#ant on a circuitboard

[jodiexists-art]

Linework by @dibleopard

Colouring by meeeee

[an-unraveling-unknown]

I would pay Seventy five Two hundred bajilion dollars to frolic through the probably massive echoing facility that AM is kept in and study him under a microscope. for science

[thefearofdepths]

Sometimes I feel real. So strikingly clear. And I can feel everything. Somehow the moment always passes and I always forget what that feeling is and what realizations I held in that moment. The sky is always so blue

[lee-the-yeen]

You know that post about an ant on a circuitboard? Been thinking about it a lot, specifically about Vezon.

Surely, the Ignika would want a guardian that was knowledgeable about how to protect it, from every possible angle.

And surely, it would have imparted that knowledge to Vezon when it fused itself to his head.

Do you think, for a brief, terrifying moment, he understood things so much bigger and so much more complicated than himself?

When he gazed upon the world he knew after all was said and done, could he ignore what he had been told, see the forest for the trees?

Or from Voya Nui onward, could he only bear witness to the true form of a god?

[post-punk-revival]

When I say the tech section of the antique store is my happy place I mean ONLY the antique store. The tech section at Walmart is not my happy place. Best Buy is not my happy place. The antique store is home to me. It's friendly. Walmart tech section is not a friend to me. I feel slowly poisoned when I spend too long there. I feel like the ant on a circuitboard. They're selling ridiculous kitsch that I neither understand the purpose of nor know how to use. At least I know what a telegraph key is even if it's literally functionally useless and $25. What the fuck is a Roku

[theneighborhoodwatch]

In one of the audios, the snail in the guestbook,Sally refers to something as a "Bouncing yellow Bun" if i remember properly, And you can hear Howdy say "Sponge" afterwards, and the "potatoes" were definitely soap, so, why is Howdy feeding Sally cleaning products?

i have a hard time saying this in a way that makes sense - i think the fact that such remarks doesn't make sense within welcome home's universe is the point. it's what i mean when i say that i always pictured the neighbors and their world being more influenced by off-the-cuff decisions, rather than there being a conscious connection between puppet and puppeteer/showrunner/writer/etc.

a funny fourth wall break that only lasts a few seconds to a staff member is another hole in the neighbors' reality - and for those few seconds, they see that hole! they may not recognize it for what it is, they may not be able to react, but when a scene calls for it, they will see it. and if/when they do recognize it... something something, ants, circuitboards, etc.

i recall @/carnivalcarrion having a few posts about This Specific Howdy Scene though, if you wanna delve deeper into that. or at least art about that howdy scene with Very In Depth Tags That You Should Read Because They Have Such Tasty Tasty thoughts.

[slicedcheesegremlin]

Does anyone else get in a spiral of beginning to comprehend the immeasurable suffering they have personally caused by existing as a western person like the ant trying to understand a circuitboard and spend all day wanting to die until you get distracted by something

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Happy WBW!! Could you tell me a bit more about the level of technology in your saga? From everything I've read it sounds like a super interesting mix. Any fun details or sciency facts you're particularly proud of for thinking of?

Hi kat!!! thanks for dropping by with this ask, i didn't mean to leave it in the inbox for two weeks but i'm glad i did so i have something super fun to start off with in this catch-up!!!

SO

in the Ehlverse, there's a few different levels of technology going on at once (which is 100% most prevalent in Millennium Saga because they actually interact with multiple different tech levels for plot reasons throughout the books) - and the reasons for these differing levels basically comes down to how prevalent certain magics are in the culture/area we're talking about, because certain Elements, all Sorcery, and most Alchemy manifest in ways that break the physical laws of universe, which breaks things like computers that rely on, say, electricity always flowing in a certain way through the crystals in the motherboard.

(and this got Very Long, as my wbw answers tend to, so it's behind the cut if you want more detail!! thank you again!!! i'll try to remember to hit you up with a double-wbw ask the next time i'm here for it :D)

For instance, let's take Ehlven societies (e.g. the kind we spend the majority of TMS neck-deep in) - every Ehlf is an innate font of Elementalism, and only 2 of the 9 total Elements are guaranteed not to mess with circuitboards, 3 more can be safe if they're used carefully, and the rest are catastrophic and unavoidable in their influence. A metal mage walking too close to a fantasy!iPad would wipe the memory completely with their inherent magnetism, a fire mage touching a keyboard overheats the whole machine, etc. etc.

HOWEVER, this does not apply quite the same to less delicate instruments, like steam engines. In fact, even without the help of Dwarven magic metals, Ehlven societies can get away with running steam trains and other motors without using any fuel, so long as there's either a water mage present to convert liquid to gas or a fire mage to facilitate combustion!

(That's probably one of my favorite science-y things I've done with this system!!)

On the flip side, we have the Lellan crater and the Goblins that call it home. Goblins are a people completely devoid of magic - some would say they're even magic-repellant to a certain extent. And they've been the only people without magic for a very long time.

Long enough for them to be at about the level of your classic hard cyberpunk setting, to compensate for their broader disadvantage in this magical world. And while that doesn't net them any respect when it comes to global politics (which are super magic-centric to the point of even pushing out formerly-magical peoples like the Fair Folk), it certainly makes it easier for them to make advances in science that end up benefiting the whole world. If it weren't for them, the Ehlves probably wouldn't know about, like, evolution, or germ theory, or electricity.

And I talk about it here like they're super separate societies with no overlap, but that's not quite true!! It's just the simple way to talk about it - there's lots of "Little Wasi" districts in Ehlven cities with local power generation and more robust machines and electronics, and there's a not insignificant amount of non-magically-volatile Ehlves in Wasi, Gyr, and the smaller satellite cities of the Lell. And many of the trains that cross the Maelands are of Dwarven make, with self-perpetuating clockwork at their cores.

The only truly isolated people technology-wise are the Fair Folk, whose society functions more like those of wasps, bees, and ants than humans or humanoids. They're nomadic and tend to nest solely in the Godwoods, where they hollow out one tree at a time into a hive, and don't have a huge interest in technology of any kind (or humanoid society at large, honestly). But there's still a few here and there who have stepped away from that society to mingle with humanoid friends!!

[yay855]

The reason it's called "eldritch madness" or "eldritch insanity" is because the entire concept of sanity is, itself, based in a number of assumptions about how reality and society work. A sane ant is one that sees the circuitboard as just another object to climb on, a sane ant is one that knows that there is no possible way to encode information in any way but pheromones. Thus, an ant that gains an understanding of a circuitboard is, by the perspective of its entire society, insane.

A sane human knows that life exists as it can be witnessed. A sane human knows that being alone in a locked building they have the key for means that they are safe. A sane human knows that death is either the end of one's existence or leads to one's soul being freed to move to the afterlife. Thus, a human who peers beyond the veil and finds that there is a greater truth that no one else knows or will ever believe- a human that comes to understand that they are never safe and never were- a human who comes to understand that their death will only lead to more horror, is insane.

But just because someone is insane doesn't mean that there is nothing wrong. Just because someone is insane doesn't mean that they're wrong.

People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness.

[minecraft]

it would be funny if there was some extremely arcane and complicated mathematical formula that supposedly "proves" in an ideological/philosophical/abstract sense why it objectively makes no sense for anyone to be romantically/sexually involved with anyone else but like the only people who even come close to understanding it are like all ace-aro types anyways. and that's really why we haven't met aliens or whatever it's because they developed so fast they hit the acearo wall nearly immediately and all fizzled out.

[jodiexists-art]

Plenty of fun being had rn

[jodiexists-art]

I have the mental illness

[jodiexists-art]

one thing ab me is that ive been busy behind the scenes :3333

[maramahan]

Honestly though. This is exactly the reason why humans are cautioned not to dine on faerie food — not because it’s some petty transactional trick or silly contract to entrap you, but because food from Faerie is by nature so incredibly sublime that no mortal-made meal can compare.

Just like the ant’s crisis at the circuitboard — it’s one thing to live on stale bread and hotdog water when that’s all you’ve ever known, but how do you go back after tasting the delights of a banquet? How do you make yourself content with crumbs once you’ve seen all the marvelous dishes you’re missing? How do you force yourself to face a future of food that fails to be even a pale facsimile of This?

To taste faerie food is to sample the Unimaginable — to glimpse an impossibly alien Way Of Being that is as terrific as it is terrible, as awful as it is awe-inspiring. Not one thing ‘despite’ the other — no, here Beauty and Horror are inexorably bound by because.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t forget. Once you’ve touched it, you can’t let go. Once you’ve known it, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

And once again, we are left with that thing called madness.

People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness.