Mountains Crack The Clouds

4000!

A huge thank you to my 4,022 subscribers. That number really snuck up on me. If you’re an artist please hit me up! I’m sitting on a episode of Castles in the Air until I have some cool art to go alongside it, and I’ll start uploading them to Youtube as well. 

He could never shake the calamity of time from his face, nor the persisting ache of life from his demeanor. Without knowing a thing about the man, you would look at him and think "My God... he survived all that?"

Stage notes from "Lilytooth”, a work in progress

Martingale Episode 1: Cold Open | RPG Roulette

The year is 1886, and the place is Montana. The Great, Mythic Frontier lets out one last stifled gasp before the cold sets in, and the final nail is hammered...

An actual-play podcast where we’re playing DEAD IN THE WEST, a game of my own creation! Please give a listen and tell me watcha think!

The year is 1886, and the place is Montana. The Great, Mythic Frontier lets out one last stifled gasp before the cold sets in, and the final nail is hammered down into the Old West's coffin. Join RPG Roulette and me for an acyual-play miniseries where Our intrepid players set out into a world of deceit, desperation, and unforgiving winter.

If you want to listen to the podcast elsewhere, check it out here (a rating or review would go a long way!): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rpg-roulette/id1403097671

Or here: https://rpg-roulette.simplecast.com/episodes/martingale-ep-1-cold-open

And also Spotify!

If you're interested in DEAD IN THE WEST, you can download or order a hardback copy here: https://deadinthewest.gumroad.com/

If you wanna support RPG Roulette, you can do so here (they’re good lads): https://www.patreon.com/rpgroulette

More episodes soon! Thanks for listening and lemme know your thoughts!

In response to the “Star Wars: The De-Feminised Cut” (which was an edit of The Last Jedi made by some weirdo that removed all female characters), I created “Star Wars: The De-Sci-Fi-ed Cut”. This version of A New Hope removes anything in the film remotely Sci-Fi or Fantasy related.

It’s five minutes long. Please enjoy A New Hope the way it was always meant to be seen.

Whatever Happens

In what we would consider a long dead universe, the last quark hangs in existence. Really, it cannot be said to hang or float, or be described with verbs at all.

There is nothing outside the quark. There is nothing beyond it. When we imagine this, we may imagine an expanse. A white void that stretches into infinity. This is incorrect. Outside the quark, there is nothing. There is no void, no expanse. The lack of existence is not something the quark inhabits; it is a force pressing down on it from all sides. The quark, in this sense, is all existence. The Quark is now everything.

This is what he would imagine, if he could. Never shutting his eyes, he watches Seychelles disappear beneath the bow as the ocean gently lifts and releases the ship. “It’s a small thing”, he thinks without knowing exactly what the thought refers to. To Seychelles, his ship was indeed small. To his home country of Somalia, however, Seychelles was perhaps even smaller. He continued on like this in his head as he watched the crown of the archipelago blink in and out of existence over the waves. To France, Somalia must seem small. He wasn’t sure, he assumed it must be so.

When someone does wrong, scale can be very comforting. He avoids eye contact with his fellows, and instead finally turns his gaze to the other ship. So much larger, so many more people. He takes comfort knowing that, to the sea, they are both small. I his mind, he moves up. Up to where the two boats are dwarfed by the ribbon of islands, up still to nothing but the ocean, up still until he can no longer picture the map. If he could have imagined that quark, he would have felt very comforted. To what hadron was it once attached, he might wonder. What he does consider is that there will eventually be something that will be the last thing to exist.

It could only take him so far, though. There is a hungry pain and a looming fear that disturbs the serenity of scale.

It is a mistake to think Nihilism comes easy. It would have been a great comfort for him to picture that quark at this moment, and felt the embrace of insignificance. To imagine his own cells, on the microscopic level, and travel back a quarter of a million years with them. To imagine the light from the very same moon hitting Mitochondrial Eve‘s eyes for the first same. To picture the Old Mother when she herself was new, before her genes branched off into a million directions, one artery of which lead him here, to this ship, on this night, holding this gun. How would any of this unease matter to him then?

You can be hungry, but you can’t steal. You can steal, but you can’t hurt anyone. You can hurt people, but you can’t kill them. How far back from that print do you have to stand before you can’t read it anymore? What could be done that Eve or the Quark would ever know?

He knows what it is that he has to do whilst feeling what he is told he has to feel. “It would be a blessing”, he might think, “to be small and to know it.”

Instead, he imagines the ship, sliding across a granite sea. He moves back until it disappears into the glint of the moon on the waves, and then further back until the light itself is gone. He could do anything.

Mario Odyssey does a lot of cool, strange things, but none as cool or strange as letting you dress the most iconic character in all of videogames as a topless cowboy. 

In this video I talk about character design and theory, as well as why Mario has stuck around as long as he has. Any likes, comments, shares or subscriptions will go a long way!

Is it insecurity or ego which drives men to so ferociously want to uncomplicate complicated women?

friends, i have been quiet because i have been funnelling all my creative energy into music right now and idk how to move from poems to that on here. I do still make more visually inclined things but right now this is what’s taking over my life. I’m not really calling anything as formal as a hiatus - just that’s why I’m here a bit less right now, though I’ve no doubt I’ll be around again for poems and art.

if you would like to maybe keep up with this music stuff, you can, and I would love it if you did.

twitter.com/breakuphaircut

Facebook.com/breakuphaircut

Instagram.com/breakuphaircut

I am also working on solo music stuff a fair amount. none of it is being released yet because recording is either difficult or expensive, but old things are on ishanijasmin.bandcamp.com and new things will be too.

Callisto

Sleek, silver. No shadow. Silver.

You acquaint yourself with what you’re looking at. The fog around the corners of your eyes dissolves. Slowly, the ceiling above you begins to materialise. “I am alive,” you think, “but too soon.”

This was wrong. Surely, this is wrong. You had heard that time doesn’t seem to pass when you’re under, but this seems distinctly different. Something was looming over you - the sleek silver ceiling that bore no shadow seemed like a distant, yet familiar threat. That was it - there should be a shadow there! If you in orbit of Callisto by now there would be a shadow. You turn your head -

No. You can’t. Something is wrong. You can’t move - you can’t even feel. Not like a numbness, no, like an absence. Your eyes dart down - the position of your body makes hardly anything visible. You just want to check - is it still there? Are you all still even there? Then you remember;

The Cells Alive.

The Cells Alive System was revolutionary. Loosely based on a process used in a Japanese Fridge of all things, the process involved freezing living tissue without the risk of damage or liquid crystallisation. For longhaul journeys like this, it was a Godsend.

By why were you awake? Why had your brain awoken without the rest of you? You wondered if something similar had happened to the rest of the crew - if you could just turn your head, you could check on them. A hot wave passes over you - or more accurately, your brain. Your mind. That’s the part of you you can feel. What was happening?

Sleek, shadowless ceiling. Just look at something else.

Memory ekes back in, slowly. You remember now - something had gone wrong. The ship lost power. You had no idea why - you were in a pod, for God’s sake. Either way, the hum of the ship was gone.

Well, “hum” is an embellishment. You have no sense of hearing presently, but when the ship is moving, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. If you can move your eyes, it’s a safe bet you’d be able to feel the ship’s engine, rocking them ever so slightly.

Or maybe your ears did work. Maybe there was just nothing to hear.

The ship was at a standstill - yet here you were. You remember, in your earlier days, before the mission, asking about the safety of the pods. In the dim blue light of a distant memory, nestled deep in the canopy of your faraway world, you remember, and are overcome with horror.

Early in the morning, the engineer reassures you. The pods run on a separate power source. They’ll keep you frozen, and keep you fed, even if the main ships power dies. Your body needs so little food in this state, and the machine will even exercise your muscles a little while you sleep.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why are you awake? How long will you be awake? Does Earth know you are?

It is frustrating that the overwhelming panic that grips you has no outlet - no sweat, no swearing, no screaming - nothing. Even your eye control is limited - you can’t even blink. The pod is keeping your eye moist. Were the settings jumbled? Why was your brain awake? Why were your eyes?

“Send me to sleep,” you pray. “Send me to sleep, send me to sleep until we’re rescued, please.” Like a child, you wish you could tighten your eyes, to amplify the strength of the wish.

Then another terrifying thought overcomes you; what if they aren’t coming for you? What if, back home, all they see is that the power is out? What if they assume you dead? What if they never come? How long will you be this way?

Silver, sleek, featureless. This image would burn into your eyes until, even if you escaped, it would have long since shrivelled up your retinas. Please, you ask, give me a shadow. Give me a detail to latch on to - give me something.

“The CAS system will keep you going,” I remembered, “pretty much indefinitely.”

Send me to sleep and kill me. Please. Send me to sleep and kill me. Cut the feeding tube off. Let your muscles atrophy. Please. God. Please.

Deja Vu. You remember thinking this before. What time was this? Has this happened before to me? How long have I… You remember… Yes, this did happen before, you woke up. But something was different.

Christ, God, no. The ceiling, you remember now. It wasn’t featureless. There was a mural on it. Where was it? Where had it gone? It was a schematic of the ship, where had it gone?! Was this the same ship? had you been taken, somehow? Was I home?! Wait, no, have I -

had you just been here long enough for your eyesight to fade?

How long have you been here?

No, I can’t have… This is all… Ah yes. Now you remember. Silver. Sleek. Featureless. You hadn’t woken up just now. It was… something else. A moment of clarity… You think. Alzheimer’s? Dementia? Not a physical thing, though. It was time, gnawing at me… Something… Else.

They say that time passes quicker the older you are. I wonder how long I have been here… Time doesn’t seem to be passing quicker, though maybe i would only notice if I had a point of reference… Something besides this ceiling… Maybe if I tried to have a conversation, everything would be moving too fast for me to follow. How long does it take a human brain to rot from the inside out, on its own accord?

I wonder if they mourned me, on the news… I wonder what a human face looks like. What do shapes look like?

The moments of clarity are the worst. I want it to take me over completely. I wonder how scared I was, the first time. The first time I realised this was everything… I wonder how different I really have it from people back home. This is ageing, this is just… Time… That’s all it is. The time we’re all afflicted by… condensed… into a…

How old are you? I remember now… Laying here… you remember the schematic fading… You could even notice it happening. Almost in real time, I saw it fade. Let me close my eyes.

Callisto, you think, must be beautiful. A beautiful silver. Sleek. Featureless.

“You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today!” is an adage I am so sick and tired of hearing that I made a half hour video debunking it. It also goes into exactly why the film is considered one of history’s most disruptive classics, and if you have time, you should check it out!

My channel is tiny, so any subs/shares/likes/comments you have are highly appreciated. Thanks in advance, pardner.