We all have them and in this I am no different. As I was mulling things over, my mind saw the end of season 3 of Kenos Diastima. Things were falling into place and even as I was going in that general direction, my mind set in place the specifics of that setting. As these cogs turn and turn I was seeing the setting that got the story to there, and I have forever in the stage to end that series at season 3, a story with an open ending. Like the famous director Terry Gilliam I love open endings. A stage where the viewer gets to mull over what comes next. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment. In that same way I also considered additions to the last two episodes of Engonos. On that note, I thought I had put the story here already. However I did not find the image.
My mind saw an additional cog, an additional layer to add to the story to the conclusion of season You see, what if we add a pinch, a setting for more and it is all linked to the fountains of Tartarus. These fountains were the ingenuity of Heaphestus and they are surrounding the palace of
Hades. As I recall there are 32 of them in three styles. The image you see merely represents (to some degree) one of the styles, but they are important and they aren’t nice and they are also a form of defence for the palace. The inner layer being eternally protected by the damned Myrmidon. They are not nice and they never will be. They are kept in place as they ignored the orders given to them and grandpa was always a stickler for rules. Those who weren’t oath breakers but slide the rules of the ‘game’ off the beat end up in eternal service of Hades and he does not waste. Myrmidons were trained better than any other soldier in that time and they were ‘rewarded’ with eternal protection of the palace. It is all they know and they do not play nice. As such his lair is plenty protected, not that anyone would want to attack it. One does not attack the lair of a god, not even in Tartarus.
So as my mind started to make sense of the developing story I saw that I had already opened the link with Heaphestus, so that part is good, I merely have to add a few tiny bits and that part is clear. As I was going over all that the story I handed out yesterday on a Final Draft project management starts making more sense, becomes more clear and more defined. Locations, people, objects optionally a graphical representation of all the elements. In that stream of data the story is disassembled into elements and as such anything missing or unconnected becomes clear, shows up clearly and that allows for a better story a more robust narration and it all improves the quality of the story. As FX had as a slogan ‘the story is everything’ especially to a story teller. But everyone, including me needs the right tools. With Pages a writer writes the story, but we all get it that for a script Final Draft is the better tool. I reckon that as you have more projects, managing any project becomes the top need.
So as my mind is tinkering with Onganos and Kenos Diastima I also see that the season 2 midpoint will need work and it all makes sense. Not everything should be in a cliffhanger. I have nothing against them, but at times a mid season conundrum fuels the soul of the watcher, making it a more defined experience. All this and soon there is more on other matters too, but that will be for later today.
This all started a long time ago and my mind revisited this point mere hours ago. I was watching a YouTube on Dubai by Travelalgorithm. I saw a banner stating “The dream starts here” and my mind went somewhere else. You see, what it is not the dream or the nightmare, but the notion? The spark that sets things in motion.
Past tense In the past (around 35 years ago) I was send a game to test. It was called Virus. It had a bio hazard sticker, it was wrapped like it was dangerous, but it was a game. A game with a difference. You see, someone thought things through. They had the building blocks, but your hard-drive was the template. It would scan your drive and from there it would create levels and a game. And that file could be send to others who would send their file to you and you would have hundreds of hours to play. The setting was pretty ingenious.
Present time Now we go to today, it could still work, but it could also set a massive larger stage with cloud stages. Now we are going to a much higher challenge (if you have a cloud directory). Then my mind took a twist on the matter and I cannot tell if it is just the story, a related story to other film IP I have, or merely new IP.
What happens when that solution creates a scan handle for every file? What if it looks for something specific? Now these levels become an entirely new stage in data collecting. And the idea is not new. Phishing operations are set to this level of access. Yet did anyone consider that gaming is also a data collective? I accuses Microsoft of that years ago, but that was a simple operation. What if the operation is not that simple. What if the combination of games create the handles they need to collect stuff? People thinking that they are gamers are so collectively driven to whatever is proclaimed to be cool. Look at some game advertising that claim “only 1% can do this”. How many people will let their ego speak and fall for that trap and that is merely the simplest of traps. What if the upload that some games do is holding a little more? It is not out of the realm of possibilities and I a not that certain how alert Google and Apple are on the subject. This gets to be a lot more dangerous if you consider the old stages that Facebook game creators employed. If you had one game, getting to a certain level would unlock something in another game and soon enough people started to play that game too and more games afterwards. So what happens that two or more games will unlock interactions as well as other interactions?
You might think this is nuts and it possibly is, but isn’t that how some ideas make for great story IP (read movie IP). At present there is more and more need for new stories and as America hasn’t been getting anything done. Other creators have had the stage all to themselves. There are all kinds of twists in stories. I personally will always love the Usual Suspects (1995) and that is for me. Yet today thee is an abundance of twists and cockles in storytelling that could and should be upgraded. Yet too many use the game as the story (which makes sense), yet too many are avoiding the technology that enabled the game in the first place and Virus was not a usual game. We focus on intelligent auto design of levels making them never the same (Diablo 3) and that is fine. Yet what happens when that engine is corrupted? It is starting to happen and it is happening more and more. What if the design is set to make you ALMOST succeed? Did you figure on that? Did you realise that most match three games seem to be easy the first 15 levels and after that it gets harder soon enough? But they have you, just buy a few ‘special items’ and you are back on track and it works, for the next 10-15 levels at least and suddenly you have spend $5. It isn’t much because that is not the goal. It is the goal of 200,000 people spending that and suddenly the game makers has a cool million. But what if that isn’t all? What if the IP on your laptop is the end goal? Did you consider that danger? That is the notion this story is thinking of. Consider the twist in Ocean’s 8 (2018). I thought it was brilliant and until the end I never saw it coming. As we went in blinker mode for one target, we overlooked the larger picture and combine these two and you have the setting. If you are still in the dark. Consider the military locations and what hardware too many kids get access to on that base (some adults too). There is a larger setting where they are all gullible and the Pentagon has overlooked that setting. Now consider what access the criminal mind gets when they combine two notions to create a third. So is that three notions, or does it suddenly become a total of 6 options? ( I will let you figure that one out).
Still, the idea has merit if you know the direction some are not considering for too long a time.
Yup, In succession to part one. I decided to think through the characters. I am not putting it all here (for obvious reasons) yet when you think it through, I set up the larger station in merely a few hours. As such, any Canadian TV channel can pick this up. The reason is simple and two fold. In the first there is a writers strike in the USA. I will not assist any TV station there whilst the strike is going on. The second is that this event plays in Toronto, it seems logical that a Canadian TV stations could have a go at this.
Vasileios He is the main character, not much is known about him and in the beginning the setting is that he travelled in time. Over the course of the movie we get more and the end has a twist (as one expects). He is driven to solve this event for reasons unknown.
Olivia She is the liaison officer connected to our main character. She sports a heavy Taurus Raging Hunter 357 Mag 7-Round Revolver. The gun is specific and this has a reason. Her father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. What she knows that other corrupt officers got him killed and she vowed to kill them with that gun. She is a crack shot, slightly rude mannered on speak and actions. She does genuinely care for justice and people. She cares for victims and she does not stand for bullshit.
Michel Coulombe He is a twist. I wanted to get the actual former director of the CSIS involved. This is largely an intelligence gathering operation, as such he would be a great consultant. Also, who is better equiped and trained to play head of the CSIS then the former director of the CSIS? From the beginning when our main character stops the initial terrorist event the CSIS gets involved and the fact that they were unaware that this was about to happen gives Vasileios a foot in the door.
Police Captain The involved police captain is there to smooth things over and set the larger operation to get things done. I thought of John Larroquette or Patrick Labyorteaux to fill this role. The elected person is there to manage the police forces and to keep tabs on the two main characters.
MAGA The nice part of these MAGA people is that they tend to be conspiracy theorists and that works for me. It is hard to find a decently believable opponent. The setting of the stage is that MAGA is ‘working’ with(or for) the Canadian Conservative Party. What none of them know is that MAGA is pushed by American Industrials to create enough panic and chaos so that America can push in and make Canada a republic. It adheres to the old golden rule ‘in confusion there is profit’ and with the US running out of space and resources expanding to the north is a simple business decision. I have set that stage in a few stages the conspiracy people, their support system, the conservative players and the conservative party. There needs to be clear separation so that the detection feels real.
Unknown player This person is unknown (for now) because I do not have the larger setting here. It is why there were two names for the police captain. The other one becomes the head of CSIS data analyses. I was thinking that they would have a data room with actual Palantir servers crunching the numbers. During the events we learn that data is ‘misplaced’ and this gets us to the corrupt police officers who were filling their pockets wherever they could, as such they are involved and we get to see Olivia being a crack shot. There is no denying that seeing a corrupt police officer executed is more satisfying than some organised crime figure (not by much though).
Location 1 This is Bloor–Yonge Station. Here we see the initial attack stopped. The detonation (with hydrogen cyanide) is stopped. The event would have killed all the people in the subway station and the tanks were large enough to flow the gas into the street, which would be a first chaos point. With the subways out of commission and a massive cornerstone of Toronto traffic stopped in the heart of the city would create massive amounts of panic. As this is stopped the CSIS enables Vasileios to proceed, but only with Olivia locked at the hip to him. This gets the police in the mix as well and the CSIS data centre will be looking over every byte of data, to see what they missed.
Location 2 It is a house, and I think it should be in Rockwood village. It allows for a later link to business conferences and Mississauga. The house is the impact of a shootout between parties and our two characters. He is sporting a Cretan knife which he buys in an earlier scene. Olivia was unwilling to hand him a gun. The scene starts with them sneaking into the back and he starts silently and indiscriminately killing the people there. Olivia shoots three and calls for backup. We see the cellar has a bomb factory, the police shows up a minute later. Vasileios grabs a gun from the table and kills the police officers. He states that these cops are corrupt, at that point the police commissioner calls and states that the reinforcements are 10 minutes out. This convinces Olivia this is about more and we see all kinds of evidence that bombs were made.
Location 3 the CSIS ‘server room’ where the data is crunched, the captain there is starting to find ‘mislabelled’ data and now he knows that there is a larger problem. He gets 3-4 most trusted people in a separate server room and they start crunching the data differently, which is time consuming, but they do not know what is missing. As the story continues we see the crunching of locations and people on every bit of data.
There is of course more, but two locations are key to the story. Seems weird to give away the plot ahead of schedule. I am still mulling over the option of how to include the conservative party without getting slammed with slander (or whatever claim they will make), for me the larger reason was their ‘worshipping’ of Donald Trump and MAGA. I still need to figure out a setting where Olivia executes the three corrupt officers that killed her father. It needs to read that it could have been a justifiable killing or a mere execution and it could be seen as either way. I personally believe it spices up the story a bit at the end.
There was a moment, a mere hour ago that I saw where streaming could get interesting and that is why I am offering it here to Amazon (Luna) and Tencent technologies (handheld). You see, as a blogger, I know that fields evolve and there is a place where the people never were offered to be, but in all this streaming is opening a new door.
To give this a swing another thing happened. I rewatched a mini series. I loved it since the first time I saw it decades ago and about 15 years ago I got the DVD and today (after at least 5 years) I watched it again. Now consider that mini series Jack the Ripper the one with Michael Caine and Lewis Collins. The first setting is Whitechapel (and the suburbs surrounding it) the stage is as authentic as possible and the Unreal Engine 5 allows for that. To recreate London around 1888 gives the people a sight towards life there, towards how the dark is a lot less appealing that we know it to be. This is not about Jack the Ripper himself, but it will be about the scenery and about a new option. So every person there will be able to create a blog, a story of a person and as you create a person (a he or a she) and you can set the face around your own image. The person you create (tradesman, uniform or other people) will give you an address in London. So now you have a person. You can now create your blog, and it will be held as stories to that individual. You cannot interact with THAT person, but you can interact as your double. Your character will be around where you are located, it will allow others to interact with your person and learn your blogs. You (your avatar) can seek out others and learn their stories. It is a new way to interact, a new way to spread your stories and as this takes off, we could have Mumbai in Victorian times. San Francisco (around 1907), New York (around 1927) and that list could grow. It has a two sided story, in the first the people get to see and walk around these places in those times. The second is that this would be a new place to propel your stories, your blog, optionally your vlog and it will be a new medium that could grow. They are all trying to hog off new games, but they need underlying knowledge and these places could grow that knowledge and give the people something to do. Pleasing well over 50 million people is not easy and before they all run around like rats in a wheel. You could consider offering a much larger stage, one that keeps them appeased and allows them to appease others. We see all the small options that were, but now with streaming it is an option to think up an entirely new stage and create even more stages. For a small fee these people could copy what they did in their first location (for example $0.50 a month) they get an additional person in a new city (and that same fee for every other location) that could amount to up to $25 million a month for every additional character. And as the quality of the locations improve, the need to watch these places with their own eyes also increase. A new medium that might (or not) be successful. So how many other ideas have you seen floating around? I got to this in under an hour and there are more locations where people might want to go. Paris 1891 (2 years after the Eiffel tower was build), then there is Tokyo, Los Angeles and a whole range of places where we always wanted to be. And as the places evolve the developer can include their own people (celebrities, historical people) and offer even more stories. Will the market be large enough? I honestly do not know but there are 600 million bloggers and there are plenty who want to stand out, so why are we not doing that? I will let it up to you to decide. I wonder what else I can come up with this weekend.
It is an idea that had been floating in my mind for some time. Yet the BBC article brought it to to front line of my (slightly despicable) brain. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-65377361) shows us what is wrong with this world and I decided to play on that. There was the added Sun article (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23668092/just-stop-oil-recruit-kids-as-young-11/) throwing oil to the fire (pardon the pun). As such I came up with the idea of ‘Vigilante’ partially in light of the old classic The Exterminator (with Robert Ginty). This doesn’t have a script yet (standing firm with actors here), the idea is simple. We see a man clearly with support, but alone standing about 120 metres from a 5G mast. Soon thereafter a ute arrives with 5 people, 2 women, three men. They are unloading all kinds of stuff, clearly wanting to harm the 5G tower. The man takes aim and kills all 5 and walks away, the police will clean up the next day. We see 2 more events, all taking aim at tech terrorists. The second event is a just stop gravity event (pun intended). The man had prepared for over a week, and in the last day when he figured out the where part. In the night he installs the speakers within speakers. And he attaches the vaporisers to the corners of the pillars so that they will be out of sight. The day starts and the people from ‘Just stop Gravity’ sit for a nice meal. As they start to eat they are so content and the man, whilst walking away presses the button. The speakers second set start screaming an inaudible sound damaging their hearing. They never wanted to listen then, they never need to listen again and the vaporisers release skunk scent all over the room, they all reek and as they run outside to hide from the stench, they find out that their hearing is now impaired.
This gets us the first flashback, a man is crying, his wife (implied) is on the stretcher, critically injured. There is little hope for her, but they hope that they can get to the hospital in time to save their yet unborn baby. The just stop gravity march stops that and the ambulance is not in time to save the baby. The man screams and his reality shatters.
We now get back to the current stage and we see that this vigilante has help, people who lost businesses to these protesters and they are helping him. They will never act and they will never be placed in the front lines. He made that promise as he lost everything he cared for, they never need to face that reality. We get one more event with fatalities and now we get the phrase ‘Our lives matter too’ then the next event the police captures him and the court setting is set upon us. The man keeps his word and never reveals his sources. He merely stares at these so called ‘victims’ as they are all about ‘their’ rights and the lawyers are all set to avoid the rights of the vigilante and his lost family. We see the evidence and we are presented ‘the side of the tech terrorists’ and as the case goes on we see that the crucial piece of evidence. One vaporiser with his fingerprint on the inside. Then on day 3 of the court case, the prosecution cannot show the evidence with the fingerprint and the court adjourns for 24 hours as we see the sides all mingled in their private hell. The next day the court resumes and the evidence is not found, as it as the critical part in the case the case is dismissed and as the vigilante is kept in a holding cell in the court (reason not set at the moment, but I am going for an emotional outburst from the vigilante) he is placed in a holding cell for the court case (from day 2 onwards), and after the dismissal he is packing his stuff in the holding cell, the judge approaches him. “You kept your word, my brother lost his son to these terrorists. Our lives matter too” he nods and walks away. End of movie.
All this done in under 4 hours. I am clearly not the worst in this, so feel free to use the idea for whatever studio you work for. Have a nice day.
OK, to be honest, this dream hit me some time ago. I had it, but I have no idea why I had the dream and I might never figure it out. The event was at Golden Oak Orlando. I was visiting someone and when we got to his abode (a mansion by any other name) we were overwhelmed. I reckon that this is the feeling that all those who ever visited someone’s place in Golden Oak leaves them. It is a little overwhelming. So we got to his place, we were shown the lower part of the house with an inner courtyard. There was a pool, a jacuzzi and a few other amenities making sure that we all felt a little out of our comfort zone. We went to the corner in the inner courtyard and we had something to drink. There were two pitchers of iced fruit-juice and it was wonderful. I went for the slightly more orange one. It was a mix of peached and tangerines loaded with what seemingly a shrapnel of ice parts. It was icy cold and refreshing. My kind of refreshing. The others were talking and I was listening and looking at the details of the courtyard and the kitchen room through the glass. The stove looked old-fashioned but seemingly bursting with high tech elements. A stove anyone would dream of having in their home. After the drink the second part started. We saw the living room, the kitchen we walked through and we saw a large pantry. The living-room was a little spartan but stylish. We all walked up the stairs and we saw the master bedroom. Not sure what the style was, but it looked neat. The walking bathroom was to die for and had everything on a space that is pretty much my living room. There were the two guest rooms and they both had their own style, nice but very different. And I saw the door, the door that would change it all. The door was out of place. It looked a lot heavier and darker, like dark oak heavy. From a distance it stood out, even as the door was deeper into the wall than any other door in the house. It stood out like a bank vault door would stand out in any apartment, it looked that heavy. The door was dark oak as said, but it was engraved unlike anything I had ever seen. The owner then moved a panel in the door and a small opening revealed itself.
The opening had a key, a very old fashioned one and if I had to make a guess it was a 17th century key, but it looked off somehow. The panels showed us characters from Peter Pan and Mr. Smee (the first mate from Peter Pan) was the center piece of the door. The door opened smoothly but seemingly heavy and the door didn’t open at the end, the door opened with the axial at one third of the door and the door was a lit thicker than a door should be. What I saw then blew me away. The room was almost entirely made from wood, hardwood floors, and I saw to the right what could have been the navigator desk from a galleon. To the left was an admiral’s table with swanky seat. The navigator had its own swanky seat, both a chesterfield design, both chairs build for comfort and I walked in. I saw the small door to the end and I walked towards it, it opened up to a small balcony with seats. The wooden balcony seemed to have been part of a slightly enlarged balcony like the admirals room on a galleon with a small table and chairs.
I looked around and I was slapped across the face a second time. The walls I can in from were the rear of a galleon, complete with stained glass and a view of the ocean. The wall that connects to the house was an ocean and the smell of salt water was invading my nostrils. A freakin ocean? I slowly walked towards the end of the ship realising that it was smoke and mirrors (of sorts) the windows were real enough, the sound of a seagull was there, but as I stared closely I noticed the fine lines. The view on the ocean were TV screens 4 meters wide in total, about a meter high. 4 of them. There was a hidden vapour in there feeding us seawater. The sound came from the screen. It was the sound of the ocean with a bird every no and then and the screens were merely showing us the water waves, almost like it would have been were we on a galleon. The walls had pictures. One in heavy sterling with the image of Bill Thompson (the name was engraved in the centre of the bottom side of the frame. I knew the name as I grew up with Disney movies. He was the voice of Mr. Smee in the Disney version of it. There was an image an autographed one of Bob Hoskins, the man who played Smee in Hook and there were more Smee memorabilia all over the room. The navigator desk was a desk, it was fully functioning with a large map of Never-never land. The map rolled up and stayed rolled up. Beneath it was a screen a 32” touch display that showed the Mac screen and applications. There were all the Adobe ones, all the Apple ones and several I had never seen before. I noticed that below it were extensions that came out, for both the keyboard and to the right of that an A4 digital writing pad. The system was super-fast, faster than the average G5 and it looked super intuitive. I looked around to the admiral’s desk which as a large and very nice desk with all kinds of amenities. The top of the desk was wood and I think a strip of leather, for writing on I reckon. The drawers were all engraved and to the right of the desk was a panel like it was some kind of food elevator. The panel was opened and two plates with canapé’s came out. They were delicious. The door I came in through was no longer visible, well not until you go looking for it. I saw the lines of where the door was and it was almost invisible to the naked eye.
The chair was bordeaux red, it looked extremely comfy. We ate the food and we all were mesmerised on the room. I was not the only one blown away. This was his office space and it was one hell of an office space. It was a few minutes later when we left the room and as the door opened the screens shut down, the sounds faded and to room lights all dimmed but did not turn off. As I left the room I heard the room lock and I heard more clicks, almost like a set of alarms were set to sharp. We went down again and in the kitchen I now noticed the same panel we hd upstairs. A food elevator and a chef was there with plates of food that staff were bringing around. There was a Japanese plate with marinated eel. Plates with what seemed to be wraps with chicken and I had another fruit juice. I took the yellow now, which was I reckoned pineapple with Limes and I guess pear. It was slightly sweeter, I preferred the orange one. Which was my third drink. We sat down in the living room and I was listening. I also figured out I was the plus one of one of the ladies there. She was way out of my league, so no idea who she was and why she was with me and as I was sipping my fruit juice I faded away and woke up in my own bed.
The dream stuck with me and at first I thought it was the setting for some kind of game, but there was no relation to any game I thought up. Then it could be for TV or movie, but the office space was too distinct. I would have loved to have a house and with such an office, but too much was not my initial desire in office choice, even as the computer clearly was. Sometimes the brain takes you on a meaningless quest, so I might never know why, but that feeling of looking around and watching the ocean still haunts me and I have no idea why.
Enjoy the day, we are now past the 50% point towards the weekend.
I decided to switch the setting, there is no real reason other than to reflect on some of these TV series that suddenly get another lease of character. The interview episode in the Rookie, the COPS episode in the X-Files and so on. Most TV series have gone through it and now so am I. In this I am reflecting on the script I to some degree (up to season 2) here called engonos. As such I have decided to have a little fun here, I hope you like it. Enjoy
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It was a decent day, as winter is settling n the southern hemisphere, the weather in Dubai was a temperate 36 degrees Celsius. I was looking at the marine, the people and watch people stroll in a relaxed fashion as I was enjoying a cup of coffee.
There was a scent in the air, it was a little off but it was distinct. Brimstone and sandalwood, there was only one person (if you can call him one) that would leave that scent. It was Al-Malik-Al-Aswad. It had been a little over 900 years, but it was the one scent that stays with you. He was not normal, no person had that level of power and he was here in Dubai. I preferred not to meet with him, for some reason he is always one card short of a full meltdown. He had seen it all as well and he was al old as any Olympian around. But there is something to be said for territory and for the most I have always respected his. Yet I was here out of necessity. I was not taking over his territory, I was more set to making sure that the next phase would include the Middle East and Asia. Europe was done. It was too corrupt and it needed to end and certain family members had been adamant about it. It wasn’t until recently that I started to see patterns, patterns that were as old as the hills. Lord Hades of Tartarus (the man I call grandfather) had found a new ploy to an old curse that he unleashed on a man named Sisyphus. The story was that Sisyphus first captured Thanatos, then he convinced my grandfather to return to make sure that pops would receive the proper offerings. The first I got, the second one I did not, it was almost too ego-centrical. As such the second was shame on him and that went not well in Tartarus, he was flaming fuming for decades. Still he used the ploy on Sisyphus to roll a boulder up a hill which slid back down when it was near the top and as fun would have it, Sisyphus was still at it after all these millennia. He had now a new goal and the setting was transformed. The Americans were all Sisyphus, the boulder was their own administration and the people were hopeless and pointless going from line to line trying to get the forms and as they were near completion the process, the forms would be adjusted and it started all over again. They would compete one line and get one form done and after that within a month they would be at it again. It was relentless and no one was seeing beyond the forms, beyond the lines and it had been going on for decades. All whilst their treasuries were having less and less to distribute. It was a failing of absolute certainty. Political wannabe leaders spending more and more on legal fees, less and less was about substance and it would continue as it was. A stage that had no solution for anyone and all the political wannabe’s were shouting things like ‘It is so complex now’ but that was for tomorrow. And now they were trying to cut up Amazon, the second bastion. First Google now Amazon. And the coffers would be depleted further as Amazon could movie its operations to Dubai for all Middle East operations and as they did that they could regain some of the Asian market. Xinhua Bookstore ruled in China, but with Dubai and Hyderabad India Amazon could regain some of that lost marketshare and as they grew in Europe the American shops would shutdown and the gap that remained could not be reset by anyone making the Americans dumber in the process. As such the Sisyphus routines were working and it was working on several levels.
But it wasn’t about that, it was not about what my grandfather was doing. It was about how it was being done. I have no idea what my other grandfather was doing. You see Zeus (no other grandfather) had lost a lot of his powers, as did my great-uncle Poseidon. They lost it to air pollution and water pollution. Lord Hades was however all powerful, he had more strength then the two others combined. A millennia of growth and death made that so. In the first century there were about 150,000,000 people, by 1500 it was 500 million and now we are at eight billion and a chunk of that ends up nowhere, as such they end up at the edges of Tartarus and a lot of them end in Tartarus making Lord Hades stronger and stronger. But today was about a new border, a new stage. Yet for that I needed the Djinn, not one, but several and the stage was not to undermine my grandfather, but to ensure the decent people had a way out. China was a separate issue and it was already on route, but the Middle East was more direct and there the one person I had not seen in 900 years comes in. He knows where one of the Zabaniyah resides. I had no clue what its name was or where it was, but that was the problem. Knowing the name of a Zabaniyah gives you power over it and they are not in the market of relinquishing power. But that was the game and that was where Al-Malik-Al-Aswad came in. Convincing him that I was on the level was a whole new problem and I had an idea, but it was a dangerous one, especially if he didn’t believe me. I took another sip of coffee and looked over the marina. There was that smell again and I looked around. Then I saw the man, an elderly man. He was standing there yet no one seem to take notice of him. Strong beard. I was certain that all; the garden gnomes in Dubai were jealous of his beard and there was a strange orange aura around him. I stood up and walked towards him.
He looked at me, I think he was sizing me up. As I got within 3 meters I stopped and suddenly noticed that no one was noticing me either. It was an interesting skill.
He held up my ring, it was on the left index finger and he took notice of the symbol on it. I spoke to him ‘I am Lavrenti of the house of Hades of Tartarus’ I seek an audience with you as things are about to happen that could impact your region and I want to make sure that the Middle East is protected. Not merely for me, but for all the good people in the world. He looked at me and pondered my words. ‘So what do you need?’ I looked at me and I responded. I have an idea to push the west into a lot of escalations, but to do that I need access to a Zabaniyah and you might know one. It is my only option at present.
He looked at me and pondered the question. “In the way you approached me, I can help. He is in Egypt, he resides in one of the pyramids. If you can see you can directly spot which one. His name is Sentatayil. This is all you need. I will expect repayment for the courtesy I just showed you and he was gone. I was standing in the street alone and suddenly some people noticed me, yet they shook it off like it was a weird trickle. I walked away, it was time to see the pyramids. I had not seen them in person for over 2100 years. When I visited them, pretending to be a greek writer visiting the court of Ptolemy IX Soter, as such the place might have evolved a bit, time would tell. As such I was on route to Dubai international airport, places to go, people to address.
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Yes this was a story and this was all my imagination, but I was kind enough to lace it with reality. You need to wonder about a few things and I reckon that every story needs a bit of spice, if only to confuse the avid reader on where reality stops. We all have an evil demon on our shoulders and mine resides on my right shoulder, the one on the left shoulder is an angelic pussy.
This is what happened. I was walking on the street (as one does) and I noticed an elderly Asian lady talking into the screen of her mobile phone. This is nothing special even as we realise some things, but that was not what it was about. You see I love my Pixel 6, it does what it needs to do and then some, but I suddenly realised something.
For this we need to go back to a year ago when Sony made a new introduction. It was the new Bravia XR. We can skip all the extra new parts it has and focus on one part. The fact that the speakers are BEHIND the screen, right behind them and for a TV it brings a little extra punch. Yet what happens when we apply a similar setting to a mobile phone? Consider the screen below.
Now we consider that we change the small part of the top screen to a (perhaps) thinner solution, water resistant and we put a microphone in the middle part and two speakers on the left and right side of this solution. We have a few less holes (making it more water resistant) and we stop dust getting there and we have a new situation, optionally less resistant to defect.
Now perhaps the boffins at Google have been considering this already, but the idea of transference of IP (outside of its own class) is nothing new. The idea that I am the first one who comes up with this is equally laughable, but I learned that for every 10 ideas I come up with that others have as well, I tend to have one that no one thought of before. Yes it seems hilarious to some, but this is how I came up with half a dozen ideas that no one seems to have in gaming, streaming and 5G (or 5G plus) IP and the moment I make it all public domain the managing dumbo’s out there will come with BS idea that I should have come to them, they would done right by me. Yes, tell me one I never heard one before. The fake it till you make it managers will all be fishing behind the net and it will be for everyone, no patent to make it exclusively. It will be for anyone who wants to make a few dollars. I placed some IP here 2-3 days ago, simply because I could. Simply because I had an idea that no one considered before and I had no skills in that direction. All options that Amazon, Apple and Google missed in the first place (no one cares about Microsoft). As such the world is lacking creativity and I am happy to show them that lesson again and again. For me it is different to some degree. Perhaps it comes down to something else. In 2003 a movie was released called ‘Danny Deckchair’ it was not the act, it was his thought on that pancake breakfast that kept going on in his mind. I felt that way with one of my IP. Even as the value is in the billions, it is nothing compared to my 5G(plus) idea on something else. That could be serious money, but I care about that less. The later IP hits a few bolts on issues I feel stronger about and as such I care about that IP (and keeping it out of the hands of Microsoft). In that same thing I think ideas are nice, but if they have no practical solution to hold onto them, why hold onto them? People will go with ‘It might be worth some, someday’. It is a greed setting and greed drowns creativity every single time. This is why I look at what streaming solutions could do someday. It is because it can push gaming forward and to any gamer that matters. Not more of the same, but more in a direction we never contemplated before and that is where organisations like Amazon and Tencent Technologies are optionally pushing us. The American anti-China sentiment be damned. As such the out of the blue setting is raised, by me more than by some of you. You see, ‘out of the blue’ isn’t that, it is that our subconscious have worked something out and the elderly lady on the phone brought it to the surface for me. Yet if we can see beyond that and learn what triggers us more clearly, we get access to a lot more creativity and that is the lottery ticket we all need to embrace, or at least we should.
So what is next? For me it is working on some of the stories I never forgot about, but I needed to take a break and hopefully get to a setting where the story becomes less iterative and more innovative. We can be clever about this, or we can try to look at it in another point of view and that leads to new ways to accelerate any story (beyond looking for some clever twist). And to a storyteller this matters. It is not merely that Market Research setting of telling a story, it becomes an approach where the abacus can be as telling as a laptop, which is the push we all need. Those who are pushed by the laptop are set to a motion started by Apple, Google or Microsoft. But the ones who can get there with an abacus are pushed by their own minds and that push can be more powerful and less constraint that other methods hold. But that is merely my $0.0154 (adjusted for currency and economic settings).
I got struck by two things today. The first was given to me by the BBC. There (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66021325) we are given something that should not be allowed to happen. We are given ‘Shell still trading Russian gas despite pledge to stop’ this has one part that offends me. You see it is the Royal Dutch Shell. The Dutch Royal family has a majority stake in this and we all agree that we do not under any circumstance support the Russians in their endeavour. In addition, Royal Dutch Shell is not alone. Dozens of American firms are still making money from Russia and allowing them to continue their acts of terror against civilian targets. I am all royalist, yet when something wrong is done I speak out, the fact that the BBC is extremely willing to drop the ‘Royal Dutch’ part in this equation speaks out against the BBC and their setting of informing the public (yet again). In addition to this we are given. “Shell said the trades were the result of “long-term contractual commitments” and do not violate laws or sanctions.” And when was war a reason not to break a contract? How long have certain corporations been doing business with Idi Amin Dada Oumee in the timeframe of 1971-1979? Do they not learn? I think this is the first time I ever speak out against the Dutch Royal family, but this time I see no other option but to speak out. And when we get to “Oleg Ustenko, an adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, accused Shell of accepting “blood money”” I personally would agree with Oleg Ustenko. And with “Last year Shell accounted for 12% of Russia’s seaborne LNG trade, Global Witness calculates, and was among the top five traders of Russian-originated LNG that year” we see just how deep Royal Dutch Shell is connected to all this.
Yet what you just read is not correct, and I did that intentionally. You see we also have “In January 2022, the firm merged the A and B shares, moved its headquarters to London, and changed its legal name to Shell plc.” So what is the UK doing? You see, Shell is seen as the 15th largest company in the world. You do not give up that position lightly or cheap. So whatever happened in January 2022 has had a massive impact and for some reason no one really knows what was going on (I have no clue), but me separating with ownership of a firm that big is a ‘no no’, so something does not add up to me, would you just shed a company that makes $20 billion a year? I have issues with all this and yes the BBC did nothing wrong, but the fact that this was once the Royal Dutch Shell and there is no indication (does not mean it did not happen) that the Dutch Royal family might still have a large stake in all this is upsetting to me and it would be to anyone having Dutch links.
So as we say goodbye to that part, we get to the interesting dream I had. I dozed off whilst watching the Rookie (season 4). My dream (or nightmare) took me to Los Angeles and an interesting Terrorist plot to create and unsurmountable amount of chaos to that city. You see, with all the connected and interacting systems someone created an interesting virus/worm/program (not sure which one). This work was pretty ingenious. You see, instead of debilitating IT systems, they did something different. They infected data parsers. In my dream I was hit as I wanted to find places that had in part the term “vectium” and suddenly it all stopped. Systems worked by they were no longer able to give the full details sudden intelligent settings in Google Search, Bing (yes that one too), and all other engines failed because certain subsystems were deactivated and for some reason some version of ChatGPT was merely making matters worse and spreading the problem across the US and hitting the other continents merely hours later. Because certain detection matters were limited to certain main parts and not subparts that damage continued. The weird part was that anyone with IT knowledge and the ability to give complete correct search terms could still work, but well over 200,000,000 people suddenly had mobiles and IT systems that would no longer connect or hand over correct information, like some kind of aphasia. The dream is now fading and I can no longer see the specifics, but at the beginning it had something to do with search terms ‘like’, which then infected more and more systems. After a short time terms like ‘containing’ would stop working and even as the complete old version SQL string would work, it was about the only thing that did and it crippled the metropolitan areas of the US (and Canada shortly thereafter). The more I think about it, the more interesting it would be to set an episode of the Rookie where infrastructures collapse. You see, people are nice when they have their coffee and their hamburger (or cheeseburger), when that stops the niceties do too.
Well that is it for me, for all you others, the end of the weekend is now no more than 19 hours away, make them count and have a lovely day.
This is the stage my mind has been in for the last 24 hours and yes it is a DC comic reference. You see, the movie Thor, Love and Thunder woke something up in me. It was the mid 80’s and there was a Dutch version of an Avengers comic book I read. In this there was a reference on a ‘villian’ which led to all kinds of things and I remember that in the end there was an image of all in hell for torment felt relieved for a second as Lucifer felt fear for the very first time. It was about the optional undoing of Eternity. The end god in the Thor movie and he was just like the real thing, except for size (the length of his foot is about the size of the Chrysler building) but lets keep this to semantics and creative freedom. Yet these is the stage, it started my thinking. You see, it started at that time and the movie Black Adam merely build on the stage my mind devised.
I gre up being a huge Batman fan, in my preteens I grew up on the Batman that Adam West gave us and the man was dope. He was the real deal. OK, that is and will forever be the kid talking in me. But as others went for all the other comic book heroes for whatever reason they had and this tainted the thoughts I had. There was a side in that comic book that gave me pause to think, even now almost half a century later these thoughts are still there. What if the villains were right? They might go about it wrong, but what if there is truth in their actions? Joker, Lex Luthor, Ares, sorceress Circe, Lucifer, and that list goes on. So what happens when we create a hidden trap. A mindset where Batman does the ‘right’ thing, but he falters to see what he does is right. The encounter with someone like Eternity brings it to the surface? It allows for an interaction with Constantine, it allows for all kinds of options. And today’s world is all about what is legally right and what could be correct and they are not the same thing. We have all seen versions of that and as far as I can tell the comic movies aren’t digging into that, even though Black Adam gives a nice stage to exploring that side deeper. The creation of Amanda Waller allows for a deeper investigation of that side and perhaps the people behind DC movies should do just that. You see, there is too much polarisation in these movies and for the most we accept this as the villains in these movies are over the top bad. Yet what happens when the hero (unintentionally) overreacts? We see that in some cases, but at times it is some plot twist. What happens when we wrongly hunt down a person and we learn after we stop them that they were trying to set us all free? Consider that we have ben misled by the church for almost a millennium. Now consider that we have an Arabic setting where an Afreet is set free, but that Afreet is tinted by the history up to 1200AD, that character missed out on 800 years and that anger is now unleashed. We want to ‘protect’ and stop that character and we now have a setting that approximates what we are trying to achieve, because we learn of what was done is only now beginning to surface, in this we create a new level of ambiguity. One that most comics never touch on and it is these new borders where we get a much larger setting for who are the actual villains? Perhaps some are tainted through polarisation and recognising that opens a new dialogue, a new stage of more interesting movies.
Consider an article from 2019 ‘Medusa was punished for being raped—so why do we still depict her as a monster?’ This sets a new premise towards the stage of a Medusa. In the Theogony, by the 8th-century BC poet Hesiod, she is described as being the child of Phorcys and Ceto and she was raped in the temple of Athena by Poseidon and Athena punishes her of all people. So what happens when we see this in a new DC setting, but until the end of the movie we aren’t told of HOW the transgression started and that opens up new doors, opens up other doors too. What if the avenging demon is Lex Luthor, getting aid by Lucifer no less and the stage is that Constantine is trying to figure out what Lex Luthor is up to (and of course Superman gets involved). Yet as we are given a partial tapestry, the loom will see the involvement of others, but until that for example the daughter of Wonder Woman Trinity was kidnapped which starts the manhunt, but at the end we learn that Trinity feared her future and got Lex Luthor to aid in her escape her dark future. Lex feeing for her and feeling his heart for her aids her and it starts a much larger feud all fuelled by Lucifer (which gives us Constantine) and there we have the making of a larger tapestry and the loom involved has the wires in one direction and cannot vouch for the fabric of the tapestry (an Odysseus reference). The stage that still bothers me is how the loom is managed, someone is pulling the strings behind the curtains of the stage and that comes to light after we see parts of the truth involved. It creates new settings of polarisation, not entirely unlike the people choosing team bat (team Cullen) or team hound (Jacob Black). The same is said for the Underworld saga. When the people are left to chose which team is the right one, you get a lot more interaction, a lot more social contribution and that pushes the story and the movies to the top of so many lists. Ambiguity gives us one side, but not all sides. What happens when Ares (opponent of Wonder Woman) is pushed to this degree by the fates Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos? What happens when they are pushed by the future and by someone wielding that side to push towards a reality free of Αion, the god of eternity? We now have a very different setting and we get the question into the open, what makes a hero a hero and a villain a villain?
Just a few thoughts going through my head (its Sunday after all) and tomorrow is another day.
Enjoy the end of the weekend, soon it will be Monday.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 