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.
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 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.
Twi days ago I wrote Brain switch, it was me on a joyride through my brain as I was reengineering IP over and over and it went faster and faster. I got a handle on it by playing Hogwart Legacy. You see gaming is more than an escape for me. It is a passion that allows me to take my mind away from things and that is at times a good thing. It allowed my subconscious to work on Engonos, the story of the grandson of Hades. Weirdly enough I was inspired by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Or better stated, he gave me the idea to take a trip to the right. In part I was already doing s in another way, but I suddenly realised that I could enhance one character to get a lot more out of the whole. It is in part a little bit of a drag. You see, I can go memento on that character to keep the story in line and not give away too much, but that too has its advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is that two characters are drawn into the story, one makes sense already, the other one does not on the surface of things, but in Olympian lore it does. As such I tend towards that part of the solution, even though one of them already has a larger role to play and I set that in motion. Now that these roles are staged and partially set, I need to build the background stories for all involved. As such the memento approach, the other one is a historic jump, it seems cleaner, but it opens up too much mesh. A combination has benefits, but at that point I need to be cautious how I approach the matter and I need to script some elements, but that is not a problem. One lesson I learned a long time ago, when a problem is too big, chip it into smaller manageable pieces. That was all good and fine, but that suddenly gave me a few more ideas towards some RPG designs I was entertaining, to be made freely available for exclusive Amazon Luna materials.
I get that this does not make sense, but the reason is simple. Microsoft made valid steps in gaming, we might not like them, but they did what any corporation did, set yourself apart. Yet they did so by buying Bethesda and making parts exclusive to the Xbox. This is a valid, but unappealing approach. This setting changed when Avalanche launched Hogwarts legacy and they set the bar way higher than Skyrim ever was, making it a problem for Microsoft. You see if Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 are on par with Hogwart Legacy, Microsoft loses a lot more than they bargained for. Now if I can add to that pain by giving Amazon Luna developers a sight to more software that is close to on par with Microsoft (not an easy task) they will feel even more pain and that is what I had been after. I expected this to be a lot harder, but Avalanche gave me a trump card, they surpassed Bethesda (what they had up to now), this is not unexpected because Skyrim is 11 years old. Yet it makes my work a little easier. The RPG has storylines, it has a balanced economic system and it has evolution, I only need to set a new stage that has a new kind of nemesis system. Not some copy of Shadow of Mordor, but something new, something we haven’t seen before. I want to counter grinding to some extent. I have one side which is a much larger map, the other side is a new kind of adversarial system and I want to add to that. But it needs to enhance what is, not replace what could be. This is hard to explain for now, but it is in the works, in the meantime, those thoughts are helping me to give larger rise to Engonos, which was what I had in mind all along. Cogs within cogs, not the most elegant of explanations, but it will do for now.
That I something we all have to do at times. I (for the longest time) have been contemplating whether Keno Diastima required a fourth season. There was something close to immaculate to the open ending and there were questions within me. Why certain things existed, why certain steps were made and then I got to thinking part of what would have been a goal? There is something towards triggers, we all do, but what happens when the trigger is happening towards an automated process? You see, the automated process takes (for the most) time out of an equation. There can be two reasons behind this. Th first is the fire and forget process where the instigators look at what comes after, the second is a little harder to explain. Consider a small room, in that room an African bee is released, to be safe you must kill the bee. That process can be monitored, but the stage is difficult and to get the killer bees in place requires an engine. My mind started to ask ‘But why?’ And then I remembered. It is perseverance, resisting temptation. This got my mind to an optional fictive stage that was once said to happen in Las Vegas, they played with artificial pheromones to keep people in a stage of continuous gambling and happiness. Now, I do not know whether this was ever true. The stage came to me from some Lawyer series, I forgot which one. But the stage had an interesting side question. How to infect the right people whilst keeping the others untouched. This led me to the brainwashing stage. Brainwashing can be achieved in psychological ways with additions of chemicals, isolation, debilitation and exhaustion. It is the balance that sets a stage and that can be used in many ways. Yet then we get to Sun Tsu. What if the need is Living spies, reverse spies and/or inside spies? How to create them and better how to keep control? That solution is in part seen by the stage where they are unaware that they are in the first place. And now we have the beginning of a stage. I am also cautious not to give anything away regarding the control lines of the first three seasons. And at that point I had unintentionally created the opening to continue the series (no spoilers).
It is that stage that creates a new cast of leads and a very new cast of antagonists. You see we assume one side, but what happens when the roles are inverted? How can we see good from evil and more important, does it matter? The soldier tells us, we do not murder, the enemy murders, we merely kill them and protect ourselves. Adrian Furnham (in The Psychology of Spies and Spying: Trust, Treason, Treachery) teaches us the concepts regarding the rigorous psychological analysis of the personality and motivation of individuals involved in spying. Yet if they are unaware motivation is taken out of the equation, the personality of a person can be adjusted to facilitate processes and as such identity is take out of the equation. And with both out of the way you get more than who is good and who is not, we get the making of a faceless scout and that was when the idea struck a much larger stage, a much longer game, optionally something leading to a timeless one. Yet, who would prosper? It was at that stage when my mind went back to WW2 and the idea that at that point corporate espionage, espionage conducted for commercial or financial purposes could have had another option. Alfred Hitchcock touched on it with the movie the 39 steps, but the people never realised what an amazing and dangerous piece of work it was. You see industrial espionage seems limited (like Microsoft on IBM), but what if the stage is not that, but what happens when the stage defines where we invest, where we look and where the diamonds are? What if that party is to identify players that make a difference? It would be a much larger game, a game that has no borders. A setting we never faced before.
And with that I had the beginning of season 4, but how to connect certain parts and make is ‘realistic’ enough to make the generals in Kremlin, Pentagon and Zhongnanhai cry like little chihuahua’s? Well perhaps not the Kremlin, they have bigger problems (like getting the bulk of their systems to actually work in wartime without losing over 80,000 troops). But the setting gives me two parts, the engine itself and trying to identify the parties involved and I do like a twist or two, like Pakistani intelligence in Homeland season 4. And the longer we do not know who or what we are facing, the term suspense at the tip of your chair becomes very acceptable. Like any writer who perks up when they hear the radio announcer scream ‘Did you see the plot twist last night? Holy F%#&!’ Any writer lives for such a moment, and I is no different.
But the revelations my mind gave me during short nap is making my brain hurt, I need to try and work out the story whilst I know I have to edit from word one with every iteration of facts. This is going to take a while, and that is merely season 4, with a related season 5.
Just my way to pass the time when sex is not an option, the universe is massively unfair at times.
It was something that had been nagging at me for a while. Whilst I was working on an idea for TV, an idea that was in ‘And a little more’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/04/04/and-a-little-more/) and a few articles before then (and one after), the setting was a little too vanilla, too sweet. Yes, it works when you have a pilot and you need to slowly submerge the viewer into this person. But after that you need to have something more and the dark place is at times so much more rewarding. So what happens when loss, loss that would drive any person insane is part of all this? No matter how we slice it, lets say a child is lost to drunk driving, to whatever reason and that person gets off on a technicality, not something that happened now, but something that happened decades ago. So when some events come back, so does the avenging rage. But not like the timeline. But a timeline that is distorted, as memories come back together. So how would that go? That is what I am contemplating. The vengeance is that he takes the life of a family member every decade. A hunt going on for decades and the family is scared beyond believe because this had been going on and they have no idea who to blame. When you know that EVERY decade on the dot a family member dies extremely brutally, how would YOU react? That is the stuff I am trying to add to the idea. You see the dark appeals to all, the need for vengeance appeals to all. In our lives as we add water to the wine, as we add compromise to our values for fairness, the dark gets a free turn on all of us and that side is appealing to all. Yet the power is not to hide it in some lame ‘conspiracy’ setting. We have seen so many of those, but what happens when the deaths also allow for something more? Lets not forget that this is the story of the grandson of Hades. And that is before we get to the part where his father is Ares. Yet that implies that he has another grandfather. All settings that seem to be clear in season one, so what gives?
A stage where decades of corpses set a line in place, a line that I am trying to give volume, but I cannot yet tell in what direction, because I do not know what the direction is yet. That is part of the thrill of creating stories. You need to keep everything in mind, just like an RPG. And this story needs to have angles, sharp sides, soft sides and surprises. It is setting a ying and yang, but shaped like Hesiod and Plato. The dialogue goes better if there is some polarisation, some opposition to either view whilst the bulk of both views are accepted. That is the stage I need to create, and if I succeed the story becomes a lot better and that is what every storyteller tries to do, create the most enticing story. And that setting works when one side is dark, really dark whilst both sides accepts the darkness and shines their own light on that darkness. You see, shadow die in the absence of light or darkness. Both are needed, a shadow cannot exist in absence of either, the first truth all storytellers learn, most often in the midst of their first story and they rewrite it.
I am no different, although I started when I saw the story became too sweet, too vanilla.
Yup, I have my IP, yet this time around it is not real, it is a fictive concept. It is my my way of giving the people at DARPA the bird (not in an insulting way) and explaining them procedure NA5 (na, na, na, na, na). So my playful mood was taking up the baton (aka the demon on my right shoulder) was calling me a pussy. It usually works and today was no exception. So as I was reading ‘Havana Syndrome may be caused by ‘directed energy’’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60237839) the brain went into overdrive and I started considering a few elements from the story. You see, I have had an experience in that direction, but I did not get sick. I learned a few years ago that when I am exposed to certain light levels AND white noise (like a projector or the sound of certain displays) I fall asleep. I cannot stop myself and drinking coffee after coffee does not help. When I sit down, coffee or not, I am out like a light. Works like a charm and annoys me to no end. So when I saw “in the last year, they have been taken more seriously with US officials encouraged to report similar symptoms. That has led to a flood of cases, numbering at least a thousand from around the world.” I put 3 and 3 together and got 27. You see it takes a specific brain with specific light, you see Paris in January has the winter sun and the winter sun in the early day is intense, but not too bright. Havana has bright most of the day and I reckon that when they start considering light intensity (not strength, or time of exposure) they will find a level of common ground. The white noise will hit everyone in different ways, but specific stressed people (generals, spy masters, command staff) will get a certain exposure. It will not hit all exactly the same, but it will hit them in similar ways. I reckon (and speculate) that those people who got sick will see over time that their ability to focus and concentrate will have been diminished. Consider that, a small white noise transmission, could be specific and might be just at the edge of hearing will do the trick. The issue is that not everyone is hit in the same way in the same time frame, but a specifically engineered projector lamp might do the trick, then that stops there will be a dozen other ways to expose people to white noise. What a way to disable military power. Not incapacitate them, but reduce their effectiveness. So when I saw “The panel found that psychological or social factors could not alone explain the symptoms although they could have compounded some of the problems for those affected. It also found that they could not be explained by environmental or medical conditions.” So when we get “non-standard antennas could create the effects on the human body. Such a source could be concealed and require only moderate power. It could also travel through the air and through walls of buildings” my mind had completed the hypothesis. A combination of light AND white noise. I wonder if they ever considered measuring and collecting the setting of white noise. The best solutions are the simplest ones. Consider Tinnitus a decade ago, it was casually dismissed and the people who had it had to grow a pair. Now consider the application of White noise and light, the light source cannot be managed, but there is this large disc in the sky that does it for us and the less elements that can be considered, the harder the cure will be. Those exposed to above certain stress levels and white noise could burn through synapses. Now, this is not fatal, it does not kill you but it will make you sick. You can heal from this, but the synapse is burned, it has an effect and I am speculating that it leads to reduced abilities in focus and concentration. Consider intelligence personnel and staff officers hit with that, it could impair armies.
So this is not IP, it is merely a fictive setting (for a story for example) to keep my mind busy. So thank you Gordon Corera for giving me this idea. Have a great day and consider that writers like John Le Carre started with the simplest of concepts to make the greatest of stories. Or in my disturbed language Hasta Lasagna! And do not skip the cheesy part.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 