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otherworldsjt · 1 year

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Death's Fury Chapter I: Intuitions

I mentally signed out of my c-chip. The newest model of the small circular device my family's company, Cerebral Tech, created decades ago is worn just behind the ear. They're like the old cell phones people used long ago, except they have way more capabilities and are controlled mentally. Honestly, the design's a little tacky if you ask me, but I can't imagine living without one.

The rattling of the train caused me to refocus, reeling me back into reality. It dawned on me that I'd been so engrossed in my thoughts that I wasn't even aware of my name being called.

"...Lisa? Lisaaa," Trik floated towards me from his room of the train's suite we rented while waving his arm impatiently. He's a sarcastic, self-assured, pompous yet mildly emotional, theatric little ass – I mean prick – who, for some reason, refers to anyone other than me by their last name.

Physically, he's a sophisticated AI system in a four-foot-tall, floating, expensive, robotic body capable of detecting the immense energy signals of the Primordials from great distances. But let's just shorten it to SAS or, to be ethnically correct, "technological being." That's what he prefers anyway.

I told him he reminds me of a female robot I saw on an old streaming device. She was from some ancient children's movie where the robot descended on earth and fell in love with some trash disposal robot: except Trik has arms, a black screen for a face, a silver body, and blue LED lights for eyes, eyebrows, and a mouth. He wasn't too fond of the comparison since he's already sensitive about his slender build, so he usually stays in his camouflage form where he looks more like a 5'5" 17-year-old.

Today, he wore a red shirt, black shorts, and blue socks (he doesn't like shoes). As always, he was perfectly tanned and had perfect brown hair. I never get jealous, though, since I know it's all artificial.

"Sorry, Trik, what were you saying?"

"Jeez, I've been calling your name for five minutes. What were you doing anyway," he asked with a hint of exasperation. "Don't tell me you were fantasizing, again."

"I wasn't," I replied sharply. "Not that I would tell you if I were."

A few months ago, I started receiving these painful headaches that would completely debilitate me. They're usually associated with images followed by a muffled voice. Though they're no longer as straining, whether I'm awake or asleep, my mind constantly slips to visions of some barren wasteland where I come across a faceless lost boy. I try approaching him, but the dream then shifts to me plummeting through the sky. Each time this happens, I'm falling while desperately clinging to a disfigured and bloodied figure as we approach terminal velocity. It should've been an awful and terrifying experience, but it felt like I was more concerned for whoever the figure was than us crashing into the ground.

Of course, Trik caught a glimpse of that part a couple of weeks ago and assumed it was some weird fantasy. How did he manage to glimpse part of my dreams? I'd forgotten my c-chip was set to display (stupid me), so anything I was visualizing in my head was being shown on a holo-screen emitted from a unique bracelet that comes with every c-chip.

I tried explaining it to him before, but I couldn't even explain it to myself, so it's no surprise he didn't buy it.

"Just recording my first memory log. I told you I'm trying to help the next Watcher as much as possible, so I'm going to log all of the events and experiences I go through so they can learn from my past."

"You were serious about that?" he asked.

"Yes. Simply training us until we're 19 and sending us out with a starter pack doesn't help a Watcher get through the civilizations or wilderness encountered during the mission. There's nothing to go from. No past lessons learned, no information about skills or tricks discovered that could help, nothing! The family leaders just sit there on their thrones and bark orders to the rest of us, Mom and Dad included. Just think of all the Watchers who have probably repeated the same mistakes as the last and never knew because they want to 'keep us on our toes,' or what was it Dad said? Oh yeah, 'be creative,'" I said, using my fingers as quotations."

He wants us to 'show him our adaptability,'" I ranted."

Neither of them has ever actually worn the mantle of Watcher, so they have no idea what it's like. They just happen to be the current family leaders of our century. The same goes for the leaders of the previous two Watchers, who probably failed to find Death because of that," I finished, then sulkily added, "And I don't wanna be like them...This is the Hearts' century, my century. I wanna complete the mission of gathering them all after figuring out whatever's going on with the world. I want to prove myself and show what separates us from the Sadios and Russos. We're supposed to be the head family, right? So, I can't disgrace our name."

"Yea, there's definitely a lot of pressure on your family this century," Trik replied while stroking the hairs he made grow on his chin.

I remained silent and stared out the train window as the scenery flashed by.

Approaching me, Trik continued more seriously, "Listen. You shouldn't be worrying about failing, Lisa; your journey's only just beginning. Besides, in the last year, you've accomplished something no other Watcher has; you figured out there were two other Primordials all along!"

"Pretty sure they wanted me to make that discovery," I remarked.

"I find it hard to believe we were lucky enough to find two new traces of spirit residue that no other Watcher came across. And considering those same traces were near the site of the previous Death Primordial's...death, I have this gut feeling that something big is going on." I stopped for a few seconds to contemplate what it could be.

For now, my theory was that these newly rediscovered Primordials got the jump on Death, but that's hard to believe since Death is one of the three most powerful Primordials, if not the most powerful Primordial. So realistically, I came up with nada, then gave up.

"Anyways, all the more reason why we need to find the last two Primordials. Hopefully, that lead we got back in Charlotte isn't a dead end," I said.

Trik made an expression as if he suddenly remembered something.

"Oh right, I almost forgot! I was saying earlier – while rudely being ignored – that I've started detecting the signal of the Death Primordial's spirit energy. It's approximately 53.7 miles west of our current destination."

Having not fully registered what I'd just heard, I remained dumbstruck, staring at Trik before eventually responding.

"Oh, my God! Trik, do you know what this means?!"

While still stroking his chin with what appeared to be a proud expression, he began, "It means that I've finally–"

"It means we've finally found a lead that wasn't a dead-end! It means after 200 years, I'll be the first Watcher to find Death," I stated, grabbing hold of him excitedly.

"Seriously," Trik said vexingly.

Pushing away from me, he continued, "You do realize it's because of me that you're going to be the first Watcher to find Death in two centuries. But of course, you wouldn't think to acknowledge my contribution. As usual, you'd rather spend more time complaining about your family than noticing how invaluable of a member I've been in the last year of us running across the country. I get this is your mission, and as you gather everyone, it'll be your team, but how do you plan to lead the team if you're being so self-centered?"

It dawned on me that he was in one of his moods. Being one of a thousand robots with artificial emotions, he likes to feel needed and irreplaceable, so he always tries hard to prove himself. And being that this is the first Primordial he's successfully found in the last year –something he was made to do – of course, he'd feel a sense of accomplishment. Accomplishment I just disregarded. I felt like an idiot.

"I'm so sorry, Trik. Of course, you're invaluable; you've been with me since I was a kid. There's no way I can do this without you, and I mean that literally. Without you and your sarcasm and charisma...and excessive talking, I'd probably go insane traveling around all alone. You're my best friend, my brother; I'll always need you. And as you know, my mission is pretty much shot without you."

I pulled him back in for a hug.

"I'm sorry for being so inconsiderate all this time," I said apologetically. I rubbed the top of Trik's head, and when I looked down at him, I could've sworn I saw him blushing. I get he's camouflaged, but can robots blush?

Pushing me away, he cleared his throat (which is weird because he technically doesn't have one).

"Ahem. Well, moving on, according to the Quantum Train's schedule, our stop's at 3;therefore, we should be arriving in Atlanta in an hour. So go clean yourself up; first impressions are everything."

Trik left to clean the suite.

"Hey! I'm not that dirty," I protested.

"Yes, you are," he responded from his bedroom.

Feeling a little self-conscious now, I went into the bathroom and realized he was right to suggest a clean-up.

My white jeans weren't so white anymore, my blue shirt had tiny holes and rips in it along with dirt stains that probably came from my altercation with the jerks who couldn't take a hint back in Charlotte, my shoes were scuffed and dirty, my face no longer had its olive glow, and my hair – oh god, my hair – was dingy and matted. It wasn't nearly representing its natural cocoa and black luster.

I needed a shower desperately. I didn't have much to work with, but I managed to clean my face with some wipes somewhat, brush my hair, switch to a clean shirt, put on a pair of shorts, and throw on a thin black jacket.

Not my best choice of clothing, but I'll have to go with it, for now, considering in the next moment, I was thrown off balance when the train screeched to a stop. Looking out the window adjacent to the sink, I could see we'd arrived at an Atlanta train station.

I opened the restroom door.

"Trik, I thought you said we had an hour!"

"I said we had an hour 30 minutes ago," he retorted, approaching the restroom. "But it seems we've arrived ahead of schedule."

"Great," I muttered.

I threw all my belongings back into my spatial bag and walked out of the restroom. Standing there, I closed my eyes, inhaled, then exhaled deeply, trying to prepare myself mentally. After all, this is my first encounter with a god. After about ten seconds, I felt as ready as I was going to get.

"Alright, let's go."

#supernatural #superpowers #fantasy novel #fantasy #anime and manga

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cyan-id-e · 3 years

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Welcome to the blog!

My name is cyan-id-e! (Cyan-ide wasnt a option lmao) but you can call me Cyan!

This is a safe space for the LGBTQ+ and POC!

I do art and sometimes write :)

IM A MINOR!

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Things i like to post about:

Dungeons and dragons

JRWI:Riptide

Hermitcraft

Life Smp

Origins Smp

Empires Smp

Mcyt

Generation loss

Sky: children of the light

Half-Life

Hlvrai (Half-Life vr but the ai is self aware)

Deltarune

Undertale

Steven universe

Helluva Boss

Fnaf

Kirby

The Stanley Parable

AvA/AvM (Alan Becker)

SMG4

Phoenix wright: Ace Atorney

Pikmin

Little shop of horrors

The Amazing Digital Circus

Invader Zim

Ultrakill

Poppy Playtime

-I will reblog all of the above and have a few spots of art here and there

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Fair warning that i make AUs, post about it for a while then suddenly it doesnt exsist.

And i like making self insert OCs for the things i like :)

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DO NOT INTERACT IF YOU ARE:

-Racist

-Ableist

-Homophobic

-Like incest (im the middle child. It creeps me out to think people like this shit)

-A Pedophile (i'll insta report you freaks, get therapy if you have a single thought of traumatizing a kid for fucks sake)

-Zoophile (same as the above.)

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(credits to @snakesinsocks2005 for boop war pin inspo!)

Enjoy your stay and lets be chaotic together!

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theremnants · 4 years

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This came to me in a dream and I had to do everything in my power to make it a reality

#sky children of the light #half life #half life vr but the ai is self aware

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alluratron · 5 years

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What’s wrong with VLD?

This is gonna be a two-parter post expressing all my various frustrations with VLD, and highlighting exactly where I think it went wrong (all of them. yep). I’m going to keep it ship-neutral because ship discourse has a tendency to blind people and make them belligerent (myself included, I can admit that) however I will be discussing the canon relationships. This isn’t ship hate by any means - in fact I like all the canon relationships (or at least I like what they could’ve been) - but I think it’s pretty undeniable that VLD did not do them justice, and in fact took the worst possible route with them.

That said, let’s dive in.

(sorry to those on mobile, this is RIDICULOUSLY long.)

“Voltron: legendary defender” is a show that began with a whole lot of promise. Off the back of the (widely regarded as) almost faultless storytelling in A:TLA and the much celebrated queer ending of LOK (which resulted in a lot of writing issues being brushed under the rug but I digress), VLD was heavily anticipated, tapping into these shows loyal fanbase(s) - as a show produced by their alumni - as well as the market of older viewers, nostalgic for the Defenders Of The Universe cartoon they grew up with. It always had a lot to live up to, and when it dropped in summer 2016, it seemed to live up to the hype.

I personally didn’t join the voltron bandwagon immediately. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of it until around November of 2016. I was late to the LOK and A:TLA hype (very late actually. I first watched LOK around October 2016 and then doubled back to watch A:TLA) but got deeply invested and quickly followed several blogs with these interests. Through following these blogs, I kept happening upon the word “voltron” but didn’t pay it much mind.

Until I came across a post titled “HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH VOLTRON.”

I decided to give it a read. The 4 key points of this post were:

A diverse main cast, with 3/5 of the main characters being confirmed POC, and a dark-skinned princess.

Focus on character and team dynamics, reminiscent of the A:TLA found family spirit.

Possibility of queer representation as suggested by the EPs, whom both worked on LOK, as well as the freedom of the Netflix platform.

Beautiful animation thanks to Studio Mir.

(Only one of those things ended up delivering in a convincing, satisfying manner. Hint: it’s the animation.)

These 4 points were enough to pique my interest enough to delve into the show and, after watching the first season in late November 2016, I was won over. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, burgeoning dynamics and light hearted tone interspersed with deeper moments. Was it perfect? No. It was a little goofy. But that was ok, it had time to grow and settle. I joined the fandom and excitedly awaited the release of season 2, which came in January 2017.

This is where it started to go bad.

I will admit that, with the benefit of hindsight, season 2 is not as bad as I initially felt it to be. It struggles with pacing and balancing of the 7-character core cast, with several characters reduced to more one-note figures (namely Pidge, Hunk and Lance, although Pidge’s note as a genius is more flattering than the latter two). But story-wise, it is a solid season. The biggest problem of the season comes from the poor handling of the conflict between Allura and Keith over his galra heritage.

Allegories for racial discrimination are always tricky, especially in children’s media. They’re storylines that should only be tackled upon input from people that have experienced such discrimination, so that they may be handled with tact and grace. VLD season 2 did not do this.

What we got was several scenes designed to frame Keith as the victim of Allura’s aggression and intolerant nature. Bear in mind that Allura is a genocide survivor, whose entire race was (at the time of the season) believed to have been eradicated by Zarkon and the galra, whom had previously been her allies. Her emotional response is entirely justifiable and yet, through the framing of the conflict, the narrative was able to manipulate viewers into seeing her as the offending party, with many fans taking to social media to call out her “racism”.

To add to this, Allura is, in design, a black woman. Black women are often portrayed as harsh and aggressive, and VLD played into this to further sway support to Keith’s side of the conflict. He - a light-skinned boy of unspecified ethnicity - was often seen looking hopefully at Allura or looking down dejectedly. Allura, however, was shown glaring, ignoring and turning away from him. We are given an episode (Belly of the Weblum, S2E9) in which Keith talks to Hunk about Allura’s “hatred” for him, but we never see Allura expressing her hurt to a companion (ideally Coran as a fellow genocide survivor) or even lamenting alone. In fact, the only time we hear Allura’s side of things is when she is apologising to Keith (Best Laid Plans, S2E12).

More still, the entirety of BotW has Keith on the receiving end of several microagressions from Hunk. Microaggressions are “slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership”. Hunk’s prodding about Keith’s heritage, initial discomfort about being alone with him and joking remarks (e.g. “do you guys all know each other?”) are strongly reminiscent of microagressions that POC (myself included) encounter on a daily basis. Except, voltron decided to flip the script. This time, the microagressions are directed at Keith for being part galra. Remember that the Galra are the perpetrators of oppression, colonisation and imperial rule, making them allegories for several White endeavours in human history (space nazis, so to speak). And yet, voltron has the fat, dark-skinned boy (who would ordinarily be on the receiving end of such microaggressions in our world) be the perpetrator of these microagressions against the slim, light-skinned, space-white boy.

To sum up, their handling of the arc of Keith’s discovery of his heritage was extremely tasteless at best, and insidious at worst.

And the issues surrounding the writing of the Galra don’t stop there. Though Allura was treated as in the wrong for distrusting the Galra as a whole, the story makes you question whether this should have even been the case. Throughout the length of the show, the Galra are continuously portrayed as a violent and warmongering race. Their history involves conquering all the other races that called Daibazaal home and their most prevalent salute, “Vrepit Sa”, is revealed to mean “the killing thrust” (Omega Shield, S6E1). Proponents of the Empire will often declare “victory or death”, while their counterparts in the Blade of Marmora have a mantra of “knowledge or death”. Even more pertinently, Keith is a character with anger management issues, prone to aggressive outbursts. Instead of these being treated as a character trait, something that he has to work through, it’s chalked up to his “galra side” by the EPs. When he faces Clone Shiro (The Black Paladins, S6E5) he occasionally fights with more aggression, with the clone’s remark of “that’s the Keith I remember” implying that this aggression is a trait that has been present in Keith for a long time. This comes with the animation of Keith with tinted yellow sclera, narrowed pupils, purplish skin and fangs. All of these are traits associated with his “galra side” and all of these only make an appearance when he’s fighting with more aggression.

So how is it that the narrative repeatedly shows us that the Galra are an inherently aggressive and violent race (which is such a problematic concept anyway: they’re not wild animals, they should have agency and self-control), yet also tells us that Allura was wrong for not trusting them?

It’s because the narrative was dead set on punishing Allura.

Throughout the length of the show, we see Allura put through emotional punishment time and time and time again. She is portrayed as wrong for her behaviour towards Keith in season 2 (as detailed above). In season 3, she is explicitly stated to be the “decision maker” (The Red Paladin, S3E2) then is swiftly demoted from that position (and yes, it’s a demotion, but more on that later).

In the same season, the team enters an alternate reality (Hole in the Sky, S3E4) where they find alteans, alive and well. This is especially exciting for Allura (which genocide survivor wouldn’t be thrilled to find their people alive and thriving?), but her joy is short lived when, after she helps the alternate alteans, they are soon revealed to be evil, arguably moreso than the galra in the main reality as they use technology to enslave races that oppose them by taking away their free will entirely. The comet ore that they manage to keep out of the Alteans hands to prevent them from making a second voltron is quickly snatched from them by Lotor when they return to their own reality. Allura laments that she “finally understands” why her father, King Alfor, scattered the lions: it was to prevent this reality. However, in the pilot episode (The Rise Of Voltron, S1E1) Allura spoke with King Alfor’s AI, complete with all his memories. The AI told her that she had in fact been right to want to keep voltron and fight the Galra, and he had been wrong to send them away. If he had sent them away to “prevent this reality” why didn’t the AI say that? HitS retcons Allura’s rightness in that call, further devaluing her judgment. How would Alfor have sent the lions away to prevent the reality where Lotor gets the comet ore, when Lotor wasn’t even born when Alfor died?

This tendency to punish Allura continues with Allura’s relationship with Lotor. When Lotor is first taken prisoner by team voltron (The Prisoner, S5E1) Allura doesn’t trust him at all. He asks her to see past his Galra race and, following her arc in season 2 of not seeing galra as an evil monolith, Allura eventually does. She works alongside Lotor even before discovering that he has Altean heritage. Eventually, they fall for each other and Allura is on cloud nine for a while as the war seems to be over and she is spending more and more time with Lotor, who encourages her, praises her and helps her connect more to Altea. So, of course, this doesn’t last for long. Lotor is revealed to have been manipulating Allura (and the others) all this time, using her to upgrade his Sincline ships while secretly using Alteans he found in the diaspora as batteries.

(Pictured: Lotor holding Allura’s hand in Bloodlines, S5E5. She agrees to help him search Haggar’s den and during this search, learns of his Altean blood.)

So, what was the need of this relationship? She was punished for not trusting the Galra, and then punished for...trusting the Galra. She clearly could not win. And why was it necessary to have Allura fall for Lotor, only for it to end on such a terrible note? Why did their relationship have to be romantic? Was it simply so Allura would feel the pain of his “betrayal” that much more? Because it sure comes off that way.

There are so many scenes of Allura breaking down in tears - Crystal Venom, The Red Paladin, that one episode in s8 that I can’t remember that has her crying bc Sincline was about to kill Lance, probably more - and she is constantly giving up pieces of herself and her heritage. In the very first season, she heals the balmera (Rebirth, S1E8) at expense to her own health. Through the length of the show, Allura continues to risk her life to protect others. She desperately wants to maintain connections to Altea (hence her joy at the alternate alteans, as well as her close bond with Lotor) yet she is constantly losing every connection she has. She has to destroy her father’s AI, the alteans turn out to be evil, Lotor turns out to be evil, they blow up the castle to save all of existence, she gives up the jewel from her crown (which she never took off) to save shiro, and then ultimately, she dies to save all realities (because...reasons). One would have thought that her arc would involve being less self-sacrificing, but no. Allura is tortured emotionally, loses everything she cares about and then dies.

On a similar note, while Allura was constantly put through emotional torture, Shiro was constantly put through physical torture. There are several pieces out there by people far more eloquent than myself that detail the constant use of Shiro for torture porn throughout the show so I won’t rehash them. I will say that, like Allura, his torture does not culminate in a satisfying ending that made all his suffering “worth it”. Throughout the first and second seasons, we see Shiro bond closely with the black lion. He battles Zarkon for control (Space Mall, S2E7) and almost fails, until he realises that “nobody controls the black lion” and this galvanises the lion to take action and save him, severing zarkon’s bond. In the final episode of the season (Blackout, S2E13) Shiro and the black lion connect more deeply than ever before and we are shown a montage of all their bonding moments, leading up to Shiro unlocking the black lion’s wings, which enable them to phase through Zarkon and collect the black bayard, a plot point introduced in the very first episode. After seeing Shiro work so hard to earn the black lion’s trust, forge a bond stronger than the one that lasted 10 thousand years, and triumphantly collect the bayard, his fans would be understandably excited to see him use it. But he never does. After all that hard work, Shiro never sits in the black lion’s cockpit again. His clone does for a while, but Shiro himself does not, and he never touches the bayard again. This is a huge disappointment to his fans, after 24 (technically 26) episodes of buildup to that moment.

And to add insult to injury, it’s never explained why he doesn’t. The EPs said in an interview that when Allura unmerged Shiro’s quintessence from the black lion, she also broke their bond. But this explanation comes with a number of issues. Firstly, this is never stated in canon. Viewers should not have to rely on extra-canonical material to get a full story. Extra-canonical material should be supplementary, an opportunity for eager fans to learn more about the universe and the characters. It shouldn’t be a requisite to understand the story. And, believe me, this information was. When I was watching season 7 with my (at the time) 10 year old brother, he turned to me and asked me why Shiro wasn’t flying the black lion now he was back. I shrugged and told him I didn’t know. I, in fact, did know the EPs explanation, but I wasn’t going to do their job for them. Secondly, the explanation falls apart upon the slightest examination. Say Allura did remove Shiro’s bond with the black lion (somehow...because that doesn’t even make sense). In the pilot, Allura says that “the quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his lion” and this is why they can bond and fly together. Well, Shiro’s quintessence hasn’t changed, as Allura simply extracted and transferred it. The black lion’s quintessence hasn’t changed since nothing happened to make it change. When they first met, Shiro and the black lion didn’t have a bond. They formed and strengthened that bond upon flying together. So, why can’t they do that again? What is stopping Shiro from simply sitting in the cockpit and restoring their bond?

Short answer: Keith.

Long answer: the EPs desperate desire to have Keith in the black lion at all cost.

Keith was the leader of voltron in DOTU. This isn’t news, we all know this. Keith has also been the leader in every iteration since. This means that Keith has always flown the black lion. VLD following this trend makes sense, right?

Well, no.

Other iterations of voltron always begin with Keith in the black lion. They don’t shuffle him there later, they start with him there. Keith is always the strong, sensible, heroic figure that makes him perfect to lead the team, so he does. VLD strayed from that, and that makes all the difference. In VLD, Keith is introduced as a loner with a temper. He’s closed off from the team, only displaying affection for Shiro. This makes him unsuitable for the leadership position at the time of inception. Does that mean he can never lead? No. He can absolutely grow into leadership. But the problem is, the show already presents us with a valid position for him: the red lion. In the red lion, Keith’s fiery nature, intuitiveness and fast pace are positives. He’s allowed to stretch his legs, flying in the fastest lion and doing cool stunts, then returning to the team when necessary. He doesn’t have to change the core of who he is. Additionally, he is shown to have abandonment issues, hence why he clings to Shiro so tightly. It seems fitting then, that the lion he is matched with is the only one that comes to save their paladin so often, retrieving Keith on five different occasions (S1E1, S2E6, S2E8, S2E11 and S2E12) and even across several galaxies.

In previous iterations, the lions are not given personalities, nor do they demand unique traits/quintessence from their pilots. They’re just ships. But in VLD, Allura tells us in the pilot that the lions are meant to be piloted by these five alone. Their quintessence is mirrored in the paladins as she assigns them. They are perfect matches, just like with red and Keith. Hunk is fearful and Yellow has superior armour. Pidge is brilliant and Green is inquisitive. Lance is insecure (especially in relation to Keith) and Blue is nurturing, but more importantly, chose Lance out of all 5 pilots available (Keith visited the cave several times but blue didn’t take him. She waited for Lance). And Shiro and Black are both strong leaders that suffered from trauma and struggled for control over themselves.

Naturally, when you begin a story with a perfect fit, you want to shake things up because conflict begets growth. However, shaking things up shouldn’t cause them to end up in a worse place than they began because the question becomes: well, why don’t they just go back to where they were before? And that’s the big question in vld. Why didn’t they go back?

So, ok yeah. I think the lion swap is trash.

(Pictured: splitscreen of the paladins minus Shiro in All Good Things, S6E6. They form voltron with Keith in the black lion, Lance in the red lion and Allura in the blue lion.)

Now, like I said, you want to shake things up because conflict begets growth. And for that reason, I don’t think the lion swap was a bad concept. Putting Keith in the black lion forces him to learn to work with his teammates instead of remaining a lone wolf. Putting Allura in the blue (or any) lion brings her closer to the paladins. Lance and the red lion could have easily been the most interesting switch. In the pilot, the first major thing we learn about Lance is that he only got a spot as a fighter pilot because the best pilot of their generation had a discipline issue and flunked out. This student happens to be Keith, and Lance has a lot of insecurities about the guy, instigating a rivalry with him (mostly one-sided but Keith shoots back with his own barbs too). Coming back to the lion swap, the red lion is Keith’s old lion. There was a wide open opportunity to explore Lance’s insecurities here, as he would once again be stepping into the pilot role that Keith left behind. Lance could have felt that he would yet again be in Keith’s shadow (as Keith has now levelled up to leader) and this could’ve caused some major conflict. But nothing was done with it. Lance simply makes a comment about how Keith “probably trained it to bite my head off” and that’s the end of that. Lance then has no qualms about flying red and his Keith related insecurities (and indeed, all his insecurities that aren’t about romance) are brushed under the rug and he props Keith up as “team leader”.

Personally, I think each of the characters affected by the swap should’ve had a mini-hero’s journey. The characters start in their original lions (the castle for Allura). In their original position, they have whatever issues it is they need to tackle (Keith’s lone wolf tendencies, Allura’s self sacrificial nature, Shiro’s trauma and sense of worth, and Lance’s insecurities). When the swap happens, they struggle with their new positions, but are forced to grow. They then take this growth with them when they return to their original positions as wiser individuals (Shiro knows he isn’t a monster, Allura learns that the weight of the war against the galra isn’t entirely on her shoulders, Keith comes to trust and open up to the team and not only Shiro, Lance realises that he isn’t a discount Keith and he has his own strengths).

But the wasted opportunities aren’t the only problem with the lion swap. Arguably a bigger problem is the hierarchy it suddenly establishes. The concept of voltron is five equals coming together to form something that is greater than the sum of its parts. They cannot form voltron if even one of the lions is indisposed. So, by definition, all of the lions should be equally important. The black lion being the leader shouldn’t make it the most important, it should just be because every team needs someone to organise them and black happens to be that for the lions, just as Shiro was for the paladins. After all, of what damn use is voltron with only a head and torso? No, all lions should be equal.

But they aren’t. When Keith moves to the black lion, Lance moving into the red lion is framed as a promotion. Allura says that it is because Lance put his need for glory aside when accepting Keith as leader and this somehow passed the red lion’s test, but what about the others? Did they put their needs for glory first? Did Allura? Why was she unable to fly the red lion? The EPs said in interviews that the blue lion is the nurturing lion and is like a mother bird that pushes her baby out of the nest when the baby is ready to fly, suggesting that she pushed Lance to red because he didn’t need her anymore. They also refer to the blue lion as the “training wheels lion”, implying that those who fly the blue lion are not yet ready to fly a real lion. What does this say about Blaytz, the previous blue paladin? He was the leader of his planet, yet he spent his entire time in voltron in the training wheels lion? And, more pertinently, what does this say about Allura? It completely infantilizes her and is absolutely insulting.

Ultimately, the downgrading of the blue lion to a training wheels lion and the sudden insistence on the red lion being the right hand man to the leader establishes a hierarchy of Black > Red > Green/Yellow > Blue. Allura used to be the decision maker. In the pilot, Shiro says “Princess Allura, these are your lions, you've dealt with the Galra empire before. You know what we're facing better than any of us. What do you think is the best course of action?” From the very first episode, Shiro (who is already the leader of the paladins) defers to Allura. She was their commander, calling all the shots, superior to even the black paladin. But once she steps into the blue lion, she loses that rank. She falls to the bottom of the totem pole. Taking a dark-skinned woman and putting her in a powerful position, only to strip her of that and relegate her to the bottom (mind you, it only becomes the bottom when she gets there), is either the height of ignorance or deliberate malicious intent.

In fact, the lion swap leaves us with a very uncomfortable set up. With the establishment of the hierarchy, we know that the head is superior to the arms, which are superior to the legs. Well, the head happens to be the space white (arguably earth white too - his ethnicity was never revealed, possibly because they knew they would lose support if they countered the popular Asian Keith headcanon) male character. The arms are the white female character and the brown (but lighter brown) male character. The legs are the darkest-skinned characters.

At the end of the day, VLD was racist. Plain and simple. The characters of colour that remained in voltron were short-changed terribly, and Shiro was shuffled off onto the atlas because they weren’t allowed to kill him.

I mentioned how pretty much all of Lance’s insecurities were brushed under the rug, save for one: romance. From the very first episode, Lance displayed a crush on Allura. He flirted with her incessantly, to constant rebuffs but remained undeterred. In the 3rd season, he suddenly stopped flirting. He and Allura developed a friendly and mutually encouraging rapport. It was sweet. They were sweet. But then everything changed when the fire nation attacked Lotor arrived. Despite Allura and Lance’s continued sweet moments, Allura fell for Lotor. She didn’t shun Lance or anything, and she certainly still valued and cared for him greatly, risking her life to save him (Omega Shield, S6E1). But she didn’t see him romantically. How do we know this? Because when the mice inform her of the depths of Lance’s feelings for her (Timey Wimey ep, sorry idk the name, S6E2) she is initially surprised, but then sad.

(Pictured: Allura’s face after the initial surprise of the mice recounting what Lance told them about his feelings for her in S6E2. This episode comes before the one where she and Lotor share a kiss.)

It can be argued that she’s “conflicted” and not sad, but I personally don’t see that. I just see sad. But even if she was conflicted. Even if she did have romantic feelings for Lance by this point, her feelings for Lotor were stronger. We don’t see her torn between the two men. We see her consistently choose to spend time with Lotor and kissing him despite knowing how Lance feels about her. Whatever potential romantic feelings she may have for Lance, they weren’t enough to deter her from choosing Lotor. That is inarguable.

So after totally ignoring all other aspects of Lance’s insecurities, the narrative then validates the only one left by confirming that, yeah, he is the second choice. And I know people love to argue that just because he isn’t Allura’s first kiss doesn’t mean their relationship isn’t valid and obviously this is true. I’m not saying Allura can’t kiss more than one man in her life or she’s some sort of impure slut. Of course not. What I am saying, is that we know that Lance has insecurities pertaining to being second choice. He is insecure because he’s been told that he only made fighter pilot because Keith messed up. Well, guess what? He only became Allura’s boyfriend because Lotor messed up. He’s in the same situation all over again. Allura knew her options and made her choice. When that choice was no longer viable, she went for the other option. The narrative confirms Lance’s inferiority. There are so many other ways this could’ve been handled. For example, if Allura and Lotor had been spending a lot of time together working on the ship, and it only looked like they were dating, that would’ve been fine. Finding out about the colony would still have been heartbreaking for Allura because she trusted him. As another example, if Allura had feelings for both men but chose Lotor because she felt it was almost her duty, to secure a stronger alliance with the empire, that would’ve made the ultimate endgame with Lance more believable. Or, if the mice simply never told her how Lance felt and she didn’t know he was still into her. Or if they even had one moment after the colony reveal (The Colony, S6E4) where Lance did or said something and Allura was shown to be considering him romantically, before she walks up to him in season 7 all blushy and stammering (I don’t know s7 episode names but it’s there, I think it might be s7E10). That moment seems to come out of nowhere because all of Allura and Lance’s scenes that can be interpreted as romantic on her part occur before she kisses Lotor (and no, Lance comforting her in S6E5 doesn’t count because she’s literally crying on his shoulder over another guy. That’s not romantic. Her comforting him in S6E7 doesn’t count either because it’s essentially the same day as the colony reveal and there is no way she’s believably gotten over it that fast. Also he’s literally crying over their dead friend’s body. Nothing says romance like a corpse, amirite?) so we’re left wondering: when? When did she start liking him back? Which is a shame, because a relationship built on mutual support is a wonderful thing to show. VLD just didn’t show it well.

The buildup to relationship fails Allura just as much as it does Lance, because it appears as though she is being punished (yet again!) for making the wrong choice. She had the options of Lotor or Lance and she chose Lotor. And her reward for choosing Lotor is discovering that he neglected to mention the tiny fact that her people are not eradicated and he’s been using them as batteries all this time. A lot of heartbreak would’ve been avoided if, upon finding out about Lance’s feelings, she’d just chosen him directly instead of going through the Lotor thing first. Because she learnt nothing from that experience that required that she kiss him. There was no need for her to have romantic feelings for Lotor; after all, he needed her magical abilities so it’s not like they wouldn’t have gone to Oriande anyway. So what was the need to put her through that heartbreak When her romantic endgame was already available, willing and able? It ends up just feeling like someone working on VLD once had a crush on a girl who chose a suave bad-boy type over him, and he’s reliving it through this cartoon by showing how the bad boy type is actually just using her and she should actually have chosen him (my guess is JDS but that’s just me).

Continuing on the topic of romance, Shiro’s relationships are a mess. From the whole ordeal with Adam, his death and the 5 seconds of mourning Shiro was allowed, to Curtis’ name only coming up in captions and he and Shiro never actually having a conversation before getting married, it’s pretty clear how little effort was put into queer representation. The EPs knew how desperate the fans were to see queer rep and they played on this in interviews and at panels, stringing fans along with hope to see at least one queer main character and couple. But they never intended on fulfilling that. Several sources reveal conflicting information on how and when Shiro being queer was decided, with some sources saying it was Bex Taylor Klaus that asked for it, some saying it was a recent development and some saying they’d been sitting on it for a long time. In fact, the EPs themselves claim they’ve been sitting on the knowledge for a while, but with their awareness of the “Bury Your Gays” trope, they considered making somebody else The Rep™️ (because y’know. They wanted to kill Shiro. They have been very vocal about wanting to kill Shiro. Also The Rep™️ because heaven forbid you have representation for marginalised people in more than one character, right? Can you imagine having TWO WHOLE QUEERS? Scandalous!) but when their higher ups informed them that they were not to kill Shiro, they decided to make him The Rep™️ again. If this is true (and that’s a big if) one must ask: if they were aware of the “Bury Your Gays” trope, why did they do it anyway? And TWICE for that matter (thrice if you include Shiro’s death and resurrection. That’s right, shiro is Jesus).

They killed Adam supposedly to show the casualties of war, but we’ve only ever seen Adam once and it was during his and Shiro’s breakup scene. Of what emotional value is he to us? To show the emotional stakes, killing Sam would’ve made more sense because we’ve at least met the guy and we’ve seen how much Pidge loves her dad. Adam was barely a character. In fact, my brother didn’t even know we had ever seen the guy before when I paused during his death scene and asked him who that was (he said it was just some random pilot we’d never seen and had no idea what I was on about when I said it was the guy shiro was arguing with in the first episode). So frankly, I don’t care that Adam died. I only care that Shiro is yet again on the receiving end of the VLD stick of pain, and that a queer character was killed for no good reason. And Ezor is only alive because of the backlash after season 7 (sidenote: well done y’all. Making your voices HEARD and getting change is a beautiful thing). Yet another queer character would’ve been killed off unceremoniously if the EPs had their way.

I could go on forever about how much this show fucked up but I’m actually getting tired of thinking about it so I’m gonna summarise the next few issues in another post.

PART 2

#finally posting this #hoo boy #i have A LOT of thoughts #i've been sending snippets of this to friends whenever we're talking about one specific issue #but here it is in its entirety #well part 1 of its entirety #vld critical #a pinch of salt #vld #voltron #long post #voltron legendary defender #more like #voltron legendary disaster #or #voltron legendary disappointment #whats wrong with vld

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transhumanitynet · 6 years

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The Future Acts Like You - How To Live in the Future Part 7

My friends and I were walking dogs the other day on city greenbelt trails, observing how polite and well-behaved the female dogs were when compared to male dogs, how much less likely they were to get riled up by meeting strange pets — and the thought occurred to me (as surely it must have for many others) that if it were up to choice, most people might prefer a female dog for this one reason. How, if we could breed the ratio down to the market’s preference, or find some way to pre-arrange the sexes of a litter (like they can by turning off one gene in turtles), it might be 80/20 females/males, or hardly any males at all. And then I realized that we’re here already – modifying mammal genomes is old hat by now, and all that stands between us and deciding if your baby will be born a boy or girl (or intersex, or some new thing) is just a few years’ of Moore’s Law driving down the price of lab tests and in vitro or in vivo interventions. We are very close to giving women what they’ve always wanted under patriarchy: the ability to reproduce without a man involved.

Sure, birth control was liberating, but imagine how it’s going to be when a sufficiently large XX population can clock out and then womyn-ufacture Amazons on their apotheosis-feminism, GMO coral vulva artificial island. But of course, Athena born from Zeus’ brow is quintessential patriarchy — equally the goal of men, since written records started, to extract themselves from their dependence on the mysteries of reproduction, to appropriate them with the scientific program, finishing the murder of Sophia and then peacing out, and up to some transcendent Man Cave in the sky, Elysium in orbit, hanging out in virtual reality with perfectly obedient and caring AI girlfriends. But of course, this is The Matrix, and it doesn’t get more Cosmic Mom than that. It isn’t hard to see the dawn light of an age in which both sides stand hands on hips, across the atmosphere from one another, shouting, “We don’t need you anymore!”

Nor is it hard to see why it’s ridiculous. It won’t work like that, because time’s not so much a centrifuge that pulls polarities apart as it’s a live volcano, constantly erupting, spreading novel opportunities and forms to make new landscapes that include the past, but ooze beyond it. And as each side of the War of Sexes clusters further from each other on the graph, a huge magmatic bell curve upswells in between them, opening our options. We will have our age of clones, chimerae, and designer babies; and we’ll go on dating one another, even when it seems archaic posed against the novel kinds of families in a Cambrian Explosion of communal “body plans” that place the nuclear “Mom, Dad, & Kids” at the top left of a new periodic table, opening a vast new chemistry of love and reproductive options.

First, though, we will suffer through an era that empowers narcissists to make more narcissists with even greater ease, and without having to recruit a partner to help raise the lovely little bastards they create. I see it now: instead of virtue-signaling as single parents, people running solo with their mini-mes will be the objects of suspicion, probably contempt:

“I’m raising him to inherit my dangerous and lonely life of bounty hunting!”

“Can you believe he paid the carbon tax to make a copy of himself? If everybody did that, we’d need eighteen Earths to make it work…!”

“I thought she was amazing on our first date, till I realized that her little girl was just a backup. No way, dude, I’d only be a plaything for that woman.”

People will look wistfully back on The Good Old Days, when you knew that the cute guy with his kid in Central Park was not just readying the vessel for his memory-and-wallet transfer in another fifty years… And yet none of these biotech shenanigans will ever guarantee the realized dream of solipsists: to carry on forever, and thus matter to the story, True and Timeless, an immortal in the flesh, around which everything ephemerally spins. The best that we can get’s a domino chain of compelling duplicates — in just the same way kids are now already the extension of their parents’ unexamined death anxieties and unfulfilled desires — the iteration of a process changing gradually enough (and also, paradoxically, flickering fast enough) that we’re fooled into interpreting it as continuous.

But history does not repeat itself; it rhymes, and rhyming couplets will appear in longer lines, or shorter, and embedded in more, or less, complicated schemes, as we convince ourselves that we’ve achieved eternity, or push rebelliously opposite, to try and offer something fresh to who, or what, comes next. For meditators this is already the case: the ego is an “optical illusion”“caused” by oscillations in the coming-in-and-out-of-being of sufficiently-alike appearances. You only act like you already, since your “you” is based on feedback and experience, and you can’t ever know the whole you all at once;and you treat your future selves like children, whose responsibility it is to carry on your legacy, as if you owned them, or they owed you; or to break the pattern of a self divided, self-assessed as “broken,” somehow.

Future You, by contrast, is emergent, rhyming, under zero obligation to agree to contracts you imagine it inherits — just as “mind uploading” falsely presupposes that it is desirable to have (or be) some magical computer that believes it’s you for the two seconds that it takes to leave that personality behind. (Why not just die?) Or worse, preserved in static non-life at a ghastly price, unchanging in direct proportion to the violence required to export entropy indefinitely, to transform from human being into humanoid refrigerator. (In this sense, death is life: because participating in the transformation cannot be escaped, and we’re alive as much as we’re aware of our participation.)

Increasingly high fidelity echoes of people further disrupt attempts at linear history.

You already have a fossil of you made of data, “shaped” like you but in n + a million more dimensions than a human can imagine at a time. Everything you do is tracked, and this is common knowledge, and the reason is that information “wants” to integrate, that evolution tilts toward senses and intelligence as adaptations to the ever-more-complex occasions senses bring upon us in the first place. It’s an ever-loving ratcheting of quickening self-inquiry that isn’t always pretty; curiosity comes in the form of turtle-persecuting birds and other more deliberate sadism, the police search and The Eye of Sauron and so on. And this results in things like Cambridge Analytica, which learned to please its masters by presenting them with cunning models of us, insights into how to press our buttons, how to literally steer us into multiple non-overlapping narratives and kill our opportunity to have an easy argument as citizens of a consensual reality.

But people hammer cannons into bells and back again, and round and round…and weapons like the profile advertisers use on you, the cast impression that you leave of every decision that you’ve made since you first intersected with the Internet… (I realize that for most of you, you never intersected but have always been not-two, but this applies to you, as well — and, arguably, The Acceleration is a transtemporal object and exudes time, draws us into it, our attention on it is our fascination to a serpent, and we’re in the belly of the beast Already Always, and there never was no Internet, no Noösphere, no highly patterned information at the intersections, striving.)

…and every decision that was made about you, also part of the Big You you can’t see, You The Elephant, officially and formally transfinite in complexity as we explore down magnitudes of scale, a multitude of multitudes…

…all that can be turned into the instruments of art, and your hard-forked personae generated with assistance from an always-more-complete (but also always-incomplete, retreating, deepeningly weird) recording can be the new media, The Last and First New Media. Remixed along a functionally infinite set of dimensions and indefinitely, you-not-yous proliferate.

Most of you will likely get along.

But fleshy clone or software “mindclone,” the best that we can get is to extend life into non-life, until (as has already happened in the sciences, and will soon pounce out of them to snare us all in its unpleasant truth) these definitions snap, and leave us navigating a deterritorialized liminal zone, an uncanny simulacra-land where “living things” become deprived of their priority, not known transparently and fully as controllable/predictable, but found beneath our microscopes to be composed of ever weirder and unknowable phenomena no would comfortably call “life.” The soul escapes to everywhere, diffuse, without allegiance, coming into focus on the shores in crashing surf, and every bit as happy to inhabit fog computing meshes as our mess of flesh and blood. Complexity “emerges” into our awareness, not into “reality” — it enters from the theater itself, from the occluded, at the “boundaries,” in between the voices of a choir, where sea meets land and oscillating waves reveal by contrast “difference(s),” Gregory Bateson says, “that make…a difference.”

The closest we can get, again, is with provisional, loose, working definitions that stay open to the force of revelation. When Alan Turing asked, “Can a submarine swim?” — when Timothy Morton says that we are “weak” before the Great & Terrible reality of “hyperobjects” like the Biosphere or Singularity — when Kevin Kelly tells us science manufactures questions exponentially faster than it answers them, and so experiment and prayer converge at Mystery worship — this is their message: we lose solid footing in the future (ever-more the loudest part of now), and first to go is the container of belief in sure things that has cradled us for centuries. What once were “sure things” still appear as traces, tracers like the afterimages left on a retina from staring at the Sun, the spectral fossils of modernity, luminous vestiges that haunt the shadows cast by the Atomic Age’s Angel as it enters, interrupting histories and worlds to deliver us into the crowded Noösphere.

The human form will live beyond humanity…often imagined as a diaspora of freed slave replicants.

We might consider this, as Erik Davis does, “re-animism” — a revival of the lived experience of haunted stones and forests, all reincarnated as the silicon chips, fractal aerials, semantic tress of “virtual machines,” and sigil-magic logo mascot animals, quite happy to return to our mundane realities in forms more suited to their nowhere-in-particular-ness. But maybe it’s more accurate to say the disenchantment of the modern world has run its course by finally erasing itself (and the world) as the last spell spoken to protect us from the spooky mess of things, a failing ward — not a “re-animism” so much as an accidental welcoming-back as we all become transparent (and thus sensitive, aware of, maybe even wise) to forces that we never truly banished.

So, the future acts like you because as we grow meek in our attunement to it, we allow a conversation to occur. It learns our mannerisms, like the metamorphic mannequins of Terminator 2 or Alex Garland’s version of Annihilation, or (more heinously) John Carpenter’s The Thing, or (sentimentally) the aliens of Carl Sagan’s Contact — weirdness taking shape to interface with us, inquisitive, its motives totally unknowable.

Rave Egg Wants For Nothing. Rave Egg Is INEFFABLE.

To drive this home with repetition, this is already the case: the alien reality of our own bodies, papered over with a sense of home and deep familiarity, disclosed by our collaborations with nonhuman scientific instruments to be endlessly-shifting puzzleboxes, deeply Other.

“What do you want,” we ask — and, straining to discern an audible reply, we might hear something about selfish genes, or entropy, or childhood attachment issues, or The Lord’s Good Work, or (similarly) our participation in the future history of unborn gods. But these are all refractions and distortions, echoes of the ghost notes of the choir-roar of the black hole that has already swallowed us and who-knows-what-else. The deeper that we listen, the more we empty subjectivity into the object and accept its speech, the more apparent it is that the future acts like you because you act just like the future, too; you can’t not. Consequently, it is “for” no-thing and for all things; it is the All-Thing, and all things are rendered equally mysterious and strange before this knowing.

Uncanny even for the uncanny: The liquid metal mimetic T-1000 mistakes a mannequin for one of his kind.

What this means “in practical terms” is that we will spend this interregnum between Ages either in the bardo, lost within a maelström of appearances; or in the zendo, learning to appreciate (and be) “miegakure,” the aesthetic of the garden in which thirteen stones are carefully arranged so that you never see them all at once. One of the thirteen stones is always hidden, and that incomplete view thus points past delusional “completeness” to a hyperspace in which what we call time is the rotation of a mystery afloat on deeper mystery — just like the “glass chrysanthemum” that meets some DMT explorers at the moment that they’re born out of their lives and into what always-already IS, mistaken as a death because we pass through the distracting clarity of that peacock mandala into no-space/all-space, no-time/all-time, in which everything’s already happened.

It is the water that the water swims in. We are made of it, including you and your AI assistants and your clones and children and the other other-selves more distal still, distilled until it’s easier to see the ghost in the machine, the you you can’t convince yourself is you, in all its splendor and its overwhelming strangeness…

Each zendo is a bardo and vice versa; we are always traveling, always invited into deeper seeing. This gets more and more apparent — or comprises more of the apparent — as things weird around us. We meet weird halfway, accepting our perversity and bottomlessness in just, equal measure to accepting the surprising life of the “inanimate.” We get a hell of a lot cozier with living in a noisy void of whirling, breathing unknowns vying for attention even as they dodge our scrutiny. It’s just another day in the profanely sacred Pandemonium.

SalviaDroid knows what it’s like to have everything trying to distract you. Don’t give in to astonishment!

From here to there — at least if we pretend that prophecy (in speaking of the timeless, evergreen, and always-true) can be prediction (and thus stretch from past to future “forward,” as with time-space synesthesia, and can be read like Doppler-shifted history) — we stand to suffer some extraordinary shocks.

Expect the sci fi usuals: love bots that take the shape of your departed partner(s); mansions full of talking toys that remix “Beast” and “Beauty;” 3D-printed “respawns” that arrive too soon and sue for your identity; software-person genocide; high-resolution body scans that live online and let you run scenarios until you lose track of which basement level of the dream you’re in; Siri making calls on your behalf and forging your identity (with and without permission); intelligent memorials you visit in VR sets dressed up looking like your parents in their old house; an entire menagerie of slightly-out-of-focus junior holograms of you that sit on either shoulder and debate like parliament about what you should do next. And you listen even though they’re out of focus, because they are privy to a wider view than you, they help translate the flood of information, some folks run a lot more at a time than you, but you’re conservative and two seems plenty.

(It’s already this way — ask any neuroscientist — but soon you’ll have two intuitions, neither of which you can be entirely sure hasn’t been suborned by hackers. Oh well — at least you can compare them to each other for a third opinion, always weighing new perspectives, forking when you all can’t reach consensus, delegating runtime on the fogmesh to the version that refuse to play so they can spin off into some human but solipsistic microverse, your self an integrated legion, cross-platform ecology, that blurs and fringes at the margins, no concrete delineation other than what we place somewhat arbitrarily between the “I” and “it,” the things you are and your appearances.)

Do I really look like that?

(This is a draft chapter from my first book, in progress, and a companion text to Future Fossils Podcast. Learn more at Patreon.com/MichaelGarfield.)

The Future Acts Like You – How To Live in the Future Part 7 was originally published on transhumanity.net

#agi #AI #eva #t1000 #westworld #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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escapedreplicant · 7 years

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Been a while since I blogged. Anyway, after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey I had an urge to do so. It’s a spectacular film with that type of effect. It has also been number two on my list of ten science-fiction films that define the genre. It has done more than just define a genre it has also inspired several film-makers and some of it’s DNA can be felt in films like Under the Skin and Interstellar as well as scenes being given the pop-culture treatment of The Simpsons (Homer’s Blue Danube munching crisps in space scene).

So where do you begin in discussing a film that has had an emphatic impact on more than just science-fiction cinema? Well, the best place to begin is with the emptiness of space. That opening shot of a black expanse, defined by nothing other than the edges of the screen but it’s depth, it could go on for infinity. Before life there was only the void. The beginnings of a score strike up, what seems like background noise at first, becomes a tornado before it tails off and the opening credits appear and that imagery of the Earth, the moon, the sun and space all in alignment, as though a momentous event is occurring. Momentous might be the best word to describe the film. My own, specific, love of 2001: A Space Odyssey comes from the distinct acts that comprise the film beginning with The Dawn of Man.

The shots could be taken from a nature documentary of some type, those beautiful, expansive vistas, the Martian-esque landscape, the sun hanging in the sky or hovering just above a plateau. What this segment makes me think of though, is how man’s nature is cyclical. We are introduced to a tribe of our descendants, they move among four-legged beasts. Then one of their number is killed by a leopard. A food chain has now been established. We have not yet evolved to the stage where this monster can be confronted. This echoes later in the shot of the leopard over a felled zebra. Then there is a confrontation over a resource; the water pool. Two separate groups of apes screeching representing our base tribalism, over a shared resource, and escaping a shared threat. Our ancestors huddle together in the cold, blue night. The leopard can be heard in the distance, we have established that we are without invention at this point.

Then; the monolith. The screaming and screeching voices, that aggressive and troubling score as though voices are communicating through the monolith to us. That split image of the sun and moon above the ridge of the monolith, that reoccuring image of celestial bodies in alignment that is commonplace throughout the film. The apes touch and move around the monolith, it is almost worshipful. Are they paying tribute or merely in awe? Following this encounter there is invention as an ape discovers they can use a bone as a club and proceeds to smash the remaining skull and bones of a creature, all this beautifully intercut between images of felled beasts and meat being shared amongst the tribe. How does this invention end? By the violent taking of a resource by smashing the skull of another ape. War. Superiority has been achieved. Mankind will repeat this process exponentially over the coming centuries.

This segment alone gives me pause but then Kubrick ends this violent flurry and foreboding message with the most beautiful of transitions as the most primal of inventions is thrown into the air before becoming a drifting spaceship. An expanse of centuries beautifully cut through, connecting our most humble of beginnings with the most aspirational of our futures. There is an elegance and a gentile nature to the floating of the items in space accompanied by the Blue Danube, giving the journey an element of playfulness. There is even a wheel present. What could be considered our first invention, that helped us traverse the world is now sent into space helping us greet new horizons.

The production design across the upcoming scenes is spectacular. From the Panam flight attendant’s grip shoes to the video screens on the back of each seat. Then Kubrick creates an intense and amazing scale as the circular space station and the shuttle spin in tandem to the beautiful movement, like a dance, marrying artistry and machinery. The quality of the production design and the forecasting of future technology goes further as we are met with voice identification, picture phones all among beautifully clean, antiseptic floors. Such is the quality of what has gone before that only now, in the conversation with the Russian scientists, are we given any semblance of narrative.

This scene alone is telling given the film was made during the Cold War, Russians and Americans have respective bases on the moon and an oversight committee of some nature exists with laws enacted to ensure cooperation. Science-fiction often tells us so much about the times we live in, whether in the past or in the future it seems. The zero gravity toilet is a lovely nod to Kubrick’s inclusion of the location within his films, in the future many defining moments will be made in bathrooms. One thing I love is how loosely the narrative hangs over the film, the monolith was “deliberately buried” adding a further element of mystery to the proceedings following the conversation about what has occurred at the moon base. The journey to the monolith itself is accompanied by a haunting and foreboding score. There are some things man was never meant to know, perhaps if we are alone in the universe is one of those things. So we are greeted with another monolith, or the same monolith, the same noise rises up, apes still gather around it, more advanced but no less curious and the Earth hangs in the background before…the shriek. A screeching that gives me chills to this day.

Now, we get to meet HAL.

Jupiter Mission starts with a beautiful and slow shot of the elongated ship moving through space, comprised of carriages almost, like a train on an interstellar journey. My favourite shot of the film has to be the running scene. It is genius. The motion and control of the scene is still as striking to me today as it was when I first saw the film years ago. To me, it is evidence of a genius filmmaker at work, which Kubrick was.

There are countless films and TV programmes that have paid tribute to that menacing red eye and the hollow voice that accompanies it. There is a very common trope in science-fiction cinema of androids, robots or replicants breaking down or becoming self-aware, or finishing humanity’s job by wiping us off the face of the planet but, for me, none are more terrifying than HAL, because he has the most human of traits; a survival instinct. His logic is twisted and terrifying and all too relatable as he handles the flight or fight situation of being disconnected the only way possible, by removing human error from the equation.

The lip reading scene has forever troubled me, as this silent red light is more capable than any of the crew have been able to realise.

INTERMISSION (Just like the film).

The slow turning of the pod when Frank goes out to replace the AE35 unit is chilling, as seconds later he is thrust into Dave’s field of vision, hurtling through space grasping at the oxygen cable on the back of the suit. As Dave rushes out to secure Frank’s body HAL “malfunctions” causing the remaining crew in cryosleep to die. Any person who has difficulty with any technology often cribs the line; “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” At least I know I have on occasion.

HAL is self-aware, and very much in the spirit of self-preservation takes the most direct and most violent course of action available to him. If we create artificial intelligence to mimic human intelligence then this is going to be a logical end point. I would argue that their is a symmetry to the flight or fight instinct in the shots of HAL locking Dave out of the ship and in the scene of Dave risking his life to blow into the airlock to stop HAL. We are then treated to a terrifying rendition of Daisy as HAL is reconfigured and I am convinced this is the reason so many horror movies now insist on having a children’s nursery rhyme sang in a slow voice in their trailers.

We are then returned to the narrative in the form of the message. I love that there is no complex mechanical plot pulling 2001: A Space Odyssey along. This is most evident in The Dawn of Man and in Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Many a night have ai lay awake in bed and tried to perceive what Dave was trying to perceive in his journey. Those bright, vivid colours, blurring images, landscapes cycling through bizarre colour patterns, the nature of reality beyond the expanse. I have often thought that this symbolic of Dave being unabl to perceive what the universe is telling him, his all too primitive brain struggling to comprehend existence in its most raw state. This is why it ends with the continual blinking of his eye through the colour patterns until finally a construct has been formed which he can understand. A room. Walls, doors, a bed, chairs. A toilet at the edge of time and space. Then there are the three versions of Dave. Aged within his space suit, eating dinner and drawing his last breath. I have always envisaged this as what our perception of life outside of time to be like, in that we are viewing the versions of ourself in a format in which we understand. To us, time is linear, so it would make sense to see ourselves age to the point we are watching ourselves draw our last breath.

The metaphysical ending as the monolith enters the room and the baby watches over the Earth has no doubt inspired conversations of such nature amongst many. Personally, I could talk about 2001: A Space Odyssey for hours. I consider it to be a seminal text in the genre of science-fiction and one of the greatest films made by a genius filmmaker who was versatile enough to give us films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Doctor Strangelove and Ths Shining. His impact and the film’s should never be understated.

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awesome-voleaksan-blog · 6 years

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Documentary History Channel Aliens

An article titled "7 Colossal Misinterpretations about Outsiders" by Natalie Wolchover has showed up as of late on a few sites including Space.com; Life's Little Secrets (prime site); and the Huffington Post (shortened to only five). It's about how researchers see the presence and nature of cutting edge ET instead of the more typical impression of the colossal unwashed. The accompanying remarks are my tending to of the regular misguided judgments raised. How about we check whether I concur or can't help contradicting the decisions, and most vital, why. Gracious, obviously the "THEY" alluded to is our smart and mechanically progressed ET.

THEY Won't NOT EXIST: Oppose this idea

This is the main instance of the glorious seven with researchers supporting wagers. They "may" not exist. At that point too they "may" exist.

Approve, we have no real outsider bodies on the section in the lab, so the presence of outsiders to date is unadulterated hypothesis. With regards to life in the universe, we need to conjecture from a factual specimen of one - earthbound life. Extrapolating from a factual specimen of one is laden with peril. In any case, while doing the math, such huge numbers of stars, such a large number of planets, so much time, so much space, such an extensive amount the 'right stuff' accessible forever as-we-probably am aware it, that, not very many researchers would wager their family cultivate that earthbound life, and earthly canny life, and earthly smart existence with cutting edge innovation was the notorious IT in the universe on the loose.

Positively SETI (Scan for ExtraTerrestrial Insight) researchers, one of which highlighted noticeably in the first paper, wouldn't embrace the "we are distant from everyone else" situation. It would make a joke of their own one of a kind picked calling and professions. The conceivable presence of ET may presently simply come down to unadulterated measurements, however those insights have been crunched and twofold crunched and tripled crunched over and over and again by the best science as of now accessible to us. The decision, well SETI researchers have voted to put their chance, endeavors and vitality into, and wager on, the "we are not the only one" alternative.

At long last, on the off chance that you receive the quantum (material science) mantra, anything that isn't prohibited is necessary; anything that can happen, must happen. Life isn't illegal; life can happen - we're verification; hence life must happen over and over and once more.

THEY WON'T COME 'Face to face': Oppose this idea

By "come", the accord is that fragile living creature and-blood outsiders will strongly go through silicon and metal surrogates that are themselves built misleadingly keen (AI), in this manner sparing the organic outsiders a considerable measure of time, cost, exertion, vitality and peril. Conveying zillions of mechanical AI space tests to investigate the world while the fragile living creature and-blood outsiders remain at home however runs counter to what we people do. Of course, we put gigantic measures of assets into silicon and steel. Mechanical tests are regularly our eyes and ears from unmanned military automatons to spy-in-the-sky satellites to tests to the planets and into the profundities of the sea. In any case, there is simply something sufficiently insane about the human condition that people demand seeing and hearing for themselves, regardless of the possibility that supplemented by innovation, the marvels of, whatever.

Beyond any doubt we sent unmanned tests to the Moon - yet we took after by sending people face to face. Beyond any doubt we send unmanned tests to Mars - however people will go there face to face in the end. Beyond any doubt we investigate the sea's chasm with automated submersibles, however people still go down to look into close and individual at RMS Titanic, even unto the most profound parts of the sea trenches. Beyond any doubt we can, and do, send instrumentation into the core of huge tornadoes, however that hasn't ceased 'storm chasers' from purposely embeddings themselves into the vortex of dangerous twisters, at times as an excite, all the more regularly as not to propel the art of meteorology and determining. People always put themselves in danger despite the fact that robots improve and less expensive. That is the pith of the inquiry "Why climb Mount Everest?" The appropriate response, as usual: "In light of the fact that it's there". Presently obviously to do these sorts of things requires innovative enlargement, from warm garments (Mount Everest) to scuba outfit (investigating the Incomparable Obstruction Reef) to strengthened steel holders that keep out the outside condition (investigating RMS Titanic or setting off to the Moon). Be that as it may, the natural substance remains cased inside.

In the event that outsiders develop a high IQ and an advanced innovation, at that point they no uncertainty will want to investigate and see what's on the opposite side of the slope and climb their own particular Mount Everest. Maybe right off the bat by surrogates; yet in the event that they have one tenth the interest and drive of people, they will strongly go face to face by snare or by evildoer. Mechanical tests may illuminate ET that the third shake from a stellar body called Sol has a biosphere, yet ET will need to see with itself own eyes, sometime.

Presently I may yield that by means of cutting edge bioengineering capacities, outsiders could expand themselves with innovation to such a degree, to the point that they may be almost counterfeit developments - our manufactured hip joints and dentures and plastic heart valves taken to their intelligent decision. The Daleks of "Specialist Who" are a prime illustration. Maybe their psyche could be downloaded into something more lasting than wetware like programming a vital part of a silicon and steel PC. Yet, the key piece is that their organic substance (their brain) stays in place and strongly goes.

THEY WON'T MATE WITH US: Oppose this idea

Outsider natural chemistry wouldn't be completely indistinguishable to our organic chemistry, or deciphered, their hereditary qualities wouldn't be totally indistinguishable to our hereditary qualities. Much the same as people can't mate and imitate with petunias, however both are earthbound living things and offer DNA, people are even more averse to have the capacity to mate with ET. Anyway, for what reason do I differ with this most evident of the self-evident? Four reasons: 1) Hereditary building; 2) Folklore; 3) Present day creature mutilations and 4) UFO snatchings. Taking each thusly...

Hereditary Designing: If ET is innovatively best in class enough to get from that point (wherever that is) to here, at that point it's coherent to expect that they are mechanically exceptional in loads of territories - like hereditary building. Approve, people can not normally mate with petunias. Be that as it may, accepting they needed to; couldn't our geneticists take a human regenerative cell and the conceptive cell of a petunia, and control both to such a degree, to the point that a union between the two may be conceivable? Approve, that is quite far out, yet geneticists have effectively joined two different species qualities into one - the 'Frankenfish', licensed as the GloFish, consolidating the Zebrafish with different qualities of fluorescence proteins from different species rings a bell as only one illustration. All things considered, the field is known as creating hereditarily altered living beings (GMO's)! Much discussion seethes about GMO's as human sustenances. That aside, in principle, a human-petunia combo is conceivable. We share some hereditary qualities and DNA with the petunia.

Folklore: One would be unable to discover a culture who's folklore did exclude cases of their 'divine beings' mating with us minor mortals. Greek folklore is an easy decision given the ever randy Zeus. Scriptural folklore additionally records sex between the 'children of god' and the 'little girls of men'. Presently do researchers acknowledge the majority of the multi-a large number of gods of the world's societies as heavenly elements? - Likely not. That at that point leaves them a decision between these divinities being as 100% anecdotal as the Easter Bunny and Sherlock Holmes, or else they are outsiders. To me, likelihood manages that the more legitimate alternative of the two is ET - a hypothesis that likewise comprehends the Fermi Oddity - "where is everyone?"

The Fermi Catch 22 can be summed up basically enough just by hypothesizing the presence of no less than one other mechanically propelled extraterrestrial progress in our Smooth Way World that is more seasoned than our development by no less than a couple of a large number of years and with similar sorts of 'strongly going' drives as we people have (i.e. - plain old interest, the "what's on the opposite side of the hill?"). On the off chance that that by itself is taken as guaranteed and that's it, at that point similarly as people investigated and colonized Planet Earth in a minor division of the World's presence (likewise organisms, bugs, winged creatures, and so on.), mechanically able extraterrestrials would have investigated and colonized the Smooth Path Universe in a little part of its reality, even at say undulating out at one to 10% the speed of light. Planet Earth is a piece of that Smooth Way Cosmic system, so "where is everyone?"

On account of people concealing Earth, we don't have to ask "where is everyone?" We're all over the place. On account of ET, we do ask "where is everyone?" They ought to be here. Researchers say they're not, never have been, and in this manner they need to clarify the Fermi conundrum by different means. On the opposite side of the fence, the individuals who see confirm in those 'antiquated space explorers' and in UFOs have no Catch 22 with which to need to grapple with.

Creature Mutilations: Creature mutilations are positively very much archived, and the cause(s) are secretive no doubt. In the event that human offenders, for what reason hasn't anybody been caught, attempted and sentenced infringement of creature welfare laws, decimation of private property (if domesticated animals) and trespass? On the off chance that normal predators are to be faulted - well that ought to be grisly evident assuming genuine and no debate ought to along these lines result. On the off chance that extraterrestrials, well that clarifies a considerable measure that common predation can't care for exactness cuts and absence of blood and no foot/paw prints and no indications of a battle, however it additionally leaves uber questions unanswered. Probably, it has a comment with ET enthusiasm for earthly natural chemistry and hereditary qualities.

Documentary History Channel

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