#technogods

[wracknorris]

GAY ALLFATHER – SLAY CIS GENDER! ⚡

🏳️‍🌈From the halls of Valhalla to the depths of the queer underground, Odin sees all—and he’s here to serve LEWKS AND PROPHECY. 🔥 His ravens whisper the truth, his spear shatters binaries, and the bifröst beams with every shade of the rainbow.No gods, no masters—only DRIP. 💅✨🔥🕶️

👉 linktr.ee/wrack_norris

[psitrend]

Dark Star releases Artefacts with six unreleased tracks from the 1990s

Edward Ka-Spel collaborates on new Dark Star album Artefacts The music project Dark Star has announced the digital release of Artefacts, a collection of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the mid-1990s. The release, which will be available on Bandcamp from January 10, 2025, features six tracks, including contributions from prominent artists such as Edward Ka-Spel, Yaxi Highrizer, and…

[bekaterrier]

A few other wonderful shows I wanted to shoutout for BIPOCtober, with BIPOC creators and/or leads:

A Ninth World Journal: Based on Numenera, a tabletop roleplaying game, and written, produced and performed by David S. Dear (plus guests). Set one billion years in the future… it’s the story of Januae, a man who randomly teleports to strange and dangerous places with no way of controlling it.

@meteorcitypod: In 2008, a freak meteor shower hit Detroit, killing hundreds and displacing thousands. Hundreds of people were quarantined for radiation exposure. 10 years later, Bianca Diaz, a vlogger returns to tell the stories of the dead, the missing, and the remaining citizens of Detroit, now called Meteor City. Shortly after returning, Bianca realizes that Meteor City, New Detroit, and the people left behind are not what they appear to be...

@witcheverpath: An interactive horror anthology podcast. Their current story is Message in a Bottle. A siren misses what was taken from her, but as she swims out to sea, she discovers a bottle that may change the course of her life.

@radio-outcast: A fantasy-western audio drama. When Helix, the Messenger God of Sound, gets yanked from the 1980s and sent to the 1880s by her abusive ex-lover, the God of Time, she must forge unlikely alliances with two humans: Jesse, a cowboy out for revenge, and Charles, a conman running from his past. The three of them embark on a journey across the American West, each with their own goals and secrets waiting to be revealed

@vegapodcast: A Sci-Fi Adventure Podcast!: In a fantasy futuristic world, Vega Rex is employed by her government to kill off the world's worst criminals. She's never met a criminal she couldn't catch...until now. Join Vega as she journeys through a world of bumbling apprentices, powerful technogods, and her biggest challenge yet

@noadventurespod: A fantasy (un)adventure story that follows Sig, the owner of Signature Eats bakery, as he aggressively avoids becoming embroiled in any daring quests or chosen one shenanigans even though the universe really seems to want him to do just that. This is a story about cutting the Hero’s Journey off at the knees to chill with friends. And also baking. This is also a story about baking.

Harlem Queen: A Black historical fiction audio drama based on the life and times of Black, woman, gangster "Numbers Queen" Madame Stephanie St. Clair during the Harlem Renaissance (the story takes place around 1926-32). She fought the "big boys" (Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz) and won.

@herebedragonspod: When the body of a previously unknown aquatic creature washes up on shore, four women are called together for the expedition of a lifetime. Tasked by the U.S. Government to find and record evidence of this new breed of sea monster, Harper Bennett, Pippa Cambell, Lt. Commander Adrienne Scarlett and Dr. Natalya Atlas set off into the untamed wilds of The Bermuda Triangle.

@unwellpodcast: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery. Lillian Harper moves to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town's boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house's strange assortment of residents.

Fan Wars: The Empire Claps Back: A not-so-romantic comedy about two star wars fans on opposite sides of the Last Jedi debate.

[invested-in-your-future]

The most hilarious thing for me is the apologia of some fans who have come to tout Arcane S2 ending as "realistic.".

An entire show worth of build-up of police brutality and division culminating in majority of government body being assassinated (and then next person in power literally gassing the poor) got written off because the show dedicated the second half of its final season to a subplot of everyone uniting against interesting-character-suddenly-turned-magic-technogod-villain and an Evil Other Empire from Outside in a conclusion that involved a character spending entire season away to develop superpowers, dead characters being retconned as alive(and then not used because gotta set up an MCU of More Shows rather than telling a story), magic robot zombies being fought, world-wide robot apocalypse, parallel universes, and time travel as the class struggle, character psychology, prominent LGBTQ+ romance(gotta love sidelining the queer for the centrist nonsense) and the nature of the class division that the first season intricately built up all take a backseat to deliver the most worn-down MCU style trope.

Like, can y'all not?

For some, S2 worked; for some, it absolutely didn't, but like or dislike the messy season 2, it's not debatable that it's a completely different show than many fell in love with in S1.

And certainly not because "it got more realistic.".

[caw-oticdork]

(Descriptions below the cut)

Descriptions:

Null /Void is a science fiction audio drama about a young woman, Piper Lee, whose life is saved by a mysterious voice named Adelaide. Piper soon uncovers a malicious plot by a monopoly of a tech company and must work with her friends and an unusual ally to help foil their deadly plot.

That Scares Me, Too: Join Dr. Sophie Yang and K.A. Statz as we discuss myths and tales of horror from Taiwan and Asia. Together, we compare and contrast stories from our cultures and talk about the shared humanity that is fear.

Ghost InSpectors: Two private detectives must solve the mystery of how they died and catch a serial killer before it's too late. A supernatural audio drama about friendship, ghost shenanigans, and moving on.

Before The Tone is a science fiction horror podcast produced by Knave Of Hearts. We follow Mack, a woman who has just gotten a job as a CCTV operator at the increasingly-suspicious Atlas Consulting. It takes the format of voicemails from Mack to her sister, Daria, who never seems to answer her calls. The horror tends towards the psychological as Mack is stalked and reality becomes a little less solid where Atlas is concerned. The science fiction is focused on time and how its fabric can be manipulated.

Vega: In a fantasy futuristic world, Vega Rex is employed by her government to kill off the world's worst criminals. She's never met a criminal she couldn't catch...until now. Join Vega as she journeys through a world of bumbling apprentices, powerful technogods, and her biggest challenge yet. Hosted by Ivuoma Hall.

The Secret of St. Kilda: In this supernatural thriller series, listeners will follow Lockie, a charismatic con man who escapes to St Kilda with the promise that this time he’ll change his ways. Unfortunately, the island and its unusual inhabitants have other ideas. He seeks redemption and they seek a saviour, but you know what they say - no change without sacrifice.

[snake-author]

Sonus Prime AU, Shockwave

Title: The Technogod DJ

Shockwave, In the Sonus Prime AU is mainly a scientist, the DJ part is mostly just his title.

His genre is experimental music.

[terriwriting]

Be a random citizen of Metropolis.

Go jogging.

See Superman doing a handstand in the middle of the park.

Check your phone.

Find a news alert saying Superman has just saved the world by pushing the planet out of the path of an antimatter ray sent by the technogod of tyranny.

Shrug.

Finish your jog.

Just another day in Metropolis.

[cerentari]

Pueblocide - Technogod (1992)

[curious-glitch]

Beyond the Current State: Uncanny Parallels among first-principles thinkers

I’m seeing uncanny parallels across the writings of the smartest first principles thinkers, and the picture is not pretty.

Seeing like a State decries top-down forced imposition of rules and grids over bottom-up organic entities.

The Sovereign Individual advocates for a new globalized class outside the crutches of state actors who will thrive in the post-industrial age.

Balaji builds on this with the Network State, which he argues is the crypto-powered (BTC) third way of life powered by crypto (BTC) vs. CCP (communist capital) and NYT (woke capital).

Tim Urban asks ‘What’s our problem?’ as he navigates the hyperpolarization of society and how we have grown more tribal.

Slate Star Codex highlights the increased distrust in traditional media. Erik Hoel highlights the increased distrust in academia. Institutions that served as the purveyors and pillars of truth in society are eroding (banks included too, of course)

The Straussian Moment by Thiel went against the grain and was among the first to point this malaise out, using Girard’s mimetic theory to diagnose the ills of modernity and eerily sounding off that we may have no way out.

Without the standard-bearers of truth and meaning and purpose, society is grappling with the emergence of new ‘gods’ like wokism or technogods or mysticism or nationalism or tribalism to take their place.

Marc Andreesen declared that ‘It’s time to build.’ because he observed that the West no longer has the muscles to push for real innovation.

Patrick Collison often points to ‘What happened after 1971?’ just as Thiel remarks that ‘instead of flying cars we got 140 characters.’

Truth is becoming more elusive. Individuals and institutions can no longer cope. Technology continues to march forward and eat the world but decels are trying to crash the party. The All-In podcast talks about this every week now. Elon tweets about it all the time. The e/acc movement has emerged to combat exactly this, as are writers like Noah Smith and Packy McCormick who are trying to bring the excitement back.

These thinkers all lament the slowdown in progress because of institutional lethargy, that good times created weak men who are now creating hard times, that the current generation has gone too soft. They are all against the Procrustean bed cast by a a larger state, who they point to as one of the key parties to blame.

They seem to have good intentions, to sound the clarion call before it’s too late for the existing powers, to defend the values of liberalism and truth, else we veer away from enlightenment and regress back to humanity’s base instincts.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel that they are also getting ready for the era that comes after this nation-state paradigm which we have taken for granted for so long.

p.s. there is also an intersection with the more techno-optimist transhumanist ‘bros’ eg. tim ferriss, the CEOs of tech giants, and effective altruists.

p.p.s. all this points to a weaker US and the end of pax americana, but in a plot twist the challenger, China is also weakened in a massive self-own, while the next powers - Middle East, India, Southeast Asia are all on the rise.

[psitrend]

'Artefacts': Dark Star Returns with a New Sound - Interview

A sonic exploration of minimalist electronic industrial noise featuring collaborations with Edward Ka-Spel, Yaxi Highrizer, and Technogod Dark Star is a German music project that first gained recognition in the early 1990s within the European and American independent cassette and DIY music scene, releasing three cassettes and two CDs on Strange Ways Records (Germany) and Soleilmoon Records…

[looowkeeey]

@taylorswift @taylornation since you seem so interested in crazy the best I can relate atm is it's like everyone is hypnotized and my past with raving in the Bay Area made for some crazy hyped technogoding and I was a simple Bard making poetry of everything in life, more beautiful than this

[itmeblog]

The Bookmarks - Even though Mark eats off silver spoons and Marquelle is more used to plastic, the two are best friends. This improvised comedy series explores the bond of two friends who start a book podcast on their way to their shared goal of writing TheNextGreatAmericanNovel(TM).

Small Victories - A recently recovered drug addict tries to start her new lease on life, too bad life has it out for her.  This dramatic comedy follows Marisol through the ups and downs of her life.

Vega - In a fantasy futuristic world, Vega Rex is employed by her government to kill off the world's worst criminals. She's never met a criminal she couldn't catch…until now. Join Vega as she journeys through a world of bumbling apprentices, powerful technogods, and her biggest challenge yet. Hosted by Ivuoma Hall.

Temujin - A Webby-nominated audio drama on the rise of Genghis Khan—and the fall of his closest friend.

Caravan - (I think) a weird–west audio adventure about going through hell with the people you love

Unwell - Lillian Harper moves to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town's boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house's strange assortment of residents.

I'm not entirely sure because the parameters for whiteness have shifted (gotten less stringent in order to keep the majority) since I was a kid (idk what's going on with latino/hispanic like... official classifications right now?? Now there are like 2 boxes?? I'm not sure how the writer self id's either).

Kalila Stormfire's Economical Magic Services - After a controversial fallout with her coven, Kalila Stormfire must juggle complex clients and an anonymous critic hellbent on besmirching her new business. The decaying urban block where Kal operates appreciates her affordable experience in a broad range of supernatural ailments and remedies. Still, Kal is not sure if her talent is enough to stop whoever has been posting bad reviews and persuading customers to cancel appointments.

The Ortiz Twins are coming home - After a face-to-face with an ancient pitáo (an ancient god) who has forgotten his name, the twins are sent on an adventure through the Underworld and face restless spirits, as well as their long lost parents. A new fantasy audio drama about twins on the border reconnecting with their indigenous roots and their family’s forgotten history.

If you don't mind my sharing my own, probably less spicy POC rep in audio drama take: the AD community's tendency toward celebration of "representation" within the medium as if this rep applies to anything substancially besides queer characters is exausting. Sure, queer rep is important but so often reading "there's rep for everything!" and the cast is like, 95% white? Or, bafflingly, people claiming diversity for something that is entirely fanon? Mmh.

Hi anon!

My take is just about as spicy, honestly.

There's a tendency to value "racially ambiguous" characters played entirely by White actors over actual BIPOC characters

(usually with BIPOC actors, though I'm not as strict about this since I don't mind White actors playing BIPOC characters so long as BIPOC voice actors can play White characters and no BIPOC actors lose voice acting opportunities. And as long as more attention is given to BIPOC creators than we're getting currently).

It sometimes feels as though BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Colour) characters and creators are overlooked in favour of characters who are ostensibly White but drawn by fandom as BIPOC.

I've seen a lot of support in the community from fellow audio drama people; I've felt uplifted by my fellow creators who are White, and I always appreciate and value that. And obviously some shows are just well made and part of their success is based on other factors.

But as someone who's also aware of audio drama fandom, it's easy to see how much favour is given to White Characters drawn as BIPOC in comparison to characters who are BIPOC in text, and I'm not sure why.

That's my spicy opinion. I follow a few BIPOC creators but I can only name two that have an amount of success comparable to White audio drama creators (Gabriel Urbina of W359 fame and Octavia Bray of Atypical Artists), but my knowledge is limited.

And that's not even getting into female led audio drama, but I do love the success of creators such as Lauren Shippen in the space.

I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum or blame anyone for this phenomenon, but I do think it's worth thinking about. Why I see 50 brown Jonny Simses for every canonically brown Samama Khalid. Maybe it's all a coincidence based on other factors. Maybe White characters invite more imagination in their depiction or something.

I don't mind BIPOC depictions of ostensibly White or "racially ambiguous" characters, but I'm not a big fan of if they outnumber depictions of canon BIPOC characters. I just think the latter deserve more love.

I'm no expert. Also I'm mostly in the horror space, apart from my love of Life With Leoh (a sci fi romcom). My knowledge is very limited so if anyone would like to contradict me, I welcome it (especially if it means discovering more BIPOC led shows).

I don't want this to just be about complaining, so please feel free to shout out some fantastic BIPOC led audio drama (either created by or with a majority BIPOC cast) or even share some art you've done of characters from them and I'll happily share them.

My favorites are Wolf 359 (by Gabriel Urbina) and Life with Leoh (by Octavia Bray)!

[lovesickrobotic]

Idk what If randomly there was a scenario of hal n am fighting over you

*HAL is instantly decimated out of existence within seconds.*

"Well, he's gone. Little annoying twit couldn't leave you alone for half a second, honest! Well, now I can take up all that extra space in your heart, huh?"

[omega-al]

Error and The Scribe

Over one hundred and fifty years ago ‘She’ came out of the dust. She came with an army of robots, carving a bloody trail through the wastes, until she came to us. We were a small non-violent tribe of scavengers, hiding in a valley that was nearly completely desolated by drought and famine. Maybe she was tired of all the death, maybe she fell in love, but for whatever reason she didn’t kill us. Instead she came to live among us. She taught us how to use the bots, not as war machines, but as tools. She showed us how to use tech and how to build it. We kept the sacred knowledge and learned how to repair the land. Over time we modded ourselves to better interact with our robot companions and turned our small valley into a lush oasis. Eventually every child born was fitted with implants and we became something more than human. We became technomancers. We lived a good life in our hidden valley in the barren wastes of the Midwest, but our savior was only human and no amount of tech upgrades could keep her with us, she died at the age of one-hundred and thirty four. Succeeded by her eleven grandchildren, the founders of our tribe.

After her death the founders were conflicted, some wanted to venture out into the world, take what we had learned to the wastes and try to do some good. But others who recalled stories of a time when we lived out there, warned of the tragedy rejoining the world of man would bring. They argued for weeks about what to do and in the end, some would go and some would stay. Those that stayed were going to make sure no one ever found them, they hid themselves away from the world and cloaked the entire valley from both visual and satellite awareness. When my family left our valley, they watched it get swallowed up by a sandstorm, one that still rages today and appears in random places in the wastes. No one has ever been able to find their way home after that, not in the fifty years since we left our paradise.

It wasn’t easy for the people that left. My grandparents were among the twenty or so families that left trying to save the world and find hidden knowledge. At first they would go to the small towns and respites of man and try to help people, they would offer medical supplies and try to teach others how to heal the land. They would be worshiped at first as saviors, welcomed with open arms, praised for their obvious superiority, but eventually ‘these people’ would get it in their heads that they’d be better off making the decisions, and then they would try to take what we had for themselves. A lot of our tribe died, a lot of our sacred tech was lost. My people had to decide whether or not helping man was worth what they could do with the help given.

Again our people were faced with a choice that further split us from each other. Some left right away, trying to find home in the vast deserts of middle america, others stayed true to our purpose, but over the years and hardship of a scavengers life many eventually fell away.

So many just gave up and walked off into the dunes, my mother was one of them. My father and a few other families were all that was left of our once mighty and righteous goal, a goal that was becoming more and more polluted by dogma and superstition with every day of struggle trying to survive in this harsh unforgiving land. My father was a kind of religious leader, he made a lot of the decisions for the tribe too. He had me indoctrinated into Technofaith by the time I was six and I was a full-fledged Scribe by the time I was eleven. That year I shed my human name, and became Scribe. That was the same year we found Error.

We were in the ruins of El Paso when we were ambushed by some feral raiders, ghoul-like humans so starved and brutalized by the environment they had reverted to a more animalistic pack-like mentality. We were sleeping in a burnt out Walmart, long since pillaged for all it’s goods but still shelter enough from the windstorms, when they crept up on us, surely drawn by our fire.

My father and I were discussing my mother again, he blamed me for her leaving, said she was afraid to see me die. But I heard them argue that night, she wanted to go looking for the homeland and when he refused, she told him if he didn’t go with her then and now, she would be gone by morning, and she was. Just like that she walked out into the night and whatever cruel fate would find her. I remember hating her for years, hating her for leaving me. But I think now I understand why she did.

We were so caught up in our argument we didn’t even here our perimeter sensors going wild with warning. It wasn’t until I heard the long drawn out laughter of one of the beasts that we even knew they were there. Suddenly six, no ten of them were upon us. Most of what was left of our small group were asleep and immediately butchered.

When they were cut down entire parts of our oral tradition were lost, I saw both my friends and our rich history dying in front of me. It had become our practise to only have parts of our great tech knowledge taught to each person in the tribe, and data that person had learned over the course of their life was saved locally, only downloaded to the collective knowledge after death. That way if one of us was captured for knowledge, the captors would only ever have part of the puzzle, but I think my father thought it would keep us together longer, binding us in tradition and blood. We needed each other to save each other.

As I watched them die, I knew man could not be saved. Their brutality would kill all that was good in the world.

My father was fighting them back, five at a time, all four robo-arms flailing wildly from his back, scorpion-like daggers stabbing deep into his attackers. I didn’t have his upgrades yet but I knew how to work the bots. I found my rigger and spiced control of my fallen friends bots into my one headset.

I want to make this clear, no one should ever do this. The human mind, even with upgrades should not be able to control more than three bots independently. It’s too much, it overheats the brain, fries your connections, messes you up. But I had no choice, everyone was dying around me, my father was losing against a near endless army of monsters that seemed to just keep coming back, barely wounded by the razor sharp robo-blades. When I took control I sensed eight bots fully functional on the network and four semi functional turrets. I set the turrets to auto and yelled at my father to run. I sent the bots after the onslaught that chased him, I jumped from bot to bot seeing through their eyes, their arms were my arms, then ran when I wanted them to. I felt the strength of twelve robots, I felt the raw power they had to tear these invaders limb from limb, I held the monsters down and punched them with robot arms until they were pulp, I fired laser cannons and mowed them down, I cut them in half with diabolical robot arms. I discovered all the ancient weapons systems we had been told to avoid using at all costs. These things weren’t meant to be tools, no, they were weapons, terrifying weapons that could turn a man to smoking cinder.

In the end it was silent, only the low hum of the bots, my father’s exhausted grunts, and the sound of a crackling fire. When I disconnected I could smell burning flesh, and my nose was bleeding. I passed out immediately and awoke to my father shaking me. A few others had survived, but were severely hurt. He checked my vitals gave me some water, then walked off to help the others without saying a word. I left the group to go scout our escape route out of El Paso, my father yelling at me to stay on the coms, we would be leaving as soon as the tech could be collected from the dead. I waved him off and went to go find somewhere to throw up.

I was gagging up a can of creamed corn when I heard a gasp and saw something moving in the corner of my eye. I pretended not to notice the small dark figure watching me as I cleaned up my face and drank some of the water. As I chugged it I heard the gasp again, I let some of the water spill from my mouth and onto the ground, and when I did a little black hand reached out from the shadows and then retreated quickly back, not making a sound. I began pouring the water onto the ground, wasting it blatantly. That did it, as it drained a small naked child about six years old came running out of the shadows towards me and the water, and began lapping it off the ground and trying to catch it in it’s mouth. I gave it the bottle and moved away to give it space to drink. I could see now that she was a tiny malnourished girl of anywhere from four to eight years old. Her hair was matted and she was filthy. Her lips were cracked and she looked like she had never known a good meal and a warm bed. I began talking to her while I got out a ration and started eating it. She was uninterested in me until I pulled out the food, then she came over and plunked herself down next to me, pointing at her mouth. I gave her the food and she skittered back off to a safe distance to eat.

I kept talking.

I told her my name, I told her who I was and where I came from the entire time she was just chewing on a slab of dried meat, but she never stopped looking into my eyes. She seemed feral, lost and starving, but something in those eyes told me she understood me. She still had some language skills under all the animalistic fear. That’s when my father messaged me and told me to return to camp, we were rolling out in ten. I told her I had to go now, that I was going somewhere with more food and water and if she wanted, she could come with me. At first she just stared at the space where I was as I walked off, not certain what to do about the offer she had been given, but eventually she followed me nervously in the shadows.

My father was wary, but philanthropic in a religious zealotry kind of way, he needed to save her and much as she needed to be saved. Especially after all that death.

We named her named Error, on account of her not being expected and taught her our way. I hated her after a few short years. She was always in my way, always trying to ‘help’. She followed me everywhere and stole all the best parts for her robots. She was annoying and easily over-excited. She didn’t have a lot of tech and no implants to interface with machines so she learned how to use them in other ways. After a few years, she was programming them to do new things, she was scavenging old tech and finding new ways to use it to improve the bots. My father loved her in a way, but he always looked at her with a kind of disappointment, I think he thought she could never be as great as she could’ve been had she been with us from birth. She could never really meet her potential because she couldn’t interface with the bots like we could. So even though she tried harder than any of us to be a technomancer and win his love and adoration she always fell short. Maybe that’s why I hated her, she tried too hard, and she was better at it than me.

After a few years of travelling together our hardships had been many and the tribe was more fractured than it had ever been, people were losing faith the more faithful and wild my father’s beliefs became. He gets it in his head one day that Error is meant to lead us back to the homeland, that she is some sort of prophet. Grateful for his attention, she begins to search the data banks of any technological society still standing, she searches records and histories looking for some sign of where our people could have gone to. She finds traces of them in their deeds across the land, but no one seems to know where they disappear to when then go back into the dunes. There are tales of people arriving in storms, some bringing aid, others bringing war and destruction. She pins it all out on a map and a great journey is planned, a pilgrimage to the home land, which she is certain she has found.  For seven long years we searched for it. We scoured the wastes, people died, our purpose seemed lost, we seemed lost. And with every failure my father became more and more insane.

One day I came home from scouting and the shelter was locked down, I had to hack into the locks to get in and when I did I found out why. My father had decided to do some surgery on Error. When I found him he was covered in her blood trying to attach some tech to her brain directly. She was out cold but still breathing, barely breathing.  He was mad, he was a butcher, he had no idea what he was doing and he was killing her. I had to stop him but he fought back. He was raving and screaming about how she was the one, the savior, but she needed the hands of god. His hands.

I killed him. I shot him through the face and as he lay dying I held my sister, the last of our tribe slowly fading away. She woke up at that moment and pointed to a helmet she had been tinkering with the last few years. She told me to put it on my head and jam the four spikes attached to it by colourful wires into her exposed brain. She could barely speak, but I understood. She was going to come stay with me for a bit. I downloaded Error into my brain.

Now some might argue that she died that day, and that I am just carrying a construct of a fifteen year old girl around in my head, but she feels real to me and she has gotten me out of more than just a few scrapes.

It’s just us now, she is still certain she knows how to find our lost paradise, so we go, we follow all the strings, go to all the places on her map, Follow all the stories of magical robots or cyborg saviors, we search for lost tech and try to find other like us out there.

She still thinks we’ll find them one day.

[invested-in-your-future]

It's almost like there was a way to have both the Arcane subplot and the actual central heart of the show—by merely using the Arcane the same way they did in S1, where it's a threat of technological progress misused in the hands of the rich and powerful, as well as the downtrodden and the oppressed, during the times where tensions and conflicts escalate.

It's possible to have the subplot of "arcane getting out of hand" and Jayce and Viktor being at odds without magic technogods and robot zombies and worldwide apocalypses and time travel and sweeping the class conflict the S1 set-up under the rug with centrist af "and they teamed up against evil Third Party and lived happily ever after; watch spin-offs about all those characters doing things elsewhere that don't directly relate to why you watched the show, pls."

There's no reason for The Arcane to be the central literal mcguffin subplot or direct villain rather than a thematic unifier.

As for LOL—why should LOL be used in a way that's detrimental to telling a good story? Arcane S1 did just fine doing that while having clever nods and cameos and not abandoning its narrative tone and character-focused drama.

Arcane lore is intended to be the "soft canon reboot" for LOL anyway, building the new setting—there's no reason they can't do better than just "Hey, remember this?" especially when characters like Mel started in the show and not the game.

There's no reason to have Vander-retcon-subplot just for LOL Cameo when Vi and Jinx should resolve their conflict via actual proper characterization rather than deus-ex-machina that screams, "Watch the spin-offs," and effs off.

There's no reason to have a whole other country invading or Mel being taken out of the actual subplot she's best in—politicking and power struggles—and spending time wanting to join the MCU.

There's no reason to have the barely comprehensible (to non-LOL players, that is) Black Rose cameo stuff, or the random traitor girl that is pointless, or a bunch of extras that do not even come close to S1's extras when the base conflict is already set up.

Imagine if someone were remaking Parasite by Bong Joon-ho and decided, "But what if we add aliens who force the poor family to live there, and also if they leave, the world gets overrun by robots, and also there's another house nearby inhabited by a pair of wizards because we need to advertise another movie?"

The majority of Arcane S2 (especially the second half, maybe even everything past the first three episodes) is clutter detrimental to what actually made S1 so good.

Don't you just love it when the actual meat and bones of the narrative—the class conflict and the nature of privilege and wealth—get dropped because the show wants its MCU magic zombie fight?

[roxiusagi]

@technoplane may i offer you a doodle