1 brand-new creepy little horror story for you to find!
you have no idea how much effort this has taken!
if you're new to the Sunsetters Project, you'll find a thorough and very-readable summary on the website! welcome to the midi machine!!
if you're a returning listener, you'll find a whopping 32 of the 40 old songs are new again! plus the new stuff! and just look at that website, seriously!!
guys this has been a nuts two months, I am so tired!! I did it all for the art!!
this is The Dream Machine, an indie game I played back when it was new (and followed as it was developed), one that I think is flat-out one of the best point-and-click games ever made. and the story in general, I think is one of the best stories in a video game, as it's just so damn solid, vivid, and.. fucking cool speculative... literary... sci-fi.
like. I love this damn game. absolutely love it. it left a hell of an impression on me.
but nobody else played it. I don't know if anybody else even really heard of it.
so, I've now got Nathan to play through it. I was there with him, to help where I could, and to enjoy his reactions. and, Nathan being Nathan, we recorded it all.
so! yeah! for the next several days, Nathan will be uploading the full playthrough. today's episode is Chapter 1, "We are like the dreamer."
I saw an anonymous ask that got sent to an artist I follow that was along the lines of "I need an outlet for my stress, and being mean to people makes me feel good" and I would really like to say. to anyone who is mean to others for the thrill of it. I understand you completely and I was EXACTLY the same a few years ago. you're right!! it DOES feel good!!!!
and then you feel even worse than you did before. you're not "letting off steam", you're building a dependence on bullying, and you WILL end up with misery as your default emotional state. even if you don't behave this way to your loved ones, it WILL start showing.
I've had to distance myself from friends whose main form of entertainment seemed to be upsetting strangers over harmless disagreements. play a stressful video game. join a sports team. get into media analysis and get angry at a shitty tv show. there are ways to blow off steam that won't make you a miserable person who has a hard time finding ways to relax.
if I got out of that "get angry -> take it out on people -> feel good -> feel worse and need an outlet -> repeat" cycle, that means it's possible.
as soon as my efforts to escape that cycle started paying off, I was NOTICEABLY less stressed, I was VISIBLY healthier, and the urge to fight with people died down.
these days, I'm quick to delight, I find it very easy to be kind to people, and I can calm myself down before jumping to conclusions. and I can tell you with absolute certainty that life feels IMMEASURABLY more enjoyable this way. my good days outnumber my bad days 10 to 1 despite the fact that I still deal with the same things I used to, and those bad days are much easier than they used to be anyway.
but how do you even escape? what's the first step?
the next time you find yourself itching to lash out at someone to get that good rush of anger, try taking it to private dms with a friend who gets you! this stops the person you're angry at from responding and continuing the argument, which helps that reward-response feeling fizzle out.
from there, try a high-focus-high-stress fun activity instead of talking about it AT ALL. like I said earlier! video games! horror movies! go for a bike ride at full speed! let the cortisol and adrenaline or whatever it might be course through you until you feel calmer.
once you've got that down as a skill, you could even try flipping that anger on its head. MAKE something out of it. someone's artstyle pisses you off? make your own art the way YOU think it should be. someone hates something you like? talk with your friends about how that same something brings you joy, and why!
best of luck. been there. this isn't meant to be patronising or condescending. I don't know better than you. I only know how good it feels, and how bad it can be for you and the people you care about.
starting June 4th, every day until June 13th, Nate At Night Gaming will be posting a new video co-starring me. these also aren't the only videos as such that are being produced. I'm basically getting Nathan to play a number of video games that I think are worth a damn.
this first batch of videos, from the 4th to the 13th, will be The Dream Machine. full game, start to finish. Nathan voices main protagonist Victor Neff, I voice everyone else. Nathan plays the game and solves the puzzles, I give very occasional nudges. alongside Glittermitten Grove (which Nathan played back in January), this is another of my favorite games of all time, and another one that I think has been criminally overlooked.
expect good writing, good horror, and some of the best visuals you could ever expect.
[REALLY NORMAL AND WELL-ADJUSTED VOICE] well you never know maybe it COULD have saved me. if i ever actually achieved perfection. it could have happened then. if i was actually ever enough. Which i was not
It is well known that in Super Mario 64, the mirror room in Peach's Castle is not an actual mirror (since the Nintendo 64 would be incapable of creating real-time reflections in this manner) and is instead merely a copy of the room behind a pane of glass.
The mirror side of the room contains Mirror Mario, who is a separately coded object from Mario and as such is subject to several discrepancies that make him perform different actions from the real Mario under specific circumstances.
The biggest discrepancy is what happens when Mario actually enters the Snowman's Land wall/painting. Since the real Mario unloads at that point, and Mirror Mario is programmed to copy whatever real Mario is doing (but cannot himself unload), he assumes a standard pose (what would be a T-pose in most games, but is an A-pose in this one) instead.
Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: LooygiBros
I should be doing more to appreciate the lack of marvel movies in today's popular culture. I once yearned for marvel movies to have this level of irrelevance. They used to feel almost ozymandian, like an empire that had no beginning and no end. and now tony stark iron man is naught but two vast and trunkless legs of stone.
I got sick of seeing Elon Musk build Hell on Earth via Twitter, so instead I did a long twitter thread uniting an outline of my understanding of life's metaphysical cosmology, at least the broadest possible strokes.
I will spare you the fate of having to go on Twitter, so here is the ramble in full. Consider this the first fruits from my Literally Decade-Long hermitude, which I have wanted to share for a very long time.
*ahem*
I. Inferno
I do not believe Heaven or Hell are real places. I don't think even the Bible believes that. I think that "they are real places" is a persistent rumour that is very lucrative, and this is why it has persisted.
I am interested in the metaphor, though. Especially Aquinas/Dante's.
In the Comedy, Dante shows us a vivid Hell that functions as an epic metaphor. It is a mental state where you are surrounded by your own behaviour, where you get to experience what it feels like to be on the receiving end. And it lasts as long as you hate it.
This is described as longer spans of time depending on the severity of your sin, because the more you act without consideration, the more committed you become to denying your responsibility in it. It becomes harder to break that mental state, because your entire world will crash.
Getting that treatment back to you, in that mental state of denial, does not feel like your own behaviour reflected back at you. It feels like unfair punishment. It feels like woe.
But sooner or later, an identity will realise. Will accept responsibility (become penitent).
This Hell is a metaphor. No human should deliberately design such a system for use on others, as in the end all they're doing with that system is treating others in a way they themselves are afraid of. Committing "sin." Building up their own bad karma, their own sentence.
With penitence eventually comes Purgatory. Dante's Purgatory is an isolated island on Earth-- it basically is Actual Life On Earth, rendered poetically. It is the default state of being.
So let me outline that for you.
II. Purgatory
Purgatory is an island with a path spiraling up a mountain. The penitent washes up on the shores at the bottom, and it is their choice whether they begin the climb. You could live on that shore your whole life. But there's not much to do, in the end.
So you begin the climb. And the climb is defined by scenarios that are not unlike Hell: You encounter your own behaviour given back to you still, and it can still hurt, but now you're no longer stuck thinking it's a prison. You have a chance to let it exist, consider implication.
Because the truth is, Purgatory is not your behaviour thrown back at you. It's just.. behaviour. At any point you can settle in a different section of the mountain, but this natural world was not built for your comfort, so sooner or later you will want to move on. Dukkha.
(The Dukkha Aside: "Life is suffering," the Buddhists say, but they don't really say that, do they? It's not suffering, it is dukkha. Dukkha is mildly annoying. Dukkha is the sound of a misaligned wheel on the cart you push, going dukkha-dukkha-dukkha.
(You can put up with dukkha. You can put up with the mildly inconvenient, for a long time even! You build up an identity of "actually I LIKE dukkha!" But sooner or later, it builds up. It drives you crazy, hearing the dukkha-dukkha-dukkha day in and day out.
(Sooner or later, the dukkha dismantles your constructed identity. You DON'T like dukkha, actually. You lash out, or withdraw, you take drastic action and seek change. Your identity dies. And a new one is born. This is samsara, the cycle of rebirth driven by dukkha.)
So you see, you have to move on eventually. Maybe many years later. Maybe you outright die, and then your children who you raised to the same mental level as you now decide to carry on where you left off, they carry on the spirit of your identity and climb that mountain.
Because, if there's a mountain, there must be a top, right? And if there's a Hell, could there be a Heaven? What would it look like?
So, you move on. Your climb grows harder. You are faced with more scenarios to settle into, and other people who behave like you have before.
You must remember what is at stake here: If you lash out against these people who remind you of yourself, you risk your mind dropping back into denial of responsibility, and therefore into Hell.
And who knows how long it will last this time?
So the theme of Purgatory is patience.
It is a long climb. You have no idea.
But there is, in fact, a top. And it is surrounded by a wall of fire. You must move decisively, swiftly, with confidence and trust that the fire stops, in order to breach it.
Good luck.
And on the other side…
..is not Heaven.
It is the Garden of Eden.
It is an earnest innocent state of mind, where you can do anything you put your mind to.
It is, metaphorically, Living In The Now.
And one wrong move will send you back out and into Hell.
It is a delicate summit, but so sweet.
And, interestingly, this is where the ascent stops.
You cannot get to Heaven in Dante's model. No living human will ever touch Paradise.
Because Paradise is, in fact, outer space. It is the music of the spheres, the geometry of the stars and planets.
It is the Order to All Things.
You climb the mountain of Purgatory because the Garden of Eden, living in the now, is the only place where you can most clearly see the geometry up there, the only mental state where you can earnestly meditate on it all.
Paradise has not changed. We still believe in space.
III. Paradise
I've covered the Dante model of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, which all stem from his studies of the theories of Aquinas. (And my understanding stems from studying the works of Joyce, who had studied Blake, Bruno, and Dante. It's a long line of Catholic heretics.)
In the middle, I brushed upon three Sanskrit concepts: karma, dukkha, and samsara. This is no coincidence. As Blake notoriously said, All Religions Are The Same / There Are No Natural Religions. One can find the same themes across cultures, and it's always heretical to the Church.
Now I am going to focus more heavily on my (limited but open) understanding of the Buddhist/Hindu cosmology, because the metaphysics fit together beautifully. (My understanding is more on the Buddhist side of things, but they are sibling religions.)
There is, see, a model of life: The cycle of dying identities being born anew, only to suffer from hindrances, restraints, and the universal constant that is dukkha. There are also concepts which are traditionally translated as "Hells" and "Heavens," but those terms confuse.
There is a metaphysical Mountain, far from any known continent but still on the Earth, a Mountain which it is possible to climb but very difficult. This is Mount Meru, and at the top is where the Earth's "gods" live.
(Compare with the Purgatory metaphor.)
And there are many Hells, each a host to different kinds of punishment for foolish behaviour.. and different kinds of "supernatural" being who reside in each one.
The supernatural beings, even the Gods, are all subject to karma and the cycle of samsara, just like we.
Consider the theory that all beings are the same Identity on a long and complex cycle of rebirth.
(And compare with Einstein's idea that the entire Universe is all the same electron on a long and winding path through time. Science and religion are not at odds.)
(The Church and religion are at odds. That's heresy. That's history. That's humanity.)
Now, let's try applying metaphor to this ongoing cosmology: If you are in one of the "Hells," you can practise good karma and hope to be reborn in a better one, perhaps even Earth.
If you accept the responsibility of your behaviour, you can begin the climb back to balance.
The thing is, the actual layout of the cosmology is more about the roles each identity plays. To be "reborn on Earth" isn't about physical location, it's about embracing society. The Earthly roles are things like Police, Tradesman, Judge. It was never literal rebirth, see?
The Hellish roles are people who would also fit within Dante's metaphorical Hell, people who have built an entire worldview at odds with reality and must suffer in it, with company, until they are finally so sick of it that they drastically destroy their own identity.
The Hellish roles are often people who have convinced themselves that karma can be bought, that people should be gamed, that profit must come first. Those people can only hope they will be reborn as something better, like a murderer, or even a drug addict.
These roles last long.
It is the Earthly roles which do not last long. A healthy society is fleeting and fragile, and the kind of healthy mindset necessary for its maintenance is constantly at risk.
The healthiest Yuga (societal era!) is the shortest one. By an order of magnitudes. It ends in fire.
The number of Yugas (4) is, like the Dante model of our solar system, best appreciated as a poetic device. It can be superseded with modern perspective. It's the rhythm of the model that counts, that still holds profound value. And this was undoubtedly the point, as poetry.
Like, I've given some rough outlines here, so you can go read some Wikipedia pages or (gasp!) dig into Actual Texts if you want the specifics. I also paraphrased Dante.
I'm nearly done. I want to skip ahead to the highest Gods.
So the highest Earthly gods live atop Mount Meru, yes? They live the longest, they see the cycles of society plainly. They too can be seen as metaphors for Actual Roles even you can fill.
They too are subject to samsara. They sin and are reborn into lesser identities.
But higher?
Higher than them are some really long-lasting identities, represented by gods who live in the clouds above the Earth, and higher than them are gods who live in the stars, and this keeps going. Taken as metaphor, it's more like a taxonomy of identity.
And they all die.
(Specifically, their lifespans start to match the lifespans of entire societies, then entire religions, then entire continents. These are identities who cannot be killed by normal means; they die when Yugas end in fire, wind, water. They die when societies die. Or concepts.)
Somewhere far up the taxonomy, with the longest lifespan yet-- As Long As The Potential Lifespan Of Our Universe-- is a special role. This one is so special, in fact, that I'm deliberately spacing out my explanation into multiple tweets.
This is the role of, perhaps, the First Identity. The first mind to notice itself. This one naturally came to the conclusion that it had created all of reality. We'll call it #1.
#1 outlives all planets, all life, all matter. And #1 came before all of us.
As #1 came before all of us, it naturally believed we came from #1. And as we came after #1 and had no other source to listen to, we naturally believed we came from #1. Nothing bad happened because of this belief. It's just that: Just a belief, an hypothesis.
Well. Except, something bad did happen, didn't it?
#1 was not the only identity born to this taxonomy, was just the first one.
Maybe #2 created us, but #1 convinced #2 that #1 created #2, so #2 gave #1 absolute sovereignty. And so sin was born.
#1 decided, "okay there are other #'s out there, but they must be on a lower Heaven/taxonomy than me, because I created them. they are NOT gods, they are cherubs, angels, satyrs, sefirot, they are Satan, they are the Son and the Holy Ghost.
"Only I am the Father."
Yes, this is the taxonomy of the Abrahamic God as seen by other religions. It is not a definite story, either; this is literally just a supposition, a model for how the first identities COULD HAVE behaved, if they were anything like us. This supposition came from rigorous reason.
And.
And.
Even that God will die. It will be the last to die, killed with the cold death of our Universe, and then it will be reborn as something lesser. Karma necessitates this. Samsara can go no higher.
(neaaaarly done….)
Samsara goes no higher. The cycle of death and rebirth can only ever get you as high as the Abrahamic God.
But there are higher identities. These ones are ones I could not find definite explanations for in English; I only have my own reasoning based on little details.
These are identities who are perhaps better seen as pure concepts, each with incredible lifespans of their own (nothing is truly immortal), but they are all still identities, they were once like us and have transcended samsara somehow, somewhen.
There are identities with form, though their forms are nothing like our definitions of "form." They basically test the boundaries of form itself.
It is possible that they inspired the Universe itself to take form, though they too were inspired by the Universe.
There are identities without form, who have no interest in manifesting form at all. They are embodiments of a beautiful paradox, finite minds who consider infinity: a finite Universe contemplating infinite space, a finite Mind contemplating infinite consciousness.
An extant being contemplating the illusion of existence, that our Universe exists yet in a valid and real sense contains no thing at all.
And my favourite, who I know only by the name of "Neither perception nor lack of perception," which is still a type of consciousness.
I feel the only appropriate response to this is silence.
Pause with me, would you?
…………..
These are the enigmas of our existence, in layers upon layers of rhythms, roles, conflicts (beautiful failures), cataclysms (tragic failures), and concepts (O the Gods!).
Follow the patterns, and you have Life in poetry.
I do not believe ours is a multiverse except perhaps across time. I believe ours is a 4D material Universe masking an 11D ideal Universe. (doesn't have to be specifically 11. that's just where my brain's limits are at right now.)
But that's me drawing a line somewhere.
Frankly, I am still ignorant on every religion. I probably have a competent foothold on Christianity? But little else. I would love to meet someone who can better clarify the nuances and beauty of either Hinduism or Buddhism; I would love the chance to address my ignorance there.
Of course, I am entitled to none of it; teaching is a considerable effort, and I am capable of learning on my own.
I'm just nervous, is all. My understanding will likely remain within the parameters of my background, and I want to engage without stepping on toes.
Because Ideas are Beautiful.
Ideas are so freaking Beautiful.
huh. rediscovered this thing. completely forgot about this thing. that prelude above the "Keep reading" looks pretty pretentious, but, yeah no wow that was literally what I'd said it was. pretty sure I wrote this when I had first stopped smoking weed, but then I picked the habit back up again after, only to stop for good. which would explain why I don't actually remember writing this ramble.
it checks out, though! it still describes how I see the world. hell, it's smarter than how I currently see the world. I'm gonna have to study my own damn words and take wisdom from them, apparently. but of course it's all processed ideas from older sources.
reblogging this ramble to keep it alive, so I can hopefully continue to rediscover it in the future.
hi. I posted about The Circus yesterday, and in that post I mentioned The Concert. I didn't go into it then, partly because I've been posting about it on my tumblr in the last like month, but I think it would be beneficial to talk more plainly about it.
so there's this thing, The Sunsetters Project. it started with a series of ideas: "I like to write stories" > "I like stories that have music lyrics in them" > "music lyrics for all my favorite bands are copyrighted, so maybe I'll just make up some lyrics in my stories and pretend they're from a band" > "I guess I should make a little rough plan of what this band's albums are, their tracklists and stuff" > "hey Jordan this is your best friend Lindsay, I like your ideas, and I think I'm going to do something wild and create the actual music for this band" > "hey Lindsay this is Jordan, can I help" > YEARS OF WORK LATER > "hey wow Lindsay we have somehow written six hours of prog rock music. I think I am going to make a website to present it all in a neat organized fashion."
that band is Sunsetters. it has kinda taken over my life, I focus more on it than I do on the stories their lyrics were supposed to enhance. I kinda care very very deeply about it. it's the most fun I've ever had creating something, and I've created many things.
Sunsetters are not real. Sunsetters music is not "real" either, it is polished MIDI music. at first, this was just a necessity of our writing software, but as time went by I got kinda good at polishing the MIDI to sound pretty damn good, and I realized, "wait, I like midi music, I want it to stay this way." I grew up with computer games (like Doom, with its rock music rendered charmingly in midi form) and video games (like Nintendo games, which used limited music channels on old hardware to produce music that was layered and really sounds sufficient as it is). I always had an interest in video game music, how it was actually made. midi music, this particular sound that Sunsetters music was gradually standardizing into a consistent style, satisfied me. it didn't look like a substitute or a rough draft to me, it looked like its own thing, its own art.
and I also have, for years, had this idea that Sunsetters music could be visualized in a particular "video game-y" way. I was thinking of one reference in particular, one video game series that loved to play with music.
I was thinking of MOTHER.
all three MOTHER games have sequences where characters "perform" music on stage. in the first game, it's just the player characters singing and dancing, but starting with the second game, there's a whole fictional band to follow: The Runaway Five.
the Runaway Five concerts in EarthBound are some of the most memorable and iconic in the game, arguably on the SNES as a whole. they play this charming 16-bit Blues Brothers music while the lead singers move around on stage. they even have like two or three different songs they play at different points. even though you know they're not literally playing the music (they're just sprites standing around as more BGM plays), you have no trouble playing pretend that you're really there attending a concert. and goddammit, it is so fun to get to pretend in that moment, it makes my heart go pit-a-pat.
the third game took this concept and really refined it, giving us a rock band called DCMC.
these concerts are absolute gems. you can tell the developers really wanted to capture the feel of live music-- there's sequences of changing stage lights, spotlights, dramatic darkness, and the actual character sprites are animated very well. MOTHER 3 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the DCMC are a part of that.
so, the point here being, I had some ideas swirling around in my brain. I had a website, I was learning the tricks of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and I had this whole fictional band-- specific characters!-- with a ton of midi music to work with. for years, I wanted to do one thing: make little sprites that bob up and down or something, a simple 1-2 animation toggle, as music plays.
and that's where The Concert came from.
that's The Concert in its current form, v1.8. eagle-eyed readers will notice that the sprites for the drum kit are straight-up traced from the DCMC drumkit. (for my first tests of this idea, I did literally use the DCMC sprites. and when I had to make the actual sunsetters sprites, I mean, that drumkit looks fine enough, I wasn't gonna be able to draw something better than that.)
one of the great things about midi music is computers already know how to interact with it. JavaScript can filter through a midi song, break it down into separate instrument tracks, and can recognize when notes are playing. so once I learned about Tone.js (the library that makes this whole thing work), well, it was off to the races. the guitarists (bass included) and the keyboards all follow the 1-2 animation toggle I mentioned earlier, their sprites go from "downstrum" to "upstrum" as each note in their track plays, so you literally get to see them play each note, you won't see them awkwardly playing while nothing is happening. (this perhaps looks odd for the keyboard, but, I am not an animator, I'm hardly even an artist, my goal here was to keep things Simple). the vocals operate a little differently, I think the jargon is they're a "key-driven schedule." the vocalist's mouth is either Open or it's Not, and it's mapped to the notes, so it's Open when there are vocal notes playing, and it's Not Open otherwise.
(the drums... *flips my hair nonchalantly* I may have gotten carried away with those. for some damn reason, I've become someone who pays a lot of attention to drums in the music I like, and I put a lot of care into the drums in Sunsetters songs. I'm not even a drummer. I think prog music is just like that, it brings that out of me. but also, I think in an animation context, the drums are the ones that can get away with laziness the least. they are very.. what-you-see-is-what-you-get. they needed to look right. so, I decided on a set of percussion, the pieces of the drum kit, that would each get its own separate "key-driven schedule." simplistically: the snare, the tom, the splash, the ride, and the kick drum. each of these trigger a "Hit" sprite only when the midi track calls for it. and there are patterns to this, a hierarchy of rules, as the drummer only has two hands. sometimes the songs are written with too many drum parts happening at once, like a snare and a ride and a crash will happen at once, and it sounds right in the song so it stays that way-- in the animation, in that case, the crash would take priority over the snare. stuff like that, there's rules. 60% of my time tinkering with The Concert is me tinkering with the drums. but the end result is a drum animation that I think looks compelling while still fundamentally being basic, like the rest of the band.)
lyrics are also a thing. that took the other 40% of my time. I had to manually write down all the lyrics and exact timestamps for them. it was a fucking pain. but I only needed to do it once, and it's all done. even the MOTHER games don't show us the lyrics when they're being sung! (and there's a handy "Lyrics: ON" button, the user can turn lyrics off if they want!)
so, like. that's The Concert. that's why and what it is. it brings a lot to this whole project. it's literally sprite animation, the sort I grew up with on newgrounds, just without flash. it's even mobile-friendly. it's.. so cool, to me. it is both a sign of and a contributor to my passion for this whole project.
(and the next thing The Concert needs, something the MOTHER games have but I don't yet, is a backdrop. we need to see Sunsetters on a stage. we need a light show too. and maybe some more features. those are all coming in v2.0, which is not done yet and won't be for a while, I have a specific release schedule in mind for it, it will release alongside Something Else I have in the works.)
(but even v1.8 is enough. and it will stay like this; v2.0 will basically be a separate page entirely. I do actually like having this version, with the sprites arranged symbolically on black. it lets you focus on each instrument as you please, nobody gets priority.)
it's all about playing pretend. The Sunsetters Project, in a real sense, is my tribute to the joy of playing pretend. it is, in fact, an art project exploring that space.
(if you want to visit The Concert for yourself, the URL is in its picture above.)
okay yeah the UK had a Fucking heatwave the last few days
I was more or less dead to the world, had to be. I did beat earthbound (I "beat" it when I was like 12, but I used cheats, so this was my first time actually.. beating it legitimately), so I've now beaten all three Mother games. and I also got back to Final Fantasy 1, which I have on switch. I'm about halfway through it I'd say. it's an interesting piece of history.
anyway today's better. the temperatures are earthly today. I can bear to go on my laptop today. might be able to get work done. or might just play more video games.
