#i like less humanoid concepts of outsider entities

[raviollies]

Does Theta have another form, like the Ladies of the Wood or Auntie Ethel?

She does indeed ( here, & here)

I went more monstery (Drew my inspiration from Bloodborne, Witcher and The Ritual) than the other two examples as I wanted to emphasize the ruthlessness of nature. A representation of an ancient monster lurking deep in the woods, unmoved by human emotions and feelings.

Theta is VERY ancient. Maybe she had a more humanoid form before - but now it's... almost part of the cycle she represents : The Fae are life but Hags are decay. She is the carcass of a beast but upon her back is a coat of moss and flowers, her wood antlers bloom. That which decays is necessary for life to blossom once more.

[venacoeurva]

Want some Corprus thoughts and headcanons while I take a coffee break

Putting under a readmore since I ramble

You know how Concept Art Dagoth is doing some weird flesh manipulation with his hand and his muscles n shit are just slippin out? and the patterning on his other arm just kinda. looks like he can unravel. Maybe if he wanted to, he could drop the humanoid body and just be a funky flesh mass thing a la final boss mode 2 or something? Fun to think about, I explored it a little with my Longoth Ur stuff.

Yeah anyway, what if the Nerevarine could do that, but to a lesser degree after they seek out treatment and the more dangerous aspects are subdued, particularly if you follow the idea of them actually being Nerevar's reincarnation and having Azura on their side actively helping and not just everyone going "huh sure" and improvising?

Following the idea that Corprus is a divine disease mortals just can't handle, and it's a display of controlling it. People who aren't ~worthy~ basically turn into your standard corprusbeast, and I like to think Ascended Sleepers basically detonate into an explosion of flesh (whose screams become almost musical once more of the tentacles start replacing where their mouth was) once they hit a certain point of transformation (enlightenment!) as well. Maybe the higher on the hierarchy of who can handle it they can sort of retain a body that's more... normal looking and not teratomas to the max with your arteries deciding they want to be outside of you.

In my Nerevarine's case, most of the remaining effects are internal, with his left leg deteriorating during and after the plot of the game resulting in an eventual above the knee amputation and his internal organs are a little wonky (besides some damage he has like 2 extra kidneys, notably). I like to play with the idea that he has some flesh manipulation abilities, too, he's just not aware of them and they're more or less just subconscious, but they giving him an ability to "link into" his prosthetics, letting him to develop prosthetics like a leg from taproots that resemble a spriggan's flesh and function as if it were a normal leg, kind of like a leg transplant, and connects to his tissues. He's preferential to that one since it comes with less discomfort of more standard ones. I also think the ability gives his flesh a little more leeway in his werewolf transformations being a little less taxing on the body since he kinda just has more... stretch? and adaptability.

I also think it works against the Nerevarine, though, even once it's technically asymptomatic, even if they're aware of it and developed a whatever control they could over it... or maybe they try to ignore it. This would vary by who they are. In Wren's case, it keeps him alive when he's passively trying to die (he hates being immortal), and his left arm tends to do its own thing sometimes in the presence of other people/entities with/involved with Corprus or the Sixth House, which is a denial of his sense of autonomy--Something Wren is terrified of losing and loathes the Nerevarine prophecy for already stripping him of it in a sense.

It's a fun idea, and I think we should play with it within our own Nerevarines and if you have any Sixth House OCs, in particular, get wild, get funky, maybe they can also yoink their arm muscles out from under the skin to be tentacles, I dunno! It's your house!

[madame-mortician]

FNAF in DBD concepts:

So we all probably heard that FNAF is officially Dead by Daylight's Anniversary chapter for next year, and it's all but confirmed that the killer will be Springtrap, but here are some other predictions and concepts I have. These likely aren't happening it would just be fun.

Springtrap - Vanny Visceral Skin

Pretty self-explanatory. If Springtrap is the chapter's killer (which it most likely is) then Vanny would be a great visceral skin for him. I would say Legendary, but I feel like Vanny would have completely different animations to Springtrap due to not being a robot.

The Dredge - Mangle Legendary Skin

I think this would go hard, as it would be a mess of wires with her main head being obviously the Toy Foxy head, whilst the rest of him would be a mangle of animatronic parts. I think something cool would be if instead of goopy noises, she made radio static noises and metallic sounds. He'd have to have more added wires and limbs to make up for Dredge's size but it doesn't have to be a 1-for-1 recreation anyway.

The Unknown - Michael/Ennard Legendary Skin

This would go hard I think. It would be pretty similar to the Unknown's default design, just purple and more zombie-looking I guess. I think the Unknown works for this idea since it really gives the appearance of a non-human entity wearing human skin to appear humanoid, and that's more of less what Ennard was doing with Michael's rotting corpse. Maybe facially it could look somewhat similar to Josh Hutcherson but that's a bit of a stretch.

Dwight - Nightguard Inspired Costume

Usually, with big video game licenses like this, one of DBD's original survivors gets a skin, typically either Dwight or Feng. While I could see Feng decked out in a Chica cosplay or something of that sort, that seems a bit too out there I guess. I think it would make more sense to see Dwight in a FNAF-inspired outfit, either based on the movie or the graphic novel's security guard design. Hell, maybe he'll just get a purple shirt or a shirt with a Fazbear design on it, idk.

The Map

So I know a lot of people want the map to just be based on one location. However, I personally have a different idea in mind. Similar to the Saw map, they could merge different locations together. If it's a one-for-one recreation of, let's say, Fazbear's Frights, we'd get another situation like RPD, where it's accurate to the original game but also not great for DBD's gameplay. Instead, I think it would be interesting to have rooms and locations based on all of the games. Maybe the office is the iconic FNAF 1 office, and then there's Pirate's Cove, but also the Puppet's music box is here, and there are some broken animatronics lying around that are from various different games. It would also make sense lore-wise since, in DBD, the maps are taken from the character's memories, so it would be like an amalgamation of Springtrap's memories, for example. It would be more interesting than trying to choose one of the iconic FNAF locations, and turning it into a DBD map.

Map Easter Eggs

Adding to my last point, whatever map they decide to go for should be similar to Midwich, RPD and Nostromo, in my opinion. Not structure-wise, but rather with the easter eggs. Midwich has girls crying in bathrooms, shaking bodies, bodies falling out of lockers, and RPD has zombies outside the windows and the save menu music playing in the safe room. Nostromo has the face-hugger in the window, Jonesy in the lockers, and the MU-TH-UR room, and if they added this level of love to the FNAF map, that would be amazing. Some ideas would be hearing the music box music near the Puppet's box (and maybe even the Puppet leaping up from the box), JJ under the office table sometimes, the audio of Chica in the kitchen playing behind the Kitchen door, the Cupcake wandering around and Shadow Freddy/Bonnie randomly appearing in the hallway but then disappearing when you turn around. Stuff like that.

[lumilasi]

I've been meaning to finish this one for aaaages, but always kept pushing it back. I also wondered if I should draw his full body ref too, but I just can't be bothered rn.

I wanted to go for a slightly different direction from what I typically see portrayed with any Deity relating to War. Nature vise I mean to be exact.

I decided to make this post into more of an info dump on the Heralds beyond just War, given two out of three others are somewhat relevant, even if they don't appear directly at any point. (Famine is not included as they're not relevant in any way)

More info below:

ABOUT WAR/SOLDIER

They are the youngest of the four "siblings" and always manifest last, as life first tends to need to reach sapient state to have actual "wars"

Their appearance changes depending on the times/current cycle. During some lifecycles War might've appeared as a woman for example.

He is currently a white male because of the World Wars being the most recent large-scale battles on earth.

He is generally very mellow and quiet, coming off like someone very tired of just existing, which often tends to confuse those who assume the Herald of War would be more fiery.

The Weaponsmith Warlocks are the only beings directly channeling his power. He initially created this ability in hopes that if someone could "see directly" what he does, they'd start to learn not to cause war so much, but unfortunately that tends to not work...

ABOUT DEATH/END

They are described as a "story collector" by their siblings and Reapers who get to speak with them. Curious to hear the story of each soul a reaper is currently shepherding to the next cycle.

No one really knows what they look like, and the siblings often indicate Death looks like everyone and no-one the same time.

In practice, typically any Grim Reaper discussing with them will just see their own reflection, but with pitch black, void-like eyes. Mortals may sometimes be possessed by a fraction of their essence too, but this is rare.

Death doesn't know where a soul goes once they pass the "veil" as they call it; if there is a heaven or hell or a rebirth. All Death does know that eventually, every single soul - if not destroyed - does make their way to the next cycle of the World itself. (In this story the world basically cycles where it gets destroyed and is reborn over and over again. I think there's even a theory/concept about this in IRL physics lol)

Grim Reapers were all living souls once, choosing to become one either while still alive, or once they are being escorted. Reasons as to why one does so wary greatly.

Death does also permit a fraction of their power to be used for a short period of time without turning into a Grim Reaper, utilizing special stones. these are very risky to use however, since using them for too long transforms you permanently, forcing the individual to leave their past life behind, unable to ever return to their loved ones.

ABOUT PESTILENCE

They are most involved with mortal realm despite not often manifesting physically. They have not one but two "follower" types, both helpful and chaotic ones.

The Chaotic ones are the Plague demons, who, while might have tendencies to be less-than-good people, aren't always necessarily evil either, hence they are described more as "chaotic"

The Helpful ones are the Blood Sage Warlocks, whose powers are typically used to help people with their ailments.

BONUS: Famine

All that is known of them is that they appear as a hermit humanoid that wanders across earth, and wherever they go, the chance of a famine gets higher.

They are very passive and the siblings often indicate they're not really mentally present, less of a person and more of an entity that just exists.

STORY RELEVANCES:

War/Soldier is mostly relevant in NCP/the main story as the "uncle" who visits Marci Raye, and generally may interact with other characters outside their family as well. He is also seen spending time with the local light Deity Spectra, and the Soul Eater King Amaros.

Pestilence & Death: They are relevant to the conflict between Angus Belmont and his ex friends-with-benefits Vincent DeVos. Vincent is obsessed over him, and wants to turn Angus into a Grim Reaper, because that way their souls can reunite at the end once the world is to be purged of life.

Angus is VERY MUCH against this because he has a kid to look after, and a sister to take care of. Also a student. Angus is a good candidate for this, because he already has a connection to the Heralds thanks to his powers, which gave Vincent this idea in the first place. (Already existing connections make these transformations easier)

Vincent's reasoning for wanting Angus to become a Grim Reaper specifically rather than turning him into a Plague demon - which would achieve the same goal - is very shallow and also slightly ignorant; he finds Reapers more attractive than his own kind, and doesn't realize turning Angus into a Reaper would mean he can't be around Vincent either, until the very end (something he'd be too impatient to wait for)

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

Alternate Goop Redux {Ben 10}

Don't mind me, just remaking this ancient thing lmao.

Trying to do things still feels frustrating, but I got this done. Have some fancy glowy eyes lmao. Also, looks best on a dark background/dark theme!

And now I have extra background details! More of an elaboration on what my original revamp concept was based around, mixed with... other things.

Doing this under a cut for the sake of the scrollers’ sanity:

Goop - "A viscous form belies a potent psychic corpus." Species: Polymorph Species Home Planet: Viscosia Omnitrix Placement: Varies, either on the chest-armor centerpiece or helmet forehead. A strange case of the medallion not actually being on the transformation's body.

Home Planet Information: Less gravity than Earth. Extremely humid and home to a wide variety of plant life, arthropods, and crustaceans, comparable to a whole-planet jungle. Ground mass (and even water and biomass due to the cycling of minerals) is a famous source of magic-reactive minerals. Fauna life often formed of colonial, composite, or symbiotic entities. Home to one of the two Greater Anoderi Colleges—dedicated to the study of Magic and the various scrounged arts of Anodites—created as a joint venture between the Polymorph and Geochelone Aerio races, being the Antebrine Schola as compared to the Addwaitya Schola on Aldabra.

Species Information: With slimy, highly permeable skin and potent magical capabilities all throughout their flexible nervous systems, Polymorphs produce and manipulate large amounts of neuroconductive slime to act as their bodies to interact with the universe around them. This slime, similar in durability and strength to that of Terran hagfish, can be manipulated in a wide variety of ways by the corresponding Polymorph, including thickness, opaqueness, acidity/corrosiveness, and consistency, though the ability can be taken to greater extremes by those with higher psychic adept.

Extra Species Information: Even with the mysterious nature of Anodite-kind, many Polymorphs boast such heritage. The species is notorious for a specific smugness in regards to Magic, which only grew more infamous when Magic was officially recognized as a field of technological study by the Plumbers organization. Seen to have a (friendly) one-sided rivalry with the Geochelone Aerio race over Magical Knowledge, which some compare to that of Cerebrocrustaceans against Galvans in regards to intelligence.

Species Abilities:

- Innate Mana Manipulation/Psychic Powers

- Slime Production and Greater Slime Manipulation

- Acid Production (See Slime Production and Greater Slime Manipulation)

- Lesser Gravity/Weight Manipulation (See Slime and Psychic)

- Evasiveness (True Body able to freely move around slime "body")

- Lesser Shapeshifting (form/consistency manipulation into spikes, blades, etc.)

Species Weaknesses:

- Fragility (True Body)

- Higher Gravity (manipulating slime in higher gravity is more strenuous, hence anti-gravity/psychoconductive armor)

- Leakage/Dissolving (Slime may leak away into uselessness through things like grates or be dissolved away by water if not paying attention)

Design Background Info:

- The design is mostly the same, mostly just adding some extra flair, trimming other things, and adding detail while drawing him with a slime-folk tail instead of legs.

- While this variant doesn't use a typical anti-gravity projector device, I wanted to keep some form of UFO imagery. I ended up adding it into the large chest-plate window with a Crop Circle-like glass pattern.

- As you can tell, I wasn't arsed to create a different species name lmao.

- I got the idea of much of the fauna being colonial/composite from Curious Archive's video on Polinices

- I decided to work them together with Addwaitya's/Terraspin's species because they're the only other species I could recall doing Magic outside of humans.

- Yes, I am making Anodites that aren't humanoid/from human gene-stock. Anodites are already weird, okay? We don't know much about them as-is, I can just imagine other species trying tp figure out Anodites/Magic while the Anodites are all just Zeus'in about lmao.

I hope you like it!

[tabletoptrinketsbyjj]

Heyho, I'm the person with the splitting knife idea. I didn't think that you'd answer so quickly. I just found your site and I think those items are all so flavourful and distinctly fanscinating. Current Favourite are the Corpse Seeds. I did not know about His Dark Materials before, it looks interesting. I am DMing a group and there is a dark entity which is currently imprisoned. So I was searching for a flavourful way to remove the seal when they get there(and give them the knife before :D).

Thank you it's nice to hear from you and I'm glad that you like the collection. I try to respond to direct questions fast because I don't get to many and I really appreciate them. Breaking an ancient seal is great fantasy and adventuring stuff and some form of a Splitting Knife is a great idea. It could always come at a cost, maybe the seal is under a lot of tension from the creature its holding back and slashing the seal open is like the magical equivalent of cutting a rubber band strained to the max or popping a full water balloon and all that tension explodes outward creating a wild magic area, unstable rifts to other planes, teleporting everyone somewhere else or mutating all the PC's in some small way. Try my wild magic surges for ideas.

Other options might be a kind of Pry Bar or Magical Crowbar that could pry open the seal partially allowing some of the creature to get out but not all of it, creating a smaller weak version of the dark entity that the PC's can negotiate with. Bonus points if they misjudge the item and the creature escapes by fragmenting itself into dozens or hundreds into a swarm of tiny creatures that scatter and will eventually reform unless the PC's hunt them down.

A third option might be some sort of specialized Magic Jar (Like the spell) or Large Crystal that will allow the trapped entity to switch places with a willing or incapacitated creature that is standing next to the seal. The PC's might have to find and capture a powerful demon, celestial or elemental and cage it so its body can be inhabited by the trapped entity. The consciousness of the outsider that they capture will then be trapped within the seal for as long as the Magic Jar or Crystal remains intact and in the possession of the being doing the mind swap.

Or lastly maybe something like a powerful divine reliquary, a cloak covered in the blood of a cleric of Liberty who died freeing people in bondage or a feather blanket with down filling collected from celestial birds owned by the God of Travel or Freedom. Since their domains are completely adverse to the concept of a caging others or restricting movement, the holy object will nullify the seal's power allowing the trapped entity to escape.

You don't have to do anything like these of course but you could always present these as potentially other options to the PC's if they don't like the splitting knife idea to show them that there are alternate solutions, but they're far less practical and will be way harder to pull off.

I like the corpse seeds too. It's a weird little item that has no immediately obvious practical use but if the player's have it someone will eventually find the perfect scenario for it and make a memorable session. It's not game breaking or even unlimited in its use but the ability to “grow” a dozen dead bodies to your specifications in one minute is an interesting power.

Corpse Seeds: A small dingy pouch containing a dozen small, rotten-looking seeds. When planted in soft earth, each seed will grow over the course of a minute into a damaged-looking corpse of whatever medium or small humanoid race and gender the user speaks while planting it. The corpse has exceedingly damaged and indistinct features and will otherwise decompose like a normal corpse once fully grown. Bodies created by these seeds are not true corpses and cannot be raises as zombies or skeletons and their souls cannot be spoken to with necromantic magics.

[magioffire]

♡ - how readily do other people accept/perceive your character’s proper gender?

gender shit ; im pretty sure i got every single ask sent to me

in dokkalfar society? pretty readily. as i said before, dokkalfar realize that the way someone presents doesnt correlate to their actual identity all the time. plus the unseelie court itself is pretty tight knit, everyone knows eachother, there would be no reason to not know what everyone's identity is, or at least their pronouns and preferred honorifics. and it would be hard to any other dokkalfar to make vali feel 'unaccepted' about his gender because like..."bro we literally have the same shit going on in our pants, theres literally no biological difference between us on a sex level.' it would be kinda pointless, theres no 'war of the sexes' like in human society. i would have to honestly think about it. how would transphobia manifest in a society where everyone is the same sex, gender identity is considered fluid and theres very little divide between people based on gender/sex, if transphobia would manifest at all? idk, some other trans people might need to chime in on that. i mean, im pretty okay with fae society being a trans paradise where transphobia is either rare or nonexistent because it makes little sense for a dokkalfar to be against vali for ....what? wearing dresses and having a beard at the same time? no dokkalfar would consider those things to clash, because neither dresses nor beards are considered exclusively the domain of women and men, respectively.

as for non-dokkalfar/non-fae, especially human society, i imagine there would be garnering a lot of confusion and attention drawn to vali because of his gender expression. and a lot of it would be not be positive. there are many times where people have approached vali from behind thinking hes a woman, and he turns around and it's obvious hes not a woman, but they cant be quite sure hes a man either, and so confusion ensues. he tends to enjoy confusing cis humans, as its a bit of harmless fun. it becomes not so harmless fun when humans start getting aggressive or disrespectful about the fact vali doesnt fit into their gender binary. he gets a lot of looks and stares for having 'clashing' secondary sex characteristics and mixing together masculine and feminine traits into his fashion, and generally just being the most gender nonconforming bitch in the grocery store. sometimes people will make backhanded comments,  invasive questions, but vali shuts that shit down real quick.

i like to imagine that a lot of fae strike the line between masculine and feminine beauty very well -- this doenst necessarily mean that dokkalfar are all 100 percent neutral, androgyous entities. vali is far from being neutral, but he, and other dokkalfar, still embody feminine and masculine traits. this tends to confuse humans too, because some people cant seem to understand that theres more to gender identity than 'male' 'female' and 'unisex/neutral'. so yeah, i imagine on beatha itself, the humans would be more accepting, maybe still a little confused, but maybe a bit less transphobic than earth humans, because beathan humans have been exposed to a lot more humanoid species that fall outside human sex and gender binary. while us here on earth seem to still be struggling with the concept of 'boy can wear pink and girl can wear blue?????!?!?!??? gasp!!!!!!!! whats next.....cows marrying horses???" because transgender gender expression has been stamped out for so long for various reasons.

[theparanormalperiodical]

The REAL Story Behind Sinister (2012), And The 11 Scariest Pagan Gods That You Don’t Want To Bump Into

It’s damn near impossible to find a really good horror film.

No, I mean a really good horror film.

You know, where the plot is winding, and unravels oh so gently until it snaps us back into its web, leaving us tied up in the lair of a monster as it inches closer and closer towards us.

Most horror films simply don’t make the cut.

But in recent years, there is one that does just that, twisting together an incredible plot, a truly terrifying monster, and the subtleties of gore that have you promising yourself you will never purchase a lawn mower again:

Sinister (2012).

That being said, this story of an unforgiving Pagan god and the innocent families that stumble across his path shouldn’t be shaking you to your core - it’s the real, historic legends that inspired this film.

Bughuul/Bagul is based on 3 Pagan gods, bringing the events behind the camera outside of our TV screen. But the thing is, it turns out Moloch, Baal, and Tlaloc are far from the only holy entities you don’t want to cross paths with.

Bughuul might just be more real than you’d like to think.

What Happens In Sinister (2012) And Sinister 2 (2015)?

Before Bughuul was conjured up from the darkest corners of our nightmares, and before Ellison Oswalt - the main character in the film - even signed the lease on his new house, was an idea.

Sure, the real Pagan gods inspiring Bughuul might be enough to keep you awake at night, but C Robert Cargill, the writer of the film, was inspired by something else at first:

It was a nightmare after watching The Ring (2002).

From here the fundamental building block of the plot was set in place: a supernatural entity spreads itself via films that need to be created and then passed on. The thing is, this being doesn’t channel as much sympathy as we all harboured for Samara.

The starring role of the Super 8 movies in this flick is taken by a far more terrifying being that doesn’t stick to such a rigorous time scale.

Our story follows a true-crime writer attempting to uncover an unsolved murder case to propel himself back to his former fame. But his distant family and obvious alcoholism are about to be the least of his problems when he accidentally unleashes a Pagan god.

You can’t find a Citizens Advice leaflet on that.

The tale begins when the author, Ellison Oswalt, moves into a new home. The thing is, he has a nasty habit of picking houses nearby to the cases he researches - only this time, he’s shacked up in the house where a whole family was murdered in the backyard and the youngest child went missing.

Nothing creepy here, right?

Oh, there’s a box in the attic with a Super 8 film projector and reels of film which display the murder of several families in their own horrific way.

*Inhale*

*Exhale*

Our new favourite true crime writer decides to team up with a lovable police deputy who does some digging around the murders. He discovers these murders took place from the 1960s up to present day, and occurred across the entire US. But what connected these murders - aside from that creepy figure in the background of the clips and the symbols - is that a child from each family went missing after the murder.

One quick Skype call to an esteemed occult professor later, and hey presto he’s realised he’s encountered a Babylonian deity known as Bughuul. But you can call him the Eater of Children, a nickname that caught on when they discovered he likes to consume the souls of children.

In case you can’t do the maths, Bughuul likes to have families murdered, and spare a child as a light snack post-murder.

Throughout this process of unveiling the truth of Bughuul, the paranormal activity begins. The steady climb in the supernatural peaks however when he hears the projector running in the attic. He checks out the situation, and realises all of the missing kids are enjoying a movie night - think less Netflix, more bloodthirsty Pagan god - when Bughuul rocks up via an unnecessary jumpscare.

Oswalt then makes the executive decision to burn the film and projector, and then swap this murder house for his previous residency.

Three cheers for common sense!

The thing is, Oswalt didn’t do his reading on basic horror movie monsters - ghosts haunt places, demons haunt people.

(Rooky error.)

Unfortunately Oswalt learns this when he’s mid-unpack of his old house. The professor then gives him a ring and lets him know that it's images of Bughuul that serve as a gateway for the deity to enter our mortal world. But it’s when kids come into contact with the image that they can be possessed.

That’s right - it’s the kids that do the murdering, the filming, and then the pissing off with Bughuul.

Shortly after this bulb lights up, our lovable deputy also gets on the blower, and lets him know that each family that was murdered did the exact same thing:

They realised their new home was haunted by some presence, shacked up at a new location where there were no Super 8 movies included in the rent, and then were killed by their child.

Yep - our favourite true crime writer has only gone and set off the exact chain of events he attempted to investigate.

(Rooky error.)

Just as he realises he’s been played by the B-man, he passes out. He’s just been poisoned by his daughter. He wakes up moments before being slaughtered with an axe.

The film ends with the child being carried away by Bughuul and teleported into the film with him.

Sinister 2 picks up the plotline several years later, following around the lovable police officer as he takes matters into his own hands; he attempts to destroy the houses that continue Bughuul’s spread across America.

But in this film, we actually get a behind-the-scenes view of Bughuul’s process of encroaching on children. And it turns out the possession is actually peer pressure from the missing children - but instead of trying a cigarette outside the back of the local Lidl, you’re being forced to murder your family in your very own brutal way.

And if this exclusive preview into our favourite Pagan deity wasn’t enough, Bughuul also upskills and learns to utilise a radio to spread his message.

*Deletes BBC Sounds App*

So - Who Is Bughuul?

Found footage is a difficult genre to break into.

Bughuul, however crashes into it, reviving the boring clips that dragged The Blair Witch Project into horror movie infamy and sent the Paranormal Activity viewers to sleep.

Sinister plays with the horror genre in a whole new way, using silent, grainy Super 8 movies to leave the viewers convinced they might awaken a long dead spirit by listening to their favourite murder mystery podcast.

But the visual horror - whether of the gory deaths we witness or of Bughuul himself - confines the movie to the streaming platform you chose that evening.

It’s the unnervingly real concept of Bughuul which allows the events concerning Oswalt to haunt us on a whole new level.

In the film we are told that Bughuul is a Babylonian deity - a Pagan or early Christian demon, if you will - who can possess children, is transmitted through images, likes to murder entire families, and then make do with a child’s soul.

You know, the basic stuff.

Whilst the finer details of Bughuul is not mapped out in theology, the fundamental building block of the body horror in this movie - that of sacrifice in horrific ways - has been practiced throughout history and devoted to 3 specific Pagan gods that the writers drew inspiration from.

And the first is called Moloch.

This Canaanite god was associated with many things, including agriculture and fertility, and sacrifice and fire, all of which are firmly represented in the movie. Whether it's the films’ focus on children, or its the spontaneous combustion of the Super 8 movies and the victims that do not conduct his bidding, Baghuul directly mirrors this entity.

Well, maybe ‘mirrors’ isn’t the right word.

Baghuul has the lookbook of a modern horror monster, from the Slender Man inspired suit to the smokey eye only a 13 year old could pull off. Moloch, on the other hand, is often depicted as a Bronze statue of a humanoid bull sitting down.

And it’s his statue form which lets you in on his preferred method of worship:

The statue would be heated with fire, and victims thrown in as a form of fiery sacrifice.

In fact, in both the 1920s and later in 1962, it was discovered via excavations of the ancient Carthaginian civilisations that both young people and animals were often the most popular victims, forging a link between the youth we saw on our TV screens, and the ashes left in the urns that were found.

This link was even addressed by the writers of the second film, with the promotional poster claiming Bughuul was the brother of this brutal god - but this isn’t the first time Moloch has appeared on the big screen.

Remember that episode in Buffy, you know, the one about online safety cause you won’t run into a paedophile but a glorified demon that wants to become a physical beast and wreak havoc on the world and is going to use you as a source of power?

Yeah, that’s the one.

In fact, Buffy stuck to the same premise, claiming Moloch was unleashed when an ancient text was scanned into a library system.

Sinister had less broody vampires, though.

Our next contender for coulda-been-Bughuul is Baal, a demon which has actually featured in a few other horror flicks of his own, so far. The Rite featured this ancient god who focused his attention on fertility, just like Moloch.

And, just like Moloch, archaeological evidence of sacrifices was discovered, but in a region of Egypt from which he was worshipped.

Amongst the sacrificed infants found was a collection of animals and prostitutes. Even the ancient texts detailing their powers and premise suggests a sibling-like link: Baal Hammon was worshipped by the Carthage people as a supreme god, just like the former entity, and instead of bearing the body of a bull, he appears as a ram.

Yet despite sharing both a ritualistic and physical approach with Moloch, it’s Baal’s backstory that brings us even closer to Baghuul.

Too close.

Legend has it Baal was considered more powerful than his father, suggesting children overpowering their own family is a vital premise of this god.

Our final contender for Baghuul-but-without-the-eyeliner is Tlaloc. And, once again, this entity is just like the previous gods, but belongs on the other side of the globe.

This Aztec god is the god of rain, water and fertility, and despite his rather more peaceful and popular worship today, historically things have been a little, uh, sacrificey.

The remains of war captives have been found near his statues, but this only hints towards his association with death; it is said that he was essentially the destination in the afterlife for those that died from a variety of ailments.

And one of these ailments was child sacrifices.

Think back to the Sinister movies for a second.

In the short Super 8 films we see Bughuul make cameo appearances (like Stan Lee in Marvel films, only he’s a wholesome old man and isn't going to gobble up Hugh Jackman’s soul when the credits roll). This suggests that Baghuul not only enjoys a hobby of snacking on innocent children, but also takes pleasure from the sacrifices of the other family members, and appears at their time of death.

Unfortunately, according to historic worship, Tlaloc prefers his sacrifices a little more niche than just dead parents. Typically he likes his sacrifices to have their hearts extracted from the corpses, and collected in a bowl by the temple.

If you thought Sinister was grotesque, be thankful you didn’t witness a 7 year old stabbing their mother in the chest with a cheese knife.

The 11 Other Terrifying Gods You Don’t Want To Encounter In Your Attic

Paganism is an incredible thing.

It’s a religion that puts the believer at the centre of a huge selection of gods, demons, and deities to choose from. Even modern paganism doesn’t follow any rules.

Simply choose an entity, and get worshippin’!

But there is a downside.

We already know that three Pagan gods are enough to have you avoiding your 5 year old nephew at the next family dinner. But unfortunately, Moloch, Baal, and Tlaloc are far from the only deities that will make you left eye twitch when you see so much as a polaroid camera for fear Bughuul might have taken a #vintage selfie.

There’s 11 more terrifying deities that you don’t want to know about but I’m going to tell you about anyway!

(Yay.)

#1 Chinnamasta

Self-sacrifice and sexual restraint sounds like values we should all practice, but when a Hindu goddess tells you to do it - and she has no head - you might be more reluctant to listen to her wise words.

The legend claims that a group of Hindu gods and demons churned the ocean in order to extract an elixir of immortality. Chinnamasta took a sip, swallowed the entire share for the demons, and chopped her own head off to prevent them from reclaiming it.

An alternative version tells a different story: Chinnasmasta and her crew were bathing too long and realised they were hungry. So, she satiated their hunger by decapitating her own head and allowing her attendants to drink the blood spurting from her neck.

And so, her image is immortalised by three fountains of blood coming out of her neck, and her attendants gulping back the liquid.

Casual.

#2 Pan

As well as being one of the most famous gods to date, this Greek deity is also one of the oldest. And whilst he he is the god of nice, wholesome things like cosy forests and flocks of cute animals, he would be deemed a sex offender today.

Pan would try and have sex with anything - yes, anything - that moved. And when one of these things tried to run away, such as the nymph Syrinx, he chased her down, and then turned her into a pan flute.

And when another nymph also turned him down, he had her murdered by his minions.

Fact is, you can choose which gods you can believe in, but the real horror in the world - sexual predators - will always exist.

#3 - Ishtar

Most gods are known for their brutal acts, whether in the name of justice, or for selfish purposes. The thing is, this goddess has a thing for gore.

And rightly so.

Having been raped by a gardener as she slept underneath the shade of his tree, she got her vengeance by punishing the Earth. She made the rivers flow with blood, she tormented the planet with storms, and she cast disease over our lands.

And similar to the gods already mentioned, she too has a habit of sacrifice. But she doesn’t want people to be sacrificed to her - she prefers to do her own sacrificing of her own lovers.

#4 - Cronus

Next up is the leader of the Titans. But his attempt to eat his own children to prevent them from completing a prophecy and overthrowing him doesn’t get a mention here - it’s what he did to his father.

He scythed off his genitals.

And if that wasn’t enough, he then chucked ‘em into the sea, spawning the goddess Aphrodite.

#5 - Teutates, Esus, and Taranis

Christianity’s got Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit. Paganism on the other hand has its own trio. But these guys rely on routine human sacrifice. But what really sets them apart is that each individual god has their own preferred murder method.

Teutates likes to drown his victims headfirst in ale, Esus likes to have his sacrifices stabbed, hung from trees, and left to bleed out, and Taranis likes wickerwork figures that are set alight to contain his victims in a fiery death a la Nicholas Cage.

Squad goals?

#6 - Tezcatlipoca

The second Aztec god to feature in this post continues the trend of these deities preferring bodily organs. But this deity sets itself apart by craving a far slower ritual that culminates in a sacrifice.

A priest would select a prisoner who was to impersonate the god. Luxurious shenanigans would ensue, including 4 maidens dedicated to his every need. Unfortunately, his needs wouldn’t last too long.

He would have a year of this god-like life, walk up the steps of a temple, and have his heart ripped out.

#7 - Huehueteotl

He was the god of death, hot, and cold. And he liked his sacrifices to have experienced all three at the same time, apparently.

The process of sacrifice would include drugging the victim, roasting them alive, ripping out their heart, and then burning the remains again.

According to other accounts, the victim could simply be drugged, and then dragged with hooks to platforms for the ritual. And then the heart would be cut out and tossed into the fire. And then the rest of the bodies would follow.

Your choice, I guess.

#8 - Toci

Life must’ve been hard back then.

You know, the constant fear that you - yes, you - might be the next victim to be tossed to the flames of fiery sacrifice, or an organ of your deity’s choice was to be placed into what can only be described as a ritualistic olive bowl.

But at least you’d have an inkling of what’s to come. The worshippers of Toci weren’t quite so lucky.

Toci was the goddess of healing and a patron of midwives and healers. But rather than wanting to celebrate life in all of its glory, she actually preferred dead people as gifts.

And so, women were dressed as the goddess, told they were going to see the local ruler, climb the temple, and be met with a priest with a knife. The unlucky woman would be beheaded, her heart removed, and skin flayed.

The priest would complete the ritual - yep, it doesn’t end there - by wearing the skin of the victim.

#9 - Chac

When we discuss sacrifice in the name of a god, it is often assumed that the act took place many years ago, and that the traces of the murders have long since decayed and disappeared from our world. But it turns out that you can actually visit the location of 2 wells in Chichen Itza where sacrifices took place in the name of Chac, the Mayan god of rain, water, and lightning.

But aside from casting storms over his worshippers, he encouraged human sacrifice.

And so, his worshippers obliged by tossing their young children into their wells; they believed Chac resided at the bottom of sinkholes, and wanted their human sacrifices to be as close as possible to him to ensure safe delivery.

According to the film’s lore, Baghuul lives inside of the images, and uses the pictures, the films, and any other form of media as a gateway to our realm.

In that case, God only knows what this article may have unleashed.

Traumatised? Afraid to turn the light out and turn in for fear of hearing Bughuul filming his YouTube outro in your attic? The you might as well check out my other articles in the mean time…

And while you’re there, why not hit follow and see a new real ghost story everyday?

[twitchesandstitches]

Lilisheb the Shoggirl

Basic Concept: A nice and sweet girl who happens to be a gigantic shoggoth-like creature; her alien appearance is comedically at odds with the unusual situations she finds herself in. And it’s funny for a Lovecraftian entity to be a bit of a wallflower!

Appearance: A massive lime-green woman with a vaguely humanoid body, her body composed of a constantly shifting amorphous mass; new features continually drift in and out of being, additional limbs are common. Overall she has a fairly solid, thick build, but she’s just slim enough to qualify as curvy instead. She’s not usually super busty by the standards of my characters, but she can be! Black veins streak across her body, especially wherever she is about to change form. All her body is extremely soft, but not to the point of being liquid. She’s still solid, just… extremely wobbly. She’s got a lot of subtle details of marine life in general: gills, the sheen of scales, and so on, but she appears to base her form specifically on turtles and octopi in general. She likes those.

Her face is mostly featureless; huge, plump lips, several sets of eyes in fairly random places, and a slight swell where humans would have a nose. She does have several thick tentacles where humans would have hair.

Below the waist, her body is a mass of tentacles, notably thicker than her upper body; she can grow any number of these, and her arms are a similar part of tentacles. She had pseudopods instead of fingers, with very dextrous cillae; she can grow fingers, but prefers not to. She has a very plump and shelf-tier backside, and takes some effort to keep it all big and round.

Due to her shapeshifting abilities, she can take on pretty much any shape she wants, though she cannot alter her species; she is obviously a shoggoth girl, in any form. She generally prefers not to deviate from this base form too much, but doesn’t mind adding extra features such as additional eyes, breasts (for multi boob elements), or limbs.

Backstory: She is OLD. Like, super old, really old. She was old long before humanity ever made their first tentative steps into space, and she may well have been alive since before our most distant ancestors had even begun to walk upright on the plains of Central Africa. Consequently, not a whole lot about her is clear, as her vast age leaves her earlier times obscured by the fog of ages, and she would indeed like to know more of what she has forgotten over the years. It is clear, though, that she is a fairly ordinary woman of possibly the eldest known species in the multiverse. She’s lived through at least four different collapses (societal, galactic and even truly cosmic levels) and in conjunction with the constant disasters she sees on an almost daily basis, she’s become something of a hyper anxious nervous wreck.

She is a member of her species commonly referred to as a brood queen; she reproduces asexually, gestating and producing hundreds of offspring that she can then implant in physically receptive mortals - and in turn give her offspring some of their traits and gradually help her own people adapt to changing circumstances - and her relationships with mortals can cause her to gestate entire new species from them. AS a consequence she’s always been rather sheltered and tends to be very codependent on those around her for emotional support.

In fairly recent years, she has done her best to assume ordinary jobs free from stress and Adventure. She does well as an archaeologist, not so much seeing it as uncovering mysteries as remembering things that modern folk have forgotten or laid aside, but unfortunately that does tend to involve a lot of adventure. Invariably, whether she is a cleaner or manager or professor of magic, she winds up entangled in stressful situations.

Personality: Most people, blessed with powers that make humans look like wimps and a natural form of immortality - or something close to it - would probably be a bit arrogant if they spend all their time around those doomed to die by the advance of time. Lilisheb is not one of those people; fundamentally sweet, kind-hearted and as inclined to nastiness as a lump of jelly, she is deeply loving and is a stable center despite being a primordial mass of shapeshifting immortal flesh.

She’s very anxious in pretty much any high-octane situation or what takes her out of a comfort zone… which is bad for her since most of the events I write her into are full of ADVENTURE. This all despite her being borderline indestructible. She does her best to stay calm, which usually lasts for all of a few seconds.

Outside of constantly panicking when villains attack, giant monsters start fighting or she gets pulled into a treasure hunt as a meat shield, she’s a friendly and kind entity, doing her best to put others at ease. She is very affectionate, and doesn’t have much interest in social norms. She shows her love the ways that feel right to her, even if this means sucking you right into her with an overly affectionate hug! Her basis deamonir is like a combo of bubbly and sedate, easygoing but very cheerful about it. Because her people tend to take a very long response to anything, she comes off as obnoxiously airheaded to her people. She does her duties calmly and without emotion, and often serves as a living couch to her smaller friends..

Species: Her people are commonly referred to as shoggoths, but their own word for themselves - roughly translated into one human language - can be rendered as ‘eldlimi’, or eldlimus in singular. They are unbelievably old, and hold a competitive place for ‘oldest beings in the known multiverse’ alongside the Transformers of Cybertron, the giants of the elemental planes, and various precursor societies. They have little common appearance, generally manifesting as a mass of amorphous flesh that is almost liquid in its flowy-ness. They can learn to assume whatever form suits them, though they are often inclined to use certain morphs as a default. Tentacles, multiple eyes, and aquatic traits dominate their instinctive forms, suggesting that their true origin is deep sea.

Certainly the eldlimi are very, very old and established, having stood as masters of the cosmos time and time again. They hold a position for establishing cosmic councils where all civilizations can meet together and peacefully negotiate for the future, and did so shortly after recovering from their most recent collapse. Due to their age, they tend to not take ordinary mortals too seriously, but at worst they tend to infantilizing others, rather than cruelty or oppression.

Fandom: Original. While heavily influenced by shoggoths from Lovecraft’s mythos, she bears little resemblance to either them or their outlook in a practical sense. She’s more or less her own thing.

Abilities: As typical with her people, she is a shapeshifter and can remold her amorphous body into nearly any shape. She can manifest a seemingly limitless number of limbs, eyes or even produces mouths or relevant organs from her body. (Multiple breasts, mouths of any shape or more delicate, unusual transformations are well within her power.) On the same note, she can alter her body to produce certain liquids or chemicals as she sees fit, assuming she knows what they are made of and the details of their production. She could make herself lactate enormous amounts of super-nutritious milk, for instance, but not super-flammable organic gasoline unless she worked out its chemical composition first.

She can grow smaller or larger, with no real limitation besides the mass she has available to work with, though she naturally gravitate towards larger, squishier forms. She can produce as many eyes or limbs as she requires, but leans towards tentacles rather than hands or feet. While she can force her insides into a rigid framework like a skeleton or even an exoskeleton for armor, she finds this deeply uncomfortable and prefers not to. She also cannot change her body’s consistency from its natural spongey nature, and thus she cannot disguise herself as a different species.

Her body’s amorphous nature grants her some other advantages. She can extend her jaws and swallow anything whole no matter the size, as long as she can wrap around it, and make her digestive acids extremely strong; she could even shift them around into her egg chambers, flushing them with regenerative liquids as an unbirthing method. She can push herself through most gaps and flow out like living water, and she is absurdly flexible thanks to her lack of an internal skeleton. Many attacks will simply pass through her if she remembers to decrease her solidity, and those that do hit her will likely be regenerated very quickly by her immortal flesh.

On a more prosaic note, while she claims to have no useful skills, her sheer age means she has picked up an extremely wide variety of skill sets. She has likely done every single conceivable non-violent career in existence, from plumber to manager to economics expert to caregiver… it goes on indefinitely, even if she can’t remember it or if they were so specific to a certain time’s technologies and social norms that they no longer have applicability. This gives her an enormous range in practical abilities, and incidentally makes her a fantastic teacher.

Height: Varies enormously; since she is a shapeshifter, she can be virtually any possible height if she has the mass to do it. She can’t just grow to whatever height she wants, as if she doesn’t have enough mass, she won’t be able to even stand up under her own power. She typically stabilized at around twelve feet or so, barring exceptionally large meals or unusual magical circumstances.

Relationships: She’s a friendly, sweet and gentle person somewhat prone to developing infatuations with people she has just met, so she has a LOT of friends and casual lovers, though it can be very hard to understand exactly what’s going on in her head. She is by far the single oldest of my OCs, even older than the likes of eons-ancient Jord, and tends to drift into the role of a den mother among her friends for that reason. She doesn’t have any established relationships as of this post, but some possibilities:

Sekhma - she thinks Miss Dionsi is cool, but way too serious! Relax a bit, no need to go all evangelical and stuff…. She may be one of Sekhma’s customers, seeking help for her chronic anxiety problems.

Pavumi - She has NO idea what Pavumi honestly is and that deeply worries her. She may be akin to her own people… or to their makers. This worries Lilisheb a lot, even though Miss Ekidna is a really nice lady!

Hivluk - what a handsome young man! She adores him, he’s just so sweet! For his part, he’s fine with her advances, as she is not even slightly scary.

Toast - she’s a xenophile sweetheart who wants everyone to be happy; he’s a loopy killing machine who wants to kill all humanity for what are probably imagined slights. They don’t get along at all for those reasons, but would probably be decent friends if that wasn’t an issue.

Odina: Besties!!! Both of them hate adventure, and would rather stay home and enjoy mundane, slice of life things. When together, Odina tends to be the more practical and sensible between the two, and gets sandwiched into her body a lot.

Pred Level: Moderate predator, with some prey levels. She is not primarily a predator-type, finding it horrifyingly cruel to swallow friends whole and hurt them no matter how hungry you are. Against threats, ordinary animals or genuine monsters, though, she has little problem simply swallowing them whole with as little interest as if she had finished off a fast food plate. It’s not her first course of action, though, and she is very reluctant to do this.

Prey Level: She’s likely vulnerable to more serious predatory specialists, due to her lack of combat skills and general timidity. Her prey levels are fairly high, owing to both the shape of her body and her trusting, timid personality. However, because of her regenerating flesh, its pretty much impossible to kill her through digestion alone; even one speck outside that gut will regenerate back to the true Lilisheb!

Relevant Kink Material: Xeno stuff in general; her shapeshifting powers offer many possibilities for Big Sexy Monster Girls. Her vast size, kindly demeanor and romantic inclinations are great sweetness material.

[makerof150papermasks]

The Three Governments of Spyro the Dragon

 Today, I have something really interesting that I feel would be worth talking about. Now I remember recently reading a post titled “’Kirby Super Star’ is a Marxist critique of the Soviet Union,” which delves into the titular 1996 SNES video game so deeply and somehow matches it up with certain pieces of USSR history (Reddit). After viewing this, I began to think, “I know a few other games that I could analyze like this guy did with Kirby.” Yes, I was motivated so much by this blog that I had a hunch to work on my own research chat.

Now the games I am about to talk about are the first three games in the Spyro the Dragon series first released for the PlayStation from 1998 to 2000, titled Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of The Dragon (Additionally, all three titles recently received a remake collectively titled “Spyro Reignited Trilogy,” which makes this document relevant as of 2019). With a little research, I was able to pair those games with a government that best defined them in a nutshell. Of course, not all real-life elements of these governments may actually match up with how any of the fictional societies depicted operate, but I’ve tried my hardest to make sure the details match up strongly enough that they can be talked about.

 *If you haven’t played the games yet and don’t want to be spoiled, then don’t bother reading!

  Spyro the Dragon: Confederation (Left)

 I want to start this discussion by saying something unique about this first third of the review: unlike the latter two titles, Spyro the Dragon seems to promote the idea of its featured form of government rather than point out the significant flaws and ensure the audience doesn’t sympathize with the concept at hand. First off, I want to give you folks a good look at how the populace of the Dragon Worlds goes about their lives and organizes themselves socially speaking. For those of you don’t already know enough about the game’s context, there are five socially-unique sectors that each owe something important to the well-being of the larger society. The Artisans represent the working class, the Peace Keepers are equivalent to a military system, the Magic Crafters are most likely representative of the business owners and upper class (As noted by the sheer presence of overly-elegant architecture in their specific area), the Beast Makers represent those who work in health, medical, biological, and other science-related fields, while the Dream Weavers can be considered a spiritually-grounded group of dragons who are experts in the field of meditation. Then there’s the extra sixth sector known as Gnasty’s World (Residence of main antagonist Gnasty Gnorc, who holds no true political power under any circumstance; therefore, I will leave him out of the equation), which I’ll just shoehorn into the sanitation sector, even though it would still easily be associated with the working class (Artisans). 

With the exception of Gnasty’s World, these groups all serve an equally vital role in establishing the economic stability and societal foundation of the Dragon Worlds, in the form of a confederation. Now if you folks are wondering what that’s supposed to mean, here’s the definition; “an organization which consists of a number of parties or groups united in an alliance or league.” For a historical example, the United States operated in this manner under the Articles of Confederation of 1777, which was ratified in 1781 and formed a society whose power lay mostly in the hands of the member states. Up until 1789, these states could establish laws without having to worry about a federal government trampling over those laws since the existing equivalent had far less political power than the one present (Reference.com).

Revisiting my view from the previous paragraph, it can be noted that each of the first five sectors can be viewed as separate, autonomous states that, in spite of their different approaches to solving daily situations, hold a common view of some sort that unites them into a larger entity. While it’s not known in canon if the sectors that dragons live in have ever come into conflict with each other at any point, I will bring up some backstory later on that may be worth identifying.

  Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage: Empire (Middle)

 Now looking at the titular villain and his path to wretchedness, picture him as this small, colonial society. From what we’re aware of based on the context provided in-game, Ripto and his cronies have no idea that Avalar (The main setting of this sophomore title) even exists at first. Now keep in mind that since Ripto despises dragons, he’s picky about where he wants to expand his influence. But anyway, once he finds himself in this dragon-free dimension, it becomes the perfect opportunity for Ripto to slowly nibble away at the land until there is no more for him to take over, aka, colonize. Of course, once Spyro shows up, the horned, red midget becomes rather peeved, prompting him and his goons to actually begin setting up the framework for his proposed kingdom. 

Throughout the events of the game, Ripto not only uses his magic to spread his negative influence across the dimension (AKA: Cause various beasts and baddies to run amok and result in calamity), but we are also shown the blue banners of Avalar being rolled back in favor of emblems donning the antagonist’s mug, THRICE. According to my searches, an empire is defined as, “an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority, formerly especially an emperor or empress.” In this case, Ripto can easily be seen as emperor because at his highest position, he holds control over not just his two reptilian brutes (Who serve as a metaphor for his “kingdom” at its most basic), but also numerous realms scattered throughout Avalar, each serving as their own formerly independent municipalities until he enters the picture. 

Now here’s another point: even with Spyro around, Ripto still feels the need to settle in Avalar because there are no dragons around other than Spyro himself currently present to scare him away, which thereby gives him access to a shipload of land and resources. When it came to real-life empires, they were strategic regarding which areas to conquer. For example, the Roman Empire wouldn’t go east into modern-day Germany because the cost of conquest in that area was far above the monetary worth earned from the extractable resources available in that region (The Daily Reckoning). 

Moving on, the western half eventually collapsed primarily due to internal conflicts over power that left them exposed to outsiders (The eastern half, dubbed “The Byzantine Empire,” managed to survive until 1453, when it fell to Turkish invaders as a result of their victory in the Byzantine-Ottoman wars). In-game, the biggest reason Ripto is defeated is because he overlooks the possibility of Spyro collecting Avalar’s sacred talismans and orbs, which collectively allow the young dragon to pass through the barriers that separate both parties.

  Spyro: Year of The Dragon: Totalitarian State (Right)

 Jumping ship to the final third of the original Spyro trilogy, we now examine the Forgotten Realms and its central government in the form of the despotic, blue crocodilian-esque Sorceress. Now the previous two games sugarcoated their subject matter immensely (Though the second game still views the concept of an empire as a detrimental idea), but this time the game doesn’t make things look as rosy. First and foremost, The Sorceress displays a position of superiority around anyone in her vicinity, and in an overly aggressive manner most of the time. Already, we’re seeing her being established as a straw tyrant; alas, there is still so much more to discuss regarding the Forgotten Realms operating as a political body that blatantly abides by the guidelines of totalitarianism. Now where do we begin on this topic?

My first point of conversation in this segment is that unlike Gnasty Gnorc or Ripto in the previous two games (Now although the latter does become “ruler” near the end of his respective game, he doesn’t spend nearly enough time to be officially considered a grand-high patriarch by any of the residents of Avalar), The Sorceress is a formally-recognized monarch, is referred to as such by the inhabitants of the Forgotten Realms, and to make matters much worse, has been ruling this same exact dimension, in the same throne for AT LEAST 1000 YEARS. Not only that, but at one point, the dragons currently living dwelling in the Dragon Realms once lived in the Forgotten Realms. But when they left, they took their magic with them and as the centuries passed, magic began to drain and caused their fancy-schmancy portals to stop working. We’re convinced to think that the reason The Sorceress has become so wary of Spyro’s presence is because he will disrupt her plans to gather the eggs they had stolen from the dragons; she is supposedly gathering them in order allow this upcoming generation of winged reptiles to bring magic back to the dimension she rules over.

I will bring up that part about the dragons and the eggs again, but there is an important detail that points further to establishing The Sorceress as an antagonist known for taking full advantage of her position over everyone around her and therefore preventing anyone from reasoning with her other than Spyro and a slew of animal friends she had recently imprisoned. A little more than a quarter way into the game, Spyro finds himself in a realm known as Enchanted Towers; it is here that he discovers that a slew of lavender-skinned counterculture humanoids had been tasked with erecting a statue built in their highness’ likeness.

There’s just so much to talk about regarding what the statue situation represents, but first let me define what this government is. Totalitarianism is described as being, “a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.” The aforementioned statue in Enchanted Towers is probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence pointing to the Forgotten Realms operating under that kind of system. To start, the Sorceress displays unrivaled power in the world she inhabits and no one dare beg to differ with her on that matter. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that the citizens of Enchanted Towers mention that they certainly did not enjoy creating this tremendous work of art (Though they agree that it looks prettier than the actual character herself, further driving the sense of rebellion in), but they completely understand that going against what The Sorceress is telling them to do is like flirting with death.

You, the reader, have to realize that this is a form of government where there isn’t a legislative or judicial system to limit executive power. Heck, that’s not even getting into the fact that the denizens of the Forgotten Realms have neither a right to free speech nor the freedom to vote in elections, as far I’m aware. It’s certainly no fun living in a society where one person holds all the social and political power and you’re not that one person, nothing delightful about that (And there’s nothing anyone can do to change the fact unless someone successfully uses force to overthrow the one in power so they wouldn’t be able to enforce their laws any longer).

Before getting to the climax of this essay, it’s that time I bring up a real example. Although I’d be talking about a dictatorship along the lines of Nazi Germany, I’ve decided to take a more interesting example from further back in history. The Qin Dynasty, an empire to which China borrows its name from, relied on an authoritarian set of regulations that would become hugely influential to every Chinese-based dynasty that followed. Although it only lasted from 221 to 207 BC, there’s still some valuable information to extract from this chapter of human history. It also makes sense for me to select this example because the game’s title, Year of The Dragon, references a specific birth year on the Chinese Zodiac (Speaking of which, the year the game itself originally released just happened to land on a dragon year, which only happens once every twelve years).

Now allow me to continue with the example. Under the commissioning of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the very first leader of a unified China, came a standardized system of writing and a strictly-guided formula for measuring the width, weight, and length of highways. Huang also oversaw construction of what would become the first section of The Great Wall of China and eventually went on to abolish the feudal system that flourished during the Zhou Dynasty decades earlier (In which landowners owed allegiance to the emperor as a result of kinship rather than fulfilling legal obligations). In addition, he commissioned the burning of almost all of the books currently available in that region at the time, only sparing those that provided information on topics like medicine and issued gigantic tax levies in an effort to pay for his military and construction expenses. This matrix of catastrophes led to a rebellion following Qin Shi Huang’s death in 210 BC, which went on to ultimately knock the Qin Dynasty out of power and make room for the Han Dynasty roughly 3-4 years later (Britannica).

Now what I’ll be explaining next is going to be extremely horrifying in hindsight, so grab your popcorn and hold your breath. While exploring Evening Lake, the third home world of the game, Spyro’s close friend Hunter winds up in a subterranean trap set up by The Sorceress that was meant for Spyro himself to prevent him from collecting any more of the dragon eggs that she desperately wanted to remain untouched. He is then approached by her servant, a magician-in-training named Bianca (To whom he has a developed a liking for over the course of the synopsis), who comes to tell the caged cheetah that the reason the dragons left so many years ago was because it had to do with their wonderful wings. As they began to realize that the obese blue saurian autocrat wanted to clip them off to give her immortality, they had no choice but to find solace in another reality. Linking this information to Spyro 1, we can now go back to viewing the example of confederation as the United States during the era of the Articles of Confederation, trying to recuperate from their religious tension with the monarchy of England and emigrating from there before ultimately deciding to settle in North America and establish a self-governed nation over the course of several decades. In the Spyro continuity, the dragons succeeded in building an autonomous series of societies in the then-vacant Dragon Realms following their disastrous affair with The Sorceress, where they then proceeded to push aside Gnasty Gnorc to the wastelands at some point later in time so they would have enough room to properly establish their footing in this uncharted land.

But sadly, that is not the end of the suspense; when Bianca returns to her master’s throne room, she discovers a dreadful truth she hadn’t been aware of until now. Ever since her henchmen brought the yet-to-hatch eggs back from the Dragon Worlds, The Sorceress hoarded them not because she wanted them to return their magic to the Forgotten Realms once they did hatch, but because she wanted to KILL THEM FOR THEIR WINGS LIKE SHE ATTEMPTED TO DO WITH THE ADULT DRAGONS BEFORE THEY LEFT. What she’s basically telling us is that she plans on committing an act of GENOCIDE ON AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF NEWBORNS in a similar manner to how Hitler promoted the large-scale massacre on an enormous number of Jews during the Holocaust.

With not a pinch of sympathy for anyone but herself by this point, the malevolent indigo monarch has become nothing short of a filthy caricature for the horrors of tyranny and dictatorship. By the way, she didn’t have to kill the newborns at all for that to happen, she just felt the need to do so JUST BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THEM SQUIRMING AROUND IN HER QUARTERS. Prompting a drastic change of heart, Bianca decides to cease working for her master, opting to rescue Hunter from the trap her former supervisor had set up in Evening Lake. Fed up with the treason her lackey recently committed, The Sorceress decides to create an absurdly powerful, bat-winged monster intended to annihilate practically everyone in her opposition (Simply put, that means almost the entire population of the world she governs, plus Spyro and some of the friends he bought along).

Even though Spyro manages to eradicate The Sorceress for good, (Much to the satisfaction of the Forgotten Realms inhabitants) the atrocious myriad of actions she takes during that one game position her as an antagonist who is regarded as a dark villain for a normally light-hearted sugar bowl series like Spyro, thereby leaving an indelible mark on the narrative of that franchise’s continuity. Serving as a harsh critique for the concept of autocracy and its consequences on the people, Spyro: Year of The Dragon uses a surprisingly pathos-inducing series of events that favors a call to action for executive reform, appealing to the wants and needs of the governed rather than the desires and aspirations of the government itself.

  Sources:

 Kirby Super Star: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/39dbqi/kirby_super_star_is_a_marxist_critique_of_the/

 Confederacy: https://www.reference.com/government-politics/examples-confederate-government-230a5f967d7f24fa

 Empire: https://dailyreckoning.com/how-empires-really-work/

 Totalitarian State: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Qin-dynasty

https://www.reference.com/history/feudalism-ancient-china-8ddd0bf737a29fc5

[npc-guy]

Dwarf Summoner

Hey there everybody. Sorry for no post the last couple of weeks, I thought I’d have time and I overestimated myself. Part of that was taken up by a convention I was working, and then I just didn’t have the energy until Memorial Day which meant I had no time this past weekend. It’s almost as if the universe conspires against me… or I’m procrastinating too much. Let’s go with the first option, it’s a more interesting narrative. But let’s get to the reason you’re here: Pathfinder and NPCs!

Welcome back the summoner! We haven’t seen this class for some time, so let me just give a quick refresher: the summoner is an arcane caster who is specialized in conjuration magic and has a special intelligent companion-creature called an eidolon. The eidolon is an entity that is given form by their summoner, which can result in eidolons looking like normal animals, magical beasts, outsiders, or even a humanoid of some type. So, how will this class interact with dwarves and how can you use them as NPCs?

Well, I can see summoners being a mixed reaction for dwarves. They may be viewed as simply an extension or close cousin of wizards, perhaps even confusing them with the more common conjurists. Certainly the average person, dwarf or not, is unlikely to know the difference. Alternatively, with dwarven culture often being more distrustful or downright hostile against the unknown, other dwarves may treat them poorly because they don’t know what to make of the eidolon.

The summoners themselves are likely making their bond with the eidolon for specific reasons, similar to those of their elven counterparts. Perhaps, like the elf, a dwarf is drawn to the eidolon because it is an ally that can be alongside them constantly for the majority if not the entirety of their remaining lifespan. Halflings and humans on average live less than a century, but this creature will last just as long as you will. Ooh, quick thought: can an eidolon make a new connection with another summoner after their previous summoner has died? What would happen to the eidolon’s form- would it change or stay the same? Interesting new thoughts here. This is all stuff that you would only need to think about if it mattered to your game, but it certainly can if you want.

This post is getting a little long, so let’s just finish with why you might have a dwarf summoner NPC in your game. One option is the same as I said with the elves: this race has a different arcane tradition, and that can be the summoner. It could be limited further to a specific region, city, clan, organization, etc. Another possibility is that it might be someone who has delved into forbidden research about places and entities that are not supposed to be known to anyone. The eidolon may look like a normal outsider, but it is not. What if this entity is just using the summoner to achieve their own goals? Maybe there is a reason this thing was formless and impotent.  Remember, a class is whatever you make of it. Let me give you a few ideas for these interesting arcane NPCs.

Shimizu Natsuki of the Deep Delvers

The concept of heroism is one that has a special place in dwarven society. Great dwarves are recognized for their deeds, and “heroes” are especially revered. Natsuki longed to be a hero since she was very young, but she’s chosen a very unorthodox path. As a summoner, her scope of skills is more limited than other spellcasters, but her eidolon Kokoro allows her a unique usefulness. Cave-ins are particularly dangerous in the tunnels of her people, as hungry creatures are often waiting for the opportunity to attack injured or disoriented. Kokoro’s form is based on badgers and other digging animals, and is also strong and capable in a fight. Natsuki joined the Deep Delvers to save people from awful fates, and bring her people home.

Gerban Stephanos

Scrying into the space between is forbidden to mages except for the strongest and most trustworthy diviners. But Gerban’s curiosity was too great, and in that expanse of shifting mist and clashing vistas, he found something. A particular knot of protomatter somehow spoke to him through his scrying spell, and offered knowledge about its domain and others. But, Gerban would have to bring the intelligence into his world and give it a form to survive. In secret, he performed the ritual and gave the entity a humanoid form to hide its true identity. Pretending that Bartholomeus was his cousin wasn’t so difficult, especially with the fact that the eidolon seemed preternaturally good at deception. Soon, they were off on a journey to strange places where, according to “Bart”, ancient secrets were waiting to be rediscovered.

Salathiel Keaton

In Salathiel’s part of the world, clerics and other divine servants are hunted and killed, as well as any mages who practice conjuration magic. Those in power consider the calling of outsiders, even truly benevolent ones, to be a violation of the natural order and an invitation for a planar disaster. Salathiel is the latest in a long line of those who have dealt with the divine in one way or another, but their way of doing it is a combination of their mother’s paladin traditions and their father’s training as a conjurer wizard. As a summoner, Salathiel’s eidolon Brandon takes the form of something close to a celestial griffin. Brandon’s form allows him to both fight alongside other summoned entities or get himself and Salathiel to safety if the battle cannot be one.

[landoftheway]

Thoughts on Persona 5

Gonna be giving a bunch of my thoughts on Persona 5 and how it stacks up compared to the other Persona games. TL;DR: 

P2EP > P5 > P2IS > P4 > P3 > P1

Persona 5 couples what are easily the best mechanics in the series with a story that rivals the other best entries both in terms of narrative quality and thematic approach. It falls just short of Eternal Punishment in terms of its story quality, but that’s only because that game has some of the best story elements and themes of any game in the MegaTen franchise.

Spoiler-y thoughts below the cut  - DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE BEATEN THE GAME

I won’t bother going over much of the gameplay aspects because they largely speak for themselves, but there are a few things worth noting because of their story significance:

Demon/Shadow negotiation is handled really well. There’s just enough variability in answers for it to still be risky without it edging into absurdity, and it’s appropriate for it to be brought back due to shadows basically being equivalent to demons; more on that later.

Confidants providing their own gameplay bonuses outside of unlocking stronger Personas is both a great way to incentivize players to complete them and fits with the initial reasoning for bonding with them specifically for their usefulness to the Phantom Thieves rather than purely as friends.

Now onto a few story elements I wanted to go over:

Like I mentioned before, shadows are presented as equivalent to demons, which actually makes perfect sense given the setting they appear in. The Metaverse is basically just a part of the Expanse/Demon World/Makai that’s brushing up against the real world, and thus the beings that live within it would naturally be demons themselves. They only become shadows because the presence of Palaces causes any demons within them to fall under the will of the Palace’s ruler, turning them into the humanoid forms we see until they become ready for serious battle. Upon being reminded of their origins as demons, they can then be integrated as personas by Joker because personas themselves naturally take the form of demons (due to those forms existing as strongly-resonating archetypes in the Collective Unconsciousness) and because Joker’s Wild Card ability naturally lets them use multiple personas. It’s basically the same method that the persona users of P1 and P2 were able to obtain new personas, except that the recruitment ability is limited to Joker because the other users obtained their powers entirely on their own rather than having their power granted by a connection to the Velvet Room.

I absolutely love the presentation of the characters as vigilantes whose ethics are at least somewhat questionable rather than straight-up good guys, particularly because of how it fits with a common concept that’s been discussed since P3. Namely, the question of whether the protags of 3, 4, and 5 only forge bonds with people because of the power they gain from those bonds as opposed to genuinely caring about said people. While it’s fairly obvious that the canonical interpretations of all the protags are of them as good people who do genuinely value their friends, what I like about P5′s approach is that it humanizes Joker by presenting their initial motivations for getting close to others as selfish, only for them to shift to selfless as those bonds progress. This makes him stand out as less of a perfect hero that the player is meant to project onto and more as a defined character within their own story, which I much prefer to the former.

The concept of the Wild Card as a villain was really cool. While I wish Goro could have actively switched between Robin Hood and Loki during his fight, it was still cool to have that concept turned on the player. Additionally, I like the idea of Loki being Goro’s true persona and Robin Hood manifesting from his bond with Joker. He quite clearly had Loki before joining the Thieves since he needed that to cause the psychotic breaks, but his only true emotional bond with others was with Joker (starting in June when the Justice arcana first manifests with Joker) and thus he could only manifest one additional persona.

While there’s been a lot of jokes about how Shido is basically a Japanese version of Armstrong from MGR, there’s actually an interesting thematic note to that comparison. Armstrong was basically an embodiment of popular American concepts of individualism and freedom, only taken to such ludicrous extremes that he became a villain. Shido is in many ways equivalent in what he represents: a extension of the popular Japanese concepts of society harmony and strong leadership taken to extremes. Though it should be noted that Armstrong was genuine in his desire to save his country (even if it meant destroying it first) while Shido only truly cared about saving himself and those who were useful to him, it could be argued that this desire was the foundation of how he planned to shape the country into what he genuinely thought was good (however fucked up that notion of his clearly was). I have no idea if these parallels in terms of themes or appearance were intentional on the part of Atlus, but it’s still an interesting comparison.

Yaldabaoth is a particularly interesting villain because he’s not a true god or demon like Nyx or Izanami. Instead, he’s more or less the reverse of what the shadows in P5 are: a concept tied to a Palace that’s adopted the form of a god’s archetype from within the Collective Unconsciousness. Specifically, the existence of the Metaverse as a realm distinct from both reality and the common planes of the Expanse led to the physical manifestation of people’s desires, the strongest of which (at least within Tokyo) was the desire for societal order and peace. That led to the formation of the Holy Grail as a treasure and Mementos as the collective Palace of the people of Tokyo. Over time, that treasure gained enough power from people’s faith that it was able to develop its own ego, which led to it becoming similar to a traditional MegaTen god: an abstract concept that is able to manifest as a specific entity and with enough power develop its own ego and personality. Thus, the Holy Grail (already being inherently connected with the Collective Unconsciousness) was able to choose an identity for itself based upon popular deities that personified order; Yaldabaoth was one such candidate, though it presumably could have also taken the form of any other supreme god of order. It’s formation is actually not all that different from YHVH’s in mainline SMT: mankind’s desire for order led to the formation of a deity that would bring just that, but by its very nature it can only recognize order itself as good. I’m still curious as to whether or not some part of Yaldabaoth was preserved within the Axiom due to its inherent connection to YHVH (which is particularly evident given that it is able to call upon the four Archangels to serve it), which would in turn mean that YHVH could have internalized that part. If nothing else, it’s an interesting thought that could lead to some cool fanfiction.

As an aside, I don’t really have much to say about the underlying themes of Chaos and Order in this game other than how they cater super hard to me being a huge Chaos dork. While they’re not quite as abstract as I would prefer, that’s mostly because they’re looking at the more practical societal implications of those concepts (most particularly in regards to Japanese society), which is perfectly understandable given the Persona series’ focus on individuals rather than ideas. What I will say is that this particular bias towards Chaos is fairly justified in this case given the nature of the society in question and the aspects of that society the game is criticizing, though that obviously means that the applicability of those themes to other societies will vary as opposed to the more universal themes of the mainline SMT games.

[kokania00]

Computers Verses Concepts: Can Computers Think?

Traffic computers manage our signal lights. Microprocessors direct our car engines. Automated controllers run our factories.

And in an insult of sorts, Watson, a successor in spirit to Deep Blue, trounced our human compatriots in Jeopardy.

Computers have permeated our work and our leisure and our lives. This has mainly been for the good, enhancing human society, enabling our progress. But we wonder. Do we feel comfortable with so many functions performed by non-thinking machines? Do we risk something passing off control to efficient, but non-the-less essentially mindless, entities?

Or maybe we feel the opposite, we wouldn't want our computers to think, otherwise we, humans, might lose control.

So can computers "think?" Would it pose a danger, or provide a benefit?

I will explore those questions, and do so, as I often do with questions of this kind, with a thought experiment.

Poker Chips

Imagine round, plastic poker chips, like you might find at a casino. Rather than being imprinted with dollar figures, we stamp each chip with a different number. The numbers run from one to twenty-five thousand. We need so many because each chip stands for a word, though for this discussion we don't know which one.

Well, we will allow some exceptions. We will have a subset of chips with actual words not numbers. These words will be mainly prepositions, articles, linking verbs, etc. such as, "is", "to", "can" and "from". This allows us to construct relations between the numbered chips. For example, using the words and chips, we might have:

"Two" can be "Seventeen" from "Sixty-four."

That might stand for something such as a chair (two) can be assembled (seventeen) from wood (sixty-four). We proceed to construction thousands, hundreds of thousands, of such relations.

We could now be asked questions, such as what can a "two" be "seventeen" from. We would search through the array of chip expressions, and find our example expression, an answer "sixty-four." We would have found the correct answer. But we did so not by understanding anything, but rather by looking through a collection of meaningless chip relationships. We had no idea of what we what talking about. We didn't understand.

From Symbols to Meaning

What would it take to add understanding to the numbers on the chips?

We could translate the chips to words. But that is not really an answer, since words are still symbols. If we translated the chip numbers into Latin, few of us would really gain any understanding. The Latin words, in fact most words in any language, are as arbitrary a symbol as the number on the chip.

Pictures, however, would help. If a dozen or so pictures of a chair were connected to the chip numbered two, we would begin to understand. "Two" would start to have meaning.

We can envision continuing the process across hundreds, thousands, of the chips, associating each with pictures, or a movie, or a sound, or a smell, or even a touch sensation (hot, cold, sharp, soft, etc). Our understanding would expand.

At some point, understanding the concepts associated with each chip would require more than pictures. "Push" could be movie of a person with his or her shoulder to a dresser moving the dresser. That may or may not be interpreted correctly. But by this point, we would have built an understanding of a good number of the chips, so the movie could be supplemented by the sentence "to push is to move an object. This can be done by walking while having your body against the object."

We could continue to build concepts upon concepts in the same manner. Once we reached a sufficient base, maybe when we got through the first ten thousand chips, we could really step up to tackle the chips that represented words like "justice" and "truth."

So eventually, we could teach ourselves the "meaning" of all the twenty five-thousand chips. We would understand.

But could we teach a computer so that it would "understand?"

The Role of Experience

Yes, and no.

Yes, because like our human above, a computer can readily associate pictures, movies, sounds, smells, touches to a symbol. Certainly the computer would need many unique components, including specialized sensors, optimized processors, large memory stores, and custom software. But we don't picture this as outlandish. We can picture a humanoid robot, with appropriate sensors in the locations of the human's ears, eyes, nose, finger tips, and so on, connected wirelessly to the computer complex needed to process all that data.

As sophisticated as the Watson of Jeopardy fame is, such a robot would be a generation, maybe two, beyond Watson. Watson works at the level of word association, basically linking our numbered chips. Watson has assimilated billions of associations between those chips, but nowhere does it appear Watson associates a chip/word with anything other than another number chip, or an occasional picture or sound.

Our robot goes beyond that. It doesn't just associate "chairs" with "four legs". Our robot learns by sitting on actual chairs; in fact we have it sit on dozens of chairs of all different types, metal ones, wood ones, plastic ones, soft ones, hard ones, squeaky ones, springy ones. And as this happens, the robot's sensors gather sounds, sights, feels, smells, at ranges and precisions well beyond humans. All the while, the robot and its computers are building associations upon associations.

And we repeat the process with tables, then with beds, then dressers and the whole range of furniture. We then move to desk items (paper, books, pens, erasers), then to kitchen items, bathroom items, work bench items, then move outside, and on and on.

When it has a sufficient knowledge of the poker chips we teach it to use the internet. The number of associations explodes.

We then add in a crucial element, evaluative software. This software allows for judgments, and comparisons, and balancing of alternate answers, and so on. We have evaluation modules for many aspects of the world, for engineering, for ethics, for aesthetics, for social dynamics.

With all this, we then send our robot/computer out into the world, to shop, to travel, to attend college and to work, all to build further and deeper associations and to tune the evaluation modules.

Let's say the training progresses for a decade. Would our robot now understand?

Yes, and no.

Yes in that the computer would have an association mapping as rich and complex as humans, and an ability to make judgments with those associations. For example let's ask the robot/computer "would you drive a freight train on a highway, and why?"

If we asked Watson, I surmise it might stumble. Watson would find many associations between highways and freight handling, and associations of trains as a vehicle and that vehicles (trucks, cars) ride on highways. It would find many citations that trucks ride on trains, and train containers ride on trucks.

In contrast, Watson would only see few mentions of the fact that the wheels on a train would damage the highway, and that the wheels could not obtain sufficient traction on the road surface to travel under control.

So Watson would be confronted with at best conflicting associations relative to freight trains and highways, and at worst indications the trains and highways are compatible.

Watson would then likely falter with the words "would you" and "why." Those don't call for a fact, but rather a judgment, and Watson can not really evaluate, it can only associate.

In contrast, our robot would likely catch the intent of the question. We gave our robot the ability to evaluate, and the word "would" would explicitly trigger the evaluation modules. Watson would run through them all, for example considering ethics, and efficiency, and economics, but would eventually reach a technical valuation based on engineering.

In fairly short order (a few seconds) or maybe long order (a few minutes), our robot/computer would calculate the load stresses of the train wheels on the asphalt and concrete, and the lateral friction between the steel and the road. The robot would see that the concentrated load from the train wheels would exceed the carrying capacity of the road material, and also see that friction between the wheels and the road surface would be insufficient to provide traction and lateral control.

Our robot would thus respond that it would not drive a train on a highway, since the train would fail in critical mechanical aspects.

Could our robot really do such engineering calculations? Computers do them routinely now. But today humans configure the problem for the computer, so could our robot convert our question to the necessary mechanical setup. Yes, converting a physical object or system into an abstract force diagram may be daunting, but it is not mystery or magic. The process of creating force diagrams can be converted into an algorithm, or set of algorithms, and algorithms can be programmed into a computer.

So our robot thinks? Yes. But does it "understand"?

No.

The robot lacks consciousness. For all the ability of the robot to associate and evaluate, the robot isn't conscious. Why do I say that? Long story short (and a discussion of computer consciousness could be long), our robot of the near future will have microchips of traditional architecture. These microchips may be very fast, may be very sophisticated, and may be made of exotic semiconductors, but they will be extensions of today's architectures nonetheless. In my view, such chips, even thousands put together, do not have the right configuration to generate consciousness.

So, agree or not, let's posit that our robot is not conscious. And consciousness is likely the key to going beyond thinking to meaning. We know a chair not because we have digitally stored a sensor measurement of a 3/8 inch deflection in a cushion. We know a chair because we experience it, a holistic experience, not a set of mechanical sensor readings. Our robot has thousands of memory registers associating digitized pictures to a chair, but not a single holistic experience.

Thinking Computers

So, our robot can think, but it doesn't understand. It has intelligence, but does have a sense of meaning. And this is because it lacks consciousness.

So now to the other part of our question, do we want our computers to think?

Numerous movies - Eagle Eye (2008), I Robot (2004), The Terminator series (1984 and later) - have computers that think. In a typical Hollywood fashion, the "thinking" of these computers, though well-intentioned, causes them to veer down unintended paths, to start to think they are smarter than humans, but to the detriment of humans. We certainly don't want those type of thinking computers.

Isaac Asimov, in his extended fictional writing on robots, was not nearly so pessimistic. His three laws of robotics kept the robots on a more positive and controlled path.

Data, on Star Trek, stands as an even a more positive view of a robot, even altruistic to a fault. But he was offset by the Borg, a cyber-organism of driven determination, to assimilate every civilization. The Borg could think, no doubt, but were thoughtless in their destructiveness.

Which one of these images from fiction will be our future?

I lean towards none of them. Watson, and then a second generation of Watson like the robot pictured here, will likely impact human society in a more insidious manner, economically. Will that economic impact vault us forward or backward? Will we have a Star Trek like Camelot with computers freeing us for leisure and human advancement, and will thinking computers displace our vast collection of information workers consigning the formerly well-employed to low paying jobs. Utopia or Matrix-like enslavement, which might thinking computers bring?

Will the future tell? Maybe not my future. But likely the future of our children. May God help them.

David Mascone has degrees in Engineering and Business. He has interests in science, philosphy and theology. His leisure activities include sports, hiking, science fiction and little league umpiring. His intellectual focus is finding consistency and synergies between the great masterpieces of human intellect, including religion, science and art.

[recentanimenews]

Can You Really Download Your Brain into a Mech?

The world of Rooster Teeth’s gen:LOCK is supposed to be our own, but about 50 years in the future. Everyone has contact lenses that can translate other languages in real time, full body holographic projections can exist just about anywhere, clouds of nanomachines are one of the most dangerous weapons on the battlefield, and that’s all before a four year time skip and the introduction of the eponymous gen:LOCK technology.

So with all of the recent advances in current technology, how realistic is everything shown in gen:LOCK? In the real world, technology is advancing at an amazing pace, but in another 50 years will we be able to sit in a pool of circuitry and upload our brains to a mech?

    One of the simplest places to start may be the contact lenses that everyone seems to be wearing at all times. In the show, in addition to the aforementioned translation ability, we see that the lenses can create virtual environments for the user and are able to connect to other people, likely via the Ether (essentially the gen:LOCK version of the internet). They may also be responsible for allowing the user to see other people’s holograms, but it's not made explicitly clear.

  This is the simplest place to start is because this exact technology is already being researched. As stated in the COMPUTERWORLD article linked above, former Google subsidiary Verily is working on a number of "smart lens" projects. The real world lenses are significantly simpler, still just getting a diode to work or measuring sugar levels via the user’s tears, but the company is also working on surgical eye implants that would house sensors, a radio, and other electronics. Outside of tech that directly interacts with you eye, virtual reality headsets already allow for audiences to attend concerts, both live and virtual, like what we see in the first episode of the show.

  With another 50 years of development, we may well be able to miniaturize the technology to display a fully virtual world enough to fit inside of a contact lens. Depending on how small, thin and flexible the lenses can get, more and more computing power becomes possible, and with more power comes more complex operations, opening up the possibility of basically everything the show depicts.

gen:LOCK’s nanotechnology may be the driving force behind this process. The Union (the malavolent, antagonistic invaders of the series) is the only entity shown actually using nanotechnology, but the Polity (Earth's international coalition formed to fight the Union) seemed to know about nanotech smoke during the attack on New York City, so it is reasonable to assume that they have seen it before and may well have some version of their own nanotech powering their lenses or mech armor printing machines.

  Again, this is technology that already exists in some form in the real world. We don’t have horrible death nanobot smoke, but news about advances in nanotech breaks every week. Some recent advances include better cancer treatment, being able to monitor firefighters with a sensor that doesn’t need to be charged, and outright breaking the second law of thermodynamics (keep in mind that these advances are part of a fairly new field of study and still subject to further peer review so may be proven incorrect in the future).

The biggest problem with gen:LOCK’s nanomachine cloud is controlling it.

  In short, a signal to keep the swarm away may be feasible, but nanomachines are just too small for complex instructions. Current nanotechnology is based on automatic processes in response to the surrounding environment–either a chemcial signal or a magnetic field. To get a nanomachine to respond to a user’s gestures or brain waves, each machine would need to have an antennae or other such receiver and a generator or energy supply to draw on to implement its instructions, both requiring more resources and mass. With each additional component, it becomes exponentially harder to keep the device on a nanoscopic scale.

So far, gen:LOCK’s technology has been mixed. The civilian technology seems at least possible, maybe even likely, but the guided nanotechnology is certainly a much harder sell. What about the actual gen:LOCK technology itself? When can we finally get in the robot?

  Well, the good news is that the mechs themselves are the easy part! If you absolutely need to pilot an armored mech now, you can go drive a tank around for a while. If you want something more humanoid, last year a Japanese man built a bipedal mech that he can climb into and use levers to control its arms and legs. It’s not as glamorous or awe-inspiring as gen:LOCK’s mechs, but, by 2068, it isn't too far fetched to imagine it as one of the first ancestors of a sleeker, more agile mech.

The problem with gen:LOCK technology is the concept of mind transference. Creating an electronic brain capable of storing a human mind isn't completely out of the realm of possibility (even if the download speed probably wouldn’t be the 30THz the in-series tech boasts–some of the fastest modern CPUs only run at 5GHz, less than one one-hunderdth of a percent of the aforementioned 30THz). Even at a slower speed, it's still feasible.

Instead, the biggest issue is with the transference medium. In order to transfer to a Holon (the show's term for mechs), the pilot must lay down in a pool of deforming, amost rubbery material that seems to contain the circuitry that transfers their consciousness.

  From what I researched, there is nothing even remotely close to this in modern technology. The fluid is able to deform like the pseudopods of an amoeba, and it seems to have circuitry for the download and upload processes, which means that it’s conductive but somehow doesn’t allow electricity to leak out to other circuits or the pilot.

Even if the fluid was explained away as just being a calming bath, mat of silicon, or pretty much any other material with waterproof electrodes hidden inside or something, that leaves the final issue: the upload.

    With current technology, downloading a human mind seems like something that could actually be possible relatively soon. Just study a person’s brain and how the synapses fire in response to set stimuli, then save the results to a giant memory stick.

Uploading the person back to their body is another matter, since it brings a litany of questions about how the process works, including but not limited to:

1. Whether the brain fully shuts down while the pilot is uploaded, and, if so, what happens to involuntary bodily processes like breathing.

2. What does it mean to re-upload the person’s brain back to their body, when all of the synapses are already in place, so nothing needs to change?

3. How is gen:LOCK different for the human body than sleep or a coma?

  Fortunately, this is one problem that might be easier to fix in the real world. Conceptually, when the brain is being copied during the download process, the original shouldn’t actually be losing anything. So once the mission is over, just wipe the brain in the Holon and wake the original back up. Depending on how the process works precisely, the original might even be awake to watch their copy fight, effectively resulting in a temporary copy of the pilot's mind in each piloting instance. No need to worry about upload time or protecting the electronic brain outside of trying to minimize resource cost.

  Essentially, the logistics of transferring a human brain is the only thing stopping us, and people are already working on how to digitize the human mind. If someone can figure out a way to map a person’s brain and put it in a computer as robotics continues advancing and giving us more sophistocated bipedal robots, then, in terms of technology, there is nothing standing between us and eventually piloting giant mechs.

Sure, we’ll have the ethical dilemmas of creating effective immortality, becoming capable of copying sentient beings at will, and the issues with deleting sentiant beings every time we want to take a walk in our mechs, but on the other hand: giant robots.

    gen:LOCK IS NOW AVAILABLE TO WATCH ON CRUNCHYROLL HERE!

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Did I miss any cutting edge science that makes gen:LOCK more possible? Are there any other technologies that you're excited to see come to life in the coming years? Let me know in the comments below!

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Kevin Matyi is a freelance features writer for Crunchyroll. He's been watching anime for as long as he can remember, and his favorite shows tend to be shonen and other action series.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features! 

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[2gameprince]

Ten Extremely Short Stories

1. The Twisted Farmer

When I was younger my town became decently known for the legend of a serial killer who kidnapped children. I can now say that with extensive research, the following is true. It was said that he would take the children back to his shack-like farmhouse and turn the children into… scarecrows, which he would display all over his “property”. It was said that some hikers discovered his abode, immediately informing the town once they inspected and realized the scarecrows were constructed from the remains of human children. Exactly one hour later our local police stormed the man’s shack. Seeing someone with a knife, hiding inside, the police kicked in the door and shot on sight. They witnessed a body drop and when the cops came inside they found no one. Just a scarecrow that, strangely enough, matched the description of the kidnapper. The man himself was never captured, and some believe him to still be at large. I think they stopped him without even knowing it.

2. The Borne Mistake

My family is dead. Everyone, except for me and my twin brother. He resides in the attic, as he always has, since birth. Mother, father and sister would dare not look upon him, for brother, they said, was hideous. Up many flights of stairs there is a golden key, rusting, on a tray, on a table aside from the attic door. I haven’t climbed those stairs in years. I only saw the inside of the attic once. The room was all black, with covered windows and a symbol on the door. I don’t know what the symbol meant, but my father said it kept us safe. He says my brother is ugly, but my brother tells me otherwise. At night I used to sneak up and talk to my brother through the door. He told me he could hurt mother, father and sister’s minds, so they kept him locked away. I always listened to mother and father, from the second they brought my brother home from the hospital. But the other day I almost opened the attic. Mother and father were so angry, they hit me. It hurt bad, but brother said he could make them apologies. So, that very next night, I grabbed the key and let brother out. Now mother, father and sister are dead and brother is nowhere to be found. There’s a man knocking on the door, saying he’s from the police department. I hope he can help me find brother. I hope he believes me.

3. The Eldritch Cauldron

Deep within the belly of my aunt's New England estate, there lingered a cauldron, black as pitch; And it took up a corner at the far end of the cellar, looking ever so morbid in it's fine stillness. My aunt was old and I spent these past few years of my life aiding her. Since my own parents had passed a few years back, and all my siblings had cut ties with the family, over money-reasons, I felt I couldn't let my dear auntie wither away, alone and forgot. She was family, and deserved so much better than that. But that cauldron… Oh, how the sight of it twisted my guts and turned my stomach. Once every Friday I would have to venture down to the cellar to fetch that evening diner's wine. Once every Friday I retrieved that wine, but at the cost of a fright. Once every Friday I hear things come from within the cauldron. Voices and mumbles echoed from out of it, and as I put out the lantern on the wall, I raced up the stairs and slammed the basement door behind me; Once every Friday. I had kept forgetting that the cauldron held the souls of those who'd wronged my aunt; Believing her witchcraft to be a curse. It was that xenophobia which got my parent's killed, but not my aunt. She struck back at those hunters, imprisoning them in the cauldron. I always forget. Why do I always forget?

4. The Father Figure

My father’s footsteps ringing distant from the hall was my lullaby when I was younger. In the dead of night, when my back was turned to the door, I would hear the familiar padding of his white and gray socks colliding with the hardwood floor outside my bedroom. The door would open, and a thin cascade of golden light streaming from where he’d come would land across my bed. The sound of his steps would become softer now, muffled by the plush white carpeting settled along the ground. And upon my forehead, his hand would gently push my bangs away, and his cold lips would press tenderly to my skin. He had always had poor circulation, and in the hot summer evenings I spent holed up in my covers, it was rather nice to have his soft skin on mine, cold and forgiving. At times, I would turn my head to face him. My sleepy gaze would meet his, and in the darkness, his pearl teeth would shine in a warm smile. And I would smile in return. It was always a silent exchange when I awoke to one of his visits, usually ended by a wave of my hand and the fading of his loving grin. I couldn’t understand why, at fourteen years old, his nightly visits ceased. Upon asking my mother about this, she turned to me, gaze softened and lips parted just enough to emit tender words. “Well,” she stated softly, “As you get older… you see ghosts less and less.”

5. The Plummeting Hope

I am falling. I have been falling for… oh, I don’t even know how long anymore. A few million years? It doesn’t even matter. Time is meaningless in the infinity. There’s really not much of a story to tell here. I was just sitting at home, there was a pain in my chest, and suddenly I was falling. At first I just started screaming, and waited for my skull to shatter on the ground, followed by my back and the rest of me. But it didn’t happen. It was a few days later when I finally realized this might not be ending any time soon. I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t do anything right. I didn’t do anything! And yet I am falling. I can see nothing but the empty blackness of whatever I am falling down to. I can hear nothing but the air whizzing past my ears as I plummet deeper. I suppose there must be air down here. Wherever “here” is. I can smell nothing except my decaying and withered body, rotting as time passes. I can feel my skin, fractured and broken, some parts of me worn away into nothingness by the fall. I’ve gotten used to the pain. It’s more interesting than the eternity of nothing I feel. Screaming? I gave that up after a century or two. No point. Not that there’s much else to do. Maybe I’ll die one day. Whatever awaits me has to be better than this. Really, the only thing that actually scares me at this point is that I’m already dead, and that this fall will never end.

6. The Dead Reborn

It started on a Friday night in October. The dead would climb out of their coffins and walk the cemetery. Once the dawn would come they would wander back to their crypts and holes in the ground, returning to rest. But every Friday since then, and without hesitation or notice from the town beyond the gates of this lot, the dead were given new life and returned when the day was upon them. They did little or nothing to me. For the dead were not vicious. I needed not take a revolver to their heads or a shovel to their throats, like those people do in the old stories. The dead had no quarrel with the living, and though they rejoiced with the gift to once again walk the earth, they would not leave the grounds of the cemetery. Why? It was almost like some force was keeping them here. Almost as though if they were to leave they would cease to be. Then I finally released something. A week prior to the dead’s weekly rising, a nobleman wearing a distinctly gothic red amulet on his necklace was buried here. I’ve taken the amulet from his corpse and hid it across town, just to see if the dead will rise again this Friday night. Then again, it was probably a bad idea to hid the mystical thing in town. Who knows how many bodies are buried back there, especially since the town was built over the lasts settlement’s graveyard.

7. The Vatican Archive

Speaking with Father Jon, one of the overseers of the Vatican Archive, he has entrusted with with information as to a most bizarre series of “facts” which have gone documented by the church. I breath not a word of these facts to anyone, for the mere fruition of this knowledge could throw our world into chaos. I speak only to the few who will take this knowledge and understand that things must be this way. Angels are not of this world. By this I do not mean they are from a realm of paradise, but rather another planet or dimension. They are humanoids with beautiful features, winged, though they are able to defy gravity. They have come to control us, for our benefit. their brother race, those which we know as demons, plan to kill and eat our inner energies. We are at the middle of a tug-a-war between supreme entities, with sciences eons more complex to our own. We are ants in the eyes of these beastly entities from those places in-between time. There is no god. Only a chain of ancient energies and monstrous giants haunt the never-ending stars. And even they fear that which surpasses them. The Vatican Archive holds these accounts. The aliens which visit us and those who work with them to mold the human race. The Vatican knows, the world government knowns and yet no one must ever know.

8. The Framed Horror (Original Concept By Theodore J. Romanowski)

He passed by a picture of the very hall that came before him and within the picture was a wooden chair. He walked down the hall and positioned himself to where he just barely saw into the upstairs bathroom. There sat a black cat with big red eyes. Their eyes connected for a moment before the cat payed him no mind and raced in-between his legs. By the time he turned around to see the cat it was gone. He blinked twice and there, again, appeared the cat, sitting beside a wooden chair that hadn’t been there before. As he walked back down the hall and over to the chair he noticed the painting from before. The chair had vanished, and in it’s place there stood a clown with a sledgehammer. Startled by the changed image, he walked over to the chair and sat down for a moment. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again everything was tinted acrylic. He got up from his seat and walked back down that same hall for the third time now. He looked at the painting and realized that it appeared more realistic. He blinked twice more and within the prelatic painting he saw the clown, again with the sledgehammer, the cat and a broken wooden chair by his side. He looked around to see the hall resembled the painting even more, finally realizing where he was. Now, if you go to the old house you may see him framed up on the wall. Trapped in that painting with the broken wooden chair and no way back.

9. The Unseen Trucker

They say that on this old road, there’s a driver that passes this speed limit sign every night, around six. He drives a big truck, and from what people say, he has a very white complexion. It’s said that if you flash your high beams as he passes you, well, let’s just say, thinks don’t work out for you or your brakes. Where the man’s truck appears and disappears is uncertain. Some have even described being on the road and having truck pass right through them, as if it’s an illusion. They say he a ghost. But, hey; smoke and mirrors, tampering with traveler’s cars when they stop into my station; How the hell else is a man supposed to keep an urban legend up and running? God knows, it’s the only thing driving people into this down. And man, could we use the money from those hikers we kidnap.

10. The Cannibal Cafe’ (Original Concept Paragraph For ‘The Manhattan Cannibal Case’ Short Story)

I have found the cafe’! Hidden away beneath these underground caverns within the sewers of Manhattan. Investigating this string of disappearances for three years now, I never believed I’d actually find the source. As well as I can figure it, the cooks and such kidnap people during the night, kill them and cook them up down here. One of the most startling things, I must say, is the revenue this place makes. So many people eating people! There are menus that display whole limbs, heads and torsos. This place must have about two-hundred customers on a constant basis. I never order anything. I just hang around behind the scenes and no one seems to notice. It’s a hive of cannibals that serves coffee and offers musical entertainment. Like a flesh-serving fast food joint that’s the size of a small parking lot. After tonight I’ll take the existence of this place to the local authorities and head a raid down here to put an end to this cannibal cafe’ once and for all. Though, something still shakes me. I’ve been noticing something strange. Before they eat, the customers pull the flesh around their mouth’s back, almost like a mask. And underneath it lies reptilian skin with a giant mouth of jagged sharp teeth. These patrons aren’t human!