#saying that it can and that it is equal in value to real human artwork is the most out of touch take

[rpgsandbox]

Simulating a Comic Book World  

Comic book RPGs tend to be sub-divided into “descriptor-based” and “effect-based” games. “Bolt of Fire” is a descriptor, while “Ranged Attack that deals 50 points of damage to one target” is an effect. A descriptor-based game prioritizes the descriptor over the effects. An effect-based game prioritizes the effects over the descriptor.

Ascendant strives to be neither a descriptor-based nor effect-based game. It is, rather, a physics-based game. The game mechanics are intended to be the physics engine of the game world. Powers have both descriptors and effects. Some effects are precluded by the logic of the descriptor, and some descriptors inevitably entail certain effects. The mechanics are elaborate and detailed (as in an effect-based game) but they are also broad and universalized (as in a descriptor-based game). Players are expected and encouraged to use their powers in whatever manner makes sense within the physics of a comic-book world, but not in ways that don’t make sense.

If a descriptor-based system aims to let players experience a comic-book story, and an effect-based system aims to let players play a superhero game, our physics-based system aims to let players simulate a comic book world. To do so, we have created logarithmic chart-based universal mechanics, a style of design that has not been widely used in the last two decades, but which will be instantly familiar to fans of the classic FASERIP and MEGS RPGs from the 1980s.  

Learning the Game  

The easiest way to learn about Ascendant is to get walked through a character stat block. Below is the stat block for Aurora. Previously a D-grade celebrity from a TV  reality show, her ambition to be a dazzling star in the spotlight was granted…sort of… when she manifested the ability to control and generate light. Now she is one of the most famous ascendants in the world, with brand sponsorships from beauty and fashion companies, her own press team, and a prestigious membership in the Star-Spangled Squadron, America’s premier team of crimefighting ascendants.  

Up at the top you can see Aurora's Character Points, Power Limit, and Challenge Rating. Character Points (CP) are used to construct characters. An average human has 200 CP. A trained soldier has 240 CP. An exceptionally impressive, formidable and renowned human in the real world has 400 CP.  Every 80 CP represents an approximate doubling of the character’s competency across all capabilities. With 940 Character Points, Aurora is one of the 20 most powerful superhumans in the world. Power Limit constrains how  characters can allocate their CP and is analogous to class level in a D20 RPG. Challenge Rating shows how powerful a character is relative to a trained soldier. Aurora can defeat 500 US infantry simultaneously - she's a tough woman.  

Over on the right, below her image, you'll see Aurora's Primary Attributes: Might (MIG), Agility (AGI), Valor (VAL), Resolve (RES), Insight (INS), and Charisma (CHA). Each of these Primary Attributes are rated in Supermetric Points (SP). SP are logarithmic; each additional one SP has a value equal to double the amount of the previous SP.  Ordinary people have 3 SPs in each of their Primary Attributes, and the most impressive humans typically have no more than 5 SP in any Primary Attribute. With 7 SPs of Agility, Aurora is four times more agile than an Olympic athlete. With 12 SPs of Charisma, Aurora is 500 times more magnetic and alluring than any ordinary person.

To the left of the Primary Attributes are Aurora's Secondary Attributes, which rate factors like Initiative, Passive Spotting Range, Height, Income, and more. With a Flight Speed of 14 SPs, Aurora can fly at Mach 24!

Below the Variable Attributes we list Aurora's Powers. Her most important Power is Agile Light Control. Light Control is a pre-defined Power Set that allows her to emulate many other powers.  (The rules let you build your own power sets if you want, yes!)

The word Agile in front of Light Control is a modifier that changes how the power works. In this case, it means that Aurora uses her Light Control in conjunction with her Agility rather than her Insight. Between Powers, Power Sets, and Modifiers, there are infinite possibilities available to make virtually any character you can imagine.

Below Powers we've listed Aurora's Skills. Skills can be substituted for Primary Attributes for specific purposes. For instance, Aurora has 14 SPs of Aerial Combat. If she's the target of a ranged attack while she's flying, she can substitute her Aerial Combat score for her Agility score, making her much harder to hit.

Below the Primary Attributes, you can see Aurora's Perks and Drawbacks. Perks function similarly to Feats in a D20 RPG. Some of the most important Perks are the Combat Maneuvers, which allow you to trade damage for accuracy and vice versa. Aurora's got two Combat Maneuvers as well as a host of other Perks related to her status as a celebrity member of the elite Star-Spangled Squadron.

Aurora has a number of minor Drawbacks such as her Code of Honor ("always be fabulous") as well as one very serious Drawback called a Vulnerable State. A Vulnerable State models all the situations that can result in heroes becoming weaker or losing their powers. Exposed to meteorites from your homeworld? Caught out of your powered armor? Forgot to recharge your power ring? Not angry enough to turn green? All modeled with Vulnerable State. Aurora's Vulnerable State is that all of her powers are based on her egoistic desire to be a star; if she's ever reduced to 0 Determination, she gets depressed, loses her superpowers, and acquires a host of flaws.

Speaking of Determination, that's one of the game's Variable Attributes. The other one is Health, and both are listed near the top of the sheet. These are like Hit Points in a D20 Game. Unlike the other Attributes, Variable Attributes aren't rated in SP, just in raw numbers, so that when you deal and take damage it's all scaled correctly.

As for how the game itself works, it's so easy even a 200-CP ordinary human can play it! Anytime you want to make an Action, you choose your Action Value (AV) and then subtract the Difficulty Value (DV) to yield a Resolution Value (RV). You then roll 1d100 on the Challenge Action Resolution Table, or CHART, to see your Color Result. The CHART is carefully structured so that the expected values for any AV versus any RV are exactly what they ought to be, given the logarithmic nature of the Attributes.  (It's pretty slick if you like math and we'll update on this in more detail later.)

Let's simulate Aurora shooting a Thermal Blast at the blindsighted assassin Helen Killer. Down at the bottom of her sheet, we've listed Aurora's Attacks. Each Attack has an Action Value and a Base Damage. If Aurora fires a Thermal Blast at Helen Killer, her AV for the Attack is 14 SPs and her Base Damage is 256. Her DV for the Attack is Helen's Combat Sense, which happens to be 13 SPs. That gives Aurora an RV of 14 - 13 = +1 on the CHART. Let's say her player rolls a 32. Scanning across the "1" row of the RV (Attack) column, we see that 32 falls into the Yellow range, so Aurora has scored a Yellow result on her Attack.

When you score a Green result when making an Attack, you deal Base Damage, while Yellow, Orange, and Red results increase damage by a factor of 2, 4, or 8. Since Aurora scored a Yellow result she deals 512 points of Damage to Helen Killer. Helen now gets to  apply Protection like Forcefield or Invulnerability, then Roll With the Attack to reduce Damage in exchange for taking on various Conditions like "Dazed" or "Staggered".

We'll discuss the rules more in future updates but if you want more details, be sure to check out the sneak preview of the game’s first two chapters at the link below!

                              LINK: Sneak Preview Chapter 1 & 2

What if Superhumans Had Just Emerged?

Enough about rules. Let's talk about setting! Ascendant includes an optional campaign setting inspired by comics like Watchmen, The Boys, Squadron Supreme, The Authority, and Invincible. The world of Ascendant  doesn't begin to diverge from that of our real world until 2012, and the first superheroes don't go public until the Battle of Atlanta in 2018, meaning your player characters will be among the first superhumans to ever don tights and fight crime.  The setting is presented as an epistolary novel made up of leaked documents, transcripts, newspaper clippings, and emails that you can print out and give to your players - like this one.

Of course, we also include statistics for all of the major characters and organizations presented in the backstory, too. If you're intrigued, be sure to download the sneak preview of the campaign setting by clicking on the image below.  (Art and layout not yet final!)

                             LINK: Sneak Preview Campaign Setting

The Art of Ascendant  

Comics are a visual medium and no comic book game should be without amazing illustrations. We’ve secured a team of top comic book artists to bring the world of Ascendant to life. Here's some samples of the artwork we've already commissioned. With your support, there'll be lots more!  

AIRBORNE faces STILETTO in a rooftop battle between hero and anti-hero

Hyperkinetic teleporter WARP confronts blindsighted assassin HELEN KILLER

The world's first (and only) ascended manatee, LEVITEE, visits NYC on his Goodwill Tour

AURORA of the Star-Spangled Squadron is greeted by adoring fans

============================================================

Kickstarter campaign ends: Wed, April 1 2020 6:00 PM BST

Website: Autarch

#RPG #kickstarter #Ascendant #Autarch

[shadow-sovereign]

1. So, here is another idea: The relationship between South Korea and Japan are bad, so one of the politicans comes up with an idea: a hunter exchange programm between Korea and Japan. Some hunters from Korea stay with the Drawn Sword Guild and some hunters form Japan stay with one of their guilds. Each hunter has a "mentor" in the guild they are staying. Jin-Woo is among the hunters who go to Japan and his mentor is Goto Ryuji who is not happy playing babysitter for an E-Rank hunter.

2. But he has to play nice because of politics. So Jin-Woo is living with Ryuji. Ryuji’s first impression of the Korean is: "weak but kind of cute" and "looks like a puppy". Of course Jin-Woo still goes into Gates (with other D and E rank hunters) and one day the dual-dungeon-incident happens. They suspect that he experienced a double awakening, but their magical power detector says otherwise. Ryuji is still suspicious because Jin-Woo feels different to his senses.

3. As if something about him has changed so he watches him. And every day he feels stronger than before, and suddenly he grows muscles over night. He is like a puzzle Ryuji can not resist solving. They get closer every day. But Jin-Woo’s time in Japan runs out and he has to return to Korea.

This would be a very interesting dynamic. Ryuji as a general rule does not respect Hunters that are weak. He would not have a very high opinion of Jin-Woo at first. Even his reasons for being a Hunter would just be baffling to him.

Putting his life on the line to keep his mother on life support? It would be one thing if it was for life-saving treatment, to actually make his mother better. He could understand making that kind of sacrifice for a parent if it would actually save the person. But to make an indefinite sacrifice for a parent that’s always going to be in a coma?

I see Ryuji as maybe being a dutiful son, but not being particularly close to them. Maybe they were the kind of parents who worked a lot and thought the way to make your kid happy was through material goods. He always had food, nice clothes, and plenty of gifts on his birthday and holidays. Did it really matter if they weren’t always home on time for dinner?

This has led to Ryuji to being distant in general and very self-sufficient. He doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to others or forming attachments to them. That distance from humanity led to feeling superiority to humanity. He convinced himself that he doesn’t need others, so he must be better than them.

Watching Jin-Woo constantly getting hurt for someone else’s sake doesn’t really change his mind, either. Maybe he’ll even try to talk Jin-Woo out of it, as an odd form of pity. He can at least respect how persist Jin-Woo is at working towards his goals, even if he thinks said goals are pointless.

The conversation doesn’t really go over well. E-rank Jin-Woo is kind of timid, but he’s absolutely livid at this self-absorbed rich asshole telling him to let his mother die….because it doesn’t benefit him?? Maybe he goes on a rant about all that his mother has done for him growing up and not wanting her to die is reason enough for his sacrifice.

It could possibly lead to them discussing different philosophies later, assuming I can figure out how to write that. At the very least, I want them to have a discussion about the inherent value of human lives and how people don’t have to be “useful”. It’ll at least make Ryuji introspective, but I don’t think he’s going to have a big change of heart right away. He’ll eventually learn how to care about people, but he’s always going to be a bit selfish.

Now, winding back to the start – how does Jin-Woo get selected for the exchange program? He’s the weakest Hunter there is. ‘Wouldn’t it look bad on Korea for me to get sent over?’, he asks. But the fact that he keeps working as a Hunter despite his weakness is exactly why they chose him.

Unlike Ryuji, other people are quite moved by his story. About how he risks his life every time he steps through a gate to pay his mother’s hospital bills. How he raised his sister after their mother fell into a coma, their father presumed killed in a gate. And how he’s raising money to put her through university.

In addition to what they normally pay him to go through Gates, they give him extra for every day he’s in Japan, plus they pay for his travel expenses. Plane ticket and a decent budget for food. With him staying with Ryuji, he at least doesn’t have to pay for housing in Japan, which is useful since he still has to pay the bills for his sister in Korea.

It’s difficult for him to be separated from her for so long. Perhaps the exchange program could be about a year long. In the beginning, Jin-Woo video calls her every day, but that gradually shifts into 2-3 times a week as they get used to the separation.

Ryuji’s not happy about having someone in his space, but he’s playing along with this situation for political reasons. He understands that public opinion is its own type of power, especially when it’ll determine who’s willing to do business with you.

When he gets Jin-Woo home, he lays out some basic ground rules. Like, no eating outside of the kitchen/dining area. He owns his own apartment on the top floor of some tall building. He doesn’t want his carpets getting stained or food spilled on his couches. But he doesn’t have expensive vases and statues laying around, waiting to give Jin-Woo a heart attack with one wrong move. (He does have some fancy artwork, but you’re a lot less likely to knock that off the wall than an expensive vase off a shelf.)

Basically, Ryuji is reasonable in the house rules he sets. He doesn’t try to intimidate Jin-Woo, but he’s not particularly friendly either. In the beginning, he’ll probably ignore Jin-Woo for the most part. But he keeps getting reports of how Jin-Woo was injured in this raid and that raid (healed before he gets back to Ryuji’s apartment. He’s going on raids with Ryuji’s guild and Ryuji always insists on a healer with every raid, low ranked or not. The healer fees are less expensive than the insurance payouts.)

Eventually, Ryuji gets curious about the way Jin-Woo thinks. How he can keep going on dangerous raids to pay for the hospital bills of a mother who’s never going to wake up. That’s when they start having more regular conversations, trying to understand the other’s point of view.

They’re not quite friends by the time Jin-Woo encounters the Double Dungeon, but they’re close enough that Ryuji visits him in the hospital. Maybe Ryuji realizes that he would be at least briefly upset if the kid died, which is more than he can say for most people.

He notices pretty quickly when Jin-Woo starts changing. Not only is he suddenly doing exercise every day, but he’s gaining muscles and height. The muscles could be hidden by clothes, but he’s not going to miss that the kid he’s been living with for months is suddenly taller.

They start spending more time together as Ryuji tries to figure out what’s going on. Jin-Woo deflects some of the questions, but doesn’t outright tell Ryuji it’s none of his business. Maybe Jin-Woo likes that he’s got more of Ryuji’s attention now. (Though if Ryuji had completely ignored him when he was weaker, he’d be ignoring Ryuji now. He won’t get closer to someone who’s only interested in him now that he’s stronger.)

As Jin-Woo becomes stronger, he becomes more confident as well. He’s more bold in how he states his opinion, no more stuttering or nervous fidgeting. The change makes a remarkable difference. Add that to his changing body and Ryuji realizes he’s starting to become attracted to Jin-Woo. (The real question is whether Jin-Woo will notice on his own. I headcanon him as not having much experience with romance before the Double Dungeon incident. He was too busy going on raids and taking care of his sister.)

Perhaps he and Ryuji spar a few times before Jin-Woo has to go back to Korea? Ryuji obviously notices that Jin-Woo is stronger every time, wondering how this is possible and when Jin-Woo’s growth will stop. He’s both relieved and disappointed that he didn’t get to see Jin-Woo reach his own strength before he had to return home, almost looking forward to sparring with him as an equal.

I’m not sure about the timeline of everything. Perhaps Jin-Woo is in Japan for another two months after the Double Dungeon incident. He doesn’t go on raids during that time, focusing on getting stronger. He’s trying to avoid having his increased strength be noticed until he reaches S-rank.

Ryuji would probably help cover for him, saying that Jin-Woo is recovering from the trauma or something. He doesn’t have anything to gain by selling Jin-Woo out, especially not compared to having an S-rank Hunter as an ally.

So, Jin-Woo goes back to Korea, perhaps in time to save Yoo Jin-Ho’s life? The timeline’s probably going to be slightly off from canon to make everything work, but I’m not sure the Novel ever explained how fast things were happening anyway.

I think I’ll stop here. When I get around to writing this, then I’ll do more brainstorming. (Thank you for this suggestion, by the way. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to have E-rank Jin-Woo interacting with Ryuji at all without this idea. But this Hunter Exchange program means that Ryuji will have no choice but to pay attention to him, when he would have otherwise ignored such a low level Hunter.)

And a reminder to my followers, feel free to send in any of your fic ideas! I’d love to see them. ^_^

#Solo Leveling #Goto Ryuji #Sung Jin Woo #Sung Jin Woo x Goto Ryuji #fic ideas #fic ideas submission #Hunter Exchange #Ruby

[breebeelee]

Jewels, a Simple Question of Vanity?

The records of jewelry throughout  Jewellery Design Competition time is not so much an account of human arrogance than a mirrored image of the evolution of human societies and the urge of human beings to create symbols and beauty.

Jewels across time

There are signs and symptoms that humans had been sporting jewels from very early times on as private adornment. Originally, these were made of materials easily to be had in nature which include shells, animal bones or enamel. With time humans learnt to paintings with exceptional stones and metals, such as gold and gem stones that had been particularly valued in rings. Our ancestors had been highly talented jewelers and the splendor and beauty of the antique jewels nevertheless fascinates us as simply confirmed by way of the interest proven for jewel shows in museums or for itinerary exhibitions on as an example the Gold of the Incas or the treasures from Egyptians tombs.

With the use of valuable metals like gold or gem stones like diamonds, jewels became tangible signs and symptoms of wealth, energy and societal order. At extraordinary instances, like within the Middle Age, legal guidelines were surpassed as to who was allowed to wear jewels, which in itself illustrates the social significance connected to jewels.

The idea of crown jewels was created within the Renaissance duration where the French King, Francois 1st declared eight excellent pieces to be inalienable heirlooms of French kings.Similar law in other countries soon laid the ground for the treasures of the European Royal families.

19th and 20th century, a turning factor

The use and significance of jewels changed substantially inside the 19th century due to social, technological and cultural elements.

A new social code - Until then men wear just as sumptuous jewels as ladies did. Likewise they had valuable stones, pearls, gold and silver threads sawed into their garments. However, around the 19th century the social code required a greater sober dress code for guys. Furthermore, across the equal length, a miles sharper differentiation become delivered between day and night jewels, the most sumptuous being reserved for evenings and galas.

A new generation - The commercial revolution made it viable to mass produce jewels of excessive- as well as low-exceptional, hence putting rings inside the economic draw close of a far larger phase of the population. This in flip caused a extra relaxed relation to jewels acquired at a lower cost and effortlessly changed via new collections for a speedy converting fashion.

The modern way of life - The Art Nouveau movement and the 1900 World Exhibition marked a brand new era wherein layout and creativity are prized above material price, as a consequence shifting the emphasis of the jeweler's art from the setting of stones to the artistic layout. This marked the beginning of what's now known as artwork earrings as opposed to standard jewelry.

During the Art Deco duration Coco Chanel substantially popularized costume jewelry as ornamentation to supplement a selected elegant gown or garment. Those dress jewels frequently product of non precious material and mass-produced marked the start of an technology of disposable jewels that are fashionable for a quick time frame and fast previous through a new fashion style.

One cannot point out layout without citing the Danish Design. This revolutionary motion is characterized by way of quite awesome sober round traces of remarkable esthetic high-quality and a predilection for silver. Georg Jensen is the maximum emblematic determine, however simply now not the simplest renowned name. Danish Design had a huge have an effect on inside the rest of Europe and inside the US and laid the ground for plenty experimental jewels in the Sixties an Seventies.

Jewel design did now not only experimented with new forms and new fabric - including cheap substances like aluminum, plastic, paper, nylon, however haute-couture designers consisting of Coco Chanel, as cited above, and renowned artists like Salvador Dali, Picasso or Max Ernst made a giant contribution to innovation in that subject. This paintings challenged constricting conventions and truly blurred the limits between jewelry, style and first-rate arts.

Jewels these days and the next day

Jewels are simply appealing these days as they were inside the past. It is not feasible at this point to assume what the 21st century will bring as novelty. However, looking at what's taking place these days may give us a touch as to dispositions.

Art jewels

One of the symptoms of the ongoing monetary and cultural significance of jewels in current society is the once a year Copenhagen Jewellery Fair that is Scandinavian biggest earrings and watch fair. This yr, the royal safety of the fair, Princess Marie, delivered the prize to the winder of the "Bella Nordic Jewellery Award", that may be taken into consideration as that Nordic competition for jewelers.

Though, faraway from that glamour, you may discover many small jewel designers' ateliers scattered throughout Denmark. There, you may locate beautiful unique jewels created by way of gifted humans with a ardour for his or her craft and presenting a extraordinary diversity of design and recognition.

Home-made jewels

The high fee of best jewels has paved the manner for a "do it yourself" movement. There is pretty a good sized quantity of physical or virtual shops had been private customers should buy jewels components that they could then assembled to make jewels for themselves or others. Those stores had been till now be a profitable business, but there are actually signal that the marked is coming to saturation and opposition is becoming harder.

Jewels, consumption society and recycling

As mentioned earlier, jewels are a mirrored image of societal trends. On one facet mass manufacturing with cheap substances has intended a huge provide of jewels that everybody can find the money for. Those jewels have emerge as normal objects of intake for use and discarded without a second notion

As a response to this "waste society" recycling has emerge as a sturdy societal movement. Waste cloth, even trash, is used to new creations, consisting of jewels. Those are in keeping with definition particular pieces popping out of the designer's creativeness and bought at prices substantially fluctuating with the popularity of the dressmaker.

Jewels for guys

While there seems to be no restrict of length, shade and composition in ladies's jewels, the provide and use of men's jewelry is comparatively pretty restrained. It is hard to say whether or not that is because of men themselves, to societal norms on what a person can put on or due to the lack of interest and creativity at the a part of the designers. It is though increasingly prevalent for men to wear earrings, which might be a signal that conventions and taste are changing.

Jewelry - an eternal love story

Jewels have observed people at some stage in a while and feature had a social and cultural position that has developed hand in hand with societies. In our complex modern society jewels, in a single shape or every other, are low priced to all layers of society and are used as alerts on attitudes, lifestyles and belonging. The cultural importance of jewels is tough to determine in view of the brilliant offer and diversity of jewels from the cheap mass-produced to the greatest specific pieces. As Clare Phillips1 states "What remains real now, as for the duration of the a while, is that rings at its greatest has the strength to fascinate and inspire - that is the top function of artwork at its quality in any of its many manifestations." It can then be conclude with none doubt that, yes, jewels are an awful lot more than an expression of human conceitedness.

[fightmeyeats]

ACNH: Colonial Desires in the Context of Quarantine

Since finishing up my undergraduate studies in June, one of the major things I've been doing with my free time is playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (please don't @ me but I've already logged something like 400 hours). As much fun as the game is, one of the things that's really stood out to me is how much AC:NH depends on and reifies colonial logics, and how important it is to unpack this in the context of the game's popularity and the ongoing pandemic.

One of the first ways I want to address colonialism in AC:NH this is through the way I was first introduced to it, namely through its connection to my thesis and what I refer to as the "terraforming imaginary". Before I started playing or had even decided to buy the game, I was working on my thesis "Constructing New Worlds: An Investigation of Climate Change and the Terraforming Imaginary" (which, shameless self plug but if you're interested you can check out my 10 minute video presentation for symposium at Johns Hopkins University here). During this time I was talking about my thesis pretty non-stop with anyone who would listen and as a result probably about half of my friends independently sent me this meme

[ID: meme from @animalcrossingmemes which shows two children; the one on the left is smiling and looking off into the distance with the label "daydreaming about terraforming" while the child on the right looks stressed and upset with the label "actually terraforming". Beneath this meme is text from @kaijuno which reads "I realize this is an animal crossing meme but as an astrophysicist I was really excited for a second that someone was finally seeing the light on how fricking difficult an a huge waste of time it would be to try to terraform Mars". Beneath this text is another meme with four hands gripping each other's wrists to make a circle. In the center is the initial animalcrossingmemes image and each arm is labeled, respectively, "Minecraft Players," "Sims Players," "Animal Crossing Players," and "Astrophysicists apparently"]

Although my thesis addresses terraforming in the context of space exploration/colonization, AC:NH's engagement with "terraforming" (alongside other aspects of colonial practices and desires) helps to expand on the stakes of this. The reason I put "terraforming" in scare-quotes is because…technically, there isn't any terraforming in AC:NH, given that terraforming is "the operation consisting of rendering other stellar bodies—mainly planets and eventually asteroids—appropriate for human life" (Frédéric Neyrat, 46). While I'm all down for an interpretation of the Animal Crossing world as a non-Earth planet and the villagers as aliens, the island is already suitable for human life and the use of "terraforming" in the game is generally more readily identifiable as geoconstructivism: players redesign and restructure their islands, shaping waterways and topography to create idealistic spaces (as opposed to making the island literally livable). Either way, it speaks to the terraforming imaginary—the underlying set of logics and desires conducive to the imagining and desiring of “terraforming”, ie the logics and desires of colonization. Even though AC:NH's terraforming isn't technically terraforming, it is an embodiment of the terraforming imaginary, centering desires for the "civilizing"/"cultivating" of a space into an orderly, colonized ideal. On even a very surface level it is useful to think about this through the island rating system: islands are ranked out of five stars, with deductions made for things such as having "too many" weeds or not "cleaning up" by leaving items lying around rather than placed with intention. 

Another, perhaps more obvious, way in which AC:NH embodies colonial logics is through the "Nook Miles Tickets". Players trade in Nook Miles (an achievement based currency) for tickets which they can take to the airport and use to visit other, uninhabited islands which they can destroy to extract all of the resources slash-and-burn style. Players also have an increased likelihood of catching rare insects, fish, and sea animals to display to their own island museum or sell. As Wilbur, a dodo pilot, explains about this process: "we run the 'finders keepers' protocol here. Lumber, fruit, fish, whatever? Yours if you can carry it", going on to emphasize the importance of not leaving anything behind as there will be no returning; they "burn the flight plans" after each flight.

Although the rampantly destructive extraction of resources is the most apparent embodiment of colonial logics, the centrality of the museum and the imperative to complete each wing by finding and identifying all of the bugs, fish/sea creatures, fossils, and artworks in the game is an equally significant connection to colonialism. Benedict Anderson argues in Imagined Communities that the museum, along with the census and the map, "shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion—the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry" (164). The specifics Anderson goes into differ of course, because he's talking about actual colonial states while AC:NH has the fluidity of embodying the underpinning desires which colonialism as process requires to function, but what holds true is that these specific forms of producing, organizing, and displaying knowledge which produced "a totalizing classificatory grid, which could be applied with endless flexibility...to be able to say of anything that it was this, not that; it belonged here, not there" (Anderson 184). Essentially, in AC:NH part of a player's ownership of the island occurs through a player's ability to classify and collect artefacts for the museum. Furthermore, this imperative to collect and preserve fossils, art work, bugs, fish, and sea creatures is part of the way the player's island is positioned as a place of value. 

The museum also implicitly functions to reify positions of authority, legitimizing a kind of monopoly of knowledge. In AC:NH, this primarily means the positions of the museum curator (Blathers) and, to a degree, Tom Nook (who selected and invited Blathers) are secured as the authorities on knowledge. When Tom Nook tells the player that the island(s) are deserted, we must take this as truth...yet fishing both on the player's island and the Nook Miles islands can turn up trash items like old tires, tin cans, and boots. Colonial logics depend on a management of who counts as "people" and what counts as "inhabited" and the myth of empty lands; Tom Nook's instance that these islands are all deserted is haunted by these lingering traces of some other inhabitation prior to the game's start. 

Okay, so you might be asking what does this all mean and why should we care? Let's talk about both the game's popularity and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which contextualized its release (and continues to shape daily life). Animal Crossing: New Horizons has not only received overwhelmingly positive critical reception, but is one of the best selling games both for the Switch console and the Animal Crossing series. According to freelance journalist Imad Khan's New York Times article "Why Animal Crossing Is the Game for the Coronavirus Moment," the game's appeal centers in its function as an escape to an "island paradise where bags of money fall out of trees and a talking raccoon can approve you for a mortgage". Khan quotes Dr. Ramzan (a professor of game narrative at Glasgow Caledonian University) who refers to it as "the universe you’ve always wanted, but can’t get." Given the significantly decreased mobility and connection that has accompanied social distancing, as well as the increased stress and heightened inequality which have accompanied COVID-19, this probably isn’t particularly surprising. It makes sense that a cute, low-stress video game would be a valuable form of escapism.

Mobility is a particularly fraught discourse in this context: on the one hand, concerns surrounding containment/immobility are heightened in the context of neoliberalism and within colonial societies, which depend upon discourses of individualism and independence to demarcate the “freedom” which comes from capitalist economies. At the same time, the desire for things like connection/community, movement, and spatial autonomy/sovereignty are not inherently colonial, even as colonialist logics frequently position colonial/capitalist/neoliberal expansion as the solution. Animal Crossing is heavily situated within this entanglement, simultaneously offering a very real form of connection (and even protest) for many people while also implicitly speaking to latent beliefs that colonization is a legitimate form of mobility and escapism. To say that AC:NH is the universe we’ve always wanted but can’t get is to refuse to engage with the inherent contradictions of neoliberalism and reafirm the notion that colonial capitalist worlds are worth wanting; that the fantasy of individual wealth and success through destructive extraction and market freedom, when obtainable, is good.

None of this is to say that playing AC:NH is the same as colonization, because of course it isn't. However, the colonial undertones of the game reflect the pervasiveness of colonial logics and desires in our daily lives, subsequently further normalizing them. Journalist Kazuma Hashimoto, for example, emphasizes the importance of contextualizing AC:NH's colonial undertones within Japanese Colonialism in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Japanese Colonialism". As Hashimoto argues, "I am only asking that people familiarize themselves with Japanese colonialism and why something as innocuous as discovering a deserted island can be read as colonialism — especially within the context of a Japanese game".

Inattentiveness to the more subdued, invisibilized manifestations of violence facilitates their internalization and acceptance; educating ourselves and paying attention to and challenging places where we feel comfortable with these kinds of escapist fantasies is an important exercise in critical thinking which can help us to continue to refuse their real life manifestations. 

#acnh #animal crossing #post-colonial theory #essay #media analysis #popular culture studies #one thing i dont go into here but which IS relevant to keep in mind is the role real life colonialism & imperialism plays in the production #of basically all technology/electronics (the reason i don't is bc i think it kind of becomes a bland 'there is no ethical consumption under #late capitalism take' which like *is* still important to keep in mind i just dont have anything useful to add or analyze there #long post #anyways as always pls share your thoughts!

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 204

Are We Big Enough to Be Arrogant?

A small-scale blueprint of the universe, the human body is a miraculous work of art that manifests the beautiful divine names and attributes of God Almighty. A human body is made up of a set of hierarchically organized components: an organ system, organs, tissues, cells, organelles, macromolecules, molecules, atoms, neutrons, protons, electrons, and subatomic particles. In this biological organization, it is striking to observe a proportionately allocated space between components on each level for their efficient functioning. The size of human body would be reduced if these spaces between organs, tissues, cells, and atoms could be removed, and the entire human body would not be bigger than a small ball.

The structure of an atom explains a lot concerning the real size of our body, which is filled with space. An atom is comprised of protons and neutrons in its nucleus, around which electrons continuously orbit. The mass of neutrons is almost equal to the mass of protons. Electrons, however, are 1,837 times smaller in mass than neutrons and protons. That is, almost 99.95% of the atom’s mass is in its nucleus. The mass of electrons is almost non-existent compared to the nucleus.

Both the universe and our body are filled with more hydrogen than any other atom. In each one billion atom in our body, six hundred thirty million are hydrogen atoms. In a hydrogen atom, electrons rotate only 0.53 nm (one billionth of a meter) away from the nucleus, which makes the atom’s volume to be around 6.10-28m3, whereas the volume of the proton is 7.10-45m3, i.e., the nucleus is only as big as one hundred quadrillionth (100.1015) of the atom’s total volume. In other words, while the nucleus comprises almost the entire mass of the atom, its volume is of no considerable size. The density of protons in the nucleus is 2,3.1017 kg/m3 (where does the period go here??), which means that there is around a hundred trillion tons of matter in only one cubic meter. If we could gather all neutrons and protons in one spot, a man who is 69 kg would be only 3.10-7 mm3 in volume. That is, the volume the total substance of our body takes up is around one ten millionth of a cubic millimeter. The human body, which is constructed of atoms with electrons rotating on an orbit quite far away from the nucleus, is in a way no different than an “inflated space.” For a comparison, the space between the earth and the sun can be filled with as many as 107 suns, whereas 450 thousand protons are needed to fill up the distance between the proton and electron in a hydrogen atom.

The subatomic world is even more amazing. In subatomic particles are found six types of quarks. A quark is considered a fundamental constituent of matter. Combinations of quarks in different shapes and numbers result in subatomic particles, the further combinations of which produce atoms, molecules, and so on. Quarks are considered to be without mass; that is to say, they are nothing else but energy. Humans have mass, but this mass consists of quarks that are without mass.

This incredibly vast space between atoms that make up matter teaches us that our true value does not lie in our physical structure, but in the artworks of no comparison designed by the Divine as manifestations of His most beautiful names. Thus, we, who are so little in material substance, should seek other gateways in the depth of our souls and attain some value with proximity to the Divine.

We may never have revolted against God Almighty in our entire life; yet still our material minority should free us from all kinds of pride and conceit. Our physical structure is very much like the number “zero,” for 0 is also nothing, and it is drawn by inflating.

#allah #god #prophet #Muhammad #quran #ayah #sunnah #hadith #islam #muslim #muslimah #hijab #help #revert #convert #religion #reminder #dua #salah #pray #prayer #welcome to islam #how to convert to islam #new convert #new revert #new muslim #revert help #convert help #islam help #muslim help

[tigerkirby215]

5e Twisted Fate the Card Master build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Riot Games)

Never lost a fair game, or played one.

Twisted Fate is one of the oldest champions in the game and despite never being extensively changed he’s always found his way in and out of the meta. A very simple kit makes him a great champion for skill expression among pros.

There isn’t much reason for this build other than “I thought it would be cool.” Twisted Fate has always been a champ that I wanted to learn and while doing some brainstorming I felt it would be fun to try to make him in 5e!

GOALS

It's all in the cards - Throwing cards aren’t the most practical choice of weapon, but they’re Tobias’ weapon of choice. By the way did you know that Twisted Fate’s real name is Tobias?

Shinin' gold - Twisted Fate’s iconic ability is to pick a card for either more damage, an AoE burst, or a stun. We’ll be taking all of them.

No fightin' destiny - It wouldn’t be Twisted Fate without the ability to teleport behind you. Nothing personnel, kid.

RACE

The people of the Serpentine River are human, and henceforth Twisted Fate’s a Variant Human with some card skills. You can increase two skills by 1: choose Dexterity and Intelligence for card reading and slight of hand. And for your skill you have to persuade people to sit at the table after all, so take Persuasion.

As for your Feat take the Observant feat to watch the cards: increase your Intelligence further and watch for any cheats at the table. And for your language there are no doubt a lot of sea creatures that speak Aquan in Bilgewater, so pick Primordial to speak to them and any other elementals.

ABILITY SCORES

15; DEXTERITY - Jack be nimble and Jack be quick, since you need mobility to survive in Bilgewater.

14; INTELLIGENCE - Poker is a game of smarts as well as luck, and while lady luck is smiling you also need your own skills.

13; CHARISMA - Not as high as I’d like but we need other skills more, and 13 is still more than enough to charm I’m sure.

12; WISDOM - Wisdom is tied to both Perception and Insight which you need to watch the cards.

10; CONSTITUTION - A little lower than I’d like (feel free to swap the 12 in WIS for this) but Twisted Fate’s hardly a tank.

8; STRENGTH - Again: Twisted Fate’s hardly a tank and it’s up to Malcolm to do the heavy lifting. (Oh god now I need to do a Graves build...)

BACKGROUND

Fun fact: Twisted Fate is a Gambler, which is a background in Acquisitions Incorporated. You get proficiency in Deception and Insight (not Slight of Hand, for some reason?!), one language (pick your poison), and one gaming set (which will of course be a Playing Card Set.)

Your feature is Never Tell Me the Odds, letting you scout out tables to swindle or more rough pirates who won’t take kindly to being scammed.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - ARTIFICER 1

Starting off as an Artificer because I really like this class and we need both their saving throw proficiencies and their skill proficiencies for Slight of Hand and Perception at the table. You also get an Artisan’s Tool of your choice and I’d pick whatever since it really doesn’t matter.

As an Artificer you have Magical Tinkering which lets you do a bunch of fancy tricks to your cards. You touch a tiny non-magical object and can make it shine light, play a message, let out a smell or a sound, or change in visual appearance. Read over the ability to see everything you can do but the effect lasts indefinitely but you can only have a number of these active equal to your Intelligence modifier. You can touch an object you Tinkered with to end the property early but if you try to make a new one the oldest effect ends.

You also get access to Spellcasting as an Artificer. You get two cantrips from the Artificer list: Guidance will give you some luck with the cards and Acid Splash will let you throw out a red card for some AoE damage.

Artificer’s are a prepared spellcaster, meaning you can swap out your spells for others on the Artificer list at the end of a Long Rest. Regardless these spells will be suggestions for the most in-character spells to take: Detect Magic and Identify are both good to make sure no one’s cheating at the table, and Disguise Self is useful to hide in a crowd if needed.

LEVEL 2 - ARTIFICER 2

Second level Artificers can Infuse Items to create a variety of magic items. As I say whenever I make an Artificer build I’d suggest picking Artificer Infusions that help your party but with only two levels we won’t be getting many.

The Returning Weapon infusion is the main one we’re here for. It lets you turn a thrown weapon magical and will cause it to return to your hand immediately after throwing it. Playing cards aren’t a “weapon” but a Dagger is pretty close, and it’s the only Finesse Thrown weapon you can take.

An Enhanced Arcane Focus is better if you want to go straight for spells. You don’t have any spell attacks yet but...

Is Graves asking you to look over his gun? Well pass him a Repeating Shot weapon so he doesn’t have to waste as much time reloading.

Fun fact: as an Artificer you can recreate common magic items from Xanathar’s Guide. Feel free to craft yourself some Loaded Dice with the Charlatan’s Die.

You can only make two of your infusions, and since one will be more-or-less permanently locked into Returning Weapon I’d choose your other option wisely.

You also get another spell: the Sanctuary spell will force any enemies that attack you to make a Wisdom save or be forced to attack someone else, which can be good in case they get pissed off when you swindle them. The effect does go away as soon as you attack though.

LEVEL 3 - FIGHTER 1

Now that we’ve got our cards it’s time to stack the deck. Level 1 Fighters can choose a Fighting Style and the Thrown Weapon Fighting style from the Class Feature Variants UA is perfect for a card-slinger. 

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED see if they count Archery for thrown weapons. If not I’d probably opt for Dueling so if you get into a melee fight you won’t be completely defenseless.

You also get a Refillable Potion with Second Wind, letting you regain hit points equal to 1d10 + your fighter level once per short or long rest.

LEVEL 4 - FIGHTER 2

Level 2 Fighters can use their Stacked Deck to Action Surge, letting them take one additional action on their turn once per short or long rest. The cool thing about Action Surge as a spellcaster is that you can use the extra action to cast a spell and then attack or do something else, but you can only cast one leveled spell per turn. Why am I telling you this when most of your spells are utility-based? No particular reason.

LEVEL 5 - FIGHTER 3

Level 3 Fighters can choose their Martial Archetype and Battle Masters are great at card tricks. I assume because you’re throwing a knife not a playing card. Regardless Battle Masters are Students of War, letting them gain proficiency in one Artisan’s Tool of their choice. Again pick whatever or see if your DM can let you take a Gaming Set instead.

But more notably you Combat Superiority die. You have four superiority dice, which are d8s and regain any expended dice when you finish a short or long rest. You can use your Superiority die to do a variety of Maneuvers:

Trip Attack will be your golden ace in the hole. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack you can expend one superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. You add the superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier btw.) On a failed save, you knock the target prone. Note that knocking a target prone will make it harder to hit them with ranged attacks but it will make it easier for melee characters to hit them, and also slow them down for a moment.

If you’re fine with your stunned target moving then Distracting Strike will give your allies an opening to attack with Advantage, and also let you add the Superiority die to the damage.

Disarming Strike isn’t something TF can do in the Fields of Justice but it’s very in-flavor to knock the weapon out of an enemy’s hand (with a Strength save) and do some more damage.

LEVEL 6 - FIGHTER 4

That uneven Charisma score is annoying me, and you can’t be a silver-tongued swindler without the Silver-Tongued Feat from the Feats for Skills UA. Your Charisma score increases by 1 and you get Expertise in the Deception skill since you already had proficiency in it to begin with.

IF UA ISN’T ALLOWED feel free to grab the Prodigy Feat instead for Expertise in Deception (or Slight of Hand) and some more skills. This won’t increase your Charisma however so you’ll have to find another way to even out your ability scores.

In addition when you take the Attack action you can replace one attack with an attempt to deceive a humanoid you can see within 30 feet of you as long as they can also see and hear you. Make a Deception check contested by the target’s Insight: if you succeed your movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks from the target and your attack rolls against it have advantage; both benefits last until the end of your next turn or until you use this ability on a different target. If your check fails, the target can’t be deceived by you in this way for 1 hour.

You do only have one attack currently but with Action Surge this will let you have Advantage on that attack and any attack on your next turn. And speaking of extra attacks...

LEVEL 7 - FIGHTER 5

5th level Fighters can get value out of that silver tongue with an Extra Attack. This means that by replacing one attack with a Deception check you can get Advantage on three attacks over two turns, or up to five attacks if you Action Surge.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 8 - WIZARD 1

Now that we’ve got our deck it’s time to du-du-du-du-du for a date with Destiny. As a level 1 Wizard you get access to Spellcasting with 3 cantrips and 6 spells known. For your cantrips Prestidigitation and Minor Illusion will allow you to do some more card tricks and Friends will let you con your way through life with ease. As for your spells...

Color Spray will let you toss out a whole deck of cards, blinding your opponents with blues and reds.

Distort Value is good for any con, allowing you to make an item seem more valuble.

Ice Knife can be red, since it’ll explode in an AoE and chill your opponents. (But not slow them.)

Jim’s Magic Missile will let you throw out three cards that do considerably more Force damage than a regular Magic Missile.

Protection from Evil and Good can be good help for your partner in crime.

And Tenser’s Floating Disk will be helpful to haul all that loot.

You also get Arcane Recovery, letting you recover spell slots equal to half your Wizard level rounded up.

LEVEL 9 - WIZARD 2

Now you’re probably wondering what Wizard Twisted Fate would be right? You’re thinking obviously Divination, or maybe Illusion? Perhaps even Enchantment to further the con?

Nope; Conjuration baby! Put bluntly Twisted Fate conjures cards into his hand, which you can do with Minor Conjuration. You spend an action to conjure up an inanimate object that’s no more than 3 feet cubed and weighs no more than 10 pounds. The object must look like a non-magical object you’ve seen before and is visibly magical, radiating dim light out to 5 feet, and it lasts for 1 hour unless it takes damage or you use this feature again, so you can only have one fake card at a time. There’s a lot of really funky stuff you can do with this and it’s up to your creativity to make it shine!

For your spells of choice Magic Missile is a far more accurate blue card, and Feather Fall can help you make sure you don’t lose your hat.

LEVEL 10 - WIZARD 3

3rd level Wizards can learn second level spells like Jim’s Glowing Card Coin to distract the table while you make your getaway and Darkvision, to help with the fact that your pitiful human eyes can’t see in the dark.

LEVEL 11 - WIZARD 4

At 4th level you get an Ability Score Improvement: increase your Dexterity for more precise card throws and an easier time avoiding damage.

You also learn another Cantrip: seeing as we’re still a pitiful human who can’t see in the dark the Light spell will let you light up a golden card to illuminate the path ahead.

You also learn two spells: Hold Person will let you Paralyze (not stun!) a target for your teammates to beat them down and Misty Step to pickup Flash.

LEVEL 12 - WIZARD 5

5th level Wizards can prepare third level spells like Melf’s Minute Meteors for a whole pack of red cards! As an action you create six floating red cards around your person and as a bonus action you can shoot one or two of them up to 120 feet away. Each creature within 5 feet of the point where the card explodes must make a Dexterity saving throw or 2d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

Alternatively if Malcom is looking for you grab the Nondectection spell to make hiding just a little bit easier when he doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve.

LEVEL 13 - WIZARD 6

6th level Conjuration Wizards get Benign Transposition, allowing them to use an action to Flash up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space they can see. You can also instead choose a space within range that is occupied by a Small or Medium creature and swap places with them if they’re willing. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest or you cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher. Remember that this does take your action, meaning that you most likely can’t cast spells or attack after using this, but it’s still an insanely good utility.

You also learn more spells and I think everyone knows what Fireball is; full-AP red card go boom. If you’re looking for someone to give a date with Destiny then Clairvoyance will let you create a sensor in a familiar location to either see or hear what’s going on within.

LEVEL 14 - WIZARD 7

7th level Wizards get access to 4th level spells, which is what we were looking for with Dimension Door. As an action you teleport up to 500 feet away to a location you can either visualize or describe. You can bring objects that you can carry and also bring one willing creature of your size or smaller who is carrying gear up to its carrying capacity. This spell actually pairs very well with Clairvoyance that we got last level because you can use that spell to peek into an area so you can visualize it for Dimension Door.

For your second spell? Eh; how about you jump back to third level for Counterspell? You’ve gotta protect the gang after all. And remember that as a Wizard your spell list is only restricted by what spell scrolls you can find.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

LEVEL 15 - FIGHTER 6

Now that we’ve finally made out date with Destiny it’s time to learn some more card tricks. 6th level Fighters get another Ability Score Improvement and we’re going to want to cap our Dexterity for sharper cards and thicker leather chaps.

LEVEL 16 - FIGHTER 7

7th level Battle Masters get one more Superiority Die and two more Maneuvers: Maneuvering Attack is great to set up an ambush, letting your jungler use their reaction to speed up at your command. Precision Attack helps if your opponent is building armor, letting you add your Superiority Die to your accuracy.

You can also spend one minute to Know Your Enemy. For every minute your study your enemy you can learn if any of the creature’s following stats are equal, superior, or inferior to you:

Strength score

Dexterity score

Constitution score

Armor Class

Current hit points

Total class levels (if any)

Fighter class levels (if any)

Considering that you have levels in Wizard this can be very useful to determine what saving throws to go for when you start the fight! Is their Dexterity equal to yours? Maybe don’t hit them with the DEX save. Is their AC high? Maybe do hit them with the DEX save.

LEVEL 17 - FIGHTER 8

8th level Fighter? Lady luck is smiling! Take the Lucky feat for an Ace up your sleeve when the going gets tough.

LEVEL 18 - FIGHTER 9

9th level Fighters get Indomitable, letting them reroll a failed Saving Throw once per Long Rest. Consider it a bit of Serpentine luck helping you when you really need it, so use it wisely; preferably on something you actually have a chance of rolling well on your save for?

LEVEL 19 - FIGHTER 10

10th level Battle Masters get Improved Combat Superiority dice, turning them into d10s. You also get two more Manuevers and we’ll be jumping over to the Class Feature Variants UA for Silver Tongue, letting you add your Superiority die to any Deception or Persuasion check you make. The Snipe meanwhile will let you sneak a card into your combo, allowing you to spend your Bonus Action to make a ranged weapon attack with the Superiority die, adding the dice to the damage if you hit. This can be a good way to sneak a bit more damage in if you teleport behind a squishy carry.

LEVEL 20 - FIGHTER 11

Our capstone is the 11th level of Fighter for a third Extra Attack, letting you attack three times per round or six times with Action Surge. If you activated Silver Tongued this equals a total of 5 attacks with Advantage over the course of two turns, or 8 attacks with Advantage if you use Action Surge! With that many cards in the deck someone’s going to have to fold.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Lady luck is smilin' - You have an immense amount of utility with magic and maneuvers to help you both in and out of combat; tons of mobility with Conjuration spells and a good bit of roleplay utility with some strong skills, a great passive perception, and Roguish proficiencies.

Cheater's just a fancy word for winner - If your DM allows you to use the Silver-Tongued feat then you’ll be making almost all your attacks with Advantage, allowing you to maximize your maneuvers. And +14 Deception is great for RP in its own right.

I never bluff - Despite having several abilities that only come back after a Long Rest you’re quite capable of surviving on just Short Rests and Refillable Potions. With Arcane Recovery giving you back up to 4 levels worth in spell slots, Benign Transposition coming back whenever you use a Conjuration spell, and all your Fighter abilities coming back on a Short rest you can keep trucking on even after a bad teamfight.

CONS

Nobody touches the hat - Wizard levels plus a 0 in Constitution results in about a hundred health. Invest in some Ruby Crystals (Amulet of Health) when you can or else you’re just a Power Word: Kill away from death.

All or nothin' - Throwing knives honestly aren’t that practical as a ranged weapon. If you don’t mind not having a melee backup try making a Repeating (Cross)bow instead.

Only a fool plays the hand he's dealt - The biggest truth however is that the 2 levels in Artificer really doesn’t do much for you. All you get is a bunch of spells you could’ve gotten from Wizard and the Returning Dagger. If you have a reliable way to get some throwing cards (either from a DM or an allied Artificer giving you a more reliable ranged weapon) I’d suggest splitting those two Artificer levels among Fighter and Wizard for more Ability Score Improvements and a 20 in Intelligence.

But you can work well alone and with a crew. You’re the ace in the hole for any party, even a party of 1. Keep your cards close to your chest and play what you need at the right time. Just be sure to know when to put down your cards and pull out the big guns.

(Artwork by Riot Games)

#DnD 5e #dnd #dnd build #dnd fighter #dnd wizard #League of Legends #League of Legends Twisted Fate #never lost a fair game #or played one

[neshabeingchildish]

League of Extraordinary Geniuses || Chapter 1

A/N: I never actually rated this, I don’t believe, but there’s a little bit of cussing here, I can’t tell you yet exactly which direction everything is going in. I’m predominantly an angst writer and I do have a lot to give to this story, mainly with Chase, just because, plain and simple... I don’t know if that man has really had people in his corner the way that he’s needed in the past, so there’s things to work through with him in particular and there’s always things to sort of try to get over and into in relationship dynamics and moreso when more people are involved than two. Also, at least two of these people are workaholics, so work projects, assignments, flashbacks, etc, will be something that is likely to appear a lot as a backdrop. The work won’t always be things that we, or even sometimes they agree with, but it’ll be there. Tagging only who I heard from last time @kiddangers @sunbeameyes @just-a-j-reallly @supercasperprincesslove-blog Let me know if I need to take you off. Edit: Thunderbolt headcanon from flashback was introduced to me by @famousflowermagazine (You don’t have to read, but I wanted to make sure that I credited your idea)

They’re the Same Picture

Charlotte woke up to the hyper sounds of the excited yipping of puppies and she immediately got out of bed and headed for the courtyard. The caretaker was out there, minding them, but when they saw Charlotte, they rushed back to her and she waved to let the caretaker know that the puppies were coming with her. They were light brown with black ears, and wearing matching little malleable outfits. She brought them to her lab and let the caretaker worry about accepting her guests, because she left her phone in the bedroom and she was not going to pick it up any time soon. 

She had one group chat titled Defenders for herself, Henry and Jasper, and it was the most used one in her phone. She had one titled Bionic Forces, for Chase and his siblings, and sometimes Donald. She had been added to that one at one point by Leo, whenever he had to casually ask her a question that she could somehow feel was tied to a catastrophe that he and his older brother, Adam were trying to evade at the Academy (and if she was being honest, one of them probably started), and she didn’t get involved again in that one until after she met Chase and he at’ed her to say that he realized that she had been in this old GC of theirs before. Now, she frequently visited and used it. 

She had one titled Elite Force, one titled T-Force, and one titled Danger Force and she hadn’t thought about how many Force teams had a GC with herself and the members, or even the fact that she knew several Force teams, until those three were active and she kept switching between the 3, one particular day. IF. EVER. There was another triple crisis, she vowed that two androids would have to get onto cloned phones and be her, because trying to sort out more than a dozen names and comments for a foreseeable incident was… a mess. 

Fortunately, Chase, Max, and Mika each took initiative in their respective chats after a while to be the point of contact and unclutter the chat at the time. But still… There were androids capable of evaluating very accurately exactly what Charlotte might think and say to responses.

She had several GCs that were business related, several that were science-for-fun related, one that was the Bionic Academy mentors, one that was everyone that she knew who had bionics, one that was everyone that she knew who was a superhero, one that was her team of androids, and one that was her lab workers. 

She was a busy woman who knew busy people, but she also was the type that liked to be helpful to friends and associates and to keep up with her loved ones and business relationships. So, most of the ones who she had GCs with… They also individually texted with her, as well.

Currently, her most frequent ones were from Henry or Jasper, who truth be told, would likely be texting her frequently for the rest of the three of their lives as lifelong best friends. Almost as frequently though were Chase Davenport and Max Thunderman.

It was a little shocking to her after she met Chase, to find out that they were extremely alike in a lot of ways, considering how differently the conversations she had with each of them went. Chase was always the perfect gentleman. If she mentioned a problem, he would factually assess it, give her stats, numbers, wish her well and ask her to touch base with him later to let him know if his assistance was fruitful. 

Max was less precise, but as correct in advice… he could probably give her stats, but knew that they weren’t usually needed and it wasn’t his default to calculate outside of an invention or something where exact numbers were necessary. Also, he was a little more profane. 

Whereas Chase might say something like, “I’m sorry that they’re making you jump through these hoops at a place of business. That is terrible customer service. Do they not realize who you are?”

Max would say, “Those guys are dicks. Just drop your name and get ‘em fired.” 

Which… was in essence the same response, to her, as their responses frequently were, and yet worlds apart. That was who they were, in her mind too. The same great person presented in two extremely different, but equally attractive ways. She valued them on the same level, though she was closer to Max, because she had known him longer and gone through more with him.

Whenever Max posted his video journal of gadgets and inventions, Charlotte noticed (and this was whenever she was in Dystopia, towards the beginning of the trio’s rise in popularity there), that he had both artwork of Dystress, her alter ego on his wall, and Charlotte Page accolades. News and fanfare!

She honestly lost her shit for a moment and squealed to Henry and Jasper, “This guy that creates gadgets and shares them online KNOWS ABOUT ME!” They had been in the habit of listening to her, but what were the odds of some dude from Hiddenville who posted science projects online for nerdy strangers like Charlotte to wind down, chewing on ice and making comments like, “I didn’t expect that to work out so well. This dude’s a genius!” just knowing about Charlotte, tucked away in one of the most silenced charities in Dystopia?

She pointed out and zoomed in on things on his wall - framed photos of her at gizmo fairs, plaques of her stats in Swellview, etc, and on THE SAME WALL, her with her purple hair and the mask that covered the bottom half of her face, many, MANY shots of her and stories about the mysterious new three Defenders who appeared in Dystopia and began vigilante justice. “That dude knows who you are, Char,” Henry said, worried.

Stressed out, she made a whole account and sent a private message, “So, I saw on your wall that you have the Dystopian Defenders. That’s cool. I like them.”

He almost immediately answered, because he was simply at home, and he was interested in fanboying any chance that he got. “Not so much interested in the Defenders as The Damsel.She’s currently my muse.”

She replied too quickly, “She prefers to be called Dystress.” The she winced and wished she could take it back. How would someone know that? Maybe another hardcore fan? There were a lot of clips of her online...

Well, that had done it. Because, now this complete stranger seemed to be trying to suggest to Max that THEY knew his favorite underground vigilante better than HE did, and before he decimated them, he was curious who he was about to destroy. “Is that something she told you?”

“I’ve heard it around Dystopia...”

He kept up the conversation long enough to trace her IP address and phishing her account. He almost fell out of his chair.“Are you Charlotte Page???”

“WHAT?” She screeched out loud, then typed, “Is that the other Black woman on your wall? You know… People are gonna think that you’re obsessive… or have a fetish... or something unbecoming.”

“I’m a fan. I didn’t mean to alarm you… So… WAIT… You’re Charlotte Page AND you are a Dystress fan AND you’ve seen my series??? This is perfect! This is like a DREAM for me! Or… is this like one of those things where you contact me and tell me that it’s creepy that I have your stuff on my wall? Because, honestly, that’s fair. It’s just… I looked up some of your work and you were super brilliant, but we’d met previously under not so great circumstances, so I didn’t want to be that guy and make it weird, but this is just how I’ve decorated my workspace. I just admire your work, a lot.”

Charlotte had watched --she didn’t know how many of this dude’s invention videos -- Every time she saw his face, a glimmer of a thought that he looked familiar passed through her mind, but his face wasn’t on screen most of the time. The focus would be on his hands and his inventions, so she didn’t notice his face too much. The way that the human brain works, she simply put it out of focus and subconsciously presumed she’d seen his face there, in the videos.

But, now that he said it, she gasped again. Realizing the familiarity, she dropped a phone number. She did NOT want to continue this conversation on the same device he had just hacked, and she had a burner phone on her.

“Hello?” She said. It took him only long enough to pick up his phone and dial while looking at the computer for him to call her.

“Is this real???” He asked. “Are you honestly Charlotte Page?” Before she could even answer, he continued, “I am absolutely freaking out!” 

It was a far cry different from the first time they crossed paths, the time that she had remembered only after he made it known that they had before. When he was a little villain-to-be. She hadn’t gotten a very good look at him, but her eyes had at least passed over his face a little, years before.“What do you want?” She asked, through her teeth. “To expose me?” 

“Expose?” He gasped and lowered his voice, but heightened his excitement, “Are you some kind of criminal mastermind, because I can totally dig that.”

“I’m…” She looked at the muted video where she had been studying his wall and she realized something. There weren’t photos of each, next to each other. There were no lines, or notes or string... He didn’t know that those were the same people. He didn’t know that she was the Damsel of Distress. He really was... just a fan of both of them. Maybe it was subconscious on his part, but she didn’t feel like he was playing mind games or anything. And… he had powers, so exposing her wouldn’t be wise for him or other supers. 

“Charlotte? Are you still there? I’m not gonna expose you, if you were waiting on an answer to that. But, I’ve gotta tell you… I’m a superhero now and if we gotta cross paths while you’re in your criminal phase… I mean… It’ll be AWESOME and like hella fun… but, I’d have to take you down. Duty and all that.”

Now, she laughed. “The Dystopian cops haven’t been able to, but give it your best shot.” There was a long pause and then a longer gasp, then the exhaling and declaration, “CharlottePageisalsotheDamselandIcan’tbelieveIdidn’tnoticeitbefore!”

“I prefer Dystress. With a “Y,” like Dystopia + Mistress… The Damsel of Distress was supposed to a clever one liner and nothing more. Some overgrown goon caught me about to tamper with supplies that we needed to steal from the criminals to give to the kids in our charity, and he said something like, “Looky here, a damsel in distress,” and…”

“And you, a 4’11 (I can’t believe that I didn’t even place your identical measurements to figure this out), you touched your wrist, hulked up somehow and beat him with his own weapon, then said, “More like a Damsel OF Distress,” and it was caught on security cameras. I HAVE that footage. I’ve gotten probably every piece of footage of you that has been recorded. I am not kidding when I say to you, that I am your biggest fan.”

“You’d think that with that wall you’ve collected,” she said, her wide smile evident in her voice. She knew that the kids in Dystopia stanned Dystress. They would tag her name and image all over the place and whenever in costume, girls and women always gave her stuff, sometimes, what appeared to be their last. She would refuse it and give them whatever she had on her to spare. 

Dogfight was in essence sleepwalking through battle, so even though he could reply to people (in Spanish), they usually didn’t understand it and generally didn’t talk much to him.  

Deflector was just that, on or off the battlefield. Henry had never mastered lying, that much was sure, but found that avoiding questions because he only spoke English, or if they spoke English, simply deflecting the conversation instead of making up something worked better for his mystery and his cover than lying ever did. 

Dystress was the one who spoke with the people. She spoke their language. She spoke to them as people. All of the Defenders were heroes to the Dystopian downtrodden, but Dystress was like a motherly hero. She could be both that ferocious bear whose cubs are threatened but she generally delivered the goods while Dogfight and Deflector fought off the criminals. Her covered face and purple ombre locks were what they saw right before they had meals that weren’t drugged to kidnap them or rotten. The image that they saw whenever they got clean socks, soap and towels...

“What are you thinking about?” Max wondered, his voice now soft, having regained control of himself after this wondrous discovery.

“I’m hoping that my secret really is safe with you and I’m appreciating being noticed by someone who I didn’t have to help save, first.”

He smiled, “Of course your secret is safe with me. I admire everything you do, apparently as you and her. I’d never let myself be a threat to you.” She was smiling on the other end and he knew it, but he also knew that this was a Dystopia line and probably a burner she got from a corner shop. He needed a doorway in. He didn’t want to let her slip through his fingers. “I can probably actually help you, you know? I have a lot of resources, with T-Force. Dystopia is a red level city. Every time the Hero League has assigned someone, they either die, quit, or turn, because the crime is like a hydra. It would only take a mention that the heroes there need supplies for me to get approval to bring some.” There was another long pause and he said, “I wish I could see your face right now.”

“You can see it… As soon as we get some supplies.”

“How do I contact you? I know this is a burner you’re on.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think this is a burner you’re on and I got your number when you called. Thanks in advance… what should I call you?”

“My name is Max.”

“Thank you, Max.”

“My pleasure, Charlotte.” They both smiled and hesitantly hung up their phones. But, Charlotte was looking forward to seeing “her biggest fan” in person… ESPECIALLY if he was using his power to come with supplies. 

After a few weeks, he made good on that. She sent him a list and asked, “Is this asking too much?” He was confused at first, because it was a different phone number, but whenever he saw the list, he knew who it was from and he smiled brightly. “Not at all. I can be there by Friday. Send me coordinates to wear to meet you.”

The Defenders were there. T-Force shook hands with them and commended them on volunteering to take on Dystopia. They unloaded everything onto a trolley and Thunder Man was explaining to Deflector and Dogfight that once everything was out of the transport, his youngest could teleport them to wherever they felt safe to bring it. 

Charlotte realized that they had brought twice the amount she requested when she placed the order, and Max added, “We also took donations up from the Hero League and transferred the total into yen, in case something comes up in between now and next time that you need us.” 

“You’d do this again?” She wondered.

“For you? Are you kidding?” He laughed, but was silenced when she practically leaped up so that she could throw her arms around his neck. Nobody was paying attention, because the rest were working. He was staring into her eyes, because that was all he could see, and it definitely was enough for him to recognize them from footage of her Spelling Bees and stuff, but, he wondered, “Could I see...” he didn’t get a chance to finish the question and she pulled down her mask, stuck her tongue out and smiled. “I’d do this however many times you need,” he finished.

Since then, they’d been gravy. Chase took much longer to warm up to her like that, and even when he had, his gushing in her presence, was generally due to some exciting news, findings, work, etc. He hadn’t gushed over her like that, and Max did not mind doing so, at all. Really, the fact that she was always comparing the two in her mind was how she came up with this idea to… well… to ask them to come on an adventure with her towards saving the world. 

She knew that she could tell Max to do anything and he would say yes and figure out how. Chase would WANT to say yes, but have some questions and need some reasonable answers. He would ultimately say yes, whether or not she was able to provide them, but he would be out of his comfort zone without a fully detailed, full transparency blueprint and trajectory. But, he would say yes no matter what she gave him because, if she knew one thing about both these people, it was that they both trusted, respected, and she hoped, loved her, and they listened to her for these reasons. SO, she would always try to reciprocate it. That was something that she knew that they didn’t always get. Max from knowing him and his family for several years and Chase from mostly Douglass and Leo’s stories. Chase only ever seemed to talk about his attributes and advantages. He never complained about the things that she’d heard about his life. Or maybe, he just didn’t trust her that much yet. 

She opened a GC with the three of them and asked them when they could all meet sometime in the near future. Max was getting ready for a furlough and Chase was finalizing another bionic mission team for field work. She was getting ready to take a hiatus on degree work for the first time in 8 years and get settled into her castle that it took 5 years to have built. For reference, it took longer to build her castle than it did to rebuild Dystopia itself, but of course, one of these things she was paying for and the other had been greenlit by a billionaire.

Eventually, the three found where they could make the meet happen and she could hardly wait to share her ideas with them and also just spend time with both of them, instead of having to always divide herself.

.

Max was visiting, spending his furlough in the castle and Chase was there “on business,” because Mr. Davenport literally never allotted vacations for him, so Charlotte told a half truth about requiring him at her place for a few days for a special project and since they scheduled it after the formation of the most recent bionic field team, Donald approved the request, but reminded him that he would still be on call, if needed.

“Firstly, I need to apologize to you both for the short notice, but whenever I realized that you finally both were free at the same time, I made sure that we could all get together! I’ve… introduced you two before, right?’

Chase raised an eyebrow and studied Max. She had never introduced them, but she talked about Max to him a lot, and pretty fondly from how he recalled. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” Chase said. It was partially true. He had not met him face to face or even crossed him in passing. They were once in Dystopia at the same time, but although she planned to introduce them, both had avoided allowing it to happen.

Max said, “That’s your boss’ little kid, right?” Max knew exactly who Chase was. He had read about him, seen his work, talked to Charlotte NUMEROUS times about his ideas, and even was impressed by him, sometimes, But he also knew that there was no way that this dude didn’t know who he was. Therefore, two could play that game. “The one that doesn’t really fight much,” he added for good measure. Chase narrowed his eyes. He fought all of the time, but people often reduced his efforts because he didn’t have feats like the members on his team. He had better feats…

“Chase Davenport!” Charlotte corrected Max and cut him off at the same time, seeing it might turn into a pissing contest if she didn’t rein it in, “Mission Leader of the world’s first bionic mission team, Mentor at the Davenport Bionic Academy, he creates most of the bionic teams that you see on the news during missions!” She proudly announced.

Chase blushed and shuffled his feet bashfully, then said, more confidently, to Max, “I do more than that, actually…”

“Cool,” Max said and made a little sound with his mouth, to which two puppies came trotting into the foyer to him. “Hey, Buddies!” He cheered and began to love talk to the brown puppies with black ears. 

Chase wondered, “Oh, you have pets?”

Max collected both puppies into his arms and stood, “Have you not been invited here, yet?” He asked, meaning for it to sting.

Charlotte interjected, “Chase is usually too tied up in missions for social visits, so this is his first time being able to stop by and his first time seeing them.”

“They’re her kids,” Max said.

Chase cleared his throat and wondered, “I’m sorry, what?”

“These are the Swagger twins,” Charlotte clarified.

Chase let out a sigh of relief, then immediately engaged with the puppies, while Max grimaced, still holding both. “They should be about two years old, shouldn’t they? Why are they puppies and not full grown dogs? Also, why are they dogs?” And both pups became toddlers in Max’s arms, causing Chase to flinch a moment, but he still petted both their heads. 

“They have shapeshifting bionics with identical coding,” Charlotte said. “Jack had very specific speculations for them. He wanted them to be male presenting, have certain traits from himself and certain ones from Cheyenne, and identical bionics that were allotted for them to transform into dogs. They are currently puppies because they’re too young to realize that a two year old dog would be full grown and probably too small to do it, if they knew it.”

“Why does Jack Swagger want his kids to be able to turn into dogs?” Chase asked, very confused.

Max grumbled, “Because celebrities are weird and gross!”

Charlotte laughed and said, “Jack’s fiancee is Max’s former celebrity crush. He’s been moody since the engagement,” she laughed. “I, on the other hand am DELIGHTED that celebrities are weird and gross. Jack has funded all of my private research on genomic architecture JUST so he can both have perfect babies with his future wife AND also have dogs.”

“Whatever happened to good old fashioned going to a third world country and buying a desperate mother’s kid from her because they’re both starving?” Max asked and scoffed.

Chase, ignoring the rhetorical question, asked, “Why do you have his two year olds at your castle?”

Charlotte shook her head and said, “Oh, these boys aren’t going to go to him. He’s not going to actually collect until I get the formula for the perfect sons who shift into the perfect dogs, with the perfect model bionic chips, and I’m going to take that to create the embryos for their surrogate.” She forced a smile and her eye was twitching, but it was extremely lucrative, if not incredibly privileged and highkey eugenics.

“Weird and gross,” Max repeated.

“Well,” Chase ignored Max again, “Where are they going to go?” He wondered, concerned about the Swagger twins. 

Charlotte laughed and said, “Budding Flowers,” like it was obvious.

“That orphanage?” He asked, a little bit horrified.

“It’s really more like a boarding school,” she told him. “And shelter for orphans. People aren’t exactly adopting them.”

“But… these boys are bionic. Aren’t the kids there all… normal?” Chase wondered.

She pointed to him and said, “You are absolutely right! We need a bionics specific orphanage/education center. I propose either in Dystopia or Centium City.”

“Why not on the island?”

“Are you kidding? You think she’s gonna hand her babies over to Davenport after how he raised you?” Max asked. 

“Max!” Charlotte hissed and held her hands out like wtf. Chase was definitely a little bothered. Charlotte tried to explain, “Excuse him for that. Sometimes Dougie complains about The Dom whenever we’re hanging but I don’t know WHY Max would bring any of that up!” She threw Max a look. Max looked unbothered.

Chase squinted, “He… knows my Uncle Douglas?”

“He’s your dad, Dude,” Max said.

“Douglas just TELLS people these things???” Chase said, highly upset, now.

“No. It’s mostly been said in what was supposed to be confidence. With the two of them both being on the board of the Max O. Thunderman Rehabilitation & Reformation Metropolis.”

“I like to call it the Maxtropolis,” Max said, smirking with his mouth and his eyebrows.

“And everyone hates when you do,” she teased. “They’ve got stuff in common.”

“You… wait… Your friend Max is ON the board at that place?”

“It’s literally named after me,” Max said.

“Yes, I realized that, but I thought it was because you were a donor or something. Douglas said that board is composed entirely of villains!” Chase said, now on alert.

“Reformed villains,” Charlotte corrected. “Like Douglas, and like Max.”

Chase ground his teeth and stared at Max. He didn’t fully always trust Douglas, at times. He certainly wasn’t ready to trust this very shifty character, so close to Charlotte AND with a villainous past? He REALLY needed to start paying more attention to others, even those that he was writing off. Now, he would have to research and review everyone that came into contact with Charlotte. How many other dangerous possible traitors did she trust in her midst? Charlotte and Max were staring at him and he realized that the puppies were too. Also, that the kids were puppies again. 

Charlotte offered, “Let’s go settle into the lounge and sit down.” She opened her hand to let Chase see were the lounge was and she caught Max’s hand and whispered as low as she could, “Why are you antagonizing him?”

“I’m not. I just don’t like him.”

“You haven’t even given him a chance!”

“I did whenever I came in and he started it. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life? You and I both know that waif has seen me before.” She covered her forehead with her fingers and lowered her face at the insult. “Furthermore, I don’t like his sanctimonious song and dance, just because he’s the poster boy for heroes, a position that he has only been granted because bionics in the past few years that they’ve been accepted have taken credit for every superhero’s victories and act like they’re doing us a favor by doing small percentages of the work and capitalizing on all of the victories!” He folded his arms and Chase turned around and looked at them. Max glared at him.

Charlotte noted still whispering, “He has super hearing. I think he’s heard us whispering.” 

“I did,” Chase said.

Max shrugged his shoulders, “Where was the lie? Bionics are just non-supes with technology. You’re only special because a madman put technology into you when you were too young to consent.” Charlotte covered her lips with her fingers this time and lowered her face again. 

“You obviously know enough about me to continue to personally attack me because of your perception of my position. If that makes you feel better, do it,” Chase said. What wasn’t about to happen was him losing his cool in front of Charlotte, or worst, inside of Charlotte’s home.

She shook her head, “I thought that the two of you would get along. There’s so much greatness inside of both of you, that I see, I guess I presumed that you would see that in each other. I had no idea that there was some kind of superhero vs bionics bad blood in you two.”

“Seriously? Because, I’ve heard that your friend here is pretty anti superheroes. Besides the members of his team, who he’s been openly negative towards (we talk, Bionic Boy), and the only super that you’ve really fully accepted was your sister, after she siphoned a little from Skylar Storm. You had supers right in front of your face, proof of our existence and you berated them and talked trash on them. At least that’s how Sky would tell it.”

“You… know Skylar too? Technically… she’s not a super. She’s an alien. All of her people are like that.”

“Wow. So not the point,” Charlotte said. “Are you actually anti-supers?”

“No! I may have said some of what he’s gossiping about, but I was younger at the time he’s speaking about, probably not much older than he was when he was aspiring to be a super villain.”

“So, NOW you know who I am?”

“I researched the information while the two of you were whisper arguing!” Chase said.

“You knew who the fuck I was when you walked into this castle, Boy! You, the smartest man in the world, who has been betrayed and bamboozled multiple times didn’t do a background search on someone who was going to be staying in the home of the woman you love and meeting up with you for possible business? I’m not the smartest man, but I’m not a dumbass, either. You absolutely looked into me, just like I’ve been looking into you from the first time she mentioned your name. Maybe you could get a fast one on the simpletons you’re usually surrounded by, but Char and I? We're in the genius leagues.” 

Chase was breathing hard and eyeballing Max, looking a bit menacing and sort of hovering over him. Chase scanned him over and Charlotte stepped between the two of them, into Chase’s line of sight. He seemed to calm down and she was grateful, because he’d looked pissed and she heard that could make things get really ugly. “I heard your response, Chase and it’s valid. You were younger and didn’t subscribe to the value of superheroes. Max was young and didn’t either! Yayyy! Similarities…” She looked at both of them. They both folded their arms and scoffed, then both groaned because they’d had the same reactions. Getting them on the same page might be a hard sell. But, she had a few days. “Let me show you your quarters, and maybe everyone can have a drink and kinda…” her shoulders slumped and she sighed, unsure of what words to use.

Henry and Jasper had been friends when she met them. Douglas and Schwoz hit it off right away. These two… SHOULD have too. But, they were both extremely pissed and she felt like she’d missed something that she should have considered before bringing them together like this. That argument proved that she missed several things. She was so in love with the idea of them being science bros, she didn’t think about Chase’s trust issues and how they might affect his view of Max. She didn’t think about Douglas telling Max things that she didn’t even know about, like Chase having a past with superhero hate, or maybe just a little bigotry, but, still… She was supposed to be smarter than that. She had been judging both of them with her heart for so long… it just seemed natural that anybody else, especially one another, would adore them too.

“Charlotte, are you okay?” They both asked her in unison. She looked up and both of them looked concerned and a little guilty. They were most likely going to at least squash it for tonight, for her benefit. 

“I’m sorry for not doing MY due diligence. I just think, if you two could get past it all, you’d understand why both of you are here with me as I embark on a new chapter. You two were my first choice and it was an equal choice. It wasn’t one over the other, it was… I know that you both bring what I want and need to the table. I want it to be a table of camaraderie.” The men looked at each other with a raised eyebrow and flared nostrils. 

“It’s fine,” they both lied. At least she knew that they’d try.

#Henry Danger #Lab Rats #The Thundermans #Chasing Thunderbolts Fic #League of Extraordinary Geniuses #LOEG Update #Nesha Fics #Multiverse Fics

[autokratorissa]

Lib

That artwork is almost quintessentially liberal, what are you talking about. Weak.

Completely by chance, I’ve been studying Ward-Perkins’ work on late antiquity these last few days for a paper I have to do and one of the things he specifically talks about (in this case in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation) is that it’s precisely the kind of “industrial” pots that that artist smashed that are invaluable in the historical record, beyond and above the high art of ornate vases etc., because they represent a history of the masses that is often lost to us through textural sources. It is from pottery and roof tiles, not Christian polemics and the histories of learned men like Ammianus Marcellinus, that we know the Fall of Rome was a disaster for ordinary people and a violent process that worsened the lives of tens millions and ended a truly ancient civilisation, way of life, and level of sophistication and comfort. (Which is not to say the destruction of textural and otherwise elitist sources is in any way acceptable either, of course). Likewise, I can only assume (as I am not a Chinese historian) that mass-produced, everyday use items like that pot are of equally incomparable, irreplaceable value to us in understanding China’s history and how we got where it is today. In destroying something because it was unremarkable when it was made and therefore apparently shouldn’t be lauded and revered on the same level as things which were (why is that again, exactly?), they are only reinforcing the idea that what is valuable and worthwhile is the properties and doings of any one society’s upper echelons, and also, in a much more real, immediate sense, contributing that much more to the disparity that exists between the amount of everyday items we have from history and how many remarkable but entirely unrepresentative ones we have. The simple passage of time and natural, unavoidable causes have already taken the vast, vast majority of our material history from us; do we really need to add more destruction ourselves?

Anyway I’m not joking when I say I think that kind of act is criminal; if I ruled the world, I’d genuinely convict that person of a crime and sentence them to some form of extended community service/communal labour. As it is, such wanton destruction of antiquities is often illegal—only the ridiculous bourgeois notion of private (personal) property could ever make what he did legal when that pot should rightfully be considered the property of the entire Chinese people, if not of the entire species as a whole. Such an act of destruction is an attack on something that is the possession of all of humanity—our history—, including those are not yet born. We do not have the right to take from future peoples their own history. I cannot possibly countenance that. It’s on a far smaller scale, yes, but nothing qualitatively separates that artist’s act from, say, Daesh’s destruction of Palmyra. As a historian, as a philosopher, and as a member of our species, I detest everything that such an act represents. And the irony is, his name and that artwork will be forgotten. It was an entirely pointless, fruitless thing to do, which is perhaps the crux of my really quite visceral reaction to it.

As @minisoc said, it comes down to the idea that breaking priceless things is edgy and some kind of act of rebellion, when it just isn’t; it’s sad, in every sense of the word.

#tag: asks #misc

[spamzineglasgow]

PART ONE: Glitching the Collective Mind (Dan Power)

Figures 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4

“I am not a nihilist, but a mood of grim, jolly absurdism comes over me often, as it seems to come over many of my young peers. To visit millennial comedy… is to spend time in a dream world where ideas twist and suddenly vanish; where loops of self-referential quips warp and distort with each iteration, tweaked by another user embellishing on someone else’s joke, until nothing coherent is left…”

> This quote comes from ‘Why is millennial humor so weird?’, in which journalist Elizabeth Bruenig (2017) taps into the vein of gleeful absurdity which is emerging in online creative spaces. This insight seems to have struck a chord with creators and consumers of online content, as in response, the article itself has become widely memed. Above there are four examples of this, with each taking a meme that existed independently and reframing it with the ‘millennial humor’ headline. There is a degree of self-awareness to this reframing, as if the content creators have taken the label ‘weird’ as a challenge to rise to. The absurdity of the source material is heightened by recontextualising it as formal journalism. By prefacing this image with a frame that draws attention to the image’s weirdness, these anonymous content creators are wilfully resisting interpretation, revealing their intent to baffle, bemuse, or maybe even unnerve internet users.

> Bruenig observes a tendency in some memes to celebrate meaninglessness with comic sincerity. By responding to the article in the way they did, these content creators have proved Bruenig’s point. The theory is put into practice: a meme has entered circulation where the intention is to be deliberately and playful obscure, and where the individual memes are linked only by their deployment of the same frame. Importantly, for all the incoherence of the memes themselves, there is a coherence to the methods producing them.

> What sparks these acts of coordinated communal nonsense – are the motivations personal, political, or is it a celebration of weirdness for its own sake? By exploring the dark absurdism creeping into post-internet artwork, particularly in video content, this series seeks to examine the latent ideology underpinning the dark surrealism of internet humour, and how its rising popularity changes the ways we think about ourselves and our realities.

-

“...that which was intended to enlighten the world in practice darkens it. The abundance of information and the plurality of worldviews now accessible to us through the internet are not producing a coherent consensus reality... It is on this contradiction that the idea of a new dark age turns: an age in which the value we have placed on knowledge is destroyed by the abundance of that valuable commodity, and in which we look about ourselves in search of new ways to understand the world.”

-

In New Dark Age (2018), his examination of the internet’s infiltration of our daily lives, James Bridle only just stops short of declaring that the internet will be the death of humanity. As well as the environmental cost of constant streaming and downloading, Bridle argues that the internet poses an existential threat in a more epistemological sense, by attempting the impossible task of collating and networking humanity’s collective knowledge, history, and culture.

> This cataloguing is conducted through the use of databases, which media theorist Lev Manovich argues are becoming (if they aren’t already) the new dominant media (2010, p.70). The database is distinguished from a physical collection of items and information by its flexibility, and the user’s ability to manipulate the structure of the content by searching for key words. Here there is a paradox: because it is so meticulously structured, the experience of using a database is one apparently devoid of structure. Manovich notes that the database is “distinct from reading a narrative or watching a film or navigating an architectural site” since these experiences are all linear, and so are experienced by readers or viewers in the same way, with point b always following point a, and so on (p.65). In a database users navigate the information however they choose, in effect creating their own narratives, with no guarantee that any two users’ experience of a database may be the same.

> This same notion is put forward by Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture (2006), where he says “each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives”. The narratives we forge through our online experiences become part of our understanding of the world – and they seem to be creating more confusion than clarity. These narratives are arbitrarily structured, and may contain false information or information devoid of meaning. Also, thanks to the volume and speed of online messaging, language is evolving faster than it ever has before (Press Association, 2015). Information may be conveyed to us in unfamiliar terms, and so be open to misinterpretation.

> Internet users are bombarded with information, little of which has any meaningful or memorable content. Exposing people to a transparent mapped network of humanity’s knowledge, history, and culture has irrevocably warped our perception of ourselves, and our relationship to the world. As Bridle later notes, “the more obsessively we attempt to compute the world, the more unknowably complex it appears”. At best the database makes the sum of all the world’s content feel overwhelming, and at worst having it all laid out makes it feel mundane. Either way, the damage done is to expose internet users to too much information, and this can lead to an existential crisis.

> Spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world) must saturate the mind. This oversaturation of meaning gives way to feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity, or as Bruenig puts it, a “creeping suspicion that the world just doesn’t make sense”. From this suspicion arises a new wave of disillusioned artists, who we will refer to as the post-internet surrealists. Unlike other meme creators (whose work arguably is surrealist in its Dada-like remixing of disparate elements), the post-internet surrealists are surrealists with intent, who respond to one another’s work, and whose videos consistently evoke alienation and absurd bemusement within digitally-rendered worlds. Videos such as BagelBoy’s pront (2017) engage with infinity as a source of existential confusion, and others like surreal entertainment’s What Kanye really showed Trump in the white house (2018) abstract real-life events to the point of absurdity (or make their inherent absurdity more apparent) by transporting them to a digital non-setting.

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Manovich argues that the database is a distinct cultural form, like a novel or film or building, in that it presents its own distinct model of how the world should be experienced. Unlike narrative, the database is non-linear. Unlike architectural structure, the database is non-spatial. It appears to us as information without structure and without context – in short, information divorced from the reality in which it takes meaning.

> This creates a tension, which grows stronger the more we rely on the online world to conduct business in the real one. It is resolved, or at least eased, by the digital world bleeding into the physical. The world becomes what Bridle calls ‘code/space’, which he defines as “the interweaving of computation with the built environment”. This term isn’t internet-specific, and covers anything which requires users to think computationally in order to interact, such as self-service checkouts, or traffic light buttons. However, its impact is most significantly felt in the prevalence of internet-connected devices such as the mobile phone, which turn the whole world into potential code/space.

> The internet is omnipresent. It is so vast in size that popular indicators of space and size fail to adequately describe it. It’s a hyper-object, to borrow a term from philosopher Timothy Morton, so large and far-reaching that it surpasses the boundaries of location, so and complex that it cannot be entirely comprehended at once.

> Morton is an ecologist, and develops his idea in relation to climate change. In the blog Ecology Without Nature, he describes the hyper-object global warming as being so “massively distributed in time and space” that we can consider it “nonlocal”, not existing wholly in any one place. He writes that when you experience rain you are “in some sense” experiencing climate, but “you are never directly experiencing global warming” (2010). Global warming is too big an object to meaningfully encounter, but to dismiss its existence on these grounds would be ridiculous. We may be unable to comprehend its existence entirely, but still we know it exists through the traces it leaves across the globe.

> Like global warming, the internet is a hyper-object, and the data we glean from it is just a fragment of the whole. When we consider the internet as one hyper-object, rather than a collection of individual data objects, then all internet-connected devices become components in a single global network, one global code/space.

> To meaningfully discuss the surrealism emerging online we will consider the internet not as a collection of individual texts, images and videos, but as one networked whole. Matthew Smith argues that, since digital media work by translating data into “universally exchangeable” bits, “all digital media are therefore identical in structure; like Campbell’s soup cans” (2007). The content of two memes may be worlds apart, but fundamentally they are both the same thing. Furthermore, if they both exist online, they are equally tiny composite parts of a larger total structure. This is not the same as, for example, claiming that all paintings in a gallery are part of the same work because they share a building. With physical objects, there is always the possibility of them leaving the gallery or entering a new one. This does not work digitally; you can’t have objects within the internet because the internet itself is an object of which digital artworks form a part.

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Briefly, we’ll consider a post-internet artwork which isn’t a meme. Crispin Best’s ‘pleaseliveforever’ is an eight-line poem which regenerates every few seconds under a new, randomly generated title (2017). By making the content arbitrary and fleeting, the poem draws attention to its medium, and flaunts its ability to do things pre-internet poetry never could. Musing on this, SPAM’s own Denise Bonetti asks “what is the poem, then? The structure? The algorithm?” (2019), and indeed, if the content of the poem is continually being remixed then the only constant by which we can define it is its invisible network of underlying code. Because it exists digitally, the poem’s structure and algorithm are indistinguishable – the algorithm is the structure. And it’s not a structure in its own right, but one small part embedded within the hypertext of the internet as a networked whole.

> The internet is a database of databases, one giant non-spatial structure too large to pigeonhole, but within which we can observe trends. It will be useful to conceptualise the internet as one giant work of art, a hyper-artwork with an uncountable number of authors and viewers. This artwork is mutable, and continually evolving. Since the internet is a network of information relating to the real world, it might be considered a reconstruction of reality. The internet then is a constantly changing map of the world, and if we consume its content on a daily basis, and if we never distance ourselves from its code/space, it throws our understanding of the world into a constant state of flux.

> This uncertainty, and the anxiety or absurdity arising from it, is key to understanding the work of the post-internet surrealists. BagelBoy’s icced (2017) might be set in the real world, but there’s no way to be certain. The plot is simply that a man goes to a store, buys a cola, then goes home to drink it, but through means of information saturation and a post-internet aesthetic these events are abstracted beyond relatability and almost beyond recognition. The film’s world is constructed out of PNG images, stock photos and text boxes – spoken words appear as text, characters glide across the screen at will, and at the end the film’s entire diegesis is hijacked by an advert. Either the video is deconstructing real-world events by moving them to a digital setting, or it’s physically depicting a virtual interaction (typing replaces speech online, people navigate between internet sites without physically moving, and adverts can materialise from anywhere at any moment with no prior warning). Like the explicitly surreal memes we’ll encounter in future instalments, icced presents an absurd but coherent depiction of code/space, a version of reality infused with internet logic.

> But before we examine these surreal memes in detail we’ll go briefly to the very beginnings of cinema, a period of experimentation and genre consolidation similar to that occurring in online spaces today. By examining the developments of early cinema and viral video in tandem, we’ll see that giving consumers the power to create and share their own work makes profit a less important factor in filmmaking, and that this fundamentally changes the kind of video content which gets produced and distributed.

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The prototype digital cinema emerging today may seem worlds apart from the first few years of cinema itself, but in fact the two share many common features. One scholar notes how “Both films of early cinema and online video clips are short films, mostly staying well under ten minutes in length” (Broeren, 2009). These short films were exhibited collectively in cinema’s early days (Gunning, 1990), keeping audiences supplied with a steady stream of novel content. Today they are exhibited side-by-side on databases like YouTube, where viewers can view as many as they desire in a single sitting, and sustain their own engagement by varying the content they consume at whim.

> In the early days of cinema, exhibitionists would often “re-edit” the films they purchased, and personalise their own exhibitions with offscreen supplements. This, too, occurs in online film. The media theorist Limor Shifman (2013) notes how “user-driven imitation and remix” as a mode of content production is integral to internet culture, and with video meme creators often accompanying their edits of other videos with captions, active comment sections, and links to other media, the off-screen supplements of old are today integrated into the on-screen experience.

> These similarities are not just superficial – they arise from the same factors. The birth of cinema saw large masses of people consuming and participating in the products of newly available commercial technologies, and the emergence of a distinct online cinema is, essentially, an accelerated replay of this process. Sharing in the same global code/space makes internet users a bigger potential audience than has ever previously existed, and the quantity and style of content produced by and for internet users is determined by the activity of this networked mass.

> Early cinema was concerned with newly-formed masses of people resulting from twentieth century modernity, not just for audiences but also as subject matter. According to Gunning (2004), the ‘local films’ of Mitchell and Kenyon would document crowds of people moving through public spaces, and when doing so they were tuned in to the growing public discourse around newly-visible congregations of people in developing urban areas. One particular style of film they produced, which we will take as out main focus, is the ‘factory gate’ film. These would document workers streaming out of a factory at the end of the day, almost universally consisting of single (occasionally sped up or spliced short) static long shots (LS) or extreme long shots (XLS). While the single take, duration and static camera are the result of practical limitations, the choice to employ LS or XLS is an artistic one. Greater distance allowed the frame to fill with a greater number of subjects, creating a visual cacophony and increasing the spectacle. The framing was often loose, meaning there were no focal points to direct attention. Viewer’s eyes would rapidly scan over the moving crowd, heightening any sense of the crowd being overwhelmingly large.

> As well as directly engaging with large masses of people, the demands of large audiences to see films made specifically for their local area meant Mitchell and Kenyon had to develop a way of turning out new films efficiently and affordably. In order to exploit the collective spending power of the masses, the form and content of these local pictures are wrapped around the desires of the masses to recognise themselves and their towns on-screen. The masses were not only the subject of the films, but also determined their mode of production, and by extension their formal properties.

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The factory gate picture is a genre, and films in this genre are produced by following the Mitchell and Kenyon template: set up a camera by a factory gate at closing time, framing the exit in LS to capture as many moving people as possible. Templatability allows for films to effectively be cloned, so it’s necessary in commercial filmmaking, allowing things to be produced and reproduced at more profitable rates. By following templates to easily reproduce a standardised kind of content, the early genre films of Mitchell and Kenyon reproduce similarly to online memes. Sean Rintel (2013) argues that “templatability lies at the heart of online memes”, and explains that “memetic process is a product of the human capability to separate ideas into two levels – content and structure – and then contextually manipulate that relationship”. A meme, fundamentally, is the deployment of a familiar template to reframe and alter our perception of otherwise familiar or unfamiliar content. It is almost mathematical in its generation of novel content, since there are as many potential remixes of movies and songs as there are unique combinations.

Figures 2.1 and 2.2

> Take these memes as an example. Their origin is the YouTube video Gordon Ramsay cannot locate the lamb sauce (2016), a remixed clip of gameshow Hell’s Kitchen (2005-) in which Gordon shouts at contestants who have not made lamb sauce in time. The video cuts out anything other than Gordon’s shouting, and accentuates the moment’s absurdity by elongating and pitch-shifting the word ‘sauce’.Figures 2.1 and 2.2 combine elements of the remix with existing meme formats (figures 2.3 and 2.4) by adding a picture of Gordon and key words ‘lamb sauce’ and ‘located’, either in reference to the video, or to other memes derived from it. These memes were created by reshaping the source material to fit another meme template.

> The prominence of the remix in post-internet art produces huge amounts content which can only be fully understood in relation to other content. Memes function like in-jokes, and in this way they are participatory. The collaboration and participation between an unknowable number of anonymous contributors is part of the enjoyment not just of post-internet surrealism, but of all memes. It’s like shouting into the abyss and waiting to see what echoes back. The communication is rapid and blind, and sublime.

> In commercial cinema templates are used to maximize profits, so it might seem contradictory that they have been embraced by meme makers. But, in online spaces, the use and misuse of templates is what makes the art form participatory. Just as the viewers of local films would attend screenings to see themselves projected, thus participating in the production of the product they consume, so internet users riff off each other’s jokes and meme formats as a way of contributing to the continual evolution of a meme they enjoy.

> It has been argued by film historian Charles Musser (1990) that “modern” cinema begins with the birth of the nickelodeon, the implication of this being that modern cinema is necessarily commercial, whereas pre-cinema films were not. This distinction might be crude, since films were being produced for profit before the nickelodeon came into fashion, but it’s a helpful distinction to make. What makes the form, content, and distribution of pre-cinema and post-internet film resemble each other so closely is the same thing that makes them dissimilar to industrial filmmaking: they’re not driven by profit, but by novelty for its own sake; they are not produced by companies of people, but by small teams or individual auteurs; they experiment with newly-accessible technologies to see what effects can be created; and importantly, since they do not rely upon the systems of capitalism to support their growth and distribution, these films can afford to scrutinise these systems rather than reinforce their ideology.

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> Today’s advances in affordable camera technology, internet access, and free video editing software have shifted the power of content creation away from industry and into the hands of consumers. Anyone with a smartphone can be an auteur, and anyone with a wifi password can become a distributor. Creating and sharing content is easier than it’s ever been before, and developments within the medium now occur at a rate too fast to thoroughly document. The continual crossing of templates and content items produces countless proliferations and variations of existing memes each day. These memes are characterised by hyper-intertextuality, each new remix a thread that further thickens the intertextual tapestry.

> In his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (1982) observes that as reproduction of artworks becomes more common, artworks are increasingly “designed for reproducibility”. With the emergence of templatability and ease of creating and sharing content in online spaces, this process is now more efficient than ever.

> Any image or video online can be downloaded in seconds, and a number of user-friendly picture and video editing programmes come pre-installed on most commercial computers. Mechanical reproduction allowed for films to be copied with ease and re-shaped at will, spawning a number of variants which today is unknowable, since many will not have been preserved. Online however everything is preserved, and this coupled with more efficient and accessible methods of reproducing and adapting works means that videos can be adapted, and their adaptations adapted, at such great volume and speed that they can quickly bear no resemblance to their origins. Cataloguing all the varieties of meme is an unfeasibly large task, but by examining trends within meme-making we can observe how the nature of an artwork changes, becoming more amorphous and apparently meaningless, in an age of digital reproduction.

~

Tune in later this week when we’ll be looking at ~ v a p o r w a v e ~, and navigating the maze of digital non-places and non-times which is rapidly becoming less distinguishable from the world we live in today.

Full list of works cited plus bonus discography are available here. 

This is part one of a three part series. Part two is available here and part three available here. 

~

Text: Dan Power

Published 5/10/19

#essay #dissertation #SPAM essay #post-internet #meme #meme culture #Gordon Ramsay #Dan Power #convergence culture #image #video #cinema

[wearemage]

Unknown Armies Pyromancer

The Pyromancer

AKA Sparks

You know that change is just the universe burning to the ground. The only absolutes, the only things that don’t burn, are nothing more than ashes. Creation, destruction, transmutation, all of it is just fire by a different name. You can see the illusions, the stagnant structures, and the outright lies that hold the world in one place. Time to let them burn away.

THE BASICS

Also known as, “the Way of the Flame,” or, “the Path of Fire,” pyromancy is a notably primeval form of magick. Of those who study such things (if you believe anything that can be said by someone who, “studies magick,”), it is said that Pyromancy was the first of the arts, and that at least makes some sense, especially to you. Fire has always been there, calling to you by its dancing, flickering light. It cooks your food, heats your forge, and burns away the rot. Fire is Power, no one is fool enough to deny that (even if they’re crazy enough to think that cogs, or booze, or porn are more powerful. Fucking crazies).

The central paradox of Pyromancy is that fire burns until there’s nothing left but ash, changes things into an inevitable unchanging state. It is the truest representation of the liminal nature of reality itself. It’s progress towards an undesired end, when the progress itself is what you want, burning things until there’s nothing left to burn. But until then, the whole world looks like gasoline and kindling. Light it up.

PYROMANCY BLAST STYLE

An old-school style has an old-school effect, and there’s no cheap magic trick older than the projection of fire. Like the flames themselves, every blast style is unique in some way; some people throw fireballs, some have a flamethrower comingvout of their palm, one guy even had a glowing violet blowtorch-laser shooting from his fingertip. There’s a lot of variety, really.

For the Minor Blast, the flames projected are usually nothing more than a dissipating puff of fire and heat without much substance, much like a propane fireball, enough to cause burns and pain, but not much else. However, on a cherry roll, these flames are able to make the target catch fire themselves, dealing equal damage as the original roll each turn, with a one-in-ten chance of spreading (and doubling the damage) each turn. Additionally, this is one of the few Blast styles able to effect inanimate objects, with all the normal qualities of the Blast intact. Be careful, though; everything burns, eventually.

This school’s Significant Blast is in most ways identical to its Minor Blast, albeit with two important changes. First, obviously, damage is rolled like for firearms, as is the same for all Significant Blasts (duh). Second, the flames projected are less like the light gassy burn of the Minor Blast, and more like the effects of an actual, real-world flamethrower: a stream of burning liquid napalm, able to stick and splash and keep burning. This manifests itself in two important ways. Firstly, anything you target will catch on fire, no questions asked. Secondly, because of the greater density and power of these flames, they will cause unintended casualties in the area around the target, setting them, the ground around them, and any poor bastard or object around the target on fire, with all of them catching and spreading. It is usually a bad idea to use this indoors, not unless you don’t care about arson charges, or being as subtle as Michael Bay.

GENERATING CHARGES

Generate a Minor Charge: ritualistically burn materials of some real value, usually a minimum of $50-100, but less than $500, and watch them burn. The materials must burn in a single contiguous fire (so you can light them all up at once or put them in one at a time, but it all has to go into the same fire), and you must watch until the fire stops burning on its own (neither you, your friends, nor the fire department are allowed to put it out, even if it spreads). Also, because the ritual is in the act of setting the fire, not in the fire itself, this fire may be used for any normal purpose that fire can serve, such as heating, cooking, forging, arson, showing off at a rock concert, or making a hippie get-together more interesting, but you cannot take your eyes off the fire for any length of time (except to add more fuel. Or blink).

Generate a Significant Charge: burn something of great value, at least $500 or more. All the restrictions of minor charges (except for value) still apply. Further, all things burned must either be yours or taken by you; if you just throw a molotov into someone’s house, that doesn’t count. But if you break into the house, beat up the owner, kick him out, and then set the place on fire, that counts. Also, yes, humans are worth more than $500, but we don’t burn very well, and the smell is bad enough that someone WILL call the cops on you.

Generate a Major Charge: feed the flames with something irreplaceable, like a childhood toy, or a loved one, or your arm. The monetary value of the object is meaningless, so long as it has value to you. Also note that this value isn’t just sentimental; if you find an original piece of artwork that truly speaks to you, in a way that you know will never be replicated, that’ll work for a Major Charge, but a print, copy, or fake (even if you don’t know that it’s a fake) won’t work, and will only generate a charge according to its normal value unless you happen to have a personal attachment to that specific copy.

TABOO

Everything burns, and it can’t just un-burn. No matter how much fire you use, you can’t turn ashes back into the log they used to be. Accordingly, the Taboo of Pyromancy is to reverse changes, such as fixing something that broke or hitting CTRL+Z on a keyboard. You can try to repair an object either if you never saw it in its original state or if your repairs were done with the explicit intent of making something obviously new or different from the original (like with kintsugi), but you can never try and undo anything. Fire burns, now accept the ashes.

Additionally, Pyromancers have a secondary Taboo of sorts against putting out fires. This secondary Taboo isn’t really a Taboo per say, as it won’t cause you to lose any charges, but it will provoke automatic stress checks. Any attempt by the Pyromancer to put out a fire provokes two stress checks, one against Self and the other against Unnatural, with the size of the fire determining the difficulty (putting out a cigarette causes a level 1 check, putting out a burning shirt causes a level 3, and so on). Further, if either of these checks are failed, then the Pyromancer is unable to take any action whatsoever for a length of time equal to ten minutes for the level of stress, with no ability to do anything for any reason of their own, regardless of consequences.

MAJOR MAGIC DOMAIN

Destruction and liminality.

#Contribution #Thank you #submission #existentialspiral #pyromancy #pyromancer

[milkshakedoe]

autobiographical drivel

i think one of the early draws to both left social justice as well as lewis mumford / green anarchist / etc style rhetoric for me was how the old man drilled into me this insistence that in order for my life and my work to be worth anything i have to be able to reinvent the wheel in everything i do. i was always paralyzed in learning new things by this notion that i had to tackle them from the ground up without any help except for his poor teaching, and it was always me who was to blame for any hesitation. if i wanted to study programming and game development, for instance, he would make fun of me for relying on tools that anyone else used. the only way i was allowed to learn any form of software development was to code it completely from scratch in java or C-languages. i wasn’t to be allowed to learn 3D modeling software, i had to be able to code my own rendering engine first. and at the same time the goals to which i aspired had to be impossible. when he discovered that i was trying to find work in food service while struggling in college, he screamed and tried to terrorize me for not spending any time i had to search for jobs (between my mental health and the work he forced me to do at home) applying to some IT sector internship with my non-existent skills.

few people completely supported me against him at the time, and even my mother’s solidarity with me as a fellow victim had always been tempered by her inability to resist being guilted into rationalizing why he must be right and she in the wrong. so i came to see everyone around me as potentially suspect. i foundered in that environment with an intense fear of being poisoned by learning nearly anything that didn’t already mostly fit in with the framework of what i already thought. in part it was in spite of him, honing my stubbornness so that i would never succumb to the terror he would try to visit on me with decreasing success in the later years of my life at the old house, even as that unflinching closedness to outside ideas could be traced in part also to the terror itself.

as i began to slowly absorb political material outside of city newspaper columns and forum arguments, insular tendencies and easy moralizations attracted me, not only because of parental violence itself but because of the horrible company i’d fallen in with during those times. and the only way i had ever learned to hash out differences in views was either through violent argument and the threat of disavowal, or total submission and prostration to the other party, with no in-between or outside to that dichotomy. non-absolute commitments are fake, after all! and when disavowal was carried out, disavowal had to be total. there could be no room for error in letting the enemy’s influence win me over again through some fluke; and without any real causal understanding of why and how things that hurt me were hurting me, and lacking any real method for examining my circumstances critically, absolutely everything had to be accounted for, even the most superficial or superstitious details. conversely, fixing any mistakes or shortcomings on my part had to be committed to in total, exacting, superficial detail, which of course led to my exhaustion and emphasis on superficial details to the detriment of real critique or understanding.

i think these are general problems among left SJ types, which eventually drew me toward them, and the general left thinking that insists that you’re either all in it or you’re not a good leftist at all, and all of the idiotic tendency fights. and also, imo, the worse anarchist / green tendencies out there. what particularly resonated with younger me when i read The Myth of the Machine in college was how Mumford’s arguments hinged on imagery and symbolism rather than empirical data; look at this pitiful astronaut, strapped into his capsule, his life dependent on tubes and support; it’s a metaphor for how megatechnics makes us dependents of the megamachine, how the Machine robs the Human of autonomy, and the metaphor is reality, the symbols are reality. growing up, the only craft i had ever been able to hone without interference was my private artwork; almost everything science-related that couldn’t be understood without math and reference to empirical study felt poisoned by the old man who held up his knowledge over my head constantly to tell me that the only thing i was good for was getting him coffee and breaking bricks in the backyard.

i think prison abolition is an opposite tendency to that kind of thing, contrary to what some might argue. i think imprisonment and punishment ultimately serve to perpetuate these sorts of attitudes, the notion that great suffering can be alleviated by (and ultimately only by) destroying its symbolic representatives, often destroying yourself in the exhaustive quest to eliminate all those symbolic representatives in yourself, filling us with a general suspicion (or divine fear) of all our peers and their ideas and to constantly reinvent the wheel - insisting on new words and total re-thinkings to replace ones tainted by symbolic association with bad things, etc, although this is not to suggest that new words and calls for reinvention are inherently bad, this is a specific problem. i think graeber’s concept of morality as debt is relevant here, even if it might be flawed / ‘ahistorical’ in some part (i look forward to finishing pashukanis’ general theory of law and marxism which seems relevant on the subject) whereby punishment takes the form of a collection of debts in a framework where the upkeep of morality in general takes the form of transactions of ‘surplus dignity’ - flattening specific moral relations into fungible tokens, where addressing the fallout of and repair from abuse becomes a process of simply ‘paying’ the victim by subtracting things of equal value from the abuser.

obviously, there are some concerns raised by critics that are worth addressing. how do you ensure that people are able to heal rather than being guilted or otherwise obligated into toxic / abusive behavior, for instance. how do approaches to prison abolition fulfill this without reconstructing prisons? admittedly i think a lot of online prison abolitionist-friendly anarchist stuff i’ve seen so far tends to gloss over this somewhat, figuring that a society of autonomous individuals in free association (whatever that exactly means) will simply hash it out in a way that works as long as we are speaking of a 'truly’, purely anarchist society. truthfully, my own thoughts on the matter remain underdeveloped, but i liked emmy cannibality’s (a leninist) musings . i also really like porp’s words on the matter, even if she has less to say about institutional approaches or even prison abolition as a specific subject per se - but i think the way she speaks of how toxicity needs to be regarded as “a medical issue, as a natural reaction to growing up under capitalism, and neither glorified nor demonized” as well as “a recurring symptom of a national sickness” helps to frame the discussion far more effectively than appeals to the necessity of punishing evil (for prison advocates) or to the individual per se (for many prison abolitionists).

#long post #useless rambling #politics

[mr880]

Our Personal Power and What to do With It

  Our Energy Within

All oldsters would love to have private strength – the energy to arise our desires, the strength to live calm and loving within the face of fear, the strength to live targeted in ourselves within the face of assault. Our society regularly confuses private energy - “energy within” - with “power over,” which is set controlling others. There is a wide distinction between private strength and management. Personal power comes from an internal enjoy of protection, from knowing who you are for your soul, from having defined your intrinsic simply really well worth It is the strength that flows via you at the equal time as you're linked to and experience your oneness with a spiritual supply of guidance. It is the energy this is the eventual result of doing deep internal emotional and religious artwork to heal the fears and fake ideals obtained in kids. Without this internal artwork to heal the ideals that create our boundaries, we're stuck in our egos, our wounded selves. The very basis of the ego is the selection for management, energy over others, and effects. Dealing With Ego Our ego is the self we created to attempt to have manage over getting love, heading off the pain, and feeling secure. We created our ego self in our attempt to protect ourselves from the losses we fear – lack of self, loss of various, loss of protection, loss of face. As youngsters, while we didn’t get the affection we wanted, we determined that our real Self needs to be unlovable. In our attempt to feel secure, we buried our real Self and created the fake self – the ego, our wounded self. The ego-self then went approximately studying the manner to feel comfy via seeking to manipulate others and effects. The ego believes that having manipulated over how human beings see us and feel approximately us, further to over the very last effects of matters, will deliver us the protection we're seeking. Even if you do manage to have some manage through anger, grievance, judgment, or money, this may by no means offer you private strength. This will by no means fill you with peace and satisfaction and an internal feel of safety. Control is a Short Fix to Personal Power Control may also moreover provide you with a short-time period enjoy of safety, however, it still in no way provide you with the deep experience of protection that comes from understanding your intrinsic really virtually really well worth, the nicely really well worth of your soul. As prolonged as your safety and virtually really well worth are being defined with the resource of way of externals which can be brief – your money, your seems, your performance, your strength over others – you'll experience stress. We experience trauma whilst we are part of our nicely really well worth and happiness to temporal matters in place of to everlasting features, in conjunction with worrying, compassion, and kindness. A Look at “Walter” For example, Walter is someone who has first-rate power over others but no non-public strength. Walter has made masses of plenty because of the truth the president of a large funding enterprise. He has a cute partner, three grown youngsters, and stunning houses. Yet Walter is frequently demanding. The problems with dropping his cash. He is results prompted into anger even as topics don’t skip his manner and people don’t behave withinside the way he desires. Because his coronary heart isn't usually open, he's a lonely guy. Walter operates absolutely out of his ego self, believing that having manipulated via anger and cash will carry him the happiness and protection he seeks. Yet he has completed the whole thing he believed may want to supply him happiness and safety and what he feels most of the time is worrying and lonely. Walter is empty internally. He has no feeling of his actual Self, no feel of the beautiful interior him, no experience of his lovability and intrinsic nicely well worth. His life is based totally on externals in place of the spiritual values of affection, compassion, honesty, and kindness. Personal Energy Personal energy comes from embracing spiritual values in preference to simply earthly values. It comes from making love, kindness, and compassion – towards oneself and others – extra essential than strength over others. It comes from doing the internal paintings essential to permit the soul to have dominion over the body, in place of allowing the herbal dispositions of combat or flight – the instincts of the body – to have dominion over our alternatives. When the soul has dominion over the body, you've got were given have been given the strength to reveal up to your dreams, to stay centered within side the face of attack, to stay loving within side the face of fear. When the soul has dominion over the body, you've got were given great private strength. Five Tips for Getting Your Life Back On Track -- After Taking a Wrong Turn We've all skilled moments in our life on the equal time as we pay attention ourselves say "YES" to a procedure, individual, or scenario we understand deep in our coronary heart isn't usually proper for us. And still, we do it. As fast as "yes" leaves our lips someplace in us we pay attention to a voice that screams "NO! Don't do it!" but in some manner, some different a part of us kicks in and our mind overrules the notice of our body and we discover ourselves on a course we in no manner supposed. Wrong Turns and Personal Power Sometimes the ones wrong turns may be terrible to our nicely-being. They motive stress and positioned us in threat of losing ourselves indefinitely. In other instances we without delay recognize our "yes" has induced an "o-oh" and we decide properly then and there to transport again to the start and start throughout once more. Either manner, while you find yourself in a sticky nation of affairs, most effective you were given have been given the energy to assert you took a wrong turn, and best you may determine whilst it's time to get decrease again on course. These guidelines may also moreover help. Be Honest With Yourself Admit, as rapid as viable, you made a desire that led you down the incorrect path. Nothing will trade till you are extensively diagnosed the choice you made isn't usually strolling for you. The quicker, the better. Be inclined to take one hundred% obligation for the alternatives you're making for your life. Plan an exit method. Once you've got were given admitted to yourself you're on the wrong course, determine how you can get once more on course. In a few situations, it may be essential on the way to forestall what you're doing right now. Most of the time, a brief exit may bring about even extra stress and terrible selection-making. Take the time you need to get very smooth on what its a long way you do want and get back on course one step at a time. Be slight with yourself. Beating yourself up will best harm your self-esteem. Realize anyone takes incorrect turns -- even the most a success human beings take several wrong turns earlier than getting it right. Remember, life is ten percentage how we make it and ninety percent of how we take it. Look for the lesson. There aren't any mistakes and there may be constantly a lesson to be found -- or maybe a blessing. What did taking an incorrect turn train you about yourself? Do you want to be aware of your gut more and others less? Do you want to in the long run pay attention to your coronary coronary heart and have a take a observe its calling? Do you need to value yourself greater? Do you need to redefine what success method to you? Personal Power to Do better next time. Life is the whole of second probabilities. Be inclined to take them! Let cross of the past and decide to do something it takes to get back on the right song. The knowledge you've were given obtained from taking an incorrect turn will help you do higher subsequent time. There's the simplest one manner to live lifestyles on your proper music. Listen to your coronary heart. It holds the name of the game on your happiness and the crucial issue in your success. If you want to develop or increase your personal power, you must embrace your power to choose. Most people live life as if they don't have choices. That's so far ...

Can You Say Yes To Happiness?

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[joemuggs]

Old is the New New

Not really. But the question of how and whether innovation happens in the digital age is a perennial one. I remember a drunken New Year’s Eve conversation a decade or more ago with a friend complaining that there was never going to be another summer of love or punk or acid house revolution, and me saying we’re too ready to pre-empt that in the UK now, but subcultural things like that could very well happen in places like Kinshasa or Kuala Lumpur or Kiev... and indeed music is a part of major cultural shifts around the world. 

Listening to the We Out Here compilation really got me going this year though. It’s so vivid and of the now, without having any of the high-tech signifiers that we of the post-rave generations have come to recognise as representing newness. But in the bodily movements of the players are encoded London life 2018, just as much as they are in drill MCs’ voices or whatever deconstructed club beat patterns are working for people right now. Though that perhaps only makes sense if you understand the soul-jazz continuum as it is woven through London music. Not that you NEED to, mind, because the music operates on an instant, pleasure-principle level too. My full review I wrote for the Wire is above... 

We Out Here by We Out Here

...but that review in turn then set off a few tangents, which became a Twitter thread, which I have tidied up as follows:

A short rant on people who use "innovation" as their primary yardstick for judging music. 

If you do this, you are judging music first of all as A Cultural Phenomenon - an abstraction - and sidelining both the sound itself and what it is doing for the real people who love it. If people still love to dance to / make drum'n'bass 20 years on, or deep house 30 years on, or jazz-funk 40 years on, or garage rock 50 years on, or R&B 60 years on, or whatever, and your first response is to accuse them of lack of inspiration, you've gone wrong somewhere. We can't always be in a Cambrian Explosion period like 70s NYC or 90s UK where globally important musical species are created seemingly willy-nilly. Comparing the normal pace of innovation to those explosive times is foolishness. And worse, it denies lasting value to music.

I've been thinking of this wrt the current buzz of what you might call "post-Plastic People jazz" - music which doesn't sound overtly new, but is still vivid with value in the here and now. Thing is, there's always been top parties where you could dance to jazz if you looked. And whether it was 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, that music had the same instant value in the heat of a club, both for its direct effect on the body and from the fact that it tended to attract some of the most diverse crowds: something that always leads to a better party. Does it lose value over the decades, just because it's not the first time it's being played in that style? Christ no. Does sex become less good because you've done it a few times?

The motives of ppl who insist that newer ≡ better are highly suspect & usually proprietorial.

This doesn't mean things don't change. The concept of "timelessness" is metaphysical and equally suspect. OBVIOUSLY dancing to drum'n'bass at 4am in 2018 is different to 1998. But when the beat drops there's real continuity of physical/emotional/social experience. All of this is no shade on innovation, either! Indeed it's rly the "innovation is dead" argument that diminishes real & amazing developments. From Chino Amobi and Elysia Crampton to mainstream hip hop over the last decade to any number of 'developing world' sounds, it's rife. Innovation is vital, we celebrate it, we seek it out. But to use it as your main measure of social and aesthetic value is bullshit.

"Oh nice house you designed and built with your own hands there... BUT DID YOU INVENT THE CONCEPT OF HOUSES, HMMM??"

Aside from sidelining the value of craft, folk art etc in favour of a vision of "inventiveness" that is always tied up in a tangle of sketchy ideas about cultural superiority, it just suggests you're more wrapped up in your own valuations than in the thing you're evaluating. And with huge irony it's often nostalgia-based: people want to see the same kind of innovation that blew them away when they were first launching out on their own voyage of discovery. It's quite egotistical in these cases, it's centring ideas of progress around your own tastes. Tangentially, there’s probably a whole PhD thesis on compering the theory bro’s modernism with the tech bro’s disruption. But more generally, this desperation to repeat a particular type of innovation v often seems like attempt to isolate "modernism" or "innovation" as an essential quality divorced from historical context. And essentialism and ahistoricalism are bad.

NONE of this is to say that retroism, revival, tradition etc etc are worthwhile qualities in and of them selves, of course. You still have to make aesthetic and cultural judgements yourself about what you're hearing and how it's consumed! Being familiar or traditional in itself doesn't make anything good, any more than it makes it bad.

Here’s another thing. Old things can still smash preconceptions. If you’re so jaded you think Sun Ra or Kate Bush or The Butthole Surfers or Coki don’t have something new to say to you, let alone a 15 yr old hearing them for the first time, I feel for you. These things, heard in the right light, can be as modernist as they ever were.

A tangent, on the job of music critics, and how we value the music of the past:

I think we all to one degree or another internalise the notion that popular music is aesthetically "cheap" because of the illusion of infinite availability, as compared to art or "art music". If you watch art/history on BBC4 you see Andrew Graham Dixon or Janina Ramirez waxing lyrical about the qualities of the pieces of art themselves, as expressions of their time. In BBC4 pop music history – unless it's one of those very specialist musicological things with Howard Goodall – it very much tends to be biographical and social history above all else. Can't help feeling that's because there's a reverence for the artworks, that comes from not everyone being able to go to Florence or New York or whatever and see them in the flesh - but everyone can hear "Purple Haze" or "Strings of Life" any time they want, right?

And to my original point about modernism vs retro, I suspect that adds to a cultural forgetting of how radical, say, "Purple Haze" not only was, but STILL IS. Isn't there a value in talking about it not in a Classic Rock way, not in a cultural history way, but in the way we'd talk about a Picasso? "Purple Haze"/"Strings of Life" perhaps are not good examples actually, because they DO at least get the historical reverence treatment on occasion (though this, too, is more based on historical context than aesthetic antalysis). There's thousands upon thousands more records that - if criticism is going to have any purpose - deserve to be looked at, over and over, AS ARTWORKS.

Especially DJing for Big Fish Little Fish parties I listen to & play a lot of what might be called cheesy dance classics, and I continually listen to them closely as a result. The diff between listening hard to Music Sounds Better With You or the Hardfloor mix of Yeke Yeke and just HEARING them as background in a bar or on the radio is like the difference between seeing a Miró or Warhol full sized and up close, and seeing a postcard of one. And actually those records are as great as works of human intellect and instinct as most Great Gallery Art. When you are up close to - in fact INSIDE - those records as they were built to be heard, their sense of balance, scale contrast, movement, balanced chaos/control, etc etc etc is up there with a Kandinsky or Braque. Obviously Capitalism doesn't value it as such, mind... And I think we (critics) unconsciously undervalue that too. So we talk about the past as movements, moments of cultural significance, but all too rarely about how the patterns and tics and structures of X record embody that and what power they still have now. People often talk of the job of critics as just being either explainers, enthusers, conceptualists or a glorified recommendation algorithm. But if the WRITING part of writing about music is ever to have any value, then what about just discussing and bearing witness?

All of which brings us back to the thing about fetishising innovation. We live in a world where thousands or more of people globally are hearing Nu Groove reissues, or rediscovered tapes from Benin, or some twisted Catalan synthpop record from 1981, FOR THE FIRST TIME. While at the same time, in mainstream and underground, soundcloud rapper and Elysia Crampton records are startling and scaring with newness. And elsewhere people – let's take the 100% Silk label or Dekmantel in Amsterdam as prime examples – are maintaining past sounds as living folk traditions. When you hear a set of Robert Hood type minimal techno, even if you don't share his spiritual beliefs and sense of the eternal, you can certainly feel it as being several steps away from the microhistorical cycles of hype. Because of course devotional or ecstatic music is consistently resistant to - or doesn't need - innovation. A shaman chanting in Uruguay, Sufi dancers in Pashtun country, a choir in Hereford Cathedral, Niyabinghi drummers - what do THEY care for the Shock of the New? But from the global 'old' music forms to the crate diggers' early house compilations to the super innovative post-Arca electronicisits, all of these things ARE our present. It's an extraordinary musical-historical moment to be part of. Scary, unpredictable, best of times / worst of times, etc but fucking extraordinary - including the presence of the past, whether unearthed or transmitted through living tradition. We should bear witness to that!

#nostalgia #retromania #futurism #modernism #innovation #subculture #tradition #jazz #rave #butthole surfers #grime #dubstep #jungle #acid house #psychedelia #devotional music #world music

[heideggirl]

some thoughts about the “great books”

occasioned, in some sense, by this NYT op ed. I do not actually think this NYT op ed is really in any important sense about the Great Books, nor is it in any real sense a defense of Great Books programs (although I do think it is a good and interesting op ed, even if I disagree with some of its diagnoses). Because it incidentally contains the words “Great Books,” people on the internet have misread it as a defense of the Great Books and have responded accordingly, which is to say orthogonally. I do not see the following as a “response” to the op ed so much as a reflection on Great Books and Great Books programs that is as much an attempt to think through my own views as an attempt to get at the truth of the matter. 

I think a discussion of the merits of Great Books programs is distinct from a discussion of books that are great and whether/why they should be preferred. I feel fairly confident that some books are great and other books are not great, and that great books are better than not-great books and therefore have a different normative status. (That isn’t to say we should never read not-great books, of course.) But discussion of the Great Books is not a discussion of whether we have reason to prefer good books over bad ones but a discussion of programs in which students read the capital-G-capital-B Great Books, namely anointed Western classics. 

One question, then, concerns whether the Great Books are really so great. I think a lot of them are, in fact, pretty great. Of course, Great Books lists also exclude a lot of books that are at least equally great. But I don’t really think the question of whether Great Books programs are good wholly hinges on the question of whether the Great Books are themselves great, because there are plenty of reasons to read not-great books. If a not-great book is instructive for some particular purpose--it teaches you about how novels can be bad, it’s historically important, it’s poorly organized but contains the empirical information you’re seeking, and so on and on--you should read it anyway. You don’t go to college to read as many great books as possible and only great books; you go to college to learn particular things, which sometimes involves or requires reading some not-great books. 

I think that a Great Books program reading list is really like any other syllabus: it’s a list of books relevant to a particular pedagogical goal, not an attempt to exhaustively catalog everything worth reading for any reason whatsoever. And, structurally speaking, a Great Books program is like any other major, all of which have requirements precisely because a discipline delineates a specialized swatch of knowledge and so requires that its adherents acquire familiarity with particular traditions. (A person majoring in philosophy will probably have to take some classes about Plato, not just because Plato is good, although he is good, but because he is important to the discipline. Arguably, part of the reason Plato is central to the discipline is because he is good. But part of it is a question of historical contingency. And other things that are important to read are widely acknowledged as bad but influential.) 

So what is the pedagogical goal or purpose of a Great Books program? What is its subject? What is someone in a Great Books program “majoring in”? In my view, the Great Books program is a major for those interested in the grounding themselves in a particular cultural and intellectual tradition, namely the Western one, and who want to take a more interdisciplinary and holistic approach than the academy in its current iteration typically accommodates. If you are interested in the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, you may want to read works of science, philosophy, and literature, rather than just one of the above; you may want to read poetry in more than one language; and so on. 

Now, the Western cultural and intellectual tradition isn’t any better than any other cultural tradition. But it is one cultural tradition that is worth studying, in part because many of the books and artworks it produced are good, in part because its development is of interest even when (and maybe especially when) its products are pernicious. There are many innocuous reasons to care about the Western cultural and intellectual tradition. You might have an interest in some particular Western figure or work, e.g., Marx or Andrea Dworkin, in which case you are going to need to familiarize yourself with certain bits of history. No person can read everything relevant to a particular topic, but I think it would be hard to fully grasp, e.g., Marx without reading Hegel, and therefore without reading Kant, and therefore without reading Hume, and so on and on. Moreover, the culture a person inhabits may be of special interest or concern to her; she may want to understand the culture she’s in because it’s her culture, which is not in the least tantamount to designating her culture better than any other. Of course, there are plenty of reasons not to care about the Western cultural tradition too. You may have a strong interest in a non-Western figure and want to ensconce yourself in the tradition that would illuminate this figure’s work. Or you may hail from a different culture and feel it’s more pressing to understand your own culture than someone else’s. Fair enough! Also fair enough! In the same way that there are many good reasons to major in math and many good reasons to major in history, there are good reasons to care about many different cultural traditions. That is to say, the Great Books approach seems good. It just does not seem like the only good. 

So what seems bad about the Great Books approach? First, there is a problem not with any particular Great Books program but with the broader structure of institutions in the anglophone world: it is bad that there are many places where students can take a holistic, historical, and interdisciplinary approach to the Western cultural tradition but that there are far fewer places where students can take a holistic, historical, and interdisciplinary approach to non-Western culture. Second, the word “Great” is a problem--first because it might prevent students from critically interrogating the Great Books, which are endowed with undue authority, and second because it seems to imply that other books in other traditions are less great. These are all real problems we should strive to rectify, perhaps by substituting the word “great” for something more descriptive and less evaluative.

In the end, determining whether Great Books programs are a good in our flawed world is also a question of asking what role they serve in the bankrupt institutions we occupy. The primary reason I think Great Books programs are probably, on the whole, good, even if sometimes flawed when it comes to the particular books they choose and in terms of certain aspects of their institutional positioning, is that they amount to a quietly revolutionary rejection of many of the worst norms in the academy. I think it is a contingent fact of the matter that Great Books programs mount a sort of attack on bad academic practice: it is of course possible that in another world, a different major or approach would lead the charge. But in this world, Great Books programs are a good because they present alternative to the usual workings of what is sometimes called the “neoliberal university,” in which students are viewed as consumers and academic workers eke publications out for no real reason besides fear for their jobs. Great Books programs tend to prioritize faculty teaching over faculty research; they tend reject the shrinkages of hyper-specialization; they tend to emphasize the importance of a historical and humanistic approach; they tend to allow students to read primary texts rather than secondary ones; they tend to reject academic jargon; they tend to value thinking as an end in its own right rather than a means to some hideous technocratic end; and so they do tend to return us to our original reasons for studying the humanities, not solely because of what they assign (though partially because of what they assign, much of which, as I have said, good) but because of their orientation towards it. Of course, of course, of course, a Great Books program is not the only way to capture these benefits. But within the academy, which is only one of many good places to be, it is one of the best ways to capture these benefits, or so it seems to someone who did not go to a Great Books school and sort of regrets it! 

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story - Part 63

(i just want to throw in a trigger warning for sexual violence being mentioned. It’s probably fine, but i don’t want anyone who is struggling personally to be hurt by what i have written.) 

It's just shy by two weeks or so from a decade to the days I started painting my first canvases. I realized when I started painting that it had actually been my thing all along. I couldn't work with lines the way I worked with color. I guess it stems from the way I saw the world through my perception, and the lead of a pencil was simply not conveying what I wanted. I was so much better of a painter than I was an illustrator too. Having drawn so much for years did help me paint – it helped me lay the ground work, and painting in the long run helped me do things like shade better and be more experimental in how I drew. It was finally great to find something I was good at for once, and some way I could express myself.

I like drawing still of course, it was a cheap way to get through school, something to do with all the free paper and pencils that I had to have in my hands anyway. I still do it time to time when I am bored, but it's always somewhat cartoonish when I draw. Line work is just not my way of expressing myself artistically. I could demonstrate so much more by use of color and contrast in a way that seemed flat when I drew. This had been the first time in a very very long time where I felt good at something I had done. I felt like I had some kind of value. I had been proud of my critiques in high school, but it never really mattered to me like painting did. It wasn't as personal as this was.

I set up a deviantart account, and I kept it for a few years to put my art on. I lost the password several years ago, started a new one, and though I check it maybe once every two months or so, I never have any art to put out, and I have struggled with having a place to put my scanner. But all of it is still there for what it's worth. This became my life in a way – reading, listening to music, painting, MySpace

Strangely enough though, the act of painting caused/causes me a great deal of pain though, and in saying this, I don't want to also say that I don't love to paint, because it hurts and is also a passion, albeit a confusing one. I believe it might be the frame of mind I get in, some psychological aspect I don't quite understand, but it really does screw with me physically. My heart begins to race, I feel sick to my stomach. I have a fever. I start feeling paranoid and meaningless and lonely. Everything feels wrong. I often have to get up after painting for twenty minutes and pace the house. I will check the bathroom to make sure nobody is in there. I will look outside to try to cool off. My mind has these impulsive feelings of feeling like someone is watching me from a closet, to feeling paranoid that I am not real – I am merely a figment of someone else's imagination and this is all an illusion. I get this feeling of intense loneliness and wanting to close the doorway that I am looking through mentally that I paint from. I start going crazy, and this is why I have struggled to be prolific. It exposes the fact that underneath my demeanor and my sense that I am in control, I am actually a chaotic lunatic.

I've never talked to another artist who had those symptoms from making artwork that they enjoyed. Everyone I have ever spoken to seem to feel at ease with what they are doing. It feels good – liberating even. Not me though. I feel the liberation, but then I feel even more suffocated. And yet, it is still worth doing. I suspect that I am at my best when I am discontent and obsessively closed off, which is unfortunate for me most likely. I feel I am more efficient, clear minded, creative and a better person when I am unhappy. Maybe the psyche aspect of my painting self is one element of this self truth? I don't seek out misery, however, misery and despair are very easy to find.

On the weekends when we were all at our mother's, my brother was beginning to be a bit of a bully to the household. It was a strange phase he was going through and it only got worse and worse. There were some very dark reasons for all of this, and I will try to explain. I think it came from a deep seated insecurity he had that my father had instilled in him in fear that David would be too feminine. David had stuttered as a child, due largely to my father screaming at David about his speech impediment and mocking him. Being the only son of a man who had been raised by a mean-spirited brother who shamed him, it must have been sort of difficult emotionally for David. He was always spoiled too, separate from us somehow. It was a strange mix. My father was always shaming David to act competitive and masculine.

David's truer personality is shy, meticulous, and honest. He had a temper from the day he was born, but it could have been dealt with differently. Maybe it was the way he was taken out of the womb? David's head got stuck in my mother's womb, and when the doctors pulled him out it misshaped just a bit. I know that even a minor altering of the human brain can cause people to lose control of things like their emotions. Anyway my father didn't like what he perceived as feminine in David, freaked out at me once for putting David in makeup – probably kids at school made him feel vulnerable and weak when he stuttered and was shy as a child. So David, feeling vulnerable, weak and unhappy and not really connected with, began walking around starting fights with everyone at home when he turned eleven or twelve – especially me and Allison, and getting disturbingly deeply violent in the nature that he attacked everyone. It was honestly a lot more terrifying then it sounds.

At random times, he would believe everyone was out to get him – in a way that went beyond typical. These were delusions. I know from experience that most boys I have known go through something in their personality at this time in their lives. Some hormone stuff happens, and boy culture at school causes them to feel a compulsion to compete and do what they perceive to be tough. But this was particularly disturbing. He walked around with clenched fists. He took whatever he wanted. His ego was over the top. At times, he was cussing us out and threatening everybody in the house. I fought back a few times, but in the end, I just became scared and closed down. I could still take him down if I had to, but David was a particularly strong kid, and I knew that it would only be a short matter of time before we were equals if it came down to a physical altercation.

Looking back, David caused me an immense amount of stress that stays with me to this day. I feel weird pointing out trauma that happened in my late teens to early twenties rather than something that happened when I was four as having a long lasting effect on my mental health, but it's truth. Years of constant uncertainty of a blow up eventually ground me down. And I don't blame David per say, but it eventually nearly ruined our relationship, which was a shame. David has a thoughtful intelligence to him that is very rare. He is one of the few people who opens himself up in a way to truly care about everything he sees around him, and it's a shame that there are parts of him that are so painful. It's a shame for his own sake. From the time David turned eleven, everyone in the house was walking on egg shells – eventually my father was even walking on them.

My mother in a weird sort of way, spoiled him even harder – maybe enjoying in this weird way that he was in control of the household, and trying to appease him constantly to avoid conflict was kind of fun for her. It made her feel special. By this time in my life I had drastically changed as a person too. I could kind of understand some of the stuff David was going through emotionally. It hadn't even been a year or two before and I myself had thought everyone was out to get me. No doubt some of this was David innocently picking these behaviors off me. But I had changed, too late, but I had. I no longer felt any room to be a person at all in a lot of ways – I couldn't feel mad. I stopped thinking in the first person at all. I thought only in facts. I tried to rely on the feelings underneath the words. I tried to be a ghost in the house whenever I could. I didn't like the way I looked and thought I was going to die, so I just had sort of shut down. If I let myself think about myself too much, if I got personal with myself at all, I would often times struggle to breath and would have these moments of intense and sudden panic that I would choke down even harder. My thoughts would scramble, and I would feel this sense that I was teetering on the edge of something I couldn't even explain. I didn't let anyone see me that way of course. I saw, and rightly so, my family in their various forms as wolves who would pick me off if I showed weakness.  

I felt like my only option was to hide away, to play and believe that I was dead inside. I needed to be somewhere private. It was hard to even do that though since the house was small and if someone was looking for trouble they would find me. So, when I was at my mom's I would lock myself away in the bathroom and read, for hours upon hours. It was a strange pattern for me. I would wake up, eat quickly and impulsively, grab a book and lay in the bathtub sometimes hiding in there for eight or nine hours a day. I would only get out when people needed to use the bathroom, and occasionally to let it air out. And then I would get back in. It was the only way for me to escape David and everyone else in the household, and it kind of worked. The bathroom had an atmosphere that was harder to fight in, and besides, out of sight out of mind. I would hear David screaming outside the door, and I would mentally shut myself off so I didn't feel anxious. But I was anxious anyway. I just didn't let myself feel that or cognitively let myself process it. I compartmentalized everything about myself as a defense mechanism. And nobody in my family noticed.

I have to take a step back, and try to understand my brother's behavior for what it was, because it was a combination of many things. It was borderline personality disorder in a very early stage. Sometimes David would be delusional. His eyes would look glassed over and he would accuse you of having said something you didn't say. And I could tell he believed it. He chased us all away, and then was hurt that we had left him alone. I could tell he knew he had manipulated the fabrication, but believed it anyway and it was beyond frustrating. My parents never cared one bit about our mental health, and he had done similar things as a little boy – the tendencies had been there, but it could have been corrected had anyone cared about what David was actually going through instead of buying him whatever he did or didn't want. But rather than sit down to talk to David, they either spoiled him and favored him – somewhat rewarding him for his bad behavior. Our father, if he did anything at all, would use fear and frighten David so he didn't act that way around him. David behaved himself, but more or less, he was only bottling it up. To my father, he only saw the problem in context to the misery it caused him personally. He didn't want to be bothered, and if he yelled or was frightening enough, we would be too afraid to act in a way that was unpleasant to him personally. It was second nature to my father, and he naively believed I think that if he wasn't seeing the behavior, then it was not there.

Nobody would ever addressed the real problem in David's  young life. Nobody cared about what was really going on in David's mind at all. I tried to care, but I was mentally fucked too, in my own way. I couldn't compete with my parent's ways of dealing with him. I was not his real parent. And though I know he was not capable of fully understanding that, and though he was a terror to me and Allison, he definitely contributed to mental concerns later on in my life (and has probably shaken Allison's mind too), I must also take a step back and realize that my early babysitting techniques with David had been abusive and horrendous and probably had something to do with what was now happening later on. So to a degree, who am I to judge David? Of course, it had been several years by that time since I had raised my voice or treated Allison and David unfairly. I was their ally now – or at least I tried to be, but it didn't matter. I may have stopped years ago and become a different person than I had been, but it doesn't make the pain I caused someone else to simply vanish. That's not how it works. If anything, I am not saying it was all my fault. I had been severely neglected in a sense myself, and I had been in my early teens. But it was still abuse, and I can only try to mend what has been broken. I can't just say sorry and wash my hands of the whole mess.

Not all of this was on me though. David was also abusing and taking advantage of every power display he could because he, well – could. I think most people are capable of some pretty shady stuff if they are given free reign to do so. It's just a part of being human. Power corrupts. Rage can be an addiction for some people. My mother pampered David and made him feel entitled – and disabled to a degree, and my father pumped David up with toxic masculinity issues. David had the advantage over Allison and I and he gained something from using that power. It was disgusting and obnoxious and animalistic – but it was a territory he was allowed to cross at an early age without any repercussions. He was being mean for the sake of being mean. And on this end of it I grew to resent him deeply. I didn't understand what it meant to feel that much animosity towards others. I would almost feel bad about how much I resented him at times because if I let myself feel too much, I almost felt nauseous with resentment and confusion about how he acted. And it hurt because I loved him. He was such a deep thinker and so collected, noble and humble even. We had a lot of fun sometimes. There were days when we really connected. It was like there were two different versions of him. He was deep down a very sensitive and thoughtful person. And that was partially what made it so upsetting. Because he would destroy our friendship over and over. He never felt he was given enough. It made me sick eventually.

Lastly, and probably most importantly in David's development, was that a grotesque sociopathic older boy had locked David up that summer, overpowered him and molested him. I think this obscene and horrible situation ruined his life forever. We didn't find out about this till many years later. He never told anyone. David started trying to tell my father one time that summer, and my dad laughed at him and told him he was too young to know what he was talking about – like, David didn't know what sex was by that age. It makes me truly sick to think about on every level. David told me some of what happened that summer – mostly talking about what the neighborhood boys were doing in this club house on the hillside, but augmented the story explaining that he had managed to get away when they chased him. I look back over and over, and I am completely sickened that I didn't think much of it. Some of the girls I knew when we were kids would kiss and stuff, and they tried to get me involved, and I had walked away. I had related it to my situation. While my situation had been weird for me growing up, it had not been violent, and nothing had been forced. It had not been vicious.

His situation had not been like mine. This same sociopathic boy was a boy who later killed animals in the town, was obsessed with joining the military so he could be sent to the middle east to rape and pillage. He moved to Spokane eventually, and I imagine be may well have gone on to do just what he had planned to. He beat his own pet dog to death for fun one day. I hated that boy. And poor David. That poor freckled sensitive little boy walking home in such an enormous amount of shame. And he was all alone. No wonder he became ill. Who knows what kind of psychological impact that had on him at such a young age. It breaks my heart and to a degree it is beyond my comprehension. The incident scarred him. He hasn't been fond of people as a whole ever since. And I don't know that I blame him. You really just can't trust most people to do the right thing.

So, Roxanne – my older sister, and her family were homeless for awhile and had to move in with my mom which added even more to the stress. Mind you, this is a very small one bedroom. There was eleven of us all crammed in a tiny one bedroom. This ordeal definitely caused me to go back and stay back to my dad's  at some point that winter. It seemed that the chaos of each place I went caused me to never really have a home. I was always on the move. I never felt safe. My home was whatever book I happened to be carrying around with me, and that was it. I was even short of clothing I could call my own, mostly being stuck with pajama pants and a oversized t-shirt. Other than my collection of drawings and writings, my art supplies, my slowly growing book collection, and a few knick knacks, I had nothing. I was a nobody.

Roxanne had all sorts of issues. She was waiting on a list for people who were looking to get in low income housing, and that can sometimes take several years for one of these places to open up. Jeremy, her fiance, had taken over every aspect of her life. I cannot stress this enough, or how abusive he was to them all psychologically. He is probably one of the most annoying and disturbing individuals I have ever met and I dare say, I think he was a sociopath. Roxanne and her kids lived in fear of Jeremy, doting on his every whim else he explode. He was a drug dealer, addicted to meth, very manipulative and friendly in a frenzied sort of way if he wasn't in a rage. He rarely if ever took on a job and usually landed in jail at least one month of the year.  If he did take a job, then he demanded everyone behave perfectly. Sometimes he would abuse the kids or Roxanne for fun. We all saw it happening. But in a way, we couldn't almost believe it. Roxanne was brainwashed by this guy and if you said anything bad about Jeremy, she reported it to him, and he would claim you were a witch and a Satan worshiper and they wouldn't talk to us anymore.

He had come to Roxanne's aid when she had been eighteen and had spent all of the money she got from her father's death. He had hung out when she had money for awhile, but had been thrown in prison for a year. Her boys wouldn't listen to her at this time, she was addicted to pills and would hide in her bedroom. She slept all the time. Jeremy imposed himself on her, and decided to leach onto her vulnerable situation and become some kind of overlord for the family. Roxanne saw it at the time like he booted her into shape. He forced her to get out of bed and make food and engage. He forced her to take care of herself. He instilled discipline to her sons. In her mind, he transformed their household and recreated her purpose in life. He treated Roxanne's children like it was bootcamp 24-7. He was so fucking phony, pretending he was some kind of sergeant and child rearing expert. He loved nothing more than to brag about himself with Roxanne massaging his feet. It was too much. Meanwhile, He left bruises and marks on the kids, and CPS was called on more than one occasion. The kids were of course trained to lie to the authorities. I know one of his disturbing games was to take one of the kids arms or legs and bend it just so it was on the brink of breaking.  They would scream and cry and Roxanne looked shaken and upset about these incidences, but she would sort of mentally shut down, and go deeper into her obsession with him. Almost doubling down on her brainwashing.

Roxanne talked about him like he was almost a biblical figure. He was, or rather, he saw himself a fundamentalist Christian (at least the creepy parts that he liked). He believed Catholics were serving the antichrist and he talked about this all the time. He convinced Roxanne she deserved the punishment because of Eve's original sin, so whenever I tried to passively let Roxanne know that she didn't deserve something, she would go onto say that Eve had brought the suffering down upon her head. She gave up any control she had over to him including her children. He controlled her drugs in order to have more power over her – keeping her at an amount where he felt she was somewhat functional, in order to maintain her level of sobriety enough to where she could still  cook and clean for him.

Jeremy was also a very sick pervert. He cheated on Roxanne occasionally, had this really disturbing collection of fake snuff and hardcore rape porn pictures he kept in a box in the closet. Roxanne showed me years later. If you got off on this stuff, honestly, you were a sick person. And nobody knew about this till way later, but when he had been eighteen he had tied up a thirteen year old neighbor girl and raped her. No charges were pressed for whatever reason. He had done time for stabbing his ex girlfriend with a pencil. He would get these moments of blind rage and his eyes would go black. He claimed to blackout when he became violent. He was a horrid and gross person – it's hard to describe having to swallow that much disgust for someone and smile for the sake of the situation. When he moved to our mother's he took over the house like it was his. He convinced Roxanne eventually to stop talking to all of us later on when they moved out.

You couldn't tell Roxanne any of this though. It's like somewhere deep down she already knew, but wouldn't accept it. If you started talking poorly about Jeremy Frye, even if she had a moment of clarity about her situation, she would soon turn on you and 'turn' you in to him like he was some kind of headmaster to you as well. I felt that in order to help her and her family, I had to be nice to this disgusting creep. And I found ways to do it. It's not how I like to be. I don't like sucking up to bad people. Inside, though I would never partake in doing anything, I would like to kill people like Jeremy. Not out of emotional hatred, but a sort of pleasure of ridding the world of something that bad. But given how fickle my living situation was, given that I was succeeding as an emotional statue, I was afraid to react to anything naturally. Perhaps I was afraid that my most natural reaction would be to kill him. That realization in and of itself caused me to find other means of coping at any cost.

When he moved in, he talked to me about Christianity a lot. I used this subject as a way to tinker with his ego. He randomly would believe that my mother was being possessed by Satan. I went along with it. I started doing this weird mental game where I would train myself in these horrendous situations to agree with people. I did it with Jeremy, my fathe and my mother. I learned how to do it with anyone, and I don't feel bad about it. For one, I didn't have the option of freaking out, at least I didn't feel I did. And life is like that. If you are desperate, or poor you do not have the option of opting out or ruining your opportunities by reacting naturally. So you have to learn to lie when you need to. Plus, it was a challenge for me. To a degree I find that I can empathize with anyone to such an extent, that I can for a short time, take on their perspective. That wasn't why I was friendly with Jeremy though. It was practice for the future, but at the time I felt Jeremy's presence in and of itself was an extreme threat to my being. I was afraid of causing a riff. I didn't want Jeremy to kill someone in my family. And Roxanne didn't have anyone in her life anymore. She was alone. Her friends had deserted her, if not when she ran out of money, than when Jeremy decided she couldn't have friends anymore that wasn't him or his own haggish mother.

What little time she had with me was all the time she really got to spend with anyone. I didn't want to ruin that – as I felt like when she was truly ready to leave him, she was going to need someone to talk to. With that said, I hated Jeremy Frye with every fiber of my being. But in this hatred, and in this situation, I was able to analyze power and what power really meant in the exchanges between people. Breaking human beings and their behaviors down, you really see an intricate web of power struggles. It's something that effects nations as well as families. It plays into every facet of our lives. It's something that is demonstrated in the very architecture of our system of thought. We are designed for this power struggle in some very basic way, and we get integrated into the power struggle as individuals based on our positions in society. This on a side note is why sociology interests me, why I believe racism is far from over, and it gives me a greater understanding of religion, cults, jobs, foreign relations, and dictators. I had so much time to compare these micro-power-plays in my everyday life in these ugly years. There was so much ugly content in my life, that I couldn't escape. I gained insight of myself that was far from pleasant. Being relatively weak in some areas of my life,  I have had to learn how to analyze the game and how it is played – I try to see deeply into people. I study their values, their motives, their feelings, insecurities and mannerisms. Maybe I was compensating for not being really able to personally play these games myself since I was so extremely and totally isolated. Psychoanalyzing people can give you a closeness with people on the whole.

I would pretend to agree with Jeremy wholeheartedly, and I found my ability to do so very fascinating. I liked to study my own psychology while I did so. I found ways to lie and tell the truth at the same time. I found ways to flatter and convince people in subtle ways, to give them weird power to see what they would do with it, but at the same time using my own naturally honest nature to be unseemly about it. I learned how to deep sea dive in the concepts that were put out there and I learned to entertain ideas without accepting them. I said things that made inner me disgusted to the very fiber of my being, but I trained myself to temporarily entertain the notion that I was telling the truth and therefore strengthen that lie. Obviously, aside from preventing conflict, I wasn't getting much out of this directly. It wasn't really fun for me. I was very lonely. I was surrounded by people I couldn't trust. In fact, I was probably being self destructive in how far I could push myself to gain trust. I was learning.

By psychoanalyzed how Jeremy thought, I was able to take what I had learned about his functioning and apply it to other things. This is of course not to say that I had never in any way tried this before. But I had never treated it like a science project. Of course, not everyone is some lesser or greater version of Jeremy. Most people aren't quite mentally built like him obviously. This was just one type of person – a narcissist essentially. But most of us are capable of some level of narcissism or power corruption given the right set of circumstances. I have found those traits in my own personality at times. It's something universal about the human ego. But Jeremy was a monster and I don't think that should be ignored. Most people are better than him. There is an enormous and vast wealth of mystery about human beings, and kindness. I do not want to give the false impression that I think at the core we are all bad.

For the record too, this is also not the way I typically do business. I hated having to become someone who studies people. It is fine now that I am older. I can sort of shut it off and have fun once in awhile. I have enough grace to not let myself analyze strangers. But being in the situation where I had to learn these traits of power dominance and deceiving the enemy hurt something innocent about myself. I became to a degree, morally ambiguous. But I would not call myself a corrupt person these days. I like to try to believe in the spirit of ideas, regardless of how I see the world as a sea of power plays and chaos overlapping a great nothingness that we all are running from. I am in part, blindly hopeful about human beings and what we are capable of. But at the same time, I am also bleak about life's great purpose ultimately and I wish I was not. I cannot shake myself from that part of my thinking ever. But I do find a sort of beauty to living at a different frequency than all that – and most days I am able to escape it all. I really, if anything, like to use my inquisitiveness to get to know people in a way that is more meaningful. I rarely get the opportunity to get to know a person. I like getting to know people, but I don't like them getting to know me. Even my writing this extremely open tale of my life, I am hiding behind my words.

Being really psychoanalytical is my way of compensating for the fact that I am quiet, terrible at small talk, often times daydreaming or zoning out, slightly anxious, and most people don't understand me very well. I don't think I am pretty enough or smart enough. I feel like a loser a great deal of the time. I feel broken. I want to reach out to people and experience friendship, but after my preteen years when my personality underwent considerable development, I lost the unique gift of simply exist among other people. It's hard to explain. Secondly, it's my way of mapping out danger. I want to know people's weaknesses, not to exploit them, but to know what I must do to either help them, or escape them. If you have corrupt leaders in your life who control you, or control someone you care about, then it's highly important that combat that. It's also important to be able to see that behavior in yourself. When I fight someone I hate, I only have two approaches. Physically attack and murder them, or undermine them. Since murder is illegal in today's society for good reason, I cannot just get to killing people no matter what they do or don't deserve. I don't believe in it. I don't believe in killing animals even. I am not for the death penalty.  Creating death is not what I am about. So my only real weapon is to quietly slip into enemy lines and do damage that way, gaining trust- undermine the enemy that way. Talking and getting along with Jeremy was my way of practicing.

I wish I could explain happier times. To me, I see this chapter of my story as one of my most negatives to date. I realize that it would only be fair to add a trigger warning on it. I feel like I talked about murder and rape and brokenness and negative aspects of the human ego more than I would want to, and more than people should probably have to hear. I feel gross having to explore that. I haven't thought about Jeremy for years, and I can feel his negative vibes in the room with me. But it had to be explained. It was a part of life. I don't think I could just lightly graze the seriousness of these topics, and move on.

I do have to say though that certain books and music kept me sane during these times. Painting, even though it created that great mysterious anxiety kept me sane. Kurt Vonnegut, and Robert Pirsig, who wrote the Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila; an Inquiry into Morals gave me this strong groundwork to my belief systems. They gave me perspective on living. I remember the day I read that book. I had a fever for two days. Finally, I was sweating the fever away, and I picked up that book. Something about the intensity of having a fever while I read Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance burned that book into the motherboard of my reality. I became an even wiser person. I became more aware of my own contradictions as a person. While the people around me simply seemed to respond to life in this mindless way, I felt like I had taken a step back and was truly in some way seeing the world for what it was for the first time. It was liberating, and it felt horrible. Out there in the world, I should have been getting my first job, meeting new friends, finding a boyfriend. I should have had my health issues dealt with, both physically and mentally. I should have gone to school. But instead I did not. All I had were these books, and my own thoughts. I had secret moments where I would let myself come out and be myself sometimes, alone while I was walking in the graveyard near my mother's apartment. Sometimes, I would fast for a few days to reset my brain. I still kept Zack tucked away in my heart. I don't know what use those memories did me in those years, but I suppose remembering times where you really felt something real in the past have value when you mostly let yourself feel almost nothing. Zack was genuinely beginning to sink away in my thoughts. I tried to revive him. But by this time, I was a different person than I had been. I didn't know if I even agreed with a single thing Zack had said. He started losing his profound attributes, he started seeming a little bit silly. I still remembered when he told me that everyone in the world deserved love, and I thought about that a lot. But as for who I was now, and who Zack had become, I had no information. I wasn't so sure he would even like me now.

I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan. I sort of deceived myself into believing that Bob Dylan was a friend of mine. He became my best friend in my innermost thoughts. When I listened to Bob Dylan I felt like he was talking to me through the music. Obviously, I didn't literally believe that he was, but the music itself and a piece of who he was had sort of become a piece of the timeless cosmos, individual from Bob Dylan's literal existence. His music was my best friend. This is not to say that Sarah was not still a friend. I just didn't feel her. Her life was in Texas now. She had no idea what it was like going through what I had been going through. I wasn't mad about that. I did try to explain my life, and for what it's worth, she did empathize. Sarah's life hadn't gone exactly as she had hoped in Texas. When she moved there, her and Alex tried to write one song together, which quickly fell apart and they ended up living in a part of the his parent's house sleeping and eating all day. Eventually, they got summer jobs as bus washers at this water park in Texas called The Schlitterbahn. They only got five dollars an hour. Sometimes they would just not go to work and nobody would notice. But Sarah's life lost direction. She missed me terribly, and if I had allowed myself to feel, I missed her terribly as well. We wrote one another all the time. In a way, I think our friendship became more balanced and meaningful after she left. I started reading the Stephen King books that had been my grandma's. I read The Stand, and several others. Aside from Stephen King, and Sarah-Mae, I had MySpace. People seemed to like me quite well there. Nobody knew I was living in a bathtub. Which felt kind of nice.

PART 62 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjrvccn

PART 61 - https://tinyurl.com/ybm99k8o

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/okay-so-i-am-posting-another-part-of-my-life

#text

[rosetta-art-tribute-blog]

Jean-François Provost: Présages

Solo exhibition

Premiere: 23 October – 21 December 2014 Art-image gallery @ Maison de la culture de Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

22 January – 23 February 2016 Maison de la culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The paintings are inspired by images of small solar system bodies obtained by space probes, including Rosetta’s images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and the (21) Lutetia asteroid.

Visual artist Jean-François Provost takes a break from his usual practice and looks at a natural phenomenon that is of particular concern to him: the real possibility that a geo-cruising asteroid collides with the Earth.

The artist was captivated by the images of asteroids floating in a totally black space, in an absolute void. He is seduced by the beauty of these celestial bodies, but also by the calm and disturbing silence that emanates from them. According to him, asteroids, both beautiful and fascinating, give us food for thought about our history, our collective and individual future and order a break in our frantic lives.

Text from the exhibition page (translated from French): http://w8.gatineau.ca/artimage/expositions/passees/jean-francois-provost.html

(25143) Itokawa, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’

Jean-François wrote: “My current work, which is diametrically opposed to my usual, abstraction-oriented work, addresses the threat of asteroids to humanity and questions the connection that the announcement of an asteroid impact that could cause a global catastrophe could have on our life. Far from being fatalistic, this theme is a sort of vibrant advocacy for life and mindfulness.”

(243) Ida, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 72’ X 96’

“Over the past 600 million years, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions that caused half of the world's plant and animal species to disappear almost simultaneously. These extinctions are due to asteroid impacts. Impacts that have allowed human life to develop. Asteroids have fascinated us since the dawn of time. Many civilizations considered them to be divinities or messages from God, sometimes as omens. Many artists have represented stars or shooting stars in their works, including Albrecht Dürer. Asteroids and comets brought life to Earth.” – JFP

(253)Mathilde, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’

“These magnificent and fascinating celestial bodies give us food for thought about our collective and individual future and call for a stop in our frantic lives. Are we ready for the announcement of an asteroid impact? The answer is no, of course. But if we were told that this was the case, what would be our reaction? Sooner or later, scientists predict that an asteroid will strike the Earth.

According to Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and founding member of the B612 Foundation, most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected. However, this hardly represents 10,000 of the one million potentially dangerous asteroids capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.” – JFP

(4179)Toutatis, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’ 

“Are we fully aware of our fast-paced life, of the seasons that follow one other at a crazy pace? According to Buddhism, it would be in our interest to become aware of the concept of impermanence to live the sense of urgency that should animate us.” – JFP

Phobos, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’

“How do we envision our future? Are we happy? And our current life? Have we become what we wanted? etc. These reflections transcend the subject himself and control, oblige in a way, a time to stop, thus pushing reflection and reasoning to the depths of our being. The human race must sometimes be confronted with its own fears or with itself so that profound changes may occur.

Far from being fatalistic, such a reflection brings us back to true values, the essence of life, its fragility and the urgency of living.” – JFP

Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’

“The idea of ​​an exhibition about asteroids came to me one day when I came across a photo of the asteroid Lutetia. This photo marked me deeply, and I later did more research to discover equally impressive images of other asteroids. I was fascinated by the beauty of these celestial bodies, but also by the calm and silence that emanates from them. A worrying silence, I would say.

So I began to draw these objects in compressed charcoal, using a technique in which you subtract charcoal with an eraser to reveal light areas and volumes. The works that will be presented for this exhibition will be large format canvases of real asteroids known to astrophysicists and to science. Some are NEOs (Near-Earth Objects), that is to say that they cross, at one time or another in their revolution, the orbit of the Earth or, at least, can pass very close and carry risks.” – JFP

(21) Lutetia, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 96’ X 72’

“Since 2007, my work is moving towards a purification of pictorial space. This thread has become, over time, a second nature, a state that underlies my work. The artwork must breathe. Do more with less. Thinking of it, it is not by chance that I was subjugated by these images of asteroids floating in a totally black space, in a vacuum. That's where the purification is. In the minimalist images of asteroids. The reproduction of asteroids with charcoal and then on canvas comes to some extent close my inner debate on purification. It is a form of personal conclusion.” – JFP

Étude pour (21) Lutetia, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2014, 40 X 48 cm

“The soundtrack made by Alain Larose, which accompanies the exhibition, plunges us into a 24-hour day. It evokes in 24 minutes, one minute for every hour of the day, the tumult of everyday life in the four corners of the planet.” – JFP

Born in Ottawa in 1976, Jean-François Provost holds a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from the Université du Québec en Outaouais. He has received several awards and honors for his work as a painter and has produced nearly twenty individual exhibitions in the last ten years. His work in painting and drawing has been presented in Canada, Austria and Italy. The works of Provost are found in several corporate and private collections in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Drawing, is for him a gestural manifestation of the subconscious, plays a decisive role in the composition of his canvases. Provost says that since 2007 he has been exploring pictorial space in his work, in a process of constant refinement. “My approach to both drawing and painting goes far beyond straightforward execution. The drawings, in India ink, graphite, and red chalk, are produced in a stream of consciousness and are then cut out. Paradoxically, they become the embryo of a work that is constructed using a highly studied and rational approach that follows the logic of my investigation of space and its simplification. My work is mainly based on the study of composition in terms of line, depth, relationships between masses, gestures, and trompe-l’oeil”. Provost basically defines himself as a Plasticien.

Biography by Jo-Anne Bouchard, Ph.D -- Art Historian

More about Jean-François Provost at: www.jeanfrancoisprovost.com

#fine art #painting #oil #acrylic #canvas #asteroid #comet #near-earth object #impact #rosetta #comet 67p #lutetia #trompeloeil #minimalistic #morewithless #quebec #canada #large format #rosettaarttribute