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thecreaturecodex · 8 months

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Protean, Renegwe

"Fang of Nulzann" © Hex Entertainment, by Martin de Diego. Accessed at his deviantArt here

[My final original species of protean, this time embodying plate tectonics as a manifestation of change. I knew I wanted to do a continental drift-themed protean, and this was one of the first art pieces I found when embarking on this project. As a reminder, all of my protean species have a name that's an anagram. I'll be posting the solutions to those at the end of the week.]

Protean, Renegwe CR 19 CN Outsider (extraplanar) This massive creature appears like a snake with a humanoid torso, its body composed of black volcanic rock. A snort hood grows between its head and neck, and a pair of horns like bent stalagmites grows from its head. It shimmers with heat.

A renegwe is a protean devoted to some of the most dramatic changes in the cosmos—plate tectonics. Renegwes are the shepherds of whole continents, observing them move over the course of thousands or millions of years, and steering them if their whims dictate they speed up or slow down. Rather than the immediate thrills of transforming a person into an animal, or the destruction of killing enemies and overthrowing governments, renegwes prefer the gradual pleasures of growing mountains, eroding canyons and rock formation. That is not to say that they cannot be dramatic—a renegwe who grows bored with a landmass’ progress might start earthquakes with magic, or heat up a lava reservoir to re-activate a dormant volcano.

Few renegwes care much about the short lives of humanoids directly, but may become territorial of particular mineral deposits and protect them from mining or other exploitation. They might also come into conflict with magical creatures that seek to stop or mitigate the destruction their earthquakes and volcanoes engender. A renegwe prefers to fight atop or within a solid surface—although they can fly, they feel much more comfortable when touching earth or stone. Renegwes spew lava from their mouths and can fire exploding boulders from their hands. They have relatively few spell-like abilities compared to other proteans, and prefer simple melee tactics to pitched battles at a distance.

Renegwes are more common outside the Maelstrom than in it. They dwell mostly deep underground on planets of the Material Planes, or in places where the Planes of Earth and Fire overlap. From these magma-rich bastions, they may plot against the shaitans and efreeti—both of these genies types are lawful, and seek to impose order where the renegwes prefer chaos. Renegwes are natural allies of magma dragons, but these allegiances may be fractious and marked by power struggles. Few renegwes have much interest in the politics of the protean choirs, but may work for a given protean lord on a temporary basis when their interests overlap. The protean lord most sympathetic to the renegwes is Etna, herself a being of volcanic power.

Renegwe CR 19 XP 204,800 CN Gargantuan outsider (chaotic, earth, extraplanar, fire, protean) Init +6; Senses blindsight 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +31, tremorsense 120 ft. Aura cloak of chaos (DC 26)

Defense AC 34, touch 12, flat-footed 32 (-4 size, +2 Dex, +4 deflection, +22 natural) hp 330 (20d10+220) Fort +23, Ref +20, Will +26 DR 15/adamantine and lawful; Immune acid, fire; Resist electricity 10, sonic 10; SR 30 Defensive Abilities amorphous anatomy, fiery body, freedom of movement, rock catching

Offense Speed 40 ft., burrow 80 ft. (earth glide), fly 80 ft. (good) Melee bite +31 (2d8+15 plus 2d6 fire), gore +31 (2d8+15 plus 2d6 fire), 2 claws +31 (2d6+15/19-20 plus 2d6 fire), tail slap +29 (2d8+7 plus 2d6 fire plus grab) Ranged 2 lava bombs +18 touch (4d6 bludgeoning plus 2d6 fire) Space 20 ft.; Reach 20 ft. Special Attacks breath weapon (80 ft. cone, 20d6 fire, Ref DC 31), earth mastery, trample (2d8+22 plus 2d6 fire, DC 35)

Spell-like Abilities CL 19th, concentration +27 Constant—cloak of chaos (self only, DC 26) At will—chaos hammer (DC 22), scorching ray, stone shape 3/day—earthquake, empowered flame strike (DC 23), greater dispel magic, quickened wall of stone, word of chaos (DC 25) 1/day—clashing rocks (DC 27), repel metal or stone, wall of lava (DC 26)

Statistics Str 41, Dex 15, Con 32, Int 14, Wis27, Cha 26 Base Atk +20; CMB +39 (+41 bull rush, +43 grapple); CMD 55 (57 vs. bull rush, cannot be tripped) Feats Awesome Blow, Combat Reflexes, Empowered SLA (flame strike), Flyby Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Critical (claw), Improved Initiative, Multiattack, Power Attack, Quicken SLA (wall of stone) Skills Bluff +29, Disguise +26, Fly +25, Intimidate +29, Knowledge (geography, planes) +23, Perception +31, Sense Motive +29, Survival +29 Languages Abyssal, Draconic, Ignan, Protean, Terran, telepathy 100 ft. SQ change shape (dragon or elemental, elemental shape IV or form of the dragon III), no breath

Ecology Environment underground (Maelstrom) Organization solitary, pair or geoform (3-6) Treasure standard

Special Abilities Breath Weapon (Su) Any creature that takes damage from a renegwe’s breath weapon is coated in lava, taking 10d6 points of fire damage for the next 1d3 rounds (no save). Change Shape (Su) A renegwe can change shape at will, but does not gain the healing from changing shape as is typical for proteans. It can only assume the form of dragons or elementals with the earth or fire subtypes. Earth Mastery (Ex) When both a renegwe and its opponent are touching the ground, the renegwe gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls. Fiery Body (Ex) A renegwe’s body is blazing hot. It deals 2d6 points of fire damage with all of its natural attacks, and any creature striking it with a melee touch attack, natural weapon or unarmed strike takes 2d6 points of fire damage. Lava Bombs (Su) As a standard action, a renegwe can fire two lava bombs, one from each hand. Each lava bomb is treated as a ranged touch attack with a range of 200 feet and no range incremenent. A creature struck takes 4d6 points of bludgeoning damage and 2d6 fire, and then the lava bomb explodes, dealing 10d6 points of fire damage in a 40 foot radius (Reflex DC 29 half). If a creature is in the radius of both lava bombs, it makes a single save at a -4 penalty, and treats the fire damage as coming from a single source. A renegwe can use its lava bombs once every 1d4 rounds. The save DC is Charisma based.

#protean #renegwe #outsider #elemental #lava #plate tectonics #pathfinder 1e

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materialsscienceandengineering · 4 months

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Study sheds light on the origin of elasticity in glasses and gels

Glasses and gels are two different types of solid materials that are commonly used in a wide range of settings. Despite their markedly different compositions, these distinct materials share some similar properties, for instance, they exhibit rigidity without a translational order and a slow transformation over time. Researchers at the University of Tokyo recently set out to better understand the differences between glasses and gels, specifically focusing on their elastic properties. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, sheds light on the origin and evolution of elasticity in these two classes of amorphous solids. "Our research started by observing the unique mechanical changes in colloidal gels during aging," Hajime Tanaka, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. "Although glasses and gels have similar characteristics as amorphous solids—like rigidity without order and slowing dynamics during aging—we found something unexpected.

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meganehaise · 3 months

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Late but here's my entry for day 4 of Yin Yu Appreciation Week!

Title: Amorphous Relationship: Quan Yizhen & Yin Yu (QuanYin subtext) Prompt: Masks Summary: After turning into a ghost, Yin Yu learns to change his appearance. He feels it's a chance to leave the burden he carries behind. Yin Yu feels his new face is better in every aspect. Yet, when Quan Yizhen sees him, he strongly disagrees. Yin Yu's original appearance is a million times better. If his shixiong can't see it, Quan Yizhen will have to make it clear for him. Also on AO3

It isn’t until a few decades have passed since his death that Yin Yu asks Hua Cheng to teach him about changing forms.

Yin Yu knows he won’t be able to make a fake skin to the same degree a supreme ghost can, but with his power, he figures that changing his face is doable. Hua Cheng raises an eyebrow at his request, but otherwise doesn’t say anything, and agrees to it.

Changing one’s skin is like reshaping a vase. You have to mold it anew and sculpt the details, infusing it with spiritual energy to set the new form. It isn’t an easy feat. If you don’t have the skills, it will look crude, and if you don’t have enough power, maintaining it in place is impossible. Yin Yu finds it easier to imagine that he’s donning a mask. Once he puts it on, he has to keep in mind its shape and looks, so that it properly hides his true features behind it. It requires mental fortitude and a tempered character. Yin Yu has been practicing it daily, using the form he had visualized for himself. It looks natural enough that whoever sees him won’t liken him to his persona. Not that most people have actually seen his face. Yin Yu still uses his Waning Moon Officer mask when he walks through Ghost City. It’s the sign of his status, after all. The only times he takes it off is when he’s inside Paradise Manor or when…

As he walks through the street, an extra weight befalls him. One hand encircles his shoulder while the other one takes his mask off.

Yin Yu is more than familiar with the man in exquisite robes that smiles at him.

“Shixio—!” The greeting dies halfway.

Quan Yizhen’s expression falls. Yin Yu can’t help but smile in amusement. Everytime Quan Yizhen comes to visit him, he does the same thing. Cling unto Yin Yu and take his mask off. That’s why, for once, Yin Yu had been looking forward to the encounter with his shidi. Not everyday can he leave the Martial God of the West with such a stupefied expression.

“Shixiong?” Quan Yizhen scowls.

“Yes?”

Even though Yin Yu’s face is different, his voice remains the same. Quan Yizhen’s eyes widen.

“What happened?” Quan Yizhen asks. “Why do you look like that?”

“Skin changing spells are amazing. Looks real, right?”

Except for its shape, Yin Yu’s new face differs completely from his original look. The skin’s color isn’t the ghostly ivory he has now; it isn’t the cool olive tinge he had when alive either. This new face has a peachy fair tone, resembling warm jade. His eyes are almond-shaped with light brown irises. The eyebrows are sword-like, sharply straight and thinning towards the outer edges. His nose is small and pointy. His lips are soft and rosy. No blemishes are present in his skin.

Like this, Yin Yu looks exceptional. It’s a face that evokes an elegant charm. A face you would look at twice when spotted in a crowd.

Quan Yizhen, on the other hand, has his godly features in disarray.

“Why did you change your face, shixiong?”

“I wanted to. I had the means, so why not?”

“You didn’t need to...”

“Maybe, but this face is convenient. People change how they treat you according to how you look.”

Quan Yizhen’s face scrunches. Yin Yu knows that expression. He has seen it too many times since they were young.

“You don’t like my new appearance?” he asks, although he knows the answer already.

Quan Yizhen twists his mouth. “I don’t dislike it.” He opens and closes his fists. “But I like shixiong’s face the most.”

“I think this face is better. The other one wasn’t even worth remembering.”

“That’s not true! Shixiong, your face is nice.”

Yin Yu snorts. “Nice, huh? Nice is not always good. This new face is good, though.”

Truth be told, Yin Yu doesn’t particularly hate his appearance. At this point, he’s used to the comments about his plain look and doesn’t take them to heart. Yin Yu wasn’t eager to change his face. However, when he was presented with the opportunity to do it, he didn’t hesitate to take it. It wasn’t much about the end result, but about the freedom of choice. Still, Yin Yu felt good when he saw his new look. It was fresh, it was lively, it was friendly; it was so unlike him. Yin Yu smiled at his reflection for the first time in a long time.

So, how could Quan Yizhen feel like he has a say in the matter?

“Shixiong—”

“What did you need today? I’m busy.”

After Yin Yu banned him from coming without a good reason, Quan Yizhen has found every poor excuse available to visit Ghost City. Sometimes he’s after a no-name ghost, other times he comes to give Xie Lian messages that could have been transmitted via the communication array. Most times, he invents something on the fly, and Yin Yu sighs and lets his shidi get away with it because, honestly, it’s more taxing to protest every single time. It’s been their routine for many years.

“I need to give His Highness a gift.” Quan Yizhen replies.

“I see.” Yin Yu says as he puts on his ghost mask again. “Then, let’s head to Paradise Manor.”

There’s no real reason for Yin Yu to lead Quan Yizhen to Paradise Manor. Quan Yizhen knows his way around the place already. If any, Yin Yu accompanies him to ensure that Quan Yizhen doesn’t end up fighting someone or crushing buildings again.

The market is bustling as always. Ghosts and demons alike move respectfully to let Yin Yu through.

“Why do you keep using that mask?” Quan Yizhen suddenly asks.

“The ghosts already know it well.” The weeping face in it is more tied to his identity than his own face. “They know it’s the Waning Moon Officer.”

Before, constantly using the mask was suffocating. The warmth of his breath made him swelter and feel uncomfortable. That wasn’t the case at all now. Without breath and without body warmth, he can go on using the mask as if nothing.

“If you show your face, they’ll learn that’s you.”

“I don’t think my face will evoke the same… respect.” Yin Yu shrugs. “Besides, if I change my appearance from now on, they won’t recognize me so easily. It’s easier to use the mask.”

“I can’t see your face like this.”

“Too bad.”

Quan Yizhen pouts. “I don't like it when you hide your face.”

“I’m not hiding…”

But isn't he? Hasn't he been doing the same thing for decades? Using a mask to close off to the world?

“I’m not hiding.” Yin Yu repeats. “What does it matter if you see my face or not?”

“I like seeing your face.”

Yin Yu scowls under the mask. His shidi likes to spout too much nonsense.

“When I don’t,” Quan Yizhen continues. “I fear you aren't really here, that you’re not the one behind that demon mask.”

The words imprint an ache in his undead chest. Yin Yu turns his head away. “Don’t be silly. You were the one that nurtured my soul for years. Why would I not be here?”

Quan Yizhen doesn’t reply. He opens and closes his fists.

The surrounding cacophony disperses. Soon, they’re all by themselves. The city gives way to a solitary path that leads to a lake. At the other side is Paradise Manor.

“You could disappear, if you want to,” Quan Yizhen says then.

At that point, Yin Yu understands it all. After he became a ghost, easing into his new situation hadn’t been smooth. He had refused to see Quan Yizhen for a long time. Eventually he gave in, thinking he owed closure to his shidi. Yin Yu was sure they would finally cut ties and that would be the end of their story. Instead, Quan Yizhen had wanted to keep seeing him, and their already tangled relationship continued entwining.

It’s true that Yin Yu’s first instinct whenever he meets Quan Yizhen is fleeing. He has done so a few times already. It’s almost instinct, a reflex he can’t get rid of. However, he hadn’t expected that it had created such a shadow in Quan Yizhen’s mind. Not when Quan Yizhen acts so giddy and undisturbed every time they meet, not when he acts as if they were teenagers again, running around their sect while practicing sword stances.

“I’ll be around,” Yin Yu compromises, because he won’t make promises he can’t keep, but he can’t stay silent either.

“Can you take the mask off?” Quan Yizhen insists.

Yin Yu doesn’t have to, but like in many other matters, he prefers to comply instead of fighting worthlessly. He takes off the mask. However, Quan Yizhen’s face doesn’t lighten at that. When he sees Yin Yu, his expression turns ugly.

“It’s not your face.”

Yin Yu scoffs. “It is mine. I made it myself.”

“It’s not the face I know.”

“You better get used to it. You’ll see it from now on.”

“Why? Why do you want to change how you look?”

“I don’t have to explain myself.”

“I want to know, shixiong. I want to understand you.”

Yin Yu is taken aback. “Understand me?”

“Yes. I used to think I did, but I’m not sure anymore.”

Yin Yu laughs once. “You’ve never understood me. If you did, a lot of problems would’ve been avoided.”

Quan Yizhen seems to think about it. Looking back on years of interactions he might have gotten wrong.

Yin Yu shakes his head. “What use is it for you to realize that now? Things have long happened. Forget it.”

“Then… why didn’t you tell me when I got things wrong?” Quan Yizhen asks, his lip hanging.

The emotions about his past that Yin Yu had locked away resurface at once. The guilt, the frustration, the impotence. Feelings that haven't faded even after all this time, but he could ignore most of the time.

“Why indeed,” Yin Yu mumbles. He suddenly feels exhausted. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Don’t worry needlessly.”

Paradise Manor towers before them. Yin Yu opens the tall doors and they go in. Yin Yu turns to a nearby servant and sends word that His Highness has a visit. They wait in the main hall. Xie Lian is in Ghost City today, but Yin Yu knows he might take a while before he meets them. No matter how long, it’s nothing that two immortals would find bothersome, even two that sit in an awkward atmosphere like them.

“Shixiong,” Quan Yizhen is the one to break the silence, as always. “I still want to know.”

“What?”

“Your reason to change appearance.”

“Again with that.”

“It’s important to you, so I want to know.” Quan Yizhen clenches his fists. “I don’t want to misunderstand you again.”

Before Yin Yu can reply, Xie Lian enters the hall. He smiles in greeting. A few steps behind him, Hua Cheng silently observes the room.

“Your Highness Qi Ying, and… Your Highness Yin Yu, hello.” Xie Lian falters a bit. Yin Yu expected as much, it hasn’t been long since he began using this face. Xie Lian turns to Quan Yizhen. “What brings you here this time?”

“I brought over a gift from… Xuan Zhen,” Quan Yizhen takes a pause before saying the name. Yin Yu wonders how long ago he actually began to remember Mu Qing’s title.

“You didn’t have to bother with this, Your Highness Qi Ying,” Xie Lian says. He means it. He probably would’ve liked it if Mu Qing had come in person.

“Indeed an unneeded travel,” Hua Cheng adds. He means it as well. If he happens to keep count of Mu Qing’s slights on paper, Yin Yu won’t be the one divulging it.

“I was coming anyway, so I offered to bring it.” Quan Yizhen admits. No one in the room is surprised.

“I see.” Xie Lian grimaces. “Well, thank you. Is there anything else…?”

“No,” Quan Yizhen says. “I have to talk with shixiong.”

Xie Lian nods, anticipating that reply. “Of course, go ahead. San Lang and I will be going to Qiangdeng Temple. You can stay here as long as you’d like.” He smiles with a perspicacity that makes Yin Yu uncomfortable. Yin Yu appreciates Xie Lian’s attempt to help, but he would rather he didn’t do anything.

Yin Yu cups his hands anyway and lowers his gaze. Hua Cheng and Xie Lian leave with more fanfare.

“Shixiong, are you telling me?” Quan Yizhen asks immediately.

Knowing that his shidi won’t stop pestering him, Yin Yu sighs. “Not here. Follow me.”

Yin Yu guides Quan Yizhen through the corridors of the mansion, finding his way to a small courtyard with a rock garden. It’s a nice private space that Yin Yu frequents. Not even the servants come this way regularly. It’s a place that lets him relax and meditate. It’s the first time he comes here with someone else, though.

He stops and stares at the long taihu stone that stands in the center of the garden. Every time Yin Yu sees it, he feels that its shape is different. No matter how many times he has seen it, he can’t ever remember it in detail.

“What a weird rock,” Quan Yizhen spouts.

Yin Yu snicker at the out-of-place comment. “It’s that what you want to talk about?”

Quan Yizhen turns to Yin Yu. He says nothing else, but Yin Yu can see the seriousness in his gaze.

“You really want to know? Why I changed my face?” Yin Yu asks.

Quan Yizhen nods.

“It was so you could stop finding me.”

“...Huh?”

“I thought that learning how to change forms would let me avoid you. There. Happy?”

“Is that really it, shixiong? You would go this far to not see me?“

Yin Yu doesn’t have a heartbeat anymore, but he feels a pressure in his chest. “If you get it, go away.“

Quan Yizhen doesn’t go away. He stays beside Yin Yu, as always. They both stand before the amorphous stone without talking. It becomes difficult for Yin Yu to keep his unrest in control. Quan Yizhen is uncharacteristically silent and Yin Yu wonders if this time he finally managed to make his shidi despise him. It would only be right, yet…

“Shixiong, is it because you’re angry at me?”

“Angry at you?”

“Yeah, do you want to avoid me because you’re angry? What can I do to fix that?”

Those words crack his mask. Shame, turmoil, desperation. They all bloom in Yin Yu’s contorted features. “Why aren't you angry at me?! How can you look at me and not hate me?”

He’s so tired. He hates looking at his face every day, a face that has remained unchanged over the last centuries, and yet that has transformed so acutely. A face that spells jealousy, betrayal, murder. A face that once truly smiled at Quan Yizhen, thinking everything would work out for both of them. Yin Yu hates to see it. He has never wanted to become this kind of person.

“Shixiong, I don’t hate you. Even if I tried, I can’t do it,” Quan Yizhen says.

“That isn’t right. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t care. I won’t hate you.”

Yin Yu sneers. His shidi is as inflexible as always.

“Why do you keep coming? I don’t treat you well. There’s too many things I’ve done wrong, so, why? Why do you still want to see me?” Yin Yu asks, because he needs to know. He needs a plausible explanation for the nonsense that is his current existence.

Quan Yizhen smiles a little. “I miss our morning training.”

“What?”

“You would take some time every morning and spar with me. I really liked that.”

Yin Yu narrows his eyes. “That was so long ago. Just that…?”

“I miss when you read books to me too, and when you braided my hair. I miss you being around.”

“I won’t do those things again. It’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Yizhen, I was banished after trying to kill you. How can I act as if nothing of that happened?”

“Shixiong, you didn’t want to kill me, I know.”

Yin Yu shakes his head. “Even if that were the case, I still tried to do it. I cannot forgive myself for that. You shouldn’t either.”

“But I forgave you. That’s in the past. We can do the things we did before all that.”

“It won’t be the same. There are too many things that are different now.”

Quan Yizhen opens and closes his fists. “I just want things to be the same as before.”

“Yizhen, we’ve lived for centuries. It's impossible for everything to remain the same.”

“But—”

“You’re not the child that ran around covered in dirt anymore. You're a martial god.” Yin Yu smiles with nostalgia. “And I’m not the head disciple that looked over you. I’m a ghost. I know you understand it.”

“I’m a god, and too many things are different. I get it… but my feelings haven't changed.” Quan Yizhen bites his lip. “I miss you, shixiong.”

Yin Yu realizes their views are extremely mismatched. Quan Yizhen hasn't caught up with their current standing. He’s still thinking of olden days, before things got hard, and before Yin Yu realized how an awful person he could be. In Quan Yizhen’s mind, Yin Yu’s still a noble person worthy of praise. A person worth pursuing.

No matter what Quan Yizhen believes, the present Yin Yu is stained and can’t erase the past. He wishes so hard he can. If he became an entirely different person, maybe he would face Quan Yizhen honestly and offer some kind of compensation.

“Shixiong, you don’t need to change,” Quan Yizhen says. “I can recognize you before I even see your face. You said so, I nurtured your soul. I know its shape. Even if you transform, I’ll know it’s you… Sorry.”

Yin Yu rolls his eyes. “You fool, saying sorry when you don’t have to.”

“But you wanted to avoid me and you can’t.”

Yin Yu looks away, trying to overcome his embarrassment. He might be imperfect, but he still had a conscience. “I lied.”

“Huh? Then… you weren’t avoiding me? What’s the real reason?”

It’s difficult to say the truth straight. Yin Yu has a hard time recollecting his words. He looks at the rock garden, going over the shapes and colors.

“Do you hate your face?” Quan Yizhen ventures. A strange insight on his part.

There’s no use in evading the question. Yin Yu sighs. He’s genuinely so tired. “I hate what my face reminds me of.” He looks at Quan Yizhen, whose face Yin Yu still remembers vividly full of blood, snot and tears. A face Yin Yu cannot will himself to hate as much as he hates his own. “I was selfishly trying to escape it. It’s not fair of me, after everything I said, but I also wanted everything to go back to how it was before.”

Yin Yu hated what he had become. So he thought that if he changed his appearance, maybe he could forget about his shameful past. Start anew.

But now, Yin Yu sourly acknowledges that no matter how he looks, he can’t become someone better. Even wearing this new beautiful face, he still can’t act fairly towards his shidi. He’s still the same old Yin Yu. What a pointless endeavor.

“I like your face, shixiong,” Quan Yizhen notes. “It’s nice.” He has already said so earlier, and Yin Yu doesn’t see how that amounts to anything.

“Doesn’t it remind you of the bad times? Of the wrong things I did?”

Quan Yizhen tilts his head. “When I see you… I think of the first time we met.”

Yin Yu raises his eyebrows.

“You were kind to me.” Quan Yizhen smiles. “And ever since then, you’ve been the kindest to me.”

“But I was cruel to you too.”

“Even so, you’ve always looked out for me. Thank you, shixiong.”

Yin Yu is speechless. He can count the times that Quan Yizhen has thanked someone with one hand. He rubs his face and his features quiver.

“Shixiong, there’s no reason for you to use that face anymore.”

“You want to see my face that bad?”

“Won’t you let me see you?” Quan Yizhen insists.

Yin Yu laughs without amusement. “It’s not like it’s particularly remarkable.”

“It is.” Without warning, Quan Yizhen comes closer and brushes Yin Yu’s eyebrows. “Shixiong’s eyebrows are arched downwards.” He points at Yin Yu’s eyes, and Yin Yu can’t help but blink. “You have phoenix eyes pointing upwards. Your eyelids are not visible. Your irises are dark and small. ” Quan Yizhen touches the point of his nose. “Your nose is round and broad.” Quan Yizhen hovers the tip of his fingers over Yin Yu’s lips, but Yin Yu stops him before he actually touches them. “Your mouth is thin and pale. Your skin is fair, but it has always looked greenish. Now it’s also ashen. And here…” Quan Yizhen thumbs his left cheek, right under his eye. “You have a small black mole.”

As Quan Yizhen takes his hand away, the mole appears in the place he has touched. Yin Yu feels the skin of energy that covered his face dissipate. Yin Yu’s face has turned just as Quan Yizhen described it. It’s Yin Yu’s face. Nice and palatable, a face easy to the eye but hard to record in the heart. Yet, Quan Yizhen knows it too well. Not a detail missing.

Quan Yizhen smiles. “There you are, shixiong.”

Yin Yu feels a tickling under his skin. He takes a step back.

“E-enough. It’s my face again. You don’t have to touch it.“

Quan Yizhen obeys and stays back. He’s still smiling though. “Like I thought, you don’t need to change, shixiong.”

Yin Yu hears the sincerity in Quan Yizhen’s words. Even though he finds the idea difficult to accept himself, Yin Yu feels an odd warmth because of it. He wonders if one day he will look at the mirror and no longer think badly of the face that looks back at him. Maybe he will forgive himself and let go. Not today. Not yet. Yin Yu has too many conflicts inside his soul, but at least, he can take the fondness of his shidi as a reminder that he has done good things too.

Today, Yin Yu feels he doesn’t need a mask.

“Let’s go back. I have to patrol the city.” Yin Yu scratches the bridge of his nose. “You can come along.”

“I’ll come, I’ll come!”

They head back, shoulder to shoulder. The atmosphere surrounding them is less harsh, more tender. Maybe things won’t ever be as they were between them. Yin Yu might not be the bright, hopeful youth he once was, but his current being didn’t feel as heavy as before.

“I also liked our morning training.” Yin Yu finds himself saying. “We could try that again, sometime.”

Quan Yizhen’s smile blinds him. “I’d love that!”

From now on, their relationship might keep entangling and morphing into something different, into something new. Change isn’t always unwelcomed. Yin Yu thinks for the first time that it might not be a bad thing at all.

#yin yu appreciation week #yinyuappreciation2024 #tgcf #quanyin #yin yu #quan yizhen #tian guan ci fu #i did sth

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twobrokenwyngs · 1 year

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Jackie I'm still saving the last ep but. I need to hear your thoughts about TD. Is there a tag where you've screamed about it? Or feel free to do it again!! What do you love about it. Tell meeee

screaming and crying over this ask tbhhh

firstly - I do have a true detective tag! and a rust cohle tag! and a rust x marty tag! and although I don't have a distinct tag for meta & such, I infuse most of my reblogs with an insane amount of unhinged raving in the tags, so, lmao. it's def there if you want it! XD

secondly - there is actually a lot I can't say without you having seen the last episode, in particular the way the show ends. one of the things I love is the fullness of their arc(s) and the way they're changed by the end, for which you gotta see how it wraps up!!!

all that aside though... man. why I love this show is almost too big and amorphous to answer lol, but I'll give it a shot!

lmao whoops this got long

I mean... one obvious variable is Rust himself. I am so endlessly compelled by both the tragedy and the potential of him. by thinking about who he used to be - when he had Sophia, when he had Claire. he tells Papania and Gilbough that the job didn't make him that way but that being that way made him right for the job, but was he always that way? was he always a lonely jaded cynic, a product of growing up in the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but his imagination and his synesthesia to keep him occupied? is his nihilism baked into his DNA or was it carefully constructed after a lifetime of being abandoned and disappointed, used and discarded? the thing about him is that he wears that nihilism on the surface, almost like a badge of honor, but there is always this pervasive sense that he is in a state of grief for the things he no longer allows himself - love, desire, softness, comfort, hope. he has made himself into this target for other peoples' pain and bullshit because it slides right off him, so he might as well, right?

like, the whole thing with Crash... that REALLY fucks me up. episode 4 is actually my favorite, and Crash is definitely a huge part of that. he accesses a whole different part of himself to inhabit that person. you can tell that during his time with the Iron Crusaders, he was like... their pet. fed drugs and passed around, used and abused, all for the sake of "the job," but it so clearly was a way to exercise self-punishment, an excuse to remove himself from polite society and just give in to his baser nature. when it came time to put Crash back on, he donned him like a second skin, confident to the point of mania, in a way that breaks my fucking heart. I could go on and on about Crash tbh, it almost warrants its own post lol.

and then there's like, the way he has somehow both no relationship with his body and yet a strict routine for its upkeep. he keeps the engine running (or at least he did, for a while) but he doesn't allow that body so much as the dignity of sleeping with a bedframe. he doesn't use it for pleasure, he barely knows how to control it when he's not using it for his job. and yet, every single thing about his physicality compels me. his slouch. his gait. his little mouth noises. matt mcc I can take or leave, but I think Rust specifically is one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen or ever will see.

okay... let me move on to Marty. Marty is fucking fascinating to me. he's a bastard and an asshole and a hypocrite and I think so much about the way insecurity rules his life. he makes all of his choices based on what he thinks he should want, what kind of man he thinks he should be, and he will delude himself to the point of absurdity in order to realize that vision. (it's why, in my headcanon, comphet plays a huge role in his relationship with Rust and with himself, but that's another story.) like, Marty doesn't actually want to be a family man lmao, but, he has to want to be one. where Rust has given up all illusions of being any sort of person at all, Marty has made pointed decisions about what kind of person - what sort of Man - he is, and that's that. so, nothing slides off him, because everything challenges his fragile sense of self. he overcompensates, he's a product of generational toxic masculinity - by all accounts he's a total stereotype. but like... that's what makes his relationship with Rust so goddamn irresistible.

there's just so much going on there, constantly. Marty claims not to want to get to know Rust, but he can't stop digging and prying, and his protests about what he finds are so... performative. he can barely show up for his own family in the most basic of ways but he's constantly bringing Rust food & coffee, voicing concern about the way Rust lives, trusting him, vouching for him - he cares. so much. and because there's no road map of Expectations to dictate that care, he never becomes suffocated by it. and Rust, despite himself, can feel all of that. it is no small thing for Rust, the eternal lone wolf, to have a partner. he most definitely knows Marty thoroughly - knows when he's lying to himself, knows when to call him on it and when not to. for Marty, he makes a space. carves a notch into the solid rock of his soul and reserves it for Marty alone. after their split, he never really recovers. neither of them do. Rust never fixes his taillight, Marty lets everything dissolve once and for all and spends years alone with his microwave dinners, because what's the point? what they felt when they were together, what they had, was incredibly profound and deeply beyond articulation (they're not willing to do it, even if they could.) and it is truly in the finale that you see the veracity of that change, what means to unexpectedly reclaim the thing that changed you.

anyway, this was just sorta a stream of consciousness, not particularly considered and very off the cuff, and therefore barely skims the surface of why I love this show. I'm sure I'm leaving out so, so much. and of course, it doesn't even touch on the baser reasons I love it/them - I love stories about bitter washed-up old men!!! I love the idea of what they could mean to each other! theirs is some of the only fic I've ever cried at or reread. their happiness, their future, is so ridiculously important to me. and I love the music! and the southern gothic vibes! and Rust's scraggly long hair and his insane mustache and how good he looks in that black shirt when he takes Marty to the storage locker!!! I love that from that first episode, the moment Rust showed up at Marty's door plastered and crying, I knew I was done-for. I mean. y'know?!?!?!

welp lmao. I don't think all THIS is what you asked for but it's what came outta me, so, hey. thank you for giving me a reason to think about them tonight!!!

#true detective #forreal lemme know when you finish!

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theredofoctober · 3 months

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i love that your audience doesn’t see ‘reader’ as alice but rather alice is her own fleshed out character!!

i know you say you dislike the x/reader shipping so when it comes time to write the spin-off, you can get away with writing alice as her own character rather than as reader!! btw love ur work @-@ <33

I know!! It's so rare that happens as I don't ever want a reader to feel excluded by trying to make the character too obviously an OC, although inevitably I have a picture in my head of them otherwise it's hard to write without the character resembling a clothes mannequin in my mind haha

So it was exciting for me when people complimented Alice in particular as being a character in her own right (in a positive way) rather than just an insert. That was really a natural progression I didn't expect and I do love!

And actually with you saying that, the middle fic in the series, Breaking the Looking Glass, was an experiment in writing Alice as an OC, but I found because I was so used to writing in Second Person perspective for her it felt more natural to switch back.

I used to hate writing in the You format but I've actually acclimatised lmaooo

It would be fun to do some pieces where I write her strictly as an OC as it can be difficult to characterise someone fully when their appearance is an amorphous non descript entity. That's the one criticism I'd have of the format (though it comes with the benefit of being inclusive).

#ask thenightsibling #ask theredofoctober #thoughts with theredofoctober #thoughts with thenightsibling

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team-kawaiipunk · 1 year

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I don't support a lot of Amity Park's views but speaking from experience, it can be really intimidating trying to take your Drifloon to playparks where Rampardos and Golem are roughhousing. I know they're just having fun but bigger, stronger pokemon can really hurt small, baby pokemon even if they're just playing.

I take my Drifloon to Amity Park because I can have picnics without being worried someone's out of control pokemon is going to pop him (and don't pretend there aren't trainers out there who can't control their pokemon). I'd love to see Amity Park's roster expanded too, but I think there needs to be a place for baby pokemon to play safely, regardless of how 'cute' someone thinks their Steelix is

You make a good point, but at the expense of missing the entire point of this movement.

It's not about vulnerability (although arguably some of the objective biological aspects being the amorphous concept of "cuteness" involve babies and the innate desire to protect those who are young and therefore vulnerable to danger), but the exclusionary practices of those in power who enforce a system that decides who can or cannot access the square. You benefit directly from a set of rules created not to defend you, but the delicate sensibilities of the wealthy elite.

TL;DR: I believe your reading comprehension is that of one who would, to paraphrase from the distsite, "piss on the poor," but you actually raise a decent point about needing a safe place for baby pokemon to play.

I will take this into consideration, and if I gain the power to make a lasting change in the park, will request an area be sectioned off for particularly young/vulnerable pokemon. In addition, it seems only natural to have a healer on site at all times, in the event of accidents. Just like a pool requires a lifeguard, a large enough park will require some supervision who can step in if things get rowdy.

#pokeblogging #rotomblr #pokemon irl #amity square #admin frill

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longlistshort · 6 months

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Julia Schenkelberg, “Blue Ocean”, 2020, Blue dye, resin, rusted metal from Detroit factory floors, plaster chips, vintage china, glass from Brooklyn beaches

Malone University Art Gallery’s exhibition Healing Spaces features work by Northeastern Ohio artists Julie Schenkelberg, Chen Peng, Yiyun Chen, and Emily Bartolone. Although the mediums differ, the work flows together in the room. Below are some selections and more about each artist from the gallery’s documentation.

Julie Schenkelberg, "Modern Memorial", 2020, Found screen, plaster, acrylic paint, vintage leather and fabric, jewelry box interior, glass gathered from Cleveland and Detroit auto and steel factory abandoned floors, vintage glass slide of the Parthenon Frieze

Julie Schenkelberg grew up in the post-industrial landscape of Cleveland, Ohio. Her mixed-media installations start with furniture, dishware, textiles, and marble, combined with concrete, resin, and construction materials, to transform notions of domesticity, and engage with the American Rust Belt's legacy of abandonment and decay. Using the home as a playground for formal and conceptual subversions, the work aggressively disrupts cohesion within the physical sphere. Familiar furnishings rekindle memories or premonitions of collapse, suggesting both the utter destruction of war, calamities, or urban decay, but also the uncanny juxtapositions of fragile substances such as cloth and china, with industrial materials such as rusty metal, heavy concrete, and tool-made marks such as drilled holes and chain-sawed indentations.

Chen Peng, Paintings from the "Mountains at Night" series, 2023, gouache, acrylic, and oil on canvas

Deriving from a desire to find stillness and grounding as an immigrant, Chen Peng explores the connection between landscape and the complexities of identity and belonging. She creates foreign landscapes from a combination of past experiences, memories, and imagination, delving into the disorienting sense of not knowing where home is. The moon, particularly in its fullness, becomes a symbol encapsulating emotions and metaphors associated with loneliness, reverence, and even terror. Her ceramic pieces extend this exploration of landscapes, featuring textures and marks that convey the essence of mountains, clouds, and the moon.

Photographs from from Yiyun Chen's series "Velleity", 2016-2018

The photography of Yiyun Chen is about the process of self-reflection and self-discovery as an Asian immigrant, exploring the relationship between people, environment and society, turning its personal experience and empathy into gentle conversations between humans and nature, capturing the poetic and distance of the environment around us. Through photography, we can take the essence of life seriously again and treat the people and things around us tenderly. Through his lens, they often have similar structure, people look tiny in nature scenes, creating an intimate visual experience. Most of his photographs are captured outdoors, with soft light and harmonious colors often used.

Stemming from her infatuation with the formal elements of painting, the work of Emily Bartolone pairs down simple, anthropomorphized shapes in an effort to explore paint and color theory while simultaneously creating tension and humor through color, edges, and texture. The playful, human qualities of painting are incorporated into the work through the use of amorphous shapes animated within the picture plane. Further informed by ideas of the mundane, the awkward, and the jovial that surround everyday life, the complexity of human relationships are mimicked by the shapes interacting on each painting's surface. In acknowledging that life is not always cordial, moments of tension are placed within the satisfying surfaces in the form of an abrupt mark, a disparate color, or a shift in scale. These ideas are used to take viewers outside of themselves for a short period of time, hoping to offer a break from the bombardment of distractions, notifications, and news we encounter so often on a daily basis.

This exhibition closes 4/9/24.

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am--f · 1 year

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Vernacular Word Clouds and Information Aesthetics

“The purpose of reduced language is not the reduction of language itself but the achievement of greater flexibility and freedom of communication (with its inherent need for rules and regulations). The resulting poems should be, if possible, as easily understood as signs in airports and traffic signs.” —Eugen Gomringer, “The Poem as Functional Object” (1960)

“The first thing that becomes clear to anyone who compares the dream-content with the dream-thoughts is that a work of condensation on a large scale has been carried out.” —Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

“What is happening?!” —User input prompt, Twitter (2023)

A juice bar has words expanding across its window. The words are: “Cheers to nature,” “positive,” “passion,” “good,” “wellness,” “cure,” “happiness,” “watermelonade,” freshness,” “serenity,” “kale delight,” “relaxation,” “peanut butter oatmeal,” “calm,” “lifestyle,” “wheatgrass,” “sharing,” “wellness,” “whole greens,” “joy,” energizer,” “positive,” “protein supreme,” “healthy,” “organic,” and “life.” The terms are arranged an in amorphous cluster, in a nondescript (vaguely Grotesk) typeface, in a range of sizes, either parallel or perpendicular to one another. Since it is vinyl on glass, the cluster of words floats in the air. The words face out towards the street, although they just as well might appear on an interior wall. They advertise the business to passerby, inventorying possible experiences that might take place. Unlike more conventional awning or window signage, which might linearly list the products and services offered, these words take up the aesthetics of a diffuse field, with blurry edges. And just as the field is relatively indifferent to the form of its support, the rectangular window, it is also relatively indifferent to the level of concreteness and specificity of each of the terms it contains. The term joy is a member of the same set as the term peanut butter oatmeal, and is represented at the same scale.

Word clouds are not an uncommon feature of the contemporary graphic environment. They are not exactly ubiquitous, but they appear throughout metropolitan landscapes as interstitial visual clutter, in contexts where we are rarely anything other than indifferent to their presence: grocery stores, apartment buildings, hotels, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, airports, corporate offices. They are indigenous to what the architect Rem Koolhaas called “junkspace”: an uncoordinated proliferation of shapeless filler, with its “superstrings of graphics,” its “fabrication of non-existent plurals,” its “fuzzy empire of blur” (“flamboyant yet unmemorable, like a screensaver”). But these formless textual forms are even more particular in a historical sense. They are not reducible to postmodernism, although they inherit its flatness. And while they have no connections to any definite style in art or design today—although they may echo the avant-garde textual experiments of artistic movements like Symbolism, Constructivism, Dada, and concretism, for which the collision of linguistic signs in nonlinear space still represented a revolutionary moment—they are unmistakably very recent, and very medium-specific. They are the forms of a residual Web 2.0, ornaments of a computational culture in which the aesthetics of the historical avant-gardes were banalized in software. Today, the everyday word cloud is more recognizable as an architectural derivative of software, a derivative that has discarded its origins in statistical analysis and UX design, let alone any origins in concrete poetry. The movement of the word cloud is the movement of informatics and interfaces into decorative vernaculars, registering our diffuse, formless present.

What is a word cloud? It is a set of terms—words, phrases, and in rare cases complete sentences—arranged in a cluster or constellation. It is free-associative, impressionistic, asyntactic. It is atmospheric, a brainstorm. It is an accumulation of themes. It is probably set in an inelegant or kitschy typeface. It is an array of opaque and possibly hallucinated correlations. Its terms do not create meaningful sequences, but are simply adjacent or orthogonal to one another. If they create anything, it is a mood or a vibe, a loose bundle of co-occurrences that may be felt. A word cloud is scanned, not read. To use Robert Smithson’s phrase, a word cloud is “language to be looked at.”

What is immediately recognizable in the decorative word cloud, the architectural word cloud, is a specific relationship between possible experiences and their description. As wallpaper, word clouds fulfill the need to put something on the wall, to fill space, and at the same time they communicate something about a place and about experiences associated with that place. The wall of an Arby’s fills up with terms like “signature,” “oven roasted,” “market fresh ingredients,” “hand crafted sandwiches,” and “Arby’s roast beef sandwich is delicious.” The wall of a Bushwick apartment building fills up with terms like “new,” “housing,” “social,” “avenue,” “street,” “future,” and “old city.” This communication is both too little and too much. It accomplishes the minimal task of naming some of the things that might go on here, some of the things (feelings, products, values, referents, connotations) on offer, but in a way that has the appearance of overactivity, busy-ness. It has parsed, labeled, and filtered the data of the experience we (as prospective consumers) are potentially having, but clarifies nothing. It leaves behind a mess; it is the entropic residue of taxonomy. Like almost everything in a designed environment, it has attempted to calibrate and nudge our attention without making overbearing demands upon it. Yet the coarseness and triviality of its matter—language in an ugly font—seems to fail in this regard. If we find word clouds unpleasant, it is because they are clumsily explicit, neither ignorable nor interesting. They name the obvious. They stupidly say words without composing them. They appear to preempt our own powers of description and association, describing and associating for us, but they are also completely unconvincing. It is as though the very first stage of a marketing project, the brainstorming or moodboarding stage, in which the product or brand is “ideated” upon, sufficed for a final design. There is no development beyond the whiteboard.

The word cloud, as a mode of textuality, cannot be conceived outside of computational culture. This is not only because it is produced using digital tools, or because it coincides with certain algorithmic operations (of theme detection, for instance, or the computing of taste), but because it has developed directly from data visualization techniques. In data visualization, a word cloud (or term cloud or tag cloud) is a technical image-text that synthesizes the contents of a set of data by arranging and scaling its terms according to a logic of measurement. What is most straightforwardly measured in this kind of word cloud is frequency. The more times a datum appears in the set, the larger its text may appear. This relation can then be adjusted using other statistical parameters, such as deviation from some other distribution. Sometimes the words are also plotted in space, in which case positionality becomes meaningful (although this would probably be called a scatter plot rather than a word cloud). In any case, the aim is to summarize data, to give humans a more or less immediate impression of can be found in the data.

UX design researchers have located the earliest word cloud (at least in its data-visualization capacity) in a 1976 paper by psychologist Stanley Milgram, who surveyed residents of Paris and mapped the terms they used. A word cloud also appears prominently on the cover of the first German-language edition of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1991), “rhizomatically” showcasing the text’s most idiosyncratic concepts. Douglas Coupland, in his third novel, Microserfs (1995), uses word clouds to model the keywords in “subconscious files,” the imaginary dream-work of a Microsoft employee’s personal computer. Following these precedents, the tag cloud became a trope of early Web 2.0 design, most notably on the social photo site Flickr (2004–) and the social bookmarking site del.icio.us (2003–2017). Here, the words in the cloud were pieces of ad-hoc, user-generated metadata, or “folksonomy,” terms constantly and conjunctively attached by users to content (which may or may not have actually included these terms). And much like Milgram’s survey of Parisians, the social media tag cloud provides a sense of what people are talking (posting) about. The cloud becomes an interface, a clickable map of labels through which one can navigate a database.

So perhaps we see in the latter-day word cloud—the one on the wall of the juice bar—not only the condensation of the taxonomic or statistical, but also the condensation of the social. Perhaps in the nimbus of terms on the fast-casual restaurant wallpaper we are supposed to be hearing the polyphony of the multitude, a “network power,” a “living alternative.” It may be that we are meant to believe that these are not just the statements of a brand but the voices of “community stakeholders” (and satisfied customers). Meanwhile, new algorithms have automated or augmented social tagging practices. New interfaces, too, have reduced the presence of tag clouds online, opting for single-stream content flows or “feeds” (Instagram, TikTok, Spotify) in which linguistic description does not have a prominent mapping or labeling function for the (sighted) end user. The original function of the tag cloud—summarizing a whole—no longer seems important once content delivery, with the help of machine learning, becomes hyper-individualized, and much more passive for the end user (who can only nudge the algorithm). There is no question of a single database of which to have an impression. The clouds appeared to have receded.

The German philosopher and founder of “information aesthetics” Max Bense argued that works of literary art were not so different from any other source of information. “Aesthetic realizations,” he argued in 1960, can be “described through statistical quantities of conditions instead of irrational motives of values.” He described text in atmospheric terms; for Bense, there was no text that was not a cloud. Texts are like “gaseous spaces,” as Claude Shannon’s information theory already recognized when it sought to translate thermodynamic particles as linguistic particles. Information theory has not changed much; today’s “deep dreaming” algorithms, such as AI diffusion models, work by introducing gaseous noise into training data that they then filter out in order to generate new outputs. The clouds are condensed and displaced, a dream-work written not only by psyches but also by machines. The word cloud may be a degraded form, but clouds of words remain.

#writing

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honourablejester · 8 months

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Numenera Setting Notes: Points of Interest Part III

Finishing up the Beyond, down in the salty weirdness near the Divided Seas and the Cold Desert of Maltheunis. There is a general theme of salt and blood and strangeness down here, which I am definitely vibing with.

Part III: The Beyond Part II (Numenera: Discovery)

Errid Kaloum, near the Divided Seas, because it’s a huge weird salt flat with fertile ‘islands’ sticking up through it due to geothermal activity. These islands have fresh water and natural desalinisation from the extrusive mineral structures. Among its weird features are the Floating Circle, which is a 300ft diameter circle in the middle of the salt flats that lets anything that weighs less than 300lbs to hover while within it (and anything that weighs less than 3lbs goes zooming off into space). It’s an ancient skydiver training platform or something similar, and it’s fantastic. There’s also a castle made of light on one of the islands which may or may not be trans-dimensional, as it’s full of abykos, which appear to be transdimensional ghost creatures.

Our Order of the Lady of the Salt Way, in the Sere Marica, the saltier of the two Divided Seas. And by salty, I mean extremely salty. Possibly Dead Sea levels? And this holy order worships that salt, on the word of a woman named Saint Eseld four generations ago. They have an unnamed monastery island in the Salted Marshes that produces a lot of salt byproducts for sale, and whose devotees crust themselves in salt, both in their hair and on their skin. There’s rumours that something is done with salt and their bodies after death, too. The current leader of the order is an ex-aeon priest who stabbed her own eyes out when she first saw a vision of a woman in the salt, years ago, believing it a test of her faith, and came around to her new faith when they took care of her. I just. I really really like spooky maritime things, salt and bones and visions and blood. I like it.

Salachia, also in the Sere Marica. Specifically, 1500ft down in the Sere Marica. A domed, wheel-shaped underwater city covered by a porous membrane that allows gases but not water or solids to pass through. The buildings appear to be huge nautilus shells in a ring around one vast nautilus shell that forms the city centre, with markets, schools, civic buildings, etc. The outer surface of the city is covered in tiny crystalline creatures called chiffons that make the whole thing seem to shimmer and writhe, and they feed on carbon dioxide. They’re what’s providing the oxygen exchange here in lieu of plants. They also can operate as symbiotic breaking masks. The city is hooked up to the surface by a bubble tube. But the population is currently dwindling, and this has more knock-on effects that you’d think, because it needs to maintain a certain population level to generate enough CO2 to keep the chiffon population up as well, or the whole city might cross a failure line and lose atmosphere. So they’re currently trying to get people to enter and stay in the city by, possibly, any means necessary. That’s a fascinating little moral and biological conundrum there. Also, you can never go wrong with a domed underwater shell city.

The Weal of Baz, on the shores of the freshwater Navae Marica, the other of the two Divided Seas. It’s a town hidden by holograms in a cliff face that was built by an ancient AI called Baz to provide a safe harbour for intelligent machines. Baz might be dead now, but some of the machines sheltering in his town are over a million years old. And they’re all cranky. They hate and/or are petrified of organic beings, and really don’t want them around, although occasionally they’ll trust one enough to give them a pass into the Weal. The town has a massive solar generator called the dragon that helps keep everyone powered, and it’s sometimes worshipped as a god. And, again, you can’t go wrong with a machine refuge, I’ll always take that!

The Amorphous Fields, to the south of the Divided Seas. Because it’s 200 miles of vast heaving morphing landscape that may or may not be the semi-solid crust over a vast subterranean organic soup that also may or may not be alive. Because, again, joy to the weird landscapes. It’s primarily inhabited by floating predatory soup jellyfish called ligoshi, and a few villages worth of absolute nutters of stubborn humans. There’s an organic green tower in the middle, a 1000ft spire of organic tissue, with a metal ‘halo’ floating around it (an observation platform?) full of numenera. It’s weird, and I love that it exists. (There’s also a fantastically dry little note in the ‘Weird of the Amorphous Fields’ sidebar, which just acknowledges that ‘Arguably, the whole place is pretty weird’. Fantastic!)

Vebar, near the Amorphous Fields, because it’s a hanging subterranean city that clings to the roof of a cavern. Its buildings hang downwards from the ceiling, and the streets are either above it, as tunnels, or between the buildings, as bridges and walkways. It’s lit by hanging artificial lights, and it’s people farm fungi down on the floor of the cavern, which is also lit artificially, so the farms and the city act sort of as each other’s ‘night sky’, the constellations above and below. And. Everyone knows me and functional subterranean cities/cultures. I ADORE this place.

Seshar, as a semi-collapsed kingdom built around an ancient prior-world canal system. It looks so cool on the map:

I know, I know, the whole Martian canal thing, but you can’t go wrong with mysterious 50ft deep ancient storm drains/canal systems that allow civilisation, agriculture and trade to bloom in what is actually an extension of the nearby cold desert. Also the capital city of Nebalich is run by a king and queen who are explicitly described as ‘short, stout and unattractive by conventional standards’, but are ‘two of the most loved rulers in the Beyond’. Which is a nice touch. Love our short stout kings and queens.

The Fields of Frozen Flowers, in Maltheunis, the Cold Desert. Three salty lakes down near the massive glacial formation of the Southern Wall, they form ‘frozen flowers’ of ice and bacteria when conditions on the surface of the lakes are exactly right. And there’s a whole mythology that’s built up around these ‘flowers’ as symbols of love, each unique and perfect and so delicate that the touch of a warm hand lifting them from the water will destroy them. Also getting to them across the thin ice of the briny lakes (full of lethal bitey fish, because of course) is a quest in itself, and the lakes are full of the bodies of suitors that sought to prove their devotion by fetching a frozen flower for their love. Also dark stories of loves who sent them to get one so that they’d become a frozen corpse. But there’s this bit: “So many young lovers are lost to love’s watery garden that there is a myth of bodies building up below the surface, creating a bridge to walk on. There are other myths, too, of the dead men rising from beneath the surface, their hands now frozen enough to carry the flowers all the way to their beloveds.” It’s romantic and ghoulish and I adore it. This icy garden lake in the ass crack of the frozen beyond that is a mecca to betrayed and beautiful and extreme love. And, of course, there’s a cottage tourism industry in the area because of it. Because of course there is. Humans, you know?

The southern end of the map does seem to be generally just a little bit ghoulish, and that is perfectly fine by me! Let’s wander these strange lands of salt and ice and weird shifting bio-soup, I’m down with that! Heh.

Next time we’ll move over to the Ninth World Guidebook and head out beyond the core region of the Steadfast and the Beyond, into the Frozen South and some other areas.

#numenera #ttrpgs #worldbuilding #setting notes #fun with landscapes #ice and salt and blood #i like it down here

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ckret2 · 6 months

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I didn't quite understand what Bill told Dipper about the true nature of the universe. Did Bill mean that their universe is a cartoon, or did his words about dimensions apply to our world as well? Are we two-dimensional in his eyes?

It's ambiguous on purpose! You're supposed to go "wait, is he talking about the fact that they're a cartoon, or is he really saying reality is 2D?"

You're supposed to not understand, because Bill is a confusing character who says things that don't make sense to the people around him. The characters are never quite sure whether he's just talking nonsense or whether he knows so much more than everyone else that when he shares a tiny fraction of his knowledge it's incomprehensible to the people around him.

And since the characters aren't sure whether he's talking nonsense or sharing incomprehensible wisdom—and, on top of that, aren't even sure what it really means—you as the reader aren't sure either.

The point of the conversation isn't "what is the literal actual origin of the universe?" That doesn't matter at ALL. The point of the conversation is the doubt—the creeping dread—the uncertainty about whether you're real in a way that matters, and the maddening realization that your view of reality is so limited that you may never be able to find out for sure. Welcome to cosmic horror.

That, plus I as the writer think it's funny to leave it ambiguous whether the thing running the "projector" is, like... the amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity named Azathoth, or just Disney.

(Although it's worth noting that there is a real-life physics theory in string theory that posits our observable universe could be holographic; although it's very different from what Bill claims it means. Bill claims that their universe is a hologram projected down from a higher dimension, whereas the IRL theory posits that observable spacetime might be projected up from a lower dimensional quantum system. But that real theory is what Ford's alluding to when he says the universe being a hologram could help explain some things about black holes.)

#anonymous #ask #about my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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thecreaturecodex · 1 year

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Protean, Yexhul

[This monster is picking up a plot thread I laid down years ago: how to introduce slaadi into the Pathfinder cosmology. It also continues me use of anagrams as the namesakes of proteans. This one is fairly short, so I suspect it's going to be one of the more solvable ones.]

Protean, Yexhul CR 16 CN Outsider (extraplanar) This serpentine creature has four arms, each ending in a clawed hand. Instead of a single head, a riot of dozens of small necks and heads grow from its shoulders like the branches of a great tree. The scales of its chest have eyespots, like the feathers of a peacock.

Yexhuls are the proteans that observe and meddle with animal evolution. Yexhuls push animals in new directions, both by introducing organisms into new habitats and by physically altering organisms, taking what is typically a slow and orderly process and interjecting sometimes bizarre flights of fancy. The touch of a yexhil can alter the abilities of an organism permanently, and the transformations they imbue are heritable. A number of the magical beasts found on Material worlds, especially those that are incongruous hybrids of two animals, are yexhul creations.

No two fights with a yexhul are likely to progress the same way, as these creatures can alter their bodies on the fly. They also have an experimental approach to violence, changing their abilities in different ways for different fights, and summoning different animals to assist them in combat. Although they have many heads, a yexhul can only bite a single target at once, striking with all of their jaws simultaneously (unless it gives itself more bite attacks with its acclimation ability). If their enemies are gaining the upper hand, a yexhul will turn them into something harmless with baleful polymorph, or use primal regression to disable their ability to cast spells.

Most other types of proteans distrust yexhuls, as they were the creators of the Spawning Stone. That continent-sized chunk of reality brought to the Maelstrom was an enormous experiment in the survival of the fittest, and its “fittest”, the slaadi, swiftly escaped the Spawning Stone and eventually the Maelstrom entirely, running amok through the planes. Yexhuls, for their part, consider the slaadi a resounding success, and they are among the proteans more likely to work with slaadi than against them. Annunaki are a species that have a great dislike for yexhuls, and try to exterminate them when their paths cross.

One of the great philosophical debates among yexhuls concerns domestication. Some yexhuls consider it a natural outgrowth of evolution, and use their abilities to make unusual species more likely to associate with humanoids and start the process of becoming domesticated. Other yexhuls consider artificial selection by any hands other than their own to be a grave insult. Some even “un-domesticate” animals, rendering livestock and pets aggressive and uncontrollable or helping feral populations adapt better to the wild. Other proteans encourage this infighting, as it keeps the yexhuls from conducting any more experiments as far-reaching as the Spawning Stone.

Yexhul CR 16 XP 76,800 CN Large outsider (chaos, extraplanar, protean) Init +10; Senses all-around vision, blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +26

Defense AC 31, touch 15, flat-footed 25 (-1 size, +6 Dex, +16 natural) hp 241 (21d10+126) Fort +15, Ref +18, Will +17 DR 15/lawful; Immune acid, electricity, sonic; Resist cold 10; SR 27 Defensive Abilities amorphous anatomy, freedom of movement

Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect) Melee bite +27 (3d8+10 plus 1d6 cold), 4 claws +27 (1d6+7 plus 1d6 cold), tail slap +22 (1d12+3 plus 1d6 cold and grab) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (15 ft. with tail) Special Attacks constrict (1d12+7),powerful blows (bite), probing bite, rend (2 claws, 1d6+10), specialization, trample (DC 27, 1d8+10) Spell-like Abilities CL 16th, concentration +22 (+26 casting defensively) Constant—speak with animals At will—atavism (DC 20), hold animal (DC 18), magic circle vs. law (DC 19), pup shape (DC 19) 3/day—animal growth, baleful polymorph (DC 21), quickened chaos hammer (DC 20), summon nature’s ally VII (animals only) 1/day—animal shapes, plane shift (DC 23), polymorph any object (DC 24), primeval regression (DC 23)

Statistics Str 25, Dex 23, Con 23, Int 24, Wis20, Cha 22 Base Atk +21; CMB +29 (+33 grappling); CMD 46 Feats Combat Casting,Dodge,Flyby Attack, Great Fortitude,Greater Vital Strike, Improved Initiative,Improved Vital Strike, Mobility, Power Attack, Quicken SLA (chaos hammer), Vital Strike Skills Acrobatics +24, Bluff +27, Climb +25, Fly +18, Handle Animal +27, Intimidate +27, Knowledge (arcana, religion) +25, Knowledge (nature, planes) +28, Perception +26, Spellcraft +25, Stealth +26, Survival +26, Swim +25 Languages Abyssal, Protean, speak with animals SQ acclimation (7 points, energy attacks (cold), reach (tail), rend, trample) change shape (animal or magical beast, beast shape IV), wild empathy +27

Ecology Environment any (Maelstrom) Organization solitary, pair or council (3-6) Treasure standard

Special Abilities Acclimation (Su) A yexhul can alter its physical traits on the fly. It has a number of evolution points equal to 1/3 its Hit Dice, which it can spend on any evolution as if it were a summoner’s eidolon. It may take any evolution legal for a serpentine shape, and treats its Hit Dice as its summoner level for the purpose of qualifying for evolutions. A yexhul can change its acclimations by taking 1 full round, and can carry them over into its alternate forms with change shape if it so desires. Change Shape (Su) A yexhul may change shape at will, but does not heal when it reverts to its normal form. Probing Bite (Ex) The many heads of a yexhul strike simultaneously, but reach around obstacles. A yexhul’s bite ignores any cover short of total cover, as well as ignoring shield bonuses to Armor Class. Specialization (Su) As a standard action, a yexhul may touch a creature to alter its ability scores. An unwilling creature can resist this with a DC 26 Fortitude save. The creature touched gains a +6 bonus to one of its ability scores, but a -2 penalty to two of its other ability scores, as chosen by the yexhul. This is an instantaneous effect, and can only be removed with a break enchantment, limited wish, wish or miracle spell. This bonus is passed on to this creature’s offspring. If a creature’s Intelligence is raised above 3, it gains the ability to speak and understand one language of the yexhul’s choice (typically Protean). These penalties cannot lower a creature’s ability scores below 1. A creature that successfully saves is immune to the specialization of that yexhul for the next 24 hours. No creature can be specialized in this way more than once simultaneously. This is a polymorph effect, and the save DC is Charisma based. Wild Empathy (Ex) A yexhul can use wild empathy as a druid with a level equal to its Hit Dice.

#protean #yexhul #pathfinder rpg #pathfinder 1e #slaad #evolution

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mariopokemonuniverse · 2 years

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Mimikyu Manual

General Information

Evolution

Does not evolve

Forms

Usually in Disguise form. Changes to Busted Form on the first hit it takes in a battle.

Mimikyu

National Pokédex #: 778

Category: Disguise Pokémon

Type: Ghost/Fairy

Height: 0’08”, 0.2 m

Weight: 1.5 lbs., 0.7 kg

Ability: Disguise

Gender Ratio: 50% male, 50% female

Egg Groups: Amorphous

Temperament: Charming, Curious, Feisty, Friendly, Intelligent, Perceptive, Quiet

Diet: not specific

Introduction

Mimikyu is a Ghost/Fairy type Pokémon that has become very popular in recent years due to its desire to make friends with people. It is one of the smallest Ghost-types, making it conveniently sized for Trainers who live in apartments, and is very well-behaved. Unlike many Pokémon, it can also thrive on any type of food, making it very easy to care for. Its unique Ability, known as Disguise, prevents it from taking damage on the first hit it receives in battle.

No one knows exactly what Mimikyu looks like, as its costume is always kept on. It may serve as protection against sunlight, and rumors state that those who see Mimikyu’s true form will become cursed and die, so the costume likely protects others as well. To be safe, it is advised not to try looking underneath Mimikyu’s costume, and it will resist these attempts violently anyway. Mimikyu is also very particular about the condition of its costume, spending all night repairing it if the neck breaks or if there are any tears in the rag.

Because Mimikyu is listed as being a potential danger to humans (although not intentionally), it requires an additional Pokémon license to legally own.

Pros and Cons of Mimikyu

Pros

Usually quiet

Low maintenance

Adapts well to apartment living

Can eat any food

Immune to three types (Normal, Fighting, and Dragon)

High Special Defense stat

Cons

Low HP and Special Defense stats

Not resistant against any types except Bug

Does not learn many attack moves naturally

Can be clingy

Not a great guard Pokemon

Important Considerations for Owning Mimikyu

Providing enough attention: Mimikyu craves companionship, so it will need lots of time with a Trainer or with other Pokémon.

Moveset: Mimikyu can only learn seven different attack moves on its own, so TM’s and TR’s may come in handy.

Care

Like many Ghost-types, Mimikyu has minimal nutritional requirements, so it can theoretically eat only Malasadas. However, a varied and healthy diet is essential for most Pokémon, including Mimikyu, to perform their best and to avoid boredom. An ideal diet for Mimikyu consists of Pokémon food, fruits, and vegetables. There is no specific amount of food that Mimikyu should eat daily.

In addition to good socialization, Mimikyu also thrives on behavioral enrichment. This includes items such as puzzle feeders, plush toys, cardboard boxes, and balls that are not easily popped. Recall training is also an excellent form of enrichment for any Pokémon. Use a whistle or call the Pokémon’s name, and have treats or a toy ready so that the Pokémon is motivated to come to you. When using this for play, do it while hiding out of view of your Pokémon so that it has to find you, like hide-and-seek. Mimikyu is naturally motivated to come towards people, so it does great at recall training.

Pokédex Entries

Disguised Form

“Its actual appearance is unknown. A scholar who saw what was under its rag was overwhelmed by terror and died from the shock.”

“A lonely Pokémon, it conceals its terrifying appearance beneath an old rag so it can get closer to people and other Pokémon.”

“Although it's a quiet, lonely Pokémon, if you try to look at what's under its rag, it will become agitated and resist violently.”

“A gust of wind revealed what hides under this Pokémon's rag to a passing Trainer, who went home and died painfully that very night.”

“It wears a rag fashioned into a Pikachu costume in an effort to look less scary. Unfortunately, the costume only makes it creepier.”

“There was a scientist who peeked under Mimikyu's old rag in the name of research. The scientist died of a mysterious disease.”

“This Pokémon lives in dark places untouched by sunlight. When it appears before humans, it hides itself under a cloth that resembles a Pikachu.”

“Mimikyu was only recently identified as a Pokémon. Previously, people thought it was just a ghost wearing a cloth.”

Busted Form

“After going to all the effort of disguising itself, its neck was broken. Whatever is inside is probably unharmed, but it's still feeling sad.”

“If its neck is broken or its rag torn during an attack, it works through the night to patch it.”

“It stands in front of a mirror, trying to fix its broken neck as if its life depended on it. It has a hard time getting it right, so it's crying inside.”

“Sad that its true identity may be exposed, Mimikyu will mercilessly seek revenge on any opponent that breaks its neck.”

“There will be no forgiveness for any who reveal that it was pretending to be Pikachu. It will bring the culprit down, even at the cost of its own life.”

“Its disguise made from an old rag allowed it to avoid an attack, but the impact broke the neck of the disguise. Now everyone knows it's a Mimikyu.”

“Even as it struggles beneath the cloth to repair the broken neck of its disguise, Mimikyu keeps up its impersonation of Pikachu.”

“It has taken damage and can no longer hold the head of its cloth disguise upright. For as long as it lives, Mimikyu will never forget its attacker.”

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translucent-at-best · 1 year

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Scatter-brained...

I want some dick. My friends want me to get some dick. The difference is... they want me to have any old dick and I need more than that. I'm not tolerating anybody who's not as dedicated to my orgasm as I am to theirs.

The Mango Berry whipped shea butter from Nappily Naturals be having folks stuck. I love smelling delicious and being told I smell delicious. I know I've mentioned this before, but it really and truly never gets old.

People referring to the start of their loc journey as "the ugly phase" irk me. Is it different? Yes. Is it a learning experience getting used to your hair in the beginning stages? Absolutely. But there's nothing ugly about you and there's nothing ugly about having locs (as a Black person).

God knew we would've taken that first place we applied to in a heartbeat had we not gotten denied. It didn't make sense at the time, but the more that I think about it, the place we ended up getting approved for is absolutely the right place for me. The fact that it's rent-controlled alone means I may finally be done moving out here, which is huge. Add to that the fact that it comes with everything we wanted in a place, is on the top floor so we don't have to deal with anyone above us, and is in a great location? God, You really be out here God-ding. Thank you.

I went to a party earlier last week and saw a lot of famous people there. I saw Damson Idris, heard Pedro Pascal was there, and met Amorphous and Courtney Taylor. It felt very LA and although I wasn't starstruck per se, it was very much a "we're not in Kansas anymore" moment.

Riding in a car after someone's been in your pussy and going over bumps and being reminded how sensitive your clit still is >>>

I had a friend over to help me pack up my room. He unexpectedly gave me a foot rub. Completely unprompted. He didn't know, but it was my first time getting one. The unprompted part really got to me. It's not lost on me at all that he didn't have to. It's also not lost on me how nice it felt. It's not often I feel lonely, but I can't lie... that shit had me wanting to see about a relationship* a lotta bit.

I'm mentoring a high school student to help them write their college essay and I'm really excited about it. I'm at an elementary school right now, and I miss working with the high school population so much. I mean Chelle luh da kids and all, but the little ones just be so sticky all the damn time lol. I love talking to older students and helping them figure out what they want to do after they graduate.

Black men are so stunning and gorgeous and beautiful and handsome and I love telling them as much. I love seeing the way their faces light up when I give them compliments.

I've been trying to think of a nicer, gentler way to say this, but... I want so badly to be fucked and fucked well. I've never thought of or referred to myself as a size queen, and while this is not me doing that, I absolutely need enough dick to hit the bottom of my shit. I want to be fucked and filled and told I look good while I'm taking it all. I-- I thought I knew what horny was. But this ovulating over 30 shit? Jesus Hakeem Christ...

#*albeit not with him #scatter brained #scatter

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ausetkmt · 2 years

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The Most Dangerous Film in the World

Three days after the explosion and meltdown of Chernobyl’s Nuclear Reactor Unit 4 on April 26, 1986, Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko was granted permission to fly over the 30-square-kilometer site known as the Exclusion Zone. His assignment was to document the cleanup operations being carried out by Ukrainian workers and volunteers, most of whom would eventually succumb to the extraordinarily high levels of radiation they were exposed to while trying to contain the disaster.

When Shevchenko’s 35mm footage was later developed, he noticed that a portion of the film was heavily pockmarked and carried extraneous static interference and noise. Thinking initially that the film stock used had been defective, Shevchenko eventually realized that what he had captured on film was the image and sound of radioactivity itself.

This article is adapted from Susan Schuppli’s book “Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence.” Buy the book: Amazon, Bookshop, more options

Upon projection, small flares of light momentarily ignite the surface of the film. Sparking and crackling, they conjure a pyrotechnics of ghostly defects that are the consequence of decaying radioactive particles moving through the exterior casing of Shevchenko’s 35mm Konvas camera to activate the emulsive properties of the film. What we are witness to, in this fleeting energetic event, is the radiological conversion of a somewhat pedestrian account of the disaster into the most dangerous film in the world.

“Radiation is a fatal invisible foe. One that even penetrates steel plating. It has no odor, nor color. But it has a voice. Here it is. We thought this film was defective. But we were mistaken. This is how radiation looks,” Shevchenko narrates over the film. “This shot was taken when we were allowed a 30-second glimpse from the armored troop-carrier. On that April night the first men passed here — without protection or stop-watches, aware of the danger, as soldiers performing a great feat. Our camera was loaded with black-and-white film. This is why the events of the first weeks will be black and white, the colors of disaster.”

Shevchenko’s film, “Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks,” provides us with an intimate view into the space of disaster. And while its pictorial mediation allows us to remain at a safe and objective distance from the hazard, the sudden distortion of the documentary’s sound and images, and the Geiger-like interference of radiation, inaugurates a sense of dread that what we are witnessing on film is in fact the unholy representation of the real: an amorphous and evil contagion that continues to release its lethal discharges into the present and future yet to come.

The contaminated film footage thus complicates the conventional partitioning of time by hurling us unwittingly back into the contact zone of the event — not merely as viewers but also as witnesses to an event whose time has not yet passed. Even when I am watching a safe VHS copy of this film, I am reminded of the transgressive agency of the nuclear to contravene the material borders that traditionally maintain the integrity between human and nonhuman entities, between bodies and images, between past and present.

Given what we know about the radical chemistry and anarchic temporality of nuclear materials, it is impossible to fully distance ourselves from this fallout on film, regardless of how far removed we believe ourselves to be from the event in both space and time.

The detonation of the first nuclear weapon in 1945 altered the planet’s baseline levels of ionizing radiation irrevocably as newly created isotopes such as caesium-134 and 137 began to supplement naturally occurring cosmic and terrestrial radiation. Although caesium-137 first appeared in the early solar system through processes of natural nuclear fission, more than 1.7 billion years would pass before it reappeared on Earth in any detectable amount — on December 2, 1942, as a result of a nuclear chain reaction produced by the first-ever human-made nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, built under the supervision of physicist Enrico Fermi.

In the decades that immediately followed Fermi’s experiment, “humanity began to significantly change the global radiation environment by testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere,” as a sobering article charting the fallout from nuclear weapons tests explains. “By the early 1960s, there was no place on Earth where the signature of atmospheric nuclear testing could not be found in soil, water and even polar ice.”

By extension, Shevchenko’s contaminated film, whether the original 35mm print or its VHS copy, signals an intensification of an already increasingly “unnatural” radiological world where anthropogenic contamination would become omnipresent. The interference that we observe within the image field of “Chronicle of Difficult Weeks” is a tacit reminder that the nuclear always operates in excess of containment and is thus ontologically predisposed to breaching imposed limits, whether they are film frames, reactor units, or remote test sites.

Although radiation is effectively everywhere, events around Chernobyl unfolded in such a way as to negate the scale and extent of the accident, and even initially to deny that it ever happened. As one Polish protestor would scrawl months later on his placard, in an antinuclear demonstration held after the USSR reluctantly admitted that an incident had occurred in the Ukraine: “Chernobyl is everywhere — except in the East.”

The irradiated image matter of Shevchenko’s documentary offers a paradigmatic account of a material witness in which trace evidence of an external event — the nuclear accident at Chernobyl — is registered directly by changes in the material composition of the artifact, producing information that opens up the artifact to further analysis and critical reflection.

In the case of Shevchenko’s defective film stock, there can be no dispute that the radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere by the reactor meltdown — at a magnitude 400 times greater than that of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima — were the source of the film’s contamination, and thus offered compelling evidence as to the scale and migrating nature of the disaster. Indeed, subsequent radiation readings also confirmed that all of his film equipment, including his Konvas and cherished Arriflex cameras, had been severely exposed, thus requiring their immediate decommissioning and disposal. Shevchenko himself died less than a year later, in March 1987.

The public contexts in which Chernobyl’s contaminants would come to feature as evidence that a major nuclear accident had occurred largely took place outside of the Soviet Union. Only when Sweden — after picking up unusually high levels of radiation — threatened to file an official alert with the International Atomic Energy Agency did the Soviet Union admit privately that there had been some sort of incident at Chernobyl. In the political aftermath of the tragedy at Chernobyl, the failure to inform its citizens served to expose the hubris of the Soviet State, which hid the disaster from the public, acted far too slowly in disclosing and managing the risk, covered up negligence in the reactor’s operational procedures, and ultimately exposed millions to unnecessary poisoning, especially as the contaminating winds blew northwest across the Ukrainian border into Belarus, and onward into Poland and Sweden.

Activities were underway for May Day celebrations throughout the USSR; Soviet officials felt that it would dampen festive spirits if news of the nuclear meltdown and potential health hazards were publicized during this period. As a result, atmospheric molecules carrying ionizing radiation entered into the respiratory systems of thousands of unsuspecting hosts. Children, it turned out, were the most susceptible to this migrating airborne malevolence. Radiation affects cells in the thyroid gland above all, which in young people are in an active state of duplication or growth. Consequently, irradiated cells were turned out at unprecedented metabolic rates, spawning, in turn, statistically abnormal increases in the incidents of thyroid tumors among children.

Today, an estimated 3.5 million Ukrainians are still plagued with maladies linked to Chernobyl; many of them have received little or no compensation for their suffering. The situation in Belarus, recipient of 70 percent of Chernobyl’s airborne contaminants, is even grimmer.

Cover of Pravda newspaper, April 26, 1986, day of the Chernobyl nuclear accident; and cover of Pravda newspaper, May 15, 1986. Nineteen days after the accident at Chernobyl, President Mikhail Gorbachev made a television address to the Soviet people.

A subsequent legal trial was organized entirely around procedural failings rather than the admission of any evidential artifacts of a material nature. In this regard, State silence around the various material expressions of nuclear contamination could more aptly be described as disclosing the management of the disaster as a “nonevent.” If the material witness’s dual obligation is to act as a registration system that archives trace evidence of events as well as accounting for the appearance of such evidence within the contested spaces of public discourse, then the willful lack of public acknowledgment for 19 harrowing days — the length of time before Soviet newspapers registered publicly that a major nuclear accident had taken place — could be said to constitute an event in and of itself. Silence, secrecy, and the withdrawal of the conventions of public speech should be understood as modes of evidence-making in their own right.

Within this context of denial, Shevchenko’s film is a material witness, and a hostile one at that, in both the literal and legal sense of the term. As a materially compromised artifact the film inadvertently offered up damaging testimony that was willfully antagonistic to the narratives of nuclear containment and crisis management that were being advanced by the State via their commissioning of the documentary, with its focus on cleanup operations.

As the airborne malevolence of Chernobyl moved beyond the borders of the Ukraine in the days immediately following the accident, the failure of the State to discharge its civil obligations was an act of malfeasance; one in which political silence was eventually reconfigured as evidence of gross negligence, and rematerialized in the form of public protest and anger. Today Chernobyl is regarded as the political catalyst that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

#The Most Dangerous Film in the World #radiation #radio active film #chernobyl #radiation accidents #nuclear accidents #4/26/86 #Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko

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