AUGUST 30TH SUPERFIGHT

A Superfight is a writing exercise where you run a fictional tournament between some fictional combatants. Today's fighters are:

Witch Hazel (of Looney Tunes)

Guts (from Berserk)

MEWTWO (returning champion... a psychic Pokémon)

Yugioh (from Yu-gi-oh! a franchise about a child's card game)

Horse

A Baby

ROUND 1:

1. Witch Hazel vs. Horse
2. Guts vs. Yugioh
3. Mewtwo vs. Baby

Witch Hazel vs. Horse:

Horse has been known to team up with opponents. Is Witch Hazel amenable? Does Witch Hazel smell trustworthy? This is a tough call for Horse. Pawing the ground, he nervously neighs. Witch Hazel begins her routine of bullshitting in rhyme while lining up the kill. 

Flash point! Let's switch to a different fight.

Guts vs. Yugioh

Yugioh offers to settle this with a tabletop game of some sort. Guts the swordsman surmises that his opponent is a veteran gambler and thus dice or cards would be disadvantageous so he chooses to stick to bloodsport. 

Yugioh is in a tough spot. He is probably going to get killed in this fight. He is not a fool. He attempts to delay the battle by talking, trying to deduce an edge. What is Guts motivation? Does he think winning the Superfight will bring him closer to any of his goals?  His quick wits quickly surmise that Guts is not very clear on why he's even here or what he's doing. No, Guts's heart is bent on one thing: revenge against the God Hand, a group of literal Gods who ruined his life. Knowing this Yugioh concedes and leaves the scene.

Mewtwo vs. Baby

Mewtwo either can't bring himself to fight a baby or simply does not care to. It seems important to this Pokémon that that point remain ambiguous. Baby wins.

Back to: Witch Hazel vs. Horse:

Horse is standing around placidly and Witch Hazel is ass-over-teakettle and has stars and planets floating above her head. We didn't get to see what happened. Horse wins

ROUND 2:

Guts vs. Horse

Guts is obviously a noble master, this is what Horse has been waiting for. Team-up, Guts riding Horse will fight Baby in the finale. 

FINALE: Horseman Guts vs. Baby?

Yugioh has swapped positions with Baby in the tourney, in exchange for a bag of candy. "It was like taking candy from a baby... in reverse!" is his line. Additionally, Yugioh has taken his time out of the limelight to find an edge.

The big reveal: Yugioh has an object of power known as a Beherit. This is terrible news.

The entire Tourney is thrown into The Eclipse, the dark dimension the Beherit pulls people into. The last time this happened, Guts's entire life was ruined. Guts is freaking out. Horse is keeping cool. The ground has become an unwieldy mass of stone faces. All participants are endangered by encroaching demons, but Mewtwo and Witch Hazel team up to hold them at bay. Baby is crying!

Yugioh is smirking evilly. Guts is in an insane rage and is going to try to kill Yugioh but he can't because of the demons and because of the approaching... God Hand.

These are the Gods capable of unleashing the darkness of humanity or something. They are the ones who ruined Guts's life. Anyway there they are; they always show up when a Beherit is used. Of course, Yugioh is able to goad one or more members of God Hand into a game of cards, the card game Yu-gi-oh! which is named after Yugioh, and before very long it's Time to Duel!

Well to make a long story short, Yugioh nearly gets his Life Points depleted to Zero from taking on all The Gods at Once but Guts intervenes and using the Power of Violence is able to Turn The Tide. Maybe Guts volunteers to Step Into The Game As One Of The Cards. Anyway with their franchise powers combined Y&G win it and The God Hand is sent to the Shadow Realm which isn't very different from The Eclipse but its not on their terms so they aren't happy. It's basically the ending of Superman (1978) where the bad guys are trapped in a prison cube and sent spinning off into space.

SUPERFIGHT WINNER: FRIENDSHIP!

FRIEND FLEAS (TRPG ENCOUNTER)

Friend Fleas.

    These mischievous creatures speak in short range telepathy, offering to keep an eye out in exchange for a place to sleep and live. They bite you if they believe you're in danger or, if you haven't been in danger for a while, because they hunger. Allowed to live long enough they will multiply and invariably cause anxiety disorders. Hosts cannot be surprised but suffer -2 Charisma per month infested.

PILL-SHAPED ARTIFICIAL LIFE (TRPG ENCOUNTER)

PILL-SHAPED ARTIFICIAL LIFE

1 Meter Tall

Encountered: 2d6

Found: Underground.

4 HP 

Attacks: Grapple, Pull apart d4 damage.

Semi-transparent shell skin, brightly colored shapes cloudily visible inside. Little cloth pants you can burn for 1 hour of light per. Nonorganic, inedible organs, feels like hard plastic.

Unclear what their purpose is. 1/3 chance they are using light, in which case they will have a single carbide headlamp with d8 hours of fuel. 

What are they doing?

1. Climbing up the same rocks over and over.
2. Trying to eat rocks (no mouths).
3. Dance-fighting.
4. Mining without tools, futilely.
5. Deconstructing a peer, 50% chance alive.
6. Motionless, staring at you.

First 3 will not resist interference but once the 4th is touched they will instantly attack en masse.

Ronnie O'Neal / THE CAGED TIGER

Video Still of Ronnie O'Neal's Trial Glitched by My Phone 

    Ronnie O'Neal transformed his murder trial, for a crime of which he was obviously guilty, into theatrics of his own fractured personality, the personality which killed his child and his child’s mother. When his public defender refused to use a “stand your ground” defence, Ronnie decided to be his own attorney, and the resulting pacing and yelling went viral.

In this impacful staging, Ronnie succeeded at becoming famous, even if his intent was only to free himself. I get the sneaking suspicion, though, that Ronnie did not anticipate his future freedom, and instead pursued something like notoriety or self-expression. Somewhat, his intent did not matter, as he was stuck in a situation ahead of himself, unable to escape.

So, in such a situation, isn't there something in performance? All the world's a stage, and the company acts pointlessly, as Georges Batallie says in The Accursed Share: “Beyond our immediate ends, man’s activity in fact pursues the infinite and useless fufillment of the universe.” Didn't Ronnie's defence pursue something useless, and universal?

    Joe Exotic, convicted animal abuser of Netflix's "Tiger King" fame, is back at it, this time running an online contest entitled "Bachelor King." The purpose is to find romantic leads for when he’s released from prison. Joe is pretty much a cult leader and as such we can’t really sympathize with him, but I think we do, anyway. There’s maybe something so ridiculous and pathetic about him that it captures our love.

Maybe it is just that we love trapped things. They become like pets. To have the whole of someone in a net is almost the same as having them tamed.

The captured criminal is the tiger in the zoo, so different than the tiger upon you. There is a visible sucking out as the caged thing writhes in the audience’s view. The passion of life becomes alike begging, the lines of power make themselves known.

Joe Exotic knows how to use structures of power, naïve as he was about his security within them. I’ve said that outlaws tend to have a Death they are seeking out, their unrestrained actions show an ignorance that must be, in some ways, intentional. I think Joe is aware of the potential for it all to come crashing down and is somewhat unafraid.

That, at least, is what ambitions tells us. Either in Ronnie O'Neal screaming at his jury or in the search for a Bachelor King, there is an admirable *image*, at least, of “I AM NOT AFRAID.”

But, of course, Ronnie and Joe are scared, everyone is; and we might, too, value leaving an image, when facing eternity.

THE ASSISTANT 2019: SIGNS OF ABUSE

 

Something's wrong within your friend circle, the vibe is off and there are signs of some power struggle. Or maybe it's online; a vacuum of non-information left like a gas signature.

The Assistant (2019) is a movie totally dedicated to the semi-invisible signs left by abuse, in this case, within the film industry. The main character swims through these signs, at the height of the film coming into direct opposition with the source, before returning to normality.

Signs of abuse modeled in the film:

• loud sounds no one will discuss
• misogynisitic jokes/ casually cruel jokes about known persons
  
• exhausted, unhappy people
• confused victims seeking help ineffectually
• the naïve positivity of pre-victims sticking out in context
• people giving up on the possibility of justice 
• direct verbal abuse, and a culture thereof
• threats to destroy people's careers, etc.
• disposability-- a revolving door of people
• new faces being brought in, and the haggard faces of those leaving or on their way out
• things happening where they shouldn't-- typically, sex.

If there exists a pathway for many people to enter, then exit someone's life, this may be a conduit for abuse. Ties of anonymity benefit those who burn through people. And abusers require fresh streams of people constantly.

This is sort of the human condition, too. We are all, mostly, folding new strings of people into our lives, and then watching some of them leave. Abuse, then, may leave patterns visible in the peoples exiting one's life. Outsiders may observe these patterns, subtle, semi-invisible, instinctually perceived...

LUST-BLOGGERY

 I think so often Lust, and by extension, Blogging, is an admission that we feel something, want to love, want to be a part of it.

An admission of desire, a seeming want to compete in a worldwide network of such admissions. To lust is to struggle, (as it is to Blog).

Lust is the desire to participate. To not only join the universal human struggle but to direct it, at least a little. For your direction to matter.

The experience we have culminates in taste. Lust is often the desire to have our tastes be actualized, applied, and viewed. Lust is tied to our desire for family to support us. Lust is a desire for the world to accept us. 

We are on here because of Lust. The desire to be read is Lustful. Publishing absolutely is a seeking of appreciation. Selling yourself as a person with attractive ideas.

This is why there's this glamour-preening network of bloggers, tweeters, facebook-users... Trying to meld themselves into appealing ink. We want to be read, we want to feel the adulation.  

Disco Elysium Review'd

I am constantly battered by ideas and impulses. There is no definitive goal that seems easy to achieve. The more concrete the outcome, the more it competes with a world of outcomes.

The feeling in my life currently is: sedentary body stresses. The thin headache from morning coffee and its aftertaste which I still have from yesterday. 

I finished up Disco Elysium today, it was cathartic. Existential art speaks to my stranded being. It's a video game, and my tenuous roleplay within it led to tenuous outcomes.

This game offers context for everything. This context underwrites and complicates all of your choices. Each story thread usually has deep rewards near the end that you will often get locked out of ever achieving. This tightwaddedness is good for games which use secrets as currency. In many dialogue-path adventure stories, the depth of the threads feels achievable after one playthrough. But Disco Elysium withholds a lot.

It makes you reliant on the game's market-society of actors. They want different compromises or are simply uninterested with you. Dealing with them often implies future losses.

I think having to permanently fail a lot in order to bargain for whatever (petty?) ultimate goal you have in mind is a good place to be for catharsis. I was invited to have troubles and I am happy that I ended up with battle scars, lost pathways, and negotiated victories. That's life!  (Post Written May 16th 2020)