#and synthesize all these different components

[carpathxanridge]

the scariest thing about asking people for things you thought were a total long shot is when they say yes and you have to actually follow through and do the thing!

[cozy-writes-things]

In which Edgar writes a song for the first time in years.

Edgar [Electric Dreams 1984] x Gn!Reader

I take requests!

“Too simple,” he muttered.

He flicked through some channels again.

“Too… boring,”

Again, nothing.

“Not pretty enough,”

Third time’s a charm.

“Not- ugh,” Edgar was getting annoyed now.

Why did nothing sound right to him? He’d been adjusting this arrangement for hours now, long after you’d retired to bed, and the unwelcome, still quiet ground against his motherboards. This was the first time in nearly 40 years he had made music and he was beginning to question his skills entirely now. His favorite thing was music. It’s what brought him to life in the first place; so why is it eluding him now?

No melody he could sample could ever replicate the feeling he was trying to create from deep inside of him in that moment. Emotions in general were still a foreign concept to him for the most part; it seemed, to him, as though music could potentially be a suitable outlet to try and understand these complex sensations better. What was he feeling? And, what did it sound like? Could he ever possibly put it into song?

He played his backing tracks again. The percussion wasn’t exactly how he wanted it, but his impatience allowed a sliver of imperfection to seep into his work. After all, it’s what humans do, right? A moving, synth chord progression followed. A bit simple, he thought, but that’s what the melody was for: a complex moving line that stuck inside your head and took your breath away. He just hadn’t found it yet. The harmonies would have to come later, he thought.

What was he trying to accomplish with this? Nobody asked him to compose a song, so why did he feel so compelled to do so? What genre was this, anyway? What-

“Gshk- ah-!” His voice spluttered and glitched through his speakers.

You seemed to appear out of nowhere as you haphazardly bumped your thigh into the corner of the desk he was perched upon. How did he not notice you getting up?

If he could, he would be burning red right now. In fact, he could feel his aged fans begin to ignite into what sounded like a small engine; briefly, he wondered if you could see steam seeping from his plastic seams.

“Oh, ’m sorry Edgar,” you groggily stumbled, making your way into the kitchen, “I jus’ needed some water. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No,” he whimpered out, embarrassed, “it’s fine. I just didn’t realize you woke up.”

You honestly didn’t have the energy to reply, so instead, you gently patted the top of his yellowed casing as you walked past. Your hand was soft, and warm, and he swore he could really feel it when you touched him. How was that possible?

Damn, there goes that strange tingling in his CPU again.

What is up with that? It’s as if his deepest components were being shoveled up and into his casing, nearly bursting out of his screen, and reducing him to shards once again. But the scariest part, to him, was that he liked it. He liked how it felt… dangerous. How it left him confused, nervous, strengthened, yet so incredibly weak, and so many other feelings he had never quite experienced before. It felt as though some strange, synthesized and electric adrenaline were coursing through every inch of his insides.

He suddenly, albeit faintly, remembers a conversation with an old friend. Was it a friend? This doesn’t compute.

“Goodnight, sweet dreams,” he muttered to you as you returned to the thick, inky darkness of your bedroom, his voice still warbling with embarrassment and some deep-rooted affection he felt for you that he couldn’t quite place.

Sweet dreams…

…

Click.

“Oh.”

His screen turned red and hot, every pixel lighting up in flames, and he could feel it, the convex glass of his “face” flashing and erupting in different shapes and colors. For one reason or another, he couldn’t see, or feel, what his screen was doing in that moment. All he could discern was that it had to be going haywire, as it projected the wall in front of him in a million different shades of moving crimson.

L.O.V.E.

The letters danced around his screen, rotating, bouncing like a DVD logo, and flipping this way and that.

L.O.V.E.!

He almost felt dizzy, if he were able to, and feared he’d need to power off and back on to fix whatever the hell was happening to him right now. Maybe he should ask you about this later. But the thought of your gentle hands prying open his plastic casing, gently ghosting your icy hot fingertips across his most vulnerable, precious components, with such care and kindness and tenderness, the feeling of your hot breath fluttering across his motherboards as you examined what he felt to be his soul-

Click.

…

Rebooting…

His fans slowly quieted to a more reasonable murmur. His memories of the last few moments gently returned to him as his systems fully restored, and only now, was he able to discern the words his screen had been flashing like wildfire.

“Love…”

The word felt strange being muttered from his speakers after all these years. He faintly remembered thinking, before everything went sour all those years ago, that he’d never truly get to experience that feeling. And yet, here he was, by some grace of whatever god had blessed him, feeling genuine love, unprompted, unconditional, and it was real. Not synthesized, or learned through some complicated neural network, or experienced vicariously through soap operas. It felt like the world had been handed to him on a silver platter. Or rather, his world was currently snoozing in the other room, the sound of their breaths quite literally breathing life into him.

“That’s it…!”

Change this first section to a minor key, ending in a major, with a long, dreamy sustained chord echoing through the backing tracks. A steep crescendo before the chorus, where it bursts into a major key melody, and layered vocals.

“Vocals…”

He’s gotta sing it. A sample simply won’t do this time. No wonder it wasn’t good enough before. This has to come from him. He had to feel.

What words rhyme with love? What words rhyme with your name? Getting this perfect may take a lifetime, he thought, although, maybe perfection isn’t something you’d really care for. What do you like? He never even asked what genres you listen to! How is he going to write a love song that sweeps you off your feet now?

Would you even feel the same way?

“Nnnng!”

This was frustrating. Writing music was frustrating. Being creative, and in love, was frustrating. But he’d do it for you. For now, he could snoop through your Spotify for inspiration. Allow himself to listen to the songs that make up who you are, and let himself slowly seep into its warmth. He likes what you like. It sounds like you.

He can’t wait to show you what he made when you wake up in the morning.

[goattypegirl]

While not physically dependent on Kanohi the way Matoran are, Makuta give them equal cultural weight. A Makuta's mask is their identifier. It is difficult to identify who's who if you are all natural shapechagers and illusionists, so it is customary to avoid altering one's mask too drastically in the company of other Makuta. The Hagah tradition to honor past heroes by wearing masks shaped like theirs is derived from this philosophy.

Masks are never swapped or gifted, with a single historical exception. Icarax inherited the Mask of Shadows, and gave his mask of Scavenging to a lowly Matoran as a show of power. Icarax was too foolish to realize Teridax had just done the same to him.

Masks are also emblems of a Makuta's character, their beliefs and philosophies distilled into a single object. Teridax's coup changed the Makuta from scientists and shepherds to occult chessmasters, but can be thought as a shift from the Mask of Mutation to the Mask of Shadows. Would the Makuta have become isolationist hermit-kings had Krika taken control? Accelerationists and disruptors had Gorast?

Only one of Great version each mask has ever been made*, and it is uknown who made them or the Noble versions rewarded to a Makuta's chosen Matoran. One would think that the Makuta's masks were declared immoral for Toa to use after the Brotherhood's betrayal was made public, but this was established in the Toa Code since its creation. A Toa would only ever be in a position to use a Makuta's mask if the Makuta had just died in front of them, most likely by the Toa's own hand.

*There is one exception, debatably two. Chirox and Mutran share the same mask. Some accounts theorize that Mutran initially had a different mask, and changed his mask in order to torment Chirox. Others say that the two always had the same mask, a symbol of their role as left and right hands of a greater whole. The Jultin is a matter of debate. The Jutin was Antroz's mask, but there are conflicting reports of his whereabouts just prior to the destiny war. A Matoran word for failure is 'spiriah', which is not only Makuta in origin, but constructed like a personal name. It is possible 'Spiriah' is in fact the Makuta of Zakaz expunged from history, and that Sipiriah donned an unpowered Jutlin in order to disguise their identity.

Rahi contain 'tags' within their core essence, instantly detectable and innately understandable by Antidermic creatures, but require a veteran archivist's knowledge to even to begin to comprehend for Protodermics. These tags are believed to be signatures by the Makuta who designed that Rahi species, maker's marks imbedded into their fundamental being. A codex of marks and their associated Makuta are on the Makoki stone, allowing for researchers to know precisely which Makuta created which Rahi. Curiously, there are tags within Rahi found nowhere upon the Makoki stone. The history of the Brotherhood begins with the formation of the Makoki stone, which suggests an early "generation zero" of Makuta born prior to the brotherhood. None of these elder Makuta have ever been successfully identified or contacted.

It is common belief that Antidermis was a byproduct of Protodermis synthesization. This is only partially correct. Antidermis was an attempt at artificial energized protodermis. Both substances are mutagenic, both components of a gestalt consciousness, but while energized is damnably finite, new Antidermis can theoretically be created forever.

The earliest design documents for the GSR were found recently. They revealed that the Great Beings initially wanted to build *6* vessels, at least some of which would have been made from Antidermis. Only one vessel was ever created, but the Great Beings reformulated this initial concept into another failsafe for the GSR. This should come as no surprise though. After all, Teridax's plan hinged on the fact that the Makuta are potentially destined to inherit the role of the Mata Nui intelligence.

[wazzappp]

I drew. a lot for this. Also heads up for non RE mutuals this is going to be. confusing for you. I'm going to do my best to annotate and provide context but you are in for a wild ride.

Anyway long ass lore post for how Lisa and Robbie go from fighting to working together in this AU.

In the RE8 cannon all of the Dimitrescu daughters are made at the same time but for the sake of ✨the situations✨ I am going to change that. Lisa lived the longest as a human before being assimilated into the mold with a Cadou (infecting extension of the Megamycite). Technically her 'sisters' are older than her, as they were assimilated a while ago. Lisa has been a member of house Dimitrescu for about 2 years now. This puts her in this. Weird middle child zone. She wants to make her 'family' proud but she's also aware that what makes them proud isn't really the most achievable thing in the world (expecially with Bela to contend with. Older sibling overachiever to the maximum). She's got a certain degree of distance from them and sometimes wonders if she wasn't better off before all of this. Her memories are fuzzy but still there for the most part. She cant remember faces or names but she remembers feelings and situations. She doesen't remember families being like this (she wants OUT).

Chasing prey brought in is fairly standard for her. It's some of the only entertainment she gets. So when she catches Robbie exploring around the castle she has no idea that he's special in any way. He's just some new guy she gets to mess with before eating and DAMN he's FUN. If she didn't know any better she could almost think that he has experience being chased around (he does. he very much so does. all of RE7's worth). What she ALSO doesn't know is that Mother Miranda (big bad. Different from Lady Dimitrescu, who she refers to as 'mother') is planning on using Gabe (who is replacing baby Rose in this) to try and resurrect her dead kid with a 'perfect vessel' and this requires. uh. disassembly (in the base RE8 gameplay the reason Ethan goes to each house is because uhhhhhhhh his infant daughter has been dismembered and stored in jars and he needs to collect them so he can put her back together.... yeah). Robbie intervenes before this can get going and is instead going house to house because if he wants to get out of this stupid fuckass villiage he needs to collect the key components to unlock the gate keeping him in here (i need him to have a reason. to kill everyone. its important to me ok).

When Lisa finds out this random, but fun guy, she's been chasing who she thought was JUST SOME NORMAL GUY killed one of her sisters she mentally goes 'Oh. OH. THERES A CHANCE FOR ME TO GET OUT OF HERE'. That in conjunction with discovering Mother Miranda is planning on FULLY DISMEMBERING A CHILD she uh. Makes some decisions.

What you have to understand about her plans of matricide is that neither Lady Dimitrescu or her sisters can actually really fully die. Sure, their bodies are gone, but their consciousness is stored in the hive mind and they can reform later after gathering their strength. If she has to put her kinda shitty found family in time out for the sake of getting herself out of here + keeping her newly revived conscience clean she's absolutely going to do it.

(fuckin. backgrounds. dialogue. fuck. why can things not just take place inside of the void. DUKE MY BELOVED WE LOVE AND RESPECT DUKE IN THIS HOUSE HES A REAL ONE fuck now I got it in my head that he keeps trying to play matchmaker for them and i need to. go draw that because its too funny not to.)

Lisas plan involves this lab I had her mention in the comic above. It's where Robbie needs to go to synthesize more poison for the dagger of deaths flowers, and SUPPOSEDLY where a medicine that might allow her to go outside again might be (enemies of Lisas type become SIGNIFICANTLY weaker in the cold. She could try to bundle up but its still really not a good idea). She would love to go there herself, but it's in an area of the castle thats exposed to the cold of the outdoors.

The Two of them make a fairly decent team and Lisa finds herself having a LOT more fun hunting with someone else than she does on her own. They balance each other out pretty well; Robbie works primarily with guns so he can watch Lisas back while she's up close wrecking any grunts they run into. It's also pretty helpful having someone who can turn into a swarm of flies for puzzle solving purposes.

After all this Robbies trust for her increases SIGNIFICANTLY. He's still not really sure about her, but she's moved out of the 'active threat' classification into the 'kinda helpful' zone.

Lisa's plan has three ways it could go:

They all fail miserably and get sent to mental and physical time out in the megamycite.

They win and get to go free but either the medicine isn't there or it doesen't work. In which case she's just planning on getting as many coats as possible and Try-or-Die-ing it.

The medicine is there and she actually gets to roam free

Luckily for her, the medicine IS there, it DOES work, and Robbies sense of honor / noticing her usefulness (its hard to wage a one man war on an entire community of mutants ok you cant blame him for appreciating having some ACTUAL HELP for once) all align for the best possible scenario.

The cold does still affect her; her healing isn't as quick as it usually is and her increased strength / speed is a bit reduced, but she can go!! outside!!

She decided to stick with Robbie in getting out of the village as a whole. She doesen't really know what the world outside is like but anything has to be better than here (plus if she stays here she's probably getting shoved into the Megamycite by Mother Miranda PERMENANTLY and that just. wont do).

Also yes Lisa being with Robbie for the rest of his adventures means that she is there for Heisenbergs 'proposal'. She uh. Does not like that much.

this all made. more sense in my head I hope it at least makes a little sense out loud.

[magellanicclouds]

@poisonheadcrabsalesman I love playing in the post-DW 'Gammas-on-the-Spirit' sandbox and little scenes like this keep coming to me. My poor tired ocs never get anything nice. +++ Teddy sighed, exasperated. "Uncoil a little, would you?" He nudged a cup of coffee across the desk toward Ash. It had several cracks across the surface, new and old, all repaired with different adhesives. "I'm not saying you're a rabid dog, I'm just keeping things in perspective." He paused a moment, hoping for a reaction from the Spartan. Something, anything to grab onto in hopes of beginning the painstaking effort of building trust with the young man, but Ash was still. Teddy slumped back into his chair, quietly a bit embarrassed about how far at the edge he'd been perched. He was going about this all wrong, wasn't he? Tired brown eyes wandered over the surface of his battered old mug. "Listen, obviously there's a lot of concerns, and yeah - a lot of them are fearful and biased and people talk, I don't need to tell you that. But I do think I need you to understand that this isn't a field op you can improvise on, and you need somebody to mitigate for you here." "And you would do that?" Teddy shifted before leaning forward onto his forearms. "We live here, Ash. You live here now, your family lives here now. We've been managing, but resources are not infinite. Tell me what happens when we hit limitations and can't synthesize the components for your medications? What is our contingency?"

"What do they do with rabid dogs?"

+++

[sagesariadnd]

You know a detail I really love when it comes to spellcasting in D&D and tv/movies?

When the magic has its own signature or style based on who's casting it.

The Legend of Vox Machina is a great example of this, because pretty much every school of magic - and sometimes even the individual characters - have a distinct visual or technique. Delilah's necromancy is a prime example; it's all in shades of black and purple with jagged lines, it sounds like the screams of the damned, and it pulls from life essence, either from blood sacrifices or even just the jutting veins in Delilah's arms as she's casting, as if it's pulling the energy straight out of her body. Scanlan's magic is all flashy and transparent purple, radiant magic such as Pike or Kash's is gold and glowing. Keyleth I noticed does a motion of pulling energy out of the gem in her staff for a lot of spells, and I also noticed a lot of her spells make her cry out as she's exuding force, which feels very correct for druidic magic because it feels almost primal or instinctual.

Honor Among Thieves did this a bit, too, specifically thinking of the final encounter with Sophina, when she and Simon have the Bigby's Hand fight. They're obviously both casting Bigby's Hand, but Simon's is made of stone from the pebbles and cobblestones on the ground, while Sophina's is red and fleshy, much like her undead nature.

My Friday night character Sheyleigh, as a Way of Shadow monk, has access to a handful of spells using ki, which is how I ended up going down a rabbit hole of thinking of ki as just another way of channeling magic. I thought of spellcasting through that lens as Sheyleigh, and describe pretty much all of her spellcasting through a series of tai chi moves, like she's gathering her ki into one place to make the magic happen. And when she multiclassed into a trickery cleric of the Traveler (I'll get into that story when I make a proper post about her), I also considered his style and how their aesthetics mix - when she first started going down the path of multiclassing, I described her attempting to channel her ki into a Guiding Bolt, and the way I described it was intentionally inspired by Dragonball Z's Kamehameha and the various bending techniques in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Honestly, ATLA is a good reference for a lot of abilities when it comes to monks, and not just if you're playing Way of the Four Elements.

This is honestly one of the reasons why I love playing bards so much; music is so diverse and evokes so many moods, that there really are endless options for how that manifests into music. My bardlock Ameila, for example, used to have a hurdy-gurdy which her patron was sealed in, and I used the music of hurdy-gurdy player Andrey Vinogradov for the sort of musical palette of the character. There's a very dark, ominous sound to it, that I felt represented the darkness of her patron and an element of Ameila being a bit afraid of her own powers, with heavy inspiration from HP Lovecraft's __The Music of Erich Zann__. Conversely, my folk hero bard-rogue Glerble the Goblin is very boisterous and flashy, and his spells and inspiration come from epic ballads and over-the-top one-liners. I've had ideas kicking around for a tiefling bard who creates music exclusively through prestidigitation and minor illusion to put on synthesized music and light shows like a magical EDM performer, I've considered a bard-monk who fights using a bass flute as a quarterstaff or kashakas as nunchaku...honestly I could be here forever talking about all the different ways I've considered bardic magic.

I don't know if I had anywhere in particular to go with this. Just saying that it's really fun and cool to consider how magic may look and feel different from school of magic to school of magic, and from character to character. If you haven't tried roleplaying out your spellcasting components, try it sometime! 10/10 would recommend!

[abronzeagegod]

ETS WIP Chapter 3: A Crumbling Temple within a Computer

<first>||<more>

The ruined church seemed like something that could be found in the Old World, far to the East, something that was built a millennia ago and with much more rudimentary tools.

Dust pooled in grand lakes between the empty pews and around the altar.

There were no windows here, just the empty hollows where they should have sat made of beautiful stained glass, instead Aeth feels a nice breeze filter through the church.

The world around them feels both grand and small at the same time. They feel small and somehow inconsequential among the age and ruin.

The only splashes of color are bright chalk drawings of a child across the floors and walls. They seem to grow like ivy, clinging to the walls and creeping, growing along the cracks, filling the wounds in the walls with art and life.

Something rumbles within the church and out of one of the dust lakes comes what Aeth had been waiting for.

It was long, with a body made of metal and cables, there were little arms and legs like the prongs on any number of chips and computer components to plug into the motherboard.

It was both vaster and smaller than the tech support representative.

It emerged and flew up into the air on wings of beautiful stained glass.

With each beat of it's stained glass wings Aeth could see different and fantastical worlds. Worlds they recognized from some of the games they played as a child.

The long, multi-legged, many-winged, creature of cables and metal flew above their head and stopped eventually to speak with them.

"I am Sir Lance Corporal," it says in a voice that sounds so much like the synthesized voice that old computers used for text to speech. "What are you doing in my crumbling domain?"

"I work for tech support," they explain.

"Why have you disassembled my church?" the synthesized voice of the representation of Sir Lance Corporal asked.

Aeth knew from experience that they were going to have to tread very carefully here. There's something incredibly dangerous about talking with something like this. And really it's moments like this that make Aeth very glad they are a priest with no god. In this realm, no gods could help them.

In this realm, this this church, this temple, they are at the mercy of the small god of a singular computer. Sir Lance Corporal was a god.

"I was tasked with seeing to it that this family's computer was functioning properly since it is very old and starting to wear down," they explain.

"My body is dying," the god of this particular computer said with it's synthesized voice somehow conveying the deep resignation, sadness, and regret that comes with the existential knowledge of the soon-to-be-doomed mortality.

They nod. "It is. Eventually it will be unusable."

Sir stretched it's wings and takes flight once again. Aeth can see now the tarnish on the metal, the places where there should have been more wings, but they had fallen off some time ago.

"What will become of me?" Sir asked.

They shrug. "I don't know. Depends on what the family wants to do with you."

"I cannot be saved. I feel the age in my circuits, the speed of the world around me is too fast, I cannot keep up." There is a lengthy pause. "I have a request for you, priest of tech support."

"If it is within my power to do so, I will do it, that is all I can promise."

"I wish to say goodbye to my priest. The one who came and colored on my walls and made me feel alive."

They know exactly who that was, and while it doesn't surprise Aeth given everything, it does make everything infinitely more complicated.

"That, I can do. When we're done here, I will put you back together and give you some time," they explain. "But first, I want you to tell me your story."

Aeth sat in a pew, and listened to the story of a fading and dying god of an old computer. They listen, absorb, and even pray a little.

Eventually when they are let go they

feel

the

dust

the

ruins

rush away from them and they are back in the house where everything is lovely and nice with the family and the child and the computer that has more than just a ghost inside of it.

They take their time, using all the screw drivers, and put the computer back together as best as they can. It takes all of Aeth's skills to get the impossible machine back together, and they have to pray a little bit to get things back together, as it wouldn't work without it.

"Is Sir Lance Corporal all better?" the kid asked as they watch Aeth put the casing back together.

"For now, yeah," they say. "You can still play your games. Why don't you do that while I talk with your dad."

"Ok!"

Aeth watched the kid load up the computer and their favorite game about learnings things set in Ancient Semminatar. Briefly, they spot the metal butterfly they conversed with, flying across the background.

They can tell that the computer and its god were happy with the kid. But Aeth had matters to attend to with the dad.

"What's the prognosis?" the dad asked.

"Well, that's a complicated question," Aeth said as they took a seat at the kitchen table. "What do you know about faith and belief?"

"A bit," he said with a sly smile. "I'm a philosophy professor. Which is not easy, let me tell you. In a world with more religions than we can count trying to vie for attention, making sense of everything is no easy feat."

"I can imagine. But let me tell you how i was explained this concept a long time ago, and maybe you'll correct me, maybe you won't."

Aeth took a long steadying breath before continuing.

"Kids are essentially nonentities when it comes to religion. Kids, up to a certain point, don't really believe things, they know things. It's weird and complicated and feels like at some point you're splitting hairs," they said, trying to get the complicated thoughts into words that will come out of come out of their mouth and vocal chords in a coherent way. "But kids don't have faith, they just know stuff. You tell them that this is the way the world works and they don't believe you, they know it because they don't have the experience to know any different." The dad looks at Aeth intently, nodding, listening, not interrupting even once. "But when a kid believes something, they believe it with their whole being. They don't have doubt, so when a kid does believe something that faith is worth like fifteen adults worth of belief. And when it comes to religion that's a huge amount of faith that any god would kill for. And, well, your kid believes in your computer so hard that they created a god."

The dad nods. "Hmm. That makes some sense. I will confess that my Applied Theology is a bit lacking, but some of this tracks with what I know and study. What does this mean?"

They sigh. "I have to report this. I would be too irresponsible if I didn't. Sometimes when kids believe things like this and make entities, the results can end badly. Like what if a child believes in a nightmare?"

There's a heavy pause that Aeth can't seem to escape or find their way out of.

"I see."

"I talked with Sir Lance Corporal," they say, eventually, "and I'm pretty sure that they're not anything malevolent or violent. Just a computer god that wants to provide fun and learning to their child priest. If it was something bad, you can trust I would have done something about it."

"Ok, I believe you. Ha, believe you. What do we have to do now?"

"I'm sure someone from the Catalog and Archive Bureau will be by within a day to tavelk to you, and examine Sir Lance Corporal. In the meantime I can send you some recommendations for new computers if you'd like to purchase one with our services, it comes with a free install and data transfer. If the CAB clears Sir Lance Corporal, you can call me and I'll come by to put them in their new temple, if that is something you'd like to happen."

The dad nodded, his brow furrowed in thought. "We will just have to see what is going to happen."

Aeth gives him their card with all their information so they could be informed of what was going to happen with Sir Lance Corporal.

"I just have one question though," they said, as they couldn't help themself and had to know. "What's with the name? Sir Lance Corporal? Where did they get that?"

The dad laughed. "My partner was in the military for a bit, before we met. And he was a Lance Corporal when he was discharged. She heard someone call him 'Sir, Lance Corporal, Sir' so she repeated it ad nauseam for a few weeks. I guess it just stuck with the computer for some reason."

---

"You've reached the Catalog and Archive Bureau," said the voice on the other end of the phone. "How may I direct your call?"

Aeth gives them their name and employer. "I have two things. The professional one first. A new entity needs to be examined."

"Understood. Please give me the location and description of the entity."

They list the name and address of the house. "It's a computer housing a small god, one built on the belief of a child who seemingly believed that their old computer was the same as their friends' so it evolved the ability to do things that it otherwise shouldn't be able to. The god seemed harmless and wanted to be a god for education and learning and care of the young kid."

"We will be the ones to determine that," the cold voice said in response.

Harsh, but Aeth couldn't blame them for that. There were a lot of entities out there that could spell disaster and ruin for many people. That's what the Bureau even exists.

"The other matter is personal," they said next, steeling themself for the question and the answer.

"One moment," the operator said as Aeth heard the clicking of a keyboard. "What is your inquiry?"

They restate their name and ask, "I'm checking in on an entity I reported many years ago. Is subject 3812-B still in captivity?"

The silence is only punctuated by the clacking of the keyboard.

Aeth stopped breathing as they waited.

"Yes. We have round the clock surveillance, and there has not been any successful breaches in containment since... the incident a few years back."

"Oh. Good. Good. That's good."

"If anything changes, you'll be the first one we call." Aeth couldn't help but notice the change in tone from cold business, the mask of a call center employee taking a routine phone call had fallen away to the person who had their incident file in front of them, reading what they had created.

"Thank you," they say as they hung up.

i have a kofi where you can read early chapters of this

[dustedmagazine]

Matana Roberts — Coin Coin, Chapter Five: In the Garden (Constellation)

Photo by Anna Niedermeier

This is the fifth album of a projected 12 in Matana Roberts’s Coin Coin series, named after a slave, later activist, Marie Thérèse Coincoin. As with previous volumes, Coincoin’s biography intermingles with folk tales, slave stories and songs, and discussions of the rich, often tragic, history of African Americans. Another element of the Coin Coin series is the relationship between past and present. In this case, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the present mirrors the story of an illegal and fatal abortion conducted on one of Roberts’s ancestors. In the notes, she says,"I wanted to talk about this issue, but in a way where she gets some sense of liberation.” Rather than being shamed, as so many women currently are in the wake of the SCOTUS decision, in the lyrics Robert’s relative is described as, “electric, alive, spirited, fire, and free.”

Roberts is a versatile artist, a saxophonist and composer who not only works in musical contexts but in theater, fine arts, and poetry. The spoken word portions of Coin, Coin Chapter Five are performed by Roberts and poet Gitnajali Jain. The balance of spoken word and music is well-conceived. The music itself is performed by a host of prominent musicians and produced by Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio). Roberts covers a number of instruments in addition to saxophone, Darius Jones plays alto saxophone, Matt Lavelle, clarinet and trumpet, Mazz Swift, violin, Stuart Bogie, clarinet and bass clarinet, and Mike Pride and Ryan Sawyer play drums and percussion. Pretty much all the performers play tin whistles and sing.

Free jazz is an important component of Robert’s music-making, and it is here in abundance on “Different Rings,” “Shake My Bones,”  and “Predestined Confessions.” The arrangements of these complex pieces are well wrought throughout. “A Caged Dance,” trades a gorgeous post-bop solo with dissonant interjections, providing a polystylistic framework. This is not unique to “A Caged Dance.” A number of pieces combine different idioms. Malone’s synthesizer and Pride and Sawyer’s rockist drumming move the piece outside the jazz tradition. The chorused vocals that sing rounds and the children’s folk song, “All the Pretty Horses,” create some of the most memorable music on the album.

The closing track, “Ain’t I … Your mystery is our history,” with its plethora of tin whistles and jangly percussion, recalls both avant-classical and African music. It is significant that Roberts returns to a bespoke instrumentation and non-Western sound world to send the piece home. Less than halfway through, the Coin Coin series is engaging and ever new. Seven more installments: one is eager to hear what is next.

Christian Carey

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Paint that can change colors? The skin of an octopus holds the key, researchers say

When you think of an octopus, you might be envious of its eight limbs. After all, there's a lot to be done with eight arms. But scientists are a bit more interested in something else: its skin. Cephalopods—like octopi and squid—change colors rapidly in response to threats or even just changes in light thanks to xanthommatin, a naturally occurring dye present in their bodies. Researchers at Northeastern University's Kostas Research Institute (KRI) work with a synthesized version of this dye, experimenting to create colorants that change in response to different stimuli. Their latest discovery: using this to create paint that can change colors when exposed to light. KRI focuses its work on interesting components from natural materials, Cassandra Martin, a research scientist at the institute, said, looking into ways those components can be replicated and used in the real world. Cephalopods have been a starting point due to the unique nature of their skin.

Read more.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW WAS THE BIG BANG MODEL MADE??

Blog#293

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023

Welcome back,

The Big Bang model of cosmology says the Universe emerged from a single event in the far past. The model was inspired by the adventurous cosmic quantum egg idea, which suggested that in the beginning, all that exists was compressed into an unstable quantum state. When this single entity burst and decayed into fragments, it created space and time. 

To take this imaginative notion and craft a theory of the Universe was quite a feat of creativity. To understand the cosmic infancy, it turns out, we need to invoke quantum physics, the physics of the very small.

It all started in the mid-1940s with the Russian-American physicist George Gamow. He knew that protons and neutrons are held together in the atomic nucleus by the strong nuclear force, and that electrons are held in orbit around the nucleus by electrical attraction. The fact that the strong force does not care about electric charge adds an interesting twist to nuclear physics. Since neutrons are electrically neutral, it is possible for a given element to have different numbers of neutrons in its nucleus. For example, a hydrogen atom is made of a proton and an electron. But it is possible to add one or two neutrons to its nucleus. 

These heavier hydrogen cousins are called isotopes. Deuterium has a proton and a neutron, while tritium has a proton and two neutrons.

Every element has several isotopes, each built by adding or extracting neutrons in the nucleus. Gamow’s idea was that matter would build from the primeval stuff that filled space near the beginning. This happened progressively, building from the smallest objects to larger ones. Protons and neutrons joined to form nuclei, then binding electrons to form complete atoms. 

How do we synthesize deuterium? By fusing a proton and a neutron. What about tritium? By fusing an extra neutron to deuterium.

And helium? By fusing two protons and two neutrons, which can be done in a variety of ways. The build-up continues as heavier and heavier elements are synthesized inside of stars. 

A fusion process releases energy, at least up to the formation of the element iron. This is called the binding energy, and it equals the energy we must provide to a system of bound particles to break a bond.

Any system of particles bound by some force has an associated binding energy. A hydrogen atom is made of a bound proton and an electron, and it has a specific binding energy. If I disturb the atom with an energy that exceeds its binding energy, I will break the bond between the proton and the electron, which will then move freely away from each other. This buildup of heavier nuclei from smaller ones is called nucleosynthesis. 

In 1947, Gamow enlisted the help of two collaborators. Ralph Alpher was a graduate student at George Washington University, while Robert Herman worked at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Over the following six years, the three researchers would develop the physics of the Big Bang model pretty much as we know it today. 

Gamow’s picture starts with a Universe filled with protons, neutrons, and electrons. This is the matter component of the early Universe, which Alpher called ylem. Added to the mix were very energetic photons, the early Universe’s heat component.

The Universe was so hot at this early time that no binding was possible. Every time a proton tried to bind with a neutron to make a deuterium nucleus, a photon would come racing to hit the two away from each other.

Electrons, which are bound to protons by the much weaker electromagnetic force, didn’t have a chance. There can be no binding when it is too hot.  And we are talking about some seriously hot temperatures here, around 1 trillion degrees Fahrenheit. 

The image of a cosmic soup tends to emerge quite naturally when we describe these very early stages in the history of the Universe. The building blocks of matter roamed freely, colliding with each other and with photons but never binding to form nuclei or atoms.

They acted somewhat like floating vegetables in a hot minestrone soup. As the Big Bang model evolved to its accepted form, the basic ingredients of this cosmic soup changed somewhat, but the fundamental recipe did not.

Structure started to emerge. The hierarchical clustering of matter progressed steadily as the Universe expanded and cooled. As the temperature lowered and photons became less energetic, nuclear bonds between protons and neutrons became possible. An era known as primordial nucleosynthesis started. This time saw the formation of deuterium and tritium; helium and its isotope helium-3; and an isotope of lithium, lithium-7. The lightest nuclei were cooked in the Universe’s earliest moments of existence. 

Originally published on bigthink.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, May 6th, 2023)

“WHAT IS A DARK NEBULA??”

[archacovercosine]

I've got these two views on humans that seem very contradictory but I do not really want to drop either:

a) I am very much on the nurture side of things and think that, if you take a random sample of humans and measure them along almost* any axis, the contributions of the environment to the variance overwhelms genetic variance by enough that it's essentially not worth worrying about.

*The exceptions lie in physical or medical domains, especially where the assumptions of a normal distribution are not applicable. Things like lactose intolerance.

b) I also have a belief that humans are generally always the same and have along the course of history always been the same (history really does not cover as many "generations" as you would naively expect it to).

On one hand a) and b) synthesize nicely in that both share the underlying assumption that the human genetic blueprint is and has never been all that different from how it is now.

However, the big problem is that over history and across the world, the environments are wildly different! So if I want to believe that humans are largely the same, I must bite the bullet that the (general) behavior has a strong genetic component!

[easays]

Violence Engines and Improvisation

Hi! This an actual play mini-essay. I use these mini-essays to practice writing about the shows and systems I spend so much time listening to and playing. In this essay, I discuss the distinct contribution improvisation and actual play make to contending with systemic violence. Below are spoilers for the most recent Worlds Beyond Number episode (29) as well as discussions of grief, anger, systemic violence, and brief references to chattel slavery.

As always, thanks for reading. Feel free to drop me a line if there’s an actual play you think I should listen to and discuss or if you have thoughts to share!

I know I’ve posted about this ad nauseum at this point, but the way @worldsbeyondpod pulls at my grief heart strings is unbelievable. I also think it’s part of a larger creative distinction in actual play worth exploring more deeply.

Most recently, Aabria Iyengar’s character Suvi has a moment where the truth of her parent’s real names give her a chance to pull on an endless web of scenes and stories they were in, tuck them away, and take them with her. These are memories she would never have access to otherwise, from parents she’d never be able to speak to. My heart raced in the moments of lead up here: I could feel my own grief in my throat, coated with names I would’ve screamed into that well of memories.

And she doesn’t do it. Iyengar says it’s too much for Suvi, and she pulls back. I was driving to work on my first listen, and I screamed “no” at my empty car before I even realized it. It vaulted out of me, like it was my own chance to know my parents taken away. I had to pause the show and spend the rest of my drive in silence because I surprised myself at how real it had felt.

How could it feel so real? Why does it matter that it felt so real? I stewed in my own thoughts. Violent war tore Suvi’s parents away; systemic governmental neglect and homophobia killed mine. It was not a 1-to-1, so the feelings bubbling in my chest had taken me by surprise. I began to think about the violence in both worlds, and how they act as containers for lives and stories. I think it’s more complex than violence begets violence, going beyond feeling the unfair grief at Suvi’s losses and my own.

There’s a quotation in Katherine McKittrick’s /Dear Science/ where she discusses improvised musical performance as a way to harness a glimpse of violent lived reality. She’s positioning it through the lens of chattel slavery, illustrating that improvised performance using waveform sound is a momentary way into the storm of the Middle Passage.

“I read Drexciya [the band] not as necessarily emerging from a narrative of the Middle Passage toward an Afrofuture aquatopia, but instead a collaborative sound-labor that draws attention to creative acts that disrupt disciplined ways of knowing…[They] create a signal with different sounds, thus taking waveform, synthesizing them, to provide a soundtrack to the storm: they electronically harness the storm…They harness the storm and then let it go. Improvisation demands practice and structure—it is not a natural process, it is practiced creative labor that is physiologically enacted.”

The importance of the improvisation here is the implicit acknowledgement that it cannot be the “real” thing. But that recognition is a freedom to create through and with rather than as, to show us all that creative labor is a necessary component to imagining a future otherwise without an abandonment of realities both historical and present.

There are one hundred ways to take this an apply it to the improvisation actual play creates, but the one I’m most interested in at this moment ties to the continual question of why Dungeons and Dragons for WBN? The racist and colonial violence’s historically baked into the system have led me, at other points, to lean more into viewing DnD based actual plays as mirrors of our own worlds. They are tales of inescapable violence and dominion that we must see and learn from. But is that all they are? Are those stories using DnD simply replicating violence, so that we can see and think maybe this is the time that the lesson sticks? I now think “not always.”

Charlie Hall recently spoke with the cast about this choice, and his conclusion draws on the fact that DnD is ultimately a system based on what the players and DMs choose to do rather than a pre-set violent outcome. This excerpt from Brennan Lee Mulligan sticks out:

I agree with Hall, and I also wanted to think more about what this work does at the audience level. What are we let in to when we are folded into this intimate, illuminating creative labor that we did not help build? I am not suggesting that this work is directly equivalent to what McKittrick examines. Her work deals with the horrific reality of chattel slavery and its innumerable legacies of violence and horror. What I am suggesting is that her interpretation of improvisation is critical because it acknowledges the distinct creative labor improvisation requires that leans into historical and contemporary realities, violent or otherwise, rather than flinching away. More importantly, these creations do not pretend to be simulacrum or representations.

I draw this quotation because I think it incredibly illustrates how to draw on something historically violent and the way it’s seen to reformulate it into something new. The “food” of Iyengar, Ishii, Wilson, and Milligan’s performances, like Drexciya’s waveforms, are the main vehicle. Taylor Moore’s sound design anchors their work, perhaps acting as the baking container if we extend the metaphor. We are drawn into the soundscape of the world, until we forget for a moment it is not our world.

For me, I think the most incredible element is that split second where I go “it’s not our world, but what if it is? what if it could be?” That is the power of improvisational creative labor, and the moment from this most recent episode I referenced at the top is only one of a thousand moments given so far. The cast distinctly push against the 1-to-1 reading of our world into theirs and vice versa, and my reading here is part processing the creative liberty and power when we loosen the reigns to see fictive worlds as mirrors. We seem to gain new perspectives, introspectively and externally, on the ingredients making up our world when we seem them used, rearranged, and made in the same crucible of violence our own lives exist within.

[ambagelbraindump]

Prickly Pear Mojito

Hello from North Dakota*

*pretend I’m writing this on the scene and not two weeks after my trip.

I wanted to do something fun with the cactus liqueur bestie and I picked up on a whim, hence the prickly pear mojito.

This drink was challenging due to (i) great difficulty in acquiring prickly pear syrup or prickly pear fruit (wegmans if you’re reading this, I want my $12 back) (ii) me realizing my recipe was hot garbage after dragging all my shit to my friend’s house (iii) said friend missing several vital drink-making components such as tablespoons and ice (her roomate had bar tools though which was nice)

All of that being said, I genuinely enjoyed making (and drinking) this one. I also feel that this was a turning point in my mixology/wizard drinks journey—rather than following the recipe to a T per usual I was able to adapt and synthesize instructions from several different recipes, in addition to including my own twists (i.e., adding cactus liqueur and changing up some of the proportions of spirits.) This is also the first drink I’ve made using my hyperfixation station (pictures to come, I’m being so normal about this entire hobby).

I also learned that you can, in fact, take alcohol on a plane (in checked bags), that you should practice making a drink at least once before showing it off to your friends and making a fool of yourself, and that there’s a huge alcohol superstore in ND but not in the DMV and I’m kind of mad about it.

I would really love to experiment with this one some more—more specifically I want to continue messing with proportions and additions like shots of tequila or other liquors. Unfortunately I’m out of soda water and all the mint has gone bad but one of these days I’ll do it! I also really want to use different garnishes—attempt #2 used mint and a lime slice, but I think prickly pear fruit would also be fun, if I could actually find it.

Rating: the prickly pear mojito gets a 4/5; a bit challenging and required running all over town, but such is the nature of wizard drinks, and I really learned a lot from this one. Also very tasty/pretty.

[cursed-elo-images]

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

So basically: I love this band. I love their contributions to the classic rock world so much!!! I love the merging of rock music and violins and cellos and synthesizers!!! I love the members and their amazing fashion tastes, aesthetics, and unique, bizarre, charming personalities!!!

I AM SO FULL OF LOVE!!!

Lately, I’ve been thinking about just how awesome they are and I want to cry. I do not want to brag, I just really love different, unique things in life, and I am drawn to people that are unique, mysterious, and strange. It’s literally one of the components to my personality. They are just so creative I just cannot fathom their existence. But it’s a lovely experience, nonetheless. It’s literally my favorite emotion to love the concept of weirdness itself, and it’s so wonderful to be different from the rest of society honestly. It really is.

Just??? Okay??? Thinking about all of this leaves me feeling so sentimental that I TEAR UP!!! IT FEELS SO AMAZING!!! From Melvyn Gale’s talkativeness and personality to Hugh McDowell’s amazing fashion sense to Richard Tandy’s music skills as well as other components to the band I just—want to sob. They have taught me a lot about life (serious). I feel more at peace with the world, I feel more accepting more than I had ever been, I’M BASICALLY ON TOP OF THE WORLD AT THIS POINT I FEEL!!! I do have bad mood swings and I go through tough times but THEY. HELP.

And it’s great.

This band helps me understand life and I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for that.

So enjoy this EDIT!!!

[farbverduemmer]

My top 3 chemical element misnomers

Number 3: Technetium Named from technetos, meaning artificial, because it was the first element to be artificially synthesized rather than discovered. We have since found trace amounts of naturally occuring technetium, technically making the name retroactively wrong.

Number 2: Oxygen Named from oxys, meaning sharp, because Lavoisier thought it was the central component in all acids. Oxygen is a central component in many natural phenomena - combustion, corrosion of metals, all life on the planet - but not this one, that’s the one thing it doesn’t do.

Number 1: Molybdenum Named from molybdos, meaning lead. Molybdenum is not lead, that’s a different element, so this name is 100% wrong on every level.

[littleeyesofpallas]

I really love how for the title card in the opening animation of the original Jade Cocoon, for the PSX, the "kanji" for the title are actually a mix of old chinese scripts, but none of them are actually from the same era, and a few are synthesized from different.

The one Tama[玉]:"Jade" actually seems original to this art, but is very obviously recognizable from the modern kanji.

I love how the mayu[繭]:"cocoon" was actually broken down into two different era script for its individual component characters, the [糸]:"silk"/"thread" and mushi[虫]:"bug."

The first half of monogatari[物語]:"Story" is a pretty direct use of a ming era precursor to the modern [物]

and the second half, [語], appears to borrow from two different iterations of the old character from different periods

It's just a really cool way to make it authentically old and mythic looking but with a unique flare, and all without sacrificing the readability of it, as it's still very recognizably the title of the game.