Blood Red Wednesdays: The Hollow Heart and Darkness

As the Psychonaut steps into the ring, They are bathed in the lights from the spiraling galaxies that hang impossibly overhead. In the Foglands, a perpetual blood red twilight washes over the face of any visiting Pasychonauts. In the perpetual night of the Mirrored city arcing currents of electricity and neon reflect off the smog and smoke that threaten to drown the city and any unwary Psychonauts. In Arcadia, sun and moon and firelight alone will light the Psychonaut's face. In the Painted Labyrinth, phosphorescent fungi climb the walls and bioluminescent creatures flit through air and stagnant pools of water, casting eerie light by which a Psychonaut may navigate the dangerous tunnels.

But in the Hollow Heart, there is no light.

Dark as the human mind from which the Shadowlands is birthed and in which it the Shadowlands grow. Dark, but not still. The Hollow Heart does thrum with what can only be called a heartbeat. The sense that the Psychonaut receives upon arriving in the Hollow Heart, is that one has been swallowed by some great creature. When Jonah was swallowed by the whale or "greate fyshe," the sense he received would have been similar. And perhaps Jonah had found a way into the Hollow Heart under its other common name: the Hidden Heart.

The Hollow Heart is also the Hard drive of the Shadowlands. The Shadowlands is procedurally generated like an unfolding fractal flower from the stories encoded into the fractal mirrored rooms of the Hollow Heart. A Psychonaut who manages to make the arduous and maliciously concealed journey to the Hidden Heart will find themselves with the entirety of the Shadowlands at their fingertips. The Universe of Stories would be theirs to control and reshape, if they can master the manner in which the Hollow Heart encodes and projects its store of tales out into the world. And, while a Psychonaut who unlocks the secrets of the Hollow Heart can reshape the Shadowlands, the stories and the archetypes which underpin the universe and which are its basis are not changeable from Hollow Heart.

And it is rumored among the veteran Psychonauts that the Hollow Heart is actually the top most layer of a vast underground network of minor realms. But what these are, a Psychonaut will have to discover elsewhere.

• Mirrored Here: https://bloodreddreaming.blogspot.com/2018/05/hollow-heart-and-darkness.html

The Repo Man and You

I've been browsing TV Tropes. I do this a lot. And in browsing through a couple of tropes. I noted something disturbing.


The Sympathetic Sentient Weapon, is a term that could be used to describe a surprising amount of modern jobs. Think about the Meter Maid and the Repo Man. These are regular people just doing jobs so that they can pay for their own right to live in this mad world. But to do so, they must inflict pain upon others.

Now, if you are still buying into the theology of modern civilization, you might think that those people brought these things upon themselves. But the game of civilization is designed to be lost. The game of civilization doesn't function unless it offers up a certain amount of its population as a sacrifice to power the success of those at the top.

And that psychology buy in that you may still cling to matches another trope.
  The restraining bolt. Unlike the sexy and tragic plot devices of science fiction, however, our restraining bolts are psychological and financial dependence upon a system that is damaging in a very real and tangible way.

We've been writing about ourselves in code to ourselves because we couldn't bear to say it out loud. Our masters wouldn't like it. But here we are, a bunch of slaves punishing each other because we don't know how to get out. The big discovery of the modern world has been to hide the mechanisms of this system better than previous generations.

"The greatest trick the devil every pulled, was convincing the world that he didn't exist."

The Usual Suspects

Yeah progress.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Dear Employeers (We are not your Robots)

Dear Employers,

Although it may surprise you, I am a human. I sleep. I eat. I get tired. I become emotionally drained. I get confused. I get overwhelmed. I have rhythms based upon the frailties of my biology. I become bored or distracted. I become disengaged (to use your dehumanizing buzzwords). I become disillusioned.

And although veiled threats and intimidation disguised as cheerleading may keep me and my coworkers moving, it doesn't work in the long run.

You fought against giving us a reasonable number of days off. You fought against coffee breaks and reasonable length for workdays. You fought against every improvement to my daily life in the workplace tooth and nail. And we remember. You still regularly break unions. You keep the lion's share of all the profits. You lie to us constantly, and sell us up the river- building your golden parachutes from our daily bread.

And we know it. And we are human. And this doesn't make us happy and engaged. And no amount of propaganda or elementary school sport game competitive shenanigans will distract us for any great length of time.

And maybe you don't care. Maybe we really are just human resources that you are willing to use up and replace. And maybe you think there are no consequences to treating us this way.

And maybe you're right. Maybe.

The Tsars of Russia were pretty sure they were right as well.

Just a thought.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Friday and why Sid Meier ruined my Childhood

So it's Friday. And the populist politics of dying empires continues unabated. Leaders say stupid things to appeal to stupid supporters. The progress made during the prosperous years is squandered.

And the clock ticks down.

But that's pretty dire. And this is Friday. So I thought I'd ignore the problem a little and take the time to recommend some video games that deconstruct our smug first world civilized delusions. Or more accurately the first game to mess with my head (probably not, but let's go with that).

Civilization 2

Civilization 2 was the first game to truly mess with my head in an immediate way. I noticed what they did while playing. Other games I may have played earlier (told you), the effect of Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 3 (as it was called on the SNES), were things that burrowed in my brain and only become clear after reflection years later. Civilization 2 taught me something uncomfortable about civilization and population growth. It taught a lesson about food supply and the limits of growth that was jarring. Also, unlike every other on this list, Civilization 2 taught through game mechanics and not through story.

Cities in the game will only grow in size if they produce excess food. Once the city has filled its food stores, the population will increase by one unit and deplete the food stores. Cities can only directly generate resources, including food, within a set radius around the city. Once a city is drawing resources from all available space within the radius a city must begin importing resources to continue growing. This necessitates new cities in less developed regions, but limits the growth of those cities by sending their resources away. There is an upper limit on this model, and the endgame occurs in 2020 just as most players will reach that limit. In trying to maximize my results I learned this system well enough that i knew our space program and the Good ending it provided were my only way to avoid stagnation or a war of genocide against my digital neighbours.

And then something occurred to me. Mines and oil well don't deplete in Civilization 2. But of course they do in the real world. You can't exhaust the land you farm in Civilization 2. But of course you can in the real world, the dust bowl and desertification worldwide make that clear. My vast digital empire was a carefully tuned system. If I were able to exhaust resources in game, my empire would face disastrous consequences.

And my brain suddenly had a thought.

2 + 2 = oh crap...

And there you go. Moving on.

Why adults lie to their children and why you will do the same

You are not 100% in charge of your life. You will fall victim to emotions and hormones, to circumstance and power imbalance. And no decision you ever make will be 100% within your control. When you account for all the variables of over which you have no control, your own intent is probably less than 20% of the relevant input.

A huge portion of life is largely beyond your control. Wayne Gretzky's father built his son an ice rink in their backyard. Bill Gates' mother got him into one of the few schools at the time with access to networked computers. External circumstances give huge head starts, or weigh you down like nothing else.

Do people overcome negative circumstances every day? Of course they do. But keep in mind, that even them overcoming negative circumstances is hugely dependent upon other outside circumstances.

So when parents and adults tell children that they can grow up to be whatever they want, the adult is obviously lying. But it's a necessary lie. Life is something of a lottery, unfortunately. But you only win the lottery, if you buy a ticket.

You cannot do whatever you want. You cannot be whoever you want. But if you don't act like you can, you will never achieve what you want. Much of your success is determined by circumstances beyond your control, and the one piece you can control is not as important as you think. But if you don't take control of that one thing, nothing else matters.

Buy the ticket.

Because if you don't buy the ticket, you end end up being human resources that somebody else will use to achieve their goal.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.

The monkey, the organ grinder, and your self-esteem

Why do we live in the look-at-me era? Why are we all shouting from the rooftops? Why are we all trying, as Andy Warhol noted, to get our 15 minutes of fame?

Alton Brown noted that following the success of Iron Chef America, he saw an influx of people going into cooking to be famous. The droves of people going in to audition to Britain's Got Talent with no talent, willing to humiliate themselves for  the chance to appear on television for less than a minute is well known. Rick Falkvinge has talked at length about how much of the privacy rights our grandparents fought for we are willing to sacrifice for a little fame. Even the Disney animated feature Hercules talks about the danger of mistaking fame for self-worth.

Is it possible, despite the crush of population, that we're all screamingly lonely? Are we seeking validation?

We spend 12 years being tested against all of our peers and told how well we do or don't measure up. We didn't see our parents for most of the day. And the surrogate parents were constantly demanding that we perform on cue to see if we're worth appreciating.

Maybe we're seven billion lonely Souls. Raised to believe will never be good enough.

Even our coming of age ceremony, as we walk across the stage with the cap and the gown and the little fake scroll, is filled with implicit and explicit commentary on how we're not yet good enough. What college are you going to? What scholarships have you earned? 

Dance monkey! Dance!

Time to knock over the organ grinder.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

You lack conviction

What is your mission? What is your purpose? You must have a life Path. You must have a reason beyond sex, drugs and daily bread to get up in morning.

I don't mean crap like career or pay check. I don't mean platitudes like friends and family. Of course you love your family! I'm not talking about the day to day.

What would you die for? No. Wrong question. What would you sell the remaining days of your life to accomplish? Because there's a good chance that isn't what you are doing with your days.

Whatever you are spending your days on, that is literally what you have chosen to die for. And if you think that's your family and not your day job, well that's okay. You're allowed to lie to yourself. We all do it.

Or.

Or instead, ask yourself who has tricked you and trapped you, chained you up with a white or blue collar and pay check just substantial enough to make walking away difficult. No shame in admitting this has occurred. It happens to nearly all of us. I am still trying to fight my way free. There is no shame in being caught, only in allowing yourself to remain caught without a struggle.

What would you sell the remaining days of your life to accomplish? You need to know this! Stare into the darkness of your soul. Don't settle for culturally appropriate answers. Don't settle for platitudes. Find your mission! In less than a century, in all likelihood, you will be dead. You will then be nothing more than the impact you have made.

Do you really want that impact to be on the quarterly bonuses of some CEO? Or the vague platitudes given in some heartfelt eulogy straining to make your life sound interesting?

The world is overflowing with people, seven billion bipedal parasites. And we are quite literally killing the life support system of the planet. If you want to be worthy of a proper eulogy, then you better do more than be a vaguely pleasant person and let life kick you around. If you want to be worth the air you breathe, and the resources you consume, then you need to have an impact other than improving the rate at which corporations are consuming the planet.

A century from now, the people still alive will look back upon our generation and wonder what we were thinking. Be one of the noted exceptions. Do something. Stand for something.

You're going to die for something. Do you want it to be for Donald Trump's pocketbook?

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.