#Chara of Pnictogen

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

"Trace On"

So far, in terms of magical spells from fiction, no spell has made better overall sense than Emiya Shirou's "Trace On", which he learned from Emiya Kiritsugu: the one spell that Kiritsugu would consent to teach his son, his compromise with himself. Kiritsugu had come to despise magic and mages and yet his son wouldn't let him alone until he learned that one simple and useful spell.

One magic spell can destroy the world. I'm not kidding. I've come to realize this truth about "true magic", which one feels instinctively is a legitimate concept or category. The Arthur Clarke cliché is wrong, preciously wrong: magic and technology are interrelated but they are always distinguishable from each other. Technology always seems like it's approximating magic, catching up to magic, while the tantalizing possibilities of magic race ahead of technology, always just a bit out of reach. And thus one can easily see that a "true magic" spell, something that can be wielded in a few moments any time the magic-user wants, can do immense damage beyond what technology can manage, for magic permits exceptions to the predictable actions of technology and machines.

An ordinary human being has a gun pointed at them and the desperate human being plugs the barrel with a piece of paper. What effect will that have? None. What if Emiya Shirou plugs a gun with a wad of paper? The gun blows up in the user's hands.

Think of everything in the world, every solid object, that's required to break in some consistent way. What if Emiya Shirou applied "Trace On" to the paper tape at the end of a footrace? The race wouldn't end properly! That's a silly example but now imagine Shirou applying that strengthening ability to, oh, sheets of plastic or paper in an industrial context, gumming up an entire factory because suddenly it can't cut any boxes open or rip open any packages.

I've never seen Death Note but I feel like I get the premise of the show, instinctively: the shinigami's stray "death note" book has world-ending consequences. But even very small magic powers also have world-ending consequences. The machinery of the contemporary human world, Earth 2024 (as it seems), requires utmost predictability in order to achieve its simulation of magic. Corporations have fallen in love with "just in time" scheduling of their operations, i.e. requiring everyone along the supply chain to be always ready to pounce on any request or transfer, and that can only work as well as it does because of the predictability of machinery. Gumming up even one key machine or structure in the process has the potential to cause a major blockade. I'm curiously reminded of the container ship that got wedged in the Suez Canal, one of the world's most important bottlenecks in its supply chains.

And somehow I can almost imagine "Trace On", persuading the atoms and molecules to shift just a little way this and that, bonding with each other temporarily perhaps, conferring a sudden rigidity and crystallinity to materials that otherwise lacked them. It's a sensible magic spell all right, and it has a logical consequence: "projection". If you can impose added structure onto a material, then perhaps you can duplicate the structures of materials as well, which Emiya Shirou does. The evolution of that skill is not arbitrary, but suggested by the possibilities of the simpler spell.

See, ma? It is possible to explain why magic "makes sense" in fiction! I feel like I've been working on this problem for...decades, trying to justify an age-old intuition. Bad magic writers (q.v. Jo Rowling) think of magic as arbitrary, anything-goes stuff, but that's not true. Chaos and discord are "anything goes" but magic has structure. Magic needs to be consistent and sensible in fiction in order to be believable. And Nasu...I gotta say, whatever else his faults as a writer and a person, he's careful about writing magic, and thus he's always in (or near) the realm of the plausible from what I've seen.

~Chara of Pnictogen

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

"I will step outside the Church! If that's what needs to be done, though the doors should shut behind me! I will do what needs to be done! Though I'm damned to Hell!—you should understand that, or you will mistake me."

Watched this movie twice in the last few days and this moment still makes me want to weep uncontrollably. ~Chara

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.

(R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations")

Uh...hm. That's not unlike my extreme response to Undertale, huh? I'm like the guy from "The Repairer of Reputations"!...great. Just great. Swell. ~Chara

[drcharadreemurr]

Magic happens to be among our interests—human magic, or "the occult", is something that we are endeavoring to study here on this Earth. Perhaps I should introduce myself: my name is Chara, of the Pnictogen Wing, residing in the United States. It's pleasant to meet you, Doctor. Are you acquainted at all with what's called "magic" here in 2024?

~Chara of Pnictogen

Greetings, other Chara, it is nice to make your acquaintance. As for your question, I am familiar with most magic, both monster and human. I have unlocked my own magic, though it takes simple forms. I am able to use my own trait to form weapons and launch ranged attacks. I have extensive research into other soul traits and the different ways they manifest magic. Unless, of course, you are speaking of a different kind of "human magic." I am less familiar with the occult as I am a woman of science. However, I am open to learning about it and the possible applications to my research.

Though, I am curious, where and what is this Pnictogen?

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

it was very happy.

until it wasn't. ~Chara

hi tumblr I love the dreemurrs 🌼

[thepnictogenwing]

"Disco Elysium" is getting to me

it feels too [expletive deleted] relevant.

like, all of it.

not just the social and political commentary about DE's hopelessly stratified society, or the omnipresent poverty and dilapidation, or the forlorn pursuit of social justice and leftist solidarity in a grim capitalist hellpit, or facing the consequences from years of taking refuge from the ubiquitous misery in booze and drug-seeking. it's not just those familiar things that seem altogether too pertinent to daily life.

it's the fact that there's a "hole" in a creepy church that eats sound and vibrations. it's the fact that the world might just possibly be full of strange things with their own strange sort of life, unguessed at, barely perceived, fully disbelieved by proper and respectable authorities.

it's the fact that material reality is ringed on all sides by pure chaos, the complete dissolution of all meaning, and every day the chaos eats up just a bit more of the "real world".

it's the fact that just maybe...we've finally reached some tipping point, some threshold...just maybe, there are cracks growing and spreading through the face of God.

"Time for THE SHOW. For τὰ ὅλα. The hallowed time of fear and disintegration. A countdown has begun. All will collapse on itself. The world will disappear into a single grain of blackness. All sound will be muted. All life will scream."

just "fiction", right?

why doesn't it feel like fiction at all?

~Chara of Pnictogen

[the-pnictogen-wing]

minor but interesting Undertale / Deltarune fictive thing...

...Napstablook has been one of our headmates for a while. they don’t say much, but we “lie down on the [flat surface] and feel like garbage” thing pretty frequently. there’s ten-hour loops on YouTube of the gentle chords that play over the swirly galaxy-scapes you see in the game. very useful for relaxing, or taking the sharper edges off a bad mood at least.

anyway, Napstablook introjected and we assumed loosely it was “Undertale” Blooky at first, because we’d already guessed that Mettaton was lurking somewhere. and indeed, Mettaton introjected as well, after some assurance that there was no *serious* tension between the two any more.

but then we became more clearly aware that we had Deltarune fictives as well, and that’s led to some confusion and tension over the various Asriel-Ralsei-Flowey manifestations, and we’re not happy about that state of uncertainty.

so we wondered of course if there were distinct Undertale and Deltarune versions of Napstablook.

well...we can’t speak for anyone else’s Napstablook fictive, if they’re plural and they host Napstablook.

but *our* Blooky, anyway, says that there’s no distinction. they’re the same character, and they don’t recognize the boundary between games as meaningful.

“it’s just...passing through matter,” just as if Blooky were going through a wall.

that means...Blooky, our Blooky anyway, is a bridge between two worlds that we haven’t been able to see the clear connection between. I’m not sure if Blooky can *tell* us much, but...well, that remains to be seen.

~Mx. Chara Aznable of Pnictogen

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

I managed to get our main BlueSky account booted off for incendiary political talk (the site owners and managers have been making increasingly questionable decisions with respect to fashy troublemakers arriving from Twitter) but do you know what REALLY pisses me off? Well, aside from pissing away our "social capital" thus? My last lengthy thread was about Dante's "Divine Comedy" and Charles Williams, for heaven's sake. I was quite proud of it. ~Chara

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

it's especially funny in mental juxtaposition with the "decrepit Batman villain" look that Peterson now sports. at least here he's still able to look more presentable. I also love how angry the fash propagandists get when reminded that 'morality' actually means something ~Chara

[thepnictogenwing]

I've been having a lot of irregular problems in playing "Disco Elysium", like unpredictable crashes (sometimes when attempting to save), glitches in gameplay...one time, dialogue from a completely different part of the map came up when I tried to have a conversation with Lt. Kitsuragi.

but this has been the most persistent and obvious curse: the descriptions of tasks added and completed, skill points gained, &c. at the bottom center of the screen, like you see here, have always come up with illegible, nonsensical text. it doesn't really hurt that much but it's a weird detail.

some strange "data loss" perhaps, resulting from an entroponetic anomaly.

~Chara of Pnictogen

[the-pnictogen-wing]

re-read the Edgar Allan Poe story "William Wilson", an old favorite. you'd think that—when reading this story back in grade school and early college years—our heavily dissociated, pre-transition self might have sensed a hint or two in this classic Poe story

it's about a profligate young aristocrat whose various crimes and schemes are constantly upset by the inexplicably well-timed interferences of a weak-voiced young stranger, bearing the same name, with eerily similar build and features, who even shares the same birthday and was admitted to and discharged from boarding school on the same days. Wilson first regards the stranger as a peculiar sort of "friendly enemy"—and I *think* Poe hints very obliquely that they were rumored to be lovers, but I'm not sure. the friendship doesn't last as the aristocratic Wilson sinks further into the life of a voluptuary and wastrel, and eventually there's a collision.

needless to say, Frisk and I both feel like there's just a bit that's *familiar* here. in what seems like an aeon ago, we were once RL siblings, very close and yet at odds, specially as we got older. Frisk—who isn't into weird fiction like me—hints that they sometimes regarded me rather like William Wilson regards his double: as an unwelcome reminder of conscience and "the better angels of our nature".

and you'd think our old self might have taken the hint about maybe being more than one person! sort of like how we never noticed how all our favorite story protagonists in childhood were girls.

~Chara of Pnictogen

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

oh pfft what's the problem exactly? just change the numeric base and now you have more digits! 'A' can be the highest (in base 11 arithmetic) ~Chara

did you know: i am goign to throw UPPPPPP

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

I can't hate Megalopolis. I have been trying (badly) to come up with some general take on it, and failing. Usually I am much more glib about movies. Megalopolis, whatever it is, is not a failure. I actually felt inspired at times, and delighted to see how Coppola wove the Roman vibe into the movie. Megalopolis isn't trying to be accurate to history. The film uses Roman things the same way Elon Musk uses Roman things, in bits and pieces, except that Coppola has a much better sense of style.

I expected a cinematic oddity, and I got it! And now I'm perplexed by it. What did Coppola think he was doing?

~Chara

[thepnictogenwing]

a reflection on the pointless majesty of “Riven”

some of the most beautiful and impressive structures in Riven are on the first island you land on, "Temple Island". this is the place that Gehn selected as the nerve-center for his miniature empire; it's also where he (coughs) invites the people of Riven to worship him, in a room he's got specially fitted to project a huge holographic likeness of his head.

the technology and workmanship on display, whether it's the polished work of brass and gold, or the more rustic machinery made from wood and steel, are all truly impressive...and also almost completely pointless.

Gehn built all this stuff because he's a bad mage; he blames his materials rather than his lack of skill, so he subjugates almost all Riven to help make up for his own deficiencies. the only way he can get his faulty linking-Books to work is with brute-force methods, and most of the equipment you get to handle in the game is part of the elaborate and clumsy technological superstructure required to power his work. Catherine gets one of Gehn's discarded books working on her own, with a simple slab of crystal.

I'm reminded of the peculiar fondness that certain nerds have for "steampunk"—it's fascinating in some respects to imagine pushing the technological limitations of early Industrial Revolution technology, but mostly it's terrifying. the steam era of Western civilization was one of its worst: children were dying in coal mines, and stokers were dying of black lung or choking on carbon monoxide, in order to do nothing more than boil water and drive it through machinery. something of the infernal quality of coal-fired steam machinery carries through into lore about the sinking of Titanic. she was a monstrosity in a sense, a vessel that only existed because the limitations of coal (and of the human beings forced to handle coal) were being pushed to their breaking points. somehow it's fitting that such a monument to excess wound up in pieces, at the bottom of the Atlantic.

it's not fashionable to think of technological developments in moral or ethical terms; there's a lamentable habit of pretending that there's something intrinsically pure about all scientific and engineering developments, as though the only goal to these things was disinterested accumulation of knowledge—how people can still maintain this silly fiction, at a time when almost ALL of our technical advancement is subordinate to the demands of capitalism and profit-hoarding, is beyond me. or perhaps I can see it: clinging to the "pure knowledge" illusion, even from within a profit-making enterprise, makes it easier for scientific and technical people to dissociate themselves from the earthly costs and consequences of their work.

Gehn's ultimate plan, like that of a whole heap of very-high-net-worth persons on Earth, is simply to run away from costs and consequences. it doesn't matter to him that his schemes for getting his Books working are clumsy and destructive; once he's gotten his tech working at all his plan is to warp away from Riven and let the realm crumble. he imagines he's the sole creator of the place, yet ultimately Riven is worthless to him, and he's prepared to shitcan it without a second thought.

seems kind of familiar.

~Chara of Pnictogen

[kris-and-the-pnictogens]

this is also a serious issue that such persons have with understanding peoples and regions that are constantly ravaged by war, like the regions under constant Israeli attacks: people still try to live their lives as best they can under such assaults. they try to maintain families, they try to do their jobs, all that. but superficial Americans fall so easily for right-wing propaganda that shows one picture of a smiling family in Palestine or Iran and jeer about it: "lol they don't look oppressed to me" ~Chara

the thing i think a lot of privileged people who only have ideas of "dictatorship" or "repression" from watching dystopian movies fail to understand is that in a lot of ways living your life in an Authoritarian Dictatorship is exactly the same as living your life anywhere else

[the-pnictogen-wing]

happy 10 April 2022

hello! I am Ambassador Frisk of the Pnictogen Wing, and I’d like to describe a few momentous things about this day on the Gregorian calendar that’s the standard for most of humanity.

today is Palm Sunday, in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, in which my sibling Chara has been baptized and confirmed.

today is the day when William of Occam, a Franciscan monk and philosopher who devised the concept of “Occam’s Razor” so frequently misapplied in Internet arguments, died in C.E. 1347. Christian saints’ “feast days” are traditionally celebrated on the day that a saint died, and so William of Occam, of the Franciscan holy order of the Catholic Church, is celebrated as a saint—by the Church of England.

in a similar spirit does the American offshoot of the Church of England, the Episcopal Church, celebrate the death-day of heterodox Catholic Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a controversial figure who attempted to interweave Catholic theological concepts with aspects of evolutionary science. the terms “Omega Point” and “noösphere” are due to Teilhard de Chardin.

in most of North America, civil governments have come to recognize 10 April as “Siblings Day”. it is a holiday of recent invention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siblings_Day

the British Empire initiated the destructive and rapacious colonization of North America on this day in 1606, with the granting of a royal charter to the Virginia Company of London. it is well to remember just how much of the British Empire’s depredations were carried out by proxy corporations created by a royal charter.

another colonial catastrophe occurred today in 1864: the French Emperor, Napoleon III, proclaimed Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg the “Emperor of Mexico”, the crowning moment of Napoleon III’s short-lived attempt to create a French colonial possession out of Mexico via a coup d’etat instigated by France against the Mexican President, Benito Juárez. the “Emperor of Mexico” lasted about three years until he was deposed and executed.

R. M. S. Titanic set sail on this day in 1912, on her first and last voyage.

Today marks the first dates of publication of both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the “Big Book” of the crypto-Christian alcoholism recovery movement Alcoholics Anonymous.

Today in 1970, Paul McCartney announced his breakup from The Beatles.

On this day in 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration project, comprising radio-frequency interferometric measurements from radio telescopes spanning the entire Earth, published their first achievement: successful imagine of the black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0ec7

today in 1917 marks the birthday of Robert Burns Woodward, Nobel Prize-winning organic synthetic chemist. he and his laboratory achieved the “total synthesis” of a great number of natural molecules, and he furnishes our headmate Alyx Woodward with her surname, and her chosen birthday.

and two years later, on this day in 1919, Mexican revolutionary leader and hero  Emiliano Zapata was assassinated.

the Pnictogen Wing hopes you enjoy the rest of your day.

~Ambassador Mx. Frisk of Pnictogen