How the Metaverse Could Save Cultural Institutions

How the Metaverse Could Save Cultural Institutions

By: Chris Cummings, CEO & founder of Iconic Moments

Museums and cultural institutions are in trouble. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these institutions learned that the typical business model of earning revenue through in-person ticket sales, event rentals and once-a-year galas was too fragile to be sustainable. In March 2020, it was estimated that 15 percent of the world’s museums would…

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CEEK VR × Playing for Change Foundation

CEEK VR × Playing for Change Foundation

CEEK VR is excited to partner with the incredible Playing For Change Foundation. As partners, CEEK will exclusively premiere the Official Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix after party and Impact Awards show in the CEEK VR METAVERSE.

Playing for Change Foundation held its premier concert, the Official Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix After Party, on May 4, 2022 at DAER Hard Rock…

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with facebook now moving into web3 and potentially onboarding billions of people to crypto, it’s more important than ever for everyone to learn what this is all about.

crypto was built on the idea of decentralization, and as major corporations move in, there is a risk of centralized crypto becoming the norm. this would give too much power and control over to too few people, and i don’t believe it would be in our best interests to see this happen.

if you’ve been thinking about looking into any of this but have been putting it off, take this as your sign to get started now. learn about web2 vs web3, decentralization, and the different purposes for each blockchain. there is truly something for everyone, whether you’re a pure investor, an eco-activist, a humanitarian, an artist, a tech builder, or anything else. it’s an extremely diverse and powerful ecosystem, and i know you’ll find something in it that resonates and excites you.

web3 is inevitable, and you have an unprecedented opportunity to help built and shape it into what you believe it should be like. if you’re tired of being studied and monetized by platforms, influenced at, advertised to, and all the rest of it, get involved! because of web3, things can be different! — but the opportunity and power it gives us all absolutely will be used by corporations if we do not claim it.

My Thoughts on.. №17: the Metaverse. I think it is a logical and inevitable progression of communication and entertainment. There are many benefits in being able to go anywhere, anytime, meeting anyone, however you please and in a much more natural manner. But somehow the biggest corporations manage to make it seem like the least appealing and most cartoony thing ever. It’s like they looked into every piece of related fiction and took only the bad aspects from those dystopias. The best thing about the metaverse will be the personal freedom it offers, whereas the corporations wish to control that as always. The difference is that they have never been so blatant about it.

Bread’s Game Journal 01/13/22: VR Himbo Simulator, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Resident Evil 4 VR

I thought of opening up this post with “Why does Resident Evil 4 Work As Well As It Does?”, but that’s a bad question, because why wouldn’t it? When RE4 VR was announced it was certainly bizarre, a high profile VR port of one of the best games to ever exist? And it’s exclusive to the Facebook VR headset? For a game that gets ported to pretty much everything, why go exclusive on one VR headset now? So naturally, a lot of people assumed the worst about the quality of the actual port.

Those people were wrong, as were any of us who doubted that Capcom could pull this off. Resident Evil 4 VR is an actual triumph of porting an old game into an entirely new medium. Far from awkwardly jamming an old game into a totally new format and letting modders pick up the slack *cough*SkyrimVR*cough*, RE4VR went through a head to toe makeover to fit into VR. That said, it’s still entirely identifiable as RE4, in spite of what I just said. The spirit of the game remains exactly the same, even if the way you’re engaging with it has fundamentally changed the playing field.

The Ganado’s still act exactly the same as you know them too, but now you can react to them differently with the wider range of movement at your command. You have two hands and can dual wield weapons if you like, but that of course trades out your ability to effectively reload. All your weapons are dynamically located in the places you’d expect them to be, and reaching for them based on feel alone becomes second nature.

Instead of the hasty port that we feared, RE4VR has far more in common with Half Life Alyx, which in my eyes, is no small feat. It’s a full game, not a fleeting experience that some people often classify VR as as. It has a sense of immersion and scale that, despite the obviously aged textures and environments, makes the whole experience feel new again. And that’s really saying a lot for a game that’s been ported to almost every console released in the last 17 years.

I know it’s not the most easily accessible game in the world, but if you do have an Oculus/Meta Quest 2, and for some reason you haven’t already bought RE4 VR, you really owe this one to yourself.

Bread’s Game Journal 01/09/22: It’s Weird That I Like VR This Much Right?

Over the last year or so I’ve become a very avid fan of VR gaming. As a medium it has a sense of immersion and a sort of theatricality that traditionally video games just can’t replicate, no matter how hard they tried. Thinking about it though, it’s pretty funny that it’s a medium I’m as into as I am.

Tearing apart VR into the individual base concepts that make it work seems to create a bunch of disparate things that I never really liked. I never thought 3D movies were worth the headache they would invariably give me, and I’ve been a pretty staunch “motion controls usually just make games worse” kind of guy, but both of those things are core to why VR works at all. Maybe the two needed to be combined, maybe it’s because I get to explore the 3D space of my own volition, maybe it’s because motion controls in VR involve the entire body, who knows. All I know is that I love it, and think it might be the actual future of video games in the end.

I received an Oculus Quest 2 for Christmas, and I’ve been going pretty hard on a handful of games for it. Pistol Whip, Until You Fall and Resident Evil 4 VR all fill niches that, a little over a year ago, I never really knew I desperately needed. I can dodge bullets to the beat in Pistol Whip, sword fight monsters in Until You Fall, and finally live out my fantasies of being the world most successful himbo in Resident Evil 4 VR.

VR is something that I’m really not sure it makes sense for me to like this much, but I’m glad I do. I’m glad that all these disparate things could come together in a way that clicks in my brain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue to juggling my guns in RE4 VR, like you just know canonically Leon does constantly.

quickly so you all can work on figuring it out before i spell it out

in 2002 the game changed again on a profound level

bc in NIGHT WATCH sir terry did something – deliberately , consciously , & acknowledged in meta – that whether he intended it @ the time or not , wld have the effect of tying discworld into the CRONOS setting

bc he incorporated something that had the effect of adding yet another city to the gestalt of the ur-city that ankhmorpork stands for

it wasnt just london-plus-birmingham-plus-new-york-plus-washington-dc as it had been ever since well the beginning , what w the Oblong Office & the Big Wahooni overlaid on the thames & dickensian grime plus industrial revolution mills

or london-birmingham-nyc-dc-ROME as it had been since gen tacitus appeared in the setting

or london-birmingham-nyc-dc-rome-PARIS as it had been since MASKERADE

bc he did something that made it now ALSO & as much & deliberately so , now modern-day MEXICO CITY no less than more northern capitols w all their corruption & decency inextricably tangled

so yeah

pratchett went there first

tho either in honest accidental synching or bc he had admired another tale of magic & undeath & common humanity triumphing over golden lures of power

& then sah ridley went there latest in hostility & explicitly welded the three worlds tog onscreen & the rest is history , or possibly jography

i still dont know if PR is officialauthorized unofficial discworld fanfic

but given the video games & comics meta connections

given all the narrowed degrees of separation

& given the alliance of THEMES & standing up for the ordinary ppl bc somebody needs to & it sure as hell wont be gods & the aristocracy coming down from on high

i know where i bet myshillings

so i said there were 3 orwell references in this diorama that i cld spot

the first & namesake is on the two tins of tea :

pls note that i cannot make out the first name of the tea importers firm & have not yet been able to determine if its a real historic brand or not , google turning up no matches for an “and appleby” line from the 19th c on the steampunk / reenactment / collectibles fronts (x)

however the look of them is very authentic , the art style and colors are exactly in line w actual historic advertising & marketing materials from circa 1890 - 1910

& the symbolism of the adapted heraldry of great britain  is quite in keeping w a brand aspiring to be awarded the honor of a royal appointment – or tryin to make casual shoppers think they already had one , hah !

but while to the vast majority of viewers this will symbolize at first & likely also 2nd glance ALICE IN WONDERLAND & THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS bc  tea –> parties (x) + lion & unicorn “were fighting for the crown” (x) = lewis carroll by default

there is something else , an obscure but super important essay by orwell from 1941

ie in the height of the blitz , during the battle of britain , but before the US had been bombed by the axis

after he & his wife had got back from the debacle of the spanish civil war

& it is called THE LION & THE UNICORN(x)

& begins w bombs falling from airplanes

& is a discussion of britain as a society & a culture & a govt as well as a changing one faced w a choice of directions imposed by war ( agn )

& in it , in the course of talking abt british culture , the “the nice cup of tea” - a subject so dear to his heart he wrote a whole other essay after the war on the right way to make tea (x) called just that -

& also the english love of flowers

all of which we see above in the CRIMSON PEAK display along w a chatelaine , a ring of keys - the key bein a symbol that features significantly in guillermo del toros previous films , both DEVILS BACKBONE & PANS LABYRINTH in literal / traditional fashion , & in more arcane modes in the HELLBOY films & CRONOS –& in BLADE 2 as in PACIFIC RIM more futuristic ones , but a key is a key if it be a puzzle-piece of metal or wood or a carefully guarded number sequence , or the DNA sequence of a member of the royal blood

–the key also oc simultaneously a longtime symbol of christianity , used heraldically esp by the church of rome , being associated w st peter the gatekeeper of heaven  & equally of hekate the guardian of the crossroads of life & death , used in one of the most famous rites of that goddess long before christianity–

–one of the keys appears to have a skull finial altho the photo is not as high res as i wld like–

the moss-green doily under the tea service keys & morning paper bein significant @ least for its color as well as its floral symbols

but then there is the paper itself & upon closest examination i see that it does not say that LADY BEATRICE ALEXANDRA SHARPE ( ! ! ! ) was the victim , but that someone connected tp her by an “of” was slain in their bath

so the plot thickens

bc there is a ton of stuffs goin on uncovered via this orwell link

& mainly it hotwires directly to discworld

bc tell me if this does not speak muchly of ankh-morpork as described in those books ??

But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official - the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, ‘co-ordinated’. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting or ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability.

But in all societies the common people must live to some extent against the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc. etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries. The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities. And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never touched the common people.

beyond that but also bc that there is a great deal in this essay which is politically & socially relevant despite the changed times – esp the bit abt bein simultaneously exhorted to save for the war effort WHILE simultaneously exhorted to shop shop shop in the name of patriotism

something anyone who was a conscious adult i n 2002 will remember bein revolted by , or even just an alert teen of which there were many

even if there is a good deal i wld disagree w from my distant & hindsighted perspective , like for one i think orwell –yes , old george orwell himself ! ! is far more sentimental abt england & his countrymen than sir terry , esp when it comes to matters of war & empire & militarism

that ankh-morporkians happily ranting against “johnny klatchian” & “the cheese-eaters of quirm” are more true to the spirit of john bull & that eric blair is FAR too soft on the raj harsh on it tho he was in the light of his own experience in burma (x) & i think george monbiot cld have taught him a few things (x) or put them in better perspective @ least (x)  –& i do wonder if there isnt also some cryptic connection w luc besson makin his last big movie abt a burmese protestor

bc here is the kicker

i have been goin thru all the watch books now w a close reading & a watchful eye for symbols & references that i might have missed or thought just a joke before

& MONSTROUS REGIMENT is not the first SHARPES RIFLES fanfic pratchett did altho it is more obv

& the earlier SHARPE fanfic / fixfic is also his LES MIS fanfic / fixfic

but also a very grim BATMAN fic –grimmer than anything alan moore or frank miller dared dream up – is NIGHT WATCH indeed

bc carcer is an evil vimes doppelganger & thus the joker to vimes noir batman who operates on the very broken jagged edge of the law in this one , seeking out the dangerous answer WHAT IS THE LAW ?? IS ‘ORDER’ FOUND IN OBEYING ORDERS – OR IN FOLLOWING THE ESSENCE OF THAT LAWFULNESS??

but it was also a dark & prescient take on the current reality of the War on Some Nouns WHICH IS STILL GOING ON

& CARCER IS A VERSION OF SGT OBEDIAH HAKESWILL played w vicious aplomb by the late great pete postlethwaite AKA THE NEMESIS OF SHARPE WHO JOINED UP FOR THE LOOTING

& if there is any doubt that sam vimes is richard sharpe HE EVEN MAKES A NAME JOKE ON IT TO LORD RUST ! ! !

however in the course of all this collision of memes pratchett did something else huge

bc he took the timelords , that most english of inventions in entertainment , & turned them into the MI-5 of the bondverse , that other oh so english of entertainments

& made them both as unenglish as cld be TIMEBENDERS AHEAD OF TIME  & also lightly made them part of UNCLE bc entrance thru a clothes shop here in their 3rd outing

its a huge subversion & of both universes , bc the bondverse is all abt “ENGLAND PREVAILS” defending the neoraj of the angloamerican pax thru strength

& the timelords are all abt the status quo in the name of benevolent handsoffery but rly to protect their privilege until it all goes blooey - except for the erratic champion-but-also-tourist the doctor

& in pratchetts hands the order of the history monks is defending reality from exactly the sort of authority figures that orwell criticized in his praise of toads & hares (x)

I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and - to return to my first instance - toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.(…) The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

but it was in FIFTH ELEPHANT that del toro found the key for makin the lost daughter & the unsaved child & the unwanted orphan ALL THE SAME SOLAR WOLF-CHAMPION FIGHTING THE ELDER GODS GENERATION AFTER GENERATION

& it is hella grim in its lead for the alchemy

bc there is a girl & a shoe in that tale as well but her story didnt have a happy ending

& also i know how it too is a bondverse fic by retconnection now

not just bc NIGHT WATCH made sam vimes into james that time round

but bc of yes PACIFIC RIM

oh & there are also evil & unredeemed versions of hermann & newt in NIGHT WATCH

even as discworlds hakeswill is defeated in it

bc this is not the SHARPE fanfic w the folksongs in it – no hagman & harris except on the barricades as the multitude ( see how they rise up … )

& as there are good ( or good-ish ) versions of them in UNSEEN ACADEMICALS

but that will have to go in another post bc rl stuff calls

but yes the great game they are playing has a point , the story isnt idle diversion @ least on the side of team resistance

& THE CAKE WAS ALWAYS A LIE – & orwells essay goes into that in quite some detail for its brevity

http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/cupoftea.html

there are so many more than i suspected some of which are harder to explain / describe  than others but here have a list of a bunch of em that i never suspected till i started a reread of all 40 DW books:

• “analog” vs “digital”
• Tendo’s rosary – aka a “paternoster” (x) 
• Raleigh’s photo collection
• & talent for languages
• Mako being exceptionally good at staff fighting
• the potted plant on the porch behind them in the alley during the Tokyo battle scene – this one is very verynaughty indeed!!
• the “Mark 1” device as the means by which the euhemerized hero is scarred & surviving proves himself worthy as leader of the people
• the fact that the personnel carrier & observation helicopters are black Pelican-class(x) ie Coast Guard versions of the Sikorsky Sea King aircraft (x) – this is very deeply encrypted & comes thru yet another series of books that pratchett himself is referencing
• helicopters in general
• all the chess references
• all the Shakespeare references
• all the mythology references including Troy, the Riddle of the Sphinx, Frost Giants, Fountain of Youth, Sword IntoStone,  Amaterasu as Wolf-Warrior guardian figure & Star Trek (what do you mean it isnt a Myth yet??)

SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD

• “analog” vs “digital” – MOVING PICTURES

  Watch…

  This is space. It’s sometimes called the final frontier.

  (Except that of course you can’t have a final frontier, because there’d be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it’s pretty penultimate…)

  And against the wash of stars a nebula hangs, vast and black, one red giant gleaming like the madness of gods…

  And then the gleam is seen as the glint in a giant eye and it is eclipsed by the blink of an eyelid and the darkness moves a flipper and Great A’Tuin, star turtle, swims onward through the void.

  On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with water, glittering under its tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the Discworld, world and mirror of worlds.

  Nearly unreal.

  Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight.

  Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.

  The Discworld is as unreal as it is possible to be while still being just real enough to exist.

  And just real enough to be in real trouble.

  now – what does this mean for the movie & the metanarrative?? a very good question ( tho i have my suspicions re Jaeger sentience implications) but one thing it absolutely does is confirm all our vague suspicions that PR is the proper & rightful sequel to THOR 1 ….& mine that branagh has been part of it for a long time too bc

  “…and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found, and people of the city watched What was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread waited between the universes…”

  The Librarian’s fingertip dragged from right to left across the pictures, and skipped to the next paragraph.

  “…forOthers found the Gate of Holy Wood and fell upon the World, and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and the City sank beneath the Sea, and all became one withe the fishes and the lobsters save for the few who fled…”

  He curled a lip, and looked further down the page.

  "…a Golden Warrior, who drove the Fiends back and saved the World, and said, Where the Gate is, There Am I Also; I Am He that was Born of Holy Wood, to guard the Wild Idea. And they said, What must we do to Destroy the Gate Forever, and he said unto them, This you Cannot Do, for it is Not a Thing, but I will Guard the Gate for you. And they, not having been Born yesterday, and fearing the Cure more than the Malady, said to him, What will you Take from Us, that you will Guard the Door. And he grew until he was the height of a tree and said, Only your Remembrance, that I do Not Sleep. Three times a day will you remember Holy Wood. Else The Cities of the World Will Tremble and Fall, and you will See the Greatest of them All in Flames. And with that the Golden Man took up his golden sword and went into the Hill and stood at the Gate, forever.

  "And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my Uncle Osbert…”

  

• the rosary – aka a “paternoster” (x) – from which name comes one of the oldest type of elevator (x) which is a major component of Hex the benevolent if eccentric AI introduced in INTERESTING TIMES–

  He’d explained at length to the Faculty that Hex didn’t think. It was obvious that it couldn’t think. Part of it was clockwork. A lot of it was a giant ant farm (the interface, where the ants rode up and down on a little paternoster that turned a significant cogwheel was a little masterpiece, he thought) and the intricately controlled rushing of the ants through their maze of glass tubing was the most important part of the whole thing.

  so they were quietly telegraphing not just Trek fixfic (x) but Trek fixfic by way of the Dysk (NOTE SPELLING) by this–

  

  in conjunction w this imagery

  

  

  bc of this

  A large hourglass came down on the spring.

  “What’s that for?” said Ridcully.

  “Er…it shows Hex is working things out.”

  “Oh. And that buzzing noise? Seems to be coming from the other side of the wall.”

  Ponder coughed.

  “Thatis the long-term storage, Archchancellor.”

  “And how does that work?”

  “Er…well, if you think of memory as a series of little shelves or, or, or holes, Archchancellor, in which you can put things, well, we found a way of making a sort of memory which, er, interfaces neatly with the ants, in fact, but more importantly can expand its size depending on how much we give it to remember and, er, is possibly a bit slow but—”

  “It’s a very loud buzzing,” said the Dean. “Is it going wrong?”

  “No, that shows it’s working,” said Ponder. “It’s, er, beehives.” He coughed. “Different types of pollen, different thicknesses of honey, placement of the eggs…It’s actually amazing how much information you can store on one honeycomb.”

  and
  

  But a lot of it had just…accumulated, like the aquarium and wind chimes which now seemed to be essential. A mouse had built a nest in the middle of it all and had been allowed to become a fixture, since the thing stopped working when they took it out. Nothing in that assemblage could possibly think, except in fairly limited ways about cheese or sugar.

  Nevertheless…in the middle of the night, when Hex was working hard, and the tubes rustled with the toiling ants, and things suddenly went “clonk” for no obvious reason, and the aquarium had been lowered on its davits so that the operator would have something to watch during the long hours…nevertheless, then a man might begin to speculate about what a brain was and what thought was and whether things that weren’t alive could think and whether a brain was just a more complicated version of Hex (or, around 4 A.M., when bits of the clockwork reversed direction suddenly and the mice squeaked, a less complicated version of Hex) and wonder if the whole produced something not apparently inherent in the parts.

  

  which is why i kept seeing both spider andant imagery in this bc HELLO JULIE TAYMOR COSTUMING INFLUENCES EVEN OUT OF THE DEFINING CONFINES OF THE THEATRICAL STAGE bc thats how symbolism works

  incl the rejection of the notion that humanity is essentially different from the aliens bc theyare a hive mind where we are not – our gestalt might be a different setup bc we dont have telepathy but we have workarounds for that aka communication technology & i cant begin to say what a radical statement this is from a sfnal pov since most sf still operates under the premise that what sets humans apart from any presumed alien species is our Rugged Indivuality ™ that wld make us stronger than anyone else–
  
  & what del toro & pratchett are sayin is that NOPE ITS OUR ABILITY TO FORM COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES THAT GIVES US STRENGTH TO STAND AGAINST THE DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF NATURE incl our own ( along w a ton of thoughts abt the nature of individual consciousness & AI & so forth)
  shorter HIVE MIND DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY = EVIL OR OTHER

• Raleigh’s photo collection – MEN AT ARMS

  “I have expended three dollars on an iconograph box which, is a thing with a brownei inside that paints pictures of thing’s, this is all the Rage these days. Please find enclosed pictures of my room and my freinds in the Watch, Nobby is the one making the Humerous Gesture but he is a Rough Diamond and a good soul deep down.”

  He stopped again. Carrot wrote home at least once a week. Dwarfs generally did. Carrot was two meters tall but he’d been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human. Literary endeavor did not come easily to him, but he persevered.

  “The weather, he wrote, very slowly and carefully, "continues Very Hot…”

  YEAHTHAT LAST BIT ISNT IMPORTANT OR RELATED TO A STORY W DIRE ALLUSIONS TO MASSIVE STORM SYSTEMS NOPE NO WAY

  

• & talent for languages – JINGO

  “What’d he say? What did you say?” said Vimes. “You speak Klatchian?”

  “Not very well,” said Carrot modestly. “I just can’t get the back-of-the-throat sound to—”

  “But…you can understand what he said?”

  which he may not share w Captain Vimes but does w someone else

  “I didn’t know you spoke Klatchian, my lord.”

  “Not a word,” said Lord Vetinari.

  “But you—”

  “I did not,” said Vetinari calmly.

  "Ah…right…”

  

  

  

  ( there is a further meta joke in this scn – well one of many & not even the biggest @ that – bc of the name-magic game theyre all playing…. bc one meaning of one of the names of one of the actors here is – interpreter)

• Mako as exceptionally good at staff fighting – SOUL MUSIC

  Susan surprised people by being good at Sport. Some sport, anyway. Hockey, lacrosse, and rounders, certainly. Any game that involved putting a stick of some sort in her hands and asking her to swing it, definitely. The sight of Susan advancing toward goal with a calculating look made any goalie lose all faith in her protective padding and throw herself flat as the ball flashed past at waist height, making a humming noise.

  so these = scythes along w the morris dance sword-stick analogs

  

  & yes function as a Setanta | Cu Chulainn (x) story connector thereby linking ball games & guardian beasts & epics across time & space

• the potted plant on the porch behind them in the alley during the Tokyo battle scene – THUD! – & the naughty / humorous aspects of the BUT IS IT ART?? q are ttly overshadowed by the confirmation of both the myffic & nonbinary nature of PR

  He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

  “No urns,” he said at last.

  “What urns?” said Nobby.

  “Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: “Or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.”

  “What about a potted plant?”

   “That’s okay if it’s in an urn.”

  “What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?” said Nobby.

  “Have you one in mind, Nobby?” said Colon suspiciously.

  “Yes,The Goddess Anoia Arising from the Cutlery,” said Nobby. “They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.”

  “The number of i’s is important, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon gravely, “but in these situations you have to ask yourself: ‘Where’s the cherub?’ If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns everywhere.”

  

  Potted plant -check

  Urn -check

  Plinth -check

  Cherub -check– which is another Sign to the knowing – “For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger”(x) – not only tennyson for the eng poetry refs here !! – leadin to the guardians of the points of the compass (x) WHICH IS ANOTHER REASON FOR THIS JUXTAPOSITION OF MAKO & CUTE STRETCHING CAT PIC:

  

  

  ALONG W AUTUMN - check! & METAL - check! & JUSTICE & FORESIGHT & DEMON-FIGHTING ASSOC yes to all of these if we needed any further proof of her status as co-avatar of the Four here embodying the WHITE TIGER OF THE WEST – & which is also anotherunicorn aka kirin symbol….learning something new every day!! bc that assoc wasnt one i ever knew abt before

  ( & we all know why cats are important in Discworld …)

  & oc now we see exactly how Amaterasu-as-solar-wolf – COYOTE TANGO which is also a THIEF OF TIME ref – gets helicopters as an attribute via syncretization since her identification w Guanyin (along w her folkloric role as one of the Three Oracles w her thunderstaff & wishing gem ) gives the Goddess of Lost Causes aspect bc dual meaning of “eggbeaters” & mirrors were already hers from of old so ascending = descending via mirroring along the horizontal & voila yet another classics ref & one linking w Aphrodite on several levels  via the pratchett allusion to the famous Venus rising from the Waves(x)

  

  incl the bit in the Orphic Hymns that hails Aphrodite as the great She-Wolf & motive force of all nature & a teensybit more of a badass than in the famous painting ( but even in old Italia there was an association of volcanoes & oracles )
  
  

  

  ( oh & the smiling kid is the mirror & modern fans look an awful lot like propellers ….)

• the “Mark 1” as the trying-by-fire of the mythic ancient god-king who was just an ordinary soldier who saw a greater duty …which happens to require abandoning the idea of revengeon their ancient foe – THE AMAZING MAURICE & HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (yes this one blew my mind too)

  The crowd opened slightly, and a man walked to the edge of the pit holding a terrier. There was some more shouting, then a ripple of laughter, and the dog was dropped in with the rats.

  The Changelings stared down at the circle of death and the cheering humans.

  After a minute or two Nourishing tore her gaze away. When she looked around, she caught the expression on Darktan’s face.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the lamplight that made his eyes look full of fire. She saw him look along the stable to the big doors at the far end. They had been barred shut.

  Then his head turned to the hay and straw piled up in the loft, and in the cribs and mangers below.

  Darktan pulled a length of wood out of one of his belts.

  Nourishing smelled the sulfur in the red blob on the end.

  It was a match.

  Darktan turned and saw her looking at him. He nodded toward the piles of hay in the loft.

  “My plan might not work,” he said. “If it doesn’t, you’ll be in charge of the other plan.”

  “Me?” said Nourishing.

  “You. Because I won’t be…around,” said Darktan. He held out the match. “You know what to do,” he said, nodding to the nearest rack of hay.

  Nourishing swallowed.

  “Yes. Yes, I think so. Er…when?”

  “When the time comes. You’ll know when,” said Darktan, and looked back down at the massacre.

  “One way or the other I want them to remember tonight,” he said quietly. “They’ll remember what they did. And they’ll remember what we did. For as long as they…live.”

  from there to here

  “You’re caught in a trap!”

  That was too much for Darktan, even if every word was agony.

  “Oh…really?” he said.

  “I’ll go and fetch S-sardines, shall I?” stammered Nourishing.

  Darktan could smell the rat’s panic begin. And there wasn’t time for panic.

  “No! Tell…me…” he panted, “…what… kind… of… trap?”

  “Er…er…er…” said Nourishing.

  Darktan took a deep, fiery breath.

  “Think, you…miserable widdler!”

  “Er, er…it’s all rusty…. Er…Rust everywhere! Looks like…er…could be a…Breakback.” There was a scratching noise behind Darktan. “Yes! I gnawed the rust off! It says Nugent Brothers Breakback Mk.1, sir!”

  Darktan tried to think as the constant, dreadful pressure squeezed him further. Mk.1? Ancient! Something out of the dawn of time! The oldest he’d ever seen was an Improved Breakback Mk.7! And all he had to help him was Nourishing, a complete drrtlt with four left feet.

  “Can you…see how…” he began, but there were purple lights in front of his eyes now, a great tunnel of purple lights. He tried again as he felt himself drift toward the lights.

  “Can…you…see…how…the…spring…”

  “It’s all rusted, sir!” came the panicking voice. “It looks like it’s a nonreturn action like on the Jenkins and Jenkins Big Snapper, sir, but it hasn’t got the hook on the end! What does this bit do, sir? Sir? Sir?”

  Darktan felt the pain go away. So this is how it happens, he thought dreamily. Too late now. She’ll panic, and she’ll run. That’s what we do. When we’re in trouble, we bolt for the first hole. Even me. But it doesn’t matter…

  only she doesnt - the squire rookie figures out how to defuse the bomb dismantle the trap on her own

  There was noise. It filled the world. And the terrible, terrible pain was back. And the Big Rat shouted, in the voice of Nourishing:

  “I gnawed through the spring, sir! I gnawed through the spring! It was old and weak, sir! Prob’ly why you weren’t cut in half, sir! Can you hear me, sir? Darktan? Sir? I gnawed all the way through the spring, sir! Are you still dead, sir? Sir?”

  and so to

  “You know I used to hang around in the theater an’ that,” said Sardines quietly. “And you pick up stuff in the theater. And the thing is…Look, what I’m saying is, you’re the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you’re doing, okay? If the leader doesn’t know what he’s doing, no one else does, either.”

  “I only know what I’m doing when I’m dismantling traps,” said Darktan.

  “All right, think of the future as a great big trap,” said Sardines. “With no cheese.”

  “That is notalotofhelp!”

  “And you should let them think what they like about you and…that scar you’ve got,” said Sardines. “That’s my advice, guv.

  "But I didn’t die, Sardines!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Huh?”

  “Something happened, didn’t it? You were going to set fire to the place with all the humans in it. And you decided not to. I watched you. Something happened to you in the trap…”

  & so a myth starts - & thus it all makes sense bc of pratchetts retellin of the Pied Piper story as a multilayered historical allegory & parable –all the subtly implicit Rat|Mouse imagery in PR –only it shld have made sense further as part of all the Bilingual Heraldry hich extends from color to animal symbolism bc the West may have no trad of Celestial Rats but benevolent rodents are part of the great cycle in the Chinese zodiac (x) (& associated w the Goddess of Mercy as well as the God of Luck in Eastern mythology) so not only thru WIND IN THE WILLOWS (x)….

  ( not to mention that NONE of that was in TBs original story - no heroic leader w unhealing wound - no careful teacher talking the younger gen thru dangers as yet inexperienced - no conscious rejection of vengeance as a moral value–however it goes & i have no idea how it willbut i do know for certain that PR2 is not going to be cast in the mold of STARSHIP TROOPERS or even ENDERS GAME–)

• the fact that the personnel carrier & observation helicopters are black Pelican-class (x) ie Coast Guard versions of the Sikorsky Sea King aircraft (x)– FIFTH ELEPHANT but this is very deeply encrypted & comes thru yet another series of books that pratchett is himself referencing in that story ( along w it bein a sort of fixfic / happier AU of his own WYRD SISTERS)

  

  (x) btw i find it surreal that nobody else over the past 15 yrs – even the L-Space wiki (x) – seems to have noticed the multiple similarities btwn FIFTH ELEPHANT & KING OTTOKAR’S SCEPTRE (x) – not just the overarching plot of assistance to a foreign king in a land that is a direct analog for eastern europe avoid being forced to abdicate due to loss of historic artifact required for the coronation ceremony YAH THIS SYNOPSIS IS IDENTICAL INORITE?? but also the refs to the spring-gun & the opera singer whose quick thinking will later save the day in CALCULUS AFFAIR  & that brings us to the former-captain who struggles w alcoholism & is also an investigator – & the concept of Tintin & Haddock as two aspects of the same persona thusly tied into the existing DW concept of everyone having / being multiple doppelgangers / incarnations across time & space…oh & there is the whole averting a lethal conspiracy by fascists to take over an oilrich region which is ALSO a Tintin storyline…

• helicopters in general – MONSTROUS REGIMENT

  “Aerial cavalry,” said Maladict.

  “Pardon, Corporal?”

  “Flying machines, sir!” said Maladict. “They won’t know where to expect us! We touch down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off!”

  Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little.

  “Flying machine?” he said.

  “I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort of…flying windmill!It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—”

  “I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcome,” said Blouse.

  “Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!” Jackrum managed.

  ( so also a multiple / multilayered ref to JINGO via the Discworld version of da Vinci - & thus the us civil war via 20K LEAGUES bc submarine & LAST HERO thus ARMAGEDDON & CONAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA bc that book makes the Carrot = Steve parallel explicit–

  “I’ve taken the liberty of asking Rincewind to take a picture of me planting the flag of Ankh-Morpork and claiming the moon on behalf of all the nations of the Disc, your lordship,” Carrot went on.

  “Very… patriotic,” said Lord Vetinari. “I may even tell them.”

  “However, I can’t show you this on the omniscope because, shortly afterwards, something ate the flag. Things here… aren’t entirely what you’d expect, sir.”

  plus the presumptive DON QUIXOTE allusion (WINDMILLS OF COURSE THEY ARE ALSO GIANTS!!) finally locked down & contextualized @ last  on top of the PLATOON & APOCALYPSE NOW refs…which oc tie back into the myffic on multiple counts & function as re-refs to LAST HERO plus HOGFATHER plus INTERESTING TIMES bc valkyries)

  

• all the chess references – the Jaegers equation w steeds = knights – startin w COLOUR OF MAGIC spinning off the then-recent CLASH OF THE TITANS movie (!!!) & agn in INTERESTING TIMES

  This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world.

  And Fate always wins.

  Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out until too late that he’s been using two queens all along.

  & carries into LAST HERO (where also an ALICE ref)

  The city’s domestic appearance was because, while people are influenced by gods, so gods are influenced by people.Most gods were people-shaped; people don’t have much imagination, on the whole. Even Offler the Crocodile God was only crocodile-headed. Ask people to imagine an animal god and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really bad mask. Men have been much better at inventing demons, which is why there are so many.

  Above the wheel of the world, the gods played on. They sometimes forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board.

  

  which is also where all the references to the story of the Fire-Stealer connect up – only for pratchett & del toro stealin fire from a monopolizing PTB is the right thing to do whether its Fingers-Mazda or Raven or yes Prometheus the rebel Elder God as the heroic Thief & it sure looks like ridley scott thinks it was unpardonable lese majeste on the part of us mere ants…

  …& under certain circumstances returnin it w interest is the right thing to do too…bc there must always be heroes to challenge the impossible odds

  “What’s the plan?” said Evil Harry, who had been watching the shimmering light over the city of the gods.

  “Plan?” said Cohen. “I thought you knew. We’re going to sneak in, smash the igniter, and run like hell.”

  “Yes, but how do you plan to do this?” said Evil Harry. He sighed when he saw their faces. “You haven’t got one, have you?” he said wearily. “You were just going to rush in, weren’t you? Heroes never have a plan. It’s always left up to us Dark Lords to have the plans. This is the home of the gods, lads! You think they won’t notice a bunch of humans wandering around?”

  “Weare intendin’ to have a magnificent death,” said Cohen.

  “Right, right. Afterwards. Oh, deary me. Look, I’d be thrown out of the secret society of evil madmen if I let you go at it mob-handed.” Evil Harry shook his head. “There’s hundreds of gods, right? Everyone knows that. And new gods turning up all the time, right? Well? Doesn’t a plan suggest itself? Anyone?”

  

  –altho this sequence owes at least as much to this (x) & poss this (x) as to DOCTOR STRANGELOVE in execution

• all the Shakespeare references bc as noted INTERESTING TIMES has a massive summing-up of plot overlap but they all coincide – incl yet again the helicopters bc WYRD SISTERS

  Hwel and Vitoller had watched the first few beams of the wooden framework go up.

  “It’s against nature,” Vitoller had complained, leaning on his stick. “Capturing the spirit of the theater, putting it in a cage. It’ll kill it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Hwel diffidently. Tomjon had laid his plans well, he’d devoted an entire evening to Hwel before even broaching the subject to his father, and now the dwarf’s mind was on fire with the possibilities of backdrops and scenery changes and wings and flies and magnificent engines that could lower gods from the heavensandtrapdoors that could raise demons from hell.

  OH YEAH THIS TOO

  

  as much as this

  

  cockpit to hold the vasty fields of france forsooth!!
  

  

• all the mythology references including Troy – ERIC along w the Faust vs Mephistopheles dynamic – the Riddle of the Sphinx – debated by the prince in PYRAMIDS – Frost Giants – terraforming the Disc in SOURCERY – Ponce de Leon & the Fountain of Youth – ERIC again along w the Dante & Virgil dynamic – Sword Into Stone – MEN AT ARMS showin that&how the Arthurian mythos can be updated to a modern urban setting – & Amaterasu as Wolf-Warrior protector of mortals – FIFTH ELEPHANT yet agn

  & bonus tracks from JINGO & THUD! & MONSTROUS REGIMENT

  Waifs and bloody strays, because normal people wouldn’t be coppers.

  

  Technically they were all in uniform too, except that mostly they weren’t wearing the same uniform as anyone else. Everyone had just been sent down to the armory to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny-Shaped Helmets Through the Ages.

  

  Vimes found himself meeting the gaze of Angua, who was leaning against the wall. She rolled her eyes helplessly.

  

  

  

  “I got my badge carved on my arm,” Detritus rumbled. “Someone c’n try an’ take it off if dey likes.”

  

  She turned. A young man of godlike proportions* was standing in the doorway.

  

  *The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously.

  

  And then there was the young-male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defense against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine…

  

  (& THIS IS ONLY THE SURFACE LEVEL OF CONNECTIONS!)

  ok one more clue – this isnt a mistake but a Sign–

  

  or why wld they be seeing something that hasnt happened yet??

so this must be what Poirot wld feel like if he were about to deliver his all-revealing speech in the library only to have one of the assembled guests leap up and shout TWAS I — I DID IT IN THE CONSERVATORY WITH A POTTED BROMELIAD AND YOU NEVER GUESSED!!

bc altho for the past months i have had no heart to participate in fandom bein as it were utterly disheartened by the petty vapid & above all spiteful turn that PR & indeed the whole of selfstyled social “justice” fandom has gone down

makin me not willing to even log in for months on end

the confirming coincidences have not stopped mounting up where i keep running over & into them

& all my MAAAAYBE?s turn out to be so right my hesitance is laughable

bc chris nolan turned the son into a daughter & stuffed a watch into the revised INTERSTELLAR script

& ridley scott stuck a mockery of the horse sacrifice into his inexplicable-except-as-parody EXODUS

& stephen moffat spent the whole of last season getting more & more overt slams at GDT
to the point where i knew that elba showin up to talk abt relearnin to ride a motorbike for GHOST RIDER 2 while wearin red trainers wasnt a joke but a warning HMS LYDIA IS COMING ABOUT TO CROSS YR T — he wasnt just gunning for ridley scott but at the NuWho team bc they shot first & over again

& did it most explicitly by stealin the Jaeger pilot armour from Comic-con for Nightmare in Silver, but then went all-out hostile open fire in the s8 finale, when they mocked both Thor & PR in it

bc all of them are tryin like fuck to be the anti-Pterry — & succeedin tho its an own goal

& then on team resistance side charlie h went & took la muerte’s cloak from her hands & rode to his own king-horse sacrifice as a warrior jesus for modern america THE ONE YOU WANTED THE ONE WHO BEARS THE SWORD RIGHT PPL? if i had any more doubts that jax TELLER was stringer BELL in another incarnation & both of them evil mirrorverse versions of the eternal defender (& dominic west is just as much part of the game & has been all along as rinko kikuchi & jessica chastain now are)

but the proof will be tonight in the xmas special

that all these folks are acting in concert , even if some of them are on opposite sides
but meanwhile watch ENGLISHMAN IN NYC and see the proof that elba & john hurt have been playin the same charas all along

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d27gTrPPAyk

& everything else follows from that

ETA: no matter how many times team wallbuilder kills our heroes in effigy playin mr teatime in their love of empire & grimdark mundanity they have lost already - & partly by their own deeds!!

http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/daily-cartoon-wednesday-december-24th

Even Walmart Is Worse in the Metaverse

hello i have written about the metaverse and that cursed walmart video that’s been going around