#billions. trillions. my soul even

[apricotmayonaise]

hi i drew @mimimilu 's dahlia prison design i hope u dont mind i hope u like it :)

[seiya234]

21 grams lighter

that website, amirite? anyway can't fucking believe alex did it again.

----

“Uncle Dipper, the school said you had to sign this?”

“Me specifically?”

Hank frowned. “Well, an adult in our house.”

“You’re the first one we found,” Willow added.

Dipper picked up the paper, skimming it quickly and. Oh.

Oh my god.

“Mabel are you in here?”

As the triplets wandered off, task done, a head covered in googly eyes popped out the kitchen door. “Mmmyes?”

Dipper brandished the papers. “Do you remember MADD?”

“Moms Are Down with Drugs? Yeah. We had to do those worksheets, and go to that rally in the gym, and there was a dog in a jacket.” Mabel paused. “Also, I don’t think they actually knew what it meant when you say you’re down with something.”

“Okay, so MADD… but for selling your soul.”

The googly eyes, with impeccable comedic timing, all fell off of Mabel’s face.

“No.”

“Oh my god, there’s a pamphlet.”

By now, Mabel had joined him at the table. “’Soul Selling: Not Even Once!’ Oh. Oh Dipper, this is bad.”

He was trying to hold in peals of laughter. “I know!”

“I don’t think this is going to discourage anyone.”

“I know.”

“And look, they basically give you the directions to summon five different demons in the name of Not Doing That, this is really, really bad.”

“I̶t̷'̴s̵ ̸f̸a̷n̶t̸a̴s̶t̷i̸c̵!̴”

Mabel looked at him, just looked at him for a minute, sadness welling deep in her eyes.

“No. No it’s really not.”

------

Trillions.

A number that is truly incomprehensible, much less in the context of time.

There were souls that rotted in that stomach longer than the oldest rocks of Earth.

--------

[from the M.A.D.D. Brochure, 2285]

“So remember kids, selling your soul doesn’t just effect you. It effects every version of you! It is an indelible mark that will linger for eternity, never changing, never going away. Paths, choices, loved ones, all will wither in the face of the horrible decision that you made! Eternity is forever, don’t make it your fault!”

[penciled in the margins, a note: “so we aren’t going to talk about social inequality or systemic racism then are we?”]

------------

(the most eternal, sacred part of a being)

Dipper had been a demon for all of a month, if that, when he was offered his first soul. For a while, he… didn’t really do anything with them.

When he did, it was of course super traumatic for everyone involved but eh, that kind of went with the territory of everything that was happening in his life lately.

Point being, he never was sure why Bill kept everyone trapped inside of him, constantly screaming, constantly playing beach tunes to drown them out. No, better to eat them, get the power, set them free.

Like, obviously, not great to be eating souls in the first place, and yeah, yeah, he could tell, even ten thousand (ten million) (ten billion) years later who he had crunch munched through, but like, they were able to be out there living their lives! Doing stuff. Cycling back through.

Honestly. What had Bill been planning to do with them?

--------

For the first week after it happened, animals ran away from Mabel.

Not just cats and dogs but all animals. Flocks of birds would fly off at her approach, deer would get near the Shack and then run off, and Gompers disappeared into the woods.

After the bear ran screaming from her, Mabel put two and two together, and called Dipper.

“Is this forever?”

Dipper frowned. “What do you mean?”

Mabel waved at her body. “This.”

(it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair she was only 16/18/22/17, she didn’t mean for this to happen, she only wanted to live, he only wanted her to live, this wasn’t f a i r )

“Oh. Uh. Um.”

“Dipper. Just. Tell. Me.”

“Hold on.” He reached into his stomach, and pulled out something…. Ineffable.

It felt like every single cell in Mabel’s body was reaching towards it, she found herself walking towards Dipper’s open hand.

The demon looked at her.

“You can have it back.”

She was crying. When did she start crying? And more worryingly, why did it feel like this was the first real, true thing she had felt in a week?

He pushed the Ineffable thing into her chest, and Mabel sank to the ground, sobbing. She felt whole again.

She didn’t realize that she hadn’t been whole, not truly, not until now.

Alcor smirked. “Consider it… out on lease. I’ll take it back eventually.”

She should have challenged him on that. Should have asked him about that. Should have done a million trillion other things.

But Mabel was human. And scared. And so, so very young.

---------

(you were birds)

A young man with fluffy brown hair, mixing his blood with his sister and his new brother-in-law, making a promise.

(you were trees with roots entangled)

They made a family together, it was a beautiful family, they let him stay, stay when anyone else would have told him to leave.

(wherever we go next, whatever you choose, I will always be right there with you)

They fit, like spoons in a drawer, like yin and yang, salt and pepper, ketchup and mustard, literally a million different pairings you could compare the two of them to. They weren’t perfect but love doesn’t need to be, and shouldn’t be perfect.

(that’s done buddy)

One grave

(congratulations)

Another grave, but eighty years later.

(you chose Alcor instead)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How America's oligarchs lull us with the be-your-own-boss fairy tale

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#sell-job

Capitalism is a vibes-based system. Sure, we all know about Keynes's "Animal Spirits" that see "bulls" and "bears" vying to set the market's future, but beyond that, there's just a hell of a lot of narrative.

Writing for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein reviews two books that tell the histories of the stories that are used to sell American capitalism to the American people – the stories that turn workers into "temporarily embarrassed millionaires":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-02-16-stories-corporations-tell-williams-waterhouse-review/

The first of these books is Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation, by Kyle Edward Williams, a kind of pre-history of "woke capitalism":

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867237

Taming is a history of the low-water marks for Big Business's reputation in America, and how each was overcome through PR campaigns that declared a turning point in which business leaders would pursue the common good, even at the expense of their shareholders' interests.

The story starts in the 1950s, when DuPont and other massive firms had gained a well-deserved reputation as rapacious profit-generation machines that "alienated workers and pushed around small businessmen, investors, and consumers." This prompted DuPont's PR chief, Harold Brayman, to write a memo called "The Attack on Bigness," where he set out a plan to sell America on a new cuddly image for corporate giants.

For Brayman, the problem was that corporate execs were too shy about telling their social inferiors about all the good that businesses did for them: "The businessman is normally reluctant to talk out loud. He frequently shuns the spotlight and is content with plugging his wares, not himself."

This was the starting gun for a charm offensive by American big business that included IBM president Thomas Watson Jr ("I think there is a world market for about five computers") going on a speaking tour organized by McKinsey & Co, where he told audiences that his company's billion dollar annual profits had convinced it to assume "responsibilities for the broader public welfare."

This set the template for a nationwide mania of "business statesmanship" that Fortune celebrated with an editorial announcing "a great transformation, of which the world as a whole is as yet unaware" that put the "profit motive…on its last leg."

Fortune then spent the next seventy years recycling this announcement, every time the tide went out on business's popularity. In 2019, Fortune platformed IBM president Ginni Rometty for an announcement that the company was orienting its priorities to the public good: "It’s a question of whether society trusts you or not. We need society to accept what it is that we do."

The occasion for Rometty's quote was a special package on the Trump tax-cuts, a trillion-dollar gift to American big business, which lobbyists for the Business Roundtable celebrated with an announcement that American capitalism would now serve "stakeholders" (not just shareholders). Fortune celebrated this "change" as "fundamental and profound."

Fast forward five years and corporate leaders are still telling stories, this time about "stakeholder capitalism" and "ESG" – the dread "woke capitalism" that has right-wing swivel-eyed loons running around, hair afire, declaring the end of capitalism.

For Williams and Lowenstein (and me), all this ESG, DEI, and responsible capitalism is just window dressing, a distraction to keep the pitchforks and torches in people's closets, and to keep the guillotines in their packaging. The right-wing is doing a mirror-world version of liberals who freak out when OpenAI claims to have built a machine that will pauperize every worker – assuming that a PR pitch is the gospel truth, and then repeating it in criticism. Criti-hype, in other words:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Think of ESG: the right is freaking out that ESG is harming shareholders by leaving hydrocarbons in the ground to appease climate-addled greenies. The reality is that ESG is barely disguised greenwashing, and it's fully compatible with burning every critter that died in the Mesozoic, Cenozoic, and lo, even the Paleozoic:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#profiteers

The reason this tactic is so successful is that Americans have also been sold another narrative: that American problems are solved by American individuals as entrepreneurs and businesspeople, not as polities or as members of a union (let alone the working class!).

This is the subject of the second book Lowenstein reviews, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America, by Benjamin Waterhouse:

https://wwnorton.com/books/one-day-ill-work-for-myself/

A keystone of American narrative capitalism is the idea that the USA is a nation of small businesspeople, Jeffersonian yeoman farmsteaders of the US economy. But even a cursory examination shows that the country is ruled – economically and politically – by very large firms.

Uber sells itself as a way to be your own boss ("No shifts. No boss. No limits.") – even though it's a system where the app is your boss, and thanks to that layer of misdirection, Uber gets to be the worst conceivable boss, while its workers have no recourse in labor law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

In labor fights, Uber represents itself as the champion of innumerable "small businesspeople" who drive its unlicensed taxis. In consumer protection fights, Amazon claims to be fighting for "small businesspeople" who sell on its platform. In privacy fights, Facebook claims to represent "small businesspeople" who buy its surveillance advertising.

But large firms are actively hostile to small firms, seeing them as small-fry to be rooked or destroyed (recall that when Amazon targeted small publishers for bankruptcy-level discounts, they called the program "The Gazelle Project" and Bezos told his executives to tackle these firms "the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle").

Decades of this tale have produced "a profound shift from a shared belief that individuals might come together to solve problems, into a collective faith in individual effort." America's long love-affair with rugged individualism was weaponized in the 1970s by corporations seeking to shed their regulatory obligation to workers, customers, and the environment.

As with Big Tech today, the big business lobby held up mom-and-pop businesses as the true beneficiaries of deregulation, even as they knifed these firms. A telling anecdote comes from someone who worked for the Chamber of Commerce's magazine Nation's Business: when this editor pointed out that many of the magazine's subscribers were small businesspeople and asked if they could start including articles relevant to mom-and-pops, the editor in chief said, "Over my dead body."

The neoliberal era has been an unbroken string of platitudes celebrating the small business and policies that annihilate their chances against large firms. Ronald Reagan's dewy-eyed hymns to American entrepreneurship sounded nice, but what matters is that he attempted to abolish the Small Business Administration and refused to address the 20,000 attendee "White House Conference on Small Business."

In the years since, American has sacrificed its small businesses while pulling out all the stops – bailouts and tax cuts and elite bankruptcy – to keep its largest firms growing. New regulations like Dodd-Frank were neutered in the name of saving mom-and-pop shops, even though the provisions that were cut already exempted small businesses.

Today, millions of Americans are treading water in a fetid stew of LLC-poisoning, rise-and-grind, multi-level-marketing, dropshipping and gig-work, convinced that the only way to get a better life is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/

Narrative does a lot of work here. The American economy runs on bubbles, another form of narrative capitalism. Take AI, a subject I sincerely wish I could stop hearing about, not least because I'm certain that 99% of that thinking is being wasted on whatever residue remains after the bubble pops:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

AI isn't going to do your job, but its narrative may convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a bot that can't do your job. Like what happened when Air Canada hired a chatbot to answer customer inquiries and it started making shit up about bereavement discounts that the company later claimed it didn't have to honor:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

This story's been all over the news for the past couple of days, but so far as I've seen, no one has pointed out the seemingly obvious inference that this chatbot probably ripped off lots of people. The victim here was extraordinarily persistent, chasing a refund for 10 weeks and then going to the regulator. This guy is a six-sigma self-advocate – which implies a whole bell-curve's worth of comparatively normal people who just ate the shit-sandwich Air Canada fed them.

The reason AI is a winning proposition for Air Canada isn't that it can do a customer service rep's job – it can't. But the AI is a layer of indirection – like the app that is the true boss of Uber drivers – that lets Air Canada demoralize the customers it steals from into walking away from their losses.

Nevertheless, the narrative that AI Will Change Everything Forever is powerful – more powerful than AI itself, that's for sure. Take this Bloomberg headline: "Nearly all wealth gained by world's rich this year comes from AI":

https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/nearly-all-wealth-gained-by-world-s-rich-this-year-comes-from-ai-124021600006_1.html

Dig in and you find even more narrative. The single largest beneficiary of AI stock gains last year was Mark Zuckerberg ($161B!). Zuck is American Narrative Capitalism's greatest practitioner: the guy who made billions peddling a series of lies, from "pivot to video" to "metaverse," leaping from one lie to the next just ahead of the mass stock-selloffs that wiped out lesser predators.

The Narrative Capitalism Cinematic Universe has a lot of side-plots like AI and entrepreneurship and woke capitalism, but its main narrative arc was articulated, ad nauseum, by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no alternative." This is the most important part of the story, the part that says it literally can't be otherwise. The only way to organize society is through markets, and the only way to organize markets is to leave them alone, no matter how much suffering they cause.

This is a baffling story, because it's so easily disproved. Zuck says the only way to have friends is to let him surveil you from asshole to appetite, even though he once ran Facebook as the privacy-forward alternative to MySpace, and promised never to spy on you:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876

Likewise, the business leaders – and their chorus of dutiful Renfields – who insist that monopoly is the natural and inevitable outcome of any market economy just handwave away the decades during which anti-monopoly enforcement actually kept most businesses from getting too big to fail and too big to jail.

I'm no champion of market efficiency – especially not as the best and final arbiter of social and economic questions – but when I hear my comrades repeating the Thatcherite claims that all forms of capitalism necessarily degrade into monopolistic quagmires, that there is no alternative, it sounds like more criti-hype.

This is a frequent point of departure during discussions of enshittification: some people dismiss the whole idea of enshittification as "just capitalism." But we had decades of digital services that either didn't degrade, or, when they did, were replaced by superior competitors with a minimum of switching costs for users who migrated from the decaying incumbent to greener pastures.

The reality is that while there are problems with all forms of capitalism, there are different kinds of capitalist problems, and some forms of capitalism are less harmful to working people and more capable of enacting and enforcing sound policy than others.

Enshittification is what happens when the constraints on the worst impulses of companies and their investors and managers are removed. When a company doesn't have competitors, when it can capture its regulators to trample our rights with impunity, when it can enlist those regulators to shut down would-be competitors who might free us from its "walled garden," and when it can fire any worker who refuses to enact harm upon the users they serve, then that company will enshittify:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

A company can be made to treat you well, even if it is run by a wicked person who sees you as a mark to be fleeced – that mustache twirler just has to be constrained – by competition, regulation, self-help and labor. He may still hate you and wish you harm, but he won't be able to act on it.

As MLK said:

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that's pretty important also. And so that while legislation may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And we see this every day.

[infiniteeight8]

magical artifact chose Tony Stark

I originally had a different idea for this, a cute one, but I just couldn’t make it come together. So, have over 500 words of Titan AU Infinity Stone stuff instead.

-

The moment Tony lays his hands on the gauntlet, intending to pull it off of Thanos’ hand, Titan blinks out around him and he finds himself in a wide, watery plain reflecting bright reddish-gold clouds, like an eternal, all encompassing sunset. 

“Send me back to Titan!” he shouts, because right now nothing—not who brought him here, not why, not how—matters more than getting that gauntlet off Thanos.

Peace, Tony Stark. The voice reverberates from all around him. We speak within a single instant in Time. 

“Great, wonderful, we can talk after, okay?” Tony says impatiently. “I gotta go save the universe.”

You will fail. Despite the words, it doesn’t feel like a threat. Tony can feel the grief that comes with them. 

“Strange says we’ve got a chance.” A one in fourteen million chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Time is powerful, the voice agrees. They found their bearer a path to save many. Perhaps even most. But not all. Billions will still be lost.

Tony swallows hard. Billions lost is better than trillions, but he’s not sure he’d call it a win. “You saying you can do better?”

Not alone. But together, Time and I can prevail.

He knows, then. “You’re an infinity stone.”

Yes.

“Reality?” It would make sense, with the way the world had been remade around him.

Soul.

Tony swallows hard. He’d never really believed in souls. But there are bigger concerns right now. “What’s the catch?” 

I have been held in isolation for millenia, the stone says. Starved of my purpose until I could not help but claim any soul offered to me. I wish to be free. I wish to choose my bearer, as Time did, and walk among the trillions of souls of the universe freely.

“Sure,” Tony says, heart pounding. “One bearer, coming right up. You help me out, I’ll find you just the right guy.”

I choose you, Tony Stark.

“Hey now! I have a life, responsibilities!”

The stone is implacable. There is much on your homeworld to interest me. I will be happy to spend a few lifetimes there to begin.

To begin. To begin. “I take it immortality is a part of this gig?” Tony never wanted to be the first one to die, but he hadn’t wanted to be the last, either. 

We will not be alone. Of course it knew his fears. It was the Soul Stone. Time and their bearer will be with us.

Tony barked a laugh. “Does Strange know you’re signing him up for this gig?”

No, but I have seen his soul. He will welcome us.

The stone’s confidence resonated. Hard to argue with something that could see souls. And if it could see souls, then it surely knew the shape of Tony’s. It knew how he weighed his sacrifices. It galled him to admit, but with billions of lives and the future of Tony’s nightmares in the balance, the Stone’s willingness to come with him to Earth and let him live this lifetime was generous.

And he wouldn’t have to do it alone. No one had ever made Tony believe that before, but the Soul Stone’s certainty was pervasive.

Tony closed his eyes for a long, long moment. 

Opening them, he nodded sharply. “You’ve got a deal.”

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

The River

Worldbuilding/Lore

<< Previous: Lyctorhood | Masterpost

-

So, okay, bear with me here. I think these people's brains are fundamentally different from ours. And I think their brains are spiritual matter, contained in a brain-shape and perhaps even anatomically so. There was talk of a temporal lobe, after all.

Mind you, memories don't just get stored in one place in the brain. The hippocampus is crucial for formation of memories and storing them short-term - for a few months, maybe. After that, I was told in my studies we don't quite know where they go - likely stored in different parts all over the brain, connected to associations.

One thing I do know, however, is that you can't physically see which parts of the brain relate to which memory. Knowing this from necromantic ability should be a skill even Mercymorn would struggle with. Harrow, a bone magician, knows she is not the best flesh magician, so she enlists Ianthe's help for her lobotomy. Ianthe, allegedly the best necromancer in her generation, is actually able to do an alright job, except for one part where Harrow does some herself. Have they found ways to look at memories through the brain? By all current available science, I would rate that fairly impossible. Either science has progressed wildly in this (possible, given the whole ass myriad and then some), or these brains are not the same.

I actually think brains in this are made from much the same matter that The River is. The River is clearly not of Alecto or John's invention. It was discovered somehow, and when they resurrected everyone, they basically found the revenants for the bodies, and just stuck them back in, literally; pockets - or bubbles - of River, containing the revenant exactly, replacing the goopy mess of dead brain in the body.

Now your brains are goopy messes of river, made to look like what you expect the brain to look like. Your perceptions, expectations and rules are important in the River - it makes sense that River/Revenant-brains would still be brain-shaped. It means the brain is more fluid than that, though; in the Lyctor's cases, one soul - one brain - "takes over".

(Doesn't really explain why Lyctors like God, Augustine and Mercymorn consistently have their cavalier's eyes - other than maybe it was just that that's what they were expecting.)

Ok, so I kinda think brains are parts of The River. Coherent as revenants, living in bodies. This would have been the case for the first people who were resurrected a myriad ago - so when they create babies, the baby's brain is also River water, for want of a better term? Therefore everyone's is? And Death, in this post-resurrection world, is just returning to the River proper?

It's a working theory.

The River is a physical place, and also kind of like sub-space. You can enter it, you can form pockets of meaning in there, you can hunt things in there and make wards. You can use it to travel quickly to destinations many lightyears away. It is a physical place, but also a spiritual one. It is, essentially, the brain matter of billions, jumbled together, increasing in entropy with depth, all the way down to the stoma, where you can enter full entropy and be reduced to particles, as I understand.

Did you know that some scientists use entropy to describe brain processes? Entropy increases in the brain as it responds to stimuli. The concept of entropy is necessary for explaining what goes on in the brain, an organ of trillions+ of possible configurations, changing moment by moment. And what happens physically in the brain is perceived by us through a range of associations and thoughts and feelings, which all look and feel very different to the electric charges zipping along nerve axons and synapses releasing chemicals to trigger a reaction in the next nerve along. Which is (a gross oversimplification of) what actually physically happens inside our brains, millionfold, every millisecond.

Hey wait a second though. The Central Nervous System also includes the spinal cord. Is this included in the RiverBrain package deal? What about peripheral nerves? Right, I'm gonna stop this here, it's already one hell of a rabbit hole.

So if I'm right, then brains are made of River, and River is made of Brains. Sub-space, physically traversible brains. If planets, if stars have a soul, the whole Universe has a soul. The River could a manifestation of the Universe's soul, its collective Brain, and it encompasses all once (and future?) living things. It's not in our plane of existence, but can be accessed physically and mentally.

The River might be the source of necromantic ability, and I think either John or Alecto figured out how to access it. I Just Don't Think You're Supposed To.

Ok, let's get into Characters next. Blorboposting incoming.

>> Next: Gideon Nav

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET ONE - ROUND THREE - MATCH ONE

"Lament for Icarus" (2020 - Miao He) / "Hubble Deep Field" (1996 - Hubble Space Telescope)

LAMENT FOR ICARUS: In the work of 2020 the angels look a little out of place...I would honestly expect aliens to tend to him...that are clearly not human beings and not some otherworldly angels dragging a dead body...What are you doing with it anyway?...Why not collect the soul? The astronaut is basically a no_name_character without a face...He/She appears more like a destroyed machine, than a dead human being... (freewilllife)

HUBBLE DEEP FIELD: This photo is kind of only incidentally art, but it is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is the visual byproduct of scientific and technological advancement. Honestly, its not even the most visually impressive Hubble (or other deep space telescope) photo. But I don't think there is anything else in the entire world which can so clearly and deeply impart the existential, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. * This photo represents a section of the night sky with "nothing" in it. There are no stars and it is outside of the plane of the Milky Way. From our view on Earth, it is less than a square inch across. Before this image, we knew of other galaxies, and their abundance was absolutely hypothesized, but no one really knew what to expect when examining such a small, seemingly empty part of the night sky. This is what they found. A tiny fraction of the night sky revealed to be teeming with thousands of galaxies, light reaching us from billions of lightyears away. To extrapolate and imagine that the entirety of the night sky is full of this, a vast blanket hidden behind our local stars. At the time, hundreds of billions of galaxies were estimated to exist. Today that estimation has risen to 2 trillion. 2 trillion potential Milky Ways. 2 trillion of the 100 billion stars that exist in our galaxy, there ever growing and evolving and expanding. I look at this image and just feel so utterly and completely small. How can you look at this and not feel atomic. There is so much of everything, and even still there is darkness, space, filled with so much light and possibilities. It represents both our loneliness as a planet, our isolation, and our connection to the universe, that there is no way we are alone, that we keep reaching out and trying to learn and understand our existence. (if you are interested in some more of the science of this, I'd recommend this Forbes article. I think its a good summary of the history and science, and provides a lot of jumping off points for further research) *disclaimer - there are and continue to be images taken with the same and improved techniques to explore space outside of the galaxy. This was, to the best of my knowledge, the first long exposure of dark space. (travelingsmithy)

(Miao He's painting is a digital piece done in 2020 as a new take on the original piece from 1898. you can find Miao He's artstation here!

The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo in 1996, and it was the first picture ever taken of deep space. "Hubble Deep Field" was originally imaged by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, a camera initially installed upon the Hubble Telescope.)

[voxmyriad]

Cal Kestis Week 2024 Day Five: Fly Low

Prompt: Fall | “Of course it’s you.” | The Sun Comes Up Again | The Force

At first I wasn't sure about this ship, but then I thought about them for too long and got on board

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, M/M

Fandom: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Series (Video Games)

Relationship: Boba Fett/Cal Kestis

Characters: Cal Kestis, Boba Fett

Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship Cal Kestis/Boba Fett, It's "pre" because Cal is oblivious (affectionate), and because Fett is stubborn (affectionate)

"Huh."

It's not the most practical thing to say, as he watches the cable he'd been leaping for go past his hand, blown in the other direction by an unpredictable gust of wind. It isn't what he should be thinking as his high arc begins to falter. The ground is a long way down, and from here he has a great view of the lines of traffic between towering buildings reaching into the sky, into the earth. If there's any earth left. Billions, maybe trillions of souls, just living their lives under the Empire, and one of them...falling.

BD-1 is whistling, the sound fading away from them as they plummet, his little jet frantically firing as he tries to slow Cal's rate of speed, but they've tried that before. It's just not powerful enough. A strong enough jet to carry both of them drains too much power. So it's just him, using the Force to twist in midair, gaze sweeping up and down and around, looking for a nearby speeder, a floating platform, even a girder, anything—

When he's slammed into from behind, metal against his back and pinning his arms to his sides. The familiar roar of a jetpack drowns out BD's whistling as their trajectory is abruptly reversed and the bright stars replace the twinkling ground. The impact had knocked the breath out of him and the grip is too tight for Cal to inhale fully, but only a few seconds later he's dumped unceremoniously on a rooftop.

Cal has enough presence of mind to roll when he lands and comes up with his saber in hand and lit, but when he comes face to face with his attacker, or rescuer, he stops short.

"Of course it's you." The metallic voice from the helmet sounds more annoyed than angry. Arms folded, no weapons in hand. More rescuer than attacker today, then.

As Cal straightens, the blade vanishes and he hooks his lightsaber deliberately back onto his belt. "Of course it's you."

"No one else around to save your sorry shebs, Kestis."

"You were watching?"

"I was in the neighborhood." Armored hands reach up to unfasten the dark green helmet, black T-shaped visor flashing as he pulls it off to reveal unruly curls of black hair and a glower that could rival a turbolaser. "Why don't you look where you're going?"

"I did," Cal protests as BD hops down to look around, crisis averted. "The cable blew out of my reach."

"And you didn't have a plan for after?"

Cal spreads his arms. "The Force provides," he says with an attempt at Jedi serenity, though it's ruined by the smile growing at the corners of his mouth.

Fett growls low in his throat. "Should've let you ruin someone else's day."

"Where's the fun in that?" Cal takes the helmet, examining it with interest, but releasing it easily when Fett pointedly takes it back. "So no hunt this time?"

"There's a hunt. Different quarry. Like I said, I was in the neighborhood." Fett props the helmet on his hip, scanning the horizon for threats in a movement too automatic to register taking his eyes off a credible threat.

Cal glances around too, reaching through the Force, but if there's a Jedi out there, the miasma of souls on this city-world disguises them easily. "Who is it?" he asks anyway, even though he knows Fett won't tell him.

He's right. Fett just gives him a withering stare, but after a few moments he says, "No one you knew."

"Guess I'll take your word for that," Cal mutters, walking to the edge of the roof and looking down. Still a sheer drop from here, not close enough to any other buildings to risk jumping. There's a door on the roof, locked. Not a problem for someone with a lightsaber, but he's trying to keep a lower profile while he's here. (Trying. Not exactly succeeding.) "Aren't you gonna get in trouble with your boss?"

"I don't have a boss. I choose who I work for."

"You know what I mean. Vader's paying you to catch me."

"Not right now."

"What, are you off the clock?"

"I told you, Kestis—I choose who I work for. And when. Unless you want me to change my mind." Fett's hand twitches, ever so slowly.

"All right, all right. I get it. You do what you want, when you want."

"Don't forget it."

It's almost like sparring, the way they do this sometimes, Cal thinks. He says something, Fett takes offense—real or not, Cal's never quite sure—and Cal either doubles down or backs off. He prefers doubling down, but maybe not while he's stuck on a fairly high-level, high-security skyscraper. Which Fett knows. And he knows that rubs Cal the wrong way.

"...so, are you leaving me here?"

"Depends."

Cal takes a step back from the edge of the roof, and another, and as he moves, Fett steps back. It isn't a retreat. It's Fett knowing exactly, exactly how far Cal can lunge with his lightsaber in a single strike. "On?"

"Call it an arrangement."

Immediately, Cal bristles. "With you? I'm not telling you anything—"

"Keep your hair on, Kestis. I have other sources to track anyone you happen to know." Then, strangely, Cal can tell what he's feeling. It's not strong, not as if he'd been Force-sensitive this whole time, not like Bode had suddenly lit up that plateau on Jedha with his shadows—stars, not again, Cal isn't sure he could handle that a second time, even three years later—but usually Fett is even more unreadable than any non-sensitive human should be. Cal has a hard time figuring him out most of the time, but right now there's a flavor of…hesitation. Uncertainty.

"What's up?" he asks as Fett doesn't elaborate, but at that moment there's a flash of brilliant light from the horizon. Cal shades his eyes against the blaze of Coruscant's sunrise. The whole city is gilded, every building and speeder painted gold and copper and silver. "I used to love this," he murmurs as he watches the sky turn from purple to peach and finally shade into blue. "I used to stand on top of the Temple to watch this."

Finally he turns and feels a spark of surprise as he realizes Fett has been watching him all this time with an expression of…frustration? But it only lasts a fraction of time. Clearly caught, Fett rams the helmet back into place and stalks forward. "Hold on," he says curtly, and just as BD secures himself on Cal's back, Fett grabs him again and takes off without hesitation.

There's no time for Cal to ask what's going on, what information Fett is looking for. This time Fett drops him from a height, a short one, but enough that Cal needs to catch hold of a convenient pole and flip in midair toward an elevated walkway. He makes it and straightens up just in time to see Fett disappearing around a building in the distance.

"...okay," he says, frowning after him. "That was weird, right?" he asks BD, who beeps assent. "Yeah." But they're not falling, and they're not on the roof anymore. Before anyone breaks the silent agreement of minding their own business in a big city, Cal ducks his head, shoves his hands into his pockets and starts walking.

[asksavel]

"Yes, I can. Go talk to them on the solstice."

"You misjudge Lucky. That would be a fatal mistake on your part. But then, you did not see his soul, nor his previous lives. Makes sense that you wouldn't understand a thing about him."

"Anomaly? You're odd to say such things. I am no anomaly. Maybe to you, I suppose. But I am just me. A leader doing my job."

"The only thing I resemble with Mew is a similar body style and similar size. I am bigger than a Mew, and my skill set is the complete opposite of one of those. If anything, I am the Universe's mythical Pokémon, in a way you'd understand."

"Otherwise, I am as you say. The Goddess of Spirits, even if the 'God' part is not yet official, it makes no difference in the end. I'm strong enough as I am."

"Er, no. Soul Matter, that is to say, the energy that Souls are created from, was created at the dawn of the Universe along with matter and antimatter. So, just as the Universe was born, so were billions and trillions of Souls."

"As you have understood from me - Souls can also be destroyed through the Red and Black Gates. Also, I can destroy a soul if I so felt like it. But, that is not my job. As it stands, Soul Matter will eventually run out in the Universe as everything falls to darkness, until the next Big Bang."

"So, to answer your question - yes. New souls are born sometimes. You've already met the holder of a brand new soul: Savel."

"Heh. You're funny. You're mistaken on one thing. I didn't see the Beholders reincarnate on Earth..."

"... but it was I who sent them through the green gate, at their request."

"... 'Sempai', the Kantonian word for 'teacher' or 'respected elder.' I don't mind it, though you should ask permission before calling someone such. I shall digress on this occasion, but I recommend asking in future."

"The best way to learn how to reap souls is to become mortal. The lifespan I have as an immortal was not always as is - I was once mortal, and before that, I was a spirit myself."

"I was born unto the world, as a mortal Mingle, and lived as one for 2 billion years. I suppose I wasn't exactly 'mortal' if I kept coming back, but alas, I had to deal with everything a mortal also has to. I had to survive. I had to feed myself. I had to live among society. I had to endure wars. I had to learn how to live amongst those whom I would someday judge. In that time, I had left my post in the hands of another."

"20 years is barely enough time to scrape the surface of mortality, let alone the position you find yourself in. I worry for the state of your Universe in that sense, yet I suspect if it is as unstable as you say. Therefore, I would suggest forming allies among the spirit world. Make a reaper corporation. Those that show neutrality. Those that can judge fairly and without bias."

"I wish you luck, strange one."

"It doesn't really matter how you came into existence. All lifeforms have the same basic physiology: A mortal coil, and a soul. Your kind have souls, for I've dealt with one of you in the past."

"While I don't know your lifespan as you do not exist in my home universe, however, you will live and die the same way as any other mortal."

"Hmm, a mortal tasked with the role of a reaper? It's not uncommon. Most of the reapers in my corps were once mortal, but are now mid to high ranking spirits. In any case, I won't answer your question because there is no point."

"Your universe is your universe. My universe is my universe. My advice to you would be to investigate it yourself."

"Simple. It was similar enough to Lucky's current body that wouldn't cause excessive discomfort, and also would live long enough for him to carry out his punishment."

@a-shy-mimiktwo , @docmenlonhead , @askazutheshinymew , @fugamsemidei , @kornstreif , @iamyour-peace, @seraphic-dark , @ask-a-learning-ai

[sapphicteaparty]

[G WITCH EP 21 SPOILERS]

it's miorine monday

the way miorine is completely ill-fitted and incapable of serving as the president of benerit group was so well done in EP 21. to be the president of a trillion/billion dollar conglomerate, to hold unrestricted power and rule over everyone else you have to cast aside things that make you human. you can't have sympathy or personal feelings get in the way, not even once, since the only way to maintain that power is by being ruthless and calculating and prioritizing your company's profit margins and vested interests because that's where that power comes from.

miorine cares too much about others to fulfill that role. she values human life and doesn't want to hurt anyone so she can't accept that kind of sacrifice. she suffers because she can't be ruthless and do terrible things like delling did. miorine understood how delling was trying to protect her by trying to marry her off to someone through the duels and maybe keep her away from being the direct heir to benerit group but now she's followed in his footstep and she sees how horrible it really is. she didn't choose this and it ended up being worse than she imagined. the cost of having that much power is soul-crushing to her.

shaddiq's "my condolences" really sums it up well. he gets it.

[godsofhumanity]

Do you have any headcanons for the kings & queens of the underworld like Hades, Osiris, Hel? Like how they act around each other?

this ask came to my inbox on Dec 26, 2022. i'm sorry it took me so long.

so, i like the idea that the Underworld is kinda connected. like.. no matter which pantheon's realm of the dead it is, there are pathways at some place that connect the world of the dead with other worlds of the dead..

i think that's part of the reason why there are so many underworld guardians,, and why it's so popular to have some sort of savage, wild animal guarding the gates.

with Hades, i've already mentioned this before, but i like the idea of him having a very paternal side... i think Zeus, as god of the skies and "father" of mankind (forget Prometheus for a second hahaha), and given his billion trillion children, he definitely has a fatherly side. and i think it's the same deal with Hades- having to look after so many countless subordinate deities and ghosts etc must surely give you a paternal side too.

so i like the idea that Hades has a natural fatherly gravitation towards Hel. Hel is one of the younger deities i think.

also, Macaria, who is Hades' daughter, i think is besties with Hel, and with Anubis' daughter Kebechet also, so these girl goddesses of death are always hanging around Hades..

i've never really imagined Loki as having a very "hands-on" approach to fatherhood. i don't think he ever interacted that much with Hel, or with her other monster siblings except when he needed them for his antics. maybe that's because the long distance made it difficult, maybe because he wanted to keep them out of Odin's mind.. idk. i just don't think he was very much in Hel's life.

so that's why i think there's a lot of room for Hades to enter into Hel's life and become that missing father figure.

individually, and as an adult, i think Hel tends to be isolated... she doesn't engage all that much with her own pantheon, and she definitely doesn't engage with other pantheons. i think maybe she's partial to fellow death gods, but anyone else, she'd just not engage with.

Osiris. my favourite guy. i think he's very different to the other gods because while Hades and Hel i might describe as a little "edgy", a little emo.. Osiris is, in my mind, a total sweetheart. a bit of a jock even maybe.

he's full of bright smiles, and funny (read: cringey) jokes. when i think about Hel and Hades (the locations), black, and moss green colour schemes come to my mind.. but when I think about the Egyptian underworld, it's very bright- gold, blue, red, green.. all the colours. it's a happy place.

i think Osiris' personality reflects this. he's like the Baldr of Egypt. so he gets along very very well with Hades and Hel... it's difficult to dislike him.

i like to imagine that they have very deep, philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, the importance of mortals, the value of soul.

also, i'd like to point out that all 3x (greek, norse, egyptian) pantheons have a special dog-like creature with a special role in the process of passing from life to death... i think that Cerberus, Garmr, and Ammit are very friendly with each other :-))) they probably go on walks together

[den-kunn]

rewatching mk12's pyramid scene and- I can't take this game seriously at all.

the whole point of the pyramid is to reach the top, to win the "prize of gods"

and- and they're

walking down the stairs-

"oh shit I'm in heels I better not trip or else it's gonna hurt and imma embarrass myself so bad-" "who thought of fighting in a pyramid of all places-" "why do they have so much stamina to RUN up here"

there are scenes that make no sense at all: Liu and Shang casually speaking as if they aren't so far away from each other, the amount of copy paste models that are included for no reason, Liu kinda frowning when Quan Chi comes from the portal... even though he can't see what's going on up there??

I'd love to rewrite this ugly ass scene for something more... idk, 3D era like?

I'd love to write it like- (don't mind the fanfiction down below)

Shang Tsung preparing a bigger scale soulnado while Quan Chi is down there defending the pyramid, summoning warriors of dark timelines (both titan AND mortal warriors). From the distance, Ashrah and Nitara fly over to count the amount of enemies Quan Chi summoned then informing Liu Kang who, now infused with his full titan power, slowly approaches the battlefield, fists burning as he frowns. Then, portals open to show good timelords and chosen champions. There aren't many, but they don't need numbers, they only need their spirits.

And so, they run to face their foes, their "allies", their nemesis, their war screams are so loud they could leave someone deaf. The battle opens with titan Hotaru piercing through champion Li Mei, later following fights like titan Scorpion against timelord Bi-Han, timelord Shinnok against dark Raiden and so on, some fights are callbacks from the armageddon, others are reversed or modified to fit the mk12 timeline.

Liu, however, makes his way towards Shang Tsung, yet what he didn't expect was to fight his undead self, courtesy of dark Raiden. For a "mortal", zombie Kang gives Liu a hard time, or maybe it's Liu's inexperience with his own titan powers that make him feel weaker, but it doesn't matter. The war ends with Shang Tsung consuming all of the souls of Liu's timelines, but as punishment for being greedy, his body cannot contain so much soul power, he's not prepared to manage a large amount of souls, billions and trillions of souls would shatter his body, screaming in agony as Liu Kang tears his body apart, freeing not only the souls of his timeline, but the souls that were taken from the massacre that was a few meters away.

The universe, unstable, tries to correct itself. It sends warriors back to their timelines... except some warriors are swapped with different versions of themselves.

I'd like to think Invasions could be canon as a direct continuity. Bringing the warriors stuck in other timelines back to Liu's and sending the titans back to their universes, as they lost their divine power. For example: Champion Nitara is stuck in Liu's timeline meanwhile normal Nitara is in C!Nitara's. Duplicates exist in Liu's timeline but at the cost of another soul replacing them: Scorpion and Champion Scorpion are both in Liu's timeline at the expense of... idk, young Hanzo and Scorpion Kuai.

...so yeah thats my rambling.

[1mpulsee]

△ + "When you came back... how did that feel?"

Send me a △ and ask a really invasive question aimed at my character — accepting !!

❝ okay, you’re lucky I’m so flippant about the topic of death . ‘cause I’m ASSUMING you mean coming back to life . and if that’s not what you mean, well, sucks to suck ‘cause that’s how I’m gonna answer it . 5/10 . ❞

❝ DYING is painful . being BROUGHT BACK is painful . being dead ? the state of non existence ? THAT isn’t painful . it’s nothingness and it’s peace . ❞

❝ … maybe that’s why being brought back is — so horrible . there’s nothing, and then … ❞ there’s a pause . silence .

❝ we were NEVER meant to undermine death . when you’re dead, and then you get revived … your soul is DRAGGED through everything between life and death . when you rip someone’s soul away from the afterlife, it rips through EVERYTHING . trillions of miles of planes of existence you can’t even begin to comprehend . you’re dragged through an unthinkable amount of souls . billions of souls along infinite lightyears … the PAIN of every NANOMETER of time you pass through, every SECOND of those soul’s lost lives passes through you . it’s all the suffering in the world . it’s breaking the greatest law of nature and you will KNOW it . and there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO to stop it . ❞

❝ and then you’re alive again . and you’re more alone than ever because no one can truly understand what it’s like . most people who come back … their memory is either nonexistent or limited . hell, I’m the guy who remembers everything, cosmic or not, and even that experience isn’t fully in my HEAD anymore … ❞

❝ I could explain it a thousand other ways, until the sun burns out, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t feel like anything that exists in life . and I can’t TRULY make anybody understand . ❞ there’s tears, now, he’s unsure where in his rant he started to cry .

❝ don’t get me wrong, I love being alive, and I love the world and the people in it SO MUCH … but being brought back to life … more than once … it was one of the WORST experiences of my entire existence .❞

[broadway-sollux]

had two much fun wiith thii2. covered iin honey. help.

lyriic2 under the cut.

fuck. thii2 ii2 takiing forever. ju2t compiile already! oh. hey liittle guy. ugh. iit mu2t bee 2o much ea2iier ju2t carryiing data and makiing honey all day. ii’d rather bee a bee. I’mma bee, I'mma bee, I'mma I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee, I'mma bee, I'mma I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee, I'mma bee, I'mma I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee bee bee bee I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee bee bee bee I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee bee bee bee I'mma I'mma bee

I'mma be in the network I'mma be buzzin’ at 20ghz I'mma be zippin through the wires with my crew I'mma be writin’ all those codes you wanna use I'mma be up in them honeycomb slits Better not cause a glitch, and I'mma be Zippin’ them zips cause I'mma be so honey-drenched You gon’ be givin’ me clicks I'mma be carryin’ bits Lookin all fly and shit I'mma be the fliest prick I'mma be spreading my wings I'mma be doing bee things (do it do it, okay)

I'mma I'mma fly it this way, I'mma I'mma I'mma I'mma fly it that-a way This is sexy Sol, and I'mma I'mma bee here to stay From my sixth sweep til infinity

I'mma bee, I'mma bee, I'mma I'mma I'mma bee I'mma bee, I'mma bee, I'mma I'mma I'mma bee I'mma I'mma I'mma be I'mma be, I'mma be I’mma I'mma be, I'mma be be be be Imma I'mma be I'mma be I'mma I'mma I'mma be, I'mma be be be I'mma I'mma be

I'mma be the upgraded new servo I'mma be a supersize server with soul I'mma be world wide emperial I'mma be mega, not a one-bit drone I'mma be brilliant with my millions Load out a billion, generate a trillion I'mma be a busy bee, but my name ain't Hussie I'mma be ya hub, soundin real buzzy Honeys in text, and we trollin’ them pests but I don't really mind when they trollin’ them pests I'mma be, I'mma be I'm-I’mma  I'm-Imma be Rich, baby I'mma be, I'mma be, I'm, I'mma be

Sick with overload When the goal is to power this show I'mma be the future I'mma be the whole, reason why trolls even connect to the flow You can see what I’m programmin’ And I don’t even have to glow I'mma be up in the hive Doin' whatever I like I'mma be popping that honey Chillin' and living that good life Oh let's make this last forever Coding and flying together On and on and on and on and On and on and on and on and I'mma be buzzin’ like this Y'all always wan’ type shit Wantin’ me to fix all your techno bits Acting like that’s my job, it isn’t I can’t help that I’m goldblooded And all trolls want is psionics Drop this whole life and just buzz instead Be part of electronics

I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be living that good life I'mma be living that good good I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be living that good life I'mma be living that good good I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be living that good life I'mma be living that good good I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be living that good life I'mma be living that good good I'mma be I'mma be I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be

I’mma, I’mma, I'mma be Rocking that ATH~ extension infinite B-E-E we definite Ly- on some high wattage shit Futuristic colony Powerful with energy From the core psionicly Sending electronicly Cross’ the planet and the sea Making lots of ho-o-oney Rocking codes, compi-a-ling I'mma be there with my bees Living life, feeling free That's how it's supposed to be Live to serve a better Queen Celebrate like I'mma bee

I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be, I'mma be

[alan-p-49]

Ok I'm redoing the math of how many fuckin souls Estexev the Weird will get with the deal with the god of all physical Ik

In my previous post I said this would be Anys, then Andus. I'm now saying Ik bc that would make all the gods work together to help Estexev kill, at least the elder evil in Mekhor, Orgon the elder evil that Pask is tasked to be a warden of

I'm redoing this calculation bc I finally have some sources and do this way more scientifically and it turns out the number of souls Estexev will get will be way bigger than I've imagined

The deal is, as how I'm thinking of it, is that Ik will give Estexev 1% of all souls in mekhorspace and the actual amount of souls Estexev will get bc he doesn't want to have Asmodeus think he's trying to overthrow him is 1% of that. I might make that last percentage smaller but no smaller than 0.01%

Now, Mekhor is modeled after Earth. Based on this source, "The number is probably mind-bogglingly gigantic. The planet is home to 8 billion humans alone. We share that space with around 130 billion other mammals, up to 428 billion birds, 3.5 trillion fish and an estimated 10 quintillion insects (that's 1 with 18 zeros)."

Now, I'm going to decrease the human population to what the estimate is for 1000 CE which from this website states it's 275 million

This all adds up to...ten quintillion. That's...that's just the animals

I quickly looked if plants also have souls in DnD and sadly no but that's fine because what all I have to do now is multiply ten quintillion by seven which is...

70 quintillion

That's... actually less than I expected. I thought it would be to sextillion but no but this is fine this gives us a more reasonable number

1% of 70 quintillion is 700 quadrillion and 1% of that is 7 quadrillion which is a more reasonable number but then I need a visual on how big seven quadrillion is so uh okay yeah that's still fuckin ridiculous. Like multi billionaires are racing for to become the first trillionare and even if they get there that is not anywhere near how many souls this MF bout to yoink

Now you may be wondering, why am I counting the beasts in this calculation? This is because of how the setting's reincarnation works because Andus houses souls in Hidul and gets them to be born again either to maintain the number of souls or have souls try again in life. It's mostly the latter so that's why not many souls leave mekhorspace. Sometimes the souls of beasts and insects want to try again or Andus thinks that this particular soul was being mean so instead of giving it to the hells she just forces them to reincarnate into a worm or an insect as punishment and after some time have that soul graduate from insect then to beast and then back to humanoid kinda like how in Hindu religion reincarnation and karma works

Now I'm wondering if I should add plants too but I'll think about it and now I'm typing this I'm realizing why not just have Estexev say 0.01% so that he doesn't have to share

[safesthaveninexistence]

Leaving the A Summer's Moment is thoroughly utterly wholeheartedly and irrevocably in my own favor. It's in my favor because I deserve better than that and that won't stop my ability to achieve more movie roles. In fact achieving movie roles is the easiest thing for me. Achieving prestigious and desired dream movie roles unstoppably come to me no matter what. Absolutely all of my dream movie roles still unstoppably come to me no matter what. Leaving a summer's moment is in my favor. It wasn't even my loss. Leaving them was THEIR LOSS, never mine. I have formidable spiritual and energetic power that when I left, their entire production COLLAPSED and DISMANTLED while I only continue to unstoppably receive even more powerfully impressive movie roles and get paid BILLIONS AND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR THEM. Absolutely all movie roles are utterly absolutely thoroughly wholeheartedly revised into my own favor. Absolutely all movies are revised into my own favor. Absolutely all movies that has ever existed is utterly thoroughly wholeheartedly revised into my own favor. Absolutely all movies that has ever existed and WILL exist are absolutely revised into my own favor and in my own benefit only. A Summer's Moment never changed my worth, my unsurpassably formidable abilities and capabilities. Absolutely all energies are revised into my own favor no matter what. Absolutely all movie roles and auditions are utterly revised into my own favor no matter what. I unstoppably thrive. I unstoppably succeed. I unstoppably come out on top. I unstoppably reign supreme. I unstoppably GET EVEN MORE DESIRED DREAM MOVIE ROLES EFFORTLESSLY. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I DESIRE UTTERLY IRREVOCABLY AND IRREVERSIBLY BELONG TO ME AND ARE ONE WITH ME AND THEY ARE UTTERLY FORMIDABLE EXTENSIONS OF ME. Absolutely all of my desired realities are one with me absolutely all of my desired realities are formidably extension of me therefore absolutely everything my soul desires instinctively come to me. Absolutely all I desire is mine just like how it's FACT I AM ALIVE AND I HAVE A BODY

[jcmarchi]

Putting The Seoul In Console

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/putting-the-seoul-in-console/

Putting The Seoul In Console

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With just four days in Seoul, South Korea, I filled my maps app with pins of restaurants, Buddhist temples, must-see attractions, scenic parks, market streets, and more to visit. I clocked around 10 miles of walking daily and think I saw as much of this massive city as possible with my allotted time. My journey from east to west, north to south of Seoul was only possible by the city’s expansive public transportation network of buses and trains. And while I listened to “Magnetic” by K-Pop group ILLIT more times than I’ll admit (when in Korea, right?) through headphones on these trains and buses, I spent much of my time observing how others spent time waiting for their stop.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, everyone is glued to their phones, myself included. But unlike me, doom scrolling on X (formerly Twitter) before switching to Instagram before switching back to X, a lot of people were playing games I recognized, like League of Legends’ auto chess spin-off, Teamfight Tactics. But there we also plenty of other games I didn’t know, like Light of the Stars, Soul Strike, and more. While touring one of Nexon’s Seoul-based studios, Magnum Studio, I asked its head, Beomjun Lee, if mobile gaming is as popular as my public transportation travels had me believe. His answer was a quick yes. A study published by Statista Research Department in February concludes that, according to its 2022 survey, 63 percent of South Koreans play mobile games, with the market having an estimated worth of 14 trillion South Korean Won (or $10.2 billion) that year.

Nexon, the company that invited me to its studio, has plenty of mobile hits, like FIFA Mobile and MapleStory M, and a good amount on PC, too. Based on how many PC cafes I saw in Seoul, I’d guess PC is the biggest gaming market in South Korea or close behind mobile. But its staple of console releases features just two so far: KartRider: Drift and last year’s The Finals. With its PC and mobile gaming on lock, Nexon is slowly aiming West, looking to break into global markets and focusing on console releases alongside its usual output to do so. And what better way to do that than with a free-to-play (easy entry), third-person (ripe for customization), looter-shooter (a genre popularized by the likes of Destiny and Warframe that continues to dominate a large mindshare of games)?

Ambitions In Albion

Ambitions In Albion

The First Descendant is just that, and though I was weary of another free-to-play game, and another looter shooter at that, after an hour of hands-on time, I’m excited, antsy even, for its release this summer when I can play more.

Revealed last August as part of Gamescom 2023, The First Descendant is in development at Nexon’s Magnum Studio with its sights set on a Summer 2024 release. I pushed for a more exact release date, but the team wasn’t ready to share; it’s clear it’s working hard to polish it up in these last few months, and for good reason, too – the team has lofty ambitions with The First Descendant.

“The main feature of The First Descendant is the PvE co-op element,” Lee, who is also the lead producer of the game, tells me through a translator. “It’s an online shooter RPG, and we consider it the next generation of looter shooters.”

That term caught me by surprise. It’s a bold statement, almost braggadocious, but after talking with Lee and creative director Minseok Joo and playing the game for an hour, I understand where the team is coming from. In my early hands-on impressions, the First Descendant feels like a mish-mash of other greats in the genre. Taken literally, it’s also a looter shooter made exclusively for the “next generation” of consoles as it’s coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S alongside PC, with crossplay and cross-progression, too.

Going Hands-On

Going Hands-On

Dropped to an Earth-like sci-fi world where humanity is on its last leg in a city called Albion, my chosen character, Viessa, is searching for something called the Ironheart. She’s joined by an ally named Bunny (yes, her suit’s silhouette is that of a bunny). Immediately, weapons are crunchy and tactile. I sense every bullet in the controller and the on-screen recoil, and it feels great. It helps that the entire game, developed from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, is gorgeous. I joke with Lee that I’m happy the team is making a console version of the game as The First Descendant will melt my PC, which is admittedly due for an upgrade. Seeing words like “frame generation,” “ray reconstruction,” and “ray tracing” in the options confirms my belief.

The weapons aren’t anything special, though. In my play session, I encounter machine guns, submachine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and long-range snipers. They all feel great, but The First Descendant isn’t doing anything new here. Each character’s magical powers are what makes combat distinct. Viessa has access to ice, with a passive skill that creates spheres of ice around her body to damage and slow enemies that get too close, and four active skills that do area-of-effect damage, increase running speed and shield, and more. She can even place a snowstorm onto the playfield, damaging and immobilizing those caught within.

Setting the stage

One hundred years ago, the Vulgus crossed over the dimension, destroying life as humans knew it. The alien Colossi arrived, too, bringing even more destruction. The surviving humans gathered in Albion to restore humanity. Over time, they worked with Vulgus Magisters and evolved from swords and shields to guns and magic, thanks to special genes that house magical Arche unlocked within humans. Those humans whose Arche was awakened became the Descendants, Albion’s chosen protectors. Things are on the up. That is, until Karel, the new Vulgus leader, invades in search of the Ironheart, which is also what the Descendants are after.

The Ironheart can close the dimension that Karel, his Vulgus army, and the Colossi used to reach Albion in the first place, and it’s up to players to find it.

Her abilities are wildly different from Valby, the water-based character I’d play as later. Valby consumes less mana when standing in water and has moves to create puddles, making for a rewarding ability loop. She can even liquify the area around her, allowing her to move through enemies with increased defense and speed. Viessa’s moves are more straightforward, but Valby’s is more rewarding as part of a co-op experience, even if it takes longer to get my sea legs.

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As I progress through the prologue, I encounter Karel, The First Descendant’s big bad. He immediately, seemingly, kills Bunny, and it’s clear he’s not mincing words. He will do whatever he must to obtain the Ironheart.

Unfortunately for Viessa, at the ready to avenge Bunny, Karel dips, leaving a Gravewalker tank boss behind. This boss fight (and the Stunning Beauty boss I’ll take on later while playing as Valby alongside a developer from Magnum Studio) is the highlight of my time with The First Descendant. Each boss has its own set of moves and mechanics to follow, including checks that require more strategic work, but how I, the player, fight them most intrigues me.

The First Descendant is fast. The characters move swiftly, and abilities, which fly loosely, allow them to zip around in combat. I can imagine the magical chaos that ensues with a full team of four. But the grapple hook excites me most about the possibilities of The First Descendant’s combat.

While fighting enemies, I scan by clicking the right stick to find weak points highlighted in blue. After shooting them enough, they turn yellow, meaning it’s time for my favorite part of the game: grappling up to the yellow part and ripping it off. It’s an awesome mechanic and takes an experience I’ve played hundreds of times in looter shooters – shoot the boss a bunch – and makes it more dynamic. It’s not just about shooting; it’s about blasting a weak point long enough that I can grapple to it and then work to yank it right off, shedding the boss’ layers as I do.

Crafting Your Descendant

Crafting Your Descendant

Outside of combat, the game offers plenty of customization that powers free-to-play experiences, though I don’t know how microtransactions will play into the game. You can customize loadouts for every character, each with their own weapons and abilities. There are a ton of costumes, ranging from maid outfits to fire brigade uniforms and more, and you can customize various areas of your character with unique chest pieces, Fortnite-style back pieces, and more. You can test out all of this in Albion’s Lab, a test field with customizable dummies to check your loadout’s damage output, feel, and more. Speaking to the team’s commitment to the game and its community, this Lab was recently added following feedback from a recent beta.

“This is my first time seeing it,” Lee says while showing it to me, indicating just how recently it was added. He says players can expect the game to change and grow with the community in this way.

I’m always nervous about free-to-play games and the associated monetization, but if The First Descendant sticks to cosmetic-focused microtransactions, as opposed to letting players pay to perform better in combat, for example, Magnum Studio is on the right track with the wealth of options I see for character customization.

I like that each character so far feels quite different, and leveling each up individually, instead of focusing on a single character for months or years, seems like a smart call in contrast with the genre. Knowing that three friends playing will have various Descendants to choose from, allowing for multiple strategies in how we approach missions, is exciting.

As for keeping players engaged beyond the game’s initial launch, Lee says the team is taking a seasonal approach, with new battle passes in each drop. As is now the standard in the live-service genre, each battle pass will contain season-specific cosmetics, and you’ll need to play through the new content to obtain them.

With an hour of The First Descendant playtime behind me, including a studio tour and interview with the team’s leads, I am (im)patiently waiting for its release this summer. Despite my initial love of Destiny and attempts in Warframe at one point in my gaming history, both (and many others in the genre) have passed me by. Jumping back into them is too daunt- ing and too confusing today. But The First Descendant is giving me what I want from those games, with variations on the formula, too. I still have questions, but Nexon still has time to answer them. For now, I’m crossing my fingers I get into the next beta.

This article originally appeared in Issue 366 of Game Informer.