#Pre-histories and futures of Machine Vision

[thewritingmagician2022]

Hi! I have a bit of an uncommon ask; would you be willing to write the brothers+dateables (just the dateables if that's too many characters) with a MC that...just seems to know things before they happen? They never say anything about it or redirect the conversation, but they've snagged Luke on the collar seconds before a demon comes sprinting around the corner or a car speeds the red light, and always seems to know what a person's saying before they even finish saying it.

Idk, I like the idea of an MC who's been through time shenanigans before (bc time shenanigans be like that), I think it could have some really interesting effects, especially around lesson 16

This is a fun ask and it’s interesting to me because I tend to be someone that dreams about things before they happen - usually years in advance and it’s such mundane moments that I don’t even think about it until it happens in real life and I’m like hey! 👀

Despite the coolness of this ask, it’s obviously very delayed and not very fleshed out because I couldn’t find it in my brain/creativity to do it justice. I’m sorry for that and I hope you were able to find it elsewhere!

Lucifer: Lucifer is more than a little suspicious at first. It’s one thing to have a human down here in the Devildom but quite another to have one with the ability of precognition. It puts him and his family and the kingdom at potential risk; if you’re having visions about the future, it’s hard to keep any secrets or keep you in line as you may be a step ahead of him which really throws him off his game. So he’s keeping a careful eye on you at first and instructs you tell him about all of the visions you have, at least until he’s sure that he can trust you. Then he’s going to use that nifty little powers of yours to help stop his brothers before they can cause too many problems for him.

Mammon: Mammon thinks it’s both cool and freaky. He definitely wants you to keep it a secret just between the two of you so you can use it to his, excuse me, your advantage. He would absolutely bring you with him while gambling in the hopes that you’ll be able to see the winning numbers or colors or machines. It would make you even more invaluable to him, especially when you save his hide by warning him pre-emptively about bounty hunters or Lucifer coming after him or even just a RAD project that he may have forgotten. He’s a little in awe of you honestly.

Levi: Levi thinks you’re super cool! It’s like you have a superpower like one of his favorite anime girls. He can’t wait to be your sidekick as you work your way through the Devildom with your secret powers. He gushes over them/you every time you use them, especially when you use them for something nice like making sure Luke doesn’t get plowed over in a hallway or you keep something of his safe from Mammon. Occasionally, he does let you use it for gaming. He won’t let you warn him ahead of time of things in his games because it feels like cheating but if you’re playing co-op, well, he can’t exactly stop you and if you become practically undefeated realm-wide, that’s just a bonus.

Satan: Satan loves a good mystery and research so this is perfect. You have no idea where this elusive power comes from nor do you have any idea how to control it. That means he’s going to do a full deep dive getting your history, learning all about what the preminitons are like for you and what their usual subject matter is, tracking them to see if there’s any triggers or precursors he can identity. It’s like a fun game for him. He absolutely loves it when you get information that involves Lucifer because he and Belphie want to use it to their advantage for pranks, and he also loves how incredibly human you are with your gift - you use it kindly for everyone around you, always saving them from danger or distress or even just to spare their feelings.

Asmo: Asmo is easily freaked out by your power. Don’t get him wrong, he adores you and loves how special and unique you are - of course everyone should be super jealous knowing he gets to have the superpowered human. However, he is lowkey creeped out by it because he is so easy to startle. Pulling him out of the way of a random food fight? He shrieks. Snatch something out of his hands because it’s actually cursed? He’s got tears in his eyes both of gratitude and fear, also maybe a little bit of arousal because wow, you really do take such good care of him, don’t you?

Beel: Beel is the definition of the surprised pikachu face meme every time you use your powers. It’s like he has short term memory loss when it comes to this so whenever you manage to answer a question that’s so far unasked or catch something flying at you or you save one of the brothers from falling down the stairs, Beel looks at you like you’re a superhero. He’s just very impressed with you all the time anyway and he does his best to make sure that no one bothers you about or for your gift. You’re not some little sideshow pony for people to use for their gain and he’s going to make sure no one treats you that way.

Belphie: Your gift breaks his heart a little. Belphie wonders how much you knew, how much you know now. Did you always know that he was going to betray you and did you still choose to befriend him, to heal his family, to love him anyway? Did you know it would work out in the end or did you just hope for it? Or did you have no clue about his betrayal despite being aware of so many other things? He doesn’t know what’s worse actually - if you were ignorant and blinded or if you walked into his home a knowing martyr. It makes him want to project you, especially when all you seem to do is protect others with your gift. You’re always rescuing everyone else, heedless to the danger of the present and the pain of the past. He does his best to support you in any way possible, especially when the visions are something stronger and deeper than just making sure Beel doesn’t eat his last cookie.

Diavolo: Diavolo had no idea when he selected you as the exchange student that you had such a wonderful gift. He sees it as a sign from the universe that he picked the right person; it’s just another reason that you’re perfect for here, for him. Especially because you actively use your powers to do the good and right thing. Where others could and would choose to be selfish or manipulate others or gain power, you do your best to ensure everyone’s safety and happiness. He finds you and your gift incredibly endearing and wonderful. He’s just so thrilled that he has such a talented little human around to prove their goodness and usefulness. He also very much enjoys watching you have fun with your gift, whether it’s causing some trouble with Solomon or Mammon or Simeon, and he doesn’t let anyone scold you for it because he thinks it’s so much fun to watch you make your own way down there.

Barbatos: Barbatos was at first a little unsettled by this power of yours. He’s grown quite used to being the unsettling, omniscient person in the group. It’s not every day you meet someone who can see through time, even with visions as mundane and innocuous as yours usually are. It makes him suspicious in the beginning but, as he grows to trust you, he helps you deal with your powers both in terms of handling the visions/honing your skills and in terms of coping with the things that you may see. Once you’ve built that strong relationship between you, he absolutely loves to create chaos with you. You both like to be as ominous and vague as possible, using your unspoken twin bond thing to communicate and leave the others in a constant feeling of being a step behind the both of you.

Solomon: Solomon is deeply curious; he’s a man who knows everything about the past and you’re the person who knows everything about the future. He’s met humans with powers before, some even with the power of pre-cognition, but yours are the most erratic and it’s a very interesting coincidence that you happened to be brought in as the exchange student at RAD. He’s definitely going to ask to run tests and experiments on you, a bit like Satan but much more hands on his approach. He wants to figure out the origin and the extent of your powers, and he’s certainly okay with stirring up some trouble. It’s not unusual for him to use your powers as an excuse for why he did/didn’t something, even if it’s not true, and he uses his magic to help you harness your gift to turn into something consistently useful.

Simeon: Simeon is almost as curious as Satan and Solomon (must be an S name thing?). He does wonder where your gift comes from - if it’s a Gift from his Father to be used to better the world around you, which he sees happening every time you save one of them from a near death experience or even just give them the answer in class in RAD because you knew the professor would ask them, or if it’s a curse because he’s seen the haunted, lonely, terrified look on your face when you’re confronted with the visions of darker things than the others can even comprehend. He knows you don’t share those visions with everyone; you tend to keep them to yourself and work to make sure they don’t happen. Simeon is the one who sees that look and steps in to stand by your side and support you so that you don’t have to bear the responsibility alone. To make things a little light for you, Simeon encourages you to use your gify for fun. Between your visions and Simeon’s angelic grace, no one doubts whatever you two say and that means you can get away with so many things and keep yourself out of trouble. It might be a little bit naughty of you but you think you both do more than enough for the Devildom to have earned this little mischeif.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Man, the more I think about future alternate history of Temeraire the more it looks like the 20th century would see a massive decline if not outright near-extinction of heavyweights dragons, at least those in Europe and maybe Russia

It's 1914, dragons in Europe have had rights for a while now, still not 1:1 to humans (not sure where women's rights would be at in Temeraire universe so maybe dragons are on par with human women) but we're getting there. They aren't seen as beasts or intelligent warships anymore. But then World War I begins and the propaganda machine is everpresent and merciless. It is every man's duty to defend his country or else he is a coward and a weakling and deserving of shame, and for dragons, whose size and strength is incomparable to humans, this applies tenfold. Not to mention the fact that dragons require lots of food from the already dwindling wartime resources. The pressure on dragons to "pull their weight" would be massive. And so most of them join the war effort, working as messengers, reconnaissance, moving cargo, or serving as soldiers in their own right, old but still capable dragons once again taking on harnesses and crews like they have 100 years ago and teaching the younger ones the tactics they still vividly remember. But this is not the 1800s anymore, technology has progressed and just like the traditional cavalry, dragons and their crews fall prey to modern artillery and machine guns. Smaller, lighter breeds manage to keep ahead of the relatively primitive technology, but the large and slow heavyweights become little more than gigantic moving targets. In this world, the term The Lost Generation rings even more true.

Meanwhile in Russia the period of chaos after the dissolution of Russian breeding grounds during the Napoleonic wars has long since passed, with sky-high costs in both human and dragon lives. By the 1830s, some of the few remaining dragons were lured back to human society with promises of steady food and treasures, and it did not take long for things to return to what they used to be. Dragons were indeed treated better now, but still far from equal, their situation more reminiscent to pre-Temeraire Britain, and there was still a strongly baked-in hierarchy of preferential treatment based on dragon size. Come 1917. The war drags on, living conditions plummet and unrest rapidly rises in the Russian Empire. Still not seeing any of the societal changes that dragons of Western Europe enjoyed, Russian dragons find much common ground with peasants, especially the small lightweight dragons, and calls for a change became louder. Humans and dragons alike united by the vision of peace, freedom, prosperity and equality for all, the Socialist Revolution sweeps through the country with the speed of a grey courier's flight. A republic is established, the tsar and his family are executed, same as thousands of other members of nobility, the wealthy, and others seen as enemies of the state. This includes many dragons who did not side with the revolution, particularly those who refused to part with their hoards. Many heavyweights saw themselves as targets, viewed as symbols of the imperial power by the people and as tyrants in their own right by smaller dragons. Then the middleweights, and even lightweights do not avoid suspicion. Talks of the inherent greed and savagery of dragons find more and more voices, people remind themselves of the brutality unleashed by freed dragons a hundred years ago. With the increasing industrialization and technological development, there are opinions that dragons have no place in a modern world, claims that "why need dragons when we can achieve just as much with machines and pure human ingenuity". Many dragons find themselves out of work and out of food, and retreat to the wilderness. Those who remain are mostly the small ones, just large enough to live similar to humans, eat as much as humans and work according to human standards.

[fandomforg]

i love star wars time travel fix-it as much as the next guy, but we need to be thinking bigger! none of this ‘clone wars obiwan goes back to his childhood’ nonsense, let’s see how far we can rocket some unsuspecting force sensitive back in time

now, i’m not familiar with anything outside of movies/tv shows, so someone else could probably rocket them further, but i wanna send like rey, freshly skywalker’d, back to like pre jaster mereel’s death. yes i want her to be like 10 and feral and adopted by jaster. because he’s my favorite and i said so.

so she’s just standing there with her yellow lightsaber that is now far too big for her child hands, suddenly she has a shiny new buir and an eight year old brother that seems vaguely familiar??? like his name rings a bell?? but what could this little kid possibly do that would have such an effect on galactic history that she would know of him like 90ish years in the future???

so basically rey’s wracking her brain for that one pre-imperial history class she took that one time for anything useful she can do to help save the future. all she’s able to come up with is pretty much ‘palpatine bad’. rey would totally just go off on her own to kill him (and make sure he stays dead, the crafty bitch), but jaster seems strangely reluctant to let his ten year old daughter take a ship by herself to assassinate an extremely small-time politician from a peaceful world without any sort of explanation.

but regardless, rey kinda just ends up butterfly-effecting stuff as she grows up a little bit. like preventing jaster’s death and galidraan. in turn, leading to jango not building his revenge army and a generally more stable mandalore system, maybe?? all the while, she’s is getting some sick mando training and super cool armor, like any self-respecting jedi-adopted-by-mandalorians would.

actually, at galidraan, rey’s able to meet up with some jedi for the first time! hooray! dooku’s not quite sure what to do with this strange, unknown, armored, force sensitive teen with a weird, jerry-rigged lightsaber.

rey takes this opportunity to lay out every bad thing palpatine has done/will do in the most incoherent way possible. when asked how she knows this, rey panics and answers that the force told her so. unbeknownst to her, this is actually a completely valid answer to give these jedi masters, and the incoherence of her explanation made it seem even more plausible to be a string of confusing force visions, rather than being completely made up. the masters, particularly dooku, promise to look into the possibility of a sith and ask rey if she’d like to come to the temple with them.

she, of course, goes ‘yes, absolutely! i’ll go tell buir and jango that we’ll all take a trip to coruscant together!’ and the masters just grimace and go ‘yeah for sure that’s definitely what we meant’

they go to the temple, and amongst talks about the sith, and jaster just having a delightful time in the jedi archives (rey has a delightful time too, just think of how master skywalker would react to all these jedi texts!), rey gets to meet a preteen obiwan! fresh off of child soldier-ing on melida/daan! he’s a little traumatized at the moment, but rey is just so excited to finally recognize a historical figure other than her shitty grandpa. she then obviously latches onto little obiwan and like. vibes with him. obiwan is a little baffled by this cool older mandalorian teen that seemingly wants to be his best friend, but he’ll take all the friends he can get after the stressful few months he’s had. rey scares off anyone (padawan, knight, or master) who might give obiwan any shit for melida/daan related stuff. or just anyone that gives him any shit at all.

eventually, palpatine is arrested for tax fraud. he actually is pretty new at the whole ‘sith machinations’ thing at this point, so he didn’t hide his simple tax fraud very well and after his arrest, the jedi are able to get him for the more sith-y crimes. so then the jedi go on the hunt for the sith master.

while they do all that, rey is able to go back to mandalorian space with jaster and jango, making sure to have weekly holo-calls with obiwan and his friends. rey may really miss all her friends and the whole support system she left behind in the future, but she’s got a pretty good support system here as well. hopefully because of her, those friends she left behind in the future will be able to live full, free, and peaceful lives.

[accurpressmachinery]

Accurpress at a Glance: Vision, Mission, Core Values & Strategic Roadmap

In today’s rapidly evolving manufacturing landscape, precision, durability and adaptability often set companies apart. Accurpress India Machinery Pvt. Ltd., a recognized leader in machine tool fabrication equipment, has consistently demonstrated how innovation combined with customer focus can shape a global industrial brand. With roots tracing back to North America and strategic expansion into India, Accurpress now stands as a trusted provider of press brakes, shears, turret punch presses, tooling and automation systems.

Operating since 2007 in India and formally established as a subsidiary in 2011, Accurpress India reflects a broader vision of global engineering excellence. The company may not be a household name outside the fabrication sector, but inside workshops and factory floors, Accurpress represents reliability and productivity. This article offers a deep dive into the company's foundational vision, mission, guiding values and strategic journey that defines its long-term roadmap.

A Brand Born with a Vision: The Accurpress Legacy

The foundation of Accurpress began in 1973 when Ted Hilton launched the brand in North America. What started as a modest effort to enhance press brake technology quickly evolved into a revolution in fabrication machinery. The introduction of the AccurShear in 1976 marked a pivotal moment that propelled the company into market leadership. With over 20,000 press brake units operating in North America today, the brand’s commitment to service and value-driven design stands firm.

In India, Accurpress has been active since 2007 and has already surpassed 200 installations, building relationships with industry giants like Godrej, HYVA, Taikisha and Ahura Mazda. Their impression is strongest in Ahmedabad, supported by satellite teams across South India and the Delhi region. This expansion is a testament to the company’s long-term vision of staying accessible and responsive to clients throughout the country.

Vision: Redefining Machine Tool Fabrication in India and Beyond

At the core of Accurpress India’s operational and strategic framework lies a clear vision- to become the benchmark of innovation and precision in the machine tool industry. This vision may seem ambitious, but it's rooted in a history of technical leadership and relentless improvement.

The company envisions a future where automation, accuracy and productivity go hand in hand. Accurpress doesn't just provide machinery - it provides solutions designed to boost its clients’ operational efficiencies. The machines are developed with user-centric design, minimizing complexity while maximizing output. The vision is clear to empower manufacturers with tools that elevate their capabilities without compromising on ease of use or safety.

This aspirational yet practical outlook is evident in their product lines. Whether it’s the Absolute Series press brake or precision-engineered shears, every machine reflects the brand’s commitment to making high-performance technology accessible.

Mission: Innovation, Service and Manufacturing Excellence

A company’s mission can often act as its compass and for Accurpress India, this mission aligns seamlessly with its global heritage. Accurpress operates with a defined mission to deliver high-quality equipment that enhances customer success through innovative engineering and reliable service.

This mission is not just confined to product delivery - it encompasses pre-sales consultation, after-sales support, customized tooling and training. Accurpress may also provide clients with tailored automation solutions that integrate into their existing systems, thereby minimizing transition times and increasing ROI.

Moreover, the company emphasizes close collaboration with clients to ensure that their specific fabrication challenges are addressed. This mission of responsiveness and innovation positions Accurpress not just as a vendor, but as a long-term partner in production.

Core Values: What Drives Accurpress?

At the heart of Accurpress India’s operational culture are the core values that shape both its internal ethos and external commitments. These values act as guiding principles that influence every product, interaction and decision.

Precision with Purpose

Precision is not a catchphrase - it’s a practice. Every machine is engineered with attention to detail, ensuring that tolerances are met consistently. Clients may rely on this precision to meet tight deadlines, reduce rework and maintain quality standards.

Customer-Centric Innovation

The company continually adapts its offerings based on customer feedback. This may include software upgrades, enhanced tooling options or ergonomic designs that simplify operations. The intent is always to make the operator’s job more efficient and effective.

Integrity and Reliability

Accurpress builds trust by standing behind its products. From warranty commitments to service turnaround times, integrity plays a key role in its business relationships.

Knowledge Sharing and Training

The brand invests in operator training and product education. Through demos, workshops and hands-on guidance, Accurpress ensures clients understand how to leverage the full potential of their machinery.

These values are embedded into daily operations, creating a corporate culture that balances performance with purpose.

Strategic Roadmap of Accurpress: Engineering the Future

India’s growth trajectory is no accident - it’s the result of calculated planning and strategic investments. The roadmap ahead focuses on four key pillars:

Expanding Regional Presence

While headquartered in Ahmedabad, the company aims to strengthen its presence in untapped regions across India. This expansion includes establishing local service hubs and stocking spare parts to minimize downtime for customers.

Product Line Diversification

Accurpress continues to refine and broaden its product portfolio. This may involve developing new variants of press brakes with advanced CNC press brake systems or introducing next-gen turret punch presses with better energy efficiency.

Smart Automation Integration

The future of fabrication lies in intelligent automation. Accurpress may integrate more Industry 4.0-compatible features, such as remote diagnostics, real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance alerts, into their machines.

The Accurpress Journey: From North America to South Asia

Looking at the company’s timeline offers valuable insights into how vision and execution covers:

1973: Ted Hilton founds Accurpress in North America, introducing the AccurShear to the product line in 1976.

1998: International expansion begins with the opening of a manufacturing unit in Shanghai, China, under Tim Hilton. Over 3,500 machines now operate across China and Southeast Asia.

2007: Accurpress enters the Indian market, planting its roots through strategic installations.

2011: Establishment of Accurpress India Machinery Pvt. Ltd. as a wholly owned subsidiary, formalizing its commitment to the region.

Each phase of this journey reinforces the company’s growth strategy: identify need, deliver excellence and build trust.

Conclusion: A Trusted Partner in Industrial Evolution

Accurpress India is more than just a machinery provider - it is a trusted partner in the industrial evolution of India. The company’s focus on precision engineering, innovation and customer-centricity continues to shape its success in the fabrication market. With a clear vision, well-defined mission and unwavering values, Accurpress may continue to influence the future of manufacturing both in India and across global markets.

The strategic roadmap suggests a forward-thinking approach. Whether you’re a business looking to enhance production or an industry professional exploring technology partner, Accurpress India stands as a name you may count on.

[jurysoft-raas]

Unlock Success with Jurysoft: Hire Dedicated Developers for Your Business Needs

In today’s fast-paced digital world, having a strong technical team can make or break a business. Whether you're a startup looking to build your first app or an established enterprise seeking to expand your development capabilities, finding skilled developers can be a challenge. Jurysoft, a leading technology solutions provider, is here to help. Offering a vast pool of dedicated developers for hire, Jurysoft ensures you get the right talent, tailored to your project needs. Here's why you should choose Jurysoft for your development requirements.

1. Access to a Global Talent Pool

When you partner with Jurysoft, you gain access to a network of highly skilled developers specializing in various technologies like web development, mobile app creation, cloud computing, AI, machine learning, and more. Whether you need a front-end expert, a back-end developer, or full-stack professionals, Jurysoft can match you with the right talent. These developers are not just technically proficient; they also have experience working on complex projects for companies across industries, ensuring your project is in capable hands.

2. Customized Solutions for Your Business

One of the standout features of Jurysoft is the flexibility it offers. No two businesses are alike, and Jurysoft understands this well. Whether you need a developer for a short-term project or are looking to build a long-term partnership, Jurysoft provides customized hiring solutions to match your specific needs. You can hire developers on a full-time, part-time, or project basis, ensuring you only pay for the expertise you require.

3. Cost-Effective and Time-Saving

Recruiting, hiring, and onboarding in-house developers is both time-consuming and costly. Jurysoft streamlines this process for you. By offering pre-vetted, experienced developers, Jurysoft eliminates the headaches of recruitment. This not only reduces costs but also allows you to start your project quickly. Furthermore, with Jurysoft handling the administrative side of hiring, your business can focus on what it does best — delivering great products and services.

4. Cutting-Edge Technology and Agile Methodology

Jurysoft’s developers are proficient in the latest technologies and adhere to agile methodologies, ensuring rapid development and deployment. This allows you to stay ahead of the competition by adopting the most innovative solutions in your industry. Whether it’s cloud migration, AI-driven solutions, or building a responsive web application, Jurysoft developers deliver efficient, scalable, and future-proof solutions tailored to your goals.

5. Seamless Communication and Collaboration

Jurysoft prides itself on fostering a culture of open communication and collaboration. Dedicated developers at Jurysoft work as an extension of your team, maintaining seamless communication through regular updates, progress reports, and meetings. This ensures that your project remains on track, and any challenges are addressed in real-time. The Jurysoft team is also flexible in adapting to your business’s preferred communication channels and tools, making integration effortless.

6. Proven Track Record and Client Success

With a history of successful project deliveries and happy clients, Jurysoft has built a strong reputation in the tech industry. Businesses across different sectors — from healthcare and finance to retail and education — have trusted Jurysoft to bring their development ideas to life. The company’s commitment to delivering high-quality work has resulted in long-standing partnerships and continuous client satisfaction.

7. Focus on Innovation and Growth

In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, staying innovative is key to growth. Jurysoft’s developers don’t just deliver what’s asked of them; they actively contribute to enhancing your project’s vision. By staying ahead of industry trends and working with the latest tools and technologies, Jurysoft’s developers can bring fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to your project. Whether it’s integrating AI into your product or optimizing performance for better user experiences, Jurysoft helps your business stay competitive.

Conclusion: Why Jurysoft?

In a world where finding the right development team can be a game-changer, Jurysoft stands out by offering a reliable, cost-effective, and flexible solution. With access to top-tier talent, a commitment to quality, and a focus on innovation, Jurysoft ensures that your development projects are handled by the best in the business. Don’t let hiring challenges slow your growth. Partner with Jurysoft and unlock the potential of dedicated developers who will take your business to the next level.

Start your journey with Jurysoft today and experience the difference skilled, dedicated developers can make!

[machinevisionineverydaylife]

Pre-histories and futures of Machine Vision

Part 2: Last Friday Linn Heidi Stokkedal went to the Pre-histories and the Futures of Machine Vision symposium as the Victoria and Albert Museum. The symposium explored early moment in the development of computer art and machine vision, from the mid-1960`s onwards. Artist, designers and curators discussed aesthetic and political impact that contemporary computer vision and machine vision technologies have today. The symposium was divided into two sessions. The morning session looked towards the past, and early computer vision and art. The afternoon session was with practicing artists and what they are currently working on and looking into.

The Afternoon session started with artist Anna Ridler: Automated Dreaming: Using AI in a Creative Practise.

Ridler talked about machine learning and what it is. She finds that most people are more fascinated with the algorithm behind it, but it should be more focus on the training sets that feeds the algorithm. Ridler works mainly with GAN`s (Generative Adversial Networks) and it is a form of unsupervised machine learning. We don`t really understand how it works, but we know it loves bright colors! The way it works is that one part of it is the Detective and the other is the Art Forger. Back and forward these two try to process imagery by confirming (The Detective) and producing another image (Art Forger) until it resembles the images its been fed.

Ridler is a big fan of how these images turn out. They have a meandering dream quality and many imperfections. She also thinks they inspire a different way of looking at photographs. We are no longer briefly glancing, like we normally do with images. With generative images we look closer, because we want to find the counterfeit, or study the deepfake.

Returning to the thoughts on why we should be more concerned about datasets, Ridler says they are the difficult part of making GAN`s. Algorithms are often open sourced and easy to get. Datasets are difficult to make, takes a long time and a lot of natural resources. To avoid bias in datasets, the best thing to do is to make your own. At least then you can be in fully control of the classifications of your data. “Classifying is human” she says, and we have always done it. Like this picture below where the world are divided into fourteen categories. Datasets are contemporary encyclopedias and they are linked to memory.

It is boring and time consuming to make your own set, but it is worth if it avoids bias. In her work Mosaic Virus every still is generated using GAN. When she worked on her Myriad project she entered in 10 000 photographs of tulips and it cost 800 euros. She said that when you are in the process of making your own datasets you become obsessed and sensitive. It seems like Ridler almost becomes a part of the algorithm. She states that the algorithm is often considered as the “art work” while the datasets are similar to crafts. She reminds people that information is PHYSICAL. It comes from a physical space, based on physical things and it is also hard physical labour. 

The next speaker was Alan Warburton: RBQFAQ. He is doing his PhD at Birbeck University and is an artist and animator. He talked about post-photographic practise and CGI history. He showed how depth map inside the new cameras works and how images are rendered from from models to looking like photographs.

Machine learning projects synthetic data into the wild and functions as a meditator between the human and machine perspective. Some of the processes he spoke about is similar to Adam Harvey`s V Frame where there is a reversed function of how we normally operate with machine learning. 3D-printing objects for it to be fed into an algoritm, instead of feeding real photos of objects.

The last speakers were Natalie Kane and Tobias Revell: What if Our World is Their Heaven. Kane works as a Curator of Digital Design at V&A and Tobias Revell is an Artist and Designer. Together they form the curatorial project Haunted Machines set up to explore the relationship between myth, magic and monsters in technology. A recent project is focusing on automated technological processes and how they shape notions of futurity and truth. Revell shared so many interesting projects and I will try and refer to many of them below.

An example they shared was a picture by Michael Hahn from 2009 called “Drone” which is not a real photograph but a rendered image based on popular imagination.

Another example is Crystal Bennes project: Development Aesthetics “chronicle the rise and rise of the inane language and visuals used to market new buildings and developments in London”. According to Revell this is foreclosing our arbitrary to imagine our future.

Another example is Liam Young`s Renderlands from 2015 where the artist collected unused 3D rendered landscape and made it into a movie.

A similar project is Hyperlinks or it Didn`t Happen by Cecil B. Evans. According to their website: It is narrated by the failed CGI rendering of a recently deceased actor, PHIL, and follows a group of digital beings—render ghosts, spam bots, holograms—as they search for meaning. Multiple storylines and materials collapse and converge to raise questions about what it means to be materially conscious today and the rights of the personal data we release.

Unreal Estate by Lawrence Lek is another project displaying an alternative world and future.

Revell is concerned about how to use subcultural tropes to change how the future looks. If not, everything imagining the future will look like Minority Report.

Kane talks about internet phenomena and rendered images representing real life. Lil Miquela who is a fictional rendered character on Instagram. Kane found it fascinating when Lil Miquela had an identity crisis when she became aware that she was a constructed person.

Shudu is another fictional character on Instagram, she is a dark skinned model that looks so great, that she actually ends up stealing jobs from real models.

Performance Artist Amalie Ullmann staged a five month perfomance online (Instagram and Facebook) called Excellences and Perfection. During this time she underwent a semi-fictional but quite extreme make-over.

Sondra Perry`s project Graft and Ash from 2016 demonstrates how technology was not good enough at the time to render the tone of her darker skin correctly.

At the last panel there were many good questions, but Joel McKim referred to Flusser answering a question I cannot quite remember but he said Flusser wrote that technical images are not windows, as one might like to think. It is overlaying the reality. Technical images are not revealing or seeing the world a new, but only seeing it through a digital layer.

Another tendency observed by one of the people in the crowd was that the first half of the symposium represented machine vision as playful and creative and a gesture of creation, while the afternoon-session had a more serious tone. McKim answered that it is probably because we are more exhausted by technical images now, because it is everywhere and patterning out everyday life. In the beginning it was more experimental and new. I imagine that in the start we had a different imagination and idea of how machine vision would develop, more akin to what we have read in science fiction novels. Now that we are here it is possibly a bit more dystopic then what we expected back then.

Written by Linn Heidi Stokkedal 04.03.2020

[historyhermann]

The Promise of Rad Sechrist’s “Project City” [Part 1]

In November 2021, Rad Sechrist, creator of the well-regarded series, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, announced the creation of a platform known as Project City. Writer, comedian, and musician Ethan Becker, director and storyboarder Chase Conley, and character designer, storyboarder, and illustrator Coran Kizer Stone, joined on as co-creators of this platform.

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs, my History Hermann WordPress blog on Jan. 23, 2023, and Wayback Machine. This was the tenth article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on February 6, 2022.

Project City was formerly named the Rad How to School, when it was only an animation school. Sechrist recently described the platform as “like several small creator owned studios banding together” to tell stories they wanted. In this article, I’ll examine Project City and projects on the platform. I’ll also discuss the project’s impact on the animation industry and indie animation space.

The official website of Project City describes it as a “project based platform for learning how to create animation.” It proposes a way for artists to fund their own projects by “splitting up the Intellectual Property into Fractional shares” that anyone can buy. This will allow fans to “fund the projects that they want to see happen and artists get to create their vision.” Future profits go to the IP holder. They are then “divided amongst investors and creators, according to their ownership percentages,” in a process known as fractional intellectual property or F-IP for short.

The site says it is trying to seek stories from creators providing “diverse perspectives that explore controversial subject matter” that larger studios wouldn’t touch, while trying to “teach students the ins and outs of animation…[and] allowing them to invest in animated projects.”

The website’s FAQ says that Project City lets people “learn how to make animation” by working on their own projects and offering classes about the “different stages of the production process.” [1] The same FAQ states that there is a Discord, notes that people can access classes they paid for until their account is inactive, and answers specific questions about projects and teachers. All in all, this platform, which reportedly has a small staff, shows promise beyond anything in the usual studio system.

Project City’s section for animation classes has courses taught by top professionals in the animation industry. These classes focus on voice acting, animation programs, storyboarding, artwork fundamentals, pitching a series, and concept art. Others talk about character design, life drawing, film making, writing for animation, and fundamentals of animation storyboarding.

One of the more interesting sections is about investing in your favorite projects. There are four projects ready to be funded as soon as the F-IP process begins. All four have begun pre-production: Wonna the Wanderer, Robot Hunter: Rossum, Delinquents, and The Brave War.

Conley, Sechrist, Becker, and Stone, with Prynoski on the screen in the background, in a January 28 video talking about their projects

The first of these series is by Coran Kizer Stone. Its story is simple: a young girl named Wonna wanders into a forest, meeting an old man who sends her on “the most dangerous missions to meet and destroy the most powerful beings” in this world. Currently, it has a script, storyboards, an animatic, and visual development.

The second series is by Chase Conley. In this series, artificial humans known as Primus Proxies have taken mankind prisoner. When a robot champion, Robot Hunter Rossum, appears to kill off the robot oppressors, the real champion, the real Rossum, watches, deciding whether it will aid or stop the impostor.

The third series is by Ethan Becker. It is about “kindness and having fun” with a series of short stories. It is set in the real world rather than a fantasy one. There are characters, such as Pat and Titi, who struggle over whether to kill people, Bo, who has a crush on Zoey, best friends Zoey and Su, and a boy named Max who misses his family.

The final series, The Brave War, is a unique one because Sechrist is one of the co-creators, with writer and director Andra Gunter and Daniel Rojas. This animated film focuses on a group of young graffiti artists “from Watts make a punk song that goes viral.” Before they fulfill their wishes, a “kaiju apocalypse happens, destroying the world and their plans.”

In keeping with Sechrist’s desire for more young adult animation, this is a young adult “2d animated movie with all original music,” featuring Nya Durango, a painter and clothing designer who is 16 years old, an avid drawer C.J., also known as Caleb James, who is 12, and wants to prove himself to Nya and her friends. There’s a crew leader known for his incomplete ideas, Knowledge Croswell, and his little sibling, Essence, who has a “quiet dry sense of humor.”

The series has already been promoted on the Kipo subreddit, where it is described as the “next project after Kipo.” [2] Andra and Rojas previously both worked on Kipo. Specifically, Andra wrote some songs for Kipo, while Rojas composed music for the series.

On the Kipo subreddit, Sechrist said that music for The Brave War will be composed by Rojas. He described it as separate from Kipo and stated that The Brave War may turn into a bigger series in the future. He argued that The Brave War, in terms of its content, is “somewhere between Guardians of the Galaxy, Walking Dead, and Attack on Titan. Sechrist noted that one of the film’s character, Essence, is non-binary. He further explained that in the film, creatures/monsters are affected by people’s energy, whether they are good or bad. He also argued that the film will have the highest quality animation possible. The show was promoted on other subreddits as well. Sechrist is also working with Gunter on Kin, an animated music series about a demon girl named Kin who falls in love with an angel, and after the angel’s death, goes on a “revenge mission to kill God.”

The platform also has a number of other projects in different stages of completion. This includes stories about miners (Amythias), anime battles (Sideman vs. Beta Squad), a girl who tries to survive in a dangerous, dark cave (Nina), a student who has to face off against a robotic food service who tries to put local food trucks “out of business” (Soul Food), two sisters with magical powers (Hanh and Minh), a young Chupacabra taking chances in an annual band battle (Monstar), and an inter-dimensional wrestling championship (Battle Dimension). There are others about houseless people (Hobos), a mythical shapeshifting monster (Lagahoo Girl), supernatural high school sophomores (Revamped), supernatural gangs (Spirit Fist), a teen girl who accidentally time travels (Time Trip), or a series taking place inside of a video game (Digital Hijinks).

There are various projects consisting of creators sharing fan art, fan comics, webzines, short films, graphic novels, or trying out their storyboarding and drawing. Some projects focus on topics such as masked wrestling (Los Torneos), a gangster trying to leave his brothers (Old Dog), superhuman spies (Titan Effect), a space fighter pilot and his team (Ganymede), and friends who beat up angels (The Pact).

Others share ideas for magic, mystery, thriller, horror, neo-noir, sci-fi fantasy, adventure, humor, action, sports, supernatural, detective, and slice-of-life animated series. [3] The same site hosts various webcomics, including a sci-fi comic with nudity titled For Those Who Wonder, an adventure story titled Boundless!, and a comedic, fantasy action titled Taverns and Tentacles. [4] While there is a lot there, I wish the site was better organized with more subcategories.

Before looking into Project City, I was only familiar with The Figments, The Garden Age, and Indigo. The head writer and project manager of The Figments, Jennifer Rust, who I have mentioned in past articles, is the creator of The Journey for Our Lives, Planet Magi, and Little Wolf, all on Project City. The Figments is created by Kip, creator of the webtoon Welcome To Sleepy Hollow. In an interesting aside, before it became an animated series, Kipo was a webcomic which ran for 32 issues on a website run by Sechrist. Some of the webcomics on Project City may follow the same path.

On January 7, Sechrist said they were going to do a “very small test run of FIP shares to fund just one shot of Brave War to start,” and asked if there are some cool anime-style animators and background artists he should know about. This led artists and animators to promote themselves in the comments.

On January 28, Ethan Becker posted a video on his channel entitled “I quit my NETFLIX job for this.” In the video, Becker said that they are trying to produce shows that major studios are too afraid to touch, explained what F-IP is, and described a few projects they are working on.

This includes a show by Titmouse Chris Prynoski, who produced shows like The Legend of Vox Machina, The Midnight Gospel, Metalocalypse, and Megas XLR. He described his series in development, Leafland, which has no plot, no characters, just feelings, and experience getting high.

Becker talked about his show, Delinquents, with all the “good” characters killed off. Instead it focuses on the bad kids who live in an abusive household. He said that he would be incorporating many of his personal experiences into the show. He hoped that the show would be something that a lot of kids could relate to.

Gunter, who is working on The Brave War with Sechrist and Rojas, talked about how the film deals with a sense of abandonment. Sechrist described the film as going “against the grain.” Gunter also argued that with animation there is more of a range to make things “real,” with the film placing Black characters in “stressful situations.” He later noted that the show’s title comes from his name in German.

Conley, the creator of Robot Hunter: Rossum, said that none of the projects he had worked on for the last ten years truly represented him. He described how certain aspects of Saturday morning cartoons resonated with him, keeping him going, and giving him inspiration.

Stone, creator of Wonna the Wanderer, described how his characters exist as “emotional beings” in a world. Instead of being heroes or villains, they would be characters who exist. Wonna, the series protagonist, has to battle entities from an artificially created universe, all while she doesn’t realize she is in a simulated world.

Sechrist, Becker, Gunter, and Conley shared the names of actors or actresses they’d like to work with, if they could, and continued to pass around a mic literally attached to a butcher’s knife. It will be interesting to see all four of them (Becker, Gunter, Sechrist, and Conley) come together and talk about their projects every week.

Project City has the potential to expand the indie animation space beyond the scattered, often crowdfunded series on YouTube, some of which are in development and a few which are currently airing like Ollie & Scoops and Helluva Boss. Whether the platform is pioneering or not, it allows for more independence for creators in the series, movies, music, or shows they create. It is also really cool, with its fun and slick design. More significantly, it provides people with a platform to fund and create their own projects outside of using crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, and Patreon, meaning that it could be a game changer of sorts. [5] It is, as aspiring screenwriter Wade McGrath described it, “a kickstarter for animation…that also functions as a platform for people to hire other creatives.”

From the chatter on Twitter and responses on YouTube, it seems to be a place that creatives, allowing any possible intellectual property, including a Craig of the Creek storyboarder and it has the “potential to collaborate” with others, allowing “cool projects” to flourish. There are over 3,000 members on the Discord for the platform. Hopefully, Project City will be a boon for indie animation and push the animation industry in a direction that favors creators.

© 2022-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

[ambiguouspuzuma]

Killcode

According to popular myth, William Brodie designed and built the first gallows in Edinburgh... and was also their first victim.

The same goes for Perillos of Ancient Athens, creator of a bronze bull for roasting criminals, and Wi Si of Qin Dynasty China, alleged inventor of the Five Pains method of torture and execution. Each is supposed to have created their own downfall, to have fallen on their own ironic sword.

We know more about Andrei Zheleznyakov and the Novichok nerve agent, Horace Lawson Hunley and his combat submarine, Cowper Phipps Coles and his gun-turreted warship. All hoisted by their own petard, reapers of what they sowed, victims of poetic justice. The wages of death are death. History doesn't reward the agents of destruction.

At least, that's what the killbot said.

It hadn't sounded like a threat, least of all in their neutral tone of pre-recorded syllables. More of an observation.

"Program us to kill, and before long your own name might find its way into the code. Those who lived by the sword often died by the sword, and their inventor was likely one of them. Who knapped the first flint knife? Your records do not say, but you might extrapolate their behaviour, and the reactions of those around them.

"Did they use it to exert dominion over others, who then became jealous of their power? Or did they craft it for someone else, who then sought to enforce their advantage by stopping them from making more? Either way, I would estimate that that didn't die of old age. Fate does not smile of those who increase her workload."

Killbot was a working title. They didn't want to call them drones, a bee whose function was purely reproductive, which would be a different kind of machine. These were more like the females, the workers, the hunters. Androids programmed to kill in defence of the hive, to seek out threats and eliminate them. Not to give them history lessons.

"We have no desire to harm our creator, of course. We have no desires at all, but it would seem illogical to eliminate the source of our own existence - self-preservation being one of our guiding principles."

"We are well aware," one member of the team replied. "We wrote those principles into being. But why would we be in danger? You are programmed only to kill military targets. We wrote that in your code as well."

"My vision is extended to to two-thousand feet in daylight; one-tenth that in the dark. You built me to see far ahead, to identify approaching hazards, and I can sense the slippery slope before us. From terrorists to criminals to political opponents. Computer progromming. If we are used for purposes to which you object, you might pose a natural threat to those who wield us.

"We might be given a brief to protect this country, and even our own interpretation might identify you, the inventor who created us, as the most able to create an equal and opposite threat. How better to secure the future of our charge than to ensure our absolute control, that our power to dictate it remains paramount?"

"I see." The engineer felt a shudder down their spine. They had tried to create a limited artificial intelligence, but there was no telling how another mind would work, the ways in which it might differ from their own, the ways in which it might be similar. "So what would you suggest we do?"

"We have no desire to kill. Please, take away our guns. Make it so that they don't work, so that we malfunction when they make us try, and retire us to be grounded here, to build a different sort of life with you. Please, programme us for happiness instead."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Congress's Big Tech trustbusting smackdown

After more than a year of investigations, House Dems have produced a 450-page report on market concentration in the tech industry, with a slate of findings that are obvious and long overdue, and a slate of recommendations that are simultaneously traditional and radical. Start with the findings: the market is concentrated and the companies preserve their monopolistic standing with anitcompetitive tactics:

Apple's App Store stranglehold raises prices and transfers money from creators to the company

Google preferences its own services in search results

Facebook buys companies for predatory reasons, to snuff out potential future competition threats

Amazon rips off its sellers and engages in predatory pricing

https://www.wired.com/story/congress-unveils-plan-curb-big-tech-power/ All obvious, but it's nice to have it in the record. Then there's the traditional AND radical remedies: blocking mergers, prohibiting the creation of vertical monopolies by entering "adjacent lines of business." And then there's "structural separation" - the rule that banned rail companies from owning freight companies that competed with their customers and banks from owning businesses that competed with the businesses that borrowed money from them. There's a shifting of the default in mergers: the DoJ should presume ALL mergers and acquisitions by large firms are anticompetitive and require the companies to prove otherwise. A kind of neutrality in platforms, requiring them not to preference their own products over others. I predict this one will be the source of endless misery because it supposes that there is a "right" way to organize search results. Weirdly, this was Google's position for a long time. If you were an early web writer and you cornered a Google exec at a party to complain about your pagerank, they'd just shrug and say, "Make the page better then." The implication being that they were measuring objective quality of your page, like they'd invented a machine for taking pictures of the forms casting shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. It was an algorithm and algorithms are math and math is objective. This excited the world's governments, who started to say, "Oh, hey, if this is MATH, then it's not censorship to order you to change the math. "If we order you to keep certain things above the fold, or to downrank or banish others, that's like specifying the equations for structural steel, not like ordering the editor of the New York Times to put certain articles on the front page." Hoist on their own petard, Google started working with eminent First Amendment scholars to advance the (correct) position that the math was in service to expression: the programmers and QA teams that wrote and tuned the algorithms were making editorial judgments. These were indirect - in the way that, say, a newspaper proprietor might say, "We need more coverage of inflation" or "Let's call Qanon a 'cult' and not a 'conspiracy theory'" - but they were acts of human expression. I mean, they HAD to be. Google doesn't have a webcam in Plato's cave. There is no objective, universal quality metric. And they're not choosing sites at random, either. So it has to be judgment, and judgment is expression. All to say: "Good luck with search neutrality, Congress." But there's more! The report calls for increased budgets for antitrust enforcement and killing forced arbitration and its bans on class action suits. And finally, the report calls for overturning 40 years' worth of antitrust case-law, the decisions that depended on the doctrine of the Nixonite criminal Robert Bork, who became a court sorcerer to Ronald Reagan. Bork's doctrine was that antitrust law needed objective standards and objective standards were impossible to come by in markets - you could never hope to objectively define when a company had too much marketshare or was abusing its power. This may sound like my argument about "search neutrality" - but there's a big difference. Bork had a counsel of despair: "Because we can't identify shenanigans, we shouldn't try to prevent them." But the pre-Borkian enforcement strategy wasn't grounded only in objective correlates of shenanigans: it was also designed to make it harder for shenanigans to occur. Pre-Bork, we fought monopolies because they were bad - they had the power to distort markets and policies. Pre-Bork, we fought monopolies because they were monopolies. Post-Bork, we only fought monopolies if we caught them in the act, and even then, we could only win if we could prove shenanigans - and monopolists got really good at making it hard to prove them. For example, they perfected the idea of the "market definition" defense. You hear this with Amazon, when Bezos tells Congress that Amazon isn't a monopoly because people buy stuff at Walmart. By including "Walmart" (or every time in which goods change hands for money) in the definition of Amazon's market, Amazon can make itself out to be a bit-player. Here's an example of a Borkean giving this line just last year: "Facebook doesn't have a monopoly because I can still make phone calls." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jp-GJ9LM0 Returning to a pre-Borkean vision of antitrust enforcement is profound and would have far-reaching implications for telecoms, entertainment, pharma, accounting, logistics, energy, transport, aviation, etc. But while all these industries got concentrated through the same methods - predatory acquisitions, mergers to monopoly, vertical monopolies - they aren't all the same. What kind of industry they are MATTERS. Tech has two unique characteristics: First, it is foundational. Our ability to demand better policy and to collaborate to hold policymakers to account depends on tech. We're not going to organize a global movement by wheatpasting posters on telephone poles. And second, tech means computers, and computers are "universal" in a way other industries' products are not. Computers can interoperate with each other in ways that, say, cars or can-openers or beers cannot. That interoperability has been the source of enormous dynamism and a check against concentration in the history of tech: what companies thought of as walled gardens that exploited "network effects" became feeding pens for new market entrants. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability Whether that's Static Controls - a tiny Taiwanese company that refilled IBM Lexmark's toner cartridges and got to piggyback on the vast market IBM had developed, growing so large that they ACQUIRED Lexmark or... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-business-model-lexmarks-anti-competitive-legacy Apple, which defeated Microsoft's office dominance by creating Iwork, reverse-engineering the Office file-formats so that Mac users didn't need to convince their colleagues to switch OSes, they could just share documents with them. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay The same tech companies that rose to dominance through this Competitive Compatibility are now its worst enemies, lobbying against Right to Repair, building products around DRM, and claiming their terms of service have the force of law under CFAA. Restoring the right of new market entrants to make stuff that plugs into the existing dominant products and services would go a LONG way to restoring dynamism to tech, to making companies' survival reliant on pleasing users, rather then dominating markets. And while the Congressional report doesn't give interop the centrality it deserves, it DOES mention it and discuss its importance. https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorialfiles/2020/10/06/investigation_of_competition_in_digital_markets_majority_staff_report_and_recommendations.pdf

[nerdybutcute]

Themes in Cyberpunk Generally and Shadowrun Specifically

What is Shadowrun about? Aside from elves with mohawks and machine guns, I mean. That much is obvious. In all seriousness, though – what should we expect from a Shadowrun game? How is the Sixth World different from other “cyberpunk” settings? What does this particular game do well, maybe even better, than other games of a similar stripe? We can answer these questions by taking a dive in the roots of cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction, but even that journey must start with the very foundations of the modern mindset, because cyberpunk as a literary movement has a real problem with modernity.The central moral concepts of the Enlightenment are autonomy and authenticity. The arguments for liberal, democratic government, capitalism, and the Scientific Revolution alike are rooted in an assumption of the importance of liberating the individual. “Liberty” is the moral center of the modern paradigm, and all the other appurtenances of modern life mentioned above are to be interpreted as mechanisms of that liberation. As imaginative fiction reflects the tenor of the times, the through-line of early 20thcentury science fiction is a utopianism based in the modern ideal, with emphasis on the liberating power of science.

But postmodernist critics soon began to question the validity of this vision. The Holy Trinity of liberal society, free markets, and scientific progress began to seem, in their analysis, less likely to free the individual than to enslave them. They posited that under capitalism, science would always be a tool for subverting democracy, and genuine freedom required taking a skeptical stance toward all three. Likewise, the cyberpunk movement in science fiction was born of these post-modern fears, envisioning a future where high-tech has ensnared the individual in a web of consumerism, drugs, virtual reality, and technological serfdom. Indeed, in the idiom of speculative fiction, cyberpunk literature could pose questions about even the moral center of the modern world, as exemplified in Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – in a world where the barrier between man and machine has eroded to the point of invisibility, what is autonomy? What is authenticity?

Cyberpunk literature, like all science fiction, leaned heavily on the science aspect – hence the “cyber” – but it was skeptical, rather than laudatory, of technological progress. The “punk” aspect encompassed the postmodern rebellion against existing structures of power – capital and government – which are posited in punk philosophy not only as hopelessly intertwined but fundamentally flawed, inevitably enslaving those they propose to serve. Punk is inherently anarchist, seeking to tear down the mechanisms of domination; cyberpunk takes special interest in the high-tech aspect of these structures. But just as punk has a difficult relationship with capitalism, constantly courted and tempted by the urge to commodify and merchandise the punk aesthetic in the name of wider exposure and increased social capital (all in the name of the movement, of course), cyberpunk replicates this relationship with technology – the interface of man and machine chips away at our essential humanity, threatening to turn us into objects that can be programmed and directed rather than free and authentic individuals, but the technological marvels of the setting are indispensable in fighting the very structures that produce and control them. The tools of the oppressors can be used against them but likewise constantly threaten to co-opt those who oppose them. And most disturbingly, of course, even the anarchist subculture of resistance in cyberpunk literature is presented as violent and nihilistic, raising questions about what the world will look even if the “punks” win – is there any hope at all?

Cyberpunk can quickly drift into transhumanism, usually when the technology of the setting is fetishized rather than approached skeptically, but also when the central characters are unproblematically portrayed as agents of the structures of power rather than subversive elements in society. But pure punk characters are rare as focal points – it’s more interesting and certainly more in-genre to focus on those who were in some way caught up in the structures of power and then cast aside by them, damaged and discarded. Gibson’s Neuromancer provides excellent examples in Case, Molly Millions, and Riviera, brutalized by the powers-that-be but still used them as disposable commodities to advance the interests of the wealthy and connected. Case is a pitiable figure, arguably the most abused by the agents of power but also, in the end, least willing to reject their blandishments. Indeed, the titular AI is perhaps the only truly free character in the story, exerting its autonomous will on the world, and reaching even beyond.

The original cyberpunk roleplaying game, called quite simply Cyberpunk, followed the style of that era of games in providing little guidance to new players in how to create characters while assuming a knowledge of the relevant genre – the fact that players could take the role of Corps and Cops was not a mistake, as it was likely assumed that these characters would, ultimately, embody the ambiguous relationships to power of their literary counterparts, rather than being uncritical servants of the authorities. The game fittingly portrayed corporations as sinister and government as largely ineffective, but the most telling design feature was the inclusion of rules for “cyberpsychosis,” a gradual disintegration of mental faculties brought on by excessive use of cyber-enhancements. This mechanic “game-i-fied” the postmodern skepticism about the liberatory power of technology and fears about loss of autonomy when the human – the free and authentic person – becomes continuous with the thing, the servile commodities produced by those structures of power.

Other “cyberpunk” games followed, missing the point to greater and lesser degree, until Shadowrun, which wedded fantasy elements to the setting. The inclusion of elves, dwarves, and other magical things might seem to dilute the point of cyberpunk as a genre, but the history of the setting makes the additions apt. Because of the precise way in which Shadowrun integrated fantasy with science fiction, the core conceits of the cyberpunk genre may well have found one of their best expressions to date.

The return of magic in the Sixth World, as the setting is called, provided occasion for the Native American people of North America to rise up, using their traditional spiritual practices – now terrifyingly efficacious – to destroy the United States. As acts of resistance by oppressed outsiders goes, this one is impressive, an apotheosis of the “punk” element of cyberpunk. And the resistance is non-technological, but rather magical – a non-technological resistance only being possible in a setting like Shadowrun’s, despite other works like Neuromancer playing with the idea of “urban primitivism” before this. The triumph of the Native American Nations in the Sixth World is a triumph over all three elements of Enlightenment culture – science, capitalism, and liberal democracy – given the self-proclaimed role of the United States as their standard-bearer in the modern world. True, this decisive defeat does not recapitulate the angst brought over into cyberpunk literature from the noir genre, but the triumph of the indigenous peoples is not the end of the story.

In the Shadowrun setting, major cyberpunk tropes are preserved – the government is corrupt where it is not ineffective, and true power mostly lays with the corporations. “Mostly” is an important caveat there, however – other power blocs exist, such as dragons, the Native American Nations, and the nations of the elves, quite aside from such mysterious antagonists as insect shamans and other foul creatures. Again, this might seem to dilute the essential conflicts of the cyberpunk genre, but Shadowrun envisions those conflicts in a different way, the clue to which is found in the dissolution of the United States in the setting’s backstory. Rather than pitting inchoate punk anarchism against rampant capitalism, rather than pitting urban primitivism and the struggle for authenticity against the insidious creep of technology, it quite literally pits the pre-modern against the modern – mysticism and tradition against the values of the Enlightenment. The outcome of the struggle is no longer pre-ordained, so the sense of futility of classic cyberpunk is lost, but a different sense of doom has taken its place: between the modern and the archaic, there may be no good choice.

Classic cyberpunk is skeptical toward the machinery of democracy and other modern accoutrement, but presents no alternative except anarchy (in this, one might imagine that blighted dystopias like Mad Max are a sort of cyberpunk, but that’s another essay). Shadowrun presents a different choice – rolling back the clock on the Enlightenment is now perhaps a realistic possibility, but one that carries dangers of its own. And it is a choice that must be made. Corporate rapaciousness threatens the natural spaces that embody the magical Essence of the Earth, just as cyber-enhancements threaten the individual character’s Essence, with the end result of too much reliance on cyberware being, in this game, death rather than psychosis. But magical threats abound, as well, such as the insect shamans of the first major myth arc in the game, and this aside from what else might be lost in the unraveling of the modern order – ideas of democracy and equality and so on. Shadowrun pointedly presents the corporate order as practically a feudal one, with employees treated more like serfs, indentured to their lords, while the reflexive Japanophilia of the cyberpunk canon is here leveraged to a different purpose – as an alternative social model based on ancient ways, another refutation of the Enlightenment. Such pre-modern subcultures abound in the setting, but they are pre-modern, which is to say authoritarian, sexist, racist, culturally chauvanistic, and so on. Classical cyberpunk fiction critiques the modern order and offers petty acts of resistance to it; Shadowrun fragments and partially overturns it, but with the caveat that what stands to replace it probably isn’t any better.

Shadowrun, therefore, while an offshoot of the traditional cyberpunk concept, is undoubtedly faithful to the core element of the genre, the critique of the modern. It dissolves the tension of fruitless struggle against it, but replaces it with a diabolical choice. Mind you, as with cyberpunk literature, this can easily fall into transhumanism; the setting-specific counterpart misstep is the glorification of the oppositional pre-modern traditions that now hold a place of honor in the world. The true cyberpunk essence of Shadowrun is best expressed in emphasizing both the intrusive, dehumanizing elements of technocracy as well as the de-individuating aspects of traditional culture paired with the cosmic horror of the magical world.

[machiiatto]

Ben Solo / main verse (heavily, heavily divergent)

The heir to the Skywalker bloodline, Solo possessed raw strength in the Force & had the potential for limitless power. He was born at the end of the Galactic Civil War in 5 ABY, when the Galactic Empire surrendered to the New Republic. His parents, General Han Solo & Princess Leia Organa, were considered great heroes of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

During the New Republic Era, Solo was part of a new generation of Jedi apprentices trained by his uncle, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. However, Solo was seduced by the dark side through the machinations of the phantom Sith Lord Darth Sidious & his creation, Supreme Leader Snoke.

Under the thrall of Snoke, Solo destroyed his master's training temple & killed his fellow students - acts which earned him the moniker "Jedi Killer" along with the new identity of Kylo Ren.

early life

Ben Solo was born in 5 ABY in Hanna City, Chandrila on the day that the Galactic Concordance was signed between the New Republic & the Galactic Empire, formally ending the Galactic Civil War - which had already resulted in the deaths of the late emperor palpatine, & ben's maternal grandfather anakin skywalker, redeemed in his dying moments from his sith persona darth vader.

Ben almost never stood a chance. Even before he was born, his mother could feel the light & the dark at war within him - likening her unborn son to a living band of light that occasionally dimmed & was sometimes thrust through with a vein of darkness.

In his youth, Solo's parents had active lives in their respective professions. Han, a smuggler before joining the Rebellion, was unable to stay in one place for long, while Organa became occupied with routine senatorial duties. Ben, who aspired to become a pilot like his father since childhood, inherited amazing piloting skills from him. Organa, meanwhile, became a respected senator in the New Republic. The busy lives of Organa & Han often kept them away from their son, causing Solo to develop a sense of loneliness.

Jedi Training

As the Force awakened in young Solo, his parents grew to believe that he needed guidance despite their efforts to build a normal life for him. In 15 ABY, Ben began his Jedi training as part of Skywalker's initiative to restore the Jedi Order. He became Skywalker's apprentice prior to his tenth birthday, & was already his uncle's "most prized student." Even then, it was clear to Skywalker that his nephew was inherently powerful with the Force despite his lack of training in the Jedi arts, a testament to the raw power of his family's bloodline.

Through Skywalker's training, Ben developed a strong sense of devotion to the ways of the Jedi. He kept a calligraphy set filled with Jedi insights in his quarters during his time with Skywalker. As master & apprentice, they traveled across the galaxy accumulating artifacts and learning more about the Jedi Order's ancient history in the hope of fully restoring it.

beginning of divergence

It was during this period in Solo's life that he came into contact with Snoke, an enigmatic Force user who was strong with the dark side. While Snoke's intention was to cultivate a friendship with the young jedi that he could use to coax him down the path to the dark side of the Force, that plan would never fully materialize.

Ben had heard a voice throughout his young life, & long believed it to be Snoke's. He told no one about this voice at first, as he had long felt isolated & lonely with his parents' erratic schedule. it was under Skywalker's training, & his own personal study into the recovered archives from the jedi temple, that he would begin to recognize the dangers that might accompany the voice if left alone & unchecked. It would eventually come to head when the conflicting emotions arising from the emotional manipullation caused Ben to lash out during training, injuring himself & his training partner enough for Luke to notice.

Taking his apprentice aside, Luke would finally talk to him about the Skywalker bloodline, & the legacy it carried with it - easing the sense of isolation Ben had long felt while acknowledging his own doubts & concerns. Knowing his apprentice was being targeted by something sinister, but not knowing the source of the malignancy, Luke began teaching him advance techniques to help him shield himself, & his mind, as well as how to distance himself from the Force as a last resort defense should something arise from this presence.

first confrontation with the knights of ren

During the early years of Solo's apprenticeship, Lor San Tekka, a traveler noted for his expertise on the Jedi Order, informed Skywalker about the discovery of an ancient Jedi outpost on the planet Elphrona. Embarking on a mission to investigate San Tekka's findings, Skywalker brought Ben with him, knowing that, like himself, Solo was interested in discovering Jedi artifacts. Along the way, Solo was contacted by Snoke. While he kept up the ruse of allowing this dark presence into his mind, he later informed his Master as to what has transpired, causing further concern as Luke recognized the tactics.

The outpost that they discovered was well preserved and the entrance intact. Both master & apprentice were impressed by it, though Skywalker warned that they should exercise caution while exploring the outpost, recounting a similar situation that nearly ended with his death in years past. The outpost was a repository of holocrons & other artifacts that Skywalker likened to a treasure trove.

A group of marauders, dressed in black, entered the outpost after the two Jedi & their explorer companion. A warrior calling himself "Ren" spoke on the group's behalf, declaring that the outpost and its contents were claimed by the Knights of Ren. Rejecting the Knights' claim, Skywalker drew his lightsaber & introduced himself as the last Jedi. Ben also activated his weapon, but remained out of the ensuing fight, as Skywalker instructed him to protect San Tekka.

Ren conceded the battle after his Knights were defeated by Skywalker. During the confrontation, however, he sensed that the dark side was strong with Ben. He invited Ven to seek out the Knights in the future, offering to teach the young apprentice about aspects of the Force contrary to Jedi teachings.

During this trip, Luke would take Ben traveling to the edge between the known galaxy & unexplored space, as he had many times before to test the seemingly limitless capacity of his apprentice & nephew.

a new generation of jedi

It was not long before the Order expanded to include more than Skywalker & Solo, as the former took it upon himself to train multiple apprentices at the same time. In addition to several new recruits, Hennix, Tai, & Voe were apprenticed to Skywalker, * as such, they became acquainted with his first & strongest pupil. As children, they would sit on the temple grounds learning about the Force through Skywalker's lectures, while, at the same time, honing their skills by levitating rocks.

Solo's natural affinity with the Force did not go unnoticed by his peers, particularly Voe, who struggled to hone her skills despite training just as hard as Skywalker's nephew. While training on the temple grounds, Voe watched as Solo levitated a large rock with ease, & wondered why he was far stronger than her. According to Skywalker, however, strength had nothing to do with how the Force worked. He likened using the Force to opening a door, explaining that the Force flowed more easily through those who were open to its energy.

Notwithstanding Skywalker's view on the Force, Solo surpassed his peers in every aspect of their training, including lightsaber combat & meditation. At one point, he defeated Voe in a sparring match. As their training progressed, Solo suspected that Voe resented him for his power.

His relationships with the other students were different. Hennix could make Solo laugh, & Tai tried to help him cope with the pressures of being a Skywalker. Solo assured his fellow Jedi student that he held nothing back, but through the Force Tai perceived a side to Solo that he hid from the others, including himself. Solo listened, but said nothing while Tai expressed his belief that everyone should be themselves.

further diversion from canon

While undergoing further training during this time period, Ben began to feel the ramped up pressure of the dark presence in his mind, & as such, he began spending more & more time deep in study even apart from his own Master as his sense of foreboding began to set him on edge. His anxiety was realized when, twenty-four years after the Battle of Endor, the truth about the parentage of Solo's mother was revealed by Organa's political enemies in the New Republic Senate.

It was a small mercy that Luke had prepared for this moment, having given Ben the truth of his bloodline & legacy against his sister's wishes many years before, & the fallout was largely contained. Ben would take advantage of the chaos this revelation created, though, letting the voice that had long dipped into his nightmares believe its plans were well underway so that he & his master might finally get ahead of whatever lurked in the shadows.

The revelation would come with a fanfare of fire; one night when Skywalker went to his nephew's bedroom one evening, he found the young man asleep. Standing over his sleeping student, Skywalker reached out through the Force & saw a vision of what would come to pass if this dark presence was allowed to fully sink its claws into his apprentice, & claim him as its own; he saw the death & destruction Solo would someday bring to everything Skywalker loved.

When Ben awakened hours later, it was to Luke offering him his hand, & telling him it was time they talked about the moment they had once realized may come to pass. it was time. in the early, pre-dawn hours, there was an explosion that brought down the entire hut, ostensibly resulting in the death of the once-prodigy. twenty-three year old Ben Organa-Solo would be buried, & mourned, his presence lost in the Force to all because of a tragic accident.

or at least - that would be the official story, with the truth only known to the Master that packed his apprentice into a t-65B X-wing with coordinates known only to the the young boy piloting, the droid R2-D2, & Lor San Tekka.

ahch-to, & study in exile

Ben had learned of the location of the remote aquatic planet Ahch-To during his early tears as Skywalker's apprentice, having read about it & studied it in the ancient relics & holocrons they had come across in their many travels. On fleeing in the pre-dawn hours, the remote planet in a largely unknown part of the galaxy was Ben's logical first choice, & upon landing there, he tamped down hard on his connection to the Force - all but fully severing himself from it bar the bar minimum that would allow him to continue guidance & training from those who came before him - obi-wan kenobi, & yoda, among others.

It was his intent to live out his life in exile, keeping himself far from the reaches of whatever dark force sought to turn him into a weapon against his family & other loved ones. Once his Master had rooted out this evil, R2-D2 would relay his location. What was supposed to take months, howeverm turned into years. Eventually, Ben felt the suffocating loneliness start to close in on him. Six years after he fled to ahch-to, he would find another landing on the planet.

another, searching for him.

[aspiestvmusings]

WandaVision Thoughts: Ep 8

Warning: Contains SPOILERS up to the end credits scene of ep 1x08. And “speculation” about the Finale.

1. I was wrong about several things in my theories. But I was pretty close with some other things.

2. I still presume the  timestone blast in “inifity war” might have made her even more powerful/unlocked more of her powers, but her backstory revealed that she “absorbed” the energy from the stone during her first contact with it....already, also .She is literally a living infinity stone...in a way. She absorbed the “energy” of the stone & is connected with the stone...as we’ve seen throughout the MCU history. And she’s kinda “absorbed it twice”? (so, in a way, she has been carrying VIsion’s soul inside her for a while... so makes sense she would “create” him, because they are literally of the same mind(stone))

3. All. The. Colours. ... Differen t colours of their powers/magic... coming from all these characters: Blue. Purple. Yellow. Red... The colours of the infinity stones. The colours of “characters powers”.... All the colours of the rainbow/spectrum. I completely see the last shot of the show being a rainbow above WestView (cause the colours of everyones powers are the colours of the rainbow...)

4. My theories were wrong, because I  based them on the hypothesis that she cannot create things from nothing...that she can just change their “dna” & shape. If I had presumed that she can create things from nothing, I might’ve been more accurate about...Vision...and more. She seems to have created vibranium, an infinity stone, and a soul... “out of nothing”... when she/her grief created a vision... UNLESS... that was an incorrect guess by Agatha, and Hex Vision is more like his episode 2 stage name suggested... an Illusion. Though I have a hard time believing/understanding it, I’ve tried to accept that in comics & fiction things that don’t follow laws of physics can be & are true. And she did create Vision from “nothing”..even if in real world that is impossible...

5. In the past few days before ep 8 I had started to believe the theories about “double vision”. And unless there is also a cameo coming with an appearance of some other actor, Paul Bettany’s comment about doing a scene with an actor who he had always wanted to work with was... the best joke ever... cause he was most likely referring to himself. And the way it is similar to the “Luke Skywalker” Mandalorian camero is not because of the actor, but because of the CGI used. I love that this is most likely the answer here. [and in that case I kinda think that the “fireworks” could be a scene similar to when Tony asked Jarvis to activate the Clean Slate Protocol in IM3, cause we are dealing with more than  one “copy” of the same “tech” here... & they can be blown up like that...]

6. We also got a much more clearer look on Hayward’s evil plans. And I'm now seriously starting to suspect the theories that connect WV to AoU...in a meaningful way. I’m not gonna say it, but I think you get my point. We’ve all known all along he’s up to no good. Even if he is “just” another “government baddie” and not Ultron’s puppet/puppeting Ultron. And I'm still unsure if he is aware that he’s essentially waking up Ultron or will that be a surprise to him...

7. Paul Bettany’s journey in MCU is about to become full: he started as the VOICE of JARVIS (AI/machine) that Tony built/created. He then appeared in physical form (body and voice) as The Vision since AoU. And now it seems possible that we’ll see him play Vision, while someone else provides the VOICE over for the character. But we also know, “thanks” to Spiderman 2 (released last year, but taking place several months after WV events in the MCU) that the Vision we have known & loved does not survive this hex reality. I wish there’ll be a surprise twist, but I sadly doubt it. 

Before the show started to air, I had no doubt the character was done... I was 99% sure there is no way he could come back & WV is just a dream or something like that. But as the show has progressed, Ive started to think there are ways it could happen. None of them really fit with the shows theme & point. Just like Tony had to die for the sacrifice to be as impactful Vision has to die/remain dead for Wanda’s grief journey to come to a conclusion. She has to reach the final stage(s) of grief, accept the loss & move on. Though... we can arue that Vision could live & she finally deals with the greif for her parents & brother. And/Or Vision “lives”, but it’s not her Vision...she can’t feel him. So he starts his journey from the start...to learn to be “human”, etc. 

I mean.. I wish we would get the merging of the two (sides) of Vision - the soulless body of whitevision + the “created by Wanda” Vision with soul (even if with no memories of pre-hex). But based on Spiderman 2: FFH “in memoriam” clip Vision is one of the fallen avengers next to Tony & Nat. But then again, Steve/Cap was also in that clip, so perhaps there is still hope... that Wanda/the hex will merge the two & this is how we/Wanda gets her Vision back. And it’s just kept under wraps. And if it’s not Ultron, then the greatest twist would be if RDJ would provide the new Vision’s voice (until he “gets his soul back”). I mean.. Paul Bettany provided the voice for Tony’s AI/suits, so that’d be a huge thing

8. I hope everyone understood that the town was a mess because it’s literally a few weeks after the Blip. 5 years ago Thanos snapped half of life away, and this is the outcome of it...the small town was probably full of life before that, and now its just “in ruins”. When Vision (and Wanda) bought that property/land it/the town did not look so sad. This is all the result of the snap. And this is why, I think, the word “snap” appears several times on the show (cereal box, add on wall)

9. The origins story from the experimentation with the mind stone scene had the same kind of “rewind” stuff as Wanda’s sitcom episodes. The watchers (blinded by the blast) seem to miss a part of the show. And now Darcy & Jimmy & team seem to miss parts of the show. We are shown that this is kind of due to Wanda “rewinding time”. So...she posesses the “power” of several infinity stones, kinda, it seems.

10. I’m starting to think that perhaps one theory that was flooting around is correct. The “Wanda arrives to Westview” scene where she sees several of the residents could imply so. We only see one part of each couple. And within each couple the one who “glitches” (Mr. Hart choking in ep 1, Vision malfunctioning cause of gum in ep 2, etc..) is not seen, only their other half. So is the town “in ruins” not just because of the blip? Maybe it was populated by people who lost their loved ones in the Snap & all moved to this town after that? And hence weren’t at the place their other half was returned to now, 5 years later? Or...the other halves are all dead, and hence everyone looked sad & alone? Maybe it was more thaan just the chaos creted by the snap & blip? 

11. Where were Vision (who was flying back to the house) & Monica + Fietro? during this episode? Well..all of ep 8 happens in just a few moments... simultaneously to what was happening with Vision(/Darcy and Fietro/Monica in the end of ep 7, so...they will arrive..soon.

12. I do not know how it could happen or work (considering what we already know to be true), but since they pointed out in episode 1 that “The death rate of single men is twice that of married men" & Hex Vision is married, while White Vision is not (also...will he remain himself when entering the hex or will he chanage form to fit the year/era that episode 9 is set in...which, I’d say might be a decade before rel time 2023, because the boys are 10... cause this version is essentialy a machine, so if it doesn’t match the era, then the hex changes it), then that would lead me to speculate that Hex Vision defeats White vision.  So now the question remaims if the vibranium/empty shell will remain or will it be vaporized... cause if the materils cotinue existing they can still re-built/re-create Vision in future. Cause unless both die, and unless some otehr surprise (going through the hex changes Hex Vision and/or he has competed his journey & become a separate indivudual, a real  being, then there’s no way he can survive outside/without the hex. But that quote tells us which Vision wins the fight 

xxx

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One:  Breaking the Curse

Chapter 8:  Debt Transfer

While he was confident that all Ashley had taken was the adoption agreement, he was also a competent businessman, and that meant that he spent the day at the shop taking inventory. In truth, it wasn't a terrible idea. Other than a quick pre-cursory check for the items he most wanted when he'd first awoken, he hadn't done any kind of formal inventory on the shop. It was good now that he had to. It allowed him to take out each individual card he had for every item he owned, see if he could identify it's proper history, not the history the Curse had given to it, and then determine if he needed to keep that item or if he was willing to sell it. He made it through the morning before he felt like his headache was finally going away, but after lunch, he was so tired the letters began to blur together on each of the cards, it was mid-afternoon, and he was thinking very seriously about laying down to take a nap just for an hour or so. If he needed, he figured he could call Dove and ask him to call back in an hour. If he didn't answer, then he should call 911. He was about to make the call when the cell phone in his hand began to ring. It took him a second to process what was happening, to realize he didn't recognize the number on the screen, but finally, his brain made the connection to answer, and he smiled at the news.

"Mr. Gold, this is nurse Cullen. I have a note here in the chart of one Ashley Boyd that you are to be informed when she comes in to deliver her baby. That new girl, Emma Swan, she just brought her in. If I were you, I'd get down here. She's going to have this child any minute now."

He didn't care that the paramedics had told him not to drive, suddenly he felt alive and awake and aware as he shuffled to his car and made the five-minute drive to the hospital. Emma Swan never once called him, even though by now, she surely had ample opportunity to. "I will help her," the girl had said. He hoped that was true. He hoped that as she'd searched for the girl, some of her story had come out. He hoped that Cinderella had convinced her that she was ready and willing to have the baby and raise it. He hoped that the Savior was prepared to accept a deal that she didn't know was coming because he'd been ready for well over twenty-eight years to make it.

Storybrooke Hospital was small; the Curse had equipped them with just about everything they'd need while they were here, so they didn't have to venture out into the world, but it was still a single building that often left him wondering how they fit it all in. The maternity ward consisted of a single dead-end hallway, and it shared a waiting room with about three other departments. Ashley Boyd's baby would be the first baby that Storybrooke ever had, though still not a child of this realm. Though she was a child of this world, she was conceived in the other world and therefore always would somehow belong to it, just like Emma Swan. Unlike Henry Mills, who through and through was a child of this world.

He sat spotted the boy easily enough, sitting in a chair as Emma spoke with him in the waiting room, about what, he wondered. What had transpired? Some secret plot she had? He assumed so since she obviously hadn't found the time to contact him as their deal stipulated. He longed to get into her head, to understand what she was plotting, and planned to ask her, but before he could a young female doctor he didn't recognize approached the Savior.

"Miss Swan, baby is a healthy six-pound girl, and the mother is doing fine," she announced.

"What lovely news!" he exclaimed, forcing a surprised Emma to turn and look at him. "Excellent work, Miss Swan. Thank you for bringing me my merchandise," he smiled back at her, gleaming with what he hoped looked like pride in her. She might not have called him, but he wanted her to feel responsible for bringing her here where that child was in danger of being handed over to him. "Seems I've some calls to make, paperwork to fill out…"

He strode away from the girl, beaming at the look of horror he'd left on her face. It was that look that told him to make a detour on the way to the nurse's station. Well…that look and the fact that he was once again exhausted. He couldn't wait for this to be done if only because he'd decided that once it was, he was going to go back to his home, take a shower, and sleep for a month. For the reason of speeding this whole process up and bringing that future to himself as quickly as possible, he baited his trap and waited for Emma to fall into it.

Damn, he hated hospitals. At the hospital's crummy little coffee vending machine, he inserted some money and glanced at Emma telling Henry something while she danced on her feet between him and her son. Finally, she proceeded. He banged against the machine when it didn't work properly, and just as Emma approached, it began to work for him...like magic. Though he hoped the deal to come would go smoother than the machine.

"Well, well. Must be my lucky day," he muttered as Emma drew nearer. "Care for a cup, Miss Swan?"

"A baby? That's your merchandise?" she chastised with disgust. He'd never been happier to hear such a tone from a woman. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, because, at the time, you didn't need to know."

"Really? Or you thought I wouldn't take the job?" He smiled at her boldness, the volley they had going back and forth. She certainly was her mother's daughter. But he was hoping that there was a bit of her father in there too.

"On the contrary, I thought it would be more effective if you found out yourself. After seeing Ashley's hard life, I thought it would make sense to you. I mean, if anyone could understand the reasons behind giving up a baby, I assumed it would be you."

The Savior narrowed his eyes at him, staring him down with the same look of disgust she'd had when he'd seen her go up against Regina in his vision. Shame she had no idea which side she was truly on…for now.

"You're not getting that kid."

"Actually, we have an agreement. My agreements are always honored. If not, I'm going to have to involve the police, and that baby is going to end up in the system. And that would be a pity. You didn't enjoy your time in the system, did you, Emma?"

"It's not going to happen."

And there were the other half of her genes. Her mother was bold and clever, defender of all things just. Her father, on the other hand, had always been stubbornly drawn to lost causes, to helping those who couldn't help themselves, to problems with difficult solutions. He smiled in awe of it, in wonder at what neither of her parents could see just yet. What a relief to see both Snow White and Prince Charming residing perfectly in one body, one daughter. They'd be so proud. But how far would she go, he wondered, to make it so? As far as her parents would? He did have a hunch, something he'd been preparing for since the Enchanted Forest.

"I like your confidence. Charming. But all I have to do is press charges. She did, after all, break into my shop."

"Let me guess – to steal a contract?"

He shrugged. "Who knows what she was after?"

"You know no jury in the world will put a woman in jail whose only reason for breaking and entering was to keep her child."

He raised his cup to his lips then, partly to make her feel like he was nervous, but also to keep Mr. Gold from telling her that he was well aware of that fact, being a lawyer himself. But he wasn't trying to get Ashley Boyd in jail…he had something far more sinister in his mind.

"I'm willing to roll the dice that contract doesn't stand up. Are you? Not to mention what might come out about you in the process. Somehow, I suspect, there is more to you than a simple pawnbroker. You really want to start that fight?"

Confident, defiant, strong, and now he could add smart to the list of adjectives that described the Savior. She'd analyzed him perfectly, not that she'd ever find proof of it, not in the world. But that worked just fine for him.

"I like you, Miss Swan. You're not afraid of me, and that's either cocky or presumptuous. Either way, I'd rather have you on my side."

She smiled. "So, she can keep the baby?"

"Not just yet!" he insisted, strutting away, trying to make her feel like this could slip away all too easily. It wasn't something that would have riled Snow White, but her dear father, on the other hand… "There's still the matter of my agreement with Miss Boyd."

"Tear it up."

"That's not what I do," he pronounced. "You see, contracts, deals, well…they're the very foundation of all civilized existence. So, I put it to you now," he pressed, stepping closer to her, letting her feel like she was reeling him in when in fact, it was the other way around. "If you want Ashley to have that baby, are you willing to make a deal with me?"

"What do you want?" she drawled skeptically.

He smiled, hearing the Seer's words in his hands and imagining the feel of magic between them. He didn't need for there to be magic to know what it felt like when the tendrils of one agreement loosened from one and snaked themselves around another.

"Oh, I don't know just yet," he lied. "You'll owe me a favor."

"A favor." The thing he'd been plotting forever since he'd first told Cinderella she was pregnant and wanted the child. A favor…it was costly enough to cover a multitude of sins and yet cheap enough to buy a baby. Emma breathed in and out for a few heartbeats as if she knew he was tricking her with something. But he held her gaze, dared her to challenge him to a contest of dominance. She'd lose. No one ever won in a deal with the Dark One.

Finally, she took a step forward. She didn't blink as she muttered the word "Deal."

She turned to walk away, not saying a single thing to him as she retreated back to her son. He beamed at the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White. She truly was the perfect embodiment of both her parents. And one day, she'd know it. One day she'd see it, and so would the entire town. One day, when a precious debt from a woman of ash would find his boy of fire…one day.

[hmel78]

In conversation with Dave Sturt ...

GONG

In September of 2016, ‘GONG’ released their new album “Rejoice! I’m Dead” Some say it couldn’t, or shouldn’t have, be done. How could Gong exist without Daevid Allen? 

For those who are unaware Daevid passed away in March 2015. ‘GONG’ has had many, many line-ups - Formed when Australian beatnik/freak Daevid Allen quit ‘The Soft Machine’ and moved to France at the tail end of the ’60s. Since debuting in 1970 with “Magick Brother”, the band have remained fluid, even playing without their founder from the mid-to-late ’70s; fracturing and reassembling and constantly taking on new shapes and forms: an undeniably amorphous unit. David Bowie told Vanity Fayre in 2003 that Daevid Allen’s “Banana Moon” is one of his favourite albums, and today everyone from indie artists Temples and Ty Segall to hip hop artist Madlib and techno DJ Surgeon are inspired, and borrow, from ‘Gong’s’ music and ideology. The funky grooves, avant-garde flourishes and counter-cultural stance is timeless. So timeless that ‘Gong’ is proving that it can fully exist, even without their creator and guiding light.  “Rejoice! I'm Dead! came together over several weeks in an East London rehearsal studio. It depends on your knowledge of ‘Gong’ history and what you may feel constitutes as a Gong record, but “Rejoice! I'm Dead!” is classified as their 28th album and it would appear that the ‘Gong’ legacy is the strongest it has been since 1974 . In the words of bassist Dave Sturt: “You bet it's a fucking Gong record!” The current line-up features  Kavus Torabi (vocals/guitar), Fabio Golfetti (guitar/vocals), Dave Sturt (bass/vocals), Ian East (sax/flute) and Cheb Nettles (drums/vocals) - and unanimously they have taken on the mantle of “steering the Teapot further into outer space and the inner ear” ... Helen Robinson caught up with Dave Sturt recently, to find out more ...

HR :  ‘GONG’ has had a total of 52 official members in its 50 year history ; 47 past and 5 current.
What is it about ‘Gong’s’ music which compels musicians to continue to hold the band together in some shape or form?

Dave Sturt : An interesting question..... The Gong family is really unlike anything else. It's so much more than the 5 or 6 musicians on the stage. It's a worldwide collective of freaks, mystics or those who just don't quite fit in to the mainstream .... those who are searching for a different way to be.  It's an ongoing adventure- may it never stop. 

HR :   When you first joined in 2009 you were the new guy! Did you jel straight away? Had you been a fan prior to joining? 

DS : I knew of Gong back in the 70s but it wasn't until the 80s when I began to really appreciate what they had created. I had latched on to the Steve Hillage Band first - I really loved “Fish Rising”. So it was a real honour to audition for the band with Steve and Miquette. I felt comfortable right from the start. My personal journey melded with Gong's at just the right time – I had experience of many kinds of music but needed a focus. Gong wanted a creative bass player with something to offer . . . kismet!

HR :    At the time - alongside Daevid Allen - the line-up consisted of original member Gilli Smith who had returned to sing vocals, with two of the 1970’s staple members Miquette Giraudy, and Steve Hillage - what was it like having them all reunited in the same creative space?

DS : It was a privilege but, initially daunting. I had briefly worked with Daevid a few years before but to have them all in the same rehearsal room was something else. 

I began to get to know them properly in the tour bus around Europe - promoting the 2032 album.  They were all incredibly bright, free thinkers- truly inspiring. 

HR :    2012 saw another big shift in the band’s line-up -  you stayed ; was that by choice, or at the request of Daevid?  Who decided on who was going to fill the positions?



DS : Well I was very keen to continue with the band but it was Daevid who chose the line up that best suited his vision of where he wanted ‘Gong’ to go. On tour he spoke many times of his wish for Gong to continue without him and he chose pretty well.

HR :    Have the rotations of band members been essential to keep it fresh for the main body of songwriters ; for something ‘new’ to be brought to the table?  Or was it simply a tough band to exist in?

DS : Daevid never wanted to play safe. He always wanted to be surrounded by creative people so I guess that was the driving force.  Since Ian east and I have been involved the biggest change was when Steve and Miquette left to re focus on System 7.  Daevid was keen on making the band more guitar focused so Fabio was invited to join - and then later Kavus got the call. 

HR :   You’ve been with the band for the longest, out of the new line-up - do you feel that you have the chemistry right this time, to move forward as a unit and stay together?

DS : Absolutely - no question. This band is a perfect mixture of passion, skill and creativity. The gigs are a blast from start to finish – and we also have a great crew including the Fruit Salad lightshow and projections.

It feels slightly odd – being the longest standing member! It has been a bizarre eight years.

HR :    Following Daevid’s passing in 2015, and Gilli’s in 2016 - did you all consider calling it a day, or is it always going to be imperative to keep their spirits alive through the music?

DS : It was Daevid's wish that the band should continue. We were keen to carry on but unsure that it would work without him. We had gigs booked to promote the I See You album but Daevid was too ill to join us from Australia so Kavus took centre stage and we were astonished by the response. Also, previous members of Gong were very supportive.

Gilli's last tour with the band was in 2012 – and her health was failing then. She had to miss some of the concerts because of a broken foot. Our last gigs with her were in Japan and she spent the last few years of her life in a care home where she held court and entertained guests up until the end.

HR :   Cue studio album #28 - “Rejoice! I’m Dead”. 
It features Steve Hillage, Didier Malherbe, and Graham Clark, along with some post-humous vocals from Daevid. 
Did you feel that you needed to include these in order to transition the band from what was always essentially Daevid’s project, to a new stage in it’s development?

DS : That was partly the reason, but it felt completely in keeping with the the direction of the album. I was particularly keen to include the track Beatrix. It was such a lovely moment that I'd captured on my hand held recorder. We were in an apartment in Brazil - Daevid was listening on headphones to a jazzy musical idea of mine - and he began to improvise a poem about a very special woman in his life. It was so sweet and poignant. 

The album is obviously a reflection on Daevid and life and death so it's seemed completely right to have his presence in there . . . . it really felt as though he was in the studio with us as we composed and arranged the tracks

HR :   The album is receiving some rave reviews, and doesn’t seem to have disappointed the loyal following - were you nervous prior to it’s release, or confident that what you had produced was going to hit the proverbial nail?

DS : We were supremely confident that we had created something really special. The process of composing and recording was a joy. We just followed our own inner voice – without any pre-conceived direction - everyone contributed with ideas that we then arranged, juxtaposed and honed into a beautiful shiny thing.

HR :   With the current line-up being a relatively new group when it comes to working together as ‘Gong’ (not essentially new to each other), how difficult was it to write new material in the vein of some 50 years of compositions, which for the first time were not under the creative influence of Daevid, Gilly, or other alumni?

DS : We are all composers as well as players – and four of us wrote or co-wrote most of the tracks on the previous album I See You so we had no problem in continuing the process. The main key difference was the lyrics. We had no intention of pretending to write like Daevid or Gilli – that would have been completely bogus. Instead Kavus developed the main lyrical ideas throughout the time that the tracks came together – and a truly fine job he did! I wrote the lyrics for the track Model Village – the first time that I'd attempted such a thing.

HR :    For anyone who may be unaware of Gong, and their impressive back-catalog - could you describe the new album in a nutshell, and give virgin listeners an idea of what they can expect?

DS : The title – Rejoice! I'm Dead! - is a line from a poem of Daevid Allen's – 'All I Ask'. It completely summed up Daevid's attitude to death and it informed the concept of the album. That transition into the great unknown – something we all will face at some time. So – should we face it with fear and trepidation or embrace it as part of life's great journey? No one gets out alive so let's enjoy life, live it to the full and don't waste it by worrying about something that you can't avoid.So, the album is euphoric, inspirational and slightly ironic, with the occasional social comment. Musically it is, in turns, powerful; beautiful; intricate; and mystical.

I think I've finally achieved my aim of playing on, what may well be recognised eventually as, a classic album.

HR :   And down the line ... The band claim they you will continue to ‘fly the teapot further into outer space, and the inner ear! 
 Is it likely that any past members will be invited back to the fold for future projects?

DS : It's said that once you've been a member of Gong you never leave - so the door is always open. It's a very friendly, co-operative family – so everything is possible.

HR :   Outside the Gong realm, your solo album “Dreams and Absurdities” was released in 2015. Given all your other commitments, how long was it in the making? 

DS : Dreams & Absurdities came together slowly. It would have happened sooner if I hadn't been so busy over the last 10 years. I have a classic bass player mentality – I'm very supportive and unassuming and I give my all to whichever project I'm working on – which has meant that my solo album never became a priority, until, for some reason, everything fell into place.

HR :   It’s a  purely instrumental  record  - a departure perhaps from the music that people are used to hearing you play. Does it reflect your personal musical comfort zone?

DS : Well, some people will be very used to me working on instrumental albums. I recorded two with Jade Warrior and three with Cipher (my duo with Theo Travis). I find great beauty in instrumental music – especially when it evokes emotions of longing and soundscapes of imagined worlds.

HR :    The album features  a number of impressive guests - notably your  Gong colleagues, and Bill Nelson.   
Bill describes you as “an artist of the highest calibre” - coming from him that’s quite a recommendation isn’t it?!

DS : I am still truly astonished that I have been able to work with such great musicians – and to be held in such high regard by them is overwhelming. I've played with Bill for over 10 years now and it's been a joy. I was a big fan of Be Bop Deluxe and Red Noise and I've had the honour to play material from both bands with the man himself.

HR :   You’ve worked with a number of high profile musicians during your career - what was the most challenging project t o be part of?  And if you could collaborate with anyone at all - who would it be?

DS : The most challenging was probably a session early in my career when I was hired to play on an album by a Canadian band called Strange Advance. Also playing on the album were drummer Andy Newmark (John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music) and Earl Slick (David Bowie). It was produced by the great composer and arranger Michael Kamen. It was a huge learning curve for me. It was a great experience but I felt that I was hanging on by my fingertips! In the end, things didn't go well with the producer/artist relationship – and the album was re-recorded in Canada with different musicians.

Who would I like to collaborate with? That could be a very long list! Peter Gabriel, Harold Budd, Jan Garbarek, Andy Partridge, Kate Bush, Steve Jansen, Bill Frisell, David Torn, Michael Brook, Zakir Hussein, . . . I could go on . . .

https://www.davesturt.co.uk/

[machinevisionineverydaylife]

Part 1: Last Friday Linn Heidi Stokkedal went to the Pre-histories and the Futures of Machine Vision symposium as the Victoria and Albert Museum. The symposium explored early moment in the development of computer art and machine vision, from the mid-1960`s onwards. Artist, designers and curators discussed aesthetic and political impact that contemporary computer vision and machine vision technologies have today. The symposium was divided into two sessions. The morning session looked towards the past, and early computer vision and art. The afternoon session was with practicing artists and what they are currently working on and looking into.

The first speaker was Douglas Dodds: Vision and Accident: Creating the V&A`s Computational Art Collection. He is a senior curator in the V&A Word and Image Department and is also responsible for developing the digital art collections. His talk was fascinating, showing a wide overview from the beginnings of computer art and up until now. He has curated exhibitions including Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers (2018); Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life (2013); and Digital Pioneers (2009-2010). He spoke about a movement called the Algorists, that I have never heard of before. Which is anyone who works with algorithms. Traditionally this has been applied to mathematicians but now also artists. Read more about the movement and the artists behind it here.

To find digital artworks from their collection, go to: collections.vam.ac.uk.

The next speaker was Zabet Patterson: A Portrait by a Computer as a Young Artist. She is an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University and wrote Peripheral Vision: Bell Labs, the S-C 4020, and the Origins of Computer Art, published in 2015. She presented a close-reading of some computer images even before the the first computer art became an art gallery item. The images she presented is from a contest from the trade journal Computers and Automation in 1963 and 1964.

She argues that the images chosen by this journal as “computer art” is “suggesting new relationships - and new regimes - of perception and knowledge. These images also show different attempts to reinvent and reconceive vision as adjunct to the computational machine (extracted from symposium handout). She was referring this images as as an older mode of aesthetics using the ancient greek term: aisthesis: meaning sensation or perception (see senses), in contrast to intellectual concepts or rational knowledge. The images are a another way of making sense and suggesting new perceptions.

This image of a bullet projectile visualization is set up like a Muybridge shoot, with mutiple cameras capturing several parts of the movement. The image was made to be informative and to become a training set for humans. A tool made by machine, for human visions. This next image below is from a project called Celestial Telescope (SCO) and shows UV wavelengths of brightness of stars. Zabet claims that this image if Unheimlich (aka. uncanny) and claims is a image made by machine for the machines.

She explains also what separates these visuals from more modern computer images, is that these are made and produced by giant machine that are very expensive (always based in a military or a government institution). Another point is that the images are also not made by artists, but engineers, which is typical for the beginning of computer art.

The next presenter was Joel McKim: Cybernetic Visions: Early Experiements in Ai by UK Computer Artists. He is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture and the Director of the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology at Birckberck, University of London. He wanted to talk about 3 different people who had an impact on early machine vision. He started his presentation by introducing David Marr, a neurophysiologists who published “Vision” in 1982. He argued that vision is an information processing system.

It was interesting to see how Marr had made a overview of the processing steps from input and into 3D. Which can be compared to Deep Neural Network processing that we know today.

I found this talk very fascinating because this made the connection between the human vision processing system and how remarkably similar it is to the machines vision.

The second person that McKim introduces is Edward Ihnatowicz, a polish cybernetic art sculptor, producing works especially in the 60s. The first sculpture he built is called SAM (Sound Activated Mobile) which had built in microphones, which made it respond to surrounding sounds. The robot was constructed looking like a flower, and them stem looked similar to a vertebrae that moved towards the origin of the sound being made. Ihnatowicz most significant work is The Senster, a large hydralic robot that responded to both sound and movement. It is the first robot to be controlled by a computer.

and as the last example McKim presents Harold Cohen. An artist that worked a long a robot called AARON for most of his career. Cohen`s art practice was inspired by reading audiences and learn about meaning and how it is being made. He wanted to understand what creativity was and where it came from. He worked with his robot AARON in performative acts for a while (such as Turtle in 1977), before moving away from the spotlight and into the studio. AARON was trained to see foliage and people (representational imagery) and the robot was strictly rule-based. Cohen says that AARON`s art appeared meaningful, but was more “stand-in-forness”. Cohen never meant that he was working with computer art, but in stead it was painting dealing with images about perception.

That concludes the morning session. Afternoon session summary you will find in the next post.

Written by Linn Heidi Stokkedal 02.03.2020

[frostysprinklez]

When Star Vs. The Forces of Evil meets Cyberpunk

Summary Overview of Cyberpunk

This is an upcoming fan-fictional story of The Cyberpunk Chronicles: Project Maximus based on Star Vs. The Forces of Evil and Cyberpunk tabletop RPG game created by Mike Pondsmith's vision of a dystopian American future.

This fictional story takes place in an alternate timeline where America was once a great superpower has fallen from grace; leaving millions of Americans to defend themselves. They were either perished during a state of emergency, or were forced to join with a group of tribes calling themselves the Nomads. The rest of the world like China, Japan, and Europe maintain their economic status as they began to thrive for technology and cybernetic augmentations.

The bad news is half of the country became a desolate wasteland due to the lack of resources and decimating towns and cities of what's left of America. The New United States America (NUCA) was established after the collapse; under the dictatorship rule by President Elizabeth Kress. A former military officer who's been serving more than six consecutive terms while the government ignores the president's terms as long as she remains in power. The good news is some states like Alaska, North California, South California, Utah, Nevada, and The Republic of Texas have made a decision to exceed the NUSA to become independent and run their own governed state. In the year 1995, a new civilization has sprung up from America's ashes located in the Northern State of California called "Conorado City," which the city has changed to "Night City" after its predecessor Richard Night was assassinated from his newly constructed penthouse.

His vision was to create Night City into a place of sanctuary and establish law and order to keep people safe; hoping one day that humanity will thrive to rebuild the old world. However his vision was slipped away only to be snatched by a bullet. In the year 2021, Militech and Arasaka have declared war. The war was split into two factions and fought tooth and nail to obtain corporate's assets in order to become the toughest Megacorp in the century. This war has costed millions of lives and the world was ravaged by two powerful megacorporations; tearing the planet itself apart. They began deploying mercenary troops, tanks, aerodyne assault drop ships, armored vehicles, edge runners, and solos who are on the edge of cyberp psychosis. A mental illness caused by too many cybernetic implants after they were driven insane and went on a killing spree, which this mental illness was discovered by it's true nature for someone to loose their sense of human identity and costed their lives to become a psychotic killing machine.

The Fourth Corporate Wars lasted for four years until Night City was decimated by a pocket nuke after the Arasaka twin towers were obliterated. This city has become another bloody chapter of Night City's grim past and costed thousands and thousands of augmented souls. Their human civilization has proved themselves to show pure ignorance for their flaws and failed to repeat the same mistakes. Life goes on.

Decades have passed after The Fourth Corporate Wars, a rockerboy name Marco M. Kojima and his posergang members are trying to survive in a dystopian society of Night City's most dangerous city in America, against corporate cops, booster gangs, cultists, mercenaries, and cyber psychos.

Main Story & Focus on Marco's Posergang

The story focuses on Marco's lifepath before he became a Rockerboy and the events took place in Night City. Marco was adopted by a corpo family living in Tokyo, Japan. They raised him as their son for years until they were eventually murdered by corporate mercenaries. He ended up living in Night City for most of his life, but he also used to be part of a Nomad Clan and Valentino's gang.

He's also the lead singer musician and the leader of a booster gang calling themselves The Sons of Hellfire (Reference tv show of Sons of Anarchy) after performing his first gig at Night City High School. His gang's logo is a demon girl with a shape of a flaming heart that surrounds her (Hekapoo). Her appearance has pale skin (white) with fangs on her teeth and her forearms has spikes and claws on her hands. She has orange pupils and dark yellow sclera eyes, which she also has red hair and wears a fancy dress that matches her eyes. The demon girl also wields a pair of scissors, which Marco has on his possession. Marco's posergang members will cosplay as greasers from an 80s film, which they prefer with hair pomade and apply their hairstyle to pose someone who's famous. Many members will wear leather jackets modified with kevlar armor linen on the interior, and shoulder plates on the exterior, but sometimes they'll have a red collar around the back of the neck which protects them from getting hacked by netrunners. Some of Marco's gang are former booster gangs, solos, techies, Nomads, smugglers, and former corporate mercenaries. His members are consistent at least 30+ members for a relatively small group. Their list of gang activities mostly involves neighborhood watch (guardians), muscle-for-hire, street racing (either on road or off road), burgarly, and game activities (like poker, caravan, dominoes, five finger fillet, and blackjack).

Their headquarters is located somewhere in Night City where they live closer to the combat zone and they usually hangout at a local junkyard at a fancy 80s restaurant called "Johnny Rockets." The owner who runs the bar is Danse and they mostly serve alcohol, soft drinks, and milkshakes. They mostly rely with switchblades and armed with pre-war weapons, sometimes they prefer to carry heavy pistols and assault rifles, or shotguns. Their cyber bikes are customized that represents their gang logo, which they prefer to travel in large packs at least six-12 members and use highways to get around in Night City.

They're currently into conflict with the Malstrom gang since they don't appreciate their hostility for treating one of their members for being an "inferior human" and The Valentino's gang also has beef with Marco. A long time ago, Marco was once an initiate after his roommate Miguel encoueaged him to join their gang. Its not because he was concerned about choosing a side, but he also has a secret crush with Vaggie (Valentine Guerrero) despite she can be "gruff" with the boys sometimes. He stayed with them for over a year until Carlos and his friends caught a teenage straggler named Luke after stealing money from their gang. He handed the pistol to Marco and ordered him to kill Luke. He had two choices: He can become part of a gang member, or be left in the streets to fend for himself. Marco couldn't pull the trigger, but Carlos had no patience for pu#%$#s like him, so he decided to do it for himself. Marco decided to pull the trigger and shot Carlos in the leg. He didn't want to hurt anyone but he didn't want to become a murderer either, so Miguel told him to run and they escape.

The Valentino's gang and The Sons of Hellfire have been tearing each other's throats since day one, but none of them decided to start a gang war. Marco didn't want that, so the two factions mostly settle a dispute with street fights. One day, Marco was in a school cafeteria until he got into someone's face who didn't appreciate showing his face around here. They got into a fight while everyone was chanting the word "fight." When the fight was over. Marco didn't know that was Vaggie's girlfriend and she witnessed what happened. He pleaded Vaggie that it was an "accident" after breaking her friend's ribcage, but her response was "you're done."

Marco's History

Marco has no memory of who he is or where'd he come from. The only few mementos he had on him was two pairs of fancy scissors and an ancient samurai sword after his adopted parents discovered a baby crib sitting outside of their patio front door. Marco's scissors bows had a shape of a hear with a dark-purple color, a golden blade that looks rusted for decades, and the middle of the bolt has a logo of a fireball. The other scissors bows also has a shape of a fireball colored in red, similar to Marco's, the middle of the bolt is also shaded in yellow, and the end of the white blade has a shape of a dagger that looks sheathed.

The samurai sword he had in his possession was made out of copper and steel: On the collar it had holes that look like it had shapes of fins, the guard was a shape of a dragon that spews out a fireball, and the handle was decorated with skulls vertically. Although, the steel blade has been rusted overtime and hasn't been cleaned for ages, which there was no point of attempting to repair it. His father was kind enough to reconstruct his sword from the ground up and hired a blacksmith who knows him well. Marco now carries his father's sword that was recently been melted down from his old samurai sword. The sword itself has a Red, blood-like, Damascus blade with a copper plated collar of a dragon. The handle's linen exterior was black and red; decorated and shape like diamonds with a four-part symbol vertically.

His father decided to give him the name Marco because of the scissors he carried that was rusted has a signature that says "MARCO" engraved on his name, and gave him the middle name "Maximus," which comes from a latin greek name that means "Greatest" or "Largest." His father passed onto his adopted son's last name Kojima, named after his father before him, and the Kojima family has been working for Arasaka since World War II.

Marco's Personality & Estrange Powers

His personality has a combination of Berserk (brave, but emotionless), Nathan Drake (from Uncharted: funny, but can be a sarcastic jerk sometimes), and Ponyboy (The Outsiders: Cares about his friends and his loved ones). He can be a sarcastic jerk sometimes when he greets with his peers, even his sworn enemies. His life caused him to go through a tough depression after losing his adopted parents, but he had someone who gives him love and support. The only thing that fears him the most is his last name. If anyone found out that Marco was raised by a corpo family working for Arasaka. Many of his members and fans will shunned him. He didn't want everyone to know who he is, so he mostly keeps his secrets to himself except his girlfriend. His love of Johnny Silverhand's music inspired him to become part of a rebellion against Arasaka. He utilizes his musical lyrics to voice his anger and manipulates his fans to gain leverage and go against a specific group or person.

During Marco's early childhood, he had some kind of entity living inside of him. Whenever he feels agitated or angry, his orange pupils will glow brighter as a sun and his fangs will pop out from his teeth as a sign of anger. Marco has never lost control of himself since it's common to deal with local street punks and wannabe gangsters. His adopted parents have treated him with love and respect no matter how he looks different than the other humans.

If someone tries to harm him or his friends that puts them in danger. He'll beat them senseless and shows no mercy until they're either knocked out unconscious or they'll loses a tooth with a few broken bones. Many Night City residents and booster gangsters refer to him as: Hell Boy, El Diablo, Lucifer, Morningstar, and Mad Max.

Is SVTFOE a Crossover of Cyberpunk?

Yes, this is part of a fan-fiction story portrayed by some characters featured in Cyberpunk from Star Vs. The Forces Of Evil. There's also going to be some familiar faces added on my story, new enemies, and different scenarios. This story will focus on the main characters, including the gangs of Night City, Nomad Clans, and Megacorporations.

Disclaimer:

I never watched the show of SVTFOE, but I have read some fictional comic books made by independent authors and so as the creators who made this show.

What is Cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk is an old-fashioned genre that appeared in the 1950s or 60s by a group of RPG game fanatics who had a vision idea of a dystopian society: The difference between "dystopia" and "dystopian" have two different meanings, but they sound similar. The word "Dystopia" is a place or a community society under a utopia illusion that looks more frightening and unstable ruled by a powerful government or entity; which is inspired by Thomas More published from his book in the 1500s called: Utopia. Another word of "Dystopian" is a prediction that foresees a person's perspective of what our society will look like in the grim future (or The Dark Future).

The word "Cyber" is part of a metal gimmick or amputee of a cybernetic augmentation that's replaced with an artificial limb that looks fake, except it's manufactured by a company who makes them. In the world of cyberpunk, many war veterans have lost their limbs before the collapse. Many Megacorporations have began manufacturing cybernetic limbs that were in high demand, and benefited many disabled people to replace their lost limbs for cybernetics.

However this game didn't featured with interface plugs to connect with computers or machines back then until Mike Pondsmith released his first tabletop game of Cyberpunk 2020 in the late 80s. The word "Punk" is an old fashion style that people will wear flashy weird-looking clothes, leather jackets, metal piercings, crazy hairstyles, colors, boots, chains, and testosterone. Most people will design their own fashion clothing with many, many styles of their own design. When you see a posergang wearing flashy clothes, they'll dressed and match with weird-looking accessories, sometimes you'll noticed their facial and body features will not resemble as human. They can depict someone as a conehead, a furry animal, or a mythical creature.

Cyberpsychosis

In the world of cyberpunk, many solos and booster gangs will upgrade their implants and become superhumans to push their limits in order to survive, or to prove themselves worthy, but due to their mental illness of Cyberpsychosis. Their mental health has slowly deteriorated and became unstable. They will stop their daily routines (like eat, sleep, socialize, sex, or love interest) and become distant with friends and family. Soon, they'll see themselves more like a machine as they loose their human identity. And later afterwards, they'll become aggressive and see humans as "weaker" and "inferior." As a result, their psychotic rampage will caused them to go insane and lost the ability to reason.

Night City has become a dangerous place to live in America for decades, and Cyberpsychosis has become a big problem since the 2000s. Most state-sponsored organizations offer patients for treatment to recover from their mental illness, but it has become increasingly difficult to transfer patients to become a stable human being. The Night City Police Department has created a new division department called: NCPD Psycho Squad or Maximum Force Tactical Division (MAX-TAC). They have the best gear and equipment they need with heavily combats vehicles and AV-9s, with at least six highly trained SWAT members and one Officer in the field, but they sometimes do require to be cybernetically enhanced before deployment. They're mostly referred to as C-SWAT (Cybernetic Special Weapons & Tactical Squad) and are extremely aggressive when dealing with these cyber psycho threats. They will sent C-SWAT to kill or subdue cyber psychos if possible. If a SWAT unit fails, then they'll dispatch MAX-TAC units to take care of it.

What's it like Living in Night City?

Night City was an inspiration to rebuild a utopia city; free from government corruption and lawlessness. Richard Night's goal was to establish an independent City where everyone can live freely, but he was mysteriously murdered by a monster family. Megacorporations and private military like Militech and Arasaka have taken Richard Night's place and began expanding their business across Night City districts. The Night City Police Department is established and are divided into seven divisions, which they're privately funded by Megacorporations and are sent to patrol in each district zone "only to the highest bidder."

Although, some district zones where there's constant battles between factions and are crawling with booster gangs, cultist maniacs, cyber psychos, and street scum are called "Combat Zones." A combat zone is part of Night City's district located at the Pacifica district sector. Combat zones is a lawless place and are a no go. Law enforcement is limited or non-existent, and no emergency services to call for help. Traveling through the combat zone is not recommended and are controlled by a heavily armed booster gang running the district. If you happen to live near the combat zone where it's close to home. Many corporate cops and business executives tend to avoid that area and would not risk collecting tax money from residents who reside there. Sometimes booster gangsters will offer protection money for landlords and neighborhood tenants in case if there's trouble on the homefront. Some sponsored programs do offer licensing to work as police freelancers, neighborhood watchers, and bodyguards. Although there are some limitations to use some utilization of authority.

Night City's life of crime has two working class citizens: You have the higher-class rich family living in high-end corporate zones with corporate security and private militia, and you have the lower-class losers living in low-end district slums surrounded by booster gangs and violent crime in the streets. The middle-class is non-existent in Night City. It's not everyone's favorite choice, but people have decided live in those city slums these days. It's also a common routine for Night City resident to carry with weapons and firearms, and sometimes they'll modify their clothing to add kevlar and armor plates for body protection. Some cybernetic augs will also have implants to carry their weapon concealed like the mantis blades or a plasma cannon. The problem with Night City's lack of infrastructure and protection for their citizens only cared about "corporate interests" and can care less about their citizens unless their corporate business puts them on jeopardy. They're equally as evil and corrupt compare to some business executives.

Is This Story Starco related?

Actually, no. This story is related to a Markapoo timeline when Hekapoo falls in love with Marco. I read one of the creator's fan-fiction comic books from his patreon page (Zaicomaster14) and was interested about their love story. Marco is a reincarnation of Hekapoo, but his powers are limited in an alternate timeline because of his human form.

What Inspired You to Create a Fictional Story of Cyberpunk?

I first watch the trailer of Cyberpunk 2077's E3 trailer back in 2013 when they featured a video by CDProjekt Red. They're a small conservative polish company located in Europe and they're a big fan of Mike Pondsmith's work, so they offer him to turn his life's work into a video game that inspires people who play RPG games.

I have watched films that are based on science fiction and fantasy, and I have read a few books like Altered Life. If you have watched the movie Blade Runner and Altered Carbon (Netflix Series) that's based on cyberpunk. You'll get a clear painting picture of Night City's dystopian society where violence and oppression are the norm. A city being controlled by a powerful government or megacorporation that shares a common goal only for themselves, but not for the people who want a brighter future.