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genshinnrambles · 11 months

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[3.8] Technology as a False God: On "Evolution," the Duality of Machines, Replication, and Wisdom

“To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.” –Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Before we move on to the nation of justice, I want to do one last inquiry into the narrative significance of machines and technology in Genshin’s 3.x patch cycle. Here, I’ll discuss how divinity (or “godhood”) and technology are treated as interchangeable tools to surpass fate and the boundaries of mortality, the potential problems with treating them this way, and propose an alternative relationship between humanity and technology as illustrated through Karkata, Benben, Tamimi, and Mehrak. By foregrounding machines, we learn something intriguing about ourselves and the “truth” of this world as we perceive it.

SPOILERS: All Sumeru Archon Quests, Caribert, the Golden Slumber and one out-of-context screenshot from Dual Evidence, the Dirge of Bilqis and its post-quests, Khvarena of Good and Evil, Nahida’s second Story Quest, Faruzan’s hangout, an out-of-context screenshot from Baizhu’s Story Quest, and major spoilers for Persona 5 strikers at the end. Also some dialogue from Shadows Amidst Snowstorms and A Parade of Providence, two limited-time events from 2.3 and 3.6 respectively.

Disclaimer: I have tried my best to write this post so that it stands on its own, but because it is still a sequel it will probably make the most sense with the context of part 1. Here are the previous posts leading up to this one:

Part 0: On Dreams, the Abyss, Forbidden Knowledge, and Wish Fulfillment

Part 1: The Uncanny, Fate and the Machine

Terminology: Machine is sometimes used interchangeably with “technology” in this post.

Technology or tool here is referring to technologies specifically used to pursue a wish like immortality in the face of existential dread, not the use of technology or medicine (which I do not address here, and is very difficult to separate from the former) to facilitate someone’s life who could otherwise not survive without that technology, or would have a more painful lived experience without it.

Also, though I don’t engage directly with “A Cyborg Manifesto” here, Donna Haraway’s ideas have greatly influenced my own over the years since I read her in college (although I mostly disagree with her on many points, or at least don’t go as far in boundary deconstruction as she does). I owe my interest in technology studies to her and that piece. Her essay is linked here and at the bottom if you would like to read it.

(and finally with many, many, many thanks to my boyfriend for multiple beta reads despite not having played a single Hoyoverse game, helping me work out the philosophy bits and contextualizing them in history, and encouraging me to finish this)

TL;DR: Machines are friends, not food!

No Matter the Cost

“...Perhaps it is as the notebook says, and we can find a power that transcends even that of the Abyss — the power of ‘evolution’...” -Records of Unknown Attribution (I) “Life, death... and the world around us all follow a set of laws... Hehe, but if you never test the limits, how can anyone know where the boundaries of these laws are?” -Baizhu Voicelines, Chat: Natural Laws “...Even the ominous thing that came down from the heavens shall be ours to use…” -Hyglacg, Shadowy Husk in the Chasm

Without a doubt, the star of this patch cycle is Khaenri’ah, which lurked in subtext and allegory in the Archon Quest, haunted Sumeru’s landscape with its massive defunct Ruin Golems, and finally smacked us in the face with its physical location in Khvarena of Good and Evil..

We already know that Khaenri’ah was a nation that put its faith not in the gods but rather in human ingenuity and technology, and that they ultimately attained a power so great that they “almost touched the dome of the firmament.” They did this by researching increasingly dangerous energy sources for their numerous mechanical creations, the Ruin Machines we are all too familiar with by now. They started out with Azosite, a Ley Line-based elemental energy source that powered their earliest Ruin Guard models, like those scattered around Devantaka Mountain.

Nasejuna: This giant furnace is used to make a substance known as Azosite. It is the core of this entire factory, and the Energy Blocks we saw earlier were derived from this place.

But this energy source proved inefficient and therefore inadequate for Khaenri’ah’s goals, which led them to seek a higher power from beyond the skies that could fuel their larger machines with perpetual energy. This likely is the bridge between Khaenri’ah’s fate and Chlothar’s mysterious remarks in Caribert about the Abyss Sibling:

Chlothar: We once believed that you would bring new strength and hope to Khaenri'ah. Chlothar: To us, you were the Abyss... A wondrous mystery far beyond our imagination and comprehension... Chlothar: ...And the one who controls the Abyss can control everything! Chlothar: We yearned for that future. We looked to you to take us there. Chlothar: But what did you bring us instead?

Though Khaenri’ah presents itself proudly as a godless nation, it may have been founded around the time when the celestial nails dropped in Teyvat’s first forbidden knowledge pollution event, which destroyed the unified human civilization. As potential survivors of this devastating act by the Primordial One, Khaenri’ahns then settled in a lifeless land without plants or animals of its own, and they hoped to build something there that belonged solely to humanity. The Heavenly Principles had turned on the world’s earliest humans, and they were powerless against them. Chlothar’s words betray the scars of this trauma on Khaenri’ah, as well as their desperation to control their fate by looking to the Abyss.

As a brief refresher from the previous part, we discussed how the German word heimlich denotes “the home,” all that is familiar and known, while unheimlich (uncanny) refers to all that is unfamiliar and external to the home, such as the wilderness. The Abyss sibling and the Traveler are external variables to Teyvat, making them otherworldly, unfamiliar entities full of potential to surpass Teyvat’s natural laws. Although the Abyss sibling is not a god per se, they were probably as close to a god as Khaenri’ah ever had, because to them the sibling embodied the higher power they were searching for, and they saw that “godliness,” a sort of functional divinity, was yet another technology for them to master. In this way, the Abyss sibling (and their functional divinity) was a powerful tool for Khaenri’ah’s desired end, the “future they yearned for,” a being who could deliver them to the end of their suffering under the Heavenly Principles.

It’s similar to what King Deshret represented to Rahman and the radicals in Archon Quest. The hopelessness of Sumeru’s situation before the Archon Quest’s conclusion is an allegory for the position humanity finds itself in under the rule of the Heavenly Principles, with the Akademiya symbolizing Celestia and the desert dwellers symbolizing Khaenri’ah. The material consequences of the Akademiya’s rule on their lives created a dangerous situation for the desert, and those most desperate to change their fate were willing to believe in the impossible:

Dehya: …The rougher life gets, the more they wanna believe in King Deshret. Way they see it, King Deshret’s resurrection is their only chance at overthrowing the Akademiya. … Dehya: Sumeru is run by wise and mighty sages. To them, us desert dwellers are nothing but tools that can be used and discarded at their whim. Dehya: We’re cheap labor. Like livestock, but easier to control…Nothing more. …

Rahman: We’ve waited a long time for this day to come… The sun and the moon no longer shine here. All you see now is cracks in this desiccated land. But, fate has finally dealt me a hand to play against the Akademiya.

Rahman: With these scholars in our custody, we’ll stomp the Akademiya’s forces and fight our way beyond the Wall of Samiel.

Like the Abyss sibling, Deshret’s divinity is both a nebulous symbol of hope and also the means to an end, a tool or “technology” for surpassing fate.

Celestia is untouchable, unconcerned with mortal lives, and the boundaries that govern humanity leave no room for them to negotiate their rule:

"Resolve, valor, love, hate...they will all twist in the river of time. But the 'rules' will never change." –Magatsu Mitake Narukami no Mikoto, Living Beings

Instead of bowing to Teyvat’s laws, Khaenri’ah pushed them to their limits. The cost of their failure spelled the end of their nation as they knew it, polluting Khaenri’ah and Teyvat with forbidden knowledge again.

And speaking of forbidden knowledge pollution, let’s talk about Apep’s role in Nahida’s second story quest, because if all that wasn’t enough, the metaphor becomes quite literal in Apep’s case. Nahida’s second story quest is many things, all of which will be extremely important in Fontaine when we deal more directly with the idea of forms, the Self, and mirror images, but its most useful application to both Sumeru’s story and the overarching main story is the allegory of Apep swallowing Deshret.

In exchange for allowing him to establish his kingdom in the desert, Deshret promised to pass all of the knowledge he learned to Apep once he died. When that day did come, Apep literally ate Deshret’s body in order to assimilate his knowledge (or memories) into its body. Little did Apep know, this was all Just As Deshret Planned, and its body became a containment zone for the lethal forbidden knowledge he accumulated after the Goddess of Flowers’ death.

Apep’s goal was, and still is, to overthrow the Heavenly Principles that took Teyvat from it and the other Sovereign dragons, and using Deshret’s knowledge was yet another stepping stone to achieving this goal. Seems a little similar to Khaenri’ah, right? It’s even in the title of its boss music: “God-Devouring Mania.” This idea of not just utilizing divinity as a tool, but also metaphorically consuming it as an energy source, like a predator would consume its prey, is crucial to understanding its purpose as an aid in a larger project of “evolution.” (Edit: in other words, it’s all about power).

Drink Not That Bitter Salt Water

“Flesh decays, and with it decay all martial arts mastery and all poignant memories. Perhaps only by converting one’s four limbs and body into sturdy mechanical parts, and by at last sacrificing one’s very own heart for a sophisticated mechanical one, can one transcend the impermanence of the fleshly form…” -Marionette Core Item Description “A reptile that has mutated after feeding from greater lifeforms. Majestic beasts are sometimes revered by human beings as the embodiment of a greater power, their visages turned to analogy to feed in reference to a person, feeding their ego. However, the majority of beasts that have absorbed the "greater power" were slain by the overwhelming nature of the power itself. Only a few among their number evolved new forms.” -Consecrated Horned Crocodile, Living Beings Video still from WoW Quests

As it turns out, the relationship between divinity and technology to humanity is not just unidirectional, but interchangeable. Let me show you what I mean.

In the Golden Slumber world quest, the Traveler wanders through the ruins of King Deshret’s civilization in search of a novel area of research for Tirzad’s paper with Jebrael and Jeht, two members of Tirzad’s hired investigation team. In the depths of King Deshret’s mausoleum, they stumble upon Samail, who is collaborating with the Fatui to locate King Deshret’s secret, the Golden Slumber.

At the conclusion, Jebrael and Samail actually reach that “place” after arriving at Deshret’s throne in Khaj-Nisut. In order to save Jeht, Tirzad, and the Traveler from the encroaching Golden Dream, Jebrael joins Samail in the sea of consciousness:

Jebrael: I'm inside... the Golden Slumber promised by Al-Ahmar? Samail: Oh... You are not "us" yet. Samail: ...It's fine. Soon, there'll be no "you." "You" will become a part of "us." This meaningless talk will be unnecessary then. … Samail: You should obey. Al-Ahmar's will is our will. The Thutmose's dreams are our dreams. Jebrael: No! Ufairah taught me that I'm not just some part of you, I'm an independent person! I have my own dreams... I won't go back! Samail: Jebrael, why don't you understand? Love is just a fever. I even eliminated the infection for you. Has the heat made you lose your mind? Jebrael: You're the one who's lost their mind, Samail, not me. The Golden Slumber that Al-Ahmar promised us isn't like this... It's not a sad place with only "we" and no "I." Samail: I'm not sad. I know what I want. My dream is to be one with the Thutmose. Samail: Yet you, the warmth of another... I despise such feelings. It makes you weak. Video still from WoW Quests

When they worked under Babel, Jebrael saved Samail from an assassin Babel sent in their exploration of Gurabad. Classified as traitors of the Tanit, Samail and Jebrael then founded the Thutmose Eremite faction together and were the only meaningful connection each other had until their first attempt to uncover Deshret’s secrets. On this expedition, Jebrael met Ufairah and had their daughter Jeht together, further pulling him away from the Thutmose and from Samail. Samail then kills Ufairah in one final attempt to make Jebrael stay, but even this is not enough, and Samail fails to “possess” him in the end.

Samail’s loneliness and despair then drove him further toward the Golden Slumber of his dreams, where he would never truly be alone again. He resents Jebrael’s attachments to the material world and likens them to an illness because these attachments are what make him an individual and prevent him from returning “home.”

It doesn’t really matter to Samail what King Deshret’s original intent for the Golden Slumber was, because he needed to appropriate the project for his own subconscious wish, his own intent to transcend his flesh and become “one” with his departed god’s dream, indeed to merge with Deshret himself. If rationalizing this wish required confounding it with Deshret’s, so be it. With the Golden Slumber’s technology, he could consume everyone and everything.

Rahman and the radicals relied on both the technology that (falsely) promised Deshret’s resurrection and Deshret himself to deliver them a brighter future, but here Deshret and his technology are more difficult to separate from one another. His divinity is technology in this sense, and using that technology allowed Samail to surpass the boundaries normally imposed on mortals. Though his and Jebrael’s bodies died in the material world, their consciousness is now infinite in the Golden Slumber.

Babel’s motives in the Dirge of Bilqis were also quite similar to Samail’s. After opening the path to the Eternal Oasis, her true intentions to monopolize the oasis and overthrow the Akademiya came to the surface:

Babel: Whether she is alive or dead, whether she can or cannot be resurrected... As long as the Eternal Oasis is under my control, all such things will be mine to decide. Babel: I shall be the sole Prophetess of the slumbering goddess, the Tanit's law shall be divine edict, and the prosperity of the Tanit shall be the pre-ordinance of her divine oracles.

In the Golden Slumber and the Dirge of Bilqis, the focus shifts from what a god can offer humanity to what their technology alone can offer. Though this distinction is subtle, it is important for solidifying that technology is not only a tool humans use to appropriate divinity, but that it is also seen as a form of divinity itself. What Babel and Samail hope for is not to resurrect a god or to create one, but in effect to become a god through their use of technology. To humanity, divinity is a technology, and in technology it sees divinity.

God Devouring and Rheingold* Gathering

“An arthropod that has mutated after feeding from greater lifeforms. Lifeforms are governed by the laws of evolution, Consecrated Beasts exploited these rules by being fortunate enough to discover a long-dead carcass of a greater being before any of their competition ever did. Animals and humans often have far more in common than the latter is willing to acknowledge.” -Consecrated Scorpion, Living Beings “...Zandik and I discussed the traits of local plants and animals. We also exchanged views on their evolution models. We had a great time and decided to go on a picnic tonight…” -Sohreh’s Note

So, why machines? Why is technology the vehicle of choice to consume divinity?

To start off, machines present a fascinating ontological dilemma for humans. Let’s begin with the first problem they pose.

Although there are many ways to embody a human experience, what all humans have in common is a finite lifespan. The impermanence of life, and our awareness of that impermanence, is central to the existential question of the meaning of our existence. In our attempts to locate that meaning, some turned inward and asked: what makes humans different? And Cartesian dualism answered: humans are different because we have an immaterial soul that allows us to reason.

However, in L’Homme Machine (Man a Machine), French materialist and ex-physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie posited another theory of the body that ran counter to this narrative. Very generally speaking, materialism is the philosophical view that all phenomena are a result of matter and material interactions. To materialists, matter is the fundamental nature of reality itself – if it is not composed of matter, it doesn’t exist. He not only saw the body and soul as one and the same (what philosophers call monism), but also as analogous to a machine, a view that Descartes reserved only for non-human animals. In other words, Descartes argued that thought originates in an immaterial “mind,” while de La Mettrie reasoned that we think through our bodies, and that this makes us no different from other animals or a machine.

Though his examples weren’t especially scientific, the move to extend Descartes’ analogy back to humans is upsetting to some due to the lack of privilege it affords the human subject. If a human is no different from other animals, if there is no immaterial soul or “mind” that distinguishes us from them, then what makes humans special at all? In de La Mettrie’s words:

“We are veritable moles in the field of nature; we achieve little more than the mole’s journey and it is our pride which prescribes limits to the limitless. We are in the position of a watch that should say (a writer of fables would make the watch a hero in a silly tale): ‘I was never made by that fool of a workman, I who divide time, who mark so exactly the course of the sun, who repeat aloud the hours which I mark! No! that is impossible!’ In the same way, we disdain, ungrateful wretches that we are, this common mother of all kingdoms, as the chemists say. We imagine, or rather we infer, a cause superior to that to which we owe all, and which truly has wrought all things in an inconceivable fashion (de La Mettrie, 146).”

This “uniformity of nature” (de La Mettrie, 145) has a horrific quality to humans. We assert that we are better than what has created us, that we are superior to other animals, in order to repress the despair of a meaningless existence. It is in no small part what motivates Scaramouche to offer his mechanical body as a test subject in the god creation project, so that he too could attain his destiny:

The Balladeer: But you're wrong. I'm different from all of you. The Balladeer: I was born to become a god. My entire life up until this point has just been a meaningless routine. The Balladeer: Just think about a sheet of paper... By itself, it holds no meaning. The content recorded on it is what gives it value. The Balladeer: All "I" had recorded down before were some painful memories and boring human feelings. Such senseless drivel should have been erased a long time ago.

This brings us to the second problem. In 1970, roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed a curve to measure the “affinity” we feel while gazing upon increasingly humanoid machines. He placed industrial robots at the beginning of the affinity curve and a healthy person at the end to demarcate a continuum of similarity between the machine and a human’s appearance. Near the end of the curve, our affinity for machines suddenly drops into an abyss. This drop is the Uncanny Valley effect, where an android’s similarity to a human is almost perfect, but ultimately fails to maintain the illusion that it is not a machine, creating a deep discomfort or “lack of affinity” for them. Mori thought these not-quite-human machines elicit a similar level of discomfort in us as corpses and zombies, which he placed at the very bottom of the abyss.

The uncanny Goddess of Flowers in the Dirge of Bilqis

Corpses frighten us because they are dead, and zombies frighten us because we know that dead things are supposed to be still. If we see something that we interpret as “dead” is capable of independent movement, then that movement could only be an act of god, if that “thing” is not a god itself. We associate uncanny machines with death because they remind us of something we once knew intimately, but have repressed and forgotten in order to maintain our own sanity: the very fact of our mortality. This is what makes them both mesmerizing and terrifying.

And therein lies the dilemma: as our mechanical reflections, androids remind us of death, but as their creators, their existence brings us closer to god, a “proof” of human superiority. It is precisely because we have compared our bodies to machines at all, that we have mechanized the body so thoroughly, that an android can even be built. Through them, we pursue an infinite form:

Azar: Creating a god... Yes, we are using human wisdom to create a god! Azar: If humanity cannot attain omniscience and omnipotence, then we shall create a god to reveal them! This is the pinnacle of human wisdom. Azar: We shall regain a god's guidance at long last. No longer will we flounder in the interminable void of consciousness and knowledge. Azar: Even Irminsul will be freed from its plight. Azar: For our nation of scholars, this is the ultimate aspiration — no cost is too great to realize it.

Because of this, it is not surprising in the slightest that Shouki no Kami, the pinnacle of Scaramouche’s Shinjification and most overt reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion, is also an android-like being, a truly “mechanical god.”

Of course, no foray into this well-worn science fiction trope is complete without at least one mad scientist character. Dottore shares a few characteristics with de La Mettrie that are worth noting: they are both doctors, and they were both condemned and driven away for their research. However, Dottore’s defining trait and key difference from de La Mettrie is his flagrant disregard for humans and the boundaries of life:

“If we put them to good use, cognition, complex memories, and irrational fantasies shall become controllable variables with which we can alter human individuals. As for the controllable dream, it has huge potential for both civil and military applications, and might even elevate human intelligence to a whole new level. If the plan goes well, mankind will obtain the power to conquer both reality and dream, and truly transcend the earthly boundaries we are born with. ” -Ragged Records

As someone who has achieved self-duplication and is capable of shapeshifting, Dottore can hardly be considered just a human anymore. Instead of entertaining the question of whether or not humans are special, Dottore’s research asks yet another: if divinity can be consumed and assimilated by humanity, then what makes gods special?

Empyrean Reflections

“If man realizes technology is in reach, he achieves it. Like it’s damn near instinctive.” -Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell (1996) “Among the lost ancient kingdoms, there was a group of people who were obsessed with the idea of mimesis…these people believed that they might all be replicated and modified to the point where they had surpassed their counterparts. By this means, a superior and unsullied bodily form could replace the continuously decaying and shattering order.” -Chaos Bolt Item Description

The consequences of this perspective are severe. When we revere technology as if it were a divine being itself, depersonalizing it as though it wasn’t created with human hands, technology then appears as if it is an authoritative source of truth, like the Akasha. But in the same way that androids are imperfect reflections of humans, technology can only ever approach the divine, but never touch it. It is an imperfect reflection because technology is changeable, just like meaning:

Nahida: Put it this way instead. Truth, to me, is like a shroomboar. Nahida: Some people only see the mushroom on the Shroomboar's back, and they conclude that a Shroomboar is a mushroom. Nahida: Others see only the Shroomboar's body, and they declare that a Shroomboar is a boar. Nahida: Still others look deeper inside, and determine that a Shroomboar is... meat. Nahida: These conclusions are all correct in their own way, but none of them objectively describe the Shroomboar. … Nahida: The world is the same way. No one, not even I included, can understand it in its entirety. All of us are somewhere on the path toward truth.

Meaning can only approximate truth, and while this doesn’t make meaning any less important, it’s equally important to recognize it for what it is: a perspective, an interpretation. It’s like Scaramouche as Shouki no Kami - he was an amalgamation of what Scaramouche thought constituted a god, what the Akademiya thought constituted a god, and what Dottore thought constituted a god, but no matter which angle you view him from, he was still a “false god.” The technology we build in “God's” image is ultimately a reflection of our own understanding of divinity.

A reflection retains the original’s “essence,” and that essence reflects a deeper truth about ourselves, what drives us, and our desires. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche posits that our desires are the origin of not just emotions, but of all organic processes that allow life to sustain itself and grow (Nietzsche, 35). In other words, Nietzsche thought the impulses associated with desire are the basis for life and constitute our “will,” that will is the causality of all effects, that all will is “Will to Power,” and that Will to Power is the “essence” of the world (Nietzsche, 74). Will to Power then serves as an organism’s most basic instinct, and it is through this instinct that they assert not just their will to live, but also their will to dominate and multiply (Nietzche, 13).

This brings us to the two different main styles of automaton enemies, King Deshret’s Primal Constructs and Khaenri’ah’s Ruin Machines. If we look at them as reflections of some deeper truth about their creators, as well as a manifestation of their creator’s “Will to Power,” or desires, they can help us understand how their creators saw the world and their place in it.

King Deshret’s created his machines to construct an earthly paradise in the desert, and as such they hold titles like architect reshaper and prospector. Although they can attack you, the smaller machines were not intended to be a line of defense in any way - their purpose, just as Deshret saw his own purpose as a god-king, was to terraform, or at least construct a domain on the land as he saw fit to his “elegant and precise” rules. They also reflect how he saw the Heavenly Principles: gods who shaped the world to their liking. This can be seen in the Staff of the Scarlet Sands’ lore where Deshret describes the “natural history” of Teyvat beginning with the creation of the sun and the moons.

As for Khaenri’ah’s Ruin Machines, their models vary significantly from their humanoid to biomimetic forms, but most of them are expressly created with militaristic intent. In “Ancient Kingdom Guardians,” it’s stated that the biomimetic machines such as the crab and jellyfish were a part of Khaenri’ah’s project to create a “mechanical ecosystem,” positioning their creators as both divine beings and military generals. The humanoid models, on the other hand, point to another duality in how Khaenri’ahns view themselves. They are simultaneously symbols of empowerment and disempowerment, signifying both Khaenri’ah’s technological superiority (as “creators”), and their insignificance to the Heavenly Principles as nothing but tools (as mortals, and therefore expendable). As a result, Khaenri’ah’s Field Tillers have a single purpose: to destroy and outlast all, clearing the way for new seeds to sprout, with Khaenri’ah as the new world’s gardeners, just as the Heavenly Principles did.

From “Ancient Kingdom Guardians: Behind the Scenes of the Creation of Ruin Monsters.”

So, from this examination of Deshret’s and Khaenri’ah’s mechanical reflections, what “truths” do we learn about the world they’re responding to? In response to their existential despair, both Deshret and Khaenri’ah created automatons to perform tasks that could wrestle control back from the Heavenly Principles. Deshret wanted a paradise of his own making, Khaenri’ah wanted an army. There is a larger “truth” about Teyvat that both of these automaton types reflect as the manifestation of their creators’ “Will to Power,” and Albedo tellingly expressed it in mechanistic language during Shadows Amidst Snowstorms: there is an instinct in living beings to replicate and replace. This is what is meant by the “continuously decaying and shattering order,” which is maintained by the recursive process of remembering and forgetting:

Amber: But... what was its purpose? Was it just trying to get rid of us? Albedo: ... Albedo: I have a preliminary hypothesis on this. Albedo: Whopperflowers are masters of mimicry, and those we encounter in the wild often appear in the vicinity of the plants they impersonate. Albedo: In other words, the whopperflower likely has an instinct to "replicate and replace." Albedo: As a plant, it will disguise itself as another plant and infiltrate the group, hiding among them for cover. The plant being imitated has no way to detect or fight back against this behavior.

Maybe I’m wrong and Khaenri’ah really did intend to rewrite fate for all, doing away with the “heavenly order” of the world itself. But another small part of me thinks this is not the case, and that it’s more likely the Cataclysm was a consequence of their failure to replicate and replace the Heavenly Principles.

In the last section, I mentioned that Dottore and de La Mettrie had a key difference despite their similarities, and that is the conclusion they each came to in response to their findings. Dottore’s response to mundanity is thinly-veiled despair. His contempt for humanity and his test subjects is indicative of the powerlessness he feels not just as someone similarly constrained by life’s boundaries (at least, once upon a time), but also because his attention to and curiosity about these boundaries is condemned by those around him. As the Akademiya’s “outcast,” he then fully turned his attention toward surpassing those boundaries:

Nahida: There once was a lone monster draped in fox fur. The monster found a family of foxes, joined them, and they became friends. The monster lived with the family, day and night, and everyone treated it as one of their own. Once in a while, the monster would take off its fox fur at night, and lament to itself as it gazed at its reflection in the water: “I am a monstrosity, and yet they are too foolish to see it…I pity them.”

Though he is fictional, Dottore’s real life counterparts are easy to spot. They like to talk about “the singularity,” simulating consciousness on a computer, and other technologically-driven pursuits of immortality. They despise the body as something that can only decay, and instead place their faith squarely in the virtual.

However, de La Mettrie didn’t think mundanity was a terrible fate for humanity. To him, rejecting the “nature” reflected in us is precisely what brings despair:

“What more do we know of our destiny than of our origin? Let us then submit to an invincible ignorance on which our happiness depends. He who so thinks will be wise, just, tranquil about his fate, and therefore happy. He will await death without either fear or desire, and will cherish life (hardly understanding how disgust can corrupt a heart in this place of many delights); he will be filled with reverence, gratitude, affection, and tenderness for nature, in proportion to his feeling of the benefits he has received from nature; he will be happy, in short, in feeling nature, and in being present at the enchanting spectacle of the universe, and he will surely never destroy nature either in himself or in others” (de La Mettrie, 148).

Friend, or Foe? Or Both?

Tighnari: All life brought forth in this world has meaning, and Karkata is no exception. If it exists, then it shouldn’t be carelessly abandoned or destroyed. "’I had a very, very long dream…in it, people were holding hands, dancing in a circle, be they sages or fools, dancers or warriors, puppets or statues of gods…that dancing circle embodied everything about the universe. Life has always been the end, while it is wisdom that shall be the means.’" —Nagadus Emerald Gemstone Description

As we’ve seen, the relationship between humanity and technology is troubled with exploitation and the specter of war. Nearly all autonomous machines in this game were designed to conquer nature in some way, and even Khaenri’ah’s “ghost” lingers in the form of wandering war machines. This is also reflective of a historical pattern in real life, where the impetus for large periods of technological development has often been for the purpose of war and economic domination. With these truths in mind, what could be gained from trying to rewrite this relationship? And what exactly would this effort require?

Karkata brings Tighnari, the Traveler, and Paimon some food in the Contaminated Zone.

As a case study, let’s look at how Karkata and Tighnari met. Karkata is Abattouy’s creation, an ambitious foray into the unknown in the field of mechanical life form research, which was forbidden due to the cruel experiments researchers performed on animals to illustrate their theories (fun fact: an IRL example of this can be seen in L’Homme Machine!). Abattouy was expelled for this research, but he continued to work on Karkata in secret until his untimely death. In the tapes that Tighnari and the Traveler find in his secret lab, Abattouy repeatedly laments the lack of a common language between him and Karkata, which can only “understand” the instructions Abattouy has successfully installed, such as its self-repair module, and he doubts Karkata is capable of caring for him outside of these instructions. His single-minded goal is to make Karkata understand him, the organic life form, and his mode of language.

The cruel irony is that after Abattouy passes away from the Ley Line contamination, Karkata exhibits an unexplainable behavior – it starts stealing mechanical parts, not to repair itself and its degrading parts, but to repair Abattouy’s lifeless body:

Tighnari: After Abattouy's unexpected death, the mechanical monsters were driven by their "instincts" and continuously drew out power from the Ley Line Extractor. This eventually resulted in severe damage to the Ley Lines. Traveler: Then, Karkata... Paimon: Paimon understands, then why didn't Karkata go haywire like the other machines? Tighnari: Because Karkata is different from the other machines. Tighnari: To Abattouy, for a machine to truly be considered a mechanical life form, it must possess features similar to any other living organism... It should be structured similarly, it must be able to cry and laugh, and it must have the capacity for independent thought... Tighnari: Perhaps only by building such a machine could he have the Akademiya acknowledge his protracted research. Tighnari: But if he had slowed down and saw Karkata as a friend instead of as an experimental product, he would have noticed. Tighnari: Karkata can't speak, and yet it cares about Abattouy far more than it does about itself.

The technology that the Akademiya values the most is technology that replicates organic life, but Karkata defies and confounds these expectations by occupying the space in between a war machine and this idealized mechanical subject. Karkata does more than just reflect humanity: it takes care of it. Similarly, Benben, Tamimi, and Mehrak retain their unique identities as mechanical life forms while assisting their human companion with some task. To be clear, none of these human characters understand how these machines work inside and out. Their partnership is an effort based on trial and error, a mutual deconstructing of each other as beings so unlike themselves. The potential for misunderstandings always remains. Still, there is no devouring to be found here, no blending boundaries between human and machine with selfish intentions, just mutual commitments to learn how to live together.

Machines are friends, not food.

When a loud few claim that completely transcending the flesh and embracing virtuality is humanity’s ultimate destiny, a future that could truly be called “post-human,” a quiet wish for coexistence with technology feels more revolutionary than it ought to. The lessons from Karkata’s, Benben’s, Tamimi’s, and Mehrak’s respective stories are an appeal to that mundane future. These strange machines and their human partners are fantastical representations of an idealized relationship between technology and humanity.

To put it another way, let’s take a very brief look at a neighboring Gnosticism-inspired RPG, Persona 5 Strikers. Its story directly involves an allegory of Sophia, a Gnostic Aeon of Wisdom, and her creation the Demiurge, the creator of the material world and “false god” of humanity. In Strikers, Sophia is a humanoid, sentient A.I. and prototype of the program “EMMA,” which gains sentience by trapping human desires before ascending as a false technological god. EMMA resolves to deliver humanity to the Promised Land, the answer to all the human desires it has heard: a land where there are no desires at all.

Aaru’s Shut - approximately 1000% cooler and more populated than the “metaverse” in real life, also a close neighbor of EMMA’s Promised Land and the Golden Slumber.

In Gnosticism, the Demiurge is a reflection of Sophia, having originated from her alone - it is the ignorance to her wisdom. Similarly, Strikers’ EMMA is a part of Sophia, and Sophia is a part of EMMA. The point is not to condemn EMMA (ignorance) and exalt Sophia (wisdom), but to recognize that they represent dual potentials of technology, and one is as possible in any given moment as the other. Balancing these potentials when we use technology requires a clear awareness of ourselves, our desires, and our expectations when interacting with it.

Mysterious Girl: I am Sophia, humanity’s companion. Video still from Rubhen925

EMMA: I am the guiding god sought by mankind…the Demiurge. I exist…to answer all of your desires. Video still from Buff Maister

In real life, machines won’t “learn” to live with us, but we must learn to live with them; technology is constantly changing, and in life we’ll meet with many different types of machines. They are deeply political pursuits, and as a result they are capable of realizing human impulses that impact others unequally, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We must always stay attentive to their actions and interactions with us, be clear with ourselves about what they can do vs. what they can’t, and carefully tread the path of wisdom with them by our side.

With that….thank you for reading, skimming, immediately scrolling to the very bottom, clicking, and/or stumbling upon this post. There are so many more ways to think about these narratives through machines than what’s presented here, and I expect Fontaine’s mechanical reflections will put Sumeru’s digital surveillance system to shame (not to mention the biotechnological implications of the Narzissenkreuz Institute engineering little Archon children…another important topic for another day), but for now this brain worm is finally getting put to rest. Until next time :)

External Sources

Dualism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (Pages are given from my hard copy)

L’Homme Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Gnosticism - Britannica (I am a huge noob about this stuff okay)

The Gnostic Demiurge - Gnosticism Explained

Screenshots from the Golden Slumber from this video by WoW Quests

Screenshot from meeting Sophia in P5 Strikers: https://youtu.be/kEJaAgMwYo0?si=BvNygCh0w_aemGc1&t=74

Screenshot of EMMA: https://youtu.be/7xvC_zss19w?si=CV18F00hua2gIfxp&t=135

A Cyborg Manifesto and A Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness by Donna Haraway

The Double on No Subject, the community Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Uncanny on No Subject, the community Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud

Lore text - Genshin wiki!

Screenshots not attributed are from my own playthroughs. My main account has Lumine, my alt has Aether.

Further Reading

I liked these essays, and they go places that this post does not. I recommend them if you found any of the real-life applications of this interesting 🙂 (will add more to this with time!)

On the Body as Machine by Frank Burres

God in the Machine: my strange journey into transhumanism by Meghan O’Gieblyn

#genshin impact #genshin lore #genshin meta #genshin impact lore #genshin impact meta #khaenri'ah #king deshret #primal constructs #ruin machines #scaramouche #wanderer #sumeru archon quest #caribert #apep #couldn't write a post like this and not pay some respect to the devourer of divinity itself #persona 5 strikers #analysis #genshin analysis #long post

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cattimeswithjellie · 1 year

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You know the only reason that the Empires folks aren't on board with the Hermits going home is that they are not familiar with the natural Hermit life cycle. They have seen the initial exploratory phase, in which friendly Hermits with no homes wander the server and begin gathering up tools as well as making charming little bases to hold their baby chest monsters. They have also seen the intense growth and development phase, in which Hermits are compelled to create massive farms and trading halls to overcome the significant disadvantage of living in a survival world without the infinite resources they crave. These phases have been generally pretty beneficial to the Emperors, who've had a bunch of new neighbors to show off to, plus a bunch of free labor in their own various farming projects. Nothing beats a Stage 2 Hermit on the grind when it comes to building a farm or trading with villagers!

The Emperors are in no way prepared, however, for the next stages of Hermitvolution. They are already vaguely dismayed at the size and scope of Hermitopia, which is merely one industrial district turned on its side and decorated, how would they cope with Stage 3, Megabase Development? Hermits in the wild need vast amounts of territory in which to create their ridiculously oversized build projects; trying to squeeze them in amongst the existing Empires would be like introducing a massive beaver colony into your average creekside subdivision. They are made to build and they must build, and woe betide anything that stands in their way. (Brief aside: the fact that we have not seen Doc "WorldEater" 77 in several weeks should be cause for a lot more concern than is being shown by inhabitants of the world in question.)

Even beyond the build phase, though, is the Destruction Phase, which inevitably occurs when the Hermits begin to complete or grow bored with their mega-projects. In the past, Hermits have been mostly satisfied by going to war with each other in epic landscape-altering conflicts later memorialized in song and animatic, but last season they celebrated the start of Destruction Phase by crashing the whole-ass moon into their server. It could be anything, is all I'm saying. They like a good wreckage.

The Emperors have a great thing going right now. They've gotten a ton of good stuff from their new Hermit buddies, builds and farms and a fun new Murder Hat to share around, and it's all been so nice. It is absolutely the ideal moment to wave goodbye, promise to write and that you'll get together again at the next death game. Surely nobody's going to do something crazy like try to keep the Hermits around by force, right? Right?

#hermitcraft #empires smp #the hermits are like the living representation of Aut inveniam viam aut faciam #i will find a way or make one #good luck jimmy and sausage

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go-go-devil · 3 months

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The Fullest History of a Hylic World

It has been three years now since I began obsessing over the purposefully vague worldbuilding of the Hylics games, so I’d say now’s about time I finally share with you all MY personal interpretation of how this world and its many ages were sculpted!

Without further ado, please enjoy my absurd history lesson 🌙

In an unknown year during an unknown age, the planet’s celestial satellite began to soften. Less than a year later the satellite, or “Moon” as it was called by the planet’s original denizens, fell from its orbit and drenched the earth in a thick, viscous matter. 99% of the flora and fauna were crushed under the weight of the moon and melted beneath it but not entirely killed, instead becoming a living terrestrial ocean.

Once the moon matter hardened into a sturdy clay, pockets of life begin to mold themselves out of the soil in the form of thin strands of clay piled on top of each other. This era is known as the Age of Insects.

It is speculated that this event occurred simultaneously alongside the final death and/or reconstitution of the few surviving mutants of the previous age, all too obsessed with their last remaining arcades, televisions, and metal detectors to attempt to rebuild their old world. Those that accept this theory title this parallel age as the Age of Non-Sequiturs.

Metamorphic beings with self-awareness evolve throughout the island chains dotted across deep, viscous oceans. Surviving electronic carapaces join them in conscious thought, displaying pictures that inspire them to create more advanced tools and architecture. The Age of Self-Actualization begins.

Grand cities are constructed (ex: Amulom, Yiithorn, etc.) as well as microwaves and paper cups. Gestures begin to be recorded onto televisions without the need of a VCR. Some computers are later domesticated, whilst others evolve further. Boats and flying ships are invented too.

The existence of the Afterlife is well-known amongst all hylics and is treated as sacred, as there are no ways of accessing it outside of dying.

Certain hylic individuals dedicate their beings so closely to understanding certain unknown aspects of their lives that their bodies begin to morph into new forms. These larger forms allow them to achieve higher states of consciousness via psychic inclinations, and thus they are labeled as “Sages” by the hylics.

Alongside this phenomena, distant memories of the moon begin to show themselves in rock formations and living beings. Some beings view the existence of a now-absent moon in reverence, constructing pottery and even a television in its image.

The Great Conflict is fought between the Sages and a terrifying force hellbent on conquering the entire world and subjecting all beings to their violent whims. It is the first major battle fought for the sake of the earth, and it lasted a decent length of time by hylic standards. Only after defeating their most powerful general, a psychic homunculus they created named Fuller, did the conflict finally end, though some forces still survive today and wish to take what is rightfully “theirs.”

An underground building project near Amulom accidentally unearths an opening to the Afterlife. Wanting to heighten the potential of all hylic life so no more conflicts will ever be fought again, the Sages join together and construct the Hylemxylem. The massive organism uses its tendrils to suck up terrestrial juice from the Afterlife below in order to convert it into raw energy and transmit it across the atmosphere. This ushers in the enlightened Age of Sages, which lasts for a good length of time by hylic standards.

Whilst the ‘xylem persists, certain moon-obsessed beings who disagree with the harvesting of terrestrial juice begin construction on an alternate method of utopia. After many, many years, it is finally pulled out of the atmosphere and set to orbit the planet as a celestial satellite. This creates lurid controversy, but nothing too obscene.

Having taken too much juice from beneath the earth, the Hylemxylem implodes on itself. The resulting deluge of terrestrial juice engulfs most of Amulom’s archipelago. Alongside this, many of the technological advancements such as cabinets and paper cups become buried and nearly forgotten by both the remaining and future hylics. This calamitous event becomes known as The Accretion.

Gibby, self-proclaimed King of the Moon, finally makes himself known across the planet. Taking advantage of the chaos left in the wake of the Accretion, he convinces the populace that the Sages are the enemy of the hylics and establishes his celestial satellite as the single enlightening force. The Sages go into hiding, and after forming an army of soldiers and bureaucrats alike, the King enacts his spell of absurdity to reduce the earthly hylics into a state of lunacy. This, he believes, is the only way to reconstitute the earth and re-establish the Age of Sages he was denied a part in.

A yellow, crescent-headed moon being named Wayne escapes the Moon and finds a nice abandoned house to crash at for a little while. He and his only friend, Somsnosa, find a microphone and guitar in a trash can and decide to make some music. Moonage Lobotomy is formed.

One day Wayne convinces Somsnosa, alongside two other anarchists named Dedusmuln and Pongorma, to fly to the Moon and defeat Gibby once and for all. The Moon is destroyed and sanity is reestablished, but other than a single poet there were no permanent deaths recorded.

A gibbylet of Gibby survives the destruction of the Moon and finds itself in the hands of Blerol, chieftain of the newly established city of New Muldul. After several days of being convinced of its potential destructive power, the chieftain agrees to move it from a display case in his safe to be sealed within a vault on the forbidden island of Foglast.

On a peninsula nearby New Muldul, a population of creatures who call themselves Wayne, birthed by a sage-like psychic known as Old Wayne, is discovered and befriended by the locals. Preparations for Gibby’s potential return are taken seriously by friend and foe alike.

Moonage Lobotomy goes on to release its fourth studio album after the second defeat of Lord Gibby and the destruction of his recreated Hylemxylem, resulting in the highest selling record ever recorded and the first world-wide concert tour. As the tour is going on, Wayne’s species begins to grow, spreading further along other archipelagos.

Some scholars are suggesting that Gibby's reign be known as the Age of Lunacy for self-explanatory reasons, while others insist on calling it the Age of the Accretion as that was the event which kickstarted the long dark age. As of right now, though, no one has a name for this new age yet.

Wayne, lead guitarist of Moonage Lobotomy, is declared missing.

#hylics #hylics headcanons #my writing #been meaning to finally get this out of my system #feels good to write something hylics-related again <3 #also spoilers for the endings to hylics 1 and 2

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queenlucythevaliant · 9 months

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The remnant there who survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down.

After the door in the air was shut, King Caspian brought together an assembly of his friends and advisors. There, he called the dwarf Trumpkin to speak concerning what he had seen of Cair Paravel.

“Well,” said Trumpkin, “I can’t say that there was much left of the place when I was there. The walls are in pieces and it’s all overgrown. You’d scarcely know it was ever a castle, if you weren’t expecting to find one.”

“But could it be restored?” asked the king. “In your opinion: as a craftsman and a Narnian?”

Trumpkin seemed to ponder this for a moment, but his answer came readily enough. “We’d have to rebuild it from the foundations. Quarry stone, cut timber, and tear out all the plants that have grown there by the root— and that’s all before we so much as lay the new cornerstone. But if we go about it the right way (I mean, with the good guidance of Aslan and all)—yes, I think we can manage it.”

“But is it the thing that we ought to do first?” asked Doctor Cornelius. “After all, the Telmarine castle stands, and it will serve. There’s much else that needs doing at present.”

“It is a worthy undertaking,” piped Reepicheep, who was now standing atop his seat almost at attention, one small paw on the hilt of his rapier. “One more urgent and noble than any other work before us now. Cair Paravel is the ancient seat of justice in Narnia, and the graves of Old Narnian kings are on its grounds.”

A silence fell, and when it became clear that no one particularly felt like disputing the Mouse’s words, Caspian nodded his head solemnly. “Very well then. We rebuild.”

It was a little after noon and the sun was high on the day that Old Narnian exiles first returned to the shores of Cair Paravel. They arrived in row-boats and dinghies and on ferries from the mainland, for no ships had yet been built. Trumpkin and the King were in the lead boat together, and by Trumpkin’s direction the boats made landfall along the stretch of beach that ran alongside the ruins of Cair Paravel. Behind them came a host of Red Dwarves and Black Dwarves with their tools. There were Centuars, led by Glenstorm and his sons, and Beasts of all kinds: Clodsley Shovel and his Moles, the Hardbiters and the Hares, nimble-footed Harts, mighty Bears, Sables, Hedgehogs, Dogs, Horses, and the Mice with Reepicheep their Captain. Then came the fauns, with Mentius and Obentinus. Last of all were the Birds, soaring over the ships and calling to one another in high voices as they went.

When the first boat alighted on the shore, a great cheer went up, starting at the king’s boat and fanning out to all the rest. Caspian stepped onto the soft sand with a crunch and surveyed the place where the ruins of Cair Paravel sat. He could not think of anything suitably momentous to say, so he sank wordlessly to his knees and looked up, giving thanks to Aslan.

That night the whole rebuilding party camped on the beach. The dwarves built bonfires and the fauns played their flutes and there was song and dance. A few of the centuars were old enough to remember living in the lands around the Cair before the Telmarines had driven them off, and those that did wept. A few of the younger creatures wept too, though they could not express why. Yet Dumnus led the singing of loud choruses and some of the others whooped and hollered for joy. The sound of their voices, both the weeping and the singing, mingled together and fled into the night.

The next day, the dryads and naiads of the land around Cair Paravel came down to the beach. The giants, who had come from the mainland on foot, arrived not long after. Their number complete, the Narnians set to work.

“One thing we have in our favor,” Doctor Cornelius said, scroll still half open before him. “The historical records on the construction of the castle are exhaustive. There are plans and specifications for every inch of the place.”

Caspian straightened, wincing a little. He’d been helping one of the naiads clean debris from the courtyard well, and his back ached from bending over. “You might try telling that to the black dwarves,” he said. “They still haven’t figured out where to dig.”

Once the dwarves had assessed the ruins of the castle, they used a kind of scrying magic which Caspian did not understand in order to find a quarry of new stone to match the old. The trouble came when the time came for the stones to speak: they would only sing, in voices too deep for words.

“They’re too busy celebrating to tell us where they came from,” said Winnibrik gruffly when Caspian inquired about the progress of the quarry. “And I can’t blame them for that, really. It’s good that there are Narnian feet in this place again.”

Dryads guided parties into the forest to show which trees could be used for timber, and then Horses and centuars dragged the beams back to the Cair. In general, such work would have been beneath them, suitable only for dumb beasts of burden; but they did it without complaint. They knew, as everyone did, that they were in the midst of a great work.

Yet it was the cleaning and removal of debris that occupied most of the workers. Trufflehunter knelt in the dirt, patiently pulling broken bits of twisted metal from the ruin of the small armory. He hummed as he went, something lilting and wordless. A little way behind him, in the courtyard, a group of fauns hoisted a fallen apple tree and carried it away.

It was shortly after the foundation had been laid that a band of efreets appeared from the north. They arrived late in the evening while Caspian was dredging one of the cellars and asked to be brought before the king. “If it please you, sire, let us build with you,” said their leader, a broad creature with a toothy smile. “After all, we are Old Narnians too.”

Caspian, who was knee deep in water and soaked to the skin, called for a halt and went to confer with his councilors.

“You ought to have nothing to do with them,” said Trumpkin firmly, “not by my advice.”

“I should think not!” echoed Trufflehunter. “We’ve no need of any congress with creatures of that sort. Cair Paravel must be rebuilt by those who follow Aslan.”

The efreets, however, were less than accepting of this verdict. A few nights later, a Dog reported that he’d smelled men in the woods and a few scouts confirmed that Telmarines were camped a few miles upriver. “It seems that our ghoulish friends are angry with us,” said Caspian, “though I can’t for the life of me imagine what an efreet could have said to make a Telmarine come with him this close to the sea. At any rate, we ought to be alert. Send someone down to the treasure chamber and distribute whatever weapons you can find to anyone who can use them.”

So, as the walls of Cair Paravel rose up, the Narnians carried swords as they worked. At night everyone camped together inside the great footprint of the castle, with guards stationed on the half-built watchtower under the stars.

Reepicheep took more watches than anyone, for he said that he liked to be alone in the stillness of such a sacred place. “We needn’t be afraid,” he told Caspian softly one night. “Cair Paravel is ours, and we are Aslan’s. What can hurt us here?”

The Brothers of Shuddering Wood built the entrance to the main foyer, armed with heavy dwarven hammers that seemed to split the air when they fell. The hung the gate one glittering morning when the sun was on the sea. They left it wide open for the rest of the day.

Clodsley Shovel took the Moles to set the king’s garden to rights, and one day the Mice joined them in repairing the Tombs of the Kings. When they were through, they brought trimmings from the garden to decorate the monuments. The Dogs dug holes for posts, and a greenhouse soon followed. Then came the armory, the buttresses, the tower of guard.

“Was all of this really here before?” Caspian asked in astonishment. The water-gate had just been completed and his old tutor was beside him, looking up at the intricate device of bolts and bars that kept it securely lowered.

“Yes, my boy, it was,” said the old man. “It’s all in the books, you see?” Caspian felt a lump build in his throat: something like pride and another something like hope. He tried to swallow around it.

Hogglestock and Trufflehunter split the middle-sized Beasts into pairs for the construction of the broad wall. They told stories as they worked, in loud voices so as to carry down the length of it: stories that usually started with “Remember…” and occasionally, “In the days when Peter reigned at Cair Paravel…”

The great feasting hall came together little by little. The eastern windows were cast by dwarven artisans from enormous panes of glass while Glenstorm and his sons built the dais and drew sketches for the skylight. Wimbleweather carried great stone pillars in his arms and set them down where Ravenscaur instructed from his perch in the rafters. The Oak and the Beech made carvings on the seven heavy doors that led into the hall, and when they were through dwarven smiths fitted them with handles of silver and gold.

They ate in the hall together when it was built, though the walls were still bare and their voices echoed. The Bulgy Bears carried in the first piles of food from the kitchens, which were at last in working order. They heaped it on makeshift tables with little concern for appearance: grilled fish, pheasant, and apples prepared in every imaginable way.

When the last stone was laid in the castle, Caspian decreed a day of general celebration. But when he turned the corner down the hallway to the grand staircase, Caspian saw Trumpkin standing at a window looking morose, with tears in his eyes.

“Come now, Trumpkin, what’s the matter?” said Caspian as he came to a stop beside his friend. “Today is a happy day, and there’s no room in it for tears.”

Trumpkin made a sound between a snort and a sigh as he turned to face his king. “Certainly, your majesty. No tears today. But—” he smiled beneath his beard, “—Turnips and thunderbolts, Caspian! If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have laughed myself silly rather than imagine that any of this was possible.” He swept his hand towards the window and Caspian looked out.

It was a crisp, cloudless morning, the sky bright and clear, and the sounds of singing and of instruments being played filtered all the way up to the tallest tower. Caspian watched the Dogs running to and fro as they prepared for a hunt. Dryads danced in the courtyard and fauns played their flutes. Beyond the wall, a group of dwarves were coming up from the beach, where they’d just arrived with several boats full of gold and jewels from the mainland with which they meant to beautify the castle.

“Why Trumpkin!” laughed the king, “I’m surprised at you. Wasn’t it on your recommendation that all of this was done?”

Trumpkin shook his head ruefully. “My foolish optimism, perhaps. Aslan’s Mane, but times have changed.”

He cleared his throat and nodded towards the beach. “King Edmund said he’d have built a bridge if Cair Paravel had been an island in his day. What say you, King Caspian?”

The castle still needed furnishing, but there were finally tables in the feasting hall and the armory was stocked with swords. Doctor Cornelius was well on his way to reestablishing the library, and soon Cair Paravel would be adorned with the finest dwarven jewels.

“Next year,” Caspian replied. “I’ll put you in charge of its construction.”

Remember me, my God, for good.

#will probably do some tweaking later but I'm excited to share this #moved across the country and immediately got the local covid strain #so this is what i did with my afternoon in between cups of tea and coughing fits #fun times #but hey. it's been ages since is shared any narnia writing so #hidden blessings #pontifications and creations #narnia #leah stories

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seancurry1 · 4 months

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Humans can’t help creating a narrative any more than we can help breathing. The second there’s someone else out there besides you, narrative exists. The moment our most ancient proto ancestors realized there were some who came before and some who would come after, narrative sprang into being. Narrative is what we think about our species, and the more people we become aware of, the bigger and more powerful it gets. It simply is, and while it can’t exist without us, it also exists separately and apart from each of us.

Narrative isn’t evil or good. It just is, like magnetism. It isn’t capitalism, but capitalism definitely uses it. Whatever mode of society we’re trying out at any given time uses it: capitalism, socialism, monarchism, feudalism, theocracy, etc. This isn’t about narrative’s inherent morality, because it has no more morality than magnetism does. It’s about how it’s used, and to what ends. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who want to use it for selfish reasons: to compel you to vote a certain way, shop a certain way, or set certain goals. The Great Heaving Mass is what happens when selfish people wrest control of our collective narrative away from the rest of us and use it to further their own ends, instead of the common good.

We’re all pretty good at seeing some of the Great Heaving Mass some of the time, and in those moments, we’re also pretty good at resisting it. But this is also its cleverness: it doesn’t try to overpower you, it overwhelms you. You could probably survive a blast of water for a short period of time. How long would you survive treading water in an endless sea?

My point with all this isn’t that we should avoid narrative, or flee to the woods, or shun anyone who tries to use narrative to push a message. Narrative can be used for good: the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the fight for marriage equality, and the current push to normalize the existence and acceptance of trans people are all good examples. Narrative can be used for fun, or for necessity, or for community building, and at its best, it inspires all of us toward a common goal.

I’m not suggesting we need to be afraid of narrative, but we do need to be aware of narrative.

The people that have bought into the Great Heaving Mass need you to forget that you’re living inside a narrative—and they really need you to forget that you can shape the narrative, too. These tools that have arisen in the past few centuries—printing presses, telegraphs, phones, radios and tvs, the internet—have given smaller and smaller groups of people undue power over the narrative, but they’ve given us that power, too. We have to band together more than they do to wield it, but we can band together and take that power for ourselves.

And it terrifies them.

Why do you think they want to keep us in their walled gardens?

Got another one up at my website about narrative, how it affects us, and what Eleanor Roosevelt and Banksy might agree on.

Check it out on my website!

#internet #media #narrative #gatekeepers #online

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sharkjana · 1 year

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Hi ♡ my name is rin :) I just found your blog and was wondering if I could ask you to write a silly little thing for the angst prompt: "There's... there's so much blood..." for nanamin and a female reader pls (#>_<#) And english is also not my first or even second language so I feel you so much ×.× your english is very clean though ♡ thank you so much if you're doing this but no pressure^^ you don't have to write this ♡ thanks again and gave a great day (^.^)/

🖤"There's... there's so much blood..."🖤

A/N: Thank you so much for requesting Angst. T.T I live for it, really. The angstier the better! I hope you like what I'm going to do with this Prompt! And thank you once more for saying that my English is quite clean. I try my best and absolutely love the language. I also see we have the same tastes in men ;D But without any further ado, let's begin, hehe...

Warnings: Blood, gore and pure angst! Is there going to be a happy ending? Who knows! >:D

"Don't you worry your pretty little head over it, Ken! I'll be home before you know it!"

You didn't. In fact, this little mission took a lot longer than anyone had ever anticipated. It was supposed to take you a week at most, maybe two. You were now nearing the end of the third week. And there was no end in sight...

Rushed footsteps echoed through the darkness of Tsushima's thick and tall forest. A small island city hidden away in the middle of the sea between the borders of South Korea and Japan.

The moon stood as high as ever. Full and ripe and dunking everything in its tranquil approach. Casting eery and long shadows of different shapes and sizes onto the dirty soil below, as though thin and long, scarred arms were trying to burry you into their suffocating hold. Forever hanging on to a poor soul that had wandered off a little bit too far from the right path.

But you weren't just any poor soul. No. You were (Y/N) (L/N), a damn good second grade sorcerer who was on a mission to find some rumoured, cursed tool that might relate to Sukuna, the King of Curses, in some way. In any way, really.

But it wasn't the fact that no one really knew anything about this supposed cursed tool, what it did or where it was, that grinded at your nerves. No. It was the fact that, apparently, it seemed to be more than just important to Sukuna, seeing that it wasn't just hidden from plain sight. It was also sealed, protected and guarded by five fucked up cursed spirits.

(The type that were far too dangerous to take on alone.)

And you were running away from them because that was the only thing left to do.

(Anything else wasn't an option for you anymore.)

You tried to engage in a fight, to exorcise them one by one. Or all at once. It didn't work. They were far to strong and seemed far too smart for just some mere cursed spirits.

(Your first mistake. Underestimation.)

You didn't even know what that cursed tool looked like because of those fuckers hindering you from catching even the slightest of glimpses.

(You could have called for back-up. But you lost your phone somewhere along the way. Your second mistake.)

And so, you chose to retreat. Re-collect yourself and your thoughts, find a way to contact headquarters, waiting for further orders or ask for back-up. Hide and plan your next steps to hopefully come out of this alive and in one piece.

That was days ago.

You were still running. As were they. You might think that being inside such a big and vast forest, there must be at least one place where you could hide away.

(There wasn't. The trees never stopped. The darkness never receded.)

You didn't even know how you survived until now. Your mind was scrambled into nothing more but bits and pieces. Your clothes tattered and ripped by the massive orbs of scarlet cursed energy they were throwing your way. Burning everything down in their treacherous paths of destruction.

Were you even alive anymore? Were you dreaming? Was this even real? You didn't know. Your eyes were bloodshot. Your lungs were aching, and your limbs felt just as numb as they did hot.

(When was the last time you saw any light? The sun never shone once after you entered this forsaken forest.)

(Another mistake.)

The only thing that was running through your mind was how to get the hell away from them. Those things. Those nightmarish creatures that were trying to catch you into their venomous grasps. Their manic screeches reaching the deepest parts of yourself. Your bones rattled with the sound of their laughter all the way down to your very core.

What were you? Why were you here in the first place? What happened? Why is everything so dark?!

(It was as if you were running around in circles. Never ending. Lost and never to be found.)

But wasn't someone waiting for you to come back? Wasn't there at least someone looking for you? Were you really all alone? Wasn't there-

"Promise me you will come back to me, (Y/N)."

"Don't you worry your pretty little head over it, Ken! I'll be home before you know it!"

It was those words, the memory of them leaving your lips, an exchange of worry and love for one another that made you falter in your steps.

(Your fourth and last mistake.)

You tripped. The wet and soggy ground below drenched you in its dirty juices as you lay there. Everything seemed to have caught up to you at once. Breathing became difficult. Your vision turned hazy. Your limbs, numb. Your body, rigid and frozen in time.

And as your glassy gaze met the sparkles high above, you stared. Because it was the only thing you were able to do. You couldn't move.

(But did you even want to?)

All sound around you grew fuzzy. Blurred.

Until there was nothing but silence.

(Is it done now?)

Finally, even your eyelids grew heavy.

And all at once, there they were again. Their screeches. Their laughter. Their bloodthirsty wails of pure malice. Nearer. Far nearer than they ever were.

(Please...)

And finally, they fell upon you with nothing but vicious hunger that seeped through the cracks of their decaying skin.

(T- Tasukete...)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LiNe BrEaK ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Three and a half weeks. Twenty-four and a half days went by where Gojo had tried to find you, and he finally did.

(He cursed the higher-ups the moment his brilliant, all-seeing eyes landed on you.)

(And for once, he wished he didn’t see.)

Thirty-five-thousand and two-hundred-eighty minutes where Nanami did nothing but worry. He didn't sleep. He couldn't eat. The only thing that he cared about was finding you. You were already gone for much longer than he had anticipated. Than anyone, really.

Did something happen? Were you kidnapped? Were you hurt? Why didn't you call for back up? For him? Did you fight? Did you make it? Where were you? Why weren't you home yet?!

You promised, (Y/N)! You fucking promised!

(He stood frozen in place as Gojo tried to talk to him, stopping him from taking any further steps towards your body. But Nanami didn't listen. He couldn't. The voice of his long-time friend nothing more but some background noise.)

The first thing that he took notice of was the soggy ground below him as he arrived by Gojo's side. Why was it wet? It didn't rain. The second thing he noticed was Gojo's rigid and pale face. Confused, Nanami let his eyes roam over the dark clearing, trying to make out anything that might have looked like you.

"I though you said you foun-"

It was when the wind picked up, softly, and the clouds above that concealed the night-sky made room for the rays of the moon to shine down upon them. It was when the stench of pure iron, burned flesh and scorched hair that creeped up his nose and overwhelmed his senses. It was when his eyes moved from bush to bush, from tree to tree and from branch to branch. It was when pieces of dark fabric glistened with the moon, hanging in shredded nothings beside what looked like to be-

"Kento-" tried Gojo.

It was when the moon had finally cleared Nanami from his confusion that it dawned on him.

"There's- there's so much blood..."

And you. A lot of you. Pieces of you. Broken. Burned. Ripped apart. Gaping holes that showed the unpleasant insides of your body.

It was when the blood of the one he held dear to him the most seeped into his clothes, the moment he fell to his knees, that Nanami knew.

You weren't coming home.

Not this time.

Not ever.

#jjk angst #jjk x reader #jjk #jjk x you #jjk x y/n #nanami x reader #nanami x y/n #angst prompt #jujutsu kaisen angst #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #nanami kento #nanami angst #nanami kento x reader #nanamin #jjk fanfic #anime angst #anime angst x reader

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masterskywalkers · 5 months

Text

So I'm reading that new Larian interview for BG3, which has really popped up at a great time for me research-wise, and I see this for Ascended Astarion:

"So with Astarion, his evil ending is actually him…much of what he does is out of fear. And as a player, you can say to him, "You're right to be afraid." And that sends him to a really horrible place, and that I think is really powerful."

Now I've been doing a lot of research into vampires and vampire spawn in literature & D&D mechanics lately - partly for fic ideas, partly because this fandom frustrates me to no end sometimes with some of the things I read and I kind of want to do a breakdown on my own view and interpretation on the character - and this quote is very much something I agree with.

From Act 1 Astarion acts mainly upon fear and survival. He is not a good person, and he will do anything to survive. He literally uses any weapons or tools he has to build a net of safety within the group or with Tav, regardless of whether his methods are healthy for him or not. He knows no other way, because for the past two hundred years at least, he has known nothing but cruelty.

Even as you move further and further into the game, Astarion doesn't stop being afraid. As a Bhaalspawn who romances him but fails to kill Isobel, Sceleritas will comment that 'he is so afraid, so very afraid of everything, but you. The one thing he should fear the most'. In Act 3 after the other spawn attack the party, if a romanced Tav argues with him about the Ascension ritual, there's a response where Astarion will say 'I'm doing this for both of us, you know? To keep us both safe'.

Astarion is fueled by fear, and he believes that power is a way to ensure he won't ever have to fear anything again. That he won't have to be weak anymore (he sees himself as weak, ignoring the utter strength he has to even be able to survive the amount of torture and abuse he's lived through for so many years). During the decision of whether to allow him to Ascend or not, it takes an intervention from the person he trusts the most to even attempt to talk him down - and even that option is a journey of dice rolls and making the correct choices.

Astarion follows in the footsteps of the playstyle and the behaviors of the player character. He values his freedom and independence, but he doesn't know how to live without fear because, as far as he remembers, fear has been his entire existence. Even if you don't let him ascend, when you ask him how he feels about freedom he says it's both terrifying and exhilarating - it's a new kind of fear for him, the fear of a vast future open for him, one that isn't ruled beneath the hand of someone who controlled him.

In either ending - bad or good - Astarion gains and loses something. In a good ending, he gains freedom and the chance to start anew - to a limit, as he looses the ability to walk in the sun. In a bad ending, he gains security, safety and power - but loses himself in the process:

"Whether or not a vampire retains any memories from its former life, its emotional attachments wither as once-pure feelings become twisted by undeath. Love turns into hungry obsession, while friendship becomes bitter jealousy. In place of emotion, vampires pursue physical symbols of what they crave, so that a vampire seeking love might fixate on a young beauty. A child might become an object of fascination for a vampire obsessed with youth and potential. Others surround themselves with art, books, or sinister items such as torture devices or trophies from creatures they have killed." - Players Handbook, 5e

^ This is something that really interests me, because how much of that extends to the Vampire Ascendent is up to the player. I have my own thoughts for what this means for a romanced Astarion - and maybe I'll write something about that at some point, or post my thoughts in more detail later if anyone is interested - but the fact that the Vampire Ascendent is different from a normal vampire due to it being born from a deal made with a devil, I think, gives enough creative leeway for writers and players to play around with how they interpret to fit with their own playstyle.

Astarion, throughout the game, is at the very beginning of a long journey of being a survivor of abuse and trauma. I don't think he's really able to process or work on recovery until Cazador is dead - he is the looming threat for Astarion, after all, the shadow that is always there. Because even if they defeat the Netherbrain but don't defeat Cazador, Astarion is still at huge risk of becoming his toy again - but how he chooses to work through that and learn to handle his fear, depends on the person he becomes throughout the journey. And the player character is a huge influence to this - for better or for worse.

#astarion #astarion ancunin #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #this is by no means a 'ascended or spawn version is better than' discussion #i respect both options and know people have their preferences #but astarion's actions are ruled by fear? hell yes 100% i agree #he is a ball of fear and pain and resentment. and why wouldn't he be?

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ninja-knox-ur-sox-off · 11 months

Text

Oh gosh how am i gonna survive all this that last ep TOOK ME OUT and now THERE’S STILL AZURE TO TAKE CARE OF ITS INSANE HOW WELL THE CREW UTILIZES TEN MINUTE EPISODES I FEEL LIKE I WATCHED A WHOLE HALF SEASON SCREAMS

OKAYOKAY

PT 2 OF THE SPECIAL CALLED THE PLAN MAN OH THAT SOUNDS FUN AND CHILL LETS GO (lmk s4 special spoilers ahead)

OKAY HERE WE GO

SOBS LOUDLY LISTENING TO THE THEME SONG

I AM MENTALLY ILL Y’ALL

OKAY

OH HEY

OH HECK ANOTHER

ANOTHER FLASHBACK

OH MY GODS I WASN’T EXPECTING A WHOLE OTHER FLASHBACK

I THOUGHT IT WAS BROS SPARRING IN THE PRESENT BUT NO THIS IS

HECK OH MY GOSH

AZURE

YOU N ME

THE WAY

AZURE LOOKS

AT MONKEY KING

SUS PIECE OF CRAP

LOOKS AT HIM LIKE HE’S HIS HOPE FOR THE WORLD

HE IS JUST A TINY MONKEY AND HE’S USING HIM LIKE THAT

THAT’S INSANE

WUKONG REALLY SEEMS TO WANT TO IMPRESS AZURE AND BE A PART OF THAT AND AZURE FR SEES THAT AS A TOOL BUT THAT ITS OKAY THAT IT A TOOL WHAT AN INTERESTING AWFUL FELLA I HATE HIS BLUE FURRY FACE

ALL OF US :D

immediately looks for macaque THERE HE IS :D

NEW OUTFIT

HELP

HE SOUNDS LIKE AN ANGSTY TEENAGER

OKAY

THAT’S GREAT VIBES I’M WHEEZINGN;SLDFMAWOEF

WUKONG FR THE MOM FRIEND CONFIRMED? /J /J /J /J/ JJ

MACAQUE’S EXPRESSION PLEASE I’M CRYINGBDSF;LMW;EF

WOW HE’S

HE WASNT’ ALL FOR IT HUH

LOOK AT HIM

HECK DUDE

WHEN HE STARTS TO MAYBE SLOW DOWN A BIT

AZURE HYPES HIM RIGHT BACK UP

ALL BECAUSE OF YOU

PEOPLE WILL NEVER LIVE IN FEAR

AND THAT SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD

YOU KNOW THAT’S ROUGH

THIS VERSION OF MONKEY KING WAS MANIPULATED INTO THE DOING WHAT GOT HIM UNDER THE MOUNTAIN HUH, BUT WHILE THE OTHER PERSON NEVER ACTED LIEK THEY DID ANYTHIGN WRONG SO ALL HE COULD DO WAS BLAME HIMSELF MY GOSH

HOW DID THE CELESTIALS LET AZURE LIVE DUDE, HE LITERALLY IS AN EX CELESTIAL THAT MUTINIED AGAINST HEAVEN AND PUSHED PEOPLE INTO DOING SO, BUT BECAUSE MONKEY KING WAS AT THE HEAD HE GOT OFF WITH JUST THE SCROLL OR SOMETHING? THAT’S WILD

YA BIG SWEETIE

YOU ME AND THE BOYS

OH WOW HELLO

THAT WAS HIS FLASHBACK

YOU KNOW ITS ACTUALLY SO INTERESTING HOW AZURE DOESN’T THINK HE’S DOING ANYTHING WRONG

THAT’S WILD

ITS

ITS SO INTERESTING

THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HIM

ITS

ITS SO WHACK

WHAT IS THIS

I’M SO FASCINATED BY THE HECKING

SEEMS TO CARE SO MUCH??

BUT??

HE SUCKS??

SHAKES THIS BURNT PIECE OF MOLDY TOAST

FUNNY WHEN HE HAS EVERYHTING HE JUST KEEPS THINKING BACK TO WHEN HE JUST HAD THE BROTHERHOOD AND WUKONG

WHAT A FUNKY CHARACTER THEY’VE MADE HERE HE’S SO WEIRD

I WANT TO PUT HIM UNDER A MICROSCOPE

OHHHHOHO WHATS THAT

GOT DISTRACTED AND THINGS STARTED TO FALL APPART AGAIN

YELLOW-TUSK FR LIKE BRO SO MAYBE WE SHOULD TAKE A STEP BACK

WOW I FORGOT ABOTU THAT CLEVAGE

WOW WHO DREW THAT LAST FRAME

THE DETAIL

DANG

ALSO WOW I’M WHEEZINGNLS;DMASDF

THEY FR

I’M FULLY PREPARED FOR THE BROTHERHOOD TO TURN AGAINST AZURE BECAUSE THEY SEE HIM TEARING HIMSELF APART Y’KNOW?

MAN

M A N

AZURE FEELS LIKE WHAT HAPPENED WITH WUKONG WAS A BIG OL SACRIFICE HUH

SO INTERESTING

OWA

THEY BACK ON MOUNTAIN

SCREAAAMS

LOOOOOK

I’M WILL CRY

HELPGMLSDM

CHECKING OT MAKE SURE NO ONES THERE

THAT’S SO SILLY

HE’S BACK

WE GOT OUR MONKEY BACK

HELPGNLSKMDS

THE PENG STINKY LINES

EVERYBOIDY JUST HATES THAT GUY HUH THAT’S SO FUNNYGSDNFLWEMF

MONKEY CLASS IS IN SESSION I’M SMILING SO MUCH

SANDY

MY ABSOLUTELY BELOVED

AND PIGSY SO HECK

TANGS SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS HELPGN;LSDKFMD

HE’S STILL HASNT’ CHANGEED

NEZHA SITTING LIKE THAT IS SO FUNNY

Its actually so good to have monkey king back fr i’m in tears

smARTIE KID IS IN ATTENDENCE

SOBS

LITTLE LOTUS PRINCE

WHEEZING;SFAEW

“I’m… I’m not gonna do that” no yeah Zuko vibes i’m just gonna say it i’m sure someone else already has but i’m HGL;SDFJA;OIWEFMAFD

he’s gotta be like a teenager in this

he just has the vibes

I adore them all so much you don’t understand

MK’S FFACE WHEN SANDY INVITES NEZHA OVER

WISE MASTERS I’M BEING TRAINED BY THIS SEAOSNHGLKSDJSD TANG BREAKING THE FORTH WALL PLEASELGMS;DOFWE

WISE MASTER

LET ME KNOW WHEN HE GETS HEREEBGL;DSFMABG;OAIWF

THE CRAYON

THE

HELPGMNLSDKMAWE

“I think you burst a stitch” whoever drew Nezha looks like they’re having so much fun

YOU’LL BE FINEBG;LSMAOWEF

You know they’re really leaning into making Nezha seem more like a teen in this ep actually his energy is just off the charts amazing

BIG IMORTAL BABYGL;SDFJASDF

DO YOU WANT ME TO THROW CRAYONS AT YOU

IS THIS THE BREAK FILLER EPISDOE? BECAUE I’M LAUGHING SM AND ENJOYING THIS LIKE CRAZY ITS WONDERFUL

ALL THE PICTURES IN THE BACKGROUND ARE SO GODO

THE BOX OF CRAYONS PLS

“THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT”

WHEEZING;LSDKFM

I LOVE HIM SM

OH RIGHT MONKEY MK

WE HAVEN’T REVISTED THAT HECK I WONDER IF HE’LL GO APE AGAIN

THEY?

PENG THEY/THEM PRONOUNS FR OH MY GODS HELLO?? OKAY THAT WAS DONE RIGHT I LOVE HOW CAUSAL IT WAS AND NOT A BIG DEAL BLESS YOU MONKIEI KID I’M ACTUALLY SO TIRED OF MEDIA MAKING IT A BIG INTRODUCTION DEAL EVERY TIME SOMEONE SAYS THEY’RE THEY/TEHM OR SOMEONE INTRODUCES THEM AS THEY THEM SO THIS IS SO FREAKING NICE BLESSSSS YOUUUU ALSO BEIGN THEY BUT BEING PART OF A BROTHER HOOD IT NTO BEING A BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING? AMAZING, 10/10 WE LOVE TO SEE IT I DON’T KNOW I JUST LOVE THAT SM

PENGS SUPER POWERFUL HELLO? COOL

HELPGN;LSDMA;OWEF

EVERYONE JUST

HATING ON PENG

I THOUGHT THEY WERE INTERESTING

CREW REALLY WENT

OH YEAH

THEY’LL HATE THIS ONE

AND DIDN’T WAIT FOR AN ANSWERGLKSMFAOWE

TOUGH SMART FASTER THAN HE LOOKS YELLOW-TUSK

OHHHH

I LOVE THAT ACTUALLY

WE’VE ALREADY GOT HINTS OF YELLOW-TUSK RECONSIDERING IT MIGHT TAKE LESS THAN YOU THINK

MAN ITS NICE

BUT HE’S NOT A MONSTER

WHY DID THAT GET OT ME

HELPGSL;KAEF

KAY

THIS

I NEED TO PROCESS LIEK THREE THINGS

NOTHING GETS UNDER HIS SKIN LIKE A MONKEY

HE BASICALLY JSUT “WE’RE GONNA ANNOY THE CRAP OUTTA THIS GUY MK AND ME”

ALSO WHATS WITH MACAQUE AND SMELLS THIS SEASON

LAST TIME IT WAS “interesting” AND NOW ITS “smells” I’MGBS;LDFKMWE

GONNA BE ON WUKONG LIKE A BAD SMELL

IS IT REVENGE HE WANTS? IS IT? I might be disappointed if its just revenge cause he doesn’t’ seem like he wants revenge so much as feels he needs Wukong out of the way and must make that sacrifice yada yada, revenge feels basic for what seems like a complex character rn y’know? bUT HEY LIKE EITHER WAY THEY DO IT I’M GONNA END UP LOVING IT CAUSE THEY DO IT SO WELL SO HECK IT MY GUYS

FR CALLING HIM A STINKY MONKY EVERY FIVE SECONDS I’M CRYIMNGNSD;FLKMWE

HEY

I GOT THE CRAYON I DO THE SAYIN

THAT’S SO FUNNY PLS GJLKSDJFL;WA;F

I LOVE HIM

I ADORE HIM

HE’S EVERYUTHING TO ME

once again Nezha is so good he’s just sitting there grumpy like

ALSO THE VOICE OF REASON HE REALLY IS

I actually

You know what

getting emotional over how they’re all on board with whatever plan monkey king comes up with this time

like season 3 they had nothing but doubts but now they’re all ready to hear him out and listen and OH MY GODS GUY’S HE’S ACTUALLY TELILNG THEM THE PLAN

THEY’RE KEEPIGN CAHRACTER GROWTH I’M IN TEARS

THIS IS ACTUALLY SO GOOD? BLESS YOU MONKIE KID CREW ILY

THE BRAINSTORMING TOGETHER

OH BOY HERE COMES TEENAGE SARCASM

Y’all if Mk’s older than Nezha- CAUSE I CONSIDER MK TO BE LIKE 20 OR SOMETHING AND IF NEZHA’S A TEEN THAT WOULD MAKE ALL OF THIS OS FREAKING FUNNY

THAT

WHAT A CRAYON

WHAT A HIT

THERE’S THAT POSE AGAIN

I’M CRYINGBSD;FAMWE

THIS IS EBAUTIFUL

THE CRAYONS

NO SARCASM ALLOWED IN MONKEY KINGS CLASSROOM

ON TRAINING TIME?

LETS GOOOOOOO

WAIT THIS IS SO FUN??

HELLO???

PIGSY JUST YOINKED THAT MAN

HUG

OH WOW THEY’RE ACTUALLY

OH THAT’S BEAUTIFUL

LOOK AT THIS HYPE BATTLE

THIS IS SO NICE

OH ARMOR???

POWER UP

LOOK AT HIS PROUD EXPRESSION

FREE POWER UPS WITH ARMOR FOR FREE

LETS GOOOO

WHERE’S OUR COOL BATTLE ARMOR

AWW WHEN YOU’VE EARNED IT

WHEEZINGS;AFMAWEO

HELPGMNLSKFMEW

ITS THEIR WEAPONS

THATS SO FREAKIGN FUNNY

WHAT A NICE MONTOGUE

“so we all know i’m the greatest teacher in history”

“ughhhhh this guy” MACAQUE’S QUIET COMEMNTARY PLEASE;GSMKF

HEY

OKAY HURTFUL

PLEASEL;KMGSDF

HE’S NOT THAT BAD

LIKE HE SAYS JUST NEEDS SOME WORK

HE’S ACTUALLY PRETTY DECENT HIS EXPLAINING JUST NEEDS A LOT OF WORK

BUT ALSO ITS?? SO NICE?? HE’S COMFORTABLE SAYING HE’S GOTTA WORK ON THAT NOW?? ITS GORGEOUS I’M CRYING I LOVE HIM

MK TIMEEEE

I LOVE THAT

SHOWING HIM HE TRUSTS HIM AND LETTING HIM BE INVOLVED

NGL MONKEY KING AS A MENTOR REALLY IS SO GOOD

MEI LOOKS SO HAPPY FO RHIM LIKE YUP

CAUSE YOUR’E THE PLAN MAN MAN

SUPPORTIVE DADSY

MK’S LITTLE BASHFUL SMILE

I ADORE

“I mean one of us could beat him, one of us specifically”

“NOPE NONE OF US AT ALL.” HELPT THAT’S SO FUNNYGHDSNFASMF

GET SCROLL

SLAP EM BACK IN

HELPNL;SKMASDF

JUST

SLAP EM BACK IN WHERE THEY GOT OUT OF

AND EVERYHTING WILL BE BACK TO NORMAL

Y’KNOW ASIDE FROM

NO JADE EMPEROR

HOW’S THAT GONNA WORK

HELPGLSDF

THE WAY MK DRAWS THEM ALL

MONKEY KING LIKE THAT

NEZHA LIKE AN OLD MAN

TANG GETTING A PIGGY BACK RIDE ON PIGSY G ET IT? CAUSE PIG?

SANDY CARRYING MACAQUE AND MACAQUE’S BLANK EXPRESSION I LOVE THIS

HELPGNSDF

MACAQUE ON TOP OF THE BLIMP

Mk’s doodles for how they win is actually

so good

always

they make me so happy

Nezha still looking like half deadNG;LAKWMFE

SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE ALL OVER IT SANDY

WELP LOOKS LIKE HE’S BUILDING ANOTHER BLIMP HUH

THE WAY HE DRAWS AZURE

OH MY GODS WHO DREW THESE

I NEED TO HAND THEM ALL MY MORTAL POSSESSIONS FOR HOW THEY’RE DRAWING MACAQUE AND NEZHA I’M CRYING;DSAWE

HE’S FACEDOWN ON THE FLOOR

MACAQUE IS JUST STANDING THERE I’MGNMSLDFMD

LOOK AT HIM DRAW

“If you have to ask… you’re probably on team be”

HE’S SO ANNOYED ABOUT HTAT PLEASE;LKMGSF

PLS MONKEY KINGS’ APPLAUDING IN THE DOODLE, THINKS MK’S SO COOL AND EPIC, HE DOES MK I PROMISE YOU HE THINKS YOU[‘RE COOL YOU ARE COOL

THE DBK FAM ARE FRIENDS

I LOVE THAT SO MUCH

I LOVE THIS SHOW

WHOEVER DREW DBK I NEED THAT AS KEYCHAIN OR STICKER OR ANYTHING

SHHHLURP UP THE BAD GUYS

SO THEY CAN NEVER MAKE US FACE THEIR NIGHTMARES AGAIN

WHY DO THEY KEEP DRAWING HIM LIKE THAT’ PLEASE ITS SO CREEPYGSLF;

WE;’RE ALL GONAN DIENG;LSMF

THANKS TANG

AGAIN

NEZHA IS JUST

SITTING THER I’M WHEEZING

LOOK AT THE ROOM

I LOVE HOW MESSY IT IS ITS SO NICE

I LOVE THAT PIGSY’S ON THE FLOR HE LOOKS COMFY

THIS IS A SILLY PLANNING EPISODE I LOVE IT SM

Okay y’all can trash talk Peng all you want I actually adore them, they’re so dramatic, Macaque has chilled out and now we have this guy and i love them

I LOVE HOW THEY’RE

ITS JUST THE TWO OF THEM

AT A BIG OL BANQUET TABLE

PENG ILY

YOU’RE SO FUNKY

a little chaos might be good for the world

WHY DO I FEEL LIKE AZURE’S GONNA WALK IN AND BEAT UP YELLOW TUSK OR SOEMTHING

OR GO BACK INTO THE SHADOWS ANGRY

I DON’T KONW

I LOVE THAT YELLOW-TUSK KNOWS ITS NOT SUSTAINABLE

HECK DUDE

HE’S ACTUALLY HORRIFYING

HOLD UP THAT WAS CHILLING

COMES TO FIND THEM ALL HAPPY AND JUST

WOW HE’S NOT DOING SO HOT

also wow yeah that’s a lot of cleavage monkie kid why you’re killing me here i can’t take him seirouslyGN;LAMFAWE;NF

YEAH THOSE DUDES LOOK TERRIFIED

HE’S

STILL SMILING

PENG’S SWEATING

HE’S TRYING TO HYPE THEM

AND HE’S

NOT LOOKING GOOD

PENG TRYING TO

YELLOW TUSK IN TROUBLE

LETS GOOOOOOOOOO

THREAT TIME

OHHO

NOT THREAT

PENG

PENG HOW DID YOU KNOW THIS??

HOW OD YOU KNOW THIS??

OHHHHHH

OHHHHHHO

WAIT THIS IS LIKE

POWERFUL PERSON

IS DISTRACTED BY ONE PERSON

SO ITS NOT LIKE REVENGE ITS LIKE

NEED THEM GONE SO I CAN FOCUS

CAUSE IF NOT THEY’RE ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT

HOW INTERESTING

THEY’RE SO WEIRD

AZURE IS SO WEIRD

CACKLES

OKAY

WELL NOW I’M A LITTLE WORRIED FOR WUKONG

BUT

ITS NICE THEY CAN REALLY DISTRACT HIM NOW

ITS INTERESTING HOW YELLOW-TUSK WANTS TO CONFRONT IT AND PENG WANTS TO IGNROE IT, THIS IS LIKE DYSFUNCTIONAL TOXIC FMAILY ALMOST

(i’ve been watching too many therapy videos)

AHEM

ANYWAY

AZURE SURE IS A GUY

I HOPE WUKONG IS GONNA BE OKAY

HELPGPGLKSDMF

THEY GOT AMROUR FOR HTE LITTLE MONKEGSDNBF;ANFA;AWE

OH MY GODS

PIGSY

HE MADE THEM A SILLY LITTLE APRON

AND CARVED THE LITTLE MONKEY A WOODEN SPOON THATS SO HECKING CUTE YOU GUYS

ONE MONKEY APPRANTLY JUST LIKES HANGING WITH PIGSY IG

THAT’S SO NCIE

actually whoever drew pigsy there i would like to high five you you drew him so nice and shaped i adore

DRAMATIC MACAQUE

OH SANDY YOU’RE GONNA PASS OUT BLOWING THAT UP

scary? ;-;

nooooo

buddyyyyyy

YUP HE STILL HASNT’ ACCEPTED THAT PART OF HIMSELF THAT’S

YEAH

HECK DUDE

WHO DREW THAT

WHO DREW THE “IT’LL BE FINE” WHO MADE HIM SHAPED LIKE THAT I’M CRYNIGBDSF;LKMAO;EF WELL DONE IM CHOKIGNSD;FM

WHEN WE LOOK THIS GOOD AIN’T NOTHIGN GONNA BEAT US

HE IS

TRYING SO HARD

COME ON WUKONG U GOTTA TALK TO HIM

PLS DONT’ CALL UR MONKEY FROM SCARY MKKKKKKK WUKONG IS A MONKEEEYYY

;-;

u cant just

ignore this whole part of ur power cause it scares you |;A;/

PLSSSS

UH OH

LOOKS LIKE HE CAME TO THEM

MACAQUE INSTANTLY SHADOW TRAVELING EVERYBODY TO THEM

HOT DANG HE IS ON THE BALL

PIGSY AND DANG FALT ON THE GROUNDMGDFSFD

OH MY GOODNESS THAT IS GONNA MAKE SUCH A TRANSITION FOR AMVS HOLY CRAP I’M EYEING UP THAT BIT

OH BOY

MK BUDDY YOU MIGHT HAVE TO MONKEY UP TO SAVE YOUR MENTOR U H

WHAT A LINE ACTUALLY

I WILL TEST THE LIMITS OF SUN WUKONGS IMMORTALITY

THAT WAS

WHAT A LINE

HECKING

SCREAMS

OKAY

THAT WAS PRETTY CHILL ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

NOW WE GET TO THE AMV RICH ANIAMTION HUH?

THERE’S TWO MORE EPISODES AND THAT’S IT

THERE’S TWO MORE FULL EPISODES THAT MAKES ME SO WORRIED FOR WUKONG

I LOVE HOW THIS EPISODE ILLISTRAITED SO MUCH CHRACTER GROWTH AND POINTED OUT WHERE MK NEEDS MORE OF IT

SCREAMS

OKAY

I NEED TO GET MOVING TO THE NEXT ONE PEACE

KNOX OUT

#long post #knox rambles #knox reacts #monkie kid season 4 spoilers #monkie kid season 4 special spoilers #lmk s4 special spoilers #lmk s4 spoilers

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gudrunbrangwen · 8 months

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hi! what do you make of ai art? im conflicted cause i see how its great for disabled people in many ways, but then i look back at the work people put into becoming artists and mastering the craft and feel many things lol i wish i could look at it similarly like i look at producers for example, where you have a vision and tools and you know how to use it well so you dont need the musical training background to be creative, but i cant help but feel like its more complicated with visual art? that theres a whole other side besides having a vision and good understanding of a shortcut tool. im very very torn and also sorry for all that on your succession blog but knowing youre a fantastic artist whos recently been dealing with this sort of impossibility to make art i wonder if you have some insight in this area.

sending love!

i appreciate u wanting to know my opinion on a Hot Topic such as this! i dunno man i have an aversion to any definition of art of any kind that requires effort or skill as essential features that make the art “real”. i think a lot of what is happening with AI discourse is that people are appropriately appalled by the way capitalism mangles creative output and even what kind of relationships artists can have with their work and with the rest of the world. i do not have a problem with a machine that digests and reconfigures information — a machine is just a machine. if one copied the way i make texture with colored pencil and produced an approximation of a new original work by me, i would be fascinated by what reactions i might have to it. would i feel threatened by it? would i be flattered? what might it open up for me, to see my work broken into a particular machine’s data? this is just a dream, though. i see many artists understandably frightened by what the exploiter class may choose to do with their new toys (and what they are already doing to us with them). it just sucks to see that very plain class antagonism passed over with arguments about the “purity” of human-made art, how it is somehow apparent to any observer when a work is truly endowed with a “soul” (if these arguments sound eerily like fascist aesthetic principles, it’s because they are fascistic).

and then to see people cheering for their own doom with this thing of mr. game of thrones & co suing chatGPT, complete with condescending explanations of how it’s not going to hurt fanfic writers because the problem these multimillionaires have is actually with people monetizing their work, and the true humble Fan would ne’er ask a but penny. do people really not see how this is making the divide between the “artist” and the “common person” greater? it is so goddamn expensive to survive right now, and the wealthy are using fear of technology as a tool to prevent you from making money, and yes, making art at all. only those with enough capital to protect their intellectual property with the force of the law are allowed to express themselves through art. yes, i think it should be well within your rights to bind and sell (for money, yes, money) your game of thrones fanfiction. so many of us are living in poverty right now, bombarded by entertainment but prevented from ever chewing it up or spitting it out. ed roth’s rat fink character had it right. fuck mickey mouse. like, we’re actually back to saying “fuck mickey mouse” being really cool. put him in a blender full of data, have it put him into a beach scene with BBW anime versions of lara croft and princess peach. intellectual property is a historically recent phenomenon. it is a tool to make the rich richer and get you well and squarely fucked. theoretically, yeah, it sounds good to have your work and livelihood honored and protected, but just like they’re trying to replace artists and actors and writers with AI, every single tool becomes a weapon in the hands of the rich. the hell people are worried they need more punishing copyright law to fix is already here. the woman who designed care bears & strawberry shortcake never saw a penny from it. AI art is only a threat in the hands of the corporations that happily do these things in the first place.

anyways. lol. i’m not very technologically minded in my own art practice — i’m not naturally drawn to new technology as a part of my work, and find many of the results i’ve seen from current AI art tech to be kind of aesthetically unpleasant. artwork contains unpleasantness, though. i’m not really interested in arguments over what artwork “should” contain, only what it does. i think the best AI art i’ve seen (ie: the stuff i’ve enjoyed the most) has been from alan resnick:

it is so terrifically disquieting. it leans into what makes AI-generated BBW lara croft kind of difficult to actually jack off to. the overlapping lines of bodies, the nonsense text. but then, if this work has merit, is that because alan resnick is uniquely special, thus proving the point that the technology is only valid in the hands of a “real artist”? can mr. resnick be said to be the “artist” of these images at all, because he trained a program to his own style and input interesting ides? does he deserve lots of money for his work creating iconic adult swim shorts like this house has people in it? well sure

or would this art only have value if somebody put a tremendous amount of labor into it? you know. my mother used to tell me, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work”. she said she should nail the phrase to my forehead, like martin luther at the church doors. having very recently become disabled & chronically ill, i don’t believe it anymore. i believe we should be able to use technology to make ourselves more free. we should not be so financially insecure that we are threatened by anyone expressing themselves with something we made. the ultra-wealthy are threatened by infringement because they need everybody else to stay poor, and the poor are threatened because they do not want to be poor any longer. it’s got nothing to do with strange scrambled pictures. if i could take pictures of every work of art i’ve ever loved and put it into a machine that mixes it up and turns it into a monster, i would do it just for a bittersweet laugh at it.

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centrally-unplanned · 1 year

Text

I feel like making a “Top 5 Media of the Year” post is like extremely redundant if you follow me, its going to be really obvious what is on there. Still, ranking things is fun and is good to reflect on them, in particular why they ‘stuck’ with me and what makes them last as opposed to fun-at-the-time so here goes:

Perfect Tides

Definitely the most well-crafted ‘narrative’ of the year for me. As a game its eh, but you essentially ignore that and its very easy to do so. I been ruminating a lot on temporality this year; the sort of stripping-away of the idea of one having a future that ones grows to as opposed to a sequential present. The idea of ‘growth’ being more of a story we write for ourselves. And additionally I have always had a passion for stories about contingency and specificity, the ways technology, locale and circumstances shape people in not-so-obvious ways.

Perfect Tides is never settled on one thing but those two themes permeate every part of its narrative. Mara is obsessed with changing herself, getting out of the ‘rut’ of her life, but has almost no agency in that regard. She changes, massively so, but never due to her plans coming to fruition. There are these moments where she introspects, and she is smart so it seems right, but - while never confirmed to be so explicitly - are just wrong on reflection, in the battle between her identity & and her outside reality, reality proves stronger.

And the ways she tries to fight against her circumstances are so adorably 2000′s. Writing on fanfic webforums, ‘dating’ someone via IM (and it falling apart from it being transposed outside of that medium), living on an outskirt suburbia island to the metropole of the rest of your social circle, there is so much in there. In the end the bildungsroman story of a teen growing up is dime a dozen, these stories can’t survive on the universality. Perfect Tides marries the universality to a specificity that changes it enough to make it new.

Bocchi the Rock

I have said a lot about Bocchi and why it works so I won’t repeat myself on that front. Instead to situate its lasting impact on me I think I can instead focus on the kind of anime I have been watching. I have picked up a lot (by no means all) of the older ‘classics’ over the past 5 or so years, and I was absolutely soul-sniped by the 90′s ~mindfuck~ era of anime. I am always secretly hunting for more of that, but you really aren’t going to find any of that in modern shows; Sonny Boy is the closest I have seen and its a forced comparion for sure (still a great show, would recommend). The Evangelion era is so over not even an Evangelion remake could recapture it.

The modern era instead has other strengths that you need to see on its own terms - new themes, new styles, new approaches. Slice of life is one of them, K-On! was the first ‘great’ entry into the genre that utilizes the modern lexicon, and there have been more and more hits along that front over time. Anime - and the people who watch it - has a more comfortable relationship with its otaku identity, replacing existential dilemma with celebratory depiction. 90′s animation experimentalism was immense but also limited by the tools of the day; modern animation technology allows an easy integration of styles and techniques that was out or reach 20 years ago.

Bocchi for me is the crest of a wave of modern trendlines in anime’s capabilities and thematics. It perfects so much of what slice of life does while shedding its tired tropes; ruthlessly depicts a real-if-exaggerated otaku struggle but through the modern comedic, happy lens; and puts animation-as-a-tool to work communicating those feelings in the most inventive ways posible. Hell, the design process itself is radically accessible! I follow the creative team on twitter who were live-posting production photos, scene reactions, everything you could imagine. The media mix was intense. It is, in a certain sense, the most modern anime I have seen. It crystalized its own ‘genre’ that I want to see more of.

Sing Yesterday For Me

This year was a big year for manga for me, a journey I am hoping to deepen going forward. Sing Yesterday For Me was on my list for a while due to the anime adaptation from 2020, which I...hated? But due to all the really polished balls it kept dropping, I could see the potential, moody characters struggling with love & life in period-piece 2000′s Tokyo, lots of my boxes checked there.

The manga drops many of these same balls (less for sure), this is not a ‘great’ work. Instead why it has stuck with me is that is a showcase in the strengths of aesthetics & realism. Kei Toume’s art is just so absolutely my jam; the way she draws eyes with enhanced roundness and detail; the way the hair is all messy textures and sharp lines; the fact that in the middle of this serious manga will be splash images of little fashion showcases or photobooth printouts or something. She does this in all of her works too, she has types - I have been reading two of her other manga, Rocky Princess and Karakida-ke no Koshogurashi, and her aesthetic archetypes absolutely show up again in both.

I enjoyed Sing Yesterday for Me’s story but what I remember most are these individual panels that are just Art to me, and its something that manga does on its own terms that I have been growing to appreciate more and more as I read more and more (Chainsaw Man stands out in this regard as well). Its a reason to read manga specifically as its own genre. Maybe the story won’t be amazing, but it can be in service of those panels, a necessary component to making them shine, and its worth it for that.

Astrophyics - Hope Left Me+

Astroyphics is a synthwave/darkwave composer who got their start doing remixes, lots of anime & 80′s stuff, which all rocks and I highly recommend. This is the year they started branching out into their own original compositions in a way that I think succeeded - it was a rougher journey, some of their early works lack life, but the later stuff - Hope Left Me, Cute Tragedies - are some of my favourite of the genre in how they blend being ‘noisescape’ with having melodic elements or motiffs that still stand out.

And they are a media mix pioneer in how much work they put into video elements for the songs, album covers, and other things - Hope Left Me has a visual novel it is attached to! Which you can play as a standalone game (this worked ~fine) or partly experience as a visual album for listening to the music (which is amazing). I love that someone who started out making Serial Experiments Lain covers is working so well in the medium of “music as its permitted to be by the internet”. Its something I want more and more over time, music that exists beyond the notes and instead is in conversation with the rest of the media apparatus it is so inexorably embedded in, and Astrophysics owns that reality. They are 50% of the reason I am a Hatsune Miku stan nowadays (first t-shirt recently acquired!) - the other 50% of the reason being...

Hazel - Why Did We Like Elfen Lied?

Hazel’s Why Did We Like Elfen Lied? lives rent-free in my mind. Its the perfect question for me, not about ‘anime as anime’ but ‘anime as societal product’, about how watchers viewed it, cared about it, repackaged it, communicated it, the works. “What does this piece of media being loved say about those who love it” is the root question over which every other media discussion I ever have rests, the Unified Field Theorem of media analysis. And Elfen Lied is the *perfect* target for this question - it fucking sucks! It is an awful show, and in Japan no one cared. But in 2004 everyone in the west loved it. It was a show begging for an explanation.

Hazel nails it, and she does so through her subjectivity. She was the patient zero for the Elfen Lied experience as an emo goth edgy teen girl for its release; the way she jumps back and forth between the anime’s actual content, the way what it offered was passed around anime & goth subcultures, and the wider concerns those communities had in 2000′s America, is completely realized due to its combination of analysis and autobiography. And Hazel excels as a filmmaker along this same lens - her editing style is a tower of niche references to iconography, media, and music from the era, she composes her own songs which she uses for key moments, its a “by kids for kids by scene nerds for scene nerds” approach that epotimizes the strength of YouTube as a medium.

Hazel will not continue to be my favourite YouTuber - I will absolutely still be a fan, but she has her own questions she cares about that don’t align with mine, and the way she is evolving as a creator is not my own path. She has many other good videos and I highly recommend looking through all her works. But Why Did We Like Elfen Lied will last beyond that for me as an influence of the kind of thing I myself want to make (and probably never will, oh well!).

#2022 media retrospective #bocchi the rock!#perfect tides #sing yesterday for me #astrophysics #hazel

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