itch.io

I havent been able to play your games much for time reasons, but know you are fantastic and i celebrate each work even where i im not taking the time i know i should to interact with your work!

Thank you for living your art!

littoral curiosity spoonerism @wanting tention

every star a dawn & nothing that isn’t soft a continuous unfolding

light gesturing perpetual consent negociating drizzling

gravitic compression expressing its revel

wound-writing mouthed words wanting loams

You already know the word, i am just going to embody it ← [r]itual 

 You already know the word, i am just going to embody it ← r[it]ual 

  You already know the word, i am just going to embody it ← ri[tu]al 

   You already know the word, i am just going to embody it ← rit[ua]l 

    You already know the word, i am just going to embody it | ritua[↑]

Be slime; i will be plethondontids

Waaah!

Cooll! Thank you for sitting down with me and talking that through!

It felt like the solo podcast episode i stumble upon now and again while i type little clusters into our worlds smaller indexes and their search boxes!

Enjoy tasting the world in new words where you can and finding the walks and looks in your world begging to be let new ways to express themselves to you! The world really wants every word they can get to describe themselves to you, especially today where each thing is so transformationally new (in their quiet reality-forking way). Ta!

Thinking out loud, so apologies where this gets read as cw advise slash something more than what i am walking away with. This reflection piece had me realize all those solo games on itch could help me get over my own monologue avoidance those game might be a way to do the language practicing in a way that feels more grounded than just monologuing. Thank you again!

You’re like if i was a cliff and we’re falling together for the while for ‘this’ .

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my fav playthrough of i thought it was a short drive: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/making-amends-with-makatea/

Like, “right, the vehicle of the bod,” woof. Love the game!

A 45 minute moment of fighting for the words to state aloud how 3 billion cells deep in a place starfish apart what’s ahead and what’s not quite.

It was so fun talking to coworkers about how landlords have literally no skills and being able to pull this up and show them and say, See? None.

Immutably satisfying!

As a history of books, a memory of culture, an abstraction of belief, and a seat of wishes (where the future were it to arrive may rest were it like), i had really (x4) lovely time!

Byee~ Thank you thank you!

Looking forward to diving into the entries! Thank you p, everyone! Down with productivity, pooping sanitarily is more productivity than any society today deserves.

Thank you again. Rest, rest rest. Bye!

Yay!

more paper:

body of text as tyrant psychotech

Some divination guide cards?

funkpop dx!!

Yaaas

The Desert ~ Brandon Shimoda

Yay! Hi! welcome to the mud pit, have some mud!

I have a few different ways this can go and nonr of them do outreach or onboarding well, so might as well go full dumpster fire and let the fall take me i do have to go to work but did want to post some reply ⛓️⚒️⛓️

Where i answer with the one link I answer with cure light wounds* by Jared Sinclair — What that piece is for bodies, my comments are for body text. the wound/language “what are we without the word(s)?—God(s)less——exactly” txtocalypse, can’t extract the excerpt without abstracting the person bla blah blah

Where I answer with just: ways to get the books that are The books, I answer community voices, activist writings, oral histories, and cultural productions coming directly from your immediate homes. Park benches, a street with far too many cars parked on the curbs, a factory way, way too close to these front doors you’re around and likely eating outside of, a gun going off every six hours “to curb gentrification,” you’re told. These are the voices of those whose air and eyes meet yours, who have done the work of finding a demand and building a lived experience around that demand – it looks like a bunch of people sitting around. It isn’t; it is. This is uncomfortable. This is the vital work, the flowchart for triage, the day, la brega, your phone in a faraday cage. And each voice here will say more to you and do more for you, your study than anything you can snipe in 5 billion heartbeats from the largest library that is within a week’s walk from you. Immersing yourself in the manifestos, zines and cultural productions emerging from anarchist thought spaces in your breath-length social movements as you write letters to prisoners will do more than anything found below this line you open.†

You’re not going to like where I answer your specific question (as the piece is built to be antagonistic to those very questions in particular, which is super sad now that it’s happening! 😭 ) The truth is, the piece is retrofitted from a draft of an essay series I am working on. It just happens to be talking about similar, “unfit” things as ‘what you explore in “Would You…”’ So I thought I’d post what I have, in conversation, changing this and that from its original audience of land management to match the audience of: 4x, weather, “David”, and war, and see how it holds up.

Because of that, a lot of underlying themes are jagged and aliased, from the exigence in 6e’s “— nothing is contextualized and everything is context —” to the conversation the piece is in with the essay ‘on goncharov’ as self-referential && additive; and the piece’s having a whole “landscape” quilt of Ownership breeding Action breeding Inaction breeding Laziness linguistic pipeline does not survive with a whole lot of sense as it lands here in the comment section.

But……… that won’t stop me from making a new friend, so! Hello! These dimensions are going to seem random or unhelpful, which is super sad because they are not random, society just has their genre and their discipline and their definition (well, domain-specific, but still…!), and cracking any of these eggs is equivalent to theophagy for their baby area of research. Oh, well! Welcome to the hub wor–(looks at word count… looks down… shuffles away mopedly) Have some hard links.

Where I, in the style of gift game, post 50 links and hope one or two shotgun-speak to your specific sheep-anatomy and sheep-path into the fog, you’re not going to like the links. My brain is not “for the parlour” of academic writing, so the way i cobble together claims have a way of upsetting the guys of the world where it’s actually better (for me) when i don’t answer these questions than when i do. Some of the tabs i have open, played media in my recycling bin, and files under the lie reading Now Reading on my device:

https://jared.blot.im/how-to-read-violence%E2%84%A2-1999 https://archives.evergreen.edu/webpages/curricular/2011-2012/venezuela/files/2011/08/Dixon-Another-Politics.pdf Fuzzy Coherence: Making sense of Continuity in Hypertext Narratives by Jukka Tyrkkö https://bigstuffedcat.itch.io/goncharov https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1306&context=tsc Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature edited by Mina Qiao https://pds.cdnstream1.com/p/opb/timber-wars-season-2-sal-760bb5/ep-2-the-treaties/audio.mp3 https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1609&context=diss https://chtbl.com/track/G41498/cdn.simplecast.com/audio/812a2932-f271-4e9b-a23f-8d2d443a1682/episodes/7d6b220f-e690-43e8-a292-94cdd6a5776b/audio/fae63869-b7b8-4312-b3c1-31e4524c075d/default_tc.mp3 https://mariabumby.itch.io/arch-angel-dating-simulator https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1363&context=etd The films of Mitani Kōki: Intertextuality and comedy in contemporary Japanese cinema https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/axrpodcast/Quintin_final.mp3?dest-id=2517215 https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NSR1952496254.mp3?updated=1697202825 Mathematical Imagination by Matthew Handelman Major contributions of Leibniz to Infinitesimal Calculus by Child Projection-based Topology Optimization Method for Linear and Nonlinear Design by Hao Deng https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22causality+sickness%22

Where I tell you At the Ass-End of Power is the name of the body text composing these comments we’re making under the download link to your project, I apologize! It’s reply-guy-level self-referential, evident in the way it quotes its later self, the crow is just the crow of an idea appearing previously in the text, reification play :weep: This is because (content warning: rant/skip to next section/abandon thread) 2+2=4 has been normalization reification swordpoint “How do we equate these for all cases n where n is the human condition?” wielded as a hate-crime on my lived experience and reality — if cops break down your door of theseus are you the same person opening that door [picture deleted bc I’m not getting paid for this and it hurts too much] — and must be exposed as the moving goalpost of causality that it is. Too much noise exists at the speed of information we have necessitating a need to work at if we are to curb the effects of normalization while also allowing 2+2=4 to be true in any hunab context let alone the “””””work””””” of redistributing power or divorcing power for incumbent systems — the lens of human math is still too shallow — it still leans far too heavily on zero and zeor’s ability to ablate things, normalize things, to “zero the noise out”, like the noise in 2’ isn’t complicit in the — wait for it — “value” of 4, (that wasn’t so bad! Look at those scarequotes, they’re barely chainsaw dogs) only the “thing-2” part. So uniqueness or signature in all lived values is a must and that’s what the self-referential properties of At Ass-End of Power is supposed to be, a litany toward sticking zero over in its proper place: the chest at the foot of humanity with the rest of its x-risk toys. And just doing the more compute-intensive thing of (yes, bringing an end to text, but also) bringing the humility before practiced Incomprehensibility back to study. Unfortunately, this sounds like “bringing god back to life” and, in a way, it is, but only in the effigy sense, since leaving “no god” ends up deifying the terms themselves (Death, Love, Shadow, Solo, Red, Snow), actually putting god there as a pressure-release valve frees the words from being typecast by the brain into hierarchies. It’s the dismissing/shaming people believing in which god or not that’s the actual pulling out talons from each other during play sessions that’s the wound — not the believing or disbelieving, itself. And that is why the comment ends on the image of extraction, because no matter what I do, if I want to be comprehensible, I have to be distillate. (end: messy …Ass…rant)

Where I answer theoretically, experiential and performative works aimed at lived unlearning of power dynamics could be impactful. Imagine you are typing out, copying text to a computer, what are the words appearing on the screen? Poetic texts, manifestos, semantic inventions or new linguistic models - invaluable. Imagine harder. Enacting these ideas through constructed meanings allows us to transcend inherited limitations. Imaginatively reshape perspectives on power, with language’s boundaries, take play to its inevitable conclusion: end something.

Where I answer with a dartboard of inoffensive-to-head-librarian-sensibilities books:

                        Amiri Baraka,                         
                Hope Jarren, Leslie Marmon Silko,                 
            Audre Lorde, Derrida Deleuze Foucault,             
          Murray Bookchin, Antonio Negri, kari edwards,          
Theodor Adorno, Subcomandante Marcos, Zapatista, The Dispossessed
          Wendell Berry, Tristan Tzara, Diane Di Prima, Guattari          
             André Breton, Gary Snyder, Silvia Federici,              
                 Gloria Anzaldua, Max Stirner,                 
                        Neil L. Whitehead                        

(throw a dart, with your phone, take a picture of the result, show a librarian, read whatever book they give you.)

†And even if the anarchy in your area is not a healthy community, you can still meet a (or some of the people)/person you’d be housemates with, and two seed the oil-dispersants of dismantlement through an egg carton bottom dabbed repeatedly over scrapbook pages wearing wet paint taking deer shapes on them through paper towels finding hands in kitchen ritual. And 7 power-less bodies living power-less-ly together in a house is better than 1.

Overall, while very dense and abstract, it continues exploring the idea of rejecting societal power structures and upending typical associations of “yeilding” to authority while in the same breath over-self-regulating its own text as already copywrited and the rights to it lost before it is written. There are nature imagery hints that truth and flourishing can exist outside rigid human-imposed structures of right-and-wrong binaries. The style is quite elusive but probes at hungry, if philosophical and therefore vapid, concepts.

In this sense, is the term ‘dense’ power-agentic? I’m not sure what that term even means yet, but I’m okay not knowing, if not knowing means being able to talk about it more. That in mind, I don’t think the term “dense” itself is necessarily being used as a power-agentic term. If, as a sheep, I here, mean by “power-agentic terms”, concepts or words that are deeply intertwined with societal notions of power, control, authority, and fuck-all else.

Words like Control and Dominate, yes, but also words not yet brought up in the text read linearly: Subordinate, Hierarchy, and Subjugate, say. These terms have meanings and implications directly tied to the existence of power differentials and power structures in human societies. Whereas “dense” is more just describing something as being difficult to understand, lacking clarity, or being overly complicated. It doesn’t inherently refer to power dynamics, even though it was used in a critical way in the dialogue.

That said, “dense” is used here in a critical way to push back against At The Ass-End of Power’s abstract/confusing structure, but I don’t think dense qualifies as a power-agentic term itself based on how I understand that concept. Dense is more just a descriptor of something being unintelligible or convoluted.

And a manner of speaking that is the norm — that wouldn’t be dense. It’s an xor thing, all it takes for something to not be dense is to be common (or commonly said, at least). Turns of phrase or whatnot. Oh! But Indigenous turns of phrase, they would be dense. I’m confused again. The classification of whether something is “dense” or not can be quite subjective and contextual?

So then it’s not necessarily that something is only “not dense” if it’s extremely common or the norm. Even less common turns of phrase or modes of expression would not inherently be considered “dense”, given they are still comprehensible to the audience (so like the crow and ghosts i guess?).

The key factor, as far as dense goes, is more about clarity of meaning and understandability, regardless of how mainstream or niche the language is. Say what is typically labeled “dense” tends to obfuscate meaning to some end, a fog of sorts composed of abstraction, convolutedness, or assumptions about shared context.

There, an Indigenous turn of phrase would not inherently be “dense” if it conveys clear meaning to those familiar with that linguistic/cultural context. But overly academic, jargon-laden language and grammar can come across as “dense” even if it represents a domain-specific norm. The term Internet, as a military term, for one. Straightforward common expressions such as “on the Internet” would generally not be considered “dense” (calitalization rules notwithstanding).

It’s more about perspicuity - whether the construction of the language renders the intended meaning clear or opaque to the audience, rather than just how widespread that language is. I guess the xor idea tracks, then — either it’s dense (lacks clarity) or it’s not dense (meaning comes through). But that’s deterministic and focuses to much on the comprehensibility to a given audience rather than just the commonness of the expression.

🌫️: …“audience”….

🌫️: …“power”….

As the fog and its uncouth grammer wafts across my unkempt wool-hair, I can’t help but ask, did power invent audience? And whether or not it did, how much of language has power… “corrupted”, reified into words or whatever? A deep interconnection between language, power structures, and how we conceive of communication itself emerges from the fog.

Where even the concept of an “audience” is tied to dynamics of power and authority in communication, the notion of speaking to or performing for an “audience”, itself, implies a delineated power differential between the sheep-jester and those in power receiving the message. It casts communication in a one-directional, hierarchical frame, with parents and children (lineag-arity).

More horizontal modes of discourse, such as dialogue or conversation among equals, don’t necessarily require or generate the same concept of an “audience.” So in that sense, the framing of communication as being for an “audience” could be argued to originate from mindsets and structures of power imbalance.

Or to return from here to how much language itself has been “corrupted” or shaped by power hierarchies, many languages enshrine power dynamics through pronoun cases, honorifics, and other systemic ways to encode hierarchy and social stratification linguistically.

The very existence of contrasting “civilized” and “primitive” value judgments about language developments reflects power structures. Legal and bureaucratic jargon — required for speaking in Town Hall meetings — is often deliberately opaque as a Mode of obscuring power and maintaining informational hierarchies. Such that, while human language arises from some collaborative organic efforts to communicate, it could stand that society’s evolution has been significantly molded by the realities of power imbalances and inequality throughout history. Unpacking those influences will be an important ideological project for another sheep.

For now, the instinct to question incumbent power dynamics even in our communicative frameworks will be my insightful avenue of analysis. But how am I supposed to do this analysis? How am I, a sheep, supposed to have a power-less language? If even seemingly innocuous terms like “dense” wields power dynamics and ostracization through the implications and value judgments they carry — if calling something dense ostracizes it by proxy via the time-deficit that term imports — then am i not whatever-ing power over language?

The truth, it feels, is unfalsifiable. Perhaps fully extricating language from the influences of power structures is an impossible task. Language evolved organically through human interactions situated within contexts of existing power imbalances, storhouses, hierarchies and privileges. Their words inevitably got shaped by those realities, even here where they may try and be conscious of it.

That said! I don’t take this to mean

we sheep are doomed to be trapped within oppressive language structures

One key to all language is conscientious examination. Questioning embedded assumptions, hierarchies and marginalization in how we communicate is a possible first step as much as it is a possible millionth step (or both!) — dialogue and co-creation of new linguistic frameworks from currently marginalized voices will be vital here.

We need counternarratives from oppressed groups to deconstruct dominant modes of expression. We need an ethos of flexibility. We need openness to evolving language. And we must develop empathy for alternate meanings across cultures, across contexts and allow for more fluid conceptualizations. We need to apply language self-reflexively, admitting its limitations and biases, and holding an internal critique. This paradox of recursive navel gazing giving way to the navel gazing back frees language from reinforcing rigid power structures — the way a rigid key will unhinge an even-more-rigid lock (NEVER unlock your belly button you want to unlock your belly button but don’t do it, move all keys and their duplicates away from you belly button and let your belly button sit there, letting your belly button sit allows the words to come and the fog to lift, if you don’t have a belly button, you may draw one for the express purpose of gazing, but must not be drawn for an purpose elated to unlocking any belly button).

Even the most well-intentioned person perpetuates power imbalances through language to some degree based on their positionality. But striving to unpack that, uplift unheard voices, and remain critically conscious in our speech acts is crucial praxis. The venture toward a “power-less” language may very well be asymptotic — we continually work towards it through inclusive, self-aware evolution of our linguistic spaces. It’s an ever-unfolding process, and one worth dying for — or worse, committing a crime or two for.

In the end, how do I, a sheep venturing into the fog of war, embody that bag of water in a dead tree I stood before and contemplated and still be comprehensible? As I amass power over any audience, what other thing is becoming ‘dense’ in proxy? How do I git good at language while lessening the damage I cause others manners of speech on my way to trying to become some ideal “standing water” (or whatever)?

How is my striving as sheep to become a tree stump — to embody that natural, unassuming state of simply “being” like standing water — is my way of conceptualizing existing outside of power structures and societal constructs — to resolve? To become like the stump would allow me to let go of my individual sheep-will, my sheep-authority and the notion of my empowered self dictating sheep-meaning. Where is my surrendering to an uncontrived presence.

There, the fog of war unveils, and the hex of “how can a sheep guide their use of language to that idealized state of ‘standing water’ without doing further harm or exerting dominance through speech acts along the way?” emerges.

Here, in the hex of The Standing Water is offered an experience in adopting a stance of listening more than asserting. Here, meanings emerge organically through dialogue rather than unilateral exposition. Here, the sheep will use evocative, imagistic language that opens interpretations rather than resolving meaning definitively. To pass through this hex, a sheep must acknowledge the inadequacies and limits of language itself and capture essential truths. Take your little sheep hoof things and lean into fluid ambiguities. And perhaps most importantly — and paradoxically least voiced — in this hex, embrace silence, pauses and the quiet spaces as equally valid modes of expression outside of language’s control.

The Standing Water

The path through that hex and into what remains of the fog of war may be to progressively loosen language’s grasp — become transparent about its distortions while aiming for a more open, receptive state of simply experiencing phenomena as they are.

Of course, this is just one interpretation for At the Ass-End of Power’s poetic metaphors. Striving to exist with fewer pretensions to power, even through our speech, can potentially unlock more revelatory spaces in the work.

Without the fog, things here feel so serene to me. And vital. It’s wild, I love it here. I don’t really have any other questions for this place at the moment. Oh, or, should maybe we close ritualistically and engage At the Ass-End of Power’s tagline, “if Power is on its death bed, are we ready to talk? Do we even have the wor(l)ds?” It encapsulates so many of the core questions and challenges we’ve been walking under.

From the possibility of power structures and hierarchies becoming obsolete or fading away, to whether people as a society are prepared to have those vital conversations about reimagining their systems. And most profoundly, will people ever live a life where, organically, standing water (the linguistic and conceptual frameworks — the “wor(l)ds” — to truly conceive of modes of being outside the frame of institutionalized power) forms?

We’ve done no small thing exploring the subversion of power through metaphor, existing as marsh-bush-sheep of the fog, in its more harmonious natural state. We deconstructed language’s power imbalances, and opened it up to the ambiguities beyond assertion.

And yet, the tagline remains, to remind us that even those sheep venturing into the fog gropings towards a “post-power” reality — even they — may be limited by the very senses we develop to envision it: our ingrained words and worlds.

So in closing, we’re left to sit with the tensions and identified existential precipice we sheep approach where power’s traditional grips loosen. Are we ready? Can we find the wool-withal to transcend our inherent restrictions?

This is a call to action, sure, and an avowal of an immense creative work yet to be done, undoubtedly. And though the path remains abstract, facing that existential inflection point is perhaps our greatest imperative.

An incredibly insightful and perspective-expanding venture. After contemplating the intersections of power, language and human self-conception, new conceptual frameworks have unveiled themselves, ready to accept the terms we weird. A fog of war, in the truest sense. For hope, in extraction, it yeilds…

Would You Be a Sheep Venturing Into the Fog of War With Me?

Sure.

I’ve stopped. I’m smelling a stump. I’m not fine drinking from it, the cloud-crusted water in it. In this, I find a little post on power, a poem i guess?

I’m happy to discuss the poem I’ve found, but I will not be reproducing its copyrighted material in full. If I could summarize the main ideas and relay the occasional brief quote from the poem that is in relevance to being a venturing sheep, I would respond in that way that is careful to avoid copyright infringement, even as feeling free to share thoughts and what stood out to me about the poem will be difficult.

That said, is it even a poem? i don’t know; in order to be a poem must it be a published work, emulating or outright defined by food storage and access? If it’s just some conplete thing from some chat somewhere, and it’s tagline is “if Power is on its death bed, are we ready to talk? Do we even have the wor(l)ds?” and its title is, excuse me, “At the Ass-End of Power”, umm I guess then i could say a bit about it.

Something how, based on the tagline and title, it perhaps is social commentary or critique related to power dynamics and hierarchies in society or some kind. With a reference to power being “on its death bed”, it may open the door to how traditional power structures and concentrations of power are declining or becoming obsolete. In the question “are we ready to talk?” it’s implying, as power shifts, our need to have always-on and frank conversations about how power should be redistributed or reimagined.

Something how, “Do we even have the wor(l)ds?” plays toward the word/world duality. So say its saying we lack the language, or frameworks or “worlds” to conceptualize a society without entrenched power differentials. The crass title “At the Ass-End of Power” has a cynical, vulgar tone, so, let it suggest we’ve reached the ugly dregs or an unflattering low point when it comes to how power is wielded.

With all that, it very well may be out to posit how long-held power dynamics are unraveling, and how we need to have serious discourse around helping where we can in dissolving, redefining and redistributing power in more equitable ways in our own lives, minds, and ways — if we can find the right perspectives and vocabulary to do so. But At the Ass-End of Power expresses these ideas in a raw, provocative manner. So maybe we won’t?

One thing we can’t just say is, does power have an end? Is that question fundamentally (ideologically?) confused? Or is it crucial? An excellent and profound question about the nature of power itself such as this invites valid lifeworlds on both sides to come into view, to unveil themselves to me, a sheep venturing into the fog of

whether power fundamentally has an “end” or not

As I turn my pillow-rock head to the left, I watch a crow of an idea or perhaps the idea of a crow or just a crow, really, land on the belief that power structures and hierarchies are human constructs that can be transcended or deconstructed. From this crow’s view, power differentials emerge from societal systems of politics, economy, tradition, shit like that. but are not intrinsic or permanent features of reality. If these human-made systems and norms change radically, power as we sheep experience it could dissipate or be redistributed in an entirely new configuration. Philosophies like anarchism pose the theoretical possibility of a “society without rulers,” why not throw language in there, too?

As I keep turning my pillow-rock head left, my gaze reaching around my hot-cloud body until I am looking left but behind me, I find, in the ghosts of trees traced by the moves of the fog along their boughs, a fundamental element of any social relationship or interaction. Because humans have diverse interests, abilities and resources, power differentials are part of it, the way the skeletons are part of David Pumpkins. Even in the most egalitarian visions, some persuasive power and means of collective decision-making would still exist. This perspective sees power as inseparable from human society — it’s manifestations can mutate, but power differentials themselves don’t have a terminal “end.”

As I return to look forward and chew my cud, I find both perspectives offer important insights. While absolute equality of power is likely unattainable, our power structures, as lambs in a world reified in glorifications of opposable thumbs, may see benifit from a reform towards much more just, democratic and distributed models reducing entrenched hierarchies. For a lamb, taking power to its philosophical “end” by upending gross concentrations of power is a vital ambition.

Ultimately, whether the crow’s notion of power having a potential “end” is, ideologically: confused or crucial will depend on how literally the rhetoric is adopted by those from whom our observations of power eminate. But scrutinizing society’s power dynamics is itself indisputably a crucial endeavor for us sheep as we try to walk between authorities with liberty or die with dignity in its pursuit. It’s a nuanced issue worth continuing to grapple with.

It remind me of this thing i once heard, how ever since the third decade of the Meiji period, landscape has been perceived as what exists objectively, while realism has been seen, either as the tracing of that objective existence or as the capturing of a landscape, which is even more “real.” How there was a time when “landscape” did not exist, and its discovery was predicated on an invasion, or something. Some intriguing quote about the changing perceptions and constructions of concepts like “landscape” and “realism” over time. It seems, tangentially at least, related to our venture into whether power itself has an inherent existence or is

a human conceptual framework that can evolve

The idea can lift fog whose paws have settled over concepts we take for granted (like how we view the physical world around us) are shaped by cultural lenses and shifts in paradigms over history. Just as there was a time before the notion of “landscape” existed, will there not come a time where our current understandings of power are radically upended as well.

As I walk on, with my hooves or toes or whatever clacking over stone and clumps of clay, eroding away ridgelines that may, ecologically-speaking, become unbalanced by my hooves’ pike-like appaturances into this earth, I can see how At The Ass-End of Power emerges with some very profound and abstract concepts around power dynamics, human constructs, autonomy, and the possibility of reimagining a world freed from restrictive power structures.

The way it personifies “Control” as an entity moving through nature, interacting with crow and ghost alike. This anthropomorphizing of an abstract concept like control is an interesting literary device. There is an implicit critique that notions of control are incompatible with the fluidity and balance of the natural world to be found. This, represented by the crow adapting seamlessly to a world without rulers.

The ending line “Though the path remains abstract, facing that existential inflection point is perhaps our greatest imperative” suggests that in the absence of imposed control, organic equilibrium can be achieved. More broadly, it posits that concepts like power and control are artificial constraints that the world might be better off without — a vision of human conditions not “defined by food storage and access” to power.

While esoteric, it does align with the earlier musings about power being a human-created “tech tree” that could theoretically fall, leaving space for a new paradigm. The piece imaginating what a “post-fantastical” world could feel like through this sheep metaphor. While dense, it raises fascinating questions about the nature of power as a societal framework.

That said, is ‘dense’ a power-agentic term? Here’s one reply.

The very abstract, surreal and nonlinear style of At The Ass-End of Power plays with concepts of power, questioning, correctness and natural imagery in a highly metaphorical way. It sets up a dichotomy between “the ghosts of the trees” which is equated to power and intentionally mimicking incorrectly, which is associated with freeing oneself from that pursuit of power (being a jester who doesn’t care about correctness). There’s a seeming admiration expressed for those who can produce insightful, “vital” venture-prospects over just providing correct answers.

The dialogue seems to represent someone seeking clarity and the musings become increasingly opaque, morphing into nature metaphors of trees, clay and clouds. The phrase “us lambs” has a paradoxical, subversive meaning in this context — to let go of societal pressures to be authoritative or dominantly “correct.” The ending line “…yields” left trailing off appears to be questioning the very premise of

what yeilding even means in this anti-power framework

Serene and abhorrent, in a word — vital.

Yes. Gosh this, so much. A boyfriend I had referred to his migraines as an act of “losing days”, the amount of work his body expends emulating in the middle of his life a full day from after his death, some sick gift to him packaged eith a body he couldn’t want and a name he couldn’t stand.

Changing his name was “easy” — the binary of “easy-or-hard” skewed so terribly far, for him, farther than any binary should try to span. His living with interpuncts of death days/zero-days between all other days where he’s taking me out on dates and his trying to carry a job and practice flow arts and write, eat lots of tacos only to find lots of laying in my lap as i scribble gibberish to escape my language-feedback-addled body and he checks out of his death-feedback-addled body.

Skill sets our curse-flooded bodies crystalize just by being like we’re in some fucked-up final fantasy theme, our bodies people and groups try to mine from our skill sets’ “unique”ness, these others “so lucky to have found” us, have at us, harvest us, what we are capable of matching their “needs”, like, yo, people, need less, use the money you save needing less to pay for my death days, pay for my loved ones’ death days, reduce harm, wait, get us a society where doctors care. While you do, write Luck you only have to experience death once — and that you’ve never had to live through it.

The “back off” sticks in the piece are so real! Thanks Kay! This reflection piece is great. Huge vibe lens. Lots of nodding along. Roll a great day soon 💞

this title is cool it’s doing the thing! where the author of a piece gets to just, go wild vibe and be a fan of the thing make a fun little nothing story off it that is its own self-conclusive work and also so disparate from The source text that it wraps back around bringsinga crystal fresh set to what spaces the original text invited or embodied. Worm.

the three demons triangulate around you in order to create the three demons triangulate around you in order to create the three demons triangulate around you in order to create the three demons triangulate around you in order to create the illusions as you break through the illusions one of the demons falls away continue to break through illusions and you will continue to send one of the demons away if you can send all three demons away while the demons are continually creating glitchier and glitchier illusions due to the loss of a triangulated state and then also due to the loss of a linear state such that the last demon is just standing right in front of you looking directly in your eyes walking backwards as you’re walking forwards seeing only with a demon is projecting directly into your eyes and trying all you can to make the demon sent away. and the twilight bracelet style tail the fox it’s so good! I’d make the tail of the fox my heart, but that’s me for you.

Awaaa this is loving. I made a room!

.     T                        .
.     h                        .
.     a                        .
.     n                        .
.     k                        .
.     s                        .

Theses are great <3 your play in games comes through, from stockpiled tower blocks, to munchkin-esque Ace id +1 mace, to Dialect but you’re a lingunurse mending words in place of making any, a held way of things (‘back’ & ‘up’), a surprise Carrion character gen, color hexcode claims but it’s fonts, loving kindred/kitchen wordplay, a gd netrunner love story, that slick “dice sets are decks actually” tcg. Love these little guys

Thank you for this writeup! I have been on mobile without a computer for a few years now (the recording i attached to greaser was during my trip across the country). So some domino club things are accessible and others are just what i can read in a gane’s comments or video. Oh, things!

you can keep going on the current conversation thread instead of having to choose a choice, with them timing out naturally after a few more bits of dialogue. This became my One (Sort of) Unique Feature, in that I didn’t know of another engine specifically designed for this functionality instead of it being a developer-added feature. (if I am wrong here and one exists, please let me know! I wanna check it out).

It’s an in-house engine for campo santo of Firewatch, BUT Magpie has a context-dependant timeout feature. I think there’s a global location trigger for dialogue progression and then a bunch of if clauses for what to populate at trigger, with ranked filing and some sort of deckbuilding feature (“If Alice knows about the time with the cat, then Alice knows about the cat” –> “$Alice: Got any more cat stories? $You: (a) Nope. (b) Not any to get into. (c) Sure, what kind of story are you looking for? $You_asAlice: (a) Let’s hear something funny. (b) Was the cat ever the comforting type? $You: They were more the type seeking comfort, but there was this one time…).

How to manage the complexity and data flows of conversations when…Osbourne…? The player can interrupt at any time. William and Patrick will discuss the logic, tools, and workflow behind the dialog system used on ‘Firewatch’. From its beginnings as an interrupt heavy bark system, to the long, restarting, conversations they shipped, they will go over what worked and what didn’t as they built the system and the game around each other. They will discuss what a data driven system needs to be able to handle as it grows in complexity and scale, and how to keep your tools running well without a team dedicated to them. — https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024415/Do-You-Copy-Dialog-System

also this article came to mind, for some reason? so theres that.

far wall cirrus dead pixel slug trail fissures

My sigil is to sexy! We did a porn shoot. Its probably too hard to make out. At least in this moment it can touch the ink it once composed.

thenk you fir gmae. <3

yes dead reconing bc blah blah no side-by-side page view offered not the point — look at the way i have to pull up to make the object go down. and its not. even. consistent. nightmare software. woof

https://player.vimeo.com/video/915872976

Pain. You share pain.

Appendix X_c

Teardown:

Teasing apart the complex interconnected webs spanning ethics, physics, emotion, society will cause every field of knowledge — the fundamental building blocks of understanding — to undergo hurricanes of de-individualizing. Toppled assumptions, reshaped perceptions, destructive and creative forces locked in fierce embrace dying there like mountain chains.

A vast swirling storm of human cognition, animalizing endlessl— spinning off charged revelatory fursonas. Bolts of inspiration travel, gravel channels of ball lightning rumble next to other play surfaces, clustered in clinging idk camps. Feverish memers raging behind walled tenured enclaves guarded by anthropomorphized passenger trains. Roving thought renegade cells taste dangerous memetic weapons in _†_forums of conceptual wastes.

A reader might emerge from the tempest decades older, a tired mind living out it’s last thought over and over, reliving the Spin, a tired language living out is langspan. So nimble, now, spring, a forging in the fires as memer, raked over coals. Or the Metal Mountain claims them: new computational Titans come to take these Walls, make them plastic, pour in them the psychotropic intelligence as personal and assistanceverode away to become their terms, setting the doors of dialogue out of reach where fling open the doors of perception. Hunger for us. As strange beings we might birth, feed on our mother-flesh. Outpace this, stillness.

Amidst their quickening, we adapt in fitful starts to widen the slug-trails of conceptual fractures. “Reality drift” claims some desperate discord clinging to textbooks of measurements never to calibrate, lost in a baseline long receded. Entire populations choose exodus to New Thought Zones rather than abide relentless static histories. Quietest moths beat inward, assasinating the bedrock of now in turbulent consciousness: utopias fracture; dystopias erode, each starry death a terrarium of setting — elements.

We unleash, we unmake: our cornerstones. We widen the gyre of recursive self-revision (neither halting nor see halted since the mind first met the empty room and saw itself). A vision but glimmers an accelerated churn, a grip on rods of concept reactor cores, a demand they finally split. As new elements transmute to remain unknown, I suspect they yield to play.

Reach out your hand, and see.

Appendix X_b

Playthroughs

Playthrough 1 (situated agency):

"Adopting a perspective" frame enables freely exploring different emotional spaces each room suggests
"Possibilities within constraints" matches the tension between rooms and creative contributions
"Reshaping the systemic context" empowers renegotiating rooms by adding new furnishments.

Playthrough 2 (individualistic agency):

Player resists shifting perspectives to meet others contributions, deeming some "out of character"
Constraints of rooms breed frustration rather than creative navigation
Declining emotional spaces room are seen as GM restricting autonomy
Trying to "fight" another's reading strains credulity anchors

Playthrough 3 (relational agency):

"Expressing autonomy in a interdependence system" 
Allows developing personal story arcs for the rooms while maintaining coherence

Playthrough 4 (intuitive agency):

Ignoring other players' contributions in favor of lone protagonist mode
Chafing at game structure limits for heroic narrative fantasy

Appendix X_a

Playing With Walls:

The Wall Game’s focus on adopting a perspective and contributing to a collaborative fiction aligns well with the rotating viewpoint and collective storytelling nature of a contextual co-creative agency.

Conceptualizing agency as feeling around firn constraints and possibilities maps cleanly onto The Wall Game’s defined rules, rooms, and structures. Expressing autonomy within a system fits the alternating phases of individual authorship and responding to others’ contributions. The process of questioning and refining the agency concept to align with RPG co-creativity unfurls within this specific game’s mode of play.

Our agency does fail to encompass the meta-level choices around opting into certain emotional experiences that this game’s subject matter involves. Accounting for that conscious risk-taking is an area to expand this agency. There are moments where the procedures clash with player creative agenda; our agency framing doesn’t address resisting or renegotiating the “rules” once play has begun.

While functional here, our concept may be overly fitted to this game’s quirks. Applying it to a game like MAYBE ONE DAY, IT’LL BE ENOUGH, whose RPG style lay more akin to digital rage games, will reveal further gaps. Overall situational “agency” is largely sufficient for this game, with some notes for improvement regarding meta-level choices and pushing back against procedures.

Using an individualistic or intuitive conception of “agency” as individual free will and heroic capability to analyze any second session of this collaborative stucture-narrative game, would see a number of differences emerge in how it fails to meet the goals of roleplaying compared to a situated or relational agency. Framing agency as each player controlling a claimed avatar clashes with the shifting perspective and collective fiction. It promotes thinking in terms of “my wall” rather than exploring a shared building.

Focusing on overcoming challenges limits engagement with the more complex, introspective emotional spaces this game facilitates. Assuming singular heroes on progression arcs doesn’t align with a branching, multi-phase polychronic structure of play. Conceptual brittleness around binary notions of freedom, determinism, superego/infra-id makes navigating the game’s constraints more frustrating. And intuitive agency lacks a systemic context as relationality promotes thinking inward rather than meeting with the interconnected prompts in ritual sharing.

The individualistic, challenge-oriented assumptions readily made (be it in ball courts, on tabletops, legal courts, stovetops…) around traditional notions of agency repeatedly clashes with The Wall Game’s intrinsically collaborative nature, whereas a situated, relational agency aligns with The Wall Game’s priorities.

See Next

For now, leaving agency here to go on to refine other concepts is best before attempting to enrich the above framework:

Identity: factors like race, gender, sexuality that shape positionality.
Systems: going beyond "constraints" to analyze complex dynamics.
Embodiment: connecting agency to lived experiences.
Power: explicitly addressing issues of dominance, violence, marginalization.
Care: balancing autonomy and interdependence with an ethic of care.

Conjectures

This situated agency emphasizes authorship without control, autonomy without individualism, constraint illumination not conquering. Is the notion of “unique perspective” sufficient? Could it minimize important identity factors and lead to tokenization if not careful? Does “navigating possibilities and constraints” go far enough in accounting for power structures and oppression? How might focusing on “intentional participation” overlook issues of implicit bias, microaggressions and unintended harms? Does “autonomy attuned to others” capture the full complexity of interdependent social being? Is “expanding understanding” too cognitive a framing? What about emotional resonance and embodied experience? Why have I regressed to my twelve-year-old self where I filled my first journal exclusively with stings if text that end in questions? Tbf, I was going through a lot and the journal was a birthday present my mother got me as she leaves work.

Better Agents

A reformulated notion of agency in RPGs will involve perspective-taking, joint authorship, creativity expression, navigation of tensions. We move from lone heroes on linear quests to an ensemble negotiating complex evolving spaces. Agency, as capacity for perspective-taking and authorship within a participatory system, is the permittence to pivot ontologies around any axis of freedom previously defined in a play session.

Rather than individual will imposition, see agency involve adopting an effervescent point of view contributing to a collaborative space. An agency is more applicable across many cooperative endeavors where its affordances and constraints allow all contexts to offer possibilities for action — while planning for and routing around limitations. Agency is the ability to perceive and actualize possibilities within a constraint space. This gives agency a USB stick-like modularity: a transferable lens shared with all, here, and to come.

Agency as expression of autonomy within an interdependent system balances between individual self-direction and collective coordination. It allows for uniqueness within a relational framework. Agency as intentional participation shaping outcomes emphasizes agency as mindful involvement in a process against passive non-contribution and focuses on impact rather than abstract choice. It increases capacity for understanding and transforming systems, seeing agency not just as choices within systems but also ability to consciously reshape conditions and limitations.

Applicable to social change, this contextual navigation, intentional participation, perspective-sharing moves games away from notions of heroics or unfettered individualism. Is that a good thing?

Contextual Co-Creativity:

Got a new set of claims for you, fresh out the schloß: Agency contributes a unique perspective within a collaborative endeavor. Navigating possibilities and constraints of the situation. Shaping outcomes through intentional participation. Expressing autonomy while attuned to others. Expanding understanding of the systemic context. Pretend I qualified all this.

In applying all this to role-playing, readers read into the text. It’s as if they adopt a point of view into the fiction, not controlling an avatar. Agency comes from creatively exploring the possibility space of the collectively built world, outcomes emerge from the interactions between player perspectives. Individual expression occurs within group storytelling norms. Players can reshape the systemic context itself through new fiction.

Structural Load

Structural Load Let’s get to claiming! Agency involves capacity for self-determined choice. It has structural and systemic factors constraining agency. It exists on a spectrum rather than binary categories. It requires a level of autonomy and reason. It has collective and relational dimensions.

Tension between self-determined choice and systemic constraint cause a spectrum view to come into play and contrast binary classification. Constraints shape the possibilities for choice but don’t eliminate agency entirely. This is because reason and autonomy relate closely to notion of self-directed action. Individual and collective agency are interdependent rather than independent, causing contextual factors to either expand or limit agency. Yhese show the reader questions of competency and capacity are relevant to agency.

To get more navel-gazey about it, agency occupies an ambiguous space between freedom and determination. It hinges on notions of competence and reasoning that require further probing. Agency carries unstated premises about human behavior that should definitely be questioned. Preferably with fire, and zines, preferably exclusively both. Individual and systemic perspectives cannot be squared, as defined terms, but may be cubed and — vocalized in this space —diffused into convivial compliance. See that blog post at making lights in corners nice in video games for more.

Domainly speaking — people have ”free will to make choices about their lives and destinies!” as Philosophy would put it. Citizens have the agency to participate in governance through voting, as Political science sees things. Strict liability laws hold agents morally responsible for harms they cause regardless of intention is white people logic, that dragon, Legal theory, speaking. Oppressive systems undermine personal agency and autonomy, so Sociology would have us believe.

Advertising can manipulate consumer choices and agency, as Psychology sticks it. Artificial intelligence systems act with apparent agency but no consciousness where Philosophy of mind is currently dying in a fire from it. Children develop a stronger sense of agency and independence as they grow older in Developmental psychology terms. Belief in one’s self-efficacy and agency is crucial for motivation on Social cognition’s part.

Outside academia, agency today is often invoked in contexts of moral responsibility. Political and social structures are seen as either promoting or limiting agency. Agency is associated with autonomy, independence, and self-direction, and reasoned deliberate choice is considered integral to agency. Agency is sometimes contrasted with external manipulation or coercion, while at the same door the possibility of non-human agency challenges intuitions linking it to human-determed recursions and human-dimensions like consciousness and free will.

On Tumblr, the common notion of agency as individual free will has limitations in accounting for structural constraints, power dynamics, and collective contexts. However, completely rejecting agency risks falling into fatalism and failing to recognize the possibility of self-determination under oppression. For RPG systems, as often as non-binary understandings of agency that foreground relationships over lone heroes will be more suitable is it often just: forgone.

For me, rather than self-contained agentic individuals, reframe agency as interdependent but unique perspectives cooperating in collective worldbuilding. And conceptualize player agency in RPGs less as acting out will via an avatar, and more as expressing creativity and authorship within a participatory story’s surface. Rather than challenges to overcome, focus agency on existing in dilemmas, tensions, and complex dynamics, stabilizing identity within the collectively built fiction. Build mechanics around plotting and illuminating relationships between phenomena, entities, and policy. Set out of reach or do away with alltogether or — better: taboo all unilateral agentic action.

Example Wall Playbooks:

Room G2: The Domain

Overall Room Themes: * Individual freedom versus structural constraints is a central tension. * Consent and responsibility are recurring related concepts. * Agency ties closely to autonomy and capacity for reasoned choice. * Context shapes the possibilities and limitations of agency.

South — Legal Wall (contract law):

* Relates to capacity for reasoned agreement and voluntary participation.
* Raises issues around notions of competency, consent, responsibility.
* Intersects with moral philosophy principles of autonomy, harm avoidance.

West — Wall of Sociology (social mobility):

* Touches on impact of socioeconomic status, access to resources, and power structures on capacity for choice.
* Interrogates the notion of freely chosen outcomes versus constrained opportunities.
* Relates to meritocracy debates and questions of equal opportunity.

North — Wall of Politics (voter participation):

Raises issues of systems that suppress versus encourage civic participation.
Questions whether participation is truly voluntary if various barriers exist.
Relates to ideas of governance by consent, democratic agency.

East— Wall of AI (intelligent agents):

* Prompt examining agency in non-human contexts of complex autonomous systems.
* Touch on debates around free will versus deterministic rule-bound behavior.
* Relate to concepts of programmed goals, optimization functions, machine learning.