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revlyncox · 3 years

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Trees (2021)

A talk abut growth, hope, and paying attention to history

Revised and expanded for the Washington Ethical Society by Lyn Cox

February 7, 2021

In this place halfway between the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring, we draw on imagination and memory, caution and optimism, hope for the future and learning from the past. Many of these things are contained in stories.

I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true. A sage, a wise person, was walking along the road and saw someone planting a carob tree. The sage asks, "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" "Seventy years," replies the gardener. The sage then asks: "Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?" The gardener answers: "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children." I will tell you where this story is from because I want to give credit, but I also want to notice that this story has a universality to it, a truth that the beginnings of things we set in motion can have an impact long past the horizons of our own lives. This story is from the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic conversations on ethics and customs. (Talmud Ta'anit 23a)

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant (Deut. 6:11). Our physical, intellectual, and religious lives depend on those who have gone before. Following their example will lead us to plant literal and figurative trees for the world of the future.

I believe caring for ourselves AND others will help us sustain a shared life of meaning and compassion for a long time.

My first semester studying for my M.Div. degree in California, I worked at one college in the south bay area, and went to school in the east bay area. I enjoyed the fragrance of eucalyptus trees around both campuses. The dry leaves rustled in the breeze, leaves rubbing together like the wings of singing crickets. Some people were distracted by the sound and allergic to the smell, but I liked them. The eucalyptus trees were tall and graceful. One might imagine that they had always been there. There’s a story about those trees. I don’t know if it happened exactly this way.

The American West in the late 1800’s was heavily influenced by dreams of getting rich quick. Non-native eucalyptus trees were brought from Australia because they grew quickly. It was imagined that the lumber and oil would become quickly replaceable commodities for those who farmed them. They were promoted as ornamental trees for rich landowners new to the area and not used to treeless landscapes. Eucalyptus trees were all over California by the 1900’s, and were tested for use as railroad ties. They didn’t work out. Eucalyptus from Australian virgin forests, seasoned and treated properly, behaves differently than eucalyptus grown from seeds in California, hastily treated, and set down in the Nevada sand. Some of the railroad ties were so cracked they couldn’t hold spikes. Some decayed within four years.

The trees themselves grew like weeds. They did what non-native species are famous for doing: thriving in the new environment, edging out diverse native plants that provide food and habitat, with consequences for the entire food chain. An attempt at a quick profit turned out to have unintended consequences. Recently, there has been more discussion in that region about restoring native trees, but it’s complicated. To say that it will take time to mitigate the damage of an invasive species is an understatement. Then again, compare that to the 2,000-year growth of some living redwood trees. May we learn patience and commitment from slow-growing trees.

We strive to be among those people who have the hope and imagination it takes to envision a world of justice and compassion, a world of liberation and self-determination, a world of peace where people sit calmly in the shade of slow-growing trees. In our neck of the woods, we might imagine a world where every person lives in safety and abundance, with access to the shade of a Witch Hazel, Hackberry, or Redbud tree; the three logically native trees our Earth Ethics Action Team recently arranged to have planted on the WES property. In folk music and wisdom tales, slow-growing trees symbolize enough time for a generation to grow without being uprooted by hunger or violence.

The California eucalyptus story reminds us that some of the environmental mistakes we humans have made were decisions made by a few but using the resources and the risk pool of many. Another time, we can unpack the harm that white American westward expansion had on indigenous land rights and communities, and on the horrors of labor exploitation involved in the transcontinental railroad, and on the energy and resources that were available for white colonization but not reparations for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Understanding the wrong choices that have been made in the past may help us turn toward making better choices as a society going forward. We can play an active role in the governments, corporations, and organizations to which we belong and who act on our behalf. Let us embody these relationships for repair and renewal.

Contrast the rushed, climate-disrupting story of the eucalyptus trees with the story of George Washington Carver. I had to catch up on some of his story this week, when my kids noticed discrepancies between what was said about Dr. Carver in the elementary school reader on our bookshelf and what they had read elsewhere. Some of us learned in school that the most important contribution Dr. Carver made as a scientist was discovering and promoting new uses for peanuts, but this version of his story is grossly oversimplified and obscures the way his research and activism supported Black self-determination as well as environmental repair.

After he graduated from the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896, Dr. Carver accepted a position at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Riding on the train to his new home, he noticed immediately that growing nothing but cotton was causing soil erosion and depletion. He had scientific solutions to that. What took longer was figuring out how to empower Black farmers -- especially those who were being exploited as sharecroppers -- to feed their families, improve their chances for subsequent years, and still make enough money to try to get out of debt. Smithsonian Magazine quotes biographer Mark Hersey about the way Dr. Carver understood the problem:

“What Carver comes to see,” Hersey says, was that “altering [black sharecroppers’] interactions with the natural world could undermine the very pillars of Jim Crow.” Hersey argues that black Southerners viewed their lives under Jim Crow through an environmental lens. “If we want to understand their day to day lives, it’s not separate drinking fountains, it’s ‘How do I make a living on this soil, under these circumstances, where I’m not protected’“ by the institutions that are supposed to protect its citizens? Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer (and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food). Instead of buying the fertilizer that “scientific agriculture” told them to buy, farmers should compost. In lieu of buying paint, they should make it themselves from clay and soybeans.

So ends the excerpt. Dr. Carver understood way before what we think of as the modern environmental justice movement that liberation and conservation are entwined projects. The decisions we make for our families, for our communities, and for the planet all go together, and they all benefit from remembering interdependence and the long years of generations to come. Honoring the very beginnings of things, continuing to work on hopes that are barely tangible, believing in the distant future, allows us to live into Beloved Community. White Supremacy depends on the hurry-up-and-profit mindset that brought cracked eucalyptus logs to the Nevada desert. Beloved Community invites us to consider what may come from a seed.

Strong trees grow slowly. Strong communities learn and grow and make connections to other communities little by little over decades. Healing takes time. Repair takes time. And for all of these, we can’t always tell that it is happening. In most cases, we don’t see the seed unfolding under the soil. Our senses are not adjusted to notice the growth of trees right in front of us. Sometimes resilience is about knowing in your heart that change is possible, even when the evidence is not yet obvious.

The nearly imperceptible beginnings of change are also a theme in the earth-honoring holiday of Imbolc. The Celtic calendar where this holiday comes from is rooted in the seasons of light and dark of the northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycles of western Europe. At approximately the same time of year in the British Isles and here in the mid-Atlantic, the middle of winter means that we can start to perceive the time of sunrise and sunset edging toward spring, just a little more daylight each day.

February into March is the time of year when lambs start to be born, vulnerable and full of promise for the coming spring. It’s still cold outside! One theory for where the word Imbolc comes from is that it’s related to the word for sheep milk. The lambs need a lot of help to stay warm and to survive. Yet their arrival shows the persistence of life. Sometimes resilience is about remembering that life is possible.

This is also the time of year when people who grow vegetables in climates like ours make a plan for the next six months, gathering seeds, starting a few indoors, and figuring out how to make the most of the soil and sun that will be available later. Making plans at this in-between time of year takes courage.

For earth-honoring folks in Celtic traditions, the goddess Bridget (and, in her later form, St. Bridget of Kildare) is associated with this early February holiday. In the legends, Bridget protects access to clean, healing water. She is also a figure of light and flame. When you put fire and water together, you can make entirely new things out of what you had before. You can forge iron, cook food, sculpt clay and fire it into ceramics. Maybe this transformative potential is why Bridget is also associated with childbirth, poetry, healing, song, and art.

There is one thing that newborn lambs, vegetable seeds, soup ingredients, raw iron, and future poetry all have in common: They don’t look at the beginning the way they are going to look at the end. You have to have some hope and imagination to believe in the transformation that is coming. You have to keep doing what you are doing, when the evidence for success has not yet appeared. We need to hold on through the long term, through step-by-step processes, through the discomfort of growth and change. And so another thing we learn at Bridget’s holiday is the need for commitment.

If we’re paying attention to a legendary figure of generosity, art, and transformation, it’s a good idea to listen to the voices of poets who figured out how to sustain themselves and their families and communities through difficult times. During Black History Month, we are reminded of many examples of poets and artists who showed and inspired perseverance as they provided hope and imagination about a better world that was not yet fully manifest.

Back in October, on Vote Love Day, we heard about the story of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She was born in Maryland in 1825 to free parents, was educated at her uncle’s school, and had published a book of poetry by the age of twenty. She became a full-time lecturer and writer, and she was an activist for abolition and for economic self-determination in the Black community. One verse of her 1895 poem, “Songs for the People,” [more on that poem here] reads:

Our world, so worn and weary,

Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Harper was well aware of the injustice, economic inequality, and violence that still plagued the cities and towns where she toured. She didn’t fail to address any part of that system in her other writing. Yet she still saw a place for music and art. For Harper, poetry was not a distraction from building the Beloved Community, but one of the technologies that can help bring it into being. Out of intangible words and ideas are woven a network of visions that lift up possibilities for liberation.

Good things grow from beginnings that are not yet obvious. The forces that will become spring are already at work under the snow in the middle of winter.

On the Jewish calendar, we’ve recently passed the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees. This is a minor holiday. It’s been around for hundreds of years, yet more people seem to be noticing it as we learn to connect spirituality with care for the earth. Sometimes people in Jewish homes and communities gather to eat different kinds of fruit and nuts, to give thanks for ways of growing, and recommit to stewardship of the planet. In regions where it makes sense, Tu B’Shevat is a time to plant trees.

Clearly, looking out the window today, it is not the right time to plant a tree where we live. Nevertheless, in our gratitude for trees, we are reminded of the growth and the fruition of work that exist because of what has come before. The forces that create and uphold life and our ancestors who cooperated with them knew that growth and resilience don’t always look that way from the outside. They knew that growth can start with something tough or plain. They knew the importance of allowing time and of giving thanks.

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant. As a community, part of our task is to muster the hope and imagination it takes to consider growth and resilience over time. We think long-term. We honor beginnings of change, even when they are hidden or barely perceptible. Let us be mindful of the impact of our choices, now and in the generations to come.

May it be so.

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harold2sco · 3 years

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Pre-Birth Wounds

Let’s discuss the concept of “Pre-Birth Wounds.” This is a subject that many people never take into account, yet it greatly affects the quality of your existence on Earth.

Most people have been taught to believe that the path of an individual’s life unfolds after birth. Yet, I'm going to assert that this is not the case; that the factors shaping and molding you appear much earlier.

One thing that we've failed to do in many societies is care for mothers during their time of pregnancy. And, by caring, I mean nurturing them, empowering them physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

See, the females of our species literally take it upon themselves to onboard new Souls into the planet. They become vessels of pure cosmic energy and divine creation.

Women essentially bring forth and perpetuate humanity. Therefore, it's important that each mother is surrounded by energies that fulfill her, that remind her of this divine essence.

Because everything that goes into her goes into the baby and, consequently, goes into our human species. So we are creating the template for who and what we are through her.

This is the time period for a woman, during her pregnancy, when we need to fill her with Love, good energy, everything we want to reproduce and experience more of in our world.

But that doesn't happen very often. In fact, many women during this time period are treated harshly. An expecting mother may be pushed by the social system to work non stop like a machine; to surround herself with harmful chemicals in the environment.

Many of our money-driven societies are set up to be this kind of dog eat dog world. Everyone is scratching and clawing to get “Theirs,” and a pregnant woman must often do the same.

Therefore, subconsciously, she will be worried about survival and safety. This woman may also be related to toxic people or have a partner who hasn't done his own self healing.

Both people in that relationship then, who are psychologically battered, will push each other's buttons nonstop. They may have arguments, experience ongoing feelings of despair and disappointment. In extreme cases, physical violence might become a factor.

Just imagine what all this could be doing to an unborn child. In the womb, we are vessels of pure potential that are being impressed upon constantly by what the mother is experiencing.

And, at the core level, we're all energetic beings surrounded by others who carry their own electromagnetic and etheric fields. We constantly mix and commingle with people and are exposed to their emotional baggage.

Through that process, our own energetic sovereignty is often breached. These disruptive frequencies can then throw our lives completely out of balance. And a baby, being exposed to this, may begin to feel unsafe, under attack, unwelcomed in this world.

Studies have been done to follow the children of parents who, early in life, went through a prolonged period of starvation, torment, terror, or suffering. The children of these people often grow up, well into adulthood, feeling that they are never safe, or will somehow be attacked.

They may even develop to be much smaller and less physically capable than the offspring of people who didn't go through such an enormous hardship. Some of these adult children will hoard things. They may feel inappropriately attached to physical objects.

Others will eat to the point of becoming obese. Because, buried inside of their neural circuitry, is a fear that there will never be enough; that what they have will run out, or that they are in danger of losing bare essentials.

The people themselves are usually not able to identify these underlying fears without help or long periods of introspection. That’s because, in the womb, we don't have language yet.

We don't understand words, reason, or verbal cues. But we do have an emotional, energetic experience which, in itself, speaks volumes. The nervous system memory morphs into a belief structure that makes sense out of fears implanted before birth.

You see, thoughts, experiences, life events, emotions, are not words. Words are simply tools we use to transmit our own internal experience into the minds and bodies of other people.

They are secondary symbols, not the experience itself, which is fundamental. In fact, think of it this way. Every emotion is simply a sensory-based representation of some “Thought or information level Frequency.”

The emotion is, therefore, a thought, in the body. The mother will have certain thoughts in response to her environment. These ideas will be translated into a language that the very cells of her unborn child can understand.

Many of these destructive ideas are not hers. Because thoughts aren’t only generated inside of our heads. We transmit them out into the surrounding world.

Therefore, people around the pregnant mother will give their energy to her. If they are petty, “Small-Minded,” or suffer from self-hate, she gets that as well.

This becomes a dangerous cocktail that is mixed together and absorbed by the baby, a being that is pure potential, at its most vulnerable and impressionable state in life.

I’ll give you another example of how this plays out. Studies have also been done to follow the lives of children who were adopted through foster care. Many have gone into the system because their parents were drug addicts or lived a very destructive lifestyle.

Regardless, during those first few weeks of life, there is an incredible bonding process taking place between child and mother. Musch of our development is reliant upon going through this connective process.

Any newborn who is torn away from his or her mother during that time, endures a tremendously traumatic experience. The mother is probably in extreme distress, which her child can feel.

The baby also experiences a sensation of being “Torn Away” from its safety net. Emotionally, that bond is being ripped apart. This leaves an enormous wound and void within the child.

The infant may be placed in a foster home within weeks. Sometimes he or she will be passed right into the arms of a waiting family.

The new “mother” and “father” will very often go on to adopt the baby as their own. Therefore, the child would only really know and remember his or her adopted family.

Yet, following the same children throughout life, it is very very common for them to have attachment issues, fears of abandonment, oppositional and defiant behavior.

Young boys and girls like this may constantly feel the need to make others react, just to prove that they exist. These children will create, through their behavior, situations that cause peers, classmates, and even other adults to push them away.

All of this, and more, can be caused by an emotional/psychological/ Spiritual injury inflicted on the child either before birth or shortly after. The baby, teenager, adult, will go through life wanting to connect; wanting to feel complete and to bond with other people.

The problem is that he or she simply won't know how to accomplish this. Because the traumatic event wouldn’t be stored in regular memory. It would not exist in words or rational thought, but in the energy system of that being.

Even those of us who were raised by “birth parents” may pick up similar wounds in the womb, shortly after birth, and all throughout life. Just imagine what you might be carrying around, stuck in your system, right now.

It could show up as pain, injury, body dysfunction, weight gain, destroyed or abusive relationships, an inability to succeed and thrive, perpetual poverty, you name it.

There are nearly infinite manifestations that can come from experiences and harmful energies trapped in the human system.

You may be able to talk these things through with a traditional therapist and, over time, work them out. However, there is another way to do the same thing that most people never consider.

That is to cancel out the frequency of abandonment, fear, or whatever else is stuck inside of the body. Once that’s removed, the human being is designed to operate perfectly.

You can accomplish this by applying, to the “wound,” a higher, cleaner, restorative vibration.

Here’s a metaphor to help explain how it would work. Imagine that there is a clog in the drain of your bathroom sink. It has built up over a long period of time. The blockage may contain hair, grime, sludge, hard mineral deposits, all backed up in your piping.

You could go underneath the sink and disassemble everything. You can pull it apart, pipe by pipe, to pinpoint where the exact location of each sticking point is. That might work, at least to some degree, but only after you’ve put in a great deal of effort.

However, what if you instead found some natural solvent; what you might call a “High Frequency” You could run that through the pipes, dissolving the sludge, grime, and build up.

This describes the work that I do with people, connecting them with powerful Divine, healing energies that transform every aspect of their lives. IT’s a way of working with the very intelligence of Nature, the intelligence that created your entire body and everything in existence.

By bringing that level of information in, no kind of dysfunction or disruption can stay put. That’s one of the quickest ways to clear problems out, by working at the energetic level.

The REAL power is in your inborn ability to dissolve toxic experiences, not reminisce about them. This is how we, as humans, Truly Evolve to transcend the difficulties that attach to us throughout life.

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ffwriteradvisor · 4 years

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Character skill sets

Obviously, you don’t really want a character that brings nothing to the table. On the other hand, a character who can do anything and everything so good that they can compete with deities dedicated to the subject of the day is often too much for the average reader to believe. There’s also a matter of how well the skills mesh together in practice, the amount of variety brought to the table, the difference between a developed skill and a mere talent, the nature of the skills - are they the sort of thing that anyone can develop or are they based on some inherent trait? - and how age and life experience plays into building a character’s ‘resume’.

It’s, as you can tell by the small laundry list I just rattled off, a tricky business.

Good news - there aren’t any hard and fast rules to giving characters skills. There are some guidelines and you’ll often find yourself playing by ear to see if your latest take strikes a sour note or not, but there are only a few ways to really do it wrong and, even then, there’s ways to salvage it.

But let’s focus on the points I listed already.

Let’s Play ‘Pick The Protagonist’ - (The Problem Of The Unique Protagonist Asset)

How many stories have you watched or read where the main character has a special, one-of-a-kind ability that makes them stand out above all the other characters in the story?

The answer is probably ‘a lot’. It can take the form of a one-in-a-million power, a sacred sword that only allows one hand to wield it, a legacy passed down over the ages... there’s a lot to work with here.

There’s nothing wrong with doing that with your protagonist. It’s probably one of the better reasons for dragging a random person into the plot - if you’re the only person who can stop the end of the world because the anti-Doomsday weapon decided that it lives in your hand now, there’s not a lot you can do about it. But there’s also something to be said for a protagonist that doesn’t have a grand destiny giving him a fair shot at victory just by merit of existing.

Plus, like. There’s also logistical issues to deal with. So let’s address those.

Depending on the story or fandom that you’re working on, a unique protagonist asset isn’t feasible. Sometimes because such things don’t exist in-universe (One Piece would be a good example of a series where literally the only thing you need to be a contender is a will to succeed and a boat, though I guess you could consider Conqueror’s Haki or a Devil Fruit ability ‘unique assets’...), but sometimes it’s just because the canon main character of the story you’re writing for already has that asset on lock.

There are ways around the second - you can kill off the original guy and take their place through reincarnation as said-guy, plot erasure of the guy (just flat-out make it so he doesn’t exist, it’ll be fine), or just being a convenient runner-up who happens to meet the bare minimum requirements to be the guy.

You can also shoehorn your OC into position to turn the Chosen Uno into the Chosen Duo, though this path of action doesn’t have the best reputation historically thanks to the influence of the Dread Mary-Sue on fandom culture (I’ll be posting an article about that eventually), or change the story to make room for a large range of potential Chosen - this one specifically can allow for an added plot aspect, because suddenly there’s competition to achieve the final goal and complete the quest for whatever.

And on that subject, let’s jump to our next point!

The Problem With Superman (and how to challenge the man who has everything)

Now, there’s no shortage of characters who, quite simply, are written to be good at everything - sometimes not even just good, but the very best ever. No, I’m not talking specifically about the Dread Mary-Sue, though the archetype associated with that term does often come with such a description. This is a pitfall just about anyone can fall into, irrespective of age, gender, background, or the originality of the work in question, even if the most blatant forms of it seem pretty easy to avoid.

Most writers know better than to make one character good at everything, but you get exceptions fairly regularly. Batman writers, for one, have a tendency to assume that Batman knows everything there is to know and can defeat anyone on his own ‘given enough prep-time’. There’s also the fact that a fair few Superman stories often have to call on Kryptonians or Kryptonite to make the plot complicated enough that the solution of ‘just move really fast and take advantage of invulnerability to punch/move/freeze/melt the problem before bad thing happen’ doesn’t work.

Then you have the more subtle examples. Where a character isn’t good at ‘everything’... just everything relevant to the plot and what we see of the setting. A good way to pick out this is to look at a story and start removing characters. Remove the science guy, the spy, the sidekick... If you can shave the cast down to your Super-suspect without having to change any major or middling-size plot points, twists, and story beats or having to shift the difficulty level of the setting, you probably have a problem.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for every story, especially if they have a very small cast to begin with. There’s also the fact that most stories are built around emotional journey’s instead of ‘use x skill to get to y place at z time’. But a lack of difficulty or danger played completely straight is something of a warning sign if you’re working with a genre that requires that there be some manner of challenge in the story.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more specific issues with power distribution.

Equal Opportunity Asskicking vs. There Can Only One Chosen One In This Town (how common is power in the setting and how does that affect the plot)

Have you ever thought about how many series - video games in particular - have the protagonist solve all the problems they come across, even the ones that seem like the sort of thing any rando could handle? Especially when you have a big organization that could theoretically handle a few of these things without the protagonist being present for everything?

It’s often hand-waved as ‘they’re not strong enough to deal with it’, but why would that make sense? If the setting is so dangerous, why isn’t there more people operating at or above the protagonist’s power level without being a member of the primary cast herd? If there’s such a dangerous colony of animals on this island, why are these fragile citizens still living there? Why is this martial art that’s so powerful and useful so goddamn rare and special despite its utility? How did such a weak person climb so far up in an organization that seems to value the punchinating power of its employees above all else?

It doesn’t make sense.

This is a problem that plagues a lot of series with an emphasis on fighting. The average person becomes an alien creature as the protagonists and antagonists gain more and more power and take down bigger and bigger opponents. The ante keeps going up and the rest of the world stays down where it started, which... well. Doesn’t make sense.

Think about Dragon Ball for a moment. On the Earth of that series, how many people would you say represent any kind of physical threat to the protagonists or the antagonists at any point in the story? I’m not asking over the course of the story if Dragon Ball-era Goku could stand even half a chance against Cooler, but if you took a specific episode from like... oh, I don’t know, the Cell Saga, how many people on the planet at that time would stand a chance of surviving the events of said-episode if they were brought into the blast radius of the plot?

The number is probably in the low tens. And the fact that, even with a lifetime of training in setting, the best chance for a person in that setting to survive that specific scenario would be coming from ‘superior’ alien stock such as the Saiyans.

And Cell isn’t even the top of the danger totem pole in setting.

Going back to our previous example, One Piece is a fairly good example of how to handle this. There are many routes of power in the series - Devil Fruits, Haki, training, inherent species traits, and more are possible in terms of physical strength, but there is also value given to intelligence and the ability to strategize and create unconventional solutions. Even the ‘weakest’ member of the Straw Hat Pirates, Usopp, who has no Devil Fruit, species ability, mutations, or, alterations, and only one form of Haki (fairly recently awakened and not even one of the offensive utility variants), is able to keep up with the rest of the crew by having a variety of weapons and skills he has developed himself. There’s also the fact that people in the setting tend to be fairly well developed to the danger levels of their relative environments, either in terms of physical strength or having strategies to deal with the dangers around them.

It still suffers from the emphasis on combat before most else, which is common in Shonen, but it at least feels fairly balanced compared to some other series that have a similar approach to strength in setting.

Besides power distribution in a setting, there are other things to consider beyond combat applicable skills.

Combo Platters/The Five Basic Food Groups (the importance of variety and moderation)

There are different types of skills that you need to balance when making a character, both in terms of variety and rationing them out in a reasonable manner.

There are career skills (good for making money, but not overly relevant to day-to-day life), utility skills (cooking, cleaning, basic home repair, etc.), recreational skills (art, music, other specific skills that aren’t necessary for day-to-day activities but lack the immediate financial reliability of career skills), interpersonal skills, and combat skills (self-explanatory).

Obviously, different skills have different ‘weights’ in terms of plot impact. A fighting series probably won’t make much of a character’s house painting skills unless it has an impact on their combat skills (which is entirely possible depending on how the writer goes about it), but someone knowing how to use a sword at a high level means that they’ve got a lot of physical capability to quite literally cut through the competition.

If you need a combat skill for a character... well, I already dedicated a post to talking about that specific range of skills. You can also apply their non-combat related skills to their fights in a tertiary sense - a lack of primary offense can lead to unorthodox tactics to bridge the gap.

But other skills have their uses too. It can allow you to make use of your characters outside of a combat context, reveal things about their character that might not be immediately obvious from their appearance - not just their interests, but background as well, though I’ll cover that a little later in more detail -, and bring them into the orbit of other characters naturalistically. You can only have so many Crash Into Hellos before the charm wears off for the audience.

In giving your character skills, you need to balance those skills. Making a character a ‘master of combat’ who can use any weapon under the sun like a master doesn’t work without some kind of supernatural explanation - martial artists tend to specialize. I’m not saying that you can’t have a character with multiple weapons skills - there’s a lot of historical real-world precedence for that, actually, usually in the combination of ‘ranged/close range/mid-range’. But a lot of those multiple weapon sets tend to be in sets that cover the weaknesses of the other weapons - sword, bow, and spear cover different combat ranges and needs, and there are various martial arts that teach their students weapons handling in conjunction with unarmed skills.

A generic ‘swords skill’ is non-functional - there are many types of sword in the world, varied by their size, weight, shape, and intended use in combat. Some swords are intended more for stabbing, others for slashing, and while you have more than a few that can do both, there are some are simple not built to stand up to the stresses of the other style.

They Didn’t Cover This In Kindergarten! (why you need to tailor skill-sets to your character’s life experience and background)

Another thing that can affect the size, nature, and diversity of a character’s skill set is their age, life experience, and background.

You wouldn’t expect a character that comes from nobility to have any concept of how to street fight without some kind of explanation attached. The same rule applies in reverse - you wouldn’t expect a character living in the gutter to know the nuances of fine manners and etiquette of nobility without a good reason. Depending on the period, a person from the second background couldn’t even be expected to know how to read.

That’s not to say you can’t use those things, but you have to have some kind of structure to support those additions. Maybe your noble doesn’t have the spotless background most would expect from one of their station or, in another scenario, someone pulled a Prince and Pauper switch back in the day and then neglected to switch them back. Same with your gutter rat - maybe they’re a fallen noble, maybe someone made a go at pulling a Pygmalion with them before losing interest, or maybe they’re an autodidact (that is to say, self-taught).

The age of a character can also affect the width and breadth of their skill set pool. People don’t expect five year olds to know much about anything - their reading skills are just getting started, their language skills a bit rough around the edges, and their ability to prepare food is generally limited to toast and toast-adjacent goods like sandwiches.

On the other hand, an elderly character, while having plenty of time to collect lots of skills, may not be able to utilize all of them anymore or might have even forgotten enough of them to be counter productive.

My grandmother, over the course of her life, has worked at several jobs that had fuck all to do with each other. She was a carhop at a drive-in, worked at a grocery store, worked at a local medical factory, worked at a guitar factory assembling instruments long enough to have a hand in every part of the process along with possessing the know-how to design a thing to make winding strings (I might be miss-remembering her exact description of the thing) faster and safer (and then not getting paid or credited for it after the company started using it), and drove bus for several years. She also had all the skills of an at-home housewife, a professional upholsterer, unprofessional seamstress, knows how to treat and care for wood furniture, knows how to work with and maintain leather (not how to make it though), was a very good cook until her physical condition no longer allowed her to handle such tasks, was physically capable enough at one point in her life to help with construction on her own home, and was a good enough artist that she was given two separate opportunities to go to college for the subject back in the 50′s.

That’s a lot of stuff. Each career - including housewife, as there’s a lot of work involved in homemaking - might provide for three to five distinct skills, a few of which would be extremely specific to that particular career path.

On the other hand, a lot of these skills haven’t been used for decades, meaning that not only would she be extremely out of practice, her understanding in a certain field might be anywhere from thirty to sixty years out of date. There’s also the fact that her physical condition is very different from what it was back then, meaning that even the skills she remembers how to preform correctly might not be feasible thanks to her own body failing to cooperate.

The Humble Bundle (varied skill-sets that come from specific careers/backgrounds).

As I touched on in the previous section about how to select certain skills for a character based on life experience and backgrounds (admittedly based on variety + how time factors into it, but that’s the point of specific focus sections), we‘re going to take a closer look at ‘skill clusters’.

You don’t have to cluster all of the character’s skills - in fact, I suggest making sure that you don’t do that, unless the character is specifically a bit character who is there to perform a specific function rather than being a long-term fixture in your cast - but there are some that simply are more expedient to cluster and can sometimes boggle the mind if the character sometimes lack some of those vital skills.

Say you have a character who’s a trucker (or, if you’re working with fantasy/sci-fi, the local equivalent of). They’d probably know how to handle a few different kinds of vehicles (in a mundane context, they’d probably be qualified for both commercial driving licenses and the unregistered kind most people have, but possibly also know how to handle loading vehicles), know how to repair their vehicle if it is damaged (this can vary in skill - knowing how to jury-rig a solution to a small inconvenience is very different from resurrecting a dead engine), have a good understanding of navigation, access to a trade-specific tongue (radio jargon, for one, if we’re still sticking with the mundane modern AU), know how to handle long hours of relatively boring work... and that wouldn’t even be the sum total of their skills tied in some way to this particular profession.

Still, it doesn’t read as an unrealistic amount of things for a single person to know how to do, does it?

On the other hand, if I gave you a character who’s... I don’t know, a generic protagonist of no particular employment and said that their list of skills includes navigation, medical knowledge, being an expert chef, trained fighter, classical ballerina, multiple languages, and limited telepathic ability, it reads as a bit much, doesn’t it? Especially when it just comes up out of nowhere without warning or even an allowance for being less than good at those things.

Part of it is that it takes time to learn how to do things, as we covered in the previous section. Having a talent or instinctive understanding for a particular subject can help cut down on that, but that can only excuse a few things - someone who’s a natural born fighter usually can’t turn that natural instinct towards language acquisition or legal understanding. The other part is that everyone knows that most people aren’t good at everything they turn their hand to, so even with a lot of effort, we wouldn’t expect a single person to be good at everything.

That’s why a diversified cast is important, so the needs of the group can be met in a more believable way, though there are also work arounds that can be used to keep the cast smaller or the inability of the group to meet those needs can be used to raise tension in the story. Injuries become a lot more notable when there’s no healer in the group, after all.

Gifts, Loans, and Hard-Earned Pay (the difference between talent, training, and temporary trades)

Now, there are a couple things you could use to ‘explain’ why a character is good at things. Like most of the points I’ve made so far, this is expanding on a few things I mentioned off hand in earlier parts of this article, such as the importance of age and life experience.

Now we’re going to be explaining the mechanics of why a person might be good at certain things. There are a few different approaches to this.

In terms of purely mundane ways, you have talent and training to explain why a person would have a certain level of ability with specific skills. These can’t universally be applied across the board, of course - you’d prefer someone with medical knowledge over someone who says that they have a ‘talent’ for it and there are other fields that require a person have a certain amount of instinctive ability to flourish. Most would agree that it’s important to have both in any given field - for example, art requires both talent (the ability to visualize what you want) and training (to transfer that vision to reality).

When dealing with supernatural settings, there are other routes. Boons from supernatural beings, familial inheritance, memories from a past life, temporary grants of power from special artifacts, and so on.

This can allow for a skill to be acquired quickly while also pushing along the plot in various ways, but there are a number of drawbacks to this one as well - a character who has been granted a supernatural power might lack the practical experience in how to use that power well, the memories of a past life don’t confer the physical conditioning required to actually pull off some of those skills or the world has moved on since those days, rendering those skills out of date and possibly useless, the artifact has a mind of its own and opinions on how it can/will be used, etc.

There are drawbacks to the more mundane routes as well. Training takes time and effort, along with coming with the risk that the character has been trained wrong or in a way that isn’t helpful to their current situation - ex. a medic who’s extremely competent in a hospital setting but is now stuck in a place where they have none of the resources they’re used to, a self-trained martial artist who doesn’t know how to modulate their force well and has a lot of holes in their technique because they never had a trainer to point that sort of thing out.

Talent can lead to a person becoming complacent with the idea that they’re automatically going to be good at a thing forever despite evidence around them to the contrary and make them frustrated whenever they do run into something they don’t quickly understand or make progress with.

On the upside, you can also use these to build off of each other. Training can help refine both talent and control over new gifts, a well-chosen gift can make a well-trained character something breathtaking, and discovering a previously untapped talent can throw a character who’s previously had to struggle for everything in their life a well-deserved bone.

Now, hopefully this covers enough points thoroughly enough to be helpful to everyone. If not, please shoot me a comment and I’ll try to expand on any areas I might have missed.

#characters #skills #talents #training #writing help

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girlwiththealligatortattoo · 4 years

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THE MAGNIFICENT SPACESHIP EARTH

I don’t think you have to be a space buff to imagine the many integrated systems that it takes to keep a human alive in space. There is such a delicate balance, and even one seemingly minuscule deviation from a normal reading on a panel, can mean the life or death of a spacecraft, and the people in it. Just ask the guys of the Apollo 13 mission, or the people living on the International Space Station.

We don’t have to think about this much on a daily basis though, because space is foreign to us. It isn’t an environment that we think we have to survive in. But rest assured, astronauts do not take their breath, sight, or any life support system for granted when in space. To do so would be ignorant and could lead to a quick death or permanent disability.

Imagine if you had to think about, worry about, your every breath, or whether or not you could step outside without protection from the sun?

For billions of years, life has been evolving on this seemingly unique planet. That’s a lot of work to get where we are now. We’ve come a long way, and these systems that we have in place can actually be thought of like a spaceship.

DELICATE AND PRECISE.

Earth is indeed suspended in space, and we are riding on it.

We are perfectly positioned from the sun. Not too close, and not too far. We have an atmosphere with the exact mixture of gases we need in order to sustain life.

Here’s an example that demonstrates the composition of our atmosphere, and what it takes to breathe on the space station:

I don’t think it is rocket science, to imagine what happens if you significantly alter the mixture of the air you breathe. Think of it this way...pretty shortly, you DON’T BREATHE ANYMORE.

Hopefully, you’ve heard it all before when the planet VENUS is given as an example of an atmosphere that contains too much CO2. Venus looks pretty beautiful in photographs, but trying to exist on the surface is likely what most fundamentalists of any religion would liken to hell. Literally.

But let’s go back to these integrated systems. We hear a lot about the Amazon rain forest don’t we? But guess what feeds it? Would you be surprised to learn that the sands of an African desert carry phosphorus across the Atlantic to feed the plants in South America? That is just one example of THOUSANDS regarding how interconnected we all are, and completely dependent upon these connections. You’ve probably never had to think about that.

But in 2020, I suspect that you DO now need to think about our life support systems for all life on Planet Earth.

I was watching a docudrama recently about the colonization of Mars. One of the botanists on there asked another ambitious astronaut “What are we, without plants?”

I’d ask you the same thing, fellow human. It’s time to appreciate that without other beings, you are in fact, nothing, and if you don’t know it now, you will know it.

How about the fact that the sun incessantly bombards us with UV rays that would fry your skin in seconds? You are currently protected by the ozone layer. Think of that like the “shields” that go up during a Star Trek battle! That’s the way I think of them. We don’t want our shields down, beautiful people. But remember how we put a hole in our shields with chemicals years back?

Like the astronauts aboard 13, many people, scientists, had to come together and find a solution, fast! And so...

Fortunately, we turned that ozone puncture around, and that is my hope regarding our many environmental challenges of today. But in order to do that, beautiful people, we have to stop letting petty politicians and dictatorial governments think for us. They want us to buy, buy, buy and build the economy and line their pockets and those of big businesses. When people are making money, we know they fight to the death to keep it rolling in.

Some of them even want us to disregard science, and debate whether or not humans contribute to negative impacts on our spaceship. Meanwhile, the signs are all around us, and you don’t need to be a scientist to read them.

These people are like bullies on our spaceship. They want all the goods. To be the last ones standing with the money and the power. What would you do if you had someone compromising your life support systems on a spaceship you were on? I think because you would be aware of the acute nature of the situation, you might take actions to change.

So I’m asking you now, in 2020, to take a look around you. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your religion is. If you’re looking for a god or anyone else to save you, I’d say you’re expecting that god to give you more chances with the greatest creation. And I’d say you are wasting your time. No god I believe in is going to give me chance after chance to do right when I knowingly continue to do wrong. To continue down a wrong path expecting forgiveness is a moral cop out. No two ways about it. It’s ethical laziness.

The most honor and praise to a deity, or just a respect and gratitude for life, comes when we care for what we are given. When we don’t take it for granted. When we see being here as a privilege, and NOT A RIGHT.

We must respect other beings. We don’t usually understand how vital they are to our survival, but it’s time to start. We shouldn’t let anyone decimate our lands and our fellow beings, the wildlife.

It’s time to take care of our spaceship, before our spaceship vents us out into the void.

So what can you do?

Take a look at what you consume. How do you purchase it? Can you get rid of single use plastic?

Can you say “no” to purchasing plastic at all? Many of us are moving in that direction.

Can you recycle?

Can you try to limit your garbage as much as possible? Challenge yourself to be a cleaner animal...to produce less waste upon the Earth.

Can you eat less meat? Modern agribusiness contributes more to our climate damage than any other industry, besides being the soul-destroying tyrant that it is.

Can you use reusable bags for shopping?

Be mindful of the water you use?

Be mindful of the electricity you use?

Think about having a vehicle that is more efficient and less polluting?

Can you help spread the word and help people to care?

Can you let politicians know that the most important thing to us is our LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS on our ship? Our environment.

If you don’t care about now, and think you’ll be dead before we have to deal with issues, how about your children and grandchildren? Do you care about what they will have to face?

Is it all just too far off?

We are supposed to be an intelligent species. So we should be able to assess the science and make a plan to turn this around. Stop listening to politicians who tell us we can still be lazy and it doesn’t matter.

I believe we can. We’ve just got to band together and do it, beautiful people. Yes, it means changing our ways.

But folks, I believe there is beautiful evolution and growth in becoming a better animal, a producer for the planet. Not just a parasitic taker.

Thanks for your attention, if you got this far.

Blessings and love.

#wildlife #nature #animals #africa #wildlifephotography #naturephotography #tanzania #conservation #natgeo #safari #climate crisis #climate science #climatechange #environmentalist #environment #sustainability #motherearth

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gdreamzseternal · 5 years

Text

I’d like to thank

@myradfemblog for finding an extremely old porn blog of mine. I forgot it existed and it actually makes me sick to see that I was role playing such sick disgusting trauma that I went through thinking it would help when it made me so much worse. Thank you for abusing me over something I repeatedly asked you to give me the link to because I wasn’t going to go through your slander about me to find it.

I want to also say thanks because you pointing that out and me seeing that made me cry both from being triggered and realizing how far I’ve come. That I am extremely kink critical now. When I used to be heavily into it. That I don’t whore myself out anymore because “sex work makes me strong”. God I used to genuinely believe that. Makes me sick. I was so so sick. I was still victimizing myself back then...

But now.. I am a survivor.

Everyone advocated for and ignored the dangers of extreme methods of “beat the child into submission”. (Looking at you old people) It’s so sad cause I still see it now. The way a person who I had a normal discussion with suddenly gets to violently abuse me and degrade me just because they didn’t like what I had to say. Sounds like abusive parents. Everything’s cool til it’s not.

My dad beat my ass cause at 9 years old because I looked him in the eyes and told him to stop drinking cause he was being mean. Telling the truth got me abused. Look at that what a surprise.

Humans communicate differently than other creatures on the planet. Does that mean the other creatures don’t communicate? No. That just means they do things different. They don’t need vaccines because they were meant to survive and live here. If humans didn’t have their science we would all be dead! We are in a race with the planet to see who can kill who first. Will we kill the planet (which kills us too idiots) or will the planet eradicate us via disease and natural disasters and heal itself and start over (we still dead). Or do we chill on our population and help the earth heal by bein more considerate of our surroundings. Yeah none of you like me because I say it how it is without thinking about how it will affect any of you. So that means you get to abuse me. I’m not hurting anyone by simply sharing my views. Yet I am being hurt for speaking my views. I’m not actively slitting the throats of disabled people. I’m not saying we have to round up the retards that already exist and just shoot them. They should just be left in their natural form. Yeah give artificial limbs out cause that’s science but giving a nasty fat fuck a wheel chair cause boohoo they can’t loose weight? Nah true waste of resources. I’m saying we use the science that is our only advantage to prevent that from ever happening again.

All I’m doing is talking on MY BLOG. & I get death threats and told I should be raped by my father all over again. Simply for sharing my feelings on what will 1000000% save the greater good. It doesn’t even have to be permanent. Imagine if every grown man had to get a vasectomy for the next 20 years til all the excited potential parents get throughly processed to see if they are psychologically, psychically, financially and home stable to have children. Then there is a massive database of all the adorable kids waiting to find homes and they get to meet and have a 30 day period where THE CHILD decides if they like their new potential parents. Every couple/person wanting to adopt can adopt up to 2 kids and the kids get a say too.

Humans are not special and I don’t care if you disagree with me. Yet for some reason we literally act like gods gift (complete pun intended) That think who fucking cares what we do to everything around us including ourselves because this is OUR EARTH. We can do what WE WANT. Blah blah blah. Then the WHITE MEN put control on EVERYONE. Then slowly we colored folk said fuck you and made our own lives cause who gives a flying fuck about someone’s skin color except for white people. Then the humans just started literally takin over. Who cares if a bunch of birds nests lived in this tree? I want my new condo that I spend 2-3 months a year in right fucking here so the homes of those birds don’t matter. Let’s massively hunt these animals into extinction for our pleasure. (Okay Hitlers)

We are selfish

I wasn’t raised like you. I wasn’t raised by anyone but my own fucking brain. I never had any positive influences but the voices in my head. We see the world for what it is and not the false reality im creating for myself. I won’t even say ‘most’ if you were raised right because even today in 2019 the system and adults hide the abuse and damage that is really happening. Clearly this whole system isn’t working.

I was raised that literally everything in the whole world was both good and bad. So I learned to be objective and unbiased. Your feelings are what get you killed. Ask any dead kid who didn’t speak up about their abusive parents. And any bleeding out gangbanger who got felt offended by a color and killed someone over it. Someone who felt the desire to get high cause they have no self control and killed some to get $$. But it wasn’t them because even though they felt the need to do the drugs it wasn’t their fault.

So why are we going to keep adding more and more children to the solution when we don’t even know what to do with the poor innocent souls that we have now? We just pretend it’s not that big a deal and keep adding feul (the kids) to the fire (the shitty system). CLEARLY you all know there’s a problem and nothing any of you are doing is working.

So when do we take extreme measures? When do we ACTUALLY make a change. We have nuclear bombs hell ANY bomb and those are okay “when absolutely necessary” but allowing people to have kids they can’t afford, can’t raise, got raped into them, got one night standed with, can’t handle. A BOMB AFFECTS HUMANS AND THE ENVIRONMENT NEGATIVELY. Humans getting neutered (since that’s what you call it for other creatures) will effect the world positively. The bombs are okay though? We can MASS destroy life but we can’t mass PREVENT it from having to be destroyed or emotionally ruined in the first place? Not forever just til we get our shit together.

The abominations and retards. That’s EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE that’s why no one likes when you mention it. They are like the endless elephant in the room. I will die by the quote, “A few bad apples ruins the whole barrel”. We think that it’s perfectly okay to keep adding bad genes to our makeup while simultaneously praying we live forever. It’s so tiresomely contradicting.

If you can all make such a fucking effort for these retard abominations that you breed. Then you can STOP breeding COMPLETELY until you give the kids homes that need them. Those kids will be more likely to become doctors getting adopted out to good homes. Then if they get left to rot in a shitty system while they walk in a grocery store with their mean foster mom and see a happy young couple PREGNANT with their first child when they could have adopted him. If you choose to give birth instead of adopting then you might as well walk up to a kid in a foster/group home and tell them they are garbage and ain’t ever going anywhere.

I still haven’t had my question answered... why does ANY HUMAN ON THIS ENTIRE PLANET need to breed when there are already so many homeless children?

So what is it are we going to stop breeding and adopt all the kids out to good homes that have been more throughly evaluated than a simple background check and having enough beds and money?

Are we going to keep creating a whole brand new system for the retards when the perfectly able children who would flourish with good parents system is still completely fucked?

Giving whole TV shows to literal human abominations for entertainment. Or humans that are forced to overbreed or sickly do it “for religious reasons”. You get to see how much their disability/struggles makes their life so hard but they are so ~brave and strong~ because society would rather force conjoined twins to spend their lives together or die trying to separate because human euthanasia is wrong until a human kills another human???????

Where does that make sense.

We are going to keep worrying more about the dysfunctional, malfunctioned, rejects of our society before the regular ones? We are going to keep following fake gods we have no proof of so that we don’t have to accept the realities of human nature.

Are we going to not do anything and ignore all the clear issues and keep adding more kids?

The same can be said about the immigrant shit in America. We have so many problems we don’t need anymore people and this place is fucked why would you wanna come here anyway? (I digress on this)

Are we going to keep throwing children out like trash in hopes that someone else will raise the busted nut you let fester in your womb?

Like out of those which one of these which one is the best option? Because all but one are things we are already doing and it isn’t working.

So hate me for being unbiased. But as my therapist (yes I discuss this with BOTH my Ts to make sure I am not delusional) put it. I am not looking at it for the benefit of humans. I’m looking at the benefit of the earth as a whole. I don’t want humans to all die off. But if it’s what it has to take in order for this planet to survive then so be it. There are so many other species, creatures, life on this Planet.

To put it simply you’re all simpleminded.

There is no god because Humans seem to think they are god. & we can breed, have our technology, have our vaccines. But as long as we are still over breeding and not adequately using our resources....

The Human Rights we are fighting for will not matter if there is nothing for the humans to live on.

This Earth is our home and there are too many of us right now. Too many of us doing too many wrong things.

Focus on the Human Wrongs then there will be no need for Human Rights because they will realize they are all just another species on this glorious and beautiful earth.

I know none of you were take anything from this.

You all were taught one way or you think one way and that is it there can’t be any other way and anyone else who thinks differently than that is wrong but at the end of the day my ideas are what will save humanity your ideas are what will destroy it. Your safe space will be irrelevant if you have no where to put it.

A human’s need to add feeling and emotion to everything is our biggest flaw.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk Typing Podcast

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sapphireorison · 5 years

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Hey so for the fusion ask: Literally anything to do with Star Wars.

Gasp. Star Wars. Yes, @per-aspera-ad-tenebrae!

Oh my goodness, my favorite thing is to fling BJT characters right into space. Er. You get what I mean. :D

(ETA: I added a cut because holy crap this is like a million words.)

Jedi

Jedi first because otherwise some of my character notes will make no sense.

So ‘The Force’ isn’t all that fancy when literally all the humans can do the thing. But, Sith & Jedi are legendary, yeah? So. What if. Tapping the Force is basically just like a shot of the Black straight into the Jedi/Sith’s veins? An infinite well of power that, if channeled long enough, will rip through and sear you from the inside out. The mysticisms of Force users could basically be how to buffer the mind so it doesn’t just pop. Or. Uh. Consume you whole. Because, like. Force users dying and poofing? Could easily be the Darkness snapping them up then and there for finally losing hold of their control of the Black. No chalice shattering here, just straight up fried into atoms in the backlash. (Sort of like…what the Ebony does even to someone who wears it.)

So there’s still a sense of ‘strong in the force,’ sure, but if they’re artificially tapping the Black, then that can be through a mechanism that informs how much potential they have to actually survive contact (and for how long). A Force user certainly can’t keep it in a reservoir like they do own power and use it for incidentals, but they can descend past their inner webs to gather it up without breaking themselves. It would make sense to me that this is: ridiculously rare, worth stealing people over during the decline of the Jedi council, and be extremely hard to fight because it honestly can’t be real that’s impossible. Plus, if the Force can sort of…eliminate a certain kind of power imbalance, then lightsaber skills and stamina and adroitness with the Force become the real distinguishing factors in a conflict between Force users.

Also—ALSO—I considered having Jedi be related to Black Widows in some way, but…Black Widows are a mundane spookiness and everyone can scent them. They don’t fill quite the same niche as Force users do in Star Wars. So while I think that Force-sensitive Black Widows are probably terrifying as FUCK (…Tersa. Tersa absolutely, and we’re…encouraged to think she would have worn the Black, so, uh), I think that they probably have a range of castes. Because, like, can you imagine a Force-sensitive Priestess? Like, Priestesses’ whole schtick is to commune with the Darkness, and the Force is basically like undiluted Darkness. It’s probably the most popular Jedi caste. The not-Force-sensitive types that are almost Force-sensitive are probably often Priestesses or Princes.

Lightsabers: So kyber crystals are clear Jewels that don’t behave like normal ones, but are capable of being channeled through. (Posit: scales of an entirely different and very specific dragon?) Lightsabers turn the color of whatever Jewel’s used to power it (sort of, Opals and Darkside are the exceptions), consume power like a fucking hog, and are cranky if tried to be manipulated by non-Force users because they really only respond to the Black. Also, a force user is more likely to use their Birthright to power the thing until a point at which they finally come to terms with the crystal (through some manner of growth—personal, mental, or otherwise) and are capable of using their Descent+Black, because it is muy difícil. The colors go wonky (and really vibrant) when it’s Black+a Light Jewel, and Opals have a cool effect and can be manipulated to pick a color, and Sith get a weird bleed effect b/c the Darkness is cranky about being channeled by the Tainted, but otherwise. (And that’s also why it’s like, Palpatine? Dude wears the Rose. He is the least likely dude to be a Sith. Oh ho ho.)(Also like. Include an EXTENDED ConVERSATIOn here re: Jedi vs Sith and balance-to-the-force epic narrative, etc, and how with a Tainted Blood concept of corruption means that the original Sith might not…actually…have had Red lightsabers and isn’t THAT something an in-world historian might find really interesting!)

Original Trilogy Humans

Leia —Purple dusk to Sapphire Queen – I waffled a bit here on making her a Priestess, actually, because that would be interesting. She struggles with diplomacy just a smidgen, has a natural Force link, and ends up leading by spit, vinegar, and sheer cussed force of personality. I stuck with Queen because of her mum, though, and because she seems to naturally draw people in. And honestly, if Han’s never been up close and personal with a Queen, that alone would probably be enough to cross all his wires and confuse the hell out of him about where they stand w/r/t each other.

Luke — Summer-sky to Green Prince – So, Luke just has this edge of sweetness to him, imho. He has to force himself up to the killing edge, and he backs away from it awful quickly. Even when he’s grumpy. And he has a measure of natural golden-retriever charisma and control that I associate with Princes. However! If I wanted to make things hard for him, I’d absolutely make him a WP, and make Tatooine one of the majority-Light-Jeweled Rim Worlds filled with species that don’t even wear Jewels and have zero idea how to handle the caste. Both possible castes then share the idea that his constant and repeated decisions to drop the fuck back and re-evaluate are hard-won wisdoms not just due to Yoda’s five minutes of fundamentals-and-trolling but because he’s making connections between what he did then to what he has to do now.

Han —Yellow to Summer-sky Warlord – Oh man. Oh buddy. Han. Friendo. He’s in over his head in every sense of the word. The thing is, he ramps up flying by the seat of his pants into an art form! He’s an idiot and a genius and has no idea what to do with these infuriating people who make him Feel Things and Do Stuff. He’s just a dude with a jalopy and a large, hairy minder and now he’s destroying the Death Star and marrying the princess, like you do. He’s not a towering, mythical badass, he just fell in love and that was it for him.

Lando — Purple Dusk to Blood Opal Warlord Prince — Dude knows how to rock capes and is a damn good leader. I feel like Lando’s really the only one of the group of them who has a grasp of his caste. He’s got that protective edge that the others have but have to actually refine, and just about all the times we see him, he’s doing something gutsy and often sharply compassionate.

Prequel Fam Humans

Anakin — Sapphire to Red Warlord Prince — Outside of Rey and Yoda, I think Anakin’s the highest ranking of the lot, honestly. Because the thing is, the Jedi Counsel wants him, and badly. He’s strong in the Force, sure, and letting anyone with the ability to wield the Black untrained is asking for trouble (and a Sith), but if he also is a Birthright Sapphire???? With the possibility that he’s going to become the Ebon-gray?! (Even if that…doesn’t happen.) Like. The kiddo is packing some serious mojo and the Jedi Counsel is…in decline no matter that they refuse to know that. But also the prospect of helping him hone the a Black-backed EG is like. Scary as hell. Let’s just. Give him to old Qui-gon and call it good. Qui-gon’s not a terrible teacher and he’s Dark Jeweled (Sapphire) it’ll be fine.

Padme — Blood Opal to Sapphire Queen — I mean. Small bb Padme was put in charge of a planet long before she would have been ready to make her offering. Her whole thing only gets more deliciously complicated if you consider the idea that while Queens are possibly not exactly rare on Naboo, that their method of choosing who to rule and where and how is…complicated. Like, if I were going to build an interesting storyline for Padme, I’d actually rock right on back and set up WHY she’s an undescended AND in charge, in contravention of most societies preference that a Queen usually makes her Offering and sets up her court in that order. At that point, the answer is probably Black Widows (:D) and Naboo Queens tie their Jewels into planet itself so that diplomat-Queens and ruling Queens need to not have had that happen yet or they would be extremely restricted in their ability to leave (which…would be bad for various reasons). Padme was probably putting off getting tie to Naboo after her Offering by her strong opinions about the Senate (and all the other Naboo Queens were probably like: she fell in love with some idiot on another planet, I bet you MONEY).

Obi Wan — Tiger eye to Summer-sky Warlord — Oh no. Oh no. Obi-wan’s got to try and run herd on a Sapphire-Jeweled rugrat who could run rings around him already through his frankly terrifying natural use of the Force, plus the Black Widows on the Council are making all sorts of dire predictions out of their Tangled Webs. He’s fine though. This is fine. He’ll just have to do his best and hope that no subtle, shadowy influence are lurking that might make his job raising an emotionally scarred and insufficiently supported little boy harder!

Sequel Trilogy Humans

Rey — Opal to Red Witch — Rey might be a Black Widow, because in BJT Craft==Science, but honestly, she strikes me as more like the kind of free-agent that Surreal is in the books. Also, and more importantly, growing up on Jakku without any sort of training on how to manage poisons (and the fact it’s a…desert…without plants…or…a lot of humans) she would have probably straight up just died. I like the idea that Opal’s get a kalaidescope-effect in their ‘sabers, so that she’d end up with the blue/green color at first, but that she’d also end up with just…a bright-ass BLAZING red ‘saber when she sorts out her shit. Not because she’s tipped over into Sith-ville, but it’s enough to make people take a second look to see if it’s Tainted-Red or that bright-burning Red of a balanced Force user. Since we don’t have the last movie, I can only speculate that there’s a balancing moment, and I feel like it would be really interesting in-universe to see her rip out one of these puppies and have the baddies go ‘!!!!!! :D :D :D’ and then ‘D: D: D: D:’ basically immediately.

Finn — Opal to Blood Opal Warlord (…pending…further info re: characterization.) — Because the thing is, Finn was also just a dude, much like Han, and made a choice to foist all the bullshit right over the edge. Plus, I have a theory that…psychological hardship forces the Blood to spend valuable mental growth and strengthening on repair. So that the First Order is actually full of a LOT of ‘double Jewel’ people whose Descended rank is the same as their Birthrights. But this is also: he can use a lightsaber and it can be any-damn-color he wants it to be, because his whole storyline is about finding out who he is outside of the Order, discovering how to navigate towards both the greater good as well as the personal, and forging his own path. The blue/green of Rey’s might be his initial pick, but just think of a rippling Opal blade. Ahh, how wonderful. I’ve only seen glimpses of his RotS promo pics, so I might fiddle with his caste depending on revelations/actions there, but part of the ‘Warlord’ here is that Finn’s just a dude like Han’s just a dude. Making important choices and becoming a big damn hero because of it.

Poe —Tiger-eye to Purple Dusk Prince — He’s essentially Leia’s heir, makin’ mistakes and getting messy. I honestly don’t think he’s a WP, nor do I think he’s Dark Jeweled. I could definitely be convinced around to a Sapphire, though. The thing is, though, that he’s a flyboy with a strength of personality that I feel like is more important as a good leader than raw power, especially when he’s trying to learn how to save lives as well as win. It’s…a different path, I think, than BJT canon itself takes with respect to power and faith and revolution, but I feel like it’s an important one. Especially in the echoed ending of…gosh, which one was it where they show the glorious little glimpses of the future. Tiny Force-sensitives and the idea that the spark of the future could live in anyone. Anyways—I feel like there’s a certain sense that characters whose strengths are NOT powered in some manner by their in-universe magic can afford to be Light Jeweled in a narrative sense.

Rose — Rose to Summer-sky Black Widow — Honestly, this is where my Craft==Science things come right in. I have a…whole thing…that I’m actually using for a fic. But the general idea is that if you use Craft to fly your ships, then it makes sense to have Black Widows (trained or not) there to maintain the webs that keep everything going. That necessitates a lot of people who have some notion on how to build very simple webs and that Han and Rey actually probably have a decent grasp on a lot of basic spell webs just as a natural consequence of being tech-oriented. But. Like. Rose is trained! She’s official! She’s got the hourglass and everything! And I couldn’t resist giving her the birthright Rose. Being a BW probably runs in her family, so her nana did one of those birth-omen Tangled Webs and her parents were like ‘!!Then let’s name her Rose!!’ and her nana is like, “Please name her something that’s not her Jewel. You managed it for Paige.” Her nana has been rolling her eyes ever since, but Rose is her favorite anyway.

Kylo — Opal to Sapphire Warlord Prince — So I’m torn. In the interest of narrative resonance and rivalry with Rey, I’m Very Tempted to make him also Opal to Red, but he’s got this weird…superiority-inferiority-entitlement thing going on that having him wear the Sapphire is like…indicative of his mental state. Also, his parents were Summer-sky and Sapphire. There’s a certain amount of ‘genetic power pool’ thing going on (We get it in the BJT with Black+Red == EG while Black+??(probably Black)==Darker Black) Even though I really like having powerful antagonists because I like when the heroes actually have to do a bit of a struggle to win (and the Gray is v. tempting to give him), I think it suits his narrative that he’s just…not as powerful in a general sense as Anakin, and that it’s his atrocities that make him scary. That he’s choosing to do all this bad shit and it’s not a function of the power he’s born with, but that he’s misusing that power in more and more dramatic ways.

Nonhuman Friends:

Yoda – Guess whose race is long-lived? THIS GUY. Does not have Birthright/Descent or human caste, but he does wear a Gray Jewel. How he got it is lost, along with the rest of his kind. Is it a Birthright? Why only one? Did he get broken at some point? How would he wear the Gray if that was the case? All a mystery. Very mysterious. Also, he can pick the color of his lightsaber(?!) and thinks green flatters his eyes.

Chewie – Wookies have a completely different caste system (the only one that might have a human analogy is close to Warlord Prince)(I really don’t know enough about Wookies, tbh T_T). So let’s say they’re sort of…middle-lived. Not as long as long-lived, not as short as short-lived. They also have ‘sets’ of Jewels that descend independently of one another. Birthright set: Yellow and Summer-sky. Descent Set: Tiger-eye and Green, but they have to give up the Birthright set as part of their Offering to the Darkness (and the ritual is different and takes longer, ofc). They big! They stronk! They seem to break the ‘can only descend three ranks’ thing of humans but no! No, because each Jewel is given in Offering independently and their humanoid mind can still only just hold two at a time. A Legendary Gray and Black Dark Jeweled Tactical Wookie would be terrifying as fuck.

—

So yes! That’s it! If you have different ideas/elaborations, I’d love to hear them. This is just my notions off the top of my head. :D

(And okay all of the fandom headcanons are going to be equally as ridiculous and longwinded as this one, so I might…do them over time. I have seen the requests, tho! And I will do all of them! Because this is…my favorite thing to do. XD Ty for sending me fandoms!! )

#star wars #the black jewels #fusion #worldbuilding #JUST FOR FUN #play with me?#per-aspera-ad-tenebrae

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hoodienot · 5 years

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Hey, so before you deleted a bunch of stuff on your account, I think I saw something about Ariel in a laboratory? Idk, I just remember a sad looking Ariel. Anyway, it is possible for you to elaborate more on his past? I wish to know more about le tall alien boi.

Honestly I’d love you, its gonna be long as HECK so be ready for that shit

Ariel was born in a lab technology though not in any human colony's. He was created by both a human AND a chaotic (a typical violent amorphous alien species) on a deserted planet somewhere on the far reaches of the human-empire. His mother (a scientist) landed there by accident and she meet a lonely Chaotic that seem to have suppressed its violent nature enough to be more intelligent. Thus they interacted with one another and eventually decided to try out some stuff with biology, comparing it and the like.

Here’s his parents btw

Eventually Ariel was a result of this but he was almost kinda like their “kid” since his mother and father did love each other. He grew him with them until he was about 6-7 years old but then the other Chaotics found the planet (they tend to travel space in large group hibernating to find more food elsewhere). His mother to protect him, fired him out of an altered escape pod sending him literally across the fucking planet so the violent creature wouldn’t kill him.

After being sent off to hell know where, Ariel sat in shock for literally months just in the pod not certain what to do. It wasn’t until he was threatened to be attacked did he flee. Once lost to the wild, Ariel had to tap into his feral nature and adapt to survive. becoming more “animal like” to hunt and cope.

He kinda looked like this, very “vaguely” humanoid and he stayed like this until he was roughly a teenager (about 14?). During this time, the planet he was one was being looked over for possible colonization and they merely happened upon Ariel. Ariel being something neither human or chaotic, the scientist there were absolutely dumbfounded so eventually captured him to test.

After that he was taken to a young scientist who was an astrobiologist by the name of Anna.

She quickly discovered that Ariel wasn’t a chaotic OR a human, something strangely both but she had no idea how he could exist since she could only understand the human half of his structure and nothing more. She also discovered too that Ariel wasn’t just an animal, he was intelligent just underdeveloped. Thus she started working with him, talking to him, training him. Kinda oddly treating him like a talking puppy (as cruel as that sounds)

He really like being with Anna, she was very motherly towards him and Ariel kinda used her as a psuedo-mom given that he lost his. Shit was crazy for him during that time since he was basically a child still.

After the government caught wind that Ariel could be trained and follow commands, they hopped immediately onto the chance to recruit him into the military. They basically stole Ariel from Anna’s lab without her permission and had him set up to become a soldier. However Ariel DID NOT enjoy being taking from Anna and SURE IN HELL didn’t like being forced to do anything he didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to be a soldier, he didn’t want to kill people. So he reacted quite aggressively in respond. Thus they decided to put him under the command of Zedekiah, a 10-ft tall super mutant who trained and dealt with the worst of the worst.

Ariel and Zedekiah didn’t respect each other at first because they really had a misunderstanding on who / what they were. Zedekiah saw Ariel like an animal and Ariel saw Zedekiah as just a tool. However this misunderstanding was eventually cleared up when Zedekiah realized that Ariel didn’t want to fight and he was suffering from a lot of trauma due to the past with his mother and the time in the wilderness which was why he was so against being in the army. Thanks to this, Zedekiah was able to get Ariel his chance to escape it and created a group for not killing other humans but killing Chaotics instead.

Ariel joined that instead since helping clear out Chaotic was far more comfortable to him. He meet some good people during that time but he still felt like he was too restrained, he hated how every move he made the government was there and just waiting to take HIM out since they were still a bit salty about the whole “he’s not doing what he’s told” shit.

Having enough of the government being up his ass, he just said fuck it. He wasn’t going to be treated like property or some kind of dog anymore and fought for his right to do whatever he wanted which the backup of many soldiers, citizens and scientists he’d become friends with. He won the battle and immediately bailed to live his own life, THOUGH under the conditions of 1. Issac, a young but brilliant science stick around him to keep experimenting on his genetic code in hopes to crack it

AND that Zedekiah checks in on him whenever he can to make sure Ariel’s not making trouble. This leads up to where Ariel is now, still wanting to help people with Chaotic, Ariel made his own “pest-control” company where anyone could call if they need Chaotic’s dealt with (since the military can’t just hop in whenever, Ariel looking out for the little guy) this Company is called Controlled Chaos. Note: Ariel can technically be hired for anything as long as it doesn’t involve human killing, body guarding, training, cargo, etc. etc. is totally up his alley because he likes having money to do the shit he wants to do.

And there ya go, sad boy is not a happy puppy with a monster killing shop, that’s the story

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sheev-pap-smear · 5 years

Text

captaingondolin

captaingondolin Re-watching...

The in-story explanation is Good! It’s not just Palps being Palps that obscures the Force, but their own actions. The Council is so frustrating because they are supposed to be wise! And the good guys! You can rant about clones forever because on the one hand I, a fandom gremlin, love every last one of my armoured children, but on the other hand /screams forever about human rights violations

I Love Every Single One Of My Sons And Would Protect Them With My Own Body. Like we’ve all done the math. The clones were first commissioned 10 years prior to Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith takes place 3 years later, which makes each and every one of them no older than 13 (and most a lot younger, based on the high death rate on Geonosis and subsequent battles). The Jedi looked at literal children and decided “well, if we’re fighting droids we’re technically not killing people, even though the TEENAGERS we’re fighting alongside will definitely also die, but since they were made for this i guess we might as well use them”. What kind of twisted Christopher Nolan fuckery did they go with to say ‘hey as long as it’s not our weapons killing them we’re still morally pure uwu’ like no ho? just because they had no past before they became soldiers doesn’t mean u can throw their lives around without the divine judgment of the universe responding in measure. humans packbond, you fucking ‘no attachment’ assholes, each and every one of those clones had someone that cared, and even if they didn’t that sTILL doesn’t give you the right. yoda if they’re each unique in the force then did u ever consider giving them a choice? i mean a real, actual choice and not just letting them believe “it’s what we were made for”. this isn’t something you put off until after the war, you walnut, because millions of people won’t have the choice by then

and let’s be fuckin real, do u honestly think the republic would have kept fighting for as long as they did without the clone army? if ya assholes had conscripted people who had families outside of the army, who had lives and loves outside of their fellow soldiers, do you honestly think the planets of the republic would have accepted that for any length of time? convenient, isn’t it, that the people who faced the brunt of the war were purposefully isolated from the rest of the galaxy, whether in the jedi temple of coruscant or the training halls of kamino.

and speaking of sending kids to the front line, u know who else stood shoulder to shoulder with the clones? fucking padawans. Ahsoka fucking Tano, aged 13 when she first became Anakin’s apprentice, and Bariss Offee. The padawan that Savage Oppress slaughtered who frankly looked 11, at best (or his species’ equivalent). people who learned what being a jedi meant on the battlefield - strategizing, sneaking around, leading troops and watching them die under your command, learning how to feel helpless instead of hopeful and resigned to violence instead of against it. ( @swdestinies did a fancomic and one of the panels shows a clone finding out how old Ahsoka is and...is pissed THE FUCK off, it’s great).

And the end is so...so terrible. Watching tcw is painful not just because we already know how it ends, but because the ‘whatifs’ that the characters themselves ask speak to endings that didn’t happen but could have. because either way, the war will end, but “we’re soldiers. what happens to us then?” And Rex is fUCKING RIGHT, because even in a universe where the jedi prevail, that still leaves millions of clones without a home beyond kamino and a purpose beyond the fight. there’s no harm in their accelerated growth because there’s no point to their existence beyond the war, but for those that do survive, it means fighting the last fight and then standing at the ready, waiting for your owners to decide what happens to you next. who will house you? feed you? clothe you? Who will spare the time to show you how to sleep on a normal bed, eat real food, walk among civilians without looking like a soldier, show you how to have a purpose and a life beyond destroying clankers and holding brothers’ bodies in your arms? and in the end that doesn’t happen, the jedi don’t win, but the clones are still obsolete. Sent back to Kamino to train new troopers, but not clones, because once you’re an authoritarian empire you can conscript all the troops you’d like and your subjects won’t dare argue, so who would waste the money on clones? And do the clones come to their senses after 66? or do they remain trapped in a haze, believing that their proudest moment is when they brought their general down? the empire discards them just as quickly as the republic decided it would the second they agreed to the clone army.

We all knew what we were getting into when we started this journey. We knew how the prequels ended. I didn’t think I’d like the clones because of what happened in Return of the Jedi - then we got Rex, and Cody, and Waxer and Boil; the relationship between Bly and Secura, the closeness of Domino Squad. We got Umbara, and Ringo Vida, and now i’d sacrifice every jedi that thought this was a good idea if it meant saving the younglings they dragged into their war

#captaingondolin #this feels sort of rambly but you did say i could rant #mod halls #my sons #swtcw #replies

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moneypedia · 5 years

Link

Life, intended as organisms capable of growth, reproduction and continual change preceding death, is the most resilient system on this planet. Before you think this is an obvious point take a look at how deadly Mars, and all the other planets in our solar system, are.

Since life appeared on Earth, almost 4 billion years ago, there have been at least 5 mass extinction events, the latest wiped out 96% of marine species and more than 70% of land species, including our beloved dinosaurs.

On top of these death inducing events there have been million years long ice ages, continent shattering earthquakes, universal flood (just kidding) and many other catastrophic affairs.

No matter how disastrous and global the accidents were, life always came back with a vengeance.

Let’s see why that might be the case.

Life is distributed: from the Saharan desert to the North Pole, from the bottom of the ocean to top of the highest mountains, from desolated prairies to Manhattan; wherever you look on this planet you will find life.

Life is decentralized: although many ecosystems rely on the delicate balance of numbers of predators and prey we can find completely independent ecosystems, think of those ugly looking creatures that thrive at the bottom of the oceans and, say, the Himalayan Black Bears. One can survive easily without the other. In other words, there’s no single point of failure for life on earth.

Life is permissionless: except for God of course, there’s no entity on this little planet of ours that can dictate the creation or extinction of species. Yes humans are capable of voluntary extermination of some species, but not all of them. Probably not even more than 1–2%. At least not yet.

The only plausible way one could extinguish life is by removing the host planet which unfortunately is bound to happen sooner or later. Hence why Musk want to colonize Mars making life distributed across the solar system. But let’s not digress.

Another system that have the same above mentioned features is Religion. There are enough independent religions (decentralization) spread across the globe (distribution) and literally everybody can come up with one (permissionless), as they do, and start a million people cult. Sorry atheists, religion is here to stay, unless of course we get rid of the hosts, i.e. humans.

Let’s now see why systems that lack even just one of those characteristics are always destined to fail. Take Empires: they were distributed (many empires spread across the globe at the same time) and were decentralized (one empire didn’t need others to survive, usually the reverse was true) yet they weren’t permissionless as it was incredible hard to start one let alone grow it. Results: no matter how big they were, and some were quite large, they all gone.

Take Communism, Fascism or Nazism: not permissionless (usually imposed by force) not decentralized (hello Stalin, hello Hitler, hello Mussolini, hello Mao…) not distributed at all (everything was controlled by a central authority). They lasted even less than Empires.

Any system that relies on a central authority that’s not spread enough across the host (be it the planet or humans or computers) and that have “barriers to entry”, in the long run, cannot and will not survive.

As you probably know Bitcoin, and generally speaking cryptocurrencies, possess the 3 crucial functions, in spades. Unlike the money in your pocket they don’t need a central authority to spring to life, anybody with a computer and internet connection can code a new blockchain so much so that there are already 1384 of them and dozens new are created every day. They are stored across the globe in thousand of computers and there’s no building where one can go knock on the door and ask for the CEO of Bitcoin. Satoshi, the developer(s) who created the first blockchain (bitcoin) understood this so well that he disappeared shortly after releasing the white paper for the technology, sometimes around 2010.

Because cryptocurrencies are not imposed, nor centralized and anybody can participate into the system to start a new (better) one, they are going to inevitably replace fiat money, and, like many revolutions it won’t be pretty.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

If you’re not a central banker and would like to support my writing you can do so by donating:

BTC: 372B63kpjF6ww6nN8ZGK12dhDmb87VvoER

LTC: MGYBUu8doMLJ4c8SHTG87TpqXGZHiR7ypN

ETH: 0x0280915D261F196F2a6f3391f082414C753fd038

Or you can create an account on Coinbase.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Related articles from Ryan DeLongpre:

Published on Jul 2nd, 2017 — Bitcoin price: $ 2,445medium.com

Why Liberty always win. A Cryptocurrency story

For the 274th timemedium.com

Bitcoin Is Dead

#bitcoin #cryptocurrency

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goblinalchemist · 6 years

Note

why do you think diamonds could be redeemed? it's not an attack just question

Oh God, okay. You guys want me to get deep on cartoon villains? I will.

First of all, I think this fandom has a problem with looking at the Gems the wrong way. You keep forgetting that the Gems are a completely different species than humans. They’re literally aliens. Sentient rocks living for thousands of years out there in space.Gems don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t defecate etc. They exist to serve their purpose. They’re not born. They’re “made”. It’s like a production line of non-organic species, pretty much. If a Gem is defective and, therefore, can’t serve their original purpose, they’re disposed of.

Diamonds are also Gems. They’re also made to serve their purpose. But their role is to lead. To rule and provide prosperity for their race, so that the Gems can live on for the next millennia. Kinda like bee or ant queen. They’re the biggest, the most powerful and the balance in their race depends on them.

For God knows how long, Gemkind have served their purpose pretty well. They managed to expand and colonise a huge part of the galaxy. They’ve created technology that greatly surpasses any known so far. They can literally accommodate to any environment.And then they end up on Earth. A new planet for a new and inexperienced Diamond. And they repeat the same process as literally every time they colonise a new planet - they arrive, they conquer and they rule. Natural inhabitants of the said planet end up either killed or placed in a “safe spot” for them to just… exist.Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Kinda like American history book.

But wait, there’s more.I see people blaming the PD for putting humans into a ZOO. So now take a step back and think. You say PD showed up on Earth - a natural habitat of the humans. She took away their space to expand her land. And then she put a handful of humans in captivity, to preserve them and to put them out for a public view for the entertainment. Hmmm… isn’t that… exactly what humankind does to animals?Just because we assume we’re superior to them and we believe their species can’t survive without our aid? And then we put them as an exhibit for families to enjoy looking at on a Sunday afternoon?

If we follow that logic, we can pretty much guess Gems perceived humans in an animalistic way. And for a reason. Humans were strange, simple and barbaric when Gems first met them. Gems had thousands of years worth of mental development, while humans were cavemen - learning how to use fire, frolicking all day and wasting their time instead of building their empire.

Now, imagine (if you have to) that you’re a working adult, that provides for the family or has a lot of responsibilities to deal with. And then, one day, an animal shows up. Be it a cow, a chicken, a monkey - whatever you want. And the animals says “Dude, you gotta stop working. You gotta just try not doing anything. Get on your four legs, eat some grass, lie down under the sun, chase your tail or smth~ Just chill out.”

On one hand, it sounds like a charming offer. Who wouldn’t want to relax for a moment. But then you realize, that you can’t do it. You have responsibilities. A cow or a monkey can just chill. But you can’t. Because if you don’t work, you won’t have money for the necessities of life. How will you buy food? How will you pay your bills? How will you buy clothes? How will you survive just doing nothing?

Diamonds ruled the Gemkind for a long time. They never had anyone turning against them, so they believed everything is as it should be.Then, one of their own kind, suggested that they should stop working, stop providing for their family and just… act like the animals. Dance, laugh, eat, love etc.

This was unnatural. Unheard of. Of course they refused. So the one said Gem started a rebellion and broke the machine, that has been operating perfectly for millennia. For a random quirk, Rose Quartz brought chaos to everything Gems ever knew. Some of them followed her, some didn’t.

I am absolutely not saying that Diamonds are pure, innocent and beautiful. They are seen as tyrants for a reason. They are the representation of a ruler, that exists only for the leading their kind. They conquer. “Veni, vidi, vici” as said by our very own Julius Caesar himself.

But they’re also not the “Hitlers” as the SU crits are trying to make them. They CAN be redeemed. It requires a lot of work and time. It requires understanding from their side. It requires a lot of fixing. But it is possible.

Shattering the Diamonds is not a solution. It’s like taking out a big and important part of a machine - as someone nicely pointed out before. It would cause chaos and leave billions of Gems out there without a purpose. Without a voice to lead them. it would free some, but it would lead the others to madness.

#beikon's banter #ask #su leaks #steven universe #diamonds

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stormsbourne · 6 years

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uhhhh with spoilers tho why was infinity war bad?

spoils + long post under cut

so I think the single scene that caps off how bad infinity war is is that thanos has captured gamora and forced her to tell him where the last infinity stone is. thanos, if you’ve forgotten, took gamora from her home – there’s an earlier scene that shows him grooming her as he kills half her planet – and spent her entire life pitting her and nebula against each other for his amusement and to “make them strong” in pretty much textbook abusive ways. but for some goddamn reason, the movie then shows thanos being a fucking whiny baby about gamora’s hatred of him.

gamora: [referring to thanos’ throne] I always hated this chairthanos: yes, I’ve heard that beforegamora: and I hated this roomthanos: you have said as muchgamora: and I hated youthanos: *sad baby face* :’(

anyway thanos and gamora are going after this stone. it’s about halfway through the movie at this point

double hitler red skull shows up as the guardian of the stone and also a weird dementor and tells thanos that in order to get the stone he has to sacrifice something that he loves more than anything. gamora starts laughing. she tells him that this is his just deserts, that the universe has put up a wall here to thwart him because he is incapable of loving anyone or anything so the stone will never be his. he turns around to face her and he’s crying. “tears, really?” she demands. “they’re not for him” doublenazi red skull says

there’s a very long sequence of thanos grabbing gamora by the wrist in a deliberate parallel to the earlier scene where he took baby gamora by the hand. he yanks her over to this cliff edge and throws her off, crying the whole time. poor sad abuse man. has to kill his victim. it must be hard. we see her fall. then we get a loving fucking 30 second money shot of her dead body at the bottom of this chasm just to really drive home how tragic it is.

(baby gamora is later used at the end of the movie once thanos wins to reassure him it was worth it)

I knew this movie was gonna be a problem before then but this was The Scene where I knew it was the second worst movie marvel had made.

in addition to all of this here are some other points

Thanos’ “sympathetic motivation” is stupid. if you haven’t been spoiled on this yet his motivation is that he wants everything to be “in balance” and he’s motivated by overpopulation, which is a racist + classist myth perpetuated by those in power to promote xenophobia. thanos’ goal is to eliminate half of every sentient species in the universe to ensure nobody is ever poor or suffering again, somehow, and also to ensure that the universe doesn’t run out of resources

oh but it’s ok! the genocide is random! no racial or class overtones here we just flip a coin for everybody! random genocides are the best genocides!

I don’t want to sound like one of those people who soapboxes about how narratives have to tell us the badguy is bad but I honestly don’t think the movie does enough to communicate that thanos is wrong and also fucking crazy. there’s a few people like “oh thanos how can you be sure” and “thanos we make these choices and that’s what matters” but almost no one ever hears his plan and tells him “you are crazy and that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking heard, you delusional fucking weirdo”

he wins btw which wouldn’t be bad taken on its own but like, why does he not use his magical glove macguffin to make resources infinite and the universe an actual utopia instead of killing half of everybody

two significant, named characters die in the first 10 minutes before the opening screen even shows up, without any sort of buildup

the soul gem plot even without all the ooh sad abuser shit is such a fucking nothing burger, you have all these weird and intricate things that involved entire plots of movies and weird shit that’s only barely a gem at all like the aether from thor 2 and then you have Fantasy Trope 101 oh you gotta kill somebody to get the rock! you gotta do it! but it’s sad and this strange dementor not-hitler is here to make sure it’s sad!

the black panther cast is in it for approximately 20 minutes total out of the like, 3 hour runtime. (aside: I actually saw BP and IF on the same day and holy balls was that a high to low sliding scale)

the movie ends with roughly 2/3 of the main cast being turned to dust by thanos winning but because we know none of it is going to stick because they have sequel movies and this is comics-based, it just feels pointless. it feels like a waste of time. it feels like they dragged out into 2.5 hours what could have been done in 20 minutes

speaking of thanos winning it is exhausting to watch. it feels like the movie is kicking you over and over and every time it starts to let you get up a bigger dude comes in and kicks you instead. nobody likes to watch a movie where the villain wins over and over and over without so much as a setback. thanos starts OUT too powerful for anybody to stop so the entire movie just becomes him stomping all over everybody over and over and over again. we start out the movie with him doing it. we end the movie with him literally undoing an emotional climax moment in order to make sure he wins. oh you destroyed the mind gem? no big deal I’ll just rewind time zoooooop ok we good! I win! *little kid voice* you can’t kill me I rewound time and actually I won 10 minutes ago!

ok this one is kind of petty but someone pointed out valkyrie isn’t even in this movie and now it’s consuming me, you give ant-man and hawkeye one-off lines about why they’re not here but you can’t even be like “oh yeah valkyrie took some of our people and escaped” (we’re gonna come back to this in like 2 seconds keep it iin mind)

random annoyance: peter quill peacocking over gamora because thor is hot and he feels threatened, I hate peter quill

other random annoyance: thor your ship got fucking blown up, how did thanos only kill half your people, are the other half on his ship now?

I honestly just like, cannot fucking stress how bad the thanos and gamora shit is, how fucking horrifying it is, how we’re expected to feel sympathy for this man who literally fucking disassembled nebula to torture her to get gamora to do what he wants. oh it’s ok though. he loves gamora in his way you see. it’s fine. it’s fine! it’s fine. it’s fine. i t s f i n e : )

does the rest of the world just not realize how horrifying that is?!?!?!?!?!?!?

the vision/scarlet witch ship is like an emotional crux of the whole movie and it just. it just doesn’t work. it just doesn’t.

the plot thread with the hulk is probably going to be resolved in avengers 2019 since iirc bruce survived but as it is it feels unfinished and dangling

speaking of survivors we gotta have that man angst, we’ll turn a 17 year old boy to dust but tony’s gotta look sad about it

like fam I love tony angst but he has had ENOUGH jesus CHRIST rdj only barely wants to be involved with this franchise anymore anyway let him be free. maybe he’ll actually die in avengers 2019

it feels like it undoes a bunch of things from the previous movies which on one hand who cares! it’s all gonna be rewound anyway! but on the other hand FUCK you. the asgardian refugees are all fucking dead now. black panther’s cast exists for like 20 minutes and its setting is there pretty much just so the aliens can fuck up someplace that isn’t new york for once. rocket’s epiphany at the end of gotg2? who cares we’ve got snark to dispense! can’t have him act like he learned anything, that’d take away from his ability to be a dick to peter!

uh I think I’m out of steam for now but that’s my list of why I hated the movie. it had some good moments and a lot of the character interactions were great, especially literally every scene involving spiderman, but you could have fucking jewels and if you bury them in shit they are still going to stink

#Anonymous #infinity war spoilers /#asks

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wholeworldbroken · 6 years

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PART 1) Net Neutrality, Hypernormalization, The Dinosaur Who Swindled Natural Selection & Prospered... AND... The Healthy Benefits Of Paranoid Delusional Psychosis.

TV is a dinosaur sinking into the tar. All those once giant networks are scrambling to survive just a little longer in this technological age that left them behind before they noticed. That Netflix model is alot bigger deal than it's given credit for. It's what reshaped HULU until it went legitimate. It's why there's an HBOGO, STARZ, SHOWTIME, etc. app that all outperform their parent networks.

The power of ON-DEMAND blew Amazon up from a more Wal-Marty version of eBay to the titan it is now. Disney is gearing up to yank all Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones, etc. properties from Netflix to add to their own upcoming streaming channel. Even the underdogs that only Netflix could make into giant hits: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Defenders and The Punisher (not so much IronFist) are being carted over to the new Disney service without so much as a "thank you for making this possible" to Netflix.

CBS launched theirs earlier this year with the added ammo of the most expensive Star Trek series to date, Discovery, being only available through their site. We'll probably see about 10 new changeovers this coming year. Comcast, Verizon and Slime-Warner know that we'll pay $8 here, $10 there for the convenience of catching all that exclusive content completely at our lesiure, always waiting as soon as we feel like tapping that PLAY button.

So, the dinosaur is slowly inching across the quicksand, dragging its rip-off cable model over to the internet, embracing the technology of the future while still thriving off the scams of the past. Even Youtube, which was kind of a revolution in independent, DIY content creators and previously muted voices now given a somewhat worldwide platform, finding an audience without having to bow to the old media gatekeepers

(the Merv Griffins, Johnny Carsons, Entertainment Tonights, Morning Shows, blah, blah, blah, who were able to get rich off the young, hopefuls kissing the asses of whoever would help them be seen, LONG before any of the actual talent was consistently turning a profit. Completely self -regenerating. You can burn up the lump of coal till it's all disintegrated, but the machine ALWAYS got fresh coal being shoveled in the fire, baby)

... is now flooded with Jimmy Kimmel, SNL, Paramount, Disney studios, which seems like normal that those sketches, clips, movie trailers would end up archived on youtube...

until you consider that youtubers are paid through Google Adsense, and receive a monetary amount per video play featuring ads that are part of the program. The success and general public hunger for these independent creators has multiplied the number of young, self-made millionaires over the last 10 years. So, in come the dinosaurs, dragging that dirty-old-bag of crooked-old-ways with them.

Now you got NBC, uploading individual sketches from SNL, a television show that makes its revenue from tv ads & endorsements, each video cashing in on adsense profits seperately, rivaling the numbers from the original airing of the whole episode. Jimmy Fallon, Dr. Phil... practically EVERYbody is clawing & scratching for that youtube money all the kids were syphoning away from them. Whatever.

Big, ugly business, but still business. Dog eat dog & all that.

But what about commercials? Who the fuck clicks on the new TIDE ad showing up in their youtube feed? SOMEbody, cause it's got, like, a bajillion clicks. Are companies drafting interns to generate views and cash in on adsense? Hey, I'm paranoid, but if stupid old ME thought of it...

So, you seen the new Star Wars trailer? Shit, EACH newer version, starting with the teaser? How many did you see on youtube? ...and when you click that movie COMMERCIAL, like magic, you gotta sit through a goddamn COMMERCIAL before you can watch the COMMERCIAL you voluntarily chose to endure. Shit. I'll be DAMNED if, half the time, the ad that comes up isn't another trailer for another movie, usually from a whole other studio. Think Disney/StarWars minds you got a sneak taste of GrownUps 3 while you were waiting to drool all over a 30-second montage of disjointed scenes arranged to grease the dollar bills out of your wallet come Christmas time? `</pre> They just got paid by Adam Sandler's scam of a company for you to wait out the 5 seconds to click away from his bullshit and get up in them Star Wars guts... several million times... by an unrelated company willing to pay the opponent team for the luxury of dropping a commercial on the front of their commercial... leading to Disney (only an example. This is some across the board shit) making millions off a commercial designed to set up an installment in a franchise that will bring them automatic billions. <pre>` It's Terry Gilliam level absurdity that we've indoctrinated ourselves, as a species, to accept as "successful business practices", as we dream of one day carving our very own little chunk of the abstract money scheme balogna. I don't pretend to have a better, more functional answer than: try to resist as much of the barrage as you can, of huckster salesmen who have studied the best psychological methods of Stockholming your oblivious ass into not only continuing to prop up their pyramid scheme and perpetuating their boss's greedy manipulation of the entire world by way of its set-up-to-fail economic machinations `</pre> but ALSO, to constantly strengthen your faith in the infallible logic of those same machinations with a passion that is prepared to DESTROY any anomalous dissenters, selfish enough to be randomly fertilized and born into their designated gangsign annotated factions dividing up larger, further established, gangsign brandishing nation-states, yet still possessing the ingratious self-serving personality defect of introspection, empathy & existential contemplation. ** incoming** __VOICE__OF__GREAT__MACHINATION__LEADER,__STIFFY__O'FOOFYSKINS______ <pre>` "The enemy is all around and they hate your way of life. They whisper corruption into the ears of our unsuspecting younger generations. They bombard you with an agenda of moral codes & ideals in direct conflict to the ones you were taught. If you love the random patch of land you literally had more of a chance to be born outside of than in `</pre> and you're not some kind of infidel, basking in the luxuries provided by your assigned locale while remaining unwilling to offer up your mortal life to assure its continuation, then you already know that the RIGHT thing to do, the divine purpose you feel pumping through your heart, is stand tall & be ready to hoist your team's flag should it fall. The enemy wants to see you fail so that it can pillage its way to the holy finish line which was divinely entitled to YOU and the rest of the good guys. It preaches demoralizing propaganda designed to weaken your resolve & raise doubt toward your righteous goals. It knows ways to steal the food from your family's table... even steal your established identity and celebrate its wicked victories by splurging on the fruit sewed by YOUR noble labors. This is your preconceived understanding of the truth. There are higher levels of truth that only pertain to you as part of a bigger picture, but you need not concern yourself with such perplexing pokings & proddings into the corners of your manufactured reality. Take comfort in the ebb & flow of a pristine, global bureaucracy that, on the surface, appears to malfunction as a chaotic dumpster fire of social upheaval, random acts of blatantly hateful terrorism and increasingly violent natural disasters reminding each & every one of us that we are vulnerable and the only shelter comes from the sinister embrace of the leaders we ourselves chose to govern us, simply because that is the way the world has worked for much longer than our insignificant participation would justify constructing a new means of stability. Best not to stress over such uncontrollable details. GREEN has always meant GO. RED has always signified a mandatory STOP. ...And that proverbial cheese at the end of the maze, ever taunting the entire roster of teams? It's laced with the affectionate tongue-kiss of cyanide, the ultimate reward for any group that is able to pull ahead of the hordes and slamdunk their Nerf football into the victory bonfire. IT'S MILLER TIME... Because being on the winning team isn't what's important: WHAT COUNTS IS THAT YOUR TEAM DESTROYED AS MUCH OF THE OPPOSITION'S LIFE & LIVELIHOOD AS WAS POSSIBLE." <pre>` Over moral posturings? Over indignant evildoings? In a race to prove to the creator that your team is comprised of his chosen people and is ready to accept the role as His Holy Assassins? Over the truth behind 9/11? Over the ongoing argument concerning the actual SHAPE of the planet & the legitimacy of the very science we thought we understood, but very well may have been meticulously devised to support our indoctrinated "understanding" of a globe-shaped world, hurling through space in a cosmic dance with the star, SOL, spinning on an axis that brings it around 360° every 24 hours and marking the outlines of our 24 hour day... 7 day week... our 12 month year... An indoctrination so effective, most of us never once stop to entertain the notion that, at its essence, the concept of time in this manner, the 7 day work week (uncannily similar to the 7 days required to create the world), the weather defining 12 months adhered to by the Gregorian calendar could very logically, and historically likely, be an immeasurable, blanket imprisonment of individual human perceptions, compressing the infinite possibilities of each reality into a much more predictable & controllable number. Wrangling in those erratic, chaos-prone, possible realities that could ultimately crash the entire capitalist cabal so dependent on limiting the imaginations & therefore, the entire concept of the fabric of reality & the universe across an entire planet's population. Outrageous, right? Borderline psychotic levels of paranoia, layered with simple, obnoxious denial and a shot or 2 of worst-case-scenario gullibility, YEARS worth of nonsensical research into the ravings of like-minded lunatics whose infectious delusions have consistently contributed to the disenfranchisement and downfall of multiple promising, yet dangerously curious intellects dating all the way back to the first significant population booms & those resultant social structures that merely sought to stifle the all too common, human urge to casually rape & kill each other on the slightest of whims. When viewed in THAT light, maybe that original intent wasn't so awful. Maybe somebody just had to think of something, like, QUICK.

WE INTERRUPT THIS LITERATAL ILLUSTRATION OF AN IMPLODING BRAIN'S LAST, DESPERATE GRASP AT UNDERSTANDING TO BRING YOU THIS TEMPORARILY DEBILITATING ANXIETY ATTACK...

#capitolism #elitism #flat earth #evolution #global model #hypernormalisation #imagination #indoctrination #infinite #reality #net neutrality #perception #social construct #stockholm syndrome #youtube #wz3d #poxyclypse

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nemesis-nexus · 5 years

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Full Sturgeon Moon 2019

HAIL THE ANCIENT FAMILY IN ALL ITS GLORY! We call to you now to thank you for all you have provided us, from the most exquisite jubilation to the hardest lessons that need to be learned! We may not understand the underlying value of the lesson being taught at the time but we figure it out soon enough! One of the lessons we are currently learning is that you really can’t take anything for granted because if we do we may find that what we rely on simply to exist may not be there tomorrow! The Human Race is capable of great progress but it is also capable of great destruction! Look no further for proof of this than our heavy reliance on technology. This is not to say that technology in and of itself is a bad thing, it IS saying that it CAN be a bad thing when it becomes so overused that it is literally taking the place of human beings!

When the Human Race was reborn millennia ago, we had to rely on our own intellect, our wits and our ability to reason and think rationally. Because of this we were mentally sharp and able to overcome most obstacles as we were able to compromise when necessary to ensure that everyone had what they needed to survive. This does not mean that there were no conflicts or wars, of course there were, but the amount of damage done was much less than what we have seen in the last few centuries and significantly less than we have seen in the last 100 years! Why is this? Because there is a world of difference between a canon and an H-Bomb, Scud Missile, Underwater Mine or Nuclear Warhead! It never ceases to amaze me that most of the technology that man has come up with since the Flood is nothing short of a myriad of ways to destroy itself and everything around it!

A few centuries ago when a person or group went fishing all they had were rods, reels and nets to catch what was available so there was little chance of snaring something larger such as a dolphin just because you cast your net and mindlessly dragged in whatever was caught in it. Today we have tuna trawlers that go to deeper waters cast their nets and drag back any and all manner of marine life including dolphins and octopi among others. What’s worse is when these trawlers actually go looking for dolphins, sharks, whales and such because the Humans blood lust is such that even though many breeds of these being are endangered and in a lot of cases mammals such whales are ONLY killed for their blubber or bones, they keep hunting them down! I wonder what they will do when they’ve successfully killed off the last whale? Speaking of killing animals for their parts – the ivory trade has been responsible for the slaughtering of many elephants for their tusks! It was bad enough in the beginning when the firepower of the human was minimal, but now with the introduction of technology such as elephant guns, they can kill many more in a shorter time period than before!

Why do I bring all of this up? Because Ignorant selfish self-righteous and pretentious people will be the absolute end of the human race but not before several MORE species are long killed off by them! Those who value ONLY human life and cast everything including the natural world to the wayside stating that "the planet was here long before we were and will be here long after we are gone" as an excuse to continue their murderous and destructive agenda across the globe will find that in the end the ONLY thing they really accomplished was signing their own death certificates!

NINHURSAG did not create the Earth so that we could dishonor her and proceed to abuse and slaughter all of her other children!

ENKI did not put his neck and position in the Grand Assembly on the line so that we could turn around and spit in his face!

There is a way to counter this and it revolves around humans waking up and remembering that they are part of the Hoop of Life, not above it or below it but right in the round with everything else! One way to do this is to take a break from the hustle and bustle of city life and take a walk through the woods. Sit down. Listen to the birds sing. Watch the deer graze. Listen to the sound of the Wind rustling through the trees and for a few minutes forget about modern technology and hear the song of the Ancient technology that enabled us to get this far! Forget about things having price tags attached to them and remember the most valuable things in life are in fact priceless and once they are gone all the synthesized replacements will never hold a candle to the real thing! The sun in the sky, the air we breathe, the earth we walk. All these things are treasures beyond any and all fiduciary measure!

In a few days I myself will be partaking on an excursion back to nature in the White Mountains, I will be venturing off with a couple friends to the middle of nowhere in the woods to recharge my Spiritual batteries! I will kick off my shoes and let my feet sink deep into the unspoiled Earth and submerge in the water that is Bear Basin. And yes it is called that because there are in fact bears in the area as well as deer, moose, birds of all kinds and most likely every insect one can expect to be that deep in the woods! These so called “pests” are the reason why even though it is imperative to stay in tune with nature, that one does so responsibly by taking all the necessary precautions against insects such as ticks (Lyme disease) and mosquitoes (West Nile, Triple E) as these are souvenirs no one wants to take home with them!

One of the most invigorating things about being in the middle of nowhere, completely unplugged from ALL technology is that you remember that you don’t need bright flashy lights and loud noises to be entertained, all you have to do is look up at the night sky and see that never-ending trail of starlight and if you’re lucky you can look into the wood or around the water and see a trail of blinking lights all around you down below as well courtesy of natures “Flash Dancers” aka Lighting Bugs! I used to love catching them in jars, just had to remember to poke holes into the lid so they didn’t suffocate! The best thing about reconnecting with nature is that you get a deeper appreciation for the gifts that were given to us to help us survive and you realize that all of mans modern technology doesn’t help anything or anyone BUT man and in the grand scheme of things, this is a system doom to collapse!

Why is this? Because the one thing that humans seem to keep forgetting is that all their computer, cell phone, game consoles, airplanes, boats, weapons, water bottles, oil, gas etc are dependent on things found in the Earth! While used sparingly and for the right reasons, these components can last for centuries, however, the way that things are being done now the methods being employed to obtain these items are actually causing a LOT more harm than they are helping and the ones responsible are of course in complete denial about it! Unfortunately for them they can’t argue with statistics and actual proof of the damage that is being done through fracking fault lines and cutting down the forests, killing anyone who gets in their way! Recently the newly elected President of Brazil enabled the slaughter of not one but THREE Elders of an Amazonian Tribe because they refused to just let oil and gas companies come in and ravage the Rainforest! Apparently the President needs to go take an Earth Science course to get a clue that if he allows the Rainforest to be dismantled it will NOT just be those uncontacted Tribes who are displaced or effected! He needs to learn how nature works and that by cutting down the trees what he’s really doing is cinching the noose around EVERYONE’S – his included – neck!

Why do I bring this up? Because the responsibility is ALL of ours collectively as one Human Race, so many fancy themselves as superior to most if not all other species and yet we are the ONLY species that needs to rely on death to continue life. What do I mean by that? Every time the side of a mountain is strip-mined the earth gets weakened and is susceptible to land slides. Every time we clear the forest for land development we render whatever wildlife that lived there homeless and many times this is resolved by people shooting whatever shows up in their new backyard which used to be that animals front yard! We are the only species that hunts down other animals, not to eat the meat or utilize the carcass in any way but JUST to kill it! Trophy Hunters make me sick! If we are so superior to everything else then why is it we are the ONLY species on the planet that has become so far removed from nature and the spiritual that we actually think we can control it and get mad when we realize once again that isn’t the case?

The answer is because we are NOT superior and the only thing that keeps us tripping down this rocky path is our own egos! But I wonder what will we do when we’ve mined the last ore? When we’ve cut down the last tree? When we’ve completely destroyed the water? When we’ve rendered the air too toxic to breathe? When we have poisoned the soil and nothing can grow? Will the human race take a page out of the Hollywood handbook and start creating actual Terminators? I have a feeling this may in fact already be happening, I’m not kidding! Look no further for proof of this than the fact that almost EVERYTHING is online or digital in one form or another! Our currency is on the brink of collapse with the introduction of digital currency! I don’t like money myself, too many are willing to kill and die for it, but I do NOT trust digital currency at all mainly because it would be all too easy for a hacker to drain your account or shut down wherever it was being stored altogether and without a paper trail, you can’t prove how much you actually had in the bank! Don’t say it won’t happen, cyber crimes such as identity theft are a huge problem even with all these alleged security measures in place!

Imagine knowing who you are but being unable to prove it? Now imagine knowing who you are but having someone with a grudge erase your identity and replace it with the dossier of a repeat offender! Sounds like a movie doesn’t it? Unfortunately this is where we are headed with the way things are going, robots replacing human workers putting that many more out of the job and as the desperation to make ends meet increases so will the depths they will sink to to make it happen! If you don’t think so take for example 2 people, one robs a store because they have a habit to feed and the other robs the store because their bills are mounting and their kids need food and clothing or they need to make rent. One is a criminal, the other is committing what is known as a survival crime meaning they wouldn’t have done it if not for having been put out of work because their former employer wanted to save a couple bucks! It is truly reprehensible what we are willing to do to one another for the sake of nothing more than our own selfish gain but this is precisely how disconnected from each other we have become! As disconnected as we are from each other, we are even more disconnected from the Spiritual aspects of existence! It is the Spirit that keeps things going even when it seems all hope is gone, we have seen this time and again! We must reconnect to the Spirit, to the Earth and to each other if we have any chance of a viable future!

I still hold out hope that this can be achieved if we all really want it to be! The first thing we have to do is let go of our ego and stop allowing it to call the shots in every situation especially when we know that someone else’s needs supersedes our own! The second thing we need to do is realize that ALL life has value – even the animals we eat to survive which is why they deserved to be shown a life of comfort and appreciation leading up to the time when their life will be taken and their body processed for the sake of our survival. We do not see this occurring in what are known as “factory farms” because these places don’t care about the animals living conditions, only how fast they can fatten them up and slaughter them! This very practice is an affront to Ninhursag who provided us with these animals who should be shown all the gratitude we can muster given what is to become of them!

Now is the time of the Full Sturgeon Moon so named because the Tribes around the Great Lakes know that it is this time of the year when the Sturgeon will be at their most active and plentiful! When they go fishing they go with humble hearts and thankful Spirits that they are provided this sustenance in which to survive upon, especially during the harsh winter months when the Lakes freeze and there are no fish to catch until Spring! I wish I could say that everyone was so appreciative, especially those who ‘go fishing’ at their nearest supermarket! It never ceases to amaze me that those who have it the easiest are more often than not the least gratified and I honestly think it is that disconnection from the process of actually going out and hunting for their food that is the cause. That and all the chemicals that are found in our meat anymore!

While it is not overly realistic for everyone to go hunting every time, imagine how much healthier people would be from consuming a fresh kill rather than a ammonia processed, oil based plastic and Styrofoam packaged bag of poison? Well this may also not be true for much longer at the rate the Humans are going with their chemical compounds being sprayed all over from crop dusters high up and being blown every which way with the wind! These chemicals are killing off by the MILLIONS some of natures hardest workers – the bees! These tiny pollinating powerhouses land on a flower or blade of grass and they get the toxins on their feet or even breathe it in while in flight and that is the end of them! What those who spray this lethal concoction fail to understand is that without the bees to pollinate the same crops they are spraying this stuff on, those same crops are NOT going to be as healthy due not only to the lack of pollen but also the introduction of the very poison meant to keep aphids away!

AVE NINHURSAG! We know that you created everything on Earth for a reason, because each and every life form has a place in the Circle that enables all forms to live, hunt, consume and reproduce thus continuing the cycle. That of course is not the only thing that is done, whether Humans admit it or not, we are not the only ones who value their freedom! Have you ever seen a herd of horses run across an open Plain? Have you ever seen how they are generally treated at a racetrack ESPECIALLY if they LOSE the race? You will notice the difference in just how lively vs lethargic they are, whether they are apprehensive or passive when there are other Humans around. This is because on the Plain they have the whole world to run around and natural grasses to feed on whereas in a lot of horseracing they are pumped full of steroids and antibiotics and beaten or have ping pong balls shoved in their nostrils that ultimately suffocate them to death by some vile Human who just decided they no longer served a purpose! This is not to say ALL jockeys are this callous and cruel, but even ONE is one too many! We must remember that it is not for us to determine that any being should be put to death especially if there is nothing actually wrong with them! This includes wildlife such as foxes, bears, bobcats, cougars, coyotes etc! Let us make our Great Mother proud and show her by example that we truly are grateful for the plethora of different life forms she has bestowed upon this Earth!

AVE ENKI! We know that your Sweet Waters are the lifeblood of the planet which is why people NEED to be more aware of just how compromised they have made the waters the world over! Have you ever sat at a lakeside and watched the fish swim? Conversely, have you ever sat at a doctor’s office and watched the fish swim in the tank? You may have noticed that the fish in the lake are a lot more active than the fish in the tank or even at the aquarium and why? Because the fish in the lake are NOT being ogled at or manhandled or having the glass of their tank banged on by ignorant Humans! They also have a lot more room to move around not to mention everything around them is natural and NOT synthetic! Same thing for the animals in the zoo and in the circus! The only benefit that fish in the tank or aquarium have is that their water may be a bit cleaner than that of the wild fish and that is just sickening! It must anger Enki to see his Waters being so carelessly polluted by toxic waste, discarded medications and all manner of trash! Let us make our Father Enki proud and show him that we do value the Water as it is the source of ALL Life Medicine! MNI KIN WICONI!

This holding any life form in captivity also makes me wonder how Humans would feel if they were out enjoying life then suddenly they were shot with a tranquilizer dart or have a net thrown over them then are dragged away and stuck in cages to be gawked at by strangers in an environment they’ve never been in before! Yes one could make the argument for Human trafficking in this context and the sickest thing about that is that it is STILL the Humans who are committing these contemptible acts against their own species! Truly it must enrage our Mother and Father to see these horrific crimes against Humanity take place! This is amplified exponentially when it involves children of ANY age! There are some seriously depraved members of our Human race! That is why if anyone sees something that doesn’t seem right that it is best to alert the authorities, it is ALWAYS better to do so and be wrong than do NOTHING and be right enabling another abuser to get away with their crime!

Coming full circle with this sermon I leave everyone with this bit of advice; technology CAN be very beneficial; it keeps us connected across the globe, it enables farmers to cultivate, plant and reap crops that much faster, it also has done wonders with microsurgery but it can also be very detrimental when we lose sight of what matter matters most (LIFE) and begin to substitute it with any number and manner of “toys” and other unnatural and synthetic items that do severe damage to the ecosystem and all life forms that dwell therein! We must remember that if we cut down the trees, we are cutting off our air, if we pave over the Earth we are interfering with its electro-magnetic field! We cannot perform any Spell or Ritual work if the Energies we rely on to carry them are disrupted! Look no further for proof of this than how Religious and Spiritual ceremonies were conducted in the Ancient World when they didn’t have all this pollution and interference to contend with when they gathered at the Temple! Remember they may not have had all our “modern conveniences” but what they DID have on a Spiritual level was FAR superior to anything anyone could manufacture in a lab and it showed in their day to day and night to night life!

As always I am including a prayer and a song that has meant a GREAT deal to me for YEARS and it touches on everything that was discussed in this sermon! In fact the movie (“Legend 1986”) that it is taken from is a PERFECT example of human carelessness and self-entitlement throwing everything off kilter and just how effective the unity of the Humans and the Fae Folk is when we put aside our pretenses and do what must be done for the sake of Multiversal Balance!

I would also like to point out that even though the name of the song and the chorus state “Loved By The Sun” that it is NOT just the Sun that keeps things in Balance, the Moon plays an equally important role in the continuation of the cycle of Life and should be respected accordingly!

“Step outside, breathe in Natures Spirit,

Feel yourself becoming one with it!

Take a step, feel your feet sink into the Earth,

Close your eyes and feel your Soul’s rebirth!

Walk into the Water, feel it embrace your being,

Slowly submerge while you hear the birds singing!

Let go of the physical world and let your Spirit fly,

Let nothing hold you back as you soar across the sky!

Look up at the Stars how they paint a trail beyond the Moon,

Sense your inner self rising coming out of your cocoon!

There are things in this world which are never touched or seen,

The most important things in life are the ones that make us serene!

Nature’s beauty is always a sight that leaves viewers humble,

We must take great care to make sure that the image doesn’t crumble!

Water is Life, Air is Life, Earth is Life, Fire is Life, Spirit is the Guide,

So don’t rely only on what you are looking at and open your Third Eye!

There is so much more to see than that what is physically entailed,

When you let your Heart be your leader you will see beyond the Veil!

So forget what they dictate to you is worthwhile don’t let them plant that seed,

And return to Mother Nature, the one who always knows what we need!

-Nemesis Nexus (‘Reconnection’)”

“I have seen the mystics play there,

Once or twice well I knew they had a reason!

Enchantment plays it's cards all right

Hand in hand with the workings of the seasons!

Legends can be now and forever,

Teaching us to love for goodness sake!

Legends can be now and forever,

Loved by the sun, loved by the sun!

Loved

Two and two go so close together,

Whether there is hope that is torn apart!

In the words of all that's singing,

Hand in hand the beginning is at the start!

Legends can be now and forever,

Teaching us to reach for goodness sake!

Legends can be now and forever,

Loved by the sun!

Loved

Who sings of all of love's eternity?

Whose shines so bright,

In all the songs of love's unending spells…?

Only lightning strikes all that's evil,

Teaching us to love for goodness sake!

Hear the music of love eternal,

Teaching us to reach for goodness sake!

Legends can be now and forever,

Teaching us to love for goodness sake!

Sweet songs of youth, the wise, the meeting of all wisdom

To believe in the good in man

-Tangerine Dream f/Jon Anderson (“Loved By The Sun/Legend 1986”)

ZI ANA KANPA! ZI KIA KANPA!

MAY THE DEAD RISE AND SMELL THE INSENCE!

Etiamsi MULTA Et Nos UNUM Sumus Nos Sto Validus Ut Nos Sto Una!

Semper Veritas, Semper Fideles, In NINHURSAG'S Nomen Nos Fides! AVE NINHURSAG!

(We Are ONE Even Though We Are MANY And We Stand STRONGEST When We Stand TOGETHER!

Always TRUTHFUL, Always FAITHFUL, In NINHURSAG'S Name We Trust! HAIL NINHURSAG!)

AVÉ IGIGGI!

AVÉ ANUNNA!

AVÉ DRACONIS!

HAIL THE GREAT SERPENT!

HAIL THE ANCIENT FAMILY!

HPS Meg "Nemesis Nexus" Prentiss

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timbarrus · 5 years

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Americans Are The Stupid Monsters of the Planet

Famine. It’s not my fault. Hmmm.

How stupid are they.

You have to literally drift around the world a few times before it hits you like a kick to the testicles. Stupidity and morality are synonymous, evolutionary processes. You can’t have one without the other. Stupidity is the self-inflicted blinders you screw into the skull bones, and morality is the kind of blazing sun that will burn your hissing eyeballs from your steaming head.

We seem to be the only people who are not aware that we are the demons of the universe.

The rest of the world does not mean us. The rest of the world has never meant us. A concentration camp is a concentration camp. We are the concentration camp of the stupid people. The concentration camps we run are concentration camps of children. It’s not my fault. Hmmm.

We have no morality. None. We never have.

None of this is new. What is new is the extent of the denial. Severe drought killed millions of Mayan people in MesoAmerica whose political structures failed as they could not stand the strain. Today, the Bantu are eating the Pygmy and cannibalism still exists. Genocide is the new normal. Nothing new about it. Democracy has rendered itself irrelevant as the white males who have kept the dinosaur afloat. In 1907, we imported African children who were exhibited naked in cages in European zoos and the World’s Fair. Americans wring their sweaty little hands and as they bring Pampers to the Auschwitz doors where the Doctors at Auschwitz say they don’t need them go away. Go away. Go away. And so Americans do as they are told. Like little insects scattering. Infestations.

You elected Hitler. You got Hitler.

We will elect other Hitlers. Hitlers come and go. Denial is forever.

It doesn’t come any more stupid than that. There is no analogous context for it in human history. Americans are breathtakingly ignorant because they want to be.

It’s not my fault. Hmmm. Wait until he has his real mandate.

I am using the photograph above because it represents famine. Americans think they are immune from famine.

But it’s coming.

a time to be born, a time to die/ a time to plant, a time to reap/ a time to kill, a time to heal/ a time to laugh, a time to weep/ there is a season turn, turn turn…

Just like global heating is already here.

Just like Central America is driving drought.

Not migrants from drought. But drought. Itself.

The kid is seven. Not one. He knows what is happening to him. He is aware.

War. Drought. Famine. Death. Suffering and faith. Faith loves suffering.

Americans are in love with hope. They have developed hope as a fetish. America whips itself with hope.

The blood flow is significant. Y won’t cure AIDS. You don’t have the balls or the courage for it. Courage is a risk. You won’t stop the flood of guns. You don’t have the balls or the courage for it. Courage is a risk. You won’t stop mass shootings. You might get shot. You don’t have the courage or the balls for it. Courage is a risk. Not a given. Your democracy will not survive. You can’t even impeach Hitler. You don’t have the courage or the balls for it. Courage is not the default position or the attribute of the old and the useless. You will not make any dents in dealing with mental health or stigma. What you have is dog shit for brains and you can’t figure it out unless you can shovel tens of billions of dollars into the suck hole mouth of Big Pharma. It doesn’t take much courage to realize you will fail because failing is what you do. If you can’t shut a thing down or shut it up with money being poured into the depths of greed, then why are you here.

Why are you here. What is your worth. As a human being. If the sight of dead children who are really seven, and not one, what does that make you. The age of wisdom. The starving boy with the big gut lived in a desert somewhere else.

Indeed, he did. A place that had once sustained itself with crops it raised, was now a thing of dirt, death, and dust. The bug eyes just stare you down.

Quick! Take a numb pill.

Quick! Take a side effect pill.

Quick! Take democracy pill.

Quick! Take a Hitler pill.

Quick! Take a chill pill.

Quick! Get a life.

By the time you are as estranged from the species you were born into as the child in the photograph, you want to die. You pray for it. You want it. You become desperate for it. Dehydration sets in. You die slowly in agony and defeat. He did.

It’s not my fault. How stupid are they.

I have walked and drifted around the planet all of my adult life. I have always said Hitler was coming back. I have always said the world was getting hotter. I have always said there are so many people on the earth, we have no systems, certainly not democracy, that do not lead to the inevitable famines, water shortages, failures of not just crops but entire institutions.

Nothing works. It just gets hotter and hotter. In the end, Hitler himself is irrelevant. It’s so much bigger than him. The planet groans from the weight of us. We live in our own rancid shit. There is no one to blame but ourselves. We did it to ourselves.

It is already far too late. The clock has struck midnight and that means midnight is here. You can pretend all you want that it’s really noon, but it’s not noon, it’s dark out there and it’s getting darker. It’s midnight no matter what you want it to be. A one-year-old turns seven every year. It doesn’t matter that you have grown numb from such images. The big heads. The swollen bellies. The spindly broken bones. As long as it is not us. I am here to tell you I have seen mountains of these corpses flung by men in surgical masks into pits. When the bodies hit the other bodies in the pits, all the bodies bounce. It doesn’t matter what you believe because they are us. What matters is the heat and the refrigerator.

Famine will mean you, too. Wherever there’s famine, there will be migration. Because you gotta move. To where the food is. You’ll leave the people who are terrorizing you in the vast and middle of the night. You will take your babies with you. In 1941 the trains would arrive.

Just like the train arrives in Mexico with the people clinging to it.

The first thing that always happens is that families are separated

They always do that first.

They know what they are doing. Without the identity of your family, what are you. Who are you. Why are you here.

We have arrived to live or die. And there you have it.

We separated slave children from their families. We raped their mothers. We raped their fathers. And we raped them. We separated Native American children from their families. We raped their mothers. We raped their fathers. We raped their land. And we raped them. We took young African-American men off the street. We separated them, we continue to separate them, and we immerse them in the institutional venue of rape, the prison.

And we do not even see it as rape or having anything to do with rape.

Rape is both the roots, the foundations, the beginning, and the end. Rape. Famine. War. Separation.

We now drive the heat that causes the famines and the wars jack built. It’s not coming. Looking back over your shoulder is so yesterday. America has finally arrived. The Planet of the Apes jumps off its horse and screams they did it they did it they did it. Because they did it.

Put your hope away. And one bite of a time. Eat your shoes.

It’s not my fault. Hmmm.

How stupid are they.

#America #America by tim barrus #tim barrus #essay on america by tim barrus #tim barrus on tumblr

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drjacquescoulardeau · 7 years

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CRUELTY, FROM HOLLYWOODERS TO EXTRATERRESTRIALS

From Hans Eisler and his “Hollywooder Lieberbuch” to Fritz Land and his “Metropolis,” there is only one step to jump to find ourselves in Geoff Nelder’s International Space Station invaded by Extraterrestrials on their way to conquer the world, and that is no entertainment, not even a film. Not even by Orson Welles adapted from H.G. Wells. Just some much entertainment for today’s audiences who want some blood and violence, vengeance and hatred, so that they can practice their empathy for as cheap a price as a ticket for the film and nearly nothing for a Kindle.

AMAZON PRIME – THE LAST TYCOON – SERIES 1 – 2017

The series is brilliantly produced, directed and acted. The smallest and lightest detail is perfect for final reception. Just as a series it is both dramatic and suspenseful. It deals with characters that are provided with depth and complexity, at times contradictions. And yet the subject of the series is grave and serious. We are dealing with Hollywood around 1936 when Hitler is arising in Germany and starting to open the concentration camps (Dachau is named). We are in the USA, and in Hollywood the debate about what we can say or show about Germany is raging. The Germans are heavily blackmailing American producers with the very dynamic cinema market in Germany.

That’s the first element. Some, like Monroe himself, have to hide their Jewishness by changing their names. The subjects dealing with Germany have to be absolutely apolitical. You can have the sound of the music but certainly not the sound of any protest in Germany or in the world against Hitler. There is a tremendous lack of courage among the people in the cinema industry at the time. This is a serious question that is pushed aside by many at the time.

The second dimension of the series is the hyper-realistic description of the ugly and often criminal atmosphere among the professionals of the cinema in Hollywood. They are ready to recuperate Fritz Lang, at least for a short while, as a Jewish and German refugee, but they are not ready to support any opposition to Hitler. And among them, we have family practices and professional practices that magnify the power of the bosses of the studios, then the power of the producers over all artistic professions, and then a dependency hierarchy with some who can block the system, like of course authors.

Then we have a professional environment made of rivalry, hatred, exploitation, ambition, ruthlessness, inequality and hypocrisy. They do one little good action to cover all their crimes and they show to the world a positive and beautiful façade that has nothing to do with their reality. They smile to photographers and they kill one another with daggers in the back all the time. And it is in this atmosphere that some beautiful films are produced and Oscars are won. And Oscars have their feet in blood, literally: the blood of assassinated people or people worn out and burnt out so much that they can only cut their wrists and take an overdose of opioids or whatever other drug they can put their fingers on and grab.

But the series is a real beauty and you will like it if you are not too sensitive to airsickness or vertigo. Be sure – and do not overlook the following fact – that the dead people on the screen correspond to dead people off the screen. Hollywood is not ethical and has no morality. It is all about money and fame, Oscars and domination. Hollywood is a control freak at the level of the global planet. And it hurts when some shares of this market evade them. It hurts so much they are ready to sacrifice a few sacred cows, or stars, to regain the ground they’ve lost.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

GEOFF NELDER – ARIA: LEFT LUGGAGE – 2011

Imagination, when compared to life, is so absurd that it becomes fascinating, mesmerizing and even hypnotizing. And Geoff Nelder really puts the smallest dishes imaginable into the biggest ones till the latter are overflowingly full.

The story is simple. Some extraterrestrials decide to take over the earth. So they deposit a suitcase on the International Space Station. The suitcase is taken down to earth, then opened by some reckless cat who will not even be killed by his curiosity. That spread a virus on the planet at the speed of light. This virus destroys the memory of people backward, so that they lose their memory from right now back on, one year in just a few days. And they reach twenty or more years in a few months. It creates an artificial Alzheimer and the consequences should be the extinction of the human race when the loss of memory reaches birth since then they will lose the memory of their basic needs like hunger and thirst, though the book pretends they will keep the memory of reproduction, at least the need of that type of physical contact, producing babies that would be forgotten as soon as being born. Destruction all around.

But later on, the extraterrestrials deposit a second suitcase on the ISS. The team decides to take it down themselves with their shuttle and they select a base in Wales that is entirely cut off from the rest of the world and where a band of uninfected scientists have taken refuge incognito of anyone. The second suitcase is then opened and it reveals it propagates a second virus that amplifies the memory of people to the very simultaneous remembering of absolutely everything down to the last detail since even before birth. This mental cramming causes serious mental disruption and at least people simply get psychotic with headaches to accompany the disruption. And from psychotic to psychopath there is only one step and the victim of this second disruption starts killing or trying to kill. But he is also endowed with enhanced humanity and life and he can even survive mortal wounds, hence death itself.

Then the conclusion is simple “Where’s there’s life, there’s hope.” It sounds like Obama and these uninfected scientists manage to travel all around the globe to another isolated area where some scientists have taken refuge in the south Pacific. Yes, definitely, they can.

The best part is for me the emergence of the first virus in a Boeing Dreamliner flying from New York to London. It is hilarious to see how the people who are losing their memory are also losing their consciousness of why they were travelling to London and so they hi-jack the plane to go back to New York, and the book reveals that this hi-jacking is impossible today because any plane can be taken under control directly from some air-traffic controlling center and then no one can pilot the plane from the cockpit and the plane can be taken anywhere the technicians in the air-traffic controlling center decide. The bully passengers who have taken over the plane thus find out the plane is directed onto a disaffected airstrip where it will be quarantined for as long as they will remember, and remember is interesting since they are losing their memory. Quarantine forever.

There are dozens of situations of that type that are dramatically humorous. And the escape of the English scientists and the ISS team from Wales to move to the South Pacific is just both incredible and funnily absurd, not funny ah ah but funny strange of course, like the famous joke of old about French cows who have five legs and not four like all self-respecting English cows.

But the author is titillating us with an important question: what is the role of memory in life? It is crucial since the loss of memory is the surest way to die, and at the same time, the preservation of memory will provide every living person with the consciousness that life is lethal since it leads to death anyway and at all times. You must admit it is crucial, isn’t it? Unconscious death as opposed to conscious death. The choice of the century.

And excessive memory leads to psychosis. Luckily the author avoided the now un-trendy if not politically incorrect term of schizophrenia. Psychosis means killing to survive, though survival is short lived in a way. But it also leads to self-preservation on the side of “normal” people who kill the deranged people with no pangs of conscience at all. Memory is the core capability of our brain and central nervous system that enables all other mental capabilities starting with sensing, perceiving, identifying or recognizing (naming), experimenting, speculating and conceptualizing without which no language is possible, no abstract thinking is possible, no human species is possible. Our memory associated to the mutations brought to us by the emergence of the bipedal long distance fast runner that Homo Sapiens was some 300,000 years ago gave Homo Sapiens the tools he needed to invent and develop our human articulated languages. No memory then no language, not even the simple set of eight or nine calls a standard monkey species have at their disposal.

Yet I think the description of this loss of memory is rather tamed by the fact it is seen essentially through people who do not lose their memory. When someone is severely hit by Alzheimer they may well lose the ability to eat and drink and only very basic physical functions will survive for a while, like breathing and rejecting waste. That leads some older people to the simple situation when they have to be fed otherwise they won’t do it on their own, and they won’t communicate anymore. They are not reduced to a vegetal state because a plant does not forget to breathe and their roots do not forget to work and the plant’s nourishment comes from the roots and the breathing of the leaves.

Highly entertaining though totally foolish crazy mad science-fiction directly out of Mad Magazine and their Alfred E. Newman. In a way, it is refreshing to know that on this planet some people might be slightly saner than most others, especially politicians.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

#hatred #cinema #science fiction

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