#humans use it for motivation demons use it to study human technology

[rustytrident]

mc vlogs while they stay in the human world.

it started because they would send the brothers' group chat videos of them and the events throughout their day, and asmo was like hm. why not just,,, post it?

and post it they did.

it's on a website that allows streaming from every realm, so humans, demons, and even angels can watch what mc is up to, which ultimately kinda weirds them out because they will be filming themselves gaming or studying or even going grocery shopping and thousands of beings will fill their page with views and comments. they already are a sort of celebrity in the devildom, and a lot of beings have heard of them in the celestial realm, so they were expecting some sort of traction from there, but when humans started watching and commenting things like "i love that brand of chips" or "you can clean it with baking soda and it will make it look brand new!" they really started freaking out.

i can see demons especially being so fascinated with how humans live. mc will be going to the bank or knocking on watermelons to choose which one to buy and every demon comment is along the lines of "damn bitch you live like this???"

you can easily tell when the brothers or someone from purgatory hall comments because they're all channel members (something mammon and levi set up), and mc replies to every single one of them, and only them. beings start complaining that mc is playing favorites and in their next video they're like "yes. that's my family. you're a stranger on the internet" and though not many of them stop being supportive, none of them bring it up again.

idk man this whole post is one big brainfart but tldr mc is really popular and really cool and all they did was just have a monologue about their favourite anime character's development and eat instant ramen because they were out of food.

[lucyav13]

Pixels

They were created by a powerful wizard from the tribe of the ancients, 3,000 years ago before the events of Spm. To create them he transferred a spirit into a vessel (the soul of his daughter, whose game was ended). It is said that he thus created 12 Pixels like this before he passed away. But his apprentices kept researching Pixls after his game ended... They learned to create many more Pixls based on his original 12.

These Pixls became widely used as 'thinking tools' for the grateful Ancients. Through the work of many Pixls, the Ancients prospered as they never had before.

But, that old technology has been lost and the remaining pixels have been scattered (until Mario manages to gather the original 11 pixels).

The truth is that they are more useful than any tool. They can think for themselves, and that's not always a good thing. The ancients feared that they would end up not obeying their creators. They say that the personality of the pixelites was created for that reason. There were some pixls that were very, very intelligent. But something terrible happened and the personality of the Pixls changed.

                                                                                        Pixl Queen 

Despite the Pixl Queen being the first Pixl ever created, she seemed to stay largely quiet for what is thought to be 1,000 years after the creation of the Pixels. However, seemingly long after the passing of her creator (the powerful magician who invented the process of Pixl-making), the Pixl Queen (then of an unknown name) finally rose into power, renaming herself with her only known name of "Pixl Queen." She then began to use her powers of mind control to manipulate all Pixls, causing them to eventually enslave most of the Tribe of Ancients (who were ironically once their masters) in her name. However, the owners of the magician's twelve original Pixl creations managed to somehow escape this Pixl Uprising and started to fight against the rebellious Pixls, containing them within Catch Cards and healing them. In the end, only one of these heroic Ancients survived, and he traveled with only his Pixl friends to the Pixl Queen's castle.

Once he arrived at the stronghold, he confronted the dark Pixl Queen herself, who immediately hid from the hero and shot a barrage of disturbing images to his mind telepathically. Although this greatly weakened the Ancient hero, one of his Pixls helped him through the tragedy and ended up  defeating the Pixl Queen itself, although it was destroyed in the process of doing so. Afterwards, it was shockingly revealed to the hero who owned the Pixl that the Pixl Queen was the first created of the Pixls (perhaps created even earlier than the magician's so-called "original" twelve Pixls) and that the magician's motives for creating her involved the study of the Dark Prognosticus. The Ancient survivor, attempting to stop such a tragedy as the Pixl Uprising from ever happening again, then took the Dark Prognosticus with himself to unknown parts, likely founding the Tribe of Darkness known to once have possessed the dark book. Afterwards, the Pixl Queen's mutinous efforts led to the fall of the Tribe of Ancients and the outlawing of Pixl creation.

Though these are the only known actions of the seemingly late Pixl Queen, more is indeed known about the Pixl herself. Although the spirit united with the Pixl vessel that formed the Pixl Queen had previously been described as "demonic", Carson later stated that a certain one of the magician's apprentices books revealed that the Pixl Queen's spirit was actually derived from a human rather than a demon. It was on this principle that Carson theorized that the Pixl Queen's spirit may have been that of the magician's own daughter (who did indeed get a Game Over during her father's life due to a deathly illness), although he later seemed to have not been sure about this theory in his statement that the author disavowed it. It is also unknown if the Pixl Queen had any helpful ability, although she was indeed able to control all Pixls and used the power of telepathy in her battle against the Ancient survivor, making these possible ability candidates.

My theory: The Pixl Quenn is Shadoo. The Pixl Queen was created by an Ancient, and after developing a grudge against her people due to how they used the Pixls, she attempted to overthrow the Ancients by taking control of the Pixls. The Pixl Queen was also said to have "powers of illusion", which she used to hide from sight. Shadoo similarly despises the Ancients and wished to use the Heroes' Pixl companions to exact its revenge, and is capable of hiding itself, the Warp Pipe leading to it, and the various clones. The details of the Pixl Queen's fate is not revealed, with Carson only stating that she was "defeated" and the Dark Prognosticus "taken from her" after her defeat; this makes it possible that she survived the battle. (Yes, i made that fanart, do you like it?)

Trivia: In a pre-release version of Super Paper Mario, a ladder-like Pixl that did not make it into the final game can be found. This Pixl would have been used to flip Mario to 3D, as revealed by unused Pixl data within the game's files.

(A/N): Tell me what you think of my theories. I would like to read them!

[waeirfaahl]

Why the Ultra-Robots made sense as vessels of the demonic blood

Small addition to my big analysis. Although I already in pretty detailed way explained, why 5 season makes zero sense, as well as why Aku has no reason and motivation to visit random fanatics he knew nothing about and to give them his blood for unmotivated and impossible reasons (again, he knew nothing about them and had no idea about their intentions and goals etc), I still have something to say about the Ultra-Robots. I can confidently say that these unexplained, appeared from nowhere and created only for symbolism cultists literally have no single reason to exist as well. Plus, Aku's entourage always consisted exactly of scientists, demons, robots, bandits and bounty hunters, but mostly exactly scientists, demons and robots. In fact, in the classic seasons Aku as a patron of technologies, progress and science is opposed to the past, where mortals had only their spirituality, religions, fixation on cultural/national identity, traditions etc (also you can notice that independent tribes, mostly human tribes on Earth, who saved their ancient culture after eons, either have no technologies or use them at the very minimum, and they are against Aku's influence or at best neutral to it). So, the entire idea of 5 season with these sudden fanatical cultists from nowhere is a blatant bullsh*t. But now let's return to the Ultra-Robots. On the one hand, it's obvious that a robot or supernatural enemy is harder to kill and more effective as a successful killer in contrast to a mortal. Moreover, in their arsenal, in addition to fast running, invisibility, grenades, bombs, a flamethrower and a mini-nuclear explosion (at least visually it resembles exactly that) and other deadly weapons, the Ultra-robots also had the ability to self-study and to copy the skills and fighting style of the enemy, i.e. reading and assimilation, not to mention their armor, made of a special metal, which even Jack's sword couldn't damage until the sword got the support of Jack's ancestors.

This ability is utterly terrifying. On the other hand, there's the one important detail, which totally explains why Aku's experiment with these robots makes sense and why he decided to make them to be vessels of his blood, which can get more power from his blood. The Ultra-robots were INITIALLY created exactly as totally EMPTY shells WITHOUT personality, without the ability to feel and to be alive (what were X-9 or robot-scientists or the servant-robot from 8 episode of 4 season), i.e. they did NOT have the functions and ability to be alive and emotional and intelligent etc. They are just empty vessels that will unquestioningly obey the order of the master, whose the blood inside of them, and therefore will NEVER rebell against him and will not use his power against him (although from "The Aku Infection" and "Birth of Evil" episodes we know that Aku's blood is poisonous and deadly for living organisms and will devour them to death out of inside, still a robot is a better and way more reasonable choice than vulnerable and weak mortal; especially after Jack was strong enough mentally and physically to stay alive and to defeat Aku's deadly blood inside of him — although Aku had no idea about Jack being infected by his blood, the demon still was smart enough to not try to do it intentionally).

So, yes, in the classic seasons Aku has thought of everything in this specific aspect.

[edge-lorde]

the religion of the galactic horde

“You seem reluctant to help me. But I only wish to use your weapon to bring peace to the darkest corners of the universe. (Glimmer: Peace? If you activate the Heart of Etheria, there will be no one left.) Yes. No war, no pain. Old worlds swept aside, a new beginning for the universe.” --Horde Prime explaining his motivations to Glimmer

the horde in shera was definitely inspired by Christianity and uses a lot of its imagery, the most iconic being the baptism scene. it certainly gives off the vibes of a christian or christian adjacent cult, but what is its actual doctrine? i have some thoughts about that. 

first here are what i consider to be the 3 main differences between real christianity and the horde: 

Their jesus didn't ascend to heaven. He's still with them.

They don't have a larger creator god. They worship horde prime like he is a living god but they don't believe that he created the universe.

They have no focus on the afterlife

this is going to be long.

before i begin heres the sparknotes version of christianity for anyone not familiar. I am not evangelizing this, just think of it as LORE. 

Once upon a time there was a guy named Jesus. He was the son of the one true god, who both created everything in the universe, is everywhere and knows everything, and controls the afterlife. Jesus is god born as a mortal person, sent by god to teach all of humanity the errors of their evil ways so they can repent and go to the good afterlife when they die. There're two afterlives, a good one and a bad one, heaven is the good one and its run by god and his army of angels, which are divine beings that god can send to earth to do things. The bad one is called hell. 

Anyway, in his time on earth jesus was the only person ever to never do anything bad ever (called sin). He tried to teach people how to be good but was Too Good for this Cruel World and was killed. 3 days later he came back from the dead, proving his divinity. Some time after that however, he ascended into heaven without dying, telling his followers to spread the word because hes going to be coming back. Christians today are still awaiting his return. In the meantime, christians follow his teachings left behind in holy texts. 

The crux of christianity is to get to heaven when you die, and this can only be done by following the teachings of jesus christ, believing in god, and believing that jesus was the son of god. Its a given that everyone will do bad things at some point in their lives so you're supposed to pray to god and ask for forgiveness regularly and if you really mean it then god will forgive you. 

thats the basics. 

to my first main point from above, if we posit that horde prime is the jesus equivalent of the horde religion, because hes treated as a living god, his goal is to spread his philosophy throughout the universe, then in the horde religions jesus never ascended into heaven. this would be like if jesus in our world rose from the dead and just picked up where he left off, and never died after that and was alive today. that would be pretty good proof of divinity. 

to my 2nd point, theres nothing in the show that suggests that horde prime thinks that he created the universe. this means that he did not get his divinity from anywhere but inside himself, hes not claiming that hes the rightful ruler of the known universe for any other reason besides his ideas are the best. 

the 3rd point is that the show does show horde prime or the horde caring one bit about the afterlife, save for one line from wrong hordak.

"Brother, I hope you, too, are full of only love for Horde Prime and have no crippling doubt eating at your soul."

meaning that they have the concept of the soul. which is very interesting and ill get to it, but on the whole the hordes focus seems to be on the here and now. this is a huge departure from christianity because chrisitanity is all about getting to the afterlife. that is the reason that christians are supposed to follow christ and recruit as many people as possible to do the same, because if they dont, they or other people will supposedly go to hell when they die. i say supposedly because at funerals, even if the person who died wasnt a believer, in my experience no christian would ever ever ever insinuate that someone went to hell. 

but the difference still stands. following real christian ideology is supposed to have benefits for the individual in the afterlife, while in the horde religion salvation seems to only be found by submitting to prime in this life and being either a tool that he can use to further his goal of purifying the universe or by letting him remove you from it. 

on top of all that, horde prime has the hive mind, which he uses to control the thoughts of all his followers. this means that theres no room for a bible study, no need of a holy text at all in fact, and no room for interpretation. horde prime delivers orders to your brain directly and can tell if you think anything out of line. real Christianity does have the idea that a sin that you just think about doing is as bad as actually doing it, but in the horde these thoughts can be easily discovered and punished. 

the horde religion seems to me to be a strangely secular version of christianity with only the bad parts remaining; the control, the blind faith, the certainty that you are right and everyone else is wrong, the not questioning authority. with none of the good aspects like community, and good deeds. it is a cult in the truest sense of the word, a religion that begins and ends with one person only, that person being horde prime.

so, if you take horde prime out of the equation, what, if anything, would be left? 

i find the plight of the horde clones here to be the most interesting. we know that they do have thoughts about their religion, as it was hordaks belief that he could earn his way back into horde primes god graces that kept him going all those years in despondos, and wrong hordak is distraught when he discovers that horde prime lied about krytis. 

unlike both the chipped people we see in the show and real religious converts, the clones were born into this cult that values blind obedience only, and have no prior ideology or cultural identity to fall back on when they are taken out of it. 

so to answer this question, i must add some conjecture to horde primes backstory and how the clones see themselves in horde primes universe. I already wrote up a brief backstory idea for horde prime/the clones and have it posted on here somewhere. I'm not going to dig it up but you could probably find it in the #horde prime tag on my blog if you dig hard enough. 

To summarize it though, I have it as horde prime was once a regular (bad) dude who became a cult leader under the premise of preaching peace --> he becomes disillusioned with people and even his own followers because he doesn't actually like people, he likes manipulating them. --> this and the power of being a cult leader go to his head and he starts to think that he is the only person in existence capable of living a moral life and everyone else needs to be saved from themselves, the world would be a better place if he could just make everyone's decisions for them. --> he somehow gets a hold of the technology needed to set up the hive mind, be it by inventing it himself, stealing it, finding it, or being gifted it. 

I'll pause here to address the theory that horde prime was originally an eldritch being that simply possessed a dude who would become the template for the clones. I think there's enough stuff in the show that this is a valid read and might even be canon but i don't really care for it. For me, what makes horde prime a compelling villain is that he's a very human evil, so having him actually be an evil demon thing instead of a really bad but believable dude who got near ultimate power weakens his character. BUT, i’m not going to address it in my comic so i'll leave it open as to whether he's got that going on or not. If he is, the clones don’t know about it and neither they nor the other characters have any way of discovering it. IF he is though, it would happen here. I could see it being a cool idea for him to get the hive mind from the eldritch being that would then possess him and haunt his lineage for time immemorial as a deal with the devil sort of thing, but he has to be a bad person before that.

Anyway he gets the hive mind--> he gets all of his followers to chip themselves --> gets those people to chip everyone else on his home planet --> use his planet wide army to harvest all resources on the planet and build his first space fleet and take to the skies and start his conquest--> realize that if he is to succeed hes going to need to both become immortal and find a steady source of new followers because chipped people die eventually and he doesnt care about people enough to figure out a way to keep a self sufficient population of followers alive, he just wants people around to adore him and do his bidding--> invents his cloning system-->

and heres the big one,

his original body has to die so he can upload his consciousness into a new clone.  

and THAT, to the clones, would be the moment that horde prime becomes a god.

his reliance on the hive mind and vast network of followers are what give him his godly abilities, but just as the horde clones could not exist without being cloned from horde prime, so too could horde prime not exist as he does in the show without them. 

i see it as both a christlike sacrifice and a cyclical system of debt and sacrifice. horde prime dies for our sins, so that he might continue to purify the universe so that there will be no more death and more clones will be born, while the clone hes possessing has to essentially die by giving himself up entirely to become the new prime so all this can happen too, and to repay primes death. not all clones can become the next prime however, but all must be ready to die for him, hence horde prime having clone infantries despite also having robots he could send instead. 

i dont have clear thoughts about what the green goo is, but horde primes words about his brothers lending him their life force go along with this idea. the clones give him theyre life force, so he can give it back to them.

another interesting aspect of this is that prime always portrays himself as a brother to his followers, never a father as christ is portrayed as in christianity. i know this is from hordak and horde prime being actual brothers in the 80s show but ive seen this trope come up a few times in media before, where a man raises a kid but has them call him their brother instead of dad. it seems so deliberate. because a parents job is to take care of you, but a sibling, might take care of you sure, but thats not their job. its like hes deliberately trying to place himself on the same level as his ‘sibling’ so he can demand the same amount of respect you would give to a parent without taking on the responsibility to not... ya know... screw them over in the head? idk it seems very slimy to me. but that says more about prime as a character than how the clones see him.

and we still have the concept of the soul to fit in here somehow, and do they have an afterlife? im going to say no to the afterlife. theres just not enough in the show to go off of and everything that we do know about horde prime points to him only caring about himself in life. HOWEVER, there is nothing more quintessentially christian than the concept of hell and i think that will be of use here. 

since the creation of the clones is tied with the creation of their religion, this would put the clones themselves less as allegories of people who need to be saved and more as the horde version of angels. in my telling here, horde prime views all people who do not submit to his will as net negatives to the universe who have to be removed for peace to exist, so by this view the chipped people are the saved, the people that horde prime kills are the sinners, and his military campaign is one long apocalypse slowly working its way through the universe, with the clones carrying out his righteous judgement. but the afterlife isnt involved in this, so even if some chipped people are left alive, eventually they will all die out, and then it will be just horde prime and is clones in a perfect, peaceful starless sky, and thats what heaven is. 

getting to heaven is the main goal of real christianity and it is the same in horde religion, but heaven isnt a place in the horde cosmology, its a physical goal that has to be created. not all clones will make it to heaven of course, because most will die before they reach total destruction of the universe but the clones arent supposed to think of themselves as individuals anyway. they have to be willing to die for horde prime and die for the cause or be cast out and thats hell. 

i dont see prime as someone who would kill his own followers outright too often even though he could. plus they arent supposed to value their individual lives the same way normal people do anyway it doesnt seem like a real punishment, they need something worse than simple death to fear. so by my view hell for the clones is separation from prime. it can be in life or death. no matter how bad it is in the horde being on the outside of it has to seem worse, and thats where the concept of the soul comes in. when one is a part of the hive mine, their soul is with prime. they are not supposed to have a will or any thoughts beyond love for prime, its essentially the same as not having a soul but they think of it as being at peace. being cast out is to be never at peace and would be told to them as being the worst possible thing that could ever happen to someone because it corrupts the soul. 

“a lot of unpleasant things happen in the horde so just imagine how terrible it must be outside of it! you cant because i protect you from that. now get in the goo, this is for your own good” - horde prime probably 

this is why outsiders are so resistant to submitting to primes light and also why its ok to kill them, in the hordes view. 

so, to start wrapping thigs up, there is no horde without horde prime. the religion starts and ends with him. because he is supposed to be the only person ever to be able to make true moral and just decisions, without him is followers cant take any actions without worrying that they are going against primes will. since they have no holy text they cant extrapolate and try to figure it out either. its up in the air whether or not they are going to find a way to get the horde to make the jump from cult to regular religion.

its late i got to go to bed now

[snarktheater]

Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it’s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

[agape-philo-sophia]

🔔 ➝ The People of Earth Will Have to Rise and Stand Together — Time to Decide How We Want to Live. ⏳

👉 FEAR-TYRRANY or LOVE-FREEDOM? 👈 The Veil has been lifted, Now is the time to act, Now is the time to decide how we will live. For those of us taking part in this global awakening each of us must re-educate ourselves to better understand our true spiritual origins and hidden history, to more accurately assess the collective human race issues that we currently face in the challenges of the present environment. We all have been here before, standing at this precipice of major evolutionary change during the time of the Fall of the First World. The same choices were presented to us, Love or Fear. We must pay attention to the signs and patterns in our world and learn to evolve and change from the destructive experiences we know happened from the past histories. Much of the current crisis and themes we are facing now are steeped in our hidden Galactic history, the historical timeline trigger events that have been stolen from our memories and are replaying themselves in multiple dimensions of time, again and again. They keep replaying these same destructive patterns from the past histories in developing human consciousness, stunting our growth forward until we understand how to evolve past these previous experiences and emotional themes, in which we must choose love over fear. When we study the past patterns and learn from our mistakes, we can actually choose a different future for ourselves, an ascending timeline that benefits all human beings. We must remember how to believe in ourselves again and have faith in our innate divinity in order to break free from the fear-based mind control used by outer dark forces. When we are inner connected we see through their tactics designed for the purpose of subjugation, to passively accept this global tyranny of fear being enforced by the Controlling humans and nonhumans. These Controlling groups are the tiny minority on the earth and yet they have successfully conditioned us into fear, through sophisticated social engineering and technological mind control for many millennia. To shape us to blindly accept what we are being told without questioning, whereby the human race passively accepts the fear based narrative and imposed limitations for enacting various means of consciousness enslavement. Stripping Humanity of Personal Freedom The Controllers are attempting to psychologically beat us into submission with this plandemic in order to get us to passively accept their anti-human vision of the AI technocracy policing our every move, with identification tattoos, nanotech biosensors, neural links and automated robots that replace natural human connections and intimacy. This transhumanism agenda to unleash the AI demon into the global grids is designed to break apart any last vestiges of human authenticity, curtailing the ability to freely express human kindness and interfering with heart-based interactions between real and organic people. Instead the vision being painted for our dystopian future is that we fearfully hide behind our enforced burka-esque uniform of masks, gloves and hazmat suits, spraying disinfectants with every next cycle of mysterious plandemic outbreak. Suspending our lives for the deceptive promise that we will develop herd immunity with each newly designed GMO mandated vaccine and inserted nanotech chips. This is not about human health it is about holding people hostage while they intend to destroy; human health, human economic autonomy and personal sanity. We have to see the motivations leading to the desired end results of this dark anti-human agenda very clearly, before we are able to come together as a unified group that is fully equipped to stop it. Our true identity and history are under attack through how we express ourselves in the world with loving kindness, compassion and empathy, and personal autonomy which is now being intentionally weaponized against us. How the NAA despise the divine birth right of the heart-based expression of unconditional love, empathy and intimate connections that exist between authentic spiritual human beings! The western value system that was intended to uphold the constitutional liberties and human rights for all peoples is taking the last stand through those brave individuals who love personal freedom and recognize the many dangers behind the current draconian ordinances. The carefully planned policies to limit human freedom are being synchronized and put into place now in all of the westernized governments, which historically happens just before a major coup attempt. In this case it is being orchestrated to generate consent into the fall of tyranny, with the shadow government rising to enforce the One World Order. We are teetering on that precipice. The first step that must happen is that we must awaken from our slumber, and stop believing the deceptions of the invisible puppet masters and their mouth piece representatives, in order to see exactly who is who through their lies and enforcement of totalitarian objectives, to know why this lockdown is really happening. Disclosure can only happen if more people are willing to use critical thinking and common sense while doing some due diligence in researching the actual facts, and are willing to face some dark and unpleasant truths in the process of that discovery down the rabbit hole. Thus, we should do what we can to pray for and support the brave heroes and champions of humanity that are rising now to courageously speak and give their personal testimony to the public about the dark cabal’s deep webs of corruption, sharing truthful information about their research into the many crimes made against humanity. We must be willing to look at the web of darkness in the environment in order to be able to clearly see these orchestrated attacks that are crippling personal freedoms, and by identifying the psychological warfare tactic being used to subjugate minds while they are in action. This phase is not about the virus or public health, it is about the aggressive psychological terrorism the Controllers are purposely inflicting upon the population. To overcome this phase of darkness, we have to see how the dark agenda of the Controllers betrayed humanity and deceived us into believing their false narratives, so we will not make the same mistakes again. We have to see where we have misplaced our trust by allowing the continuation of rampant abuses of power that are designed to further enslave humanity. Therefore, we have to be willing to face the abusers and their lies in order to see the crimes they have made against humanity, and begin to honestly forgive ourselves for allowing these spiritually sick and depraved people to gain such power to tyrannically rule over our lives. We will experience emotional pain from fully realizing this great betrayal. The Power Elite groups believe they are above the common Rule of the Law, and that they cannot be judged for their crimes against humanity because they are noble or royal bloodlines and have the divine right to rule. The people of earth will have to rise to stand together to take the accounting and then decide the consequences which lead to the path of Tyranny or Freedom. https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1300445245460189201

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 396

ISLAM AND SCIENCE: Part 1

POLARIZATION OF MUSLIM OPINION

The relationship between Islam and Science has been a point of scholarly discussion for a long time. Seven hundred years ago, al-Ghazali expressed fears that some mathematical knowledge may lead to the denial of God. A similar fear was expressed more recently by the American convert to Islam, Maryam Jameelah who wrote:

Modern science is guided by no moral value, but naked materialism and arrogance. The whole branch of knowledge and its applications is contaminated by the same evil. Science and technology are totally dependent upon the set of ideals and values cherished by its members. If the roots of a tree are rotten, then the tree is rotten; therefore all its fruits are rotten (Jameelah, 1983).

Their view does not demonstrate a consensus. Al Afgani wrote that

…those who forbid science and knowledge in the belief that they are safeguarding the Islamic religion are really the enemies of that religion (Keddie, 1983).

Muslims seem to have been historically polarized into those who reject scientific discoveries as ‘dangerous’ and those who look for co-existence with scientific development.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

Most discussions on Islam and science have been limited to the many great achievements of Muslim scientists like al-Biruni, al-Tusi and al-Khwarizmi. Most look beyond the pitiful position the Muslims are in today and remember that:

At its peak, about one thousand years ago, the Muslim world made a remarkable contribution to science, notably mathematics and medicine. Baghdad in its heyday and southern Spain built universities to which thousands flocked. Rulers surrounded themselves with scientists and artists. (Ghiles, 1983).

We must remember that Arabic was the language of science from the 8th to 11th centuries. This period marked the birth of European algebra with the translation of a treatise by al-Khwarizmi ’s-a fact that prompted Ghandz to recognize that ‘Al-Khwarizmi is more entitled to he called “the father of algebra’ than Diaphantus because Al-Khwarizmi was the first to teach algebra in an elementary form and for its own sake (Ghandz, 1936). The Muslim tradition did not reject those who came before them. The studied the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonious and the like. Respect for the predecessors and a desire to develop this early work lead to the great discoveries of Islam. Knowledge is the property of God. It is always being revitalized. Cultures are interdependent in this respect. Hoodbhoy (1991), critical of the notion of Islamic Science, admits that ‘today we remember Nassir al-Din al-Tusi for his trigonometry, Omar Khayyam for his solution of cubic equations, Jabir Ibn Hayyan for the ingenuity of his chemical apparatus and al-Jazari for his intricate machines. Among the great scholars of Islam are the following:

The mathematician, Thabit lbn Qurrah (826-901ce)

The astronomer, Abul Qasim al-Majiriti (d. 1007ce)

The astronomer, Qutb-al-Din al-Shirazi (12336-1311CE)

The scientists, the Banu Musa brothers

The physician, Ibn Sina (980-925ce)

The physician, Muhammad al-Razi (865-925ce)

The writer on optics, Ibn al-Haitham (965-1039ce)

The philosopher and scientist, Abu Yusuf al-Kindi (SO l-873ce)

The commentator on Aristotle, lbn Rushd (1126-I 198cc) The geologist, Baha al-Din al-Amili (1546-1621ce).

The list is endless. Many of these scholars had memorised the whole Qur’an and excelled in their religion. Europe borrowed from the Muslims but rarely acknowledged the fact.

IS THERE A CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND ISLAM?

Islam promotes the material and spiritual well-being of Man. It enjoins its followers to seek and utilise knowledge for the betterment of their life on earth and in the Hereafter. The Messenger used the most up-to-date weapons in battle, laying down the principle that we must never fall technologically behind. This was not true of other religions. On the authority of St. Augustine, it was forbidden for a Christian to believe that there were people living on the other side of the earth. The world was believed to be flat, and, if there were people on the other side, they would be standing upside down-and this was unacceptable to the Church. Similarly, on the authority of St. Paul, Christians were required to believe that disease, famine, pestilence, and air pollution were caused by demons. Vaccination was therefore forbidden in Christianity. This took place while al-Razi was already making advances in the field of inoculation.

Muslims were not exempt from persecution by their own authorities. Al Kindi, popular in the court of Caliph Maimun had to flee when al-Mutawakil took over. Al Razi lost his eyesight when, on the instructions of the amir, he was hit with his own book.

IS THERE SCIENCE IN THE QUR’AN?

The Quran is a book of guidance. It was the motivation and driving force behind many of these scientists. The Quran offers hints that could lead to major discoveries if followed up diligently. Modern day scholars have studied at length Qur’anic references to science subjects, and produced texts in areas of astronomy, embryonic biology, the movement of bees, the mountains, the composition of the earth, the plants and a variety of other subjects. Even those that wish to deny the assertion that the Qur’an contains scientific hints have to concede defeat when they examine verses like those found in the chapters of Yasin, 36-7, 40; al-Shams1-4; al-Anbiya, 30; al-Rahman, 7; al-Naziat, 28 and many others.

The Qur’an gives vital hints which include important insights and encouragement to undertake new forms of scientific research.

Although, scientific knowledge is only part of the general guidance to be found in the Qur’an, there are some modern scholars who have made research into science found in the Qur’an a full-time preoccupation.

Some of the work done by these scholars has been very useful. It has reawakened Muslims to the value of their inheritance and rekindled the desire for further research and given it sanction from their own Holy Book. However, some scholars, in my view, have overstepped the boundaries and exposed Islam to Western ridicule and nourished the inferiority complexes of those Muslims that still need proof that the Qur’an is revelation from God.

When in 1961, an Egyptian scientist, Muhammad Jamaluddin El-Fandy published a pamphlet entitled On Cosmic Verses in the Qur’an, he was cheered in the Muslim world: but in the West, scientists smiled patronizingly, satisfied that if the Muslims were going to rely on them to prove the accuracy of their Divine Book, then they could not have much to offer. The trend had only just started. Azizul Hassan Abbasi, a Pakistani neuropsychiatrist asserted that he had managed to find in the Qur’an modern cures for diabetes, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers, rheumatism, arthritis, high blood pressure, asthma, dysentery and paralysis. In the end, the claims turned out to be more intellectual amusement.

In 1976, Maurice Bucaille, a French surgeon, published The Bible, The Qur’an and Science and with it sparked off a wave of excitement in the Muslim world. Bucaille subjected both the Bible and the Qur’an to rigorous tests against the findings of modern science in the fields of astronomy, geology, animal and vegetable sciences, and human reproduction. He concludes:

The Qur’an most definitely did not contain a single proposition at variance with the most firmly established modern knowledge. Modern Man’s findings concerning the absence of scientific error are therefore in complete agreement with the Muslim exegetes’ conception of the Qur’an as a book of Revelation (Bucaille, 1978).

The Muslims were excited. Their book had been ‘proven’ correct. Bucaille’s sweeping suggestion that modern Man’s findings concerning ‘the absence of error’ were endorsed by the Qur’an was missed by an excited Muslim community. The marriage between the Qur’an and modern Man’s ‘scientific’ findings was a completely happy one. His conclusion that it is impossible not to admit the existence of scientific errors in the Bible’ was also swallowed wholesale by the Muslims.

Muslims had always taken on faith the belief that the Qur’an, being the Word of Allah, did not contain any errors; and that the Bible, in its present form, is not a true revelation from God. But now they had ‘scientific proof’. The rules of the game had changed. Modern science had been accepted by a cross-section of Muslims as the umpire between the scriptures. Bucaille became a hero among Muslims. At those conferences where he was not invited, he was generously quoted by a variety of people including highly learned Muslim scholars. The time-bomb that Bucaille had set could be detonated by the emergence of a scientific ‘Salman Rushdie’ with a formula that finds scientific error in the Qur’an or proves the scientific accuracy of the Bible.

In April 1985, Keith Moore, Chairman of the Anatomy Department of the University of Toronto’s School of Medicine, ‘discovered’ the agreement between Islam and contemporary knowledge on the subject of embryology. He joined Bucaille on the conference circuit presumably further confirming that the Qur’an was scientifically correct.

Much of their work has undoubtedly benefited the Muslim community, but where, the likes of Bashirudin Mahmud, a Pakistani nuclear engineer, suggests that Jinn, whom God made out of fire, should be used as a source of energy to combat the energy crisis, the trend they have set leads us into total absurdity. Sayyid Qutb described the whole exercise as ‘a methodological error’, and has insisted that while the Qur’an contains guidance on scientific subjects, it is not a scientific textbook.

[perfect-fourth]

Hⁱˢ ˡᵃᵗᵉˢᵗ ᵃʳʳᵃⁿᵍᵉᵐᵉⁿᵗ ʰᵃᵈ ᵇᵉᵉⁿ ˢᵘʳᵖʳⁱˢⁱⁿᵍˡʸ ᵉᵃˢʸ ᵗᵒ ᵒʳᶜʰᵉˢᵗʳᵃᵗᵉ.

A year had gone and past in conjunction with his arrival to Piltover-Zaun, his third reappearance in the twin cities and certainly not his last, had he any say in the matter.  Getting out of Tuula again had been simple enough.  Even without the old man commanding the Navori, they found use of him and his methods; and for the most part, left him to his own macabre devices when he completed whatever menial task they set him on.  It was never anything that created conflict with his own intentions, and they knew better than to ask anything of him that did, at least without the former Eye of Twilight to tell them what to do.  He didn’t much care about their cause; be it for better or worse, so long as it gave him a means to further his own.  

  It wasn’t that he especially enjoyed the region; the constant whirring and buzzing of machinery was a distraction rather than a calming white noise, and more often than not he found himself falling ill to the smothering smog and toxins that permeated the atmosphere, no matter how careful he was to protect himself and cleanse his numerous temporary habitats.  His only solace was found in the part-time work he’d taken as a keeper for one of the many greenhouses that spotted the city, little pockets of foliage in an otherwise bleak and repugnant landscape that offered little hope to anyone who had the misfortune of living there.  Truly, he couldn’t have been the only one who saw the irony in the unholy green glow of the Sunken City, a color representing life to taunt a place overwrought with death.

  Of course, there was also his art, the driving force behind his motivation to return to such a technological dystopia.  As uncomfortable as it was, there was no denying the grotesque beauty in this place.  Twisted iron and even more twisted people, Jhin had felt for a long time now that he hadn’t realized his full artistic potential in his previous installments.  His work back then had left much to be desired, especially in the case of...

No, no, no, no.  Now was not the time to think about Zed, or Shen, or that wretched girl who had systematically ruined his vision.  Tonight was not about them, and it was unlikely they’d heard anything of his whereabouts this time around.  It had been both a blessing and a curse to operate in a place where he was only one of many to paint the streets in blood.  In Ionia, no masterpiece went unnoticed, everything held a weight to it that echoed horror through legends that spun themselves into the cautionary bedtime tales of many a defiant child.  But in Zaun, most of his feats were swept away with the rest of the muck that soiled the bowels of the city, no more than a small snippet of acknowledgement in the local papers. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, but it seemed almost every time he performed there he was plagued by some misfortune or another. Be it a trap not going off when it was supposed to, or a composition disrupted before it’s full beauty could be realized, Jhin was half convinced by now that some sort of horrible curse had befallen him.  Either way, surely nothing substantial that was likely to circulate beyond the sea.  Even if it had, the last he’d heard about the Master of Shadows, Zed had his own hands full dealing with the backlash from unrelated endeavors.  Something to do with the vastaya, and two in particular, though he knew little else outside of this. Served him right, really. 

It was of no matter, in the end.  Tonight was the night he’d force the dual cities to bear witness to his gruesome techniques.  Tonight, he would make his mark on the consciousness of Piltover-Zaun.  Permanently.

  The hexdraulic descenders were one of many industrial splendors that helped to shape the outline of the city; so prominent a landmark that the local hooligans had taken to riding on one of them as a right of passage.  The Howler, they called it -- certainly a beast of a transportation device that had initially peaked the virtuoso’s interest,  but soon fallen to the wayside when he’d grown to understand the importance of the smaller, more streamlined descenders.  They carried less passengers at any given time, most of whom held power in either or both of the neighborhoods.  Government officials and high-profile scientists, popular entertainers and media influencers--those who would set Piltover’s Finest into a frenzy trying to uncover the cause of their untimely demise. 

 Working in the gardens had been a genuine form of stress relief for him; but it also carried the added benefit of camouflaging him as nothing but a faceless bystander in a place that was often frequented by the higher class.  He’d overheard many an interesting conversation in his time there; but one conversation in particular had cued him in on how and where to find the schedule logs for these descenders; a knowledge he put to great use for that night’s performance.

5 minutes.  It was 5 minutes until the clock struck twenty hundred hours.  Not his favorite time, but a necessary one to ensure a perfect number of victims would unwittingly meet their demise inside the private descender that was set to rise back into Piltover.  He’d studied the four passengers who were to be boarding that night; ever the meticulous sort, though who they were meant little to Jhin personally.  Just that they were important, and that their deaths would leave a scar on the hearts and minds of not only those who bore witness to his designs, but the region as a whole.

Being there had given him the liberty of exercising his creativity; exploring alternate means to express his art and magic, and tonight was no different.  Jhin had never much entertained the idea of modifying poisons before, but the abundance of toxic substances that were at his disposal were a little bit more than tempting to fool around with.  After a lengthy two months of study and experimentation, he’d found the perfect substance, and the perfect disruption method via modified gas grenades.  Placing them inside the descender at the appropriate time had been the most difficult part; not because of anyone taking notice of the fanciful bits of molded metal and cogwork that looked more like decoration than anything, but because the person--creature--whatever he was who he’d recruited to do the task for him with his stealthy abilities kept accidently setting the little devices off before he even got to the location.  He’d had to reschedule his performance at least twice because of this; eventually coming to the conclusion that the assortment of knives the jester carried on his person were piercing the canisters.  How his physiology bypassed the effects of the fumes was beyond him, but it certainly brought to mind some questions about whether or not he should be involved in any dealings with this other, so-called ‘demon’.         

In 3 minutes, now, the four passengers would finish boarding what would inevitably become a chamber of death; locked away beside the inconspicuous embellishings that at just the right moment would release a concoction of horrible toxins, with a very specific effect.  He could visualize it so clearly in his mind.  Slowly, these unfortunate aristocrats would begin to lose their ability to breath as the chemicals bound to their cells, transformed them, their lungs splintering like tiny shards of glass. They'd gasp and choke for air, but each breath would only bring more pain as the contamination spread into veins and arteries, eventually rupturing skin and kissing away their lips and eyelids with the corrosive fluid that was once their blood eating through soft tissue.

 It was a hideous and painful process that left behind a bubbling mess of flesh and bone, just barely distinguishable as human.  Whoever had luck enough to stumble onto his latest masterpiece wouldn't see this, though-- at least, not at first. Where blood would boil and seep, his magic left streams of gold, and where flesh would tear and melt, delicate roots of wisteria would sprout and spread along the floor of the compartment.  It would be a sight to behold when they actually managed to breach the door, but that would take them quite a fair bit of time to accomplish.  Every facet of his plan had been carefully conducted, right down to the the workings of the machine itself.  By his meddling, the descender would shudder to a halt at the exact spot where it was to cross up into the golden city above-- where those in both cities would be able to marvel at his display.  Threads of magic would unfurl around the spherical machine into illusionary flora that gave it the appearance of a blossoming lotus-- and concealed the gnarled metal cables which would inevitably swallow the cart thanks to the nature of gravity.

 Clad in attire suitable for any other faceless citizen of Zaun, Jhin sneered at the flavorless layers of drearily hued fabrics and simplistic patterns, something he tried to bolster at least a little with choice accessories and one of the numerous protective masks he’d acquired during his time in the city.  By no means was it any kind of substitute for his most beloved facial wear, but he wore the device well, just as one would expect of an astute actor challenging themselves with an unfamiliar role. He had to admit, the abundance of selection when it came to facial wear in Zaun was pretty impressive.

He watched the events of the city below from beyond the panes of an abandoned alcove ascending the walls of the two cities, a delicately crafted telescope at hand.  He’d set up camp there a few hours earlier, beside him a small lantern, a satchel containing extra supplies, two flasks; one water, one alcohol, and a handful of homemade snacks were he to find himself stuck there longer than intended.  Naturally, he kept Whisper at hand, though with no intent of use.  A precautionary instrument, and a source of comfort for the artist, he stroked metal-clad fingertips across her emblem, an invariable and timed motion.  It wasn’t long, now, before the beauty of his craftsmanship would express itself in full for the whole of both cities to marvel.  He could hardly contain his excitement as he heard the soft tick of the pocket watch at his breast, and for a moment, he reluctantly desisted his gun-fondling to tip the telescope up to his line of vision and peer out into the crowded city below.  They were boarding now, each of them, one astutely dressed woman and three...

Two.

One, two. 

Where was the third gentleman who was to board the descender?  Perhaps he’d already entered?  Yes, that must have been it, surely, he hadn’t been watching the entire time, after all, and--

No...

“No.”

  Once, twice, again, again, he scoped across the panels of each window, he stood, he repositioned, he scanned it from every conceivable angle but... There were only three people on board.  He could feel his pulse start to pound in his temples.

One would think that if the sanctity of these individuals lives were of non-importance, than it wasn’t really of any matter if one slipped away, but that sadly just wasn’t the case.  He’d had a very distinct and fixed idea that he’d wanted to convey that night, and while the mechanisms that he’d implemented did indeed seem to be working without a single misstep, it was not what he had arranged.  As the seeds of his creation took root, the artisan barely heard the loud echo of creaking metal beyond the ringing in his ears. He clutched the telescope he’d brought but no longer used it, so tight that the retractable brass slid out of alignment beneath the bow of his fist. 

“This is wrong, this is all wrong!  Where is he?  Where is the Professor?!  I don’t understand, why isn’t he--this can’t be happening to me again.”  

Shambling to bring his now partially dismantled telescope back up to look at the scene that had unfolded, Jhin took little comfort in the suffering of the three who thrashed around in their last ditch effort to cling to life.  Hands trembling, he lowered it once more and forced himself to inhale on the count of 4.  Hold for 8, exhale 4-- a repetition that continued until he had managed to calm himself down enough to at least stop shaking.  This did not mean he was in any way, shape, or form happy about his circumstances, but he couldn’t allow that to control him.  

By the time he looked at his artwork again, everything had fallen into place, and bystanders had started to take notice.  Silent, save for a deep sigh, the maestro prepared his hand canon with an impressive swiftness.  He unlatched the window and rested the muzzle through the slight opening, taking aim at the first person he saw within range down below.  Whisper sang her tune into the unsuspecting courier’s flesh, leaving the woman’s blood and brain matter in a scattering of petals across the cobblestone.  Four.  But not how he’d envisioned.    

“Unacceptable.” he spat to himself, collecting his bearings from the kickback of his canon.  A sneer was hidden behind the sharp contours of his gasmask.

“Uninspired.  Absolute garbage!” As much as he wished to continue berating his own work and breaking things, he knew he couldn’t linger there long.  His improvising had left him vulnerable to discovery, already people were looking to see where that powerful blast had come from, though more were simply trying to find shelter in case the onslaught were to continue.  Collecting most of his things haphazardly, the killer stood and rolled onto his heels towards the tiny passageway he’d found his way through earlier that day.  He had been planning to leave Zaun as soon as he’d accomplished his work anyway, but it’s simultaneous success and failure had ensured his departure.  Once he gathered the seldom few necessities he’d left in a safe space nearby, he’d be out on the next boat.  Siren began screaming in the distance.  

He needed to reassess his work.  He needed to get his inspiration back.  It was time to go home. 

[assmuncher]

How would the boys from seduce me act if they were in the Army?

so im a military child so im a little familiar with the military in general, but im not too familiar with the army as a branch. I'll go boy by boy for this one, and i hope you were referring to the military and not the BTS fandom, because im pretty sure they're both called army 😭

*in all seriousness i don't see any of the boys joining the army or any government related kind of thing, as their respective jobs fit them and their personalities very well and i doubt they'd be quick to fight in wars after escaping the abyssal plains which was literally filled with war. and i feel like the controversy surrounding cases such as LaVena Johnson and other military personnel being murdered by eachother and having it covered up by the military is like a huge turn off and red flag. Also the mistreatment and abuse of middle eastern civilians would probably disgust them, especially sam, as they know too well the horrors civilians can face during a war.

☆ james

so in the case of joining the army, he'd join due to his past experience in the demon world, as his studies focused a lot on militaristic subjects, such as battle strategy, and I'd assume he was trained in combat skills too. he'd definitely rise in ranking and maybe be deployed a bit. i can see him having a long military career, and he probably retires in Florida lol

☆ erik

I see him as joining the navy and working in the medical departments there. Erik would probably be a army nurse and help civilians and other army members. He's definitely passionate about helping others (as i see all the boys being) and will dedicate most of his time to helping civilians, or low income families who cant afford health care later after retiring.

☆ sam

Sam is definitely getting deployed and he immediately hates it because he cant see any of his brothers or s/o??(unless they're serving with him) and he's shocked by the treatment and abuse of civilians and the devastation the middle east has faced. He definitely pulls a gaku and helps feed the civilians that need it, and after returning from his time in that country, he becomes an advocate for human rights globally and helps make a lot of change in the future.

☆ matthew

Since Matthew is a toy designer, he probably ends up designing a bazooka gun or some shit lol. I see him being an engineer for new weapons and him helping design and operating new equipment and technology! He probably would join the airforce, since they have some really innovative inventions and weapon ideas. He's definitely against the idea of making nuclear weapons or weapons that would be used to masa murder innocents, but he makes weapons for the soldiers to defend the country and keep his family safe. He also helps out sam and makes new technology to help those in need and do some good!

☆ damien

he would probably stay away from the army. Lil homie been thro so much already he probably would never join any form of military unless homie got drafted. Like erik, he'd be working in some kind of medical department. Maybe materials management or pharmaceutical work (idk if the army has that but ik the navy does) and he's definitely gifted at what he does. He's the backbone of his department and knows how to keep everyone motivated and going. He's definitely the type of guy to be bringing Christmas presents for his coworkers and gives out candy to the office staff.

♧ also all of the boys use their powers to their advantage, like sam go vroom vroom i am speed and Matthew be pulling shit outta his pockets.

(im srry if this sucked)

[tlbodine]

Three 1970s Horrors Worth Watching (that are not part of this film series)

The Horror by the Decade series started innocuously enough, with someone requesting some recent film recommendations. That got me to thinking about trends, and recommendations from previous decades, and how many movies that were true classics I was familiar with but had never seen, and thus the idea “hey, let’s watch movies from every decade!” came into being. 

But obviously you can’t watch every horror movie from every year, so there had to be a selection process in place. Here’s roughly how I’ve been choosing movies: 

Search Google for “horror movies {year}” for each year of the decade 

Research them a bit and pick out everything that is familiar, historically significant, or seems especially interesting, and put them on a list

Pare the list down to 1-2 of the most interesting titles per year 

Look for themes and pair movies up according to theme (since we watch two movies a week)

In order to save time, any movie that both I and @comicreliefmorlock have seen recently/a lot gets knocked off the list. In the 1970s, that means removing three extremely good, extremely important movies, so I wanted to talk about them a bit here. 

Follow below the cut for thoughts on Jaws, The Exorcist, and Alien

Jaws, made in 1975 by Steven Spielberg, is based on a novel of the same name written by  Peter Benchley. Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider team up to kill an unusually large and aggressive great white shark that is terrorizing the beach in a quiet New England town. 

Fun fact: Until Star Wars was released two years later, Jaws was the highest-grossing movie of all time! This is probably due in part to how much money Universal decided to sink into its distribution and marketing, but the film’s quality has to play a big part too. It really is a magnificent movie and is probably a big part of why people are still scared of sharks. 

Some things that are notable about Jaws: 

It has one of the most iconic and effective film scores in cinema. Everyone knows the Jaws theme, and it’s been used to basically mean “impending danger!” in a jokey way for...I mean, at least 30 years, because I know that was a meme when I was a kid. I imagine it has been since 1975. That’s just a really impressive feat, and John Williams (yes, the Star Wars guy) deserves acclaim for it. 

Music aside, Jaws is an excellent study in suspense and restraint. Technological limitations meant they couldn’t show the shark as much as they’d wanted, so scenes had to be filmed suggestively to ramp up the tension. (You do still get to see a lot of wonderful big scary shark, though, and honestly the effects still hold up pretty well to this day) 

The performances are really good, too. The leads have a great chemistry and play off of each other really well. The script was a joint effort, getting passes from several people (including the book’s author), but a comedian  Carl Gottlieb got a pass at it, and that humor really helps to elevate the film. 

The most powerful thing about Jaws, though, is that it taps into a mythic seed that renders it utterly timeless. There is an echo of Moby Dick in Quint’s character and motives, with a similarly tragic arc. But it draws on something older and deeper, too. The premise of “man-eating wild animal terrorizes a community, a bounty is put on its head, only a hero can kill it” has been a staple of mythology for thousands of years. 

Man-eaters are real, and they become the stuff of legend -- dating at least as far back to the monstrous Nemean Lion that could be slain only by Heracles. Historically, there are accounts of man-eating wolves, lions, tigers, etc. terrorizing locals, sometimes inspiring local werewolf legends - you can read about just a few of them here: https://listverse.com/2010/10/16/top-10-worst-man-eaters-in-history/ 

I think I watched Jaws for the first time when I was 8 (I saw all the sequels too, there was a cable marathon) and I was utterly captivated. I feel pretty confident if I showed it to an 8-year-old today, they would be too. It’s just that kind of movie. 

The Exorcist, released in 1973 and directed by  William Friedkin, was based on a novel by  William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay. 

The story is about a 12-year-old girl, Regan, who begins acting strangely after playing with a ouija board. Once medical causes are ruled out, her mother turns to two priests for assistance; they come to perform the exorcism and have a harder time than expected with casting out the demon, to say the least. 

The film is still considered one of the most frightening horror movies of all time by some, and at the time of its release it was a sensation. Movie-goers were said to have all sorts of reactions, from fainting and vomiting to having miscarriages and heart attacks. Contemporary psychologists even wrote about “cinematic neurosis” in people who had watched the film: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1151359

The story crossed a lot of boundaries (even for the 1970s) and you have to bear in mind that this was a major cinematic release, not a grindhouse exploitation film. Most film-goers in 1973 were absolutely not prepared to see an innocent child spouting off vulgarity, urinating on the floor, and masturbating with a crucifix. And some of the practical effects, like the famous head-twisting scene, are still really creepy. 

This is one of those movies that’s hard to watch with fresh eyes because it was so influential on all of cinema to follow. If you like demonic possession movies, this is the film that started it all. I know religious people who are deeply afraid of this movie and won’t allow it in their home for fear of inviting real demons, so, that’s the kind of staying power the story has. 

** As an atheist, I am not particularly frightened of demon movies, and I suspect I will never fully grasp the real terror of watching something like this for people who believe that these types of things happen in real life. The Exorcist is definitely not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I can respect that it definitely is for many other people. 

Fun trivia: The Exorcist is considered by some to be cursed because the cast and crew had an unusually tough time with filming: the set caught fire (but Regan’s room was undamaged), several actors were injured during practical stunts/effects, several people died during filming or in post-production (not on set), and the demon’s voice actor experienced an awful tragedy years later when her son killed wife, kids, and himself: http://www.the13thfloor.tv/2015/12/02/is-the-exorcist-movie-cursed/

The events are all most likely coincidental (and on a long enough timeline, everyone involved with a project will be dead!) but it lends power to the suspicion that this was A Very Cursed Movie That God Doesn’t Want You To Watch, which makes it all the more frightening. 

Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, came out in 1979 and is so powerful that it’s still a popular franchise today, spawning books, movies, video games, merchandise, and more. 

The story is essentially a haunted house film set in space. A commercial space crew is woken from stasis by the ship's on-board computer to answer a distress signal, discovering a derelict alien ship and founding a chamber of eggs belonging to an aggressive, parasitic alien creature that infests a crew member with its egg, which later hatches violently from his body, grows up, and proceeds to terrorize the ship. 

It's a tense cat-and-mouse game of searching for the alien as it picks off crew members one by one, and the music, atmosphere, and visuals are all compelling, with effects that still hold up pretty well for modern audiences. But what makes Alien especially significant is the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley. 

We’d had scream queens before -- female horror protagonists who survive as “final girls” against the mayhem and slaughter -- but Ripley is something different. She is badass, heroic in a way that girls rarely got to see themselves, and laying down a template for strong female characters in future cinema (for better or worse). 

The script was reportedly written to be gender neutral, with no assumptions about casting, which allowed Ripley to defy gender norms and expectations. But despite this supposed gender neutrality, there is a definite flavor of female horror in Alien -- which is, after all, a movie about forced impregnation and death at the hands of a decidedly phallic monster. 

And that is, I think, probably right at the heart of the film’s sticking power. Science fiction can swiftly become dated as our knowledge of the universe expands, but the horror of Alien isn’t really the aliens so much as what they represent -- and sad to say, sexual violence is something we humans may never understand. Here’s a fun essay on the topic: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2019/03/forty-years-what-can-ridley-scott-s-alien-teach-metoo-generation

So, there you have it. Three movies we will not be watching in our film series, but which you absolutely should check out if you somehow haven’t seen them. 

[scoutception]

Final Fantasy Type-0 review: Depression central

If there’s one Final Fantasy subseries whose fate gets me feeling down, it’s the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, a novel and ambitious concept based around various games and stories of different settings and casts of characters, but sharing common themes and mythos, putting them in different contexts in each. While a fascinating idea, it ran into nothing but trouble with each of its entries, with Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels being very divisive, to say the least, Final Fantasy Versus XIII running into an infamously extended development hell, only to finally emerge as Final Fantasy XV, now almost completely separate from its original concept, and the final big entry, Final Fantasy Type-0, vanishing until 5 years after its announcement in 2006, as a PSP exclusive that only came out in Japan, a rarity for the series when it comes to its higher profile spinoffs. Thankfully, in 2015, Type-0 got a remaster on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, finally allowing other audiences to enjoy it. Was it worth the almost 10 year wait? Well, that’s something we’re about to find out now.

Story:

Final Fantasy Type-0 takes place on the world of Orience, divided into 4 great nations blessed with Crystals: the Dominion of Rubrum, a place for the study and teaching of magic granted by the Vermilion Bird crystal, the Kingdom of Concordia, a female led monarchy able to communicate and control monsters and, more importantly, dragons, and home to the Azure Dragon crystal, the Militesi Empire, a technologically advanced state able to produce great machines of war known as Magitek Armors, or MAs, through the power of their White Tiger crystal, and the Lorican Alliance, whose citizens are much larger and powerful than any other in Orience thanks to their more direct connection to their Black Tortoise crystal. Orience is, unfortunately, not a place of peace, with each of the 4 crystal states wishing to unite Orience under them, and making plenty of attempts to in the past. The motive behind this is the legend of the Agito, a messiah said to appear during Tempus Finis, an apocalyptic event prophesied in the somewhat dubious, yet widely believed, Nameless Tome, with every crystal state seeing it as their divine duty to create Agito, to the point of Rubrum training so called Agito cadets from its brightest and most magically adept citizens.

The story opens with yet another war being started in the year 842 by Milites, whose emperor has been deposed by the brilliant and ambitious Imperial Marshall Cid Aulstyne (Final Fantasy games have a tradition of having a character named Cid somewhere, and finally, he made it as main antagonist), who immediately sets out to attack Rubrum. What would otherwise be a “normal” invasion quickly turns disastrous for Rubrum when Milites unleashed a new device called a crystal jammer, which cuts Rubrum’s legionnaires from their connection to the crystal, rendering them helpless before the Militesi invaders. Even worse, Milites also deploys a l’cie, a human chosen by their nation’s crystal to become its direct servant, in exchange for immense power and near immortality, the use of which in warfare was mutually banned by each of the 4 nations. Just when Rubrum seems doomed, the mysterious Class Zero arrives, 12 cadets who are unaffected by the crystal jammer, raised by Rubrum’s even more mysterious archsorceress, Arecia Al-Rashia, who proceed to liberate the capital, Akademia. Now, with the addition of two promising but otherwise normal cadets, Machina Kunagiri and Rem Tokimiya, Class Zero becomes a vital part in Rubrum’s efforts to reclaim their lost land and defeat Milites, once and for all.

To just come out and say it, the story’s biggest weakness is the cast, or, more specifically, its use of the cast. While the playable cast alone is certainly large, at 14 characters, and the supporting cast only grows from there, almost nobody gets proper focus. The main 12 members of Class Zero, named after playing cards, consists of Ace, Deuce, Trey, Cater, Cinque, Sice, Seven, Eight, Nine, Jack, Queen, and King, and despite being the “proper” members of Class Zero, they all only have a few character traits each. Trey is a knowledgeable type that tends to ramble, Sice is an arrogant loner, Nine is a violent muscle head, Cinque is nice, but downright weird, and so on. While after a while they all grew on me, it’s still pretty unsatisfying, especially when Ace, the face of the game, gets neglected just as badly. The supporting cast gets it even worse, as outside of Arecia and Class Zero’s commanding officer, Kurasame, most of everyone else that’s notable either has minimal at best story presence, or doesn’t show up in the story, period, being relegated to sidequests. Ultimately, the most focused on characters are the two “normal” people in Class Zero, Machina and Rem, which kinda makes sense, giving a more grounded air compared to off how putting the others can be to begin with, but even they don’t work out quite well. While Rem is fine, she doesn’t do very much interesting with the time she gets, while Machina, on the other hand, is very, very unlikeable to the point of hurting the story, whether it be his own cold attitude or broodiness to put the usual RPG protagonist stereotype to shame, he ends up way more unsympathetic than near anyone else in the story, even most of the antagonists. While the cast overall is definitely flawed, though, they’re definitely entertaining at a lot of points, whether they come from the main cast, mostly Trey or Cinque, or from some of the side characters, mainly the extremely greedy Carla and, most memorably to me, the paranoid, bombing throwing Mutsuki.

Since the story doesn’t focus on the characters very much, the main focus is instead the war itself. While it definitely has a few twists and turns, especially starting in chapter 4, overall, the battles and events of the war aren’t the most interesting subject by itself. More interesting is the elements around the war. This is by far one of, if not the darkest game in the franchise, and it doesn’t shy away from showing just how messed up Orience is. Rubrum’s main strength comes in the form of its Agito cadets, meaning, teenagers, as young as 14, at that, and the tactics the military uses means they tend to die in droves. Even when it’s technically pragmatic, between magic proficiency peaking at teen years and decreasing with age, plus not having many other means to resistance, it’s still very uncomfortable, and keep in mind, this is what the good guys, or the relative ones, get up to. Milites, meanwhile, is all too happy to deploy superweapons, such as literal nukes, and its soldiers are disturbingly fanatic, being more than happy to massacre towns, and even refer to Class Zero as demons. Class Zero themselves were raised to be soliders, and feel almost nothing in battle, and Rubrum’s leadership are paranoid and petty, to the point of the military commander actively trying to get Class Zero killed out of pure spite. Eidolons, extremely powerful monsters able to be summoned by mages, demand the lives of their summoners, and there are outright suicide squads of cadets who are only meant to summon more powerful Eidolons. Additionally, a very important plot point is that the crystals automatically erase the memories of anyone who dies from everyone’s minds, to the point Rubrum’s citizens need to wear dog tags just so it can be confirmed they even existed after they die. While they try to justify it as a blessing from the crystals that allows people to move on and not be held back by the dead, all it’s done is completely desensitize Orience to death, and having characters casually talk about being informed of their friends or family dying, and not feeling a single thing, is pretty disturbing, especially when it’s named character involved. It does a very good job of showing how constant warring and lack of reverence for the dead has corrupted this world, even when many of the characters affected still remain sympathetic.

Unfortunately, the biggest flaw of the story to me is that there simply isn’t a lot of it to be found, at least in regards to the main story. While the game is comprised of 8 chapters, that’s more than a little inaccurate, as half of those consist of a short introduction and a singular mission, rather than the 2 or 3 missions in the rest of the chapters. The story only really gets moving in chapter 4, and even then, many important points aren’t addressed until chapter 8, which is a downright bizarre and sudden change of subject and tone compared to the rest of the game, to the point a second playthrough is required because of how many holes are left otherwise, and even then, it can be a bit difficult to figure out just what is going on. The biggest achievement of the writing, on the other hand, is the lore of the setting. Orience is a fascinating world, with a detailed history of each nation, plenty of info to find on the various characters, and examinations of the various enemies of the game, all stored in a book in the hub called the Rubicus. It’s also quite interesting seeing the perspective flip compared to Final Fantasy XIII; instead of l’cie “merely” being granted the use of magic, and quickly going through their usefulness, at least by their masters’ consideration, along with the main cast being comprised of them, l’cie in Type-0 are near demigods who often live hundreds of years, and are just as fearsome to the party as to everyone else, for instance. Overall, though, while there are certainly many problems with the writing, I can’t help but say it works quite well regardless. Even with the limited time for both the story itself and the characters, it still builds a cast worth rooting for throughout the horrible situations, and an effective atmosphere that’s quite good at leaving you feeling somber. Moments like the entirety of the opening chapter, showing the utter devastation inflicted on Akademia in a mere three hours, and the various costly, large battles are very effective moments, and the ending is easily one of the saddest endings I’ve seen in a video game, for all the right reasons. Even the final chapter, odd as it is, has a lot of cool revelations and setpieces to me, at least now that I comprehend it.

Gameplay:

Type-0 is an action RPG that has you control the 14 members of Class Zero on various missions, each one possessing a different weapon. Ace uses cards, Deuce uses a flute (I swear they aren’t all this weird), Trey uses a bow, Cater uses a magic infused pistol, Cinque uses a mace, Sice uses a scythe, Seven uses a whipblade, Eight fights with his bare hands, Nine uses a lance, Jack uses a katana, Queen uses a longsword, King uses dual revolvers, Machina uses dual rapiers, and Rem uses dual daggers. Each one possesses a vastly different moveset and playstyle, such as Cinque being slow, but strong and tanky, Sice encouraging an aggressive hit and run style of play, even getting stronger for the more enemies she defeats while taking minimal hits, Trey excelling at range to a much degree than anyone else, while being near helpless up close, and Deuce being more of a supporter, having great support abilities, while her attacks are fairly weird to get used to, though effective on their own once you understand them. Despite the huge amount of characters, they’re actually fairly well balanced, all of them having important strengths and weaknesses, and while some can definitely be better than others, with Trey in particular coming to mind, possessing absurd range and the ability to charge his shots, it’s never quite game breaking. You can have up to three characters in your party, though their AI isn’t exactly great. They can certainly distract enemies well, and will make sure to heal you if your HP gets low, they don’t tend to be aggressive, and are terrible at avoiding the attacks of most enemies more complex than your average imperial trooper, and are near guaranteed to die to bosses. Speaking of which, the main wrinkle is that, while it varies, overall, your characters are not very durable, and in fact take hits about as well as wet toilet paper when faced with most enemies. This is balanced by the sheer amount of people you have. One person dies on a mission, don’t sweat it, you’ve got 13 backups. Of course, this also encourages training them all up and learning to play them as well, which is complicated by only characters in the active party gaining experience. Leveling up, in addition to granting the usual stat boosts, also grants ability points, which you can use to purchase or upgrade command or passive abilities and moves.

While just attacking enemies normally is decently effective, it can put you in unnecessary danger, and while you do have items like potions you can use to restore your health quickly, the most efficient way to fight is to use breaksights and killsights. Every enemy has at least one attack that leaves them vulnerable for a short time either before or after using said attacking. Hitting them during this period will trigger a break, or, if their health is low enough, killsight. Breaksights take a good chunk of their health away and stuns them, giving you a chance to attack them freely, while killsights just kill them outright. This one mechanic adds a lot to the gameplay, encouraging you to learn enemy patterns and attacks to see when they are vulnerable, and getting the timing down can make otherwise fearsome enemies easy to take care of. Of course, some enemies won’t take this very well, and may counterattack or even go into berserk states after recovering from breaksights, so you still have to be careful. Every character has 4 commands: regular attacks with their weapons, 2 slots that can either hold abilities or offensive magic spells, and a defensive command, whether it be the cure spell to restore health, putting up a magic wall to nullify some attacks, or just flat out blocking, which, while still causing you to suffer damage, prevents being knocked down, letting you score breaksights easier than if you were to simply dodge. Magic can be upgraded by harvesting phantoma from dead enemies, coming in various types like red for fire magic, green for defensive magic, and purple for unique spells. While powerful, magic usually takes a large chunk out of your magic points, meaning it’s better to save it for more dire situations, though harvesting phantoma restores small amounts of MP. As for equipment, aside from weapons, you have access to accessories that do things such as increasing HP by a certain percentage, giving immunity to status effects, or raising defense, though everyone can only have 2 accessories at a time. You also have three different squad commands: triad maneuver, which simply causes the party to do 3 powerful, rapid attacks, Eidolon, which summons an Eidolon you can control for a short time, in exchange for KOing the character that summoned it, and Vermilion Bird, a powerful spell that, to actually become powerful, has to be upgraded using crystal shards, which, while fairly easy to get most of the time, aren’t very numerous.

Type-0 uses a mission system, throwing you into various locations to complete objectives, though it usually equates to to reach the end of the area and kill an enemy commander. Most locations are pretty linear, though they all have a few side areas you can go to, usually for more items. You get graded based on how fast you completed the mission, how much phantoma you harvested, and how many party members got KOed during the mission, with getting the best rank on all three categories getting you an S rank, which gives a bonus item. Beating each mission on a difficulty above easy also unlocks other bonuses, whether they be additional items up for purchase or unlocking new spells or Eidolons, or just flat giving you a rare item. Completing missions also gives you money, with more the higher the difficulty and the higher your rank. Speaking of difficulties, there are 4 of them: cadet, which is just easy mode, officer, normal mode, Agito mode, which is a hard mode that makes every enemy 30 levels higher than on cadet and officer, and Finis, which is only available after completing the game once, and is, just plain absurd. All enemies have their levels increased by 50, they’re in permanent rage mode, causing them to move twice as fast and hurt twice as much, and you’re restricted to only being able to use one person per mission. It’s not much worth the effort. Aside from completing missions, your main source of items, magic, and Eidolons is from completing special orders, optional objectives that can pop up in various areas. While there’s various generic, white orders that only give items at the end of the mission for doing stuff like not getting hit for 30 seconds or not using magic for a few minutes, there are also specific, red ones with more specific objectives like taking out certain enemies, that give out better rewards. The main problem with accepting them is that, if you fail to complete them, you risk instant being killed over it, though you can avoid it you’re fast enough, as it’s delivered through portals on the ground.

In between missions, you’re allowed to explore Akademia, chatting with NPCs or party members, or engaging in “free time events” which are either conversations with random people, or cutscenes that tend to have much more interesting information. You only have a limited amount of hours until the next story mission starts, with each event taking two hours away, though time doesn’t pass just running around and talking to people without events. While a neat concept that could easily be like Persona, in practice, it doesn’t add much. While you can get some interesting information at times, and doing events also gives you items, it’s not very in depth otherwise. Even the sidequests with the more prominent side characters just consist doing their events whenever they’re available and doing a sidequest for them, eventually getting admittedly very good bonuses at the end of their little storylines. The other thing you can do with your free time is go out into the world map, where you can visit extremely small towns, get into random encounters, visit dungeons, and... not much else. While the world map isn’t tiny, there’s just not much to find. While there’s many towns, they are, again, tiny, only consisting of a single small area with a shop or two, a sidequest, and a little unofficial side quest to get a l’cie stone, which can be traded into a certain NPC to unlock lore entries in the Rubicus. There’s just not much of interest, and you’re very heavily restricted in where you’re allowed to even go on the world map, only being able to go to areas officially reclaimed by Rubrum, or that are the destination of the current story mission. Only in chapter 7 do you finally get some kind of freedom, to the point of being able to gain an airship to allow easy traversal of the world. Plus, most dungeons aren’t even meant to be explored on a first playthrough, with only about one or two being reasonable at that point, not that there’s even much to find besides l’cie stones and a chance at a rare item, emphasis on chance, since they’re always in a specific chest at the end that can only be opened once without reloading your save, and the chance of getting the most valuable item from them is rather low.

As for other activities, you can train in the arena, for downright piddly gains, or take on sidequests, most of which just contain of going out and defeating a certain amount of specific enemies, giving over items, and so forth. Most rewards aren’t great, but a few, namely from the more notable characters like the leaders of Rubrum, Kurasame, and Arecia, give very notable rewards. Sidequests don’t take time to do, but often require you to leave Akademia, meaning you need to weigh the time lost going out to do the quests against the time you could use doing events, which is difficult when you don’t know just what rewards either give out. When it comes mission time, though, you gotta venture out on the world map to your next destination. Speaking of the world map, along with the regular missions, there are also RTS style missions, where you, controlling a party member on the world map, help the dominion army reclaim forts and towns by taking out enemies and having units generated by controlled areas weaken said areas until you can invade them in a regular mission style. Instead of being graded on phantoma harvested, you’re instead graded on objectives completed, as occasionally you’ll get orders to do stuff like defend a fort for a specific amount of time or taking out a large enemy. While technically optional, you get bonuses for completing them beyond mission grade, such as access to “hero units” and direct control of certain areas. There’s a decent amount of these missions in the game, and they do make for an interest change of pace, but they aren’t much notable. You’re even allowed to skip participating in them, though obviously you miss out on rewards.

The highlights of the game are, rather sensibly, the end of chapter missions. Not only are they much longer than typical missions, they have much more unique settings, and, of course, bosses. This game has some very enjoyable, if difficult, bosses, ranging from the giant mech Brionac that is more than capable of wiping you out in a single attack, to the highly mobile mech of Qator Bashtar, Cid’s second in command, to several fights with the near invincible Gilgamesh (another recurring character in the series). My personal favorite is the boss of chapter 5, the dragon Shinryu, which is also all too happy to instantly kill you with most of its attacks, even more so than Brionac, and spend most of the fight enveloped in the darkness surrounding the arena you’re in, only being visible by the lights of its glowing red eyes. It makes for an amazing setpiece, and losing to it is almost more enjoyable than winning simply due to the failsafe implemented since the devs expected most players to lost, the details of which I simply cannot spoil. Finally, on a second playthrough, two new types of missions are available for you: expert trials, and Code Crimson missions. Expert trials are optional missions you can do during your free time, which you’ll likely have a lot of since events you see on a previous playthrough can be viewed again at no time cost on repeat playthroughs. While technically available in the first playthrough as well, they are way too difficult for the average player, i.e who isn’t insane like me. Code Crimson missions, on the other hand, are replacements for the end of chapter missions, consisting of you going off to do other stuff. While an interesting concept, in practice, they aren’t anything special, especially when they’re replacing the most interesting parts of the game, and they barely give any more story context either. The chapter 7 mission is the one exception, being very short, but an interesting concept and adding a bit more to the story. Plus, completing them all on one playthrough unlocks an interesting alternate ending, so that alone makes them worth a go.

As for the hardest challenges to be found, they’re a bit lacking. Aside from the regular optional dungeons, there’s one notable bonus dungeon and two notable superbosses. The bonus dungeon is the Tower of Agito, which can only be reached by airship, which consists of 5 floors where you need to fight 100 specific enemies, such as tonberries and behemoths, with plenty of chests to open in between, ending off on an extremely disappointing end boss that is just a Malboro that happens to be massive. While it certain sounds difficult, and pretty much everything is capable of one shotting you, once you get into a good pattern, it’s really just boring. Most of the time, they just spawn so slowly, and while after a while more of them come out at a time, it takes about an hour and a half at best to get through even if you’re otherwise efficient. As for the superbosses, there’s Nox Suzaku, only available in a second playthrough and onward, who has a chance of appearing whenever you harvest phantoma, stealing everything you try to harvest until it decides to go away. Aside from making it go away on its own, you can beat it up, which is quite a doozy. Instead of fighting you directly, it summons phantoms of various enemies to fight you, and while you could just defeat them all, this doesn’t do anything to Nox itself. Instead, you have to let the enemies defeat you, causing Nox to appear for a short time, allowing you to attack it until it retreats. Rinse and repeat, it’s not that difficult, and the rewards aren’t that great, so the main reason to beat it up is just to make it go away, because it stealing your phantoma is extremely annoying, especially when it can show up during missions, since you can’t just leave to fight it, and it’s entirely possible for it to flat make it impossible to get an S rank on that mission it decides it doesn’t want to leave. Not exactly a fun mechanic. The other superboss is, per tradition, Gilgamesh, in a stronger form than in the story. He only shows up on a third playthrough, at a few different locations on the world map, in the form of a portal. Entering said portals causes him to randomly select one of your characters to challenge. If you win, you get that character’s ultimate weapon, but if he wins, he steals your character’s current weapon. The ultimate weapons are kinda underwhelming, especially considering you may well have everything else done after a second playthrough, and it’s annoying getting specific people picked, but it’s actually a fun and fair fight, if easy to figure out.

Overall, Type-0 has some of the tightest gameplay among all the Final Fantasy spinoffs, and is the main thing that holds it together. It has a fast, hectic pace to it, interesting enemies to tackle, and a wide variety of people to try out. Really, the main criticism I have is the actual missions you have with which to try them out. The other main story missions aren’t much to look at, and same goes for the expert trials and Code Crimson missions. I’m sure this is at least partially due to originating on the PSP, and having to deal with its limitations, something that’s about become a theme in this review. Overall, though, it’s still more than satisfactory.

Graphics:

The visuals of Type-0 are a very mixed big, unfortunately leaning more towards negative. More than anything else, they make it very apparent that Type-0 was originally a PSP game. While the members of Class Zero themselves have decent looking models, if rather unemotive, everyone else, except a few important characters like Arecia, are much lower quality, especially the faces. Here’s a comparison between Ace and Carla.

The textures don’t fare much better, looking very blatantly stretched and blurry, especially on the world map, where bridges are just one long, hideous texture. Most locations outside of, again, the end of chapter missions don’t look anything special, and so many areas are just reused over and over. You go into a town, it’ll look like every other town, at least of that region. You invade a fort, it’ll look like every other fort. Repeat for almost every mission in the game. Thankfully, the big story missions look quite impressive and creative, my favorites being chapter 5′s, taking place on frozen clouds that end up near breathtaking, and especially the setting of the very final mission, which is, to avoid anything too specific, downright insane, in a good way. Another positive are the enemy designs, more specifically, the actual monsters, with enemies such as bombs and flans resembling their earlier FF designs much more than most modern entries. Unfortunately, there’s just one problem: the actual variety of enemy designs is rather lacking, with the majority of enemies being slight alterations or palette swaps. It’s a more minor point than most, but still something. The original enemy designs are quite inventive though, and overall, this is a game that excels more in general design than actual fidelity, like the spiraling Concordian capital surrounded by a sea of clouds.

Sound:

The music of Type-0 is plain great, as is usual for the series. The boss themes especially are fantastic, along with the main theme, The Beginning of the End. It also sounds quite distinctive compared to most of the rest of the series, having a greater focus on metal, fitting the more modern aesthetic. The English voice acting, on the other hand, isn’t quite great. It’s pretty obvious the dub was a rush job, considering Type-0 lacked the simultaneous localization process of the main series games, resulting in it being very lackluster overall. There are some notable voice acting names in it, like Cristina Vee as Cinque, Bryce Papenbrook as Machina, Danielle Judovits as Carla, Cassandra Lee as Mutsuki, and even Matthew Mercer as Trey, and they all do good jobs, but the rest of the cast varies, especially Class Zero itself. Ironically enough, the side characters tend to have much more solid performances, with special props going to Steve Blum as Cid, giving a very menacing perfomance, as well as other characters like Aria, Class Zero’s orderly, and Kazusa, the resident mad scientist. Corri English as Sice and Heather Hogan Watson as Queen also fair quite well. Beyond that though, the performances can be rather forced, like Nine and Cater, or just weak overall, like Rem and Deuce. This is not helped by the normal, in game cutscenes themselves, with their structure causing many long, awkward pauses nearly every sentence. It does, however, improve as the game goes on, to the point of the final cutscenes not being hurt by it near at all.

Conclusion:

Overall, this is a solid recommended by me. Even with the weakness of elements like the graphics and the short, underdeveloped story, the core gameplay just holds up that well, and there’s quite a bit to enjoy in the weaker elements even beyond that. Overall, this is one of my favorite Final Fantasy spinoffs, and the fact that it will most likely never get a sequel due to the departure of its director, Hajime Tabata, makes me very sad. With that unneeded note, this shall be the last of the Final Fantasy spinoffs I play in some time. The next time the name Final Fantasy pops up as the subject of one of my reviews, it shall be about the main series. Till next time.

-Scout

[cherriipeachcreme]

Witch’s Heart + YTTD Crossover AU

I’ve mentioned that I was coming up with a crossover AU involving Witch’s Heart and Kimi ga Shine for a while, and here are some of the details so far! I really liked coming up with ideas for this. More info including potential spoilers will be under the cut.

!! Please read my links before you interact!!

The setting may take place in a fictional island region containing both Eastern and Western elements. It is set in the modern era but may have more old-fashioned things mixed in. I’ll be sure to do research on this to keep things accurate.

Main Characters:

Claire Yabusame; Claire with the Reko’s role. A cheerful, friendly woman with a love for music. She was adopted by an old couple, and has spent much of her life helping others and following a music career. “The Witch’s Heart” is one of her favorite book series’, consisting of many different stories. She enjoys both punk things and girly things.

Noel Egokoro; Noel with Nao’s role. A kind, polite artist who has an interest in astronomy. While he seems mysterious to many people, he’s very attached to his friends, such as Claire, Sirius, and Professor Mishima. He often sleeps more during the day and is active at night.

Sirius Yabusame/Gibson; Possibly Sirius with Gonbee’s role? A short-tempered man who highly admires and respects Lady Dorothy, a well known witch. He seems to know Claire but doesn’t say much about it. Although he prefers to keep to himself, he can show kindness to others at times.

Shunsuke “Shun” Hiyori; Ashe with Sou’s role, but more similarities between the two are mixed in. He comes across as friendly and laid back, but also keeps his distance from others except those he’s closer to. His hobbies/skills include reading, cooking, and computer hacking. He doesn’t trust witches, and seems to have an ulterior motive involving the mysterious “game.”

Wilardo Satou; Wilardo with Kai’s role. A quiet person who doesn’t say much about himself, but is willing to work with the others to escape the “Sacrifice Game.” He had found a job in helping people with housework and flower arranging. He often doesn’t show fear regarding the monsters that roam around the building.

Keiji Shinogi

Kazumi Mishima

Gin Ibushi

Kanna or Hinako (+ Kugie or Anzu)

Qtaro or Naomichi

Demons, floormasters of the games;

Giselle/Zizel Sue-Miley [The Laughing Demon]; Giselle with Miley’s role. An elegant but sadistic demon who enjoys the killing/sacrifice games and tormenting others. She doesn’t care much for their lives and finds their reactions amusing. She seems to be following her own agenda alongside Rouge.

Charlotte Rio-Ranger [The Fashion Demon]; Charlotte with Ranger’s role. A cruel demon with a fairly childish disposition. She also enjoys the suffering of others, having a very low view on humans, and speaks in a rough tone. She likes fashion and works with Lime.

Lime Tia-Safalin [The Crying Demon]; Lime with Safalin’s role. Despite her title, she shows a relatively cheerful and peppy personality. She’s mainly in charge of the facility’s medical office and offers hospitality to others. She also likes to surround herself with lavish things. However, she has a dark side which shows her true nature. She mainly works with Charlotte.

Rouge; One of the floormasters who is working with Giselle. She’s also very narcissistic and sadistic.

Nicholas Egokoro [The Receptionist Demon]; Nicholas with Gashu’s role. He is first referenced in a newspaper article Shun found. Once the governor of a town, he became a researcher of negativity, especially since that is the specialty of demons.

The prologue shows Claire having a dream of her childhood with her close friend. After that, the story begins with a scene of her returning home after exploring the mountains and finding a field of flowers. It starts to rain and eventually she falls unconscious, awakening in a mysterious building/facility. (Not sure how exactly this would go yet)

She and a few people face a “First Trial”, running into many strange monsters and having to fight them off. They succeed, and while trying to find an exit, they fall and find themselves in the main floor with everyone else.

There are windows in the facility, but while peering out they realize that there is no way out and they are all trapped. They must learn more about the mysterious “Sacrifice Game”, and try to survive.

The Sacrifice Game is revealed to be run by the demons, who claim that the winner must also discover the legend of the Witch’s Heart.

~ Spoilers Ahead!! ~

The characters must help various demons with side quests. Doing so will help them with exploration and finding clues within the building.

“Shun’s” real name is Ashe Tsukimi. He deliberately joined the Killing Game because he wanted to grant a wish with the Witch’s Heart. However, when he was told he has a 0% chance of survival and granting his wish, he chooses a new name.

He hates witches because of the rumored connection to them with someone who betrayed him in the past and killed his family.

Nicholas was an evil man and Noel’s father. He turned his townspeople against witches, and raised his son to become an assassin. Although he’s already dead, a doll replica was made of him in the facility possibly using demon magic and advanced technology. His doll along with the demons value negative things since they are contrary to positivity.

During his childhood, Noel was not used to things such as love and friends. When meeting Claire and Sirius, he realizes what affection is like and highly values their friendship.

Demon magic and technology was also used to create doll and AI replicas of the participants, and analyze their lives as if they’ve been studied for years.

The legend of the Witch’s Heart involves finding a gemstone made of crystallized blood and making a wish. Claire possesses the Witch’s Heart, which is her literal heart. She is the granddaughter of the witch Dorothy.

Wilardo was in search of a way to get rid of his immortality, as he became immortal due to contact with the Black Lily. But upon finding the facility, he realizes that he gets in the Death Game.

Charlotte and Lime are Hater Demons; Those who were previously human but due to tragedy and negative emotions they became demons after their deaths. Giselle and Rouge are Purebred Demons, those who were demons their entire existence. They are quite prideful of their status.

When Charlotte became a demon, she developed strong jealousy and an inferiority complex toward humans, which is the reason of her disdain toward them. Realizing she was a tool for war throughout her previous life fuels this hatred for humanity.

The real reason why Lime is the “Crying Demon” is because of her cruel past. For her entire human life she was labeled as a “witch,“ and had no freedom and dealt with abuse along with other witches. She swore revenge by cursing/hexing everyone in her town during her death. She wants others to suffer as she did, and is searching for someone who is just as miserable as her.

The demons have been around for thousands of years, while Wilardo has only lived for centuries.

[femuscleblog]

Women’s Health : The Even Weaker Sex

https://femuscleblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/even-weaker-sex-from-fiji-times-online/

This was article was originally posted by Daily Mail in 2013. Known for its sensationalist style of reporting it does have the right idea about women’s health. Faddy diets and fears that muscles are not feminine enough have left women physically weaker than their grannies almost sounds like a comedic tabloid headline. Women do suffer from negative body image issues. The problem is the focus is always on the physiological element, rather than how this actually effects physical health. Women need to exercise and build muscle for the sake of their musculoskeletal health. Osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and heart disease become major threats to health the longer one lives. Women on average will live longer than men so the possibility of getting a chronic illness is higher.  Both men and women are getting less exercise in highly developed nations due to poor diets and sedentary lifestyles. Women are effected the most.  The reason is they have less strength and muscle mass to begin with. According to Grant Tomkinson of the University of South Australia muscular strength and endurance has declined by 8 to 10 % since the 1980s. This is based on data gathered from the US, UK, and Canada. 

What appears in the data accumulated at the time was that muscle power peaked around 1985. Yet, body weight as it is claimed has increased immensely. Muscles have gotten weaker with women getting even more physically weak. Some would say that weakness is a woman’s natural state, but it clearly is not. Starvation diets and lack of physical activity is clearly harming women’s bodies.Physiotherapist Sammy Margo stated “    there are skinny women who have no muscles supporting their spine, and overweight ladies who don’t have any muscles under the fat.” The serious danger related to health could be the increase in arthritis, stress fractures, and back pain. Women should not focus on weight loss as a sole motivating factor to exercise. The intent should be to be active enough to give the muscular system and skeleton enough care to prevent chronic disease. There also needs to be a change in body image perception. Too often, the fitness industry presents thin as the only image of beauty. Rather than following gender stereotype conventions, women should seek to boost their fitness levels.  According to the Women’s Sports Foundation 40% of women said feeling better about their appearance was the motivating factor to exercise. Their intent was to get thinner, which does not automatically mean healthy. Proper weight depends on one’s height and skeletal mass.   

There is a body type prejudice against women who show significant muscle and strength. The sexist attitude is so powerful that it scares women away from weight training. Even Jessica Ennis stated one time she was concerned about getting too muscular. The term “bulky’” is normally used to describe relally muscular people. That term has no basis in exercise physiology. There are different levels of muscular development that a person can achieve. Even the largest women, who are bodybuilders weigh less during competition. Compared to the rest of the weight of the majority of the population they are not bulky at all. Colette Nelson during competition only weighed about 145 lbs. The average weight of an American woman according to the CDC is ( at 5ft 3 inches) is a 168.5 lbs. That means Colette despite her appearance is technically not carrying around as much mass a one would assume. 

 Women normally reject weights saying they may end up looking like a female bodybuilder. This is not a simple task. This requires consistent training, diet, and supplements. Some may resort to performing enhancing drugs as a short cut in the recovery and muscular hypertrophy process. However, it erroneous to think that women have less athletic potential. The article correctly states that testosterone is very helpful for building muscle to a high degree. Endocrine function is not the only factor in building muscle, which explains why some women can actually get muscular. Muscular hypertrophy functions in the same manner in both men and women. Endocrinology just gives men an advantage during puberty, when strength spurts and body composition is altered. Estrogen enables the female body to carry more fat for the sake of reproduction. Regardless of sex, genetics, height, somatotype, training method, and nutrition are factors in building muscle and strength.  There is a difference between training for hypertrophy or just strength. Women with mesomorphic body types prior to training can achieve more gains relative to women of ectomorphic and endomorphic body types. A woman can gain as much strength as an average man. However ,a man on the same training regimen will most likely have more mass and strength. It should be understood that the idea of toning does not have an exercise physiology basis either.  Professor Ken Fox was quoted saying “they can get toned but looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t an issue,’ he says.” There are different degrees of muscular development, but toning is just another colloquial terms to describe a woman of a certain fitness level. This term is never applied to men rather the term bulk is. The fact is men and women have the same muscles. Through progressive overload they can increase strength and mass. The difference is in physical fitness capacity. 

Whether the term bulk or tone is applied they are relative terms. The women displayed above are different depictions of  levels of muscularity.  What people refer to as toned is the woman at the top. There is a middle level that can best be described as a figure physique. Then there is the bulky look that normally is demonized in women. All these women have different degrees of muscular development so the terms “bulky” or “toned” are just not applicable. Women for a longtime were discouraged from use and control of their own bodies. Besides limiting reproductive rights, body image conformity had been imposed through various points in history. This encouraged women to either have their feet bound or wear corsets. The latest unhealthy measure is to make the body extra thin. Such obsession could put women and girls at risk for anorexia or bulimia. The problems with health and body image start in youth. Girls are not encouraged to be physically active as boys at home or in school. Children are also being negatively effected by a sedentary lifestyle in which video games and TV have replaced playing outside. Also sexist prejudice develops around this age. According to a Women’s Sports Foundation study of 15,000 school children half the 14 years girls surveyed claimed that   getting sweaty was not feminine and a  third of boys stated sporty women are not feminine. Already in youth children are absorbing the negative stereotypes and frailty myth related to women and their bodies. 

This reveals their still is much to be done even though Title IX has made much progress in getting girls physically active. The rise of obesity and childhood weight problems have made it so that people are facing more potential health issues at a younger age. Before such panic should be raised, the study by  Dr, Gavin Sandercock only examine 315 children in 2008 and then compared it with data from ten years earlier. That sample is small, so it may not represent all of the UK. What the data showed was arm strength had fallen 26 % and grip strength 7%. The children of the 2008 group could only do two thirds amount of sit-ups from the 1998 group sample. The only thing this indicates is that physical education needs improvement. Many teachers that teach those classes may not have a background in exercise physiology, sports science, or coaching. There may be a generation of people who are physically illiterate. The question one may wonder is why would it be significant in a technological society. Maintaining health is critical not just for the individual, but the nation at large. Healthcare systems will soon feel the strain of aging populations or common chronic illnesses. Public health may reach a crisis if governments do not act. From a perspective of economics, a sick population can be liability. Disability and the personal financial burden on individuals could effect markets. This is why it is important to have a functional universal healthcare system and to educate the public about exercise. Making physical education a positive experience for youth will influence their future health related behaviors. 

Women need muscle for their health. This is not discussed as much in academic circles focused on women’s health issues. Muscle acts as a scaffolding for joints and bones in the human body. There are stages in which musculoskeletal mass grows in the body and at a certain age it will decline. The result could be sarcopenia and reduced mobility. 

There are some studies that show that muscular strength can contribute to longevity. Losing balance and falling can be detrimental for older people. Broken bones and specifically broken hips may cause the loss of independent living. Contrary to popular belief, when bones heal they do not comeback stronger. Healthy muscles mean more mobility and possibly less falls later in life.J anet Lord, director of the Arthritis Research UK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research claims strong muscles will enable you to control your movement more preventing harmful incidents. The rise in back pain can be linked not only prolonged periods of sitting rather weak core muscles. The muscles of the stomach are responsible for holding up the body when sitting. If these muscles are too weak,then the labor is shifted to muscles in the back. That results in more pressure in strain causing increases in back pain. Posture is also effected causing some people to slump over. The tendons and ligaments in the back are also effected as well. This can also effect the neck and knees. 

Women are not eating or dieting correctly. They may not eat enough or there protein consumption is low. Muscles need protein for cells.The sudden rise of whole food movements and veganism may be driving a trend to excluding meat or protein completely may not be the healthiest activity. Protein can be found in dairy products and meat. If one does not get enough, the body could cannibalize itself. Organs could be at risk in extreme cases. There still is debate on what is the correct amount of protein. If  there is an attempt to manage weight eating less would be ineffective. Excluding sugar and fats would be more helpful combining it with exercise. The goal is to get enough protein based foods along with vegetables to ensure normal metabolic function. There are some positive developments that can be taken away from this. Women are now becoming more active in strength sports and see that lifting can be an effective means of weight loss. Positive depictions of female athletes can counter sexism and body image issues. The important revelation is that  exercise physiology should be incorporated more into women’s health assessments. Doing so would be effective against common chronic illnesses later in life. 

[inumbro]

a collection of some of the ama answers, all the twitter posts, and all of red posts on the boards about zed & some related topics that I can find from the last ~1.5 years (with a few exceptions), so that I have all this info in one spot for reference

organised based first by topic, then by rioter

if anyone has any jhin / xayah / rakan / vastaya related information that I missed I’d appreciate a link so I can add it bc there’s not nearly as much not-officially-canon-canon information on those connections as I remember there being!

Morals:

WAAARGHbobo said:

No. He is, if anything, a hardline nationalist and federalist.

WAAARGHbobo said:

Zed is, indeed, much more complicated than you think. But he is definitely not a nice person.

@miketmccarthy said:

At the moment, [Akali] does not align with [Zed’s] philosophy. He killed Shen’s father and master. Although they are both aggressive, Akali is inherently good and Zed, well, notsomuch.

Shadow magic:

WAAARGHbobo said:

...A wizard has a different, more studious, and analytical way of accessing magic — but arguably a shaman has a more inate connection to spirit magic. While warriors like Zed, Shen, and Kayn have studied a different way to access magical power—

The strenght of the connection, the control, and the narrowness of focus are all important variables...

@LaurieGolding said:

... but Shadow Magic had not been practiced in Runeterra for a long time, before Zed started. Jax hasn't had time to master it in the ~10 years since then!

Kayn:

Scathlocke said:

Kayn's principal conflict is almost not with Rhaast at all, but Zed. It is very likely that his master sent him to retrieve the weapon knowing that it would be the ultimate test for his protege - either it would destroy him, or he would conquer the Darkin and become a worthy new leader for the Order of Shadow.

Basically, Kayn and Zed have a super-complicated "adopted father" type of relationship going on. Rhaast is more like Lady Macbeth, in this current situation.

@LaurieGolding said:

I think [Kayn’s] shadow-form is what Kayn and Zed both hope the outcome will be - he's been given a near-impossible task by his master, as a true and final test of his worthiness to one day lead the Order of Shadow. If he fails, the weapon will consume him.

It's interesting, because both Zed and Swain seem to have engineered their plans for succession into their own rise to power. Both of them seem to say "You can have my job... IF you can take it!"

@LaurieGolding said:

Kayn is a singularly gifted student, but Zed gave him the hardest test imaginable - to withstand the power of a Darkin. ...

Jaredan said:

I wouldn't take the horror of Kayn's experience as typical of Noxus's approach or attitude to recruitment. The Ionia conflict saw some very strange things happen within the Noxian military and beyond. I can't talk about them yet. But that day will come.

@miketmccarthy said:

I think a lot of that will come out later... Zed has had a complicated run in his life, he wants a successor, and I believe he hopes Kayn is 'the one' and time will tell whether or not he can be that. Zed saved Kayn from certain death, trained him, raised him. He cares.

Interlocutioner said:

Link to Zed: Functionally, they're master and apprentice. But in truth, I think they have a deeper relationship than that. Zed sees himself in Kayn. An orphan with a gift and a drive that others can't control, no matter how much they try. No matter how much Zed tries, in Kayn's case, lol. I think Zed might also see something he could never be in Kayn. Kayn's link to the shadow is deep, for whatever reason. Maybe Zed hopes this is a sign that Kayn could do better than him? Ultimately succeed him? And he may have other, darker motives as well.

I think Kayn's respect for Zed is just as deep. Unfortunately, he's in the process of convincing himself that the only way he can prove himself to his father figure is by becoming something more than Zed wants him to be. Stronger than Zed. Strong enough to defeat him, if necessary.

They have a bond, but it will be tested.

...

I just mean their bond will be tested by Kayn's possession of Rhaast, if nothing else.

Kinkou + Jhin:

Jaredan said:

The characters you mentioned [Shen, Zed, Jhin] are very important to each other's lives going forward...

Jaredan said:

Shen, Zed, and Jhin, sitting in a tree. K. I. L. L. I. N. G.

In their history, Jhin is absolutely an antagonist. But Shen doesn't look at Zed with any kind of fondness, only with betrayal. The man he thought was his brother murdered his father, the person that Shen defined himself by.

However, it's true that Shen can't give into his own immediate, visceral anger. Perhaps he even tells himself he doesn't hold that anger against Zed. His job does require him to hold that inner balance to perform it. It's a role that he does partly in honor of his father. Still, if Shen told you he isn't angry, would you believe him?

When he has two worlds balanced on the edge of a blade, how long any man keep his hand steady?

I'm not going to talk about where their story might be headed in specifics, but those are the things that are involved in our thinking.

Jaredan said:

Yup, though Shen and Zed's relationship is a bit more complicated than Tobias and Malcolm's. Zed and Shen also have more complicated personalities and responsibilities than TF and Graves (that's not a challenge when it comes to Graves especially, he's a to-the-point kind of fellow).

Scathlocke said:

Shen is most likely seeing quite a few parallels between Zed's path, and Akali's. There is some significant crossover in their ideology, and they both rejected the Kinkou Order in some way... but Zed rejects the notion of "balance" as weak, and is more than happy to use any/all means at his disposal. Akali is certainly not there, yet!

Thermal_Kitten said:

Akali knows the cost of Zed’s break with the Kinkou. Zed was training alongside Shen, but after their first run in with Jhin, Zed began to have second thoughts. (We updated Zed’s bio to add more context and details surrounding this.)

...

As far as the Order of Shadow and the Kinkou, they don’t exactly work together, it’s more they tend to keep out of each other’s territory and see to Ionia’s future in their own ways. If it came to a direct disagreement, it could come to blows.

WAAARGHbobo said:

Jhin give us a chance to show that Ionia is in transition. The attack on their nation changed them. They are embracing technology they had previously thought unnecessary, and they are questioning their morale foundations. Jhin is the true villain of Zed and Shen's story-- and he represents everything that could go wrong for Ionia.

The Noxus-Ionia war:

Scathlocke said:

Seven years since Swain seized power and commanded the Noxian armies to leave Ionia.

@LaurieGolding said:

Noxus has a HUGE military presence off the main coast of Ionia - the First Lands are so concerned with restoring balance after they "won" the war, they've failed to notice that Noxus hasn't actually abandoned the island of Fae'lor, for example...

@LaurieGolding said:

The Great Stand at Navori was about ten years ago, and she was something like 14 then. Swain seized control of Noxus roughly three years later and ended the war in Ionia.

@LaurieGolding said:

Noxus was originally supposed to be persuading Ionia to join the empire, which of course became an occupation, then a war. They didn't intend to pillage/destroy... But it seems Darkwill was actually looking for magical stuff to extend his life, so who knows? (LeBlanc, maybe?)

@LaurieGolding said:

The death toll was catastrophic, certainly. But also, Ionia has been marked with a big, bloody Noxian handprint that they'll never be able to wash away - the soul of the First Lands has been changed forever... Was that Swain's plan all along? It's hard to say.

Vastaya:

Q&A:

Why is there a rebellion? Is Zed doing something with magic that affects the vastaya and are they dying as a result?

Not dying, but magical essence sustains their continued existence. The less magic there is, the fewer resources there are to support vastayan life and tradition. Other humans tap into or twist up the same magic source that the Lhotlan vastaya need to survive. This is not necessarily a moral thing, good people do bad things for good reasons, unaware of the consequences it causes others. Zed and his people are unknowingly or uncaringly accelerating the drain of the magical energy though they are absolutely not alone in doing this. This is aggravating the growing tension between humans and some vastayan tribes in Ionia - and directly violates the agreements that were forged between species.

Miscellaneous:

In response to:

Then Zed decided to pull a Sasuke because he couldn't deal with someone being better/picked over him.

Jaredan said:

Zed's issues run a bit deeper than that.

WAAARGHbobo said:

[referring to the wild magic video] It is not a part of the timeline. Promotion team just takes inspiration from the lore-- they do not make stuff within the timelines. Because... uh.. Reasons? Well you'd have to ask them.

WAAARGHbobo said:

So as the guy who did this, and Jhin’s lore...

The character you love hasn’t changed.

This simply expands the timeline and shows how Zed’s descent can be understood from his own perspective.

This timeline was actually done during Jhin, and the goal was to give Zed’s fall a slower, more human, less arch, trajectory.

Timeline (rough from my phone):

Shen and Zed are students together and bros. Zed is clearly the better, more talented student.

Kusho takes the two young teenagers undercover chasing “the golden demon”

Jhin crime scenes traumatized zed. (And shen)

Zed begans to struggle with his studies.

Kusho catches but refuses to kill Jhin. Zed loses respect for his master.

Zed begins to study forbidden shadow magic. —gets in trouble.

Leaves.

Noxus invades —zed witness war crimes. Kusho’s refusal to help the war effort is the last straw, Zed is no longer sympathetic or allied to the kinkou. While not directly opposed to them— he begins to view the kinkou as rivals.

Zed forms his own order— related to the Navoi militia group. (Spelling?)

Some vastaya tribes looking for a better deal, ally with the Noxus. Others fight for Ionia. Zed begins hostility with non- humans.

The war is tough, zed returns to the take the last of the shadow magic. Kusho tries to stop him.

Zed kills his master, shen’s dad.

Shen becomes the eye of twilight.

Kayn.

The war ends.

Zed begins consolidating power. Trains kayn. (He continues hostility with noxus, growing hostility with many Vastaya tribes.)

Harrowing mists begin to bother the southern Ionia sea ports.

Kayn gets raaast (around here i think)

Jhin is frees.... by someone

Zed finds out jhin is free. contacts Shen.

Jhin heads to zaun.

[didanawisgi]

Gabriel Guerrer,  August 24, 2017

Abstract 

Motivated by a series of reported experiments and their controversial results, the present work investigated if volunteers could causally affect an optical double-slit system through mental efforts alone. The participants task alternated between intending the increase of the (real-time feedback informed) amount of light diffracted through a specific single slit and relaxing any intention effort. The 160 data sessions contributed by 127 volunteers revealed a statistically significant 6.37 sigma difference between the measurements performed in the intention versus the relax conditions (p = 1.89 × 10−10, es = 0.50 ± 0.08), while the 160 control sessions conducted without any present observer resulted in statistically equivalent samples (z = −0.04, p = 0.97, es = 0.00 ± 0.08). The results couldn’t be simply explained by environmental factors, hence supporting the previously claimed existence of a not yet mapped form of interaction between a conscious agent and a physical system.

Discussion 

The five experiments testing a consciousness-related form of interaction with a double-slit system resulted in a 6.37 sigma effect, successfully replicating the anomaly found by previous studies. In contrast, the control sessions conformed to the null hypothesis, showing that the obtained effect cannot be reduced to methodological or analytical artifacts. The effect neither can be explained by a temperature increase in the experimental room as shown by experiment 0 with a lamp producing more heat than a human body does. Experiment 0 also excluded possible artifacts caused by the participant/control sessions order. Care was taken in order to isolate the experiment from mechanical vibrations and electromagnetic waves, as well to monitor the magnetic field and the temperature over different places. The same differential analysis procedure resulted in no significant results for the monitored environmental variables, discarding those physical processes as the primary causal sources of the light measured intention/relax differences. The participants intended the feedback magnitude increase, which in turn was linked to a specific feedback variable and a test hypothesis. The variable was built by taking into account a model which predicted the most sensitive wavenumber regions in the case of a legitimate interaction. With this method, the participants indirectly intended the increase in the amount of light crossing through a specific slit. The results indicate a flexible interplay between the two degrees of freedom ψ and φ to achieve the desired variation, revealing a goal-oriented characteristic for the ψφ-interaction. As the light luminosity is conserved, the interaction can be pictured as Maxwell’s demon kind of influence, where intention plays the demon’s role by “steering” some photons to the desired left/right slit. 11 The observed effect cannot be explained as the consequence of a measurement taking place in the participants conscious awareness. If that were the case, one should expect to see a decrease in the interference component followed by a 50/50 balanced slit intensity ratio. Differently, the results reveal a probability modulation enhancing the light passage through the desired slit. Thus the presented results don’t provide a solution to the quantum measurement problem (a similar view is shared by [26] on commenting about Radin et al. conclusions). According to the experimental evidence, it is more reasonable to label the effect as an interaction adding complex numbers to the path amplitudes, which by interference leads to a change in the outcome probabilities. Instead of challenging the quantum mechanics framework and the traditional objective interpretations, the results are suggestive of a standard-model violation, pointing to the existence of a still to be elucidated fundamental force field. A pertinent question to be addressed is: if such an effect really exists how could it have lasted consensually undetected in spite the technological breakthroughs of the last century? First, it’s reasonable to expect a small cross-section; an effect too small it could go unperceived in people’s daily lives, that needs proper amplification and a group of people to be statistically detected in a controlled setting. Second, by being a function of the conscious agent subjective condition, it may rely on a specific state of consciousness and an individual skill to promote it, thus not being consistently obtainable by anyone in any situation. In particular, if the effect happens to be catalyzed by states opposed to rational faculties such as thinking and the use of language, it may lead to a paradoxical situation: the more one tries to exert control in a pragmatic approach, the less they cause the phenomenon. The third reason can be argued as a consequence of the sociocultural process described by [27, Chap. 1] that led physicists to shift from philosophical interests to a more pragmatic approach motivated by post world war II military interests. While it was not uncommon to watch the quantum physics founding fathers discussing topics such as consciousness and mysticism, after the post-war technological race, the interest in such topics not only became old-fashioned but something to be avoided while following a “serious” career path. As a result, the current consensus defends that consciousness is not necessary to describe the physical world, while not introducing consciousness per se in their experiments. Compared to the previous efforts to probe the phenomenon using random number generators, the double-slit system has the advantage of providing interference information across a spatial dimension as opposed to binary outcomes. Having more information available makes it more sensitive to the investigated ψφ-interaction. Moreover, as opposed to the usual random number generator physical processes, it allows final state interference, which allows the phase difference φ to play a role in the probability modulation. Regarding the double-slit variable of interest, the use of Fourier transformed variables is suggested in order to benefit from the full CCD frame instead of using the fringe visibility three pixels (the central maximum value and its adjacent minima). Future improvements to the current double-slit setup can be achieved by focusing on strategies to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in the interference pattern measurements and to provide clearer feedback information. From the theoretical side, refinements in the interaction model can be sought in order to provide sharper variable predictions. Regarding the profound implications in the event that the observed effect is confirmed as a legitimate anomaly, replication efforts are highly advised.

[brain1230]

Free Write 2: A Reflection on Complexity Management Theory: Motivation For Ideological Rigidity And Social Conflict by Jordan B. Peterson and Joseph L. Flanders

Ideological rigidity, a tendency in people to denounce and discredit all competing belief systems other than his or her own, is engendered and maintained at large by our human aversion to unexpected and complex events happening in the physical world. This tendency is rooted deeply in human’s evolutionary instinct to survival. As in primitive societies of our ancestors, people were always under threats from predatory entities lurking in the forests and unexplored territories. As a consequence, the biological instinct to survival forced our ancestors to react strongly to emotions like fear or anxiety so that they could act in time to avoid dangers in the wilderness. Although the development of modern technology has eliminated most threats faced by ancient men, our fear for the unexplored possibilities in life still remains intact. Thus, “our essential existential problem [or existential anxiety] can thus be more accurately conceptualized as vulnerability to complexity” (Peterson & Flanders 431). As a desperate attempt to cope with the overwhelming magnitude of reality, simpler and low-resolution ideologies about the real world are developed by people of modern time. Although these belief systems help to shield us from the complexity of life, we put ourselves in a immensely dangerous situation if we just thoughtlessly and stubbornly rely on our oversimplified perception of the world. 

To trace the fundamental cause of ideological rigidity, we first need to bring our attention to how human perception actually operates. There is a general agreement in the limitations of our perceptual power and cognitive processes as we are only consciously aware of a small portion of all the information being constantly presented to us. For instance, when performing a simple task like the action of picking up a cup of tea, we seldom pay any attention to the reflection on the cup or even the set of mechanical motions required to lift up the cup from a surface. Information that is not essential or relevant to our task at hand goes entirely unnoticed unless we consciously direct our attention to them. This is essentially the “frame problem” encountered by many computer scientists who work in the field of artificial intelligence. It was a challenging task for AI researchers to teach the robot how to ignore irrelevant information to the task, as sensors on the robot will non-selectively pick up stimuli from the external environment. Human intelligence only primarily concerns with goal-oriented actions, and much of the reality is reduced and ignored in order for us to perform necessary tasks for our survival. Having goals can effectively reduce the complexity of life, as all components of life beyond the task at hand will be temporarily ignored. Since human life is really essentially goal-oriented, it is reasonable to conclude that a huge portion of an individual’s life operates without his or her conscious perception (Our actions reveal a lot more things about us than what we are consciously aware of, and this is also the reason why we have so many academic studies on sociology and human psychologies). Nonetheless, this ability to simplify the reality and to work with reduced model of the physical world is really a double-edged sword, which may either facilitates the development of our societies or leads to massive destruction of civilizations.

What is it about ideology that makes it so dangerous? and Why do people go so far and even resort to violence in order to defend their ideologies? What is the fundamental cause of a highly polarized society? In order to answer these questions, it may be beneficial to look beyond mere political phenomenon and locate their biological and psychological origin. Ideologies, as low-resolution and oversimplified models, help humans to reduce the complexity of life to a few tangible rules to follow so that we may live our life without being paralyzed by our constant anxiety and fear of unexpected irregularities. However, it is crucially important for us to realize that these ideological representations of the world are highly restricted due to the immense variability of life. When a truly unexpected and tragic event occurs in our life, the false sense of security derived from our oversimplified belief systems will collapse instantly and render us completely defenseless against the magnitude of life. It is not hard to imagine the level of anxiety one may experience when one loses all control of his or her life. These unpleasant feelings and emotions are the exact same kind of reactions our ancestors harbor against unpredictable threats in the forest. In this context, when an unfamiliar stimulus or a different belief system is introduced to our lives, it will inevitably raise our anxiety level due to the fact that our fundamental belief system is under direct attack. It is a lot easier for people to just reject other forms of perceived realities because the mere ackownlgedgment of the existence of “others” can dramatically expand the domain of life that people have to operate within. Thus, it is not surprising to see people who passionately seek to deny the validity and existence of opinions that oppose to their worldview. This point is so well demonstrated if you just listen to the verbal exchanges between people, who have different opinions, in any protests or public demonstrations. What people frequently do at these rallies is that they would demonize the opposite side and try to shut them down instead of creating an environment where different opinions can be shared and openly discussed. It is sad that so many people have become so obsessed with their ideologies and group identities that they would sacrifice opportunities for constructive dialogues just for the preservation of their illusory sense of security provided by their pitiful and insufficient understanding of the world. As a result, nothing meaningful is likely to emerge out these public demonstrations because they are, at its core, motivated by fear and cowardice. 

In order to prevent ourselves from being a puppet of our ill-informed belief structures, it is of paramount importance for us to take up our courage to willingly tread upon unknown territories and exam unfamiliar ideas. We must realize that both dangers and opportunities can co-exist in those possibilities that we have yet to explore. By stepping out of our comfort zone voluntarily, we empower ourselves as we realize that those serpents and dragons lurking in the darkness are simply creations of our mind. People will no doubt become a lot stronger and stable as they make voluntary and conscious effort to organize the chaos that surrounds each every one of us. Additionally, in order to combat ideological rigidity, I think it is also necessary for us to see people as individual beings instead of mere representations of their group identity or ideology. As I have mentioned in the previous paragraphs, ideologies are insufficient models created by people to deal with the complexity of the world. They will never be able to provide us a full and objective representation of our reality; therefore, we risk to neglect different possibilities that lie beyond our perception if we entrap ourselves in a particular way of seeing the world. People are more than their ideologies and group identities. We must listen people as if the speaker knows something that we don’t (and it is almost always the case) in order to start a constructive and meaningful conversation. The great person-centered psychologist Carl Rogers put forward the idea that, in order to develop a meaningful and growth-promoting relationship between individuals, people must try to accept the existence of multiple realities as perceived by different individuals. This is not an absurd idea and I do believe that any sensible people would agree with the fact that we all see and understand the world in our unique ways; however, in reality, it is so difficult for people to even want to  understand the reality as how others would see and feel about it. I think part of the reason that this is so hard for people is because, by fully accepting the experience of someone else, it is likely that changes will be made to ourselves and our perceptions of the world. Therefore, this process of opening up ourselves to other people directly provokes the existential fear in all of us. Nonetheless, we have to realize that those changes occurring in us can be constructive and beneficial. If we just give people a chance to be themselves and speak forward their beings, we can create a safe place where the opinion of every single individual is valued and appreciated. This sense of security, grounded in mutual understanding and respect, can elevate the spirit of every individual and truly unleash the hidden potential in each one of us.