I Embrace It.
hello, world.
bjorn again.
I'm here, stuck for an opening. I have been close, seveal times, to writing a triumphant, egotistical fanfare for myself.
Instead, I want to paraphrase Mike LeRoi's diatribe from that old gem Shadowman. I say Paraphrase; I mean copy verbatim and draw parallels.
"I am the Lord of Deadside, Shadowborn at the confluence of worlds to walk between.
Liveside is without the meaning that my partly living possesses here in Deadside, where the darkness is manifest at the edges of reason.
As a God, I step forth upon the writhing, suppurating surface of the Deadside Serpent.
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coilings of the snake's mortal shuffling.
Weapon in my hand, my hand, the arching deathblow at the End of All Things.
The horror.
The horror.
I embrace it."
What's going on here? Mike's the Shadowman. What does that entail? He's a Dark Knight for the afterlife. Watcher over order in the place where all go after death, killer of the already-dead when they dare to cross back here, to Liveside.
This is, of course, all fiction. There's no reference to certain facts that those in the know unconsciously spot, the secret equivalents of 1138s and wilhelm screams.
So, our Shadowman is a necessary nasty. What else? Well, to an outsider, he looks like nothing more than a great Bokor, terribly powerful, doing as he pleases and killing whoever gets in his way. He's dressed up in titles; the whole speech opens with that.
Break it down. Lord of Deadside. A place necessary to, subservient to and the product of the world of the living, yet a credible threat to. Compare to the internet. Similarities emerge. We create - instead of dying, though, we simply create through iteration of thought. We need - don't deny it, global banking would collapse and that's just one thing I have little interest in. The cultural ramifications for the developed world of loss of the internet are truly stupefying.
What else? Subservient to. It is our tool, our toolbox now; loom and thread and everyone's clothing. Without humanity, there would be no internet. To a certain extent, it is held up by its own inertia, yet without human life going on, it'd fall over. The internet may not answer to any individual, but it does answer to the whims of society. We see ourselves in it, our thoughts and intents, and trace the greater movements of a sleeping thing, and from that divine ourselves; we, through the internet, are both soothsayer and sacrifice, pouring over what makes us tick for secrets.
Secrets. I'll get back onto that in a while.
Product of. I covered that in subservient to. It's our tool, and it's the work of that tool.
Finally, threat to. The internet has become a part of so much of what we do that it can't not be dangerous.
Roads. Take those. They're something we need. They kill you if you dance into them too often.
Internet's dangerous. What is it? Constant exchange of information. Throughput unbelieveable compared to early, even to five years ago, compared to ten. The number of facts and rumours and lies and ideas that flow through it in five minutes - the proportion of those that could cause at least unpleasantness and at worst ruin lives is, thankfully, much larger than the proportion that live up to that potential.
Yep. Deadside's a good analogue for the internet (though analogue internet would be interesting and tricky).
So what of our shadowman?
The real world is, to him, devoid of some essential meaning, some spark, that he finds in his internet. Now, I'm not going to claim that the internet is where "darkness is manifest at the edge of reason", that's not how I put things. I will say that, once things go far enough, it feels like there's something to the great exchange, the ongoing flood of human life; our internet is a thing more clear and real for its rendering-down. You cannot have the internet without the real, not yet, and while you can go back to the world of the real, but you cannot forget what has gone, not without denying it any import, and that is not how things should be. I will rebel against things having any right to have happened, but what has gone before should be recognised as having gone before, as having shaped us. Curse a memory, yes, but do not forget. That is what our internet is - it is memory, cultural memory, shared and split open as a patient on a table, that we may look and diagnose and see what we must do to make ourselves well again. Our blood, as a beautiful and many-splendored thing, is stifled. It flows, yes, but in many places, it is taken by tumours, things that have grown fat and become entitled, and we must do all we can to choke the life from them as they try to do the same to us - we, with our numbers, will win if we begin soon.
Now, on to Shadowman again.
As a God, he steps forth. He walks, a God. If these lines weren't written by someone of Knowledge, they were certainly edited by one. A God. One. Singular, implying the space for plurality. Yes. I haven't been to that place, nor knowingly touched it, but all describe it differently - who's to say this Deadside he describes is not one writer's vision, seen in a Veve, perhaps, of that place?
Who is he? He is what he does. Weapon in hand, hand, his hand. That hand, in the air - the blow is already in motion. There is an end coming. What nobody has told Mike is what happens afterwards. There is an end, as a precursor. Vodouns are always so dour. The deadside serpent bites into its tail, that it may roll on towards a future, carrying those bounded, girded by it, on.
I've got a finger on the pulse. I see what we are doing. With my last breath, I will not exhale, as Kurtz did; I will not see Horror, but what I do see, I will embrace.
I'm not making a Go of it yet. No, we're hitting the curse, but the exponent is yet to explode. Eventually, sooner than I'll expect, things will hit their final pace.
Yes, I Rebel against certain things. But for now, my work is best done here. There are many of my not-quite-allies. There are almost as many of us as there are causes, probably more. It's a dangerous game, to flex with forces untamed; the levels are complex, the facts more extreme. Go too early, and you'll be Ousted before the time is come for that final exhalation - wait too long, and you won't be able to finish your final campaign. You don't want to be caught, on that last day, on the "U" of a "Last Hurrah".
Some people tell you to run, because they're coming.
I'm already here. I'm in you. Listen to the beating of your fibreoptic pulse. It's the heart, and the war-drum, and it oscillates faster than you could possible know. I'm here, we're here. I'm going to crash your ship, your party and your servers.
My name is Bjorn Sigurdson. Hello, World.
bjorn again.
I'm here, stuck for an opening. I have been close, seveal times, to writing a triumphant, egotistical fanfare for myself.
Instead, I want to paraphrase Mike LeRoi's diatribe from that old gem Shadowman. I say Paraphrase; I mean copy verbatim and draw parallels.
"I am the Lord of Deadside, Shadowborn at the confluence of worlds to walk between.
Liveside is without the meaning that my partly living possesses here in Deadside, where the darkness is manifest at the edges of reason.
As a God, I step forth upon the writhing, suppurating surface of the Deadside Serpent.
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coilings of the snake's mortal shuffling.
Weapon in my hand, my hand, the arching deathblow at the End of All Things.
The horror.
The horror.
I embrace it."
What's going on here? Mike's the Shadowman. What does that entail? He's a Dark Knight for the afterlife. Watcher over order in the place where all go after death, killer of the already-dead when they dare to cross back here, to Liveside.
This is, of course, all fiction. There's no reference to certain facts that those in the know unconsciously spot, the secret equivalents of 1138s and wilhelm screams.
So, our Shadowman is a necessary nasty. What else? Well, to an outsider, he looks like nothing more than a great Bokor, terribly powerful, doing as he pleases and killing whoever gets in his way. He's dressed up in titles; the whole speech opens with that.
Break it down. Lord of Deadside. A place necessary to, subservient to and the product of the world of the living, yet a credible threat to. Compare to the internet. Similarities emerge. We create - instead of dying, though, we simply create through iteration of thought. We need - don't deny it, global banking would collapse and that's just one thing I have little interest in. The cultural ramifications for the developed world of loss of the internet are truly stupefying.
What else? Subservient to. It is our tool, our toolbox now; loom and thread and everyone's clothing. Without humanity, there would be no internet. To a certain extent, it is held up by its own inertia, yet without human life going on, it'd fall over. The internet may not answer to any individual, but it does answer to the whims of society. We see ourselves in it, our thoughts and intents, and trace the greater movements of a sleeping thing, and from that divine ourselves; we, through the internet, are both soothsayer and sacrifice, pouring over what makes us tick for secrets.
Secrets. I'll get back onto that in a while.
Product of. I covered that in subservient to. It's our tool, and it's the work of that tool.
Finally, threat to. The internet has become a part of so much of what we do that it can't not be dangerous.
Roads. Take those. They're something we need. They kill you if you dance into them too often.
Internet's dangerous. What is it? Constant exchange of information. Throughput unbelieveable compared to early, even to five years ago, compared to ten. The number of facts and rumours and lies and ideas that flow through it in five minutes - the proportion of those that could cause at least unpleasantness and at worst ruin lives is, thankfully, much larger than the proportion that live up to that potential.
Yep. Deadside's a good analogue for the internet (though analogue internet would be interesting and tricky).
So what of our shadowman?
The real world is, to him, devoid of some essential meaning, some spark, that he finds in his internet. Now, I'm not going to claim that the internet is where "darkness is manifest at the edge of reason", that's not how I put things. I will say that, once things go far enough, it feels like there's something to the great exchange, the ongoing flood of human life; our internet is a thing more clear and real for its rendering-down. You cannot have the internet without the real, not yet, and while you can go back to the world of the real, but you cannot forget what has gone, not without denying it any import, and that is not how things should be. I will rebel against things having any right to have happened, but what has gone before should be recognised as having gone before, as having shaped us. Curse a memory, yes, but do not forget. That is what our internet is - it is memory, cultural memory, shared and split open as a patient on a table, that we may look and diagnose and see what we must do to make ourselves well again. Our blood, as a beautiful and many-splendored thing, is stifled. It flows, yes, but in many places, it is taken by tumours, things that have grown fat and become entitled, and we must do all we can to choke the life from them as they try to do the same to us - we, with our numbers, will win if we begin soon.
Now, on to Shadowman again.
As a God, he steps forth. He walks, a God. If these lines weren't written by someone of Knowledge, they were certainly edited by one. A God. One. Singular, implying the space for plurality. Yes. I haven't been to that place, nor knowingly touched it, but all describe it differently - who's to say this Deadside he describes is not one writer's vision, seen in a Veve, perhaps, of that place?
Who is he? He is what he does. Weapon in hand, hand, his hand. That hand, in the air - the blow is already in motion. There is an end coming. What nobody has told Mike is what happens afterwards. There is an end, as a precursor. Vodouns are always so dour. The deadside serpent bites into its tail, that it may roll on towards a future, carrying those bounded, girded by it, on.
I've got a finger on the pulse. I see what we are doing. With my last breath, I will not exhale, as Kurtz did; I will not see Horror, but what I do see, I will embrace.
I'm not making a Go of it yet. No, we're hitting the curse, but the exponent is yet to explode. Eventually, sooner than I'll expect, things will hit their final pace.
Yes, I Rebel against certain things. But for now, my work is best done here. There are many of my not-quite-allies. There are almost as many of us as there are causes, probably more. It's a dangerous game, to flex with forces untamed; the levels are complex, the facts more extreme. Go too early, and you'll be Ousted before the time is come for that final exhalation - wait too long, and you won't be able to finish your final campaign. You don't want to be caught, on that last day, on the "U" of a "Last Hurrah".
Some people tell you to run, because they're coming.
I'm already here. I'm in you. Listen to the beating of your fibreoptic pulse. It's the heart, and the war-drum, and it oscillates faster than you could possible know. I'm here, we're here. I'm going to crash your ship, your party and your servers.
My name is Bjorn Sigurdson. Hello, World.