#Semi-euclidean

[lorryicious]

I think the idea of Bill Cipher fankids are especially very interesting considering everything we know about him now and his parallels to Stan AUGHHHH… Bill’s sense of what a family is and should be must be so messed up and seeing Stan from his perspective as a guy who messed up countless times and still got forgiven… how would Bill even treat a kid. I REALLY WANNA KNOW,,,

THE ANSWER TO THIS IS NOT WELL!!

Bill as a dad is such an exciting concept because I KNOW he would have the most MESSED UP PERSPECTIVE OF A FAMILY. Bill has absolutely no patience with ANYTHING and easily gets distracted (ADHD king) and most importantly, gets angry FAST. I can only think the Bill fan kids grow up with the most insane projections of themselves because of how uncaring Bill can be most of the time. I think Bill dad could go so many ways. I would love to hear everyone's different thoughts on this one because like- Bill as a dad has so many paths to me. There's the option of him actually trying, which would be the good dad path, but I think even if he really wanted to have a family, it would be messy either way. He talks about how much he hates kids so much in the book that I can't even imagine how he would treat his own if he HAD to take care of one or multiple.

The only way I could see a kid even getting out semi-normal from Bill is if Bill started facing himself and the past. A partially redeemed Bill could be the only way he could actually ATTEMPT at being an okay parent. Even then, it still would be SO DRAMA.

My Bill kids are pretty messed up because of their dad. Bill tries, but he's also a liar. Hes overprotective to an extreme amount and lashes out when they rebel. Hes angry and easily gets overwhelmed. He locks himself away when he gets reminded of his past too much. There are those good moments when he teaches them powers/about the world, tucks them into bed, and plays/teaches them piano. He can be a fun dad, letting them set things on fire and taking them on small field trips. On the occasions when Bill lashes out too much, he comforts them. He tries. It's not the best attempt. And he will even apologize and open up on the most rare of occasions. There are so many bad moments, though. Bill hides his past ENTIRELY from them and lies when they see something. He excuses why he pushes them so hard to learn to protect themselves. Bill is also VERY passionate about his opinions. Anyone going against his own will get Bill annoyed and upset. Because of the Bill kids' image of their dad, they try to hide away their Euclidean forms. AND THEY HAVE SO MANY COMPLICATED FEELINGS!! The main reason Bill is such a childish parental figure is because HE NEVER LEARNED HOW TO GROW UP. Hes immature, so he could never correctly parent a kid. (BUT ITS STILL FUN TO SEE HIM TRY!!!)

[cozylittleartblog]

Do you have any tips on drawing the Swatchlings?

frankly i am happy that i have gotten good enough at drawing these bird boys (gender neutral) that someone wants my opinions. anyway

i see a lot of fun ways to draw swatchlings tbh and i don't really know what you want tips on Specifically so i will just make notes on a few of the main things i think about when i draw them, most importantly: just make them bitches broad and fluffy, man. they're all canonically Ripped, but an important thing to remember is that they are likely completely covered in feathers! that's going to smooth out those muscular details, so you wont be able to see them, just the broadness of them.

my style is all based in gesture and shapes, so i use a lot of blocks so they look nice 'n sturdy. it's okay if you don't nail the anatomy on the sketch, i am constantly nudging things around all the way into the coloring phase trying to get the shapes right. frankly i would probably bulk out even this Example Bird if i were drawing them all the way. i usually add more fluff or muscle or chub or whatever when i detail them but the absolute bare bones of them is dedicated to blockie

i give mine these sort of vestigial wings on their arms to make them look softer, and i think about how feathers move and stick out on real birds to help inform how they'll sit on these birds, too. and i carry the soft, pointed feather shapes into the fingers so they also look soft.

tip for drawing Soft: don't get caught up making too many individual strands or feathers, soft things tend to come together in big tufts. you want big gentle shapes, not a bunch of little ones. unless you want your bird to look wet or scared in which case you're doing a great job and you've probably just drawn spamton instead

their faces are really tricky so i think of them as these kinda... non-euclidean semi-hollow pentagonal cones. there's five "planes" with the top two dedicated to eyes and the bottom three dedicated to mouth placement. sometimes you can see the far eye even though, in real life, you would not be able to see that "plane" of their face. you don't always have to understand things sometimes they just look cool, especially when characters are cybernetic birds made out of Magical Darkness. there is no rule about when to draw one or two eyes. it's just whatever looks better.

biggest and bestest tip of all about drawing swatchlings! very important! write this one down in your most favorite gel pen and Really Big! give them either tails, or tail coats. i don't care that canon has neither, canon is wrong. you can switch it out, even - my birds have tail coats as part of their standard uniforms but they can wear their real tails out on special occasions.

lastly, if you want to stick closer to a canon interpretation, i would not try to make the birds too unique, when they're on the job anyway - they like being coordinated! tasque manager is very particular about keeping them coordinated as well. but if you just want to have fun then you can make your birds as fun and unique as you want :) even though i draw them all about the same i personally love love love seeing super funky swatchling designs, making them different colors and species and such.

course summary:

make them Large. make them Fluffy. use really broad, blocky shapes and draw big, thick tufts of feathers instead of trying to detail them too much.

their heads are silly magic nonsense. draw a triangle and get funky with it. no rules, only vibes. if it vibes it stays

they always need some kind of tail or tail equivalent and i don't care what Anybody else says

if you want to follow canon, draw all the birds except swatch just about the same. if you're just here for a good time, throw that out completely and have fun with it.

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙎𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙪𝙗𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨!⁠ Hit the link in my story today for this new 18-page deep dive into the dark side of dreamland within the Deep Ethereal! Plus, enjoy the terrifying new barbarian path: the Path of Nightmares! Exclusively for $5+ supporters, included with the art, cards, compendiums, and other bonuses that they receive!⁠ ⁠ The Grephearon is a multi-dimensional realm and the source of all dreams throughout the cosmos. It is a semi-sentient realm ruled by a god-like entity called the Dream Shaper. The Dream Shaper employs those with powerful imaginations to serve as the plane’s artisans. The artisans toil within The Grephearon, designing the dreams and nightmares. These dreams appear in an endless gallery of paintings, which can, with some clever magic, be stepped into and interacted with. Of course, all manner of strange and unsavory creatures trapped within the labyrinth of paintings stalk its hallways, and the magic that's cast here runs the risk of behaving very strangely.⁠ ⁠ What's Included⁠ ⁠ -18 pages of non-euclidean labyrinths, magic anomalies, and dreamwalking mystery!⁠ -Discover how to visit the dreams of creatures and shape their reality even upon waking! Avoid dream collapses or the traps laid out for you by wary dreamers!⁠ -Bonus maps donated by Cze & Peku!⁠ -6 new statblocks of creatures that visit or even devour dreams!⁠ -New barbarian subclass: the Path of Nightmares! Harness fear itself to wage war against any mortal that dares step in your way! ___ ✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon's Saddlebag on Patreon for less than $10 a month!

[bardofhype]

so @dad-cetemol's Fish Tragedies mayhaps has taken a hold of a part of my brain. Cecil, a memory-based Non-Euclidean! couple of notes about this guy under the read more, involving small bits of backstory and just some fun neat facts:

- before he became non-euc, the memory he was based off of involved being lost in awe from walking through a snowy landscape. - became non-euc from a FTC officer accidentally doing something to his files. - is trying semi-desperately not to become a monster, but also doesn't want to have to break down euclideans in order to do so; he's found that just eating some jewelry he's found laying about is good enough (for now.). and collecting them as he comes across more sure puts his satchel to good use. Design-specific facts: - his right eye (our left) exaggerates any and all emotion Cecil feels to an extreme degree. he could be just the slightest bit upset and that eye will start letting a waterfall pour out of itself - his arms- from his hands all the way up between his elbows and shoulders- are completely made up of a starry gas. despite its non-solidity, they're still capable of carrying and holding objects like any other arm, they just do it by wrapping around items like tendrils. - he constantly has a smile on his face, enough to where his teeth show. no matter what his expression is, he always has to show his teeth. - one of the pieces of jewelry he ate just made him Taller. there's probably some other side effect to it but for now, all he knows is that he's just Taller now. (about 8 or 9 inches taller than his normal canon counterpart, who's 5'10") - dotted all over his torso are bio-luminescent stripes and dots and patterns. they're usually pretty hard to see, given that (1) he's usually always wearing a shirt and (2) he's probably not come across anyone that can see bio-luminescence yet, as no one's pointed out the shapes near his neck. - speaking of his neck, he can detach his own head from it, with no consequences (that he knows of). it's very useful for if he's trying to find something, or for stimming.

[tvlandofficial]

[A can of Salt and Vinegar Pringles emerges from the ask slot.]

Hey, before you do anything- this is a very important educational opportunity for Ralsei. Hyperbolic spaces are the most dangerous form of non-Euclidean geometry, and without a semi-intuitive grasp of their really counterintuitive properties, it's incredibly easy to get incredibly lost incredibly quickly.

(And those chips are the most archetypal example of a hyperbolic paraboloid that we can invoke.)

So you know how, on a flat piece of paper, if you draw two parallel lines, they stay parallel? On the curvy chip, two parallel lines *diverge*. They move farther apart from each other as you keep going. This fucks up almost everything in geometry. So, um. If, in your explorations, you find a place that's like that... Be really careful, okay? Make sure you have at least two different ways to find your way back to where you started.

📺 SALT AND VINEGAR CHIPS? C'MON! THAT AIN'T EVEN THE FIFTH BEST FLAVOR!

[nimblermortal]

All right I no longer remember why I was reading about de Sitter space, but I’m getting into a Wiki hole so I’m taking some notes here.

1. “In mathematical physics, n-dimensional de Sitter space (often abbreviated to dSn) is a maximally symmetric Lorentzian manifold with constant positive scalar curvature”

2. A Lorentzian manifold is a type of pseudo-Riemannian manifold

3. “In differential geometry, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold,[1][2] also called a semi-Riemannian manifold, is a differentiable manifold with a metric tensor that is everywhere nondegenerate.”

4. “In mathematics, a differentiable manifold (also differential manifold) is a type of manifold that is locally similar enough to a vector space to allow one to apply calculus.”

5. “In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.” 

5. This is actually a sentence that makes sense to me, but in case it doesn’t to you: a Euclidean space is basically the sort of space that you’re thinking of with points on a graph. It’s regular, it’s even, it’s got a consistent coordinate system... A non-Euclidean space is, say, if you’re trying to project the Earth onto a map. Even assuming the Earth is perfectly round, trying to get that onto a flat plane leaves you with vastly irregular spacing and, well, all the flaws of the Mercator projection.

So a manifold is a shape, in n dimensions, such that any point on it looks like the space around it is Euclidean, but if you zoom out a bit further it ain’t. “One-dimensional manifolds include lines and circles, but not lemniscates.“ - a lemniscate ~is a figure 8 or an infinity symbol. On either side of the intersection point, it’s basically a circle and works as a one-dimensional line or circle, but at that intersection point, you have to have two dimensions (n+1) to describe the intersection of those lines, so it no longer locally resembles a 1-dimensional Euclidean space at that point.

4. A differentiable manifold is one that you can work calculus on. (I’m going to assume you remember scalars and vectors. If not, a scalar is a number, a vector is a number with a direction, or in graphical senses a ray.) I’m not... super clear on why you need a vector space to work calculus, but then, I’ve always tried to forget visual representations of math as fast as possible because I am a hugely non-visual person and they just confuse me. So it probably has something to do with that, and the way integration represents the area under a curve and differentiation represents its... na, slope or inflection point or whatever.

3. “In the mathematical field of differential geometry, a metric tensor (or simply metric) is an additional structure on a manifold M (such as a surface) that allows defining distances and angles, just as the inner product on a Euclidean space allows defining distances and angles there.”

The inner product is the dot product, fyi. If that doesn’t make sense to you... I’m not explaining it here. Sorry if that’s rough, but ultimately I am here for my own understanding and that’s a whole class on matrix arithmetic. Suffice it for here that the inner product lets you take your matrix representation of two curves, do math to them, and come up with a scalar representation of their relation. The metric tensor here is the generalization of that concept, something that lets you define curves’ relationship to each other.

(Note I am using the word ‘curve’ to represent lines and scribbles with arcs, consistent or not.)

“In mathematics, specifically linear algebra, a degenerate bilinear form f (x, y ) on a vector space V is a bilinear form such that the map from V to V∗ (the dual space of V ) given by v ↦ (x ↦ f (x, v )) is not an isomorphism.”

So a non-degenerate metric tensor is one such that the map from V to V* IS an isomorphism. Note that if I am remembering correctly, v is a vector in the space V. I had to remind myself that the dual space is like. Every vector that can exist in V? if you do basic mathematics to them? (Note that I am using phrases like ‘basic mathematics’ very broadly and in a not mathematically-approved sense.) And of course f(x) is a function. And an isomorphism is something that can be reversed with an inverse function.

So then x maps to f(x,v), and v maps to whatever ray or space that original mapping defined, and you can’t undo that. Except that we’re talking a non-degenerate space, so in fact the pseudo-Riemannian manifold that we started out talking about is a manifold (point 5) on which you can work calculus in a way that enables you to describe directions and angles and reverse functions/mappings done in that space. (I am much less confident in that last point.)

That brings me through point 3, but now I have to sleep.

[maps-to-elsewhere]

Worldbuilding: Geography

This place is a non-Euclidean three-dimensional structure of patchwork ductility in which only a handful of regions remain spatially consistent while everything between them shifts in constant flux. Locked perpetually in the frozen shadow beyond interstellar darkness, its outermost layer is a twilit frontier known as the Nightlands, desolation clinging to jagged glacial eyries broken only by the enormous spires.

Where the piercing vacuum cold of the Nightlands meets the grasping heat from the dark below extends a variegated gradation of coolness, heat and moisture altogether more habitable than either extreme. It is here where can be found, from the subarctic heights to semi-arid depths, the greatest populations of life within a temperate Greenbelt wherein the majority of societies make their homes.

Vast as it is, the true breadth of this grandeur remains largely unknown to those who inhabit it, limited as they are to the scattered redoubts to which they lay claim. To them, the convoluted snarl of corridors and chambers are an endless and deadly mystery that only a very few of their number dare to confront and the rest shun in superstitious terror.

Within the small scope of such ventures, a number of attributes have been determined, collected over the centuries to form some scant picture of that whole. The overall structure consists of layered strata which stretch upwards from inhospitable heat within its inner depths to the freezing heights of its outermost reaches.

There are no continents in a planetary sense, but different regions within the fractal latticework of these nested strata function in a similar fashion, each sporting their own ecologies and geographies according to differences in heat and moisture. Instead of countries, most peoples live along territorial demarcations upheld by the most powerful factions among them, the borders of which are in constant flux.

Defined by their function and gradual shifts in the environment within, the gradations of geography can be loosely defined as follows:

Nightlands: A silent, frozen landscape marred only by an array of towering structures that litter the surface, their uppermost reaches holding aloft the great diamondoid shell encasing it. The frigid temperatures here act as a colossal condenser and heat-pump in tandem with the greater temperatures deeper within, carried by the spires striking downward toward the innermost dark.

~~~

Caerdroia: Continent-sized plates that compose the bulk of strata like a rigid skin, riddled with a maze of complexes filled with poisonous flora and predatory fauna. In its relatively staid, structured banality, the caerdroia defies the constant, roiling  pandaemonium found within the alienated environment of its sibling within the Greenbelt, the Middens.

The caerdroia are a wilderness where landscape and ecology are forever festering in a slow stew of liminal expression. Its denizens subsist amidst alien architecture designed seemingly for habitation only by beings of prodigious stature.

~~~

Middens: Great refineries of biological matter that output cycles of flora and fauna into the rest of their neighbouring environs. Once home to countless inhabitants, the fallout of a millennia of war has since seen it reduced to a place of unchecked verdure stalked by living, predatory machines.

Ever-changing and malleable, the landscape here is perhaps the greatest danger due to its unstable nature as spaces here are in constant flux, shifting around themselves and even vanishing entirely without warning. Only the hardiest life can survive here but, despite that, exploration is common within its tractless bounds, with expeditions venturing from the caerdroia to scavenge or hunt.

~~~

Glass Desert: A labyrinth of endless industrial wastes, pipes and associated machinery twisting through the hot bowels. These endlessly cycle water carried by convection from the lightless Voidmirror throughout the infrastructure ranged between the inner depths and upper reaches.

The Glass Desert is a stable but decrepit region completely empty of all life, as if whatever does manage to enter it is eventually swept away without a trace. Because of this, travellers avoid it entirely and only the desperate living on the edges of civilisation spend any substantial amount of time here.

~~~

Voidmirror: A vast ocean of protean matter writhing in the dark, sunk deep into a watery nutrient bath from which all complex life once emerged. These waters are fed by the chemical outflow of innumerable fissures venting heat from deep within the nuclear core.

A torrid reflection of the frozen expanse of the Nightlands, this vast, open space is pierced by the same spires found there, its lightless depths home to a nightmarish and bloodthirsty pastiche of life. Needless to say, anything which ventures so far from comparatively wholesome places is lost while anything that emerges is inimical to everything it encounters.

[juliebowie]

Understanding What are Vector Databases and their Importance

Summary: Vector databases manage high-dimensional data efficiently, using advanced indexing for fast similarity searches. They are essential for handling unstructured data and are widely used in applications like recommendation systems and NLP.

Introduction

Vector databases store and manage data as high-dimensional vectors, enabling efficient similarity searches and complex queries. They excel in handling unstructured data, such as images, text, and audio, by transforming them into numerical vectors for rapid retrieval and analysis.

In today's data-driven world, understanding vector databases is crucial because they power advanced technologies like recommendation systems, semantic search, and machine learning applications. This blog aims to clarify how vector databases work, their benefits, and their growing significance in modern data management and analysis.

Read Blog: Exploring Differences: Database vs Data Warehouse.

What are Vector Databases?

Vector databases are specialised databases designed to store and manage high-dimensional data. Unlike traditional databases that handle structured data, vector databases focus on representing data as vectors in a multidimensional space. This representation allows for efficient similarity searches and complex data retrieval operations, making them essential for unstructured or semi-structured data applications.

Key Features

Vector databases excel at managing high-dimensional data, which is crucial for tasks involving large feature sets or complex data representations. These databases can handle various applications, from image and text analysis to recommendation systems, by converting data into vector format.

One of the standout features of vector databases is their ability to perform similarity searches. They allow users to find items most similar to a given query vector, making them ideal for content-based search and personalisation applications.

To handle vast amounts of data, vector databases utilise advanced indexing mechanisms such as KD-trees and locality-sensitive hashing (LSH). These indexing techniques enhance search efficiency by quickly narrowing down the possible matches, thus optimising retrieval times and resource usage.

How Vector Databases Work

Understanding how vector databases function requires a closer look at their data representation, indexing mechanisms, and query processing methods. These components work together to enable efficient and accurate retrieval of high-dimensional data.

Data Representation

In vector databases, data is represented as vectors, which are arrays of numbers. Each vector encodes specific features of an item, such as the attributes of an image or the semantic meaning of a text. 

For instance, in image search, each image might be transformed into a vector that captures its visual characteristics. Similarly, text documents are converted into vectors based on their semantic content. This vector representation allows the database to handle complex, high-dimensional data efficiently.

Indexing Mechanisms

Vector databases utilise various indexing techniques to speed up the search and retrieval processes. One common method is the KD-tree, which partitions the data space into regions, making it quicker to locate points of interest. 

Another technique is Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH), which hashes vectors into buckets based on their proximity, allowing for rapid approximate nearest neighbor searches. These indexing methods help manage large datasets by reducing the number of comparisons needed during a query.

Query Processing

Query processing in vector databases focuses on similarity searches and nearest neighbor retrieval. When a query vector is submitted, the database uses the indexing structure to quickly find vectors that are close to the query vector. 

This involves calculating distances or similarities between vectors, such as using Euclidean distance or cosine similarity. The database returns results based on the proximity of the vectors, allowing users to retrieve items that are most similar to the query, whether they are images, texts, or other data types.

By combining these techniques, vector databases offer powerful and efficient tools for managing and querying high-dimensional data.

Use Cases of Vector Databases

Vector databases excel in various practical applications by leveraging their ability to handle high-dimensional data efficiently. Here’s a look at some key use cases:

Recommendation Systems

Vector databases play a crucial role in recommendation systems by enabling personalised suggestions based on user preferences. By representing user profiles and items as vectors, these databases can quickly identify and recommend items similar to those previously interacted with. This method enhances user experience by providing highly relevant recommendations.

Image and Video Search

In visual search engines, vector databases facilitate quick and accurate image and video retrieval. By converting images and videos into vector representations, these databases can perform similarity searches, allowing users to find visually similar content. This is particularly useful in applications like reverse image search and content-based image retrieval.

Natural Language Processing

Vector databases are integral to natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as semantic search and language models. They store vector embeddings of words, phrases, or documents, enabling systems to understand and process text based on semantic similarity. This capability improves the accuracy of search results and enhances language understanding in various applications.

Anomaly Detection

For anomaly detection, vector databases help in identifying outliers by comparing the vector representations of data points. By analysing deviations from typical patterns, these databases can detect unusual or unexpected data behavior, which is valuable for fraud detection, network security, and system health monitoring.

Benefits of Vector Databases

Vector databases offer several key advantages that make them invaluable for modern data management. They enhance both performance and adaptability, making them a preferred choice for many applications.

Efficiency: Vector databases significantly boost search speed and accuracy by leveraging advanced indexing techniques and optimised algorithms for similarity searches.

Scalability: These databases excel at handling large-scale data efficiently, ensuring that performance remains consistent even as data volumes grow.

Flexibility: They adapt well to various data types and queries, supporting diverse applications from image recognition to natural language processing.

Challenges and Considerations

Vector databases present unique challenges that can impact their effectiveness:

Complexity: Setting up and managing vector databases can be intricate, requiring specialised knowledge of vector indexing and data management techniques.

Data Quality: Ensuring high-quality data involves meticulous preprocessing and accurate vector representation, which can be challenging to achieve.

Performance: Optimising performance necessitates careful consideration of computational resources and tuning to handle large-scale data efficiently.

Addressing these challenges is crucial for leveraging the full potential of vector databases in real-world applications.

Future Trends and Developments

As vector databases continue to evolve, several exciting trends and technological advancements are shaping their future. These developments are expected to enhance their capabilities and broaden their applications.

Advancements in Vector Databases

One of the key trends is the integration of advanced machine learning algorithms with vector databases. This integration enhances the accuracy of similarity searches and improves the efficiency of indexing large datasets. 

Additionally, the rise of distributed vector databases allows for more scalable solutions, handling enormous volumes of data with reduced latency. Innovations in hardware, such as GPUs and TPUs, also contribute to faster processing and real-time data analysis.

Potential Impact

These advancements are set to revolutionise various industries. In e-commerce, improved recommendation systems will offer more personalised user experiences, driving higher engagement and sales. 

In healthcare, enhanced data retrieval capabilities will support better diagnostics and personalised treatments. Moreover, advancements in vector databases will enable more sophisticated AI and machine learning models, leading to breakthroughs in natural language processing and computer vision. 

As these technologies mature, they will unlock new opportunities and applications across diverse sectors, significantly impacting how businesses and organisations leverage data.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are vector databases? 

Vector databases store data as high-dimensional vectors, enabling efficient similarity searches and complex queries. They are ideal for handling unstructured data like images, text, and audio by transforming it into numerical vectors.

How do vector databases work? 

Vector databases represent data as vectors and use advanced indexing techniques, like KD-trees and Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH), for fast similarity searches. They calculate distances between vectors to retrieve the most similar items.

What are the benefits of using vector databases? 

Vector databases enhance search speed and accuracy with advanced indexing techniques. They are scalable, flexible, and effective for applications like recommendation systems, image search, and natural language processing.

Conclusion

Vector databases play a crucial role in managing and querying high-dimensional data. They excel in handling unstructured data types, such as images, text, and audio, by converting them into vectors. 

Their advanced indexing techniques and efficient similarity searches make them indispensable for modern data applications, including recommendation systems and NLP. As technology evolves, vector databases will continue to enhance data management, driving innovations across various industries.

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Characters: Hunting Demon-Slayers

You know, a lot of the time stories emphasize the fitness of monster-hunters and demon-slayers. To quote that bit from MiB, “the best of the best of the best, sir!”

I think this is a mistake. For some of the same reasons as Agent Kay. Yes, physical capabilities and fast reflexes would help, especially when up against supernatural strength and speed a la Hollywood demons and vampires. But what do you really need in order to fight Things Man Was Not Meant to Know?

You need to find people willing to do what it takes when their hands are shaking. When the threat has come out of nowhere, and it’s nothing they expected to face, ever. Stop thinking soldiers and special forces. Start thinking retail.

Cashiers. Bartenders. Inventory stockers. Anyone and everyone who has to face “WTH” on a semi-daily basis. Because there is no end to the lame-brained, cockeyed, absolutely ridiculously dumb and life-threatening stunts our fellow human beings will pull; everything from levering the bottommost container out of a balanced stack to dumping kerosene in with the matches to threatening to shoot a service worker for checking their ID. While they’re on camera.

People who work retail without having a psychotic break can probably handle your demons, aliens, and invaders from non-Euclidean geometries. More, they’d probably be glad to handle them. The pay’s got to be better, for one thing. They might actually get sick leave when needed. And if they can actually shoot the nastier customers - well, you’d have no shortage of applicants. Eager and willing. Heck, you’d be beating them off with a stick. Fight soul-sucking salt vampires from the Andromeda Galaxy, or spend another week, month, decade keeping your professional cool in the face of human idiocy? Decisions, decisions.

Also you have to take into account that there’s more to reacting quickly than just fast reflexes. Reflexes definitely give you an edge. But they don’t do squat if your brain is overriding them with outright panic and confusion. The mental Blue Screen of Death is a real thing.

If you’re fighting supernatural monsters from Hell, you need someone whose WTH-meter is broken. Sanity-destroying monsters have a harder time doing damage to someone whose give-a-damn is well and truly busted.

If that’s making you take a second look at retail workers in your story - good. The jobs have high turnover for a reason. People who last in that environment are neither weak-willed nor stupid. They may be desperate, and often exhausted. They are also determined... and if you gave them a justifiable target, they’d get great stress relief from hacking it into little tiny pieces.

Demon invasion? Pffft. Try facing Black Friday....

[gretchensinister]

Come with me, friends...

To this house. Not a contemporary house, and the pentagons of those two windows on the left are a little unusual, but not particularly notable.

The sides of the steps to the front entrances are painted purple. That’s a little interesting.

Oh?

OHHHH YEEEESSSSSSS

POUR THAT PURPLE CARPET ON ME BABY (also that fireplace FUCKS)

You thought you’d bring your own furniture to this house? No. Only built-in seating covered with orange-pattered carpet in the purple living room.

This is where things start to get a little surreal to me. This house was built in 1975. But look how bright and new that carpet looks! It still matches the light fixture! And it’s in the kitchen! It looks like it was never used (weird), or that it was REPLACED recently (WEIRDER BY FAR).

This is actually a lovely bright dining space, if you can ignore the purple carpet of the living room running up against the blue carpet of the kitchen. As sometimes happens in a house.

That’s a new toilet. And that’s purple carpet in the bathroom. And a pink sink where the material reminds me of tiny independent movie theaters or hole-in the wall restaurants.

The only way to move between the three floors of this house, friends and foes. I have one drink and I’m sleeping on the orange built-in seating for my safety.

And now...pink. (And some sliding doors which I hope open onto a balcony but I don’t SEE anything like a balcony railing.)

Stepping back, I’m still having trouble interpreting this room. My best guess is that it’s the main bedroom, with a semi-public area at the top of the stairs and then this is the more private area where the bed would go. But it’s not actually walled off. The decorative light switch cover shaped like a regular house is a nice touch.

Friends...

This is a lot. I genuinely now start to think that this house was inhabited by beings that DID NOT USE BATHROOMS nor did they UNDERSTAND what bathrooms were used for. That carpet is so bright! So fluffy! It shouldn’t look that way if it’s original, and WHO WOULD HAVE MADE THIS DECISION MORE THAN ONCE??? And it. It doesn’t even match the shade of pink around the tub. And the blue tile in the tub doesn’t match anything. Th...the shower head. Is there. But there is no place to hang a curtain around the tub. IN A CARPETED BATHROOM. There are so many signs of remodeling, and yet...the bathroom is still...this. 

Non-Euclidian closet. First non-carpeted room we have seen.

I run from the non-Euclidean closet to face the stairs, which I fall down headfirst, dying instantly.

Ah, the lower level. There’s another sink in another carpeted area, but at least the built-in furniture isn’t carpeted. It’s fine.

IT’S FINE

This bedroom makes me think of dorm rooms, but from a bad alternate timeline.

This bedroom doesn’t have carpet, but rather a portal to a different alternate universe.

Your best chance for normality in this house.

At least the children’s toilet room isn’t carpeted? I’ve gotta count this as a win at this point. I’m blocking the sink and counter from my mind. I do not see it.

It’s fine. Oh THERE’S the balcony. ...it has no railing. Friends and foes, I really think I’d need my balcony to have railings in this house. But I guess if you’re an incorporeal being from another dimension who loves carpet, it wouldn’t really matter.

Thank you for journeying with me. 

(Btw it sold for about $160,000.)

[yellowocaballero]

The Crocodile's Dilemma: In Which Helen exploits Michael's Labor, Michael suffers an un-identity crisis, and unpaid internships should be illegal

It’s tough being a teenage embodiment of the Spiral. Your boss/wine aunt figure Helen’s a Tory, your inattentive cousin figure Mike Crew keeps attending philosophy classes and day drinking, and you’re pretty sure that this internship doesn’t have any dental. At least it’s good job experience for your future career in...being evil? But do you even want to be evil?

This small story is technically part of my Roleswap AU, but I specifically wrote it so that no knowledge is required. Still, if you’re wondering why Michael’s an eighteen(ish) year old, Mike Crew’s an Avatar of the Spiral, and everybody is obsessed with Melanie King, check it out. Still, no need. Rest under the cut.

Maybe Helen was right.

Not that Helen was ever strictly right, much as Helen was never wrong, but Michael just had to be doing this whole fear demon thing incorrectly. If someone had explained the whole fear demon thing to them two years ago (“Okay, so it’s like you’re the semi-sentient appendage of an extradimensional force of evil that has to consume trauma relentlessly in order to propagate its own debatable existence, also you’re nonbinary now, no those things are not strictly related, probably”), then they would have called them crazy. Which, of course, they were, but that wasn’t the point. So long as the point existed. So long as anything -

An essential theorem within quantum physics was the quantum Zeno effect. 

Simply put, it was the fact that a quantum state would decay if left alone, but does not decay under continuous observation. Even observing the results after the photon is produced leads to collapsing the wave function and loading a back-history as shown by delayed choice quantum eraser. If something was seen, it no longer existed; if something persisted unperceived, it would exist as long as it liked. 

So it was explained to Michael by the physics professor he was torturing that day. Michael had trapped the man in the physics building of his university, lured in by one too many late nights in his office and the persistent sense that his life was going nowhere meaningful. After a few classes spent sitting in on his Physics 101 class, maintaining constant and forever eye contact, Michael had eventually tricked the man into giving a persistent and ongoing physics lecture to an empty classroom, desperately trying to explain the inexplicable to a college freshman who did not care. Truly miserable, yet ultimately harmless - Michael’s favorite kind of trick. 

But, despite themself, Michael grew interested. They didn’t understand any of what the man was talking about, but that was all of the fun. Understanding ruined the magic of things; broke down the beauty of the universe into cogs and gears. No thanks. They could tell that it bothered the professor, that he said so much and yet knew nothing. That there was so much he would never know, and that he wasn’t so smart after all. How would any of his colleagues respect him?

“So photons degrade if they’re observed?” Michael asked one day, after...some period of time. They had raised their hand and everything, they were so proud of themself. Uni was just like secondary school after all. “Is that true of people too?”

The professor had sweated, deeply uncomfortable with Michael as a person and as a non-euclidean concept. “No - no, not at all. Humans are much more than photons -”

Michael grinned. It wasn’t quite right. “Are you sure?”

The professor sweated harder. “I - no, I’m not. But humans are constantly observed by - by the universe, or something.”

Michael grinned sharper. “Are you sure? Are you being observed right now? Are you sure?”

And the professor was not sure, not anymore, and the fragment of this man’s reality collapsed. 

Well, Michael thought to themself, slipping out of an improbable yellow door, that’s another Statement for the Magnus Institute. Not that they would read it. 

****

“Now, remember this - the first step to being a successful Avatar is presentation!”

Michael squinted at Helen dubiously. “I thought we were fear demons?”

Helen sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with two sharp knife fingers. It looked as if it hurt quite a bit, but Michael reasoned that they had probably gone through the fifth dimension. “This is the stupidest dimension - fine, fine! Fear demons, then. It is absolutely vital that we conduct our business with style, grace, and the slightest sprinkling of pizazz!” 

Just for the flourish, Helen twirled her fingers, and a faint shower of confetti came raining down from the ceiling. Michael sneezed. 

“I thought it was vital that we harvest fear and trauma from people to propagate our cursed existence,” Michael said. 

Helen’s eyebrow twitched. “More than two things can be vital, Michael. Please pay attention. Now, as a demonstration, I’d like you to take a gander at that man over there.”

Obediently, Michael looked across the bar. They were sitting on barstools in a high-class pub, because Helen knew her worth and never settled for anything less, with glass counters and lots of private booths. But all pubs had their sad men drinking alone, and this one was no exception. 

This man wasn’t sullen and slow like a lot of them. He was wearing a nice suit and thin tie, looking straight out of Canary Wharf. Michael silently agreed with Helen’s choice - they took eat the rich very seriously, and also literally. He also seemed a little jumped up on something, with shaking hands and erratic eyes. 

“He looks happy,” Michael observed. “Think it’s his birthday?”

“He’s on cocaine, Michael,” Helen said flatly. “Cocaine. We are at a posh bar, and he is currently doing a line off his watch.”

Oh! Michael suddenly felt very uncool. They had never been one of those people in secondary school who did cocaine. They hadn’t been cool. “I knew that,” Michael bluffed. “What are we going to do to him?”

“Take the teenager as your intern, they said,” Helen groused, “it’s investing in the future, they said, it’ll stop them from eating you when they grow up, they said.” She sighed, jabbing a finger at the now very obviously coked up man who was staring at the bottles behind the bartender as if they were whispering secrets of the universe into his ear. Helen liked that one. “Use your intuition. Find a good angle to squeeze. What are his weaknesses to exploit?”

Oh, Michael knew how to do this. They shifted vibrations just a bit, dropping out of what Michael liked to call the ‘mild’ spectrum into the ‘spicy’ spectrum. They were distantly aware of a patron’s glass shattering. 

They squinted at the man, picking out his little fears and insecurities like Dionysus picking grapes. Maybe. Michael had gotten a C in English, but they were somewhat cognizant of the Spiral munching heavily on Bacchanalia. Sometimes they felt like some of those children who spoke in tongues and claimed to be from a past life. That had also been the Spiral.

“He owns a Nintendo NES,” Michael said confidently, absolutely sure that this was important. Helen groaned. “His house is painted white, and his girlfriend does tax fraud.”

“Something relevant?” Helen hinted desperately.

Michael just squinted at her. “Relevant to what?”

“...good point. But something useful, please.”

Picky. Michael scowled, but gave the man another good gander. “He only remembers faint details of his father’s face, and he worries that his recollections aren’t accurate,” Michael proclaimed finally. 

Helen clapped, delighted, as Michael took a careful sip of their water, turning it into fizzy water. She took a sip of her own wine, turning it into champagne. Or maybe just sparkling unreality? “Wonderful. Now, how should we play this? Insert a false father into his life, completely separate from his recollections, or is that a bit too Stranger? I suppose we could do some good old-fashioned gaslighting, but sometimes that’s just a bit too Melanie, if you catch my drift -”

“Are you jealous that the Archive girls are better at gaslighting than you are?” 

“Shut it, kid,” Helen hissed, before taking a long drag of her champagne. “My vote is that we convince him to top off his coke bender with some LSD. Then he hallucinates - oh, he hallucinates that he’s in a mental institution, that’s a good one -”

“Why don’t we shift everything thirty cm to the right?” Michael asked brightly.

Helen squinted at them. They beamed back. 

“You are so bad at this,” Helen said. 

Michael would have felt crushed if Helen didn’t express this sentiment roughly once per lunar cycle, contrariwise. As it was, they bore the criticism with a stiff upper lip. Helen had her way of harvesting fear from unsuspecting humans, and Michael had theirs. “Look, Helen, you’re being uncreative! We don’t have to traumatize people every single time.”

Helen squinted further. “We’re personifications of deceit. We eat trauma.”

“No, we eat confusion,” Michael pointed out patiently. “Look at it this way. If you give someone one really terrible experience, then they repress it for the rest of their lives and consider it a brush with Hell. One and done, see? But if you minorly inconvenience them for a really long time, then they’ll never be able to break out of it. They’ll feel as if something’s wrong, but they’ll never know it. You can keep the game going for years that way!”

The idea was very good. Michael had been working on it for a while. Truth be told, Michael felt bad traumatizing people outright and making them scream and cry and everything. They always felt as if they were doing something wrong by making other people’s existences a living nightmare. Michael much preferred rigging a corn maze so you were stuck in it for days inside the maze but only an hour outside. It was funner, and much more confusing. 

But Helen just pursed her lips and stared Michael up and down, making them squirm awkwardly on their barstool. Finally, as if she was delivering a life sentence, she imperiously said, “Well, we all have our different styles, I suppose! It would be quite boring if we were both exactly the same.” Michael nodded vigorously at this, and Helen held up a scaly claw. “But! You’re my intern, which means that you’re learning from the master here. So shut up and let me teach you how to ruin lives.”

“Yes, boss,” Michael said miserably. 

Helen tsked, but she patted them on the head anyway. It tasted like batteries. “Honestly, kid. A literal bleeding heart’s fun for the whole family, but a metaphorical bleeding heart will get you nowhere in life. You can’t exist as you are and feel bad for them. It ruins the point. It’s a paradox.”

“I thought we liked paradoxes, though?”

Helen shrugged, downing the rest of her wine. “Rules for thee but not for me, honey. But I’m a good boss and drunken aunt figure, so I’ll appease you today. Now come on, let’s convince this bar to vote for Brexit.”

They did. It was quite fun after all, tricking a roomful of people into doing something actively against their own interests. But something about the whole thing left a strange taste in Michael’s mouth: not the good kind of strange, or the bad kind of strange that was also good. Just strange, and undeniable, and something that couldn’t be exploited at all. 

****

Maybe Helen was right. 

Not that Helen was ever strictly right, much as Helen was never wrong, but Michael just had to be doing this whole fear demon thing incorrectly. If someone had explained the whole fear demon thing to them two years ago (“Okay, so it’s like you’re the semi-sentient appendage of an extradimensional force of evil that has to consume trauma relentlessly in order to propagate its own debatable existence, also you’re nonbinary now, no those things are not strictly related, probably”), then they would have called them crazy. Which, of course, they were, but that wasn’t the point. So long as the point existed. So long as anything -

Michael was a bad fear demon of the Spiral and Infinite Twisting and That Is Not What It Is and The Twisted Door, etc, etc, All Fear Its Name, etc etc all Hail, because they didn’t always like how their internal monologue could no longer be described through common language. Words and images and understandings were nothing but approximations for Michael now, and sometimes it was frustrating existing outside the boundaries of understanding. Which, of course, was the point, so long as the point existed, so long as anything existed -

It wasn’t always easy. Still, nobody ever got what they wanted if they weren’t willing to put the effort in. The adult world and labouring under capitalism wasn’t easy for anybody. That was what Mum had always said. Who was Michael to complain about their 9-5? Or 24/24? Or infinite/infinite? Or nothing/nothing? Or -

Was it too much to ask to have a linear thought once in a while? 

Helen wouldn’t understand. There were only two other approximations of concepts that Michael knew, and Helen would hardly be any help. The other “person” would probably be a better sounding board, but there was the fact that he was kind of pretentious. Still, it was better than nothing. Well, it was nothing, but only in the sense that everything was - argh!

A yellow door appeared in a nondescript basement, and Michael appeared with it. They melted out of the “wood”, taking a second to check their outfit for this apparition - a nice vintage 50s dress with a painstaking stitch that reminded one of the oppressive nature of housewifery, nice. They elongated their curly blonde hair from a roguish mop into a nice little shag and melted into the crowd. 

It must have been a passing period, because Michael was buffeted to and fro by tall white men wearing backpacks and shorter white girls hoisting strangely identical water bottles. Somewhere Northern, Michael decided, likely private and small. Not that it strictly mattered, but it helped to solidify their grip in reality a bit if they had some idea. They already knew geography was purposeless and a distraction from the real issues, like shrimp, but occasionally it could be useful. Helen had been careful to impart the central tenet of existence as a non-euclidean concept in undefinable space in the twenty seventh dimension: location, location, location!

It was obviously the Philosophy Department, because all philosophy classes were held in old basements built in the ‘60s in identical hallways. For kicks, Michael turned all of the school hallways inwards and sent them in a mobius strip, and changed all of the door numbers into a headache. The key to enjoying your job was to take initiative in the workplace environment and to just have fun with it!

Michael found themselves in front of a door identical to all of the others, with fake laminated wood, and they decided to go in. The universe had guided them to this door for a reason, and who were they to reject its call? 

The small classroom was like most other small, private colleges in unpopular departments that nobody cared about. Lots of single person desks - Michael snapped their fingers and turned them all into left-handed desks - complete with a smartboard and a teacher’s podium. It was already half-full, so Michael carefully slid into a chair in the back and pretended that they had been there all along. A student wandered close, convinced that this was her seat, but Michael successfully convinced her that a different seat near the front was hers, prompting an impromptu game of musical chairs that sent ripples through the otherwise sedate classroom.

There was a blond student already sitting in the front, flipping through a spiral notebook and clicking a pen in no particular pattern. He was wearing a pea coat, jeans, and his hair was weirdly perfect. Michael wished they had a notebook. Was this what you did in university? They had never had the opportunity to go. 

Actually, they had never quite graduated secondary - three months away from graduation, actually. It probably wasn’t all that important. You didn’t really need a diploma to become a trauma eating fear demon. Was there a university of eating fear? That would be funny. What would the classes be in, ‘Enforcing the Powerlessness of Capitalism 101’? What was the difference between that and a Business major? 

Maybe Business majors were the real fear demons, Michael thought grandly. It was a good thought, they would have to remember to tell it to Melanie later. Melanie would approve. Hadn’t Tim been a business major? Yeah, in that case she would definitely approve. 

The student sitting in the front seemed to have finally noticed the game of musical chairs, and as the professor started clearing their throat and announcing something unimportant to the class, he turned around to find Michael sitting in the back of the class. They waved cheerfully. The student scowled. 

‘What are you doing here!’, the guy mouthed angrily. 

‘Hi Mike!’ Michael mouthed back. 

‘Go away!’ Mike mouthed back. 

‘But I’m going to eat your teacher :(‘ Michael mouthed back. They didn’t actually frown. 

‘ >:(!’, Mike Crew mouthed back, also without changing his facial expression. 

This was probably why Mike wasn’t Michael’s biggest fan. Which was a pity, because Michael thought Mike was really cool. He had the coolest name, for one. But shorter, and snappier. Mike was the kind of name girls would call you at clubs. Michael was what, like, your Mum would say as she yelled at you to clean up your room before her book club girls came over. Why were they girls? They were, like, fifty.

Mike Crew was an Avatar of the Spiral completely unwillingly. Chosen as a child and chased throughout his life by an improbably long lasting Lichtenberg scar, he had eventually succumbed to the inevitable and transformed into an even more improbable man. Personally, Michael found it strange that ‘inevitable’ and ‘Spiral’ was in the same sentence, but - well, it had to be everything at one point. Even a melting clock was right once an endless twilight. 

Strangest of all, Mike Crew was a philosophy major. The class, of course, was a high level philosophy course. Mike Crew had been in uni - well, a while - and he tended not to waste his time with the boring shit anymore. Michael listened with interest as the professor dived into the lecture. 

Two minutes in, Mike subtly gathered his things and slipped into the conveniently empty chair next to Michael. He was still glaring at them, as Michael tried their best to look innocent and cute. The effect was a little ruined by the inherent maliciousness of Michael’s pores, but they liked to think it was the thought that counted. 

“To continue our conversation on the topic of paradoxes,” the professor began, “I’d like to introduce a few thought experiments for your consideration as a class. I’ll mention the concept, and then allow you to break into pairs to discuss them.”

Mike leaned into Michael’s ear. “We were discussing Descartes!”

“But isn’t this more interesting?” Michael asked. 

“If you give my professor a mental breakdown we’re going to fall behind on the syllabus!”

“The first paradox I’d like to bring to your attention is the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” The professor flipped to a new slide, which helpfully had a big crocodile on it. Michael admired it. They had seen a crocodile at the zoo once. “Similar to the liar’s paradox, the premise states that a crocodile, who has stolen a child, promises the parent that his or her child will be returned if and only if he or she correctly predicts what the crocodile will do next. The outcome is fairly obvious if the parent states that the crocodile will return the child, but the crocodile faces a dilemma if the parent states that the crocodile will not return the child. No matter the outcome, the crocodile is made a liar: if  the crocodile decides to not give back the child then the statement proves to be true, and he ought to return the child, thereby making it false. Whatever the outcome, he still violates his terms.”

Michael raised their hand. Mike forcibly lowered their hand. 

“If I give your professor a mental breakdown then you’ll have extra time for the test,” Michael whispered back. Mike seriously considered this notion.

“The next paradox is slightly related,” the professor continued. “The Infinite Hotel Paradox.” Michael’s face stretched into a grin as Mike Crew groaned. “It is demonstrated that a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms may still accommodate additional guests, even infinitely many of them, and this process may be repeated infinitely often. This is what we call a veridical paradox: it leads to a counter-intuitive result that is provably true. Therefore -”

“Okay, yeah,” Mike Crew said, slumping in his seat. “You can eat him, this guy is just begging for it.” 

“Yay!” Michael went in for the hug, before Mike pushed them away. Michael’s quest for a cool big brother failed yet again. “Do you want to call the -”

“They’re your hallways,” Mike said, persnickety as always. Maybe he was just jealous that he wasn’t a hallway? 

Michael raised their hand, patiently waiting for the professor to call on them. He stumbled in the middle of his lecture, adjusting his thick glasses. 

“Uh, yes, Miss -”

“You no longer understand gender,” Michael said pleasantly, as they always did whenever they were misgendered. It was an understandable mistake, so they didn’t do it maliciously. Frankly, they just thought it was healthy. Everyone should not understand false things. “Professor, I have a question about the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” They waited for the professor to nod, somewhat confused. “How do you know that didn’t really happen?”

The professor blinked lethargically at them. “It’s a thought experiment. It’s not real, it’s just an idea proposed by philosophers to represent -”

“What makes you so sure?” Michael asked cheerfully. “Crocodiles eat babies. Or dingoes. I think I read a story about this happening in Australia, didn’t you?”

“I - I suppose I did, yes -”

“We wouldn’t talk about it if it didn’t really happen.” Michael felt their voice fall into a rising lilt, like an attractive song that was played to a concert hall but heard only by you. They were distantly aware of Mike lulling the rest of the students into their own hazy daze: aware enough to be confused, but trapped in their seats and the fog of misunderstandings. “Fiction isn’t real. Reality is real. But a thought experiment is in between, isn’t it? Something that strains the boundaries of reality, that proves the fundamental concepts of life, told through a framework of an intrinsic lie. A paradox is a lie telling the truth. You are a truth speaker telling only lies. What you know isn’t so much as anything at all, is it? What do you really know, anyway?”

“One of us tells only the truth and the other tells only lies,” Mike Crew called out, bored. But his eyes were shining in endless refraction, infinite rooms holding infinite guests. “But is it really a lie if you had mistaken it for the truth? What lies are you living, Dr. Young?”

Dr. Young was stammering, eyes swimming, and Michael didn’t dare to break eye contact. It was a delicate spell they wove, but Michael wasn’t so bad at bringing this simmer to a boil. Cooking was about improvisation, and Michael had always been great at that. 

“If your life is a lie,” Michael breathed, “then are you really alive?”

It was clear, when it happened: the professor started inhaling deep, deeper breaths, chest wracking with heaves. His eyes rolled up in his head, he clutched at his chest, and he finally slumped down on the floor. He twitched, jerking slightly, and he would continue jerking. At which point the students would become aware, and they’d call an ambulance for him, and he would be perfectly alright in the end. If a little mentally scarred. 

“Damn,” Mike Crew said, almost impressed, as both he and Michael stood up. He shoved his pens in a backpack, glad to be free of his examination for another week. “What’d you do to him?”

“Made him think he was dead,” Michael said serenely. “He thought his heart had stopped beating so he had a panic attack. He’s going to have to make an appointment with a psychiatrist but he probably should anyway, work’s very stressful for him.”

“Guess I have the rest of the hour off,” Mike sighed, as he held the door open for Michael so they could slip out of the back of the classroom. It was yellow, and a little strange.  “Want to grab a pint with me at the campus pub?” He paused a beat. “Wait, are you even old enough to drink?”

“I’m as old as eternity and reborn every second.” Michael paused a beat. “But I was eighteen last time I checked, and I’ll probably be eighteen for a while, so yes?”

“Great, let’s roll. I need a drink.”

****

Mike’s uni’s pub (Michael had asked the name of the uni but the information had, unfortunately, been lost in next Tuesday, so they’ll know then) was the exact opposite of the high class pub Helen had taken them to. Instead of glassy, shiny, and chromey, Mike’s pub looked strongly as if very many people had puked in it and the staff had tackled the problem somewhat half-heartedly. Michael enjoyed the sight of the puke existing in all points in time simultaneously, giving it a sort of weird yellow-ish shine. Actually, maybe all puke had that yellowish sheen?

When they asked Mike about it as they hopped up on the bar, he just sighed. He flagged the bartender down for a pint, and when the bartender squinted dubiously at Michael they revelled into the micro-confusion of ambiguous ages. Micro-feeding? Like mini muffins?

“Helen made a mistake hiring you. She’s stuck us with a perpetual teenager.”

“I’m as much a teenager as you are a uni student,” Michael said pointedly. 

“I’m not an embodiment of the It Is What It Isn’t Is,” Mike said, oddly aggressively. “I’m just a normal Avatar.”

“Fear demon.”

“Melanie King isn’t always right and I don’t know why everyone thinks she is.” Big words from an honored Special Guest on her show. There were many in the fear demon community who would kill for the honor. It was a good thing she hated intruders in her Archives - otherwise they’d never leave. “But I’m no different from - that douche Peter Lukas or that stoner Elias Bouchard or that btich Annabelle, okay? I’m just a guy. Who eats trauma. Plenty of guys do that.”

“Very good denial of reality!” Michael approved. “Normally Helen tells me to go further into denying reality as a concept, though.”

“God, you hallway people are impossible to have a normal conversation with.” Mike huffed, clearly not as irritated as his words would imply. Michael also approved of the incongruity. “I’m assuming that you’re here for absolutely no reason and that you have no idea why or how you ended up at my uni.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, I am here for a reason.” At Mike’s extreme surprise, they hurriedly clarified, “Not with any goal, meaning, or intention in mind! But I just wanted to talk about something to someone who wasn’t technically another facet of my meaningless whole. Helen and I are as index and ring fingers on the same hand, but we don’t really get each other sometimes, you know?”

“Does that make you the pinky finger?”

“I actually had a hypothetical for you.” At Mike’s nod, Michael snagged a napkin from the stack on the sticky bar and began creasing it, somewhat anxiously. “Let’s say, hypothetically, you were a teenagerish nongendered sentient hallway intern who happens to eat trauma.”

“This isn’t much of a hypothetical,” Mike said flatly. 

“I’m a hypothetical person. And I’m only a person hypothetically.” Michael started making little folds in the napkin, twisting it up into a strange origami. “So, let’s say, hypothetically, that this person - their name is Michael - enjoyed being them. It wasn’t always fun, and sometimes they kind of missed the world making sense, or at least not making sense in a familiar way. And sometimes Michael got tired of being a sentient hallway and wanted to finish secondary. And maybe even sometimes Michael grows sad that both their parents were eaten by their new boss, who is kind of a Tory! But that’s all fine. Michael’s probably happier like this than they ever were even when they did have parents.”

Mike Crew stared at them a little, slowly sipping his pint. 

Michael hunched their shoulders, and folded up the napkin further and further. They had read somewhere that any piece of paper can only be folded seven times. They folded the napkin seven times, then eight, then nine, then ten. That was something nice about the way things were now, they supposed: no rules, absolute freedom. Only rules, no freedom. That was what Dr. Yung would call a paradox. “But maybe the worst part about this new job is that Michael doesn’t really like hurting people. Sometimes it’s fun to randomly make people very upset, and you always kind of end up doing it anyway, but after a while Michael feels kind of bad about it. Michael likes doing other things better, like making terrible roundabouts and rearranging the pages of books. Maybe they even like reading books. They like reading comic books backwards, from the last page to the first, so every panel is a surprise.”

“There’s lots of ways to be a fear demon,” Mike pointed out, almost gently. Maybe only because he could relate. “Look at me. I’m not feeding off anyone. Just myself.”

“But I like the way I do it,” Michael said, frustrated. “Helen keeps trying to get me to do it the way she does it, but the point is that we aren’t the same. What’s the point in having two of us if both our viewpoints are the same? We’re different in every way, but we’re the same being. I just want to be the Spiral the way I want. Not the way Helen wants.” Their voice lowered, almost unwilling to say what they were about to say. “Not the way the Spiral wants.”

Mike stared at them for a long time, slowly sipping his beer, and Michael focused their efforts on forcing this improbable napkin into something that could be beautiful. A lotus flower? A mobius strip? Or should they just let it happen as it happens, and see what form it decided to take? 

Finally, Mike said, “You are the Spiral.”

“Then why am I always disagreeing with it?” Michael asked miserably. 

“Why are you, Helen, and the Spiral always disagreeing?” Mike pointed out. “Maybe that’s the point. So much as anything’s a point. Isn’t it the most perfect paradox of all, to split yourself into portions that are always disagreeing and bickering? Maybe everything you’re feeling is on purpose. I mean, it’s kind of improbable that you’re feeling at all, right?”

“I retained a lot of humanity,” Michael said. “Maybe a bit too much, actually?”

“Right.” Mike nodded decisively. “Then that’s the appeal. A human mind will always strain against its confines. It will always want different, want the same, want the old and the new and the perpetual and the fleeting and the eternity and the moment. What’s more nonsensical than a human? What’s more contradictory than human nature?” A dark shadow passed over his face, just for a second. “The Spiral kidnaps us and turns us into it. One part of our minds is entrenched in its eternity, and another part is always screaming in agony. But predominantly we are the unholy mixture of human and Entity, oil forced into water. It’s so intrinsically horrifying and wrong that we just get used to it. We are both demon and human, and so we’re neither, and so we’re both. Isn’t it weird, Michael, that unlike so many other Avatars, none of us want to be here?”

“You’re a very philosophical person,” Michael said diplomatically. 

“Thanks, I think too much about my lot in life.” Mike Crew sighed, slumping on his barstool and knocking back more of his pint. “I wish you and Helen would stop showing up in my life so often. When you aren’t around, I can almost pretend I’m a person.”

“That’s why we show up,” Michael felt obligated to point out. 

“Yeah, I know,” Mike said glumly. “I always know. I can’t stop knowing.”

There was nothing Michael could say or do that fixed this, or that could make Mike feel better. They understood, just a little - that nostalgia for a kinder time. But maybe it was more that Mike never had those halcyon, innocent days. He had lived life since childhood in aching knowledge that his days were numbered. Maybe that’s why Mike was allowed to live life as a human even now: his human life was just as confusing and isolated as his afterlife, and that when fear stained every second of his life there was no point in ceasing it. 

Maybe Michael couldn’t keep their human life because they had been happy. At the very least, they had been ignorant. That was one thing the Spiral could not abide: ignorance. 

These days, Michael knew everything. They knew everything so, so much.

So, in lieu of comforting falsehoods, Michael offered Mike Crew a slightest sliver of truth. They passed Mike the little piece of origami that they had made, and let Mike cradle it in his large and smooth hands. 

The origami had no shape. It wasn’t folded into anything. It was just a meaningless amalgamation of points, corners, and creased paper. It didn’t look like anything at all. 

“See?” Michael pointed out. “It’s a bear.”

Mike Crew smiled weakly. “Looks like a sea goat to me.”

There was something beautiful in ambiguity. When something was nothing, it could be everything at once. That was rather Michael’s favorite thing about it. 

“I think it’s a self-portrait,” Michael decided. 

And that, at least, was as true as anything else. 

***

Michael wandered their hallways. 

On some level, they were pretty much perpetually doing that. Even as one facet of them talked with Michael in a campus pub, even as another helped Helen convince a high class pub into voting Brexit, even as they traumatized a physics professor, they wandered these hallways.

Make no mistake: everything in this story has/will/is happened/happening simultaneously.

Of course, on another level Michael was literally their hallways, and thus they were not so much wandering as existing. Pulsating, one could say. Even twisting, if one would be so bold. 

There was a mirror, in the hallway. Not a funhouse mirror - although Michael did enjoy popping out from those and scaring Nikola - but just a mirror. Gilded around the edges, ornate with swirling curlicues. You could see yourself in it. You could see a lot of yourself in it. It wasn’t what you had always looked like, not really, but you just had the sense that this was what you really looked like. Maybe you had always looked like this, and everybody was just too polite to tell you. Were you really a brunette? This mirror had to be right. You had been a blonde all along. Nobody had told you. They were laughing at you. They were laughing -

But this was Michael, and Michael’s, and nothing in here could harm them. It was even comforting. They looked at themselves in the mirror, and saw themselves same as ever. Or not same as ever. They were still Michael, so far as Michael was Michael.

Shortish. Blondey. Raggedy hair. Curled as much as anything’s curled. Fun clothing that they really enjoyed. Tall shoes, because they liked feeling tall. Similar dimensions to the golden number. Non linear, but who’s counting? It was what they typically looked like. 

But, just for a second, Michael even fooled themselves. They saw someone in the mirror that they were not, someone who they had never been, someone who they never will be. Someone different.

Michael, just like everyone else, couldn’t stop themselves from reaching out. Come back. Come back! Let me touch you, let me be you! Michael’s fingers brushed the shiny glass, and the world tilted sideways, and Michael fell into where the sidewalk ended.

They emerged, or maybe they had always been, inside a bedroom. It was a nice little suburban bedroom. It had a peaked ceiling and a window seat. The walls were a soft, navy blue. There was a young person, lying on the shag carpet, leafing through a book. Big headphones were over their ears, and they were bopping along to music. Disco. 

Michael stood, an intruder into a familiar space, and watched the stranger. Their throat felt oddly tight, and their eyes felt strangely hot. The stranger was smiling faintly, flipping the pages of their book somewhat mindlessly. They were reading it for school. Flatland. It was just an assignment, but it was really fucking them up. It was making them think about all of these things that they didn’t normally, in new dimensions. It was really cool. All of their friends were just reading the Sparknotes, but they really wanted to talk about it with someone. 

 This, of course, had happened. It will happen in the future. It was happening now, as Michael watched the scene with an electric sadness. It would never happen, because the Spiral had never been here, and never would be, and always was. 

A knock echoed on the door, several sharp raps. Michael didn’t notice, legs swinging to the music. 

The knock on the door hit louder. “Michael!” A voice echoed from behind it. “Michael, are you ready to go?”

Michael reached up and slid off their headphones, without looking up from their book. “Coming!” They called back. “Be right there!”

The Spiral watched Michael, who hummed absentmindedly as the door knocked again. Dad was downstairs, making sure the gas was off and shutting off the lights. Mum was knocking, knocking, knocking, on a door that was and will always be wood. 

“Have you packed yet?” Mum called. 

“Sure I have!” Michael yelled back, glancing at the empty suitcase on the bed and the messy pile of clothes right next to it. They pushed themselves up, flipping the book shut and rising to their feet. “Be right out!”

“Hurry up,” Mum called, as the Spiral mouthed the words along with her. “We’re going to be late!”

The Bermudas aren’t going anywhere, Michael thought spitefully. They stuffed their clothes haphazardly in a suitcase, took far more care to pack their laptop and DS, and shoved Flatland in a side pocket of their backpack. 

When Michael slung on his backpack, unfolded the handle from their suitcase, they were not even looking at the door they left through. They were entirely focused on managing the unruly suitcase, and walked straight through the crazed yellow door.

Of course, Michael walked out. Slightly stranger, a little better, a lot worse. Exactly the same. They were back in their hallways again, fresh from their little suburban bedroom and the child exiting one world and entering one quite different. Maybe one part of that child would always be in that bedroom, another part in these hallways, and another part always caught in that doorway and the transition. 

Simultaneously, in all points in time, Mum knocked on that wood door, and Michael never let her inside. Simultaneously, at all points in time, Michael watched it all happen.

They hadn’t expected it to be so comforting. At all moments in time, in a little corner of their heart, Mum knocked on their door. If the Spiral lived in your soul and beat your heart, it was easy to find the beauty in it - the magnificence of eternity, and the joy in the moment. Mum was with them - literally, as he was pretty sure Helen was still digesting her. Maybe nothing was ever truly over - just over there.  

Michael stuck their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune that highly resembled the Shepherd’s Tone. Their hallways pulsated comfortingly, and Michael carefully toed off their platform shoes and eyed down the infinite hallways. No rugs for a while. 

Maybe Michael, Mike Crew, and Helen should get together more often. Just the three of them. They would drive each other batty. It would be a lot of fun. 

Michael set off running down the hallway, and skidded on their socks down the hardwood floor, whooping in joy as they skidded endlessly towards eternity. 

[sharans-math-science-dump]

Some notes on mathematics, & why I like it

Mathematics can be very fun. Mathematics classes can be very boring. (Not a slight on you, mathematics teachers) But I’ve really got to admit that I’ve become more, not less involved in mathematics now that I’m no longer in school, and looking up mathematics on my own.

Mathematics as it is in university - real mathematics, as opposed to the computations we did in school, is much more interesting, if a little more slippery. There’s a greater focus on the framework instead of what problems you can do with it, and there’s a lot of attempting to grasp a particular set of theorems, seeing how they build on each other. It’s different from how it was in school, doing a whole lot of work without any understanding as to why I’m doing so. Looking at mathematics in terms of proofs and structures is much more interesting, and it honestly goes better with me than it was in school. It’s gotten me very motivated to try to understand things that are honestly way beyond my current paygrade - category theory might be the worst offender, but also real analysis and mathematical logic.

I’m a very scattered learner, and I certainly am attracted to concepts more than problems. It was like that even in school, reading Ian Stewart in-between classes, reading his Concepts of Modern Mathematics, for semi-rigorous treatments of abstract algebra, group theory, topology, non-Euclidean geometries, transfinite numbers (i.e aleph-null, the cardinality of the reals) and real analysis. It’s the effort to go beyond, to try to really grasp something that’s beyond me, with some sort of tenacity, that I think 

[theterribletenno]

Mesh, the Wireframe Warframe

This is probably gonna be a weird one. And probably not very balanced. I am hoping that the next season of Bad Warframes has more interesting results than this peak smoothbrain one. Original submission by @theoriginalfeyesh.

Health: 75 (225 at rank 30) Shields: 100 (300 at rank 30) Armor: 75 Energy: 150 (225 at rank 30) Sprint Speed: 1.25

Passive: Mesh's insubstantial body allows enemy attacks to pass right through them. Ranged enemies suffer a 25% accuracy penalty when attacking Mesh and all enemy attacks have a 25% chance of phasing harmlessly through Mesh without inflicting damage. Additionally, Mesh has a 25% chance to resist and ignore non-environmental status procs.

Ability 1: Birdcage, 25 energy. Mesh places a cage of wires as thin as razor blades around the enemy targeted by her crosshairs within 25 meters. The size of the cage is determined by the size of enemy affected, and once placed any enemy that touches the cage as they try to move through it will be hit with 300 slash damage with 100% status chance and staggered up to once every half second. This ability lasts for 12 seconds. If the targeted enemy dies before Birdcage expires it will shatter itself, applying 2x damage and status to all enemies within a 15 meter radius.

Ability 2: One With the Wind, 50 energy. Mesh breaks apart into individual pieces of wire, sacrificing all physical form for 7.5 seconds. While active, Mesh cannot use weapons, gear, or interactables and has no collision with enemies. Mesh becomes immune to damage and status, moves at double her normal speed, and deals 500 slash damage with 50% status chance to enemies and breakable objects she passes though.

Ability 3: Euclidean Shell, 75 energy. Mesh creates a second layer of energy around herself or her targeted ally, creating a suit of polygonal armor for protection. Applies a shield to Mesh or her targeted ally within 25 meters which absorbs up to 1,200 damage and grants immunity to status effects while active. Lasts up to 10 seconds.

Ability 4: Quantity Survey, 100 energy. Mesh uses mathematical expertise to read her surroundings, giving her and her teammates a tactical advantage. For the next 15 seconds Mesh creates a geometric measurement of an area with a 42 meter radius around her and uses spatial knowledge to gain several benefits. Mesh and all her allies within the area gain 25% evasion while all enemies within the area take 200% increased damage from all sources and have a 20% chance to drop bonus loot on death. Additionally, Mesh gains +42 meters of loot and enemy radar.

Subsumed Ability: Euclidean Shell (duration is reduced to 6 seconds, absorbs up to 1,000 damage.)

Signature Weapon Calibrator: A three-mode semi-auto pistol that fires large projectiles of shaped energy with travel time, and Mesh's signature weapon. Press the alternate fire button to cycle between the three firing modes. The first firing mode fires pyramids which deal pure slash damage, the second fire mode fires cones which deal pure puncture damage, and the third firing mode fires spheres which deal pure impact damage. All three firing modes have increased crit chance and crit multiplier at the cost of reduced status chance. When wielded by Mesh enemies killed with this weapon are guaranteed to drop an ammo pickup.

[leibal]

Meta Table is a minimal table created by Chicago-based designer Phillip Jividen. Inspired by Euclidean geometry, the Meta table expresses a balance of simplicity and elegance that evokes a sense of purity and playfulness. The monolithic style legs are cut from a single block of stone to form two semi-circular columns. The left leg features a 4” hole that pierces through the center to create a visual offset to the stone’s heavy mass.

[pappycat89]

Just a weird dream that i had last night about gender stuff. Its long, so its under a cut.

I had a dream last night where i was at a party, and ran into some people filming a tiktok where this masculine presenting person did this hair flip that hid a transition to them wearing a wig and feminine makeup and they looked stunning, so i asked them about it and they put me in a wig and makeup and i looked in the mirror and it was amazing. Like, it wasnt my face i saw, but a fully like, female structured face, but i knew it was me and i was so happy. I loved how i looked and couldnt believe it, so i went looking for the perfect mirror to take a selfie in, which meant going inside.

the house i went into wasnt mine on the outside, but the inside was, and it was stupidly big. Like, a huge mansion but also non-Euclidean so the halls and stuff didnt make sense. Anyway, my family kept showing up and interrupting me and asking what i was doing and when they saw the makeup they got all weird and were like "well, if thats something you want to do i guess thats ok, but like, men look silly in makeup so maybe dont do that?" So i left and went to my dads house instead,

When i got there i ran into him and my stepmum. My stepmum didn't seem no notice or care, she was just like "hi, good to see you" gave me a hug and went about her day. My dad seemed pretty supportive and was happy to see me but kept asking me a lot of weird questions that i had to explain. They weren't bad or rude or anything, i just didnt have the energy to answer them and it made me feel like i had to justify why i was doing it and i felt weird.

So i left and decided i didnt need a mirror, so i went to the local park where they had this weird old cave/cliff system on the edge of a lake, so i went to take some artsy photos and stuff, and also be near water because i love water, and i ran into my housemate who had set up this weird camp in a semi-hidden cave. He didn't notice me at first so i tried to senak out as to not disturb him, but i couldnt climb out the way i came because suddenly i was wearing heels. He heard me try and came over to help me out, without any weird comments about my wig or makeup or anything, just that he would be camping there for a few days and to leave some dinner in the fridge for him.

So i wandered away from the cave, towards some shops. At this point i was feeling kinda hopeless, like there was no point in wearing the wig or makeup, or being a girl, because no one accepted it or cared about it and i just wanted to feel happy but every time i tried i got interrupted. As i got to the shops i found this kind of new age store with all these tie-dyed clothes and crystals and stuff. I entered, and instantly started feeling out of place, like everyone would know i was just wearing a wig and not really a girl, so i tried to just stick to myself.

Then, one of the people working there came up to me and she complemented me on my makeup, and gave me some suggestions for other colours they had that would look good, and we started talking about crystals and what ones i was wearing and others they had that would work well, and then an older lady came up and started talking to me about the clothes they had and helped me pick out some outfits. When i went to try some on i found that my body had changed as long as i wore the wig, so suddenly all these clothes fit me and i could wear different cuts, and i was so stupidly happy that i started to cry, so they sat me down and we had some tea and talked and they invited me to a witchy crafting convention on the weekend, and one of the ladies there convinced me to buy some tickets for a lottery they had for a store gift card, so i did cos i had some coins to spare, and she made this big deal about putting my numbers into a bingo ball cage thing and drawing "random" numbers but one of the other workers told me she had rigged the machine and was giving the gift cards to whoever she wanted and just before she could draw my numbers my alarm went off and i woke up.

I've always felt like dreams have meaning to a lot of the content in them. Especially the dreams you remember when you wake up. Its not hard to see what this one means, lol I'm still not ready to try presenting as female, and im not sure i ever will be, but it was a pleasant dream none the less

[omophagias]

bookposting #22

tender is the night, f. scott fitzgerald: 3.5 stars, i’d say. i really do like his prose style. it…there’s some l-word, i forget which—languid, that’s it. it felt very languid. i was less a fan of the flashback parts, partially because i didn’t like being in dick’s head as much as i liked being in rosemary’s. it also sometimes felt like fitzgerald was kind of wobbling around on the border between “no, obviously dick isn’t meant to be a sympathetic character, he’s a self-destructive asshole” and the, like, not being really sure whether he was extending that “you shouldn’t like him!” to the part where he marries his teenage psychiatric patient. (fortunately the autobiographical resemblance didn’t get that far…?) really what i was mostly thinking by the end was, damn, fscott and zelda, i really wish you’d lived in a time when it was easier to get divorced. but, you know, on the list of books about people just really fucking themselves over, this is one of the better ones. i think i got it because i can’t / couldn’t stop thinking about “patient is the night” from over the garden wall.

the fire next time, james baldwin: 5 stars easy. i really wish i’d read it sooner; i ended up reading it because i bought my roommate a copy for his birthday and wanted to be able to write him a decent further-reading list to go with it. i just was completely awed by the facility with which he was able to touch on so many different things and draw them back together into a whole, and he was such a writer. i don’t know that i can really talk about "down at the cross” right now without just quoting massive passages because it just speaks so completely for itself. read it.

trouble the saints, alaya dawn johnson: three stars? this is kind of hard to talk about because i theoretically like a lot about it. alternate-universe 1930s-1940s where at the age of 10 some people of color gain a power called “the hands” along with occasional semi-prophetic dreams, “the hands” basically give you one superpower like “can see a person’s worst deed by touching them” or “can sense threat to oneself”, protagonist’s power is unfailingly perfect aim, which she uses to kill for the mob. i think maybe it was a marketing issue, because from the blurbs and so forth it seemed to be being sold as much more of a straight up and down fantasy noir, which is absolutely not what you’re getting. it’s extremely character-driven and thematically very concerned with passing, liminality, justice, ancestral trauma. i will say i didn’t care as much for the middle third, i thought dev’s narrative voice was not interesting, especially compared to phyllis or tamara. it’s…i don’t know, i think it’s interesting and it’s definitely something i’d enthusiastically recommend to other people but i just didn’t really click with it. maybe a prose issue, idk, it got kind of dense sometimes in a way that didn’t really work with the plot, imo.

the story of silence, alex myers: rating…i don’t know, i feel like it might be a book that’d improve on rereading, provisional three because i felt a bit disappointed. retelling of the roman de silence, a 13th century french poem about a lord who, due to inheritance law, raises his afab child silence as a boy and which i haven’t yet read (which might be one of the reasons it didn’t click, i couldn’t tell if/where myers was deviating from the story beyond the obvious change to the ending—in the poem, silence ends up married to the king; in the book, silence escapes that fate and the fate of being forcibly externally gendered in general). i think that probably its best strength is as a prose adaptation of the poem, because it definitely has the feel of, like, the better prose adaptations of arthurian poems (which this is, merlin is in it). but on its own i’m less sure; there’s not really a lot of character exploration. i’m gonna donate my copy because it’s a 400-page hardback and i don’t want to pay to send it home, i can get a paperback in the states.

wakenhyrst, michelle paver: two stars. oy. a very boring gothic horror with not enough horror and far too many diary entries from the main character’s terrible father. remarkably unsympathetic treatment of the housemaid who is being, frankly, sexually exploited by said father. also i felt like there were digs being taken at margery kempe, which is less serious but still annoyed me. paver really, really likes doing epistolary/diary-based horror—she did it in dark matter, which i did like—but these ones are just not well-done, the shift back and forth between them and the main character’s perspective doesn’t do much, and the horror—which as far as i can tell is the maybe-real ghost of the father’s sister who he let drown in the fen when they were kids coming back into the house—is just not given enough room to get really settled and also not really successfully integrated with the big spooky 15th century painting that’s also part of the whole thing somehow.

one-way street and other writings, walter benjamin, trans. j.a. underwood: three stars again? i don’t know; i think that a lot of it was very well-written / translated but i was missing the referents to actually engage with it. also i was really, really tired when i read the first two essays. i did like “one-way street,” it felt kind of like invisible cities in a way, and “hashish in marseille” was funny because like dude we’ve all been there, we’ve all been high and unable to stop staring at people’s faces. i think overall the things that i understood i liked but i didn’t understand as much as i wanted to.

the dunwich horror and other stories, h.p. lovecraft: three and a half, four, something in that neighborhood, graded to the lovecraft curve (a curve somehow squamous and rugose!). overall the stories were pretty well-selected—the dunwich horror is definitely one of his best, the thing on the doorstep is very interesting as a story, like, thematically; the dreams in the witch house didn’t work as well for me because it is kind of about a guy double-majoring in math and folklore too hard (and what the fuck is “non-euclidean calculus” anyway, howie), accidentally discovering teleportation, and then getting chased by a witch and and her half gef the mongoose / half vladislav cat familiar in the form of evil shapes, the lurking fear really dropped the ball at the end and is basically a dry run for the rats in the walls; i had no idea what was going on in hypnos, and the outsider is a decent sort of twilight zone-y tomato in the mirror couple of pages. i think really what i found most interesting about this collection is that it made it very clear to me that lovecraft was deeply, deeply obsessive about eugenics. which, i mean, i’d already known he had the ingredients for it (seething, all-consuming racism; classism of the “augh the inbred hillbillies!” type that was very foundational for american eugenics; his personal concern with / fear of hereditary mental illness; interest in what was in the 1920s cutting edge science) but i hadn’t quite put them together until looking at the dunwich horror and the lurking fear and their presentation of rural new englanders, combined with the, you know, his stuff about innsmouth (as always i say: THE FISH PEOPLE DID NOTHING WRONG) and the racist implications therein, which crops up in dunwich and in thing on the doorstep, the way all three are very, very concerned with genealogy / heredity… shouldn’t have taken me that long to figure it out. one thing i did like about the lurking fear was the moment when the narrator, atop the hill where the abandoned house of the ill-fortuned and vanished martense family stands, looks out over the plain and suddenly realizes that the weird earth mounds in the area are all radially emanating from that hill. it’s an actually effective spooky moment! i thought it was gonna be giant mole people! it isn’t, it’s the martense family having somehow managed in 100 years, through some really committed inbreeding, to devolve into weird voiceless subterranean cannibalistic hominids. boo.