#cycles talk

[thewintercorner]

minor flashing lights and loud noises in video

on undesired villainy

villainy by circumstance, by popular consensus; villainy that is not willing but assigned.

the perjured city - hélène cixous // born in winter - mischeviousdog // holyaches (twt) // i, minotaur - natalie diaz // aglasssunflower (ig) // ancestral memory - hari alluri // insurgent - veronica roth // a hora de estrela - clarice lispector // pinterest // paaigr_ (ig) // teacher's pet - hieu minh nyugen // pinterest // pinterest // have you been long enough at the table - leslie sainz // luvicle (ig) // anna kamieńska // unknown // how's that house that raised you - lev st. valentine // mehummm (ig) // timelapse of the future - melodysheep // elektra - sophokles // warframe npc dialogue // bonfire - aleksei adlexe panfilov // vomitpants (ig) // deaf republic - ilya kaminsky // anasabdin // nemesisyphus // e horne and j comeau

[thewintercorner]

the point of no return.

you say you've atoned for disciple, that you never want to go back, but all of this feels awfully familiar, doesn't it?

thewintercorner (twt) // sidewalk - richard siken // ryebreadgf // bone deep - m.v.e. // fridayiminlovemp3 // ? // valtsv // thewintercorner // ? // ultima thule - henrik saxgren (bg), a hora da estrela - clarice lispector, grief lessons: four plays by euripides - anne carson (transl.), after the movie - marie howe // (deactivated) and mysteryteacup // peter pan - j.m. barrie // tags on transfemstalin's post // catherynne m. valente // ultima thule - henrik saxgren (bg), white oleander - janet finch, frankenstein - mary shelley, herman melville - w.h. auden, twinnedpeaks, daphne du maurier - jamacia inn // rollercoasterwords // lullabies for little criminals - heather o'neill // dysphoresque // vomitpants (ig) // cogmented (??) // ? // the broken pomegranate - alexei antonov (bg), ?, ephesians 4:26, ?, ancestral memory - hari alluri // half-light - frank bidart // thucydides // long term nuclear waste warning message // fatum betula (video game) // charlotte ager // aint.praasha (ig) // ?

[thewintercorner]

"unstoppable force is more than just what i was. it's who i am."

on stormz's cycles, and choosing to find beauty in the fact he always gets back up.

introduction of emily wilson's translation of the iliad // x // fairytale scars - alice van duuren // fragmentsof-mysoul // x // exit, pursued - dalton day // the myth of sisyphus and other essays - albert camus // desktop-alt-f4 // x // disechanted-killjoy // noshiepic + richard siken (twt) // desktop-alt-f4 // robert frost // x // aridante // x // x // bird by bird - anne lamott // x // anasabdin *x - all screenshots from this stormz stream

[thewintercorner]

feeling so insane about stormz and his weird fucked up relationship with morality and humanity and being good. there's some part of him that wants to listen to q, wants to be the person they imagine he could be, but he knows better. he's been around this cycle enough times to know better.

he has tried being good and genuine and human and it has gotten him nothing but enemies and swords to the chest. he has watched dumb care so much again and again and try so hard to be good over and over and it has never saved them. he saw how successful they immediately were when they stopped trying to uphold their morals. he has watched squid dominate the server so absurdly entirely, unimpeded by his fickle heart.

he got a taste of it for himself in disciple and has never really been the same, has he? revenge turned him heartless and squid gave him a guiding hand, and it was so damn easy, wasn't it, to rise to the top? so easy to get the entire server under his thumb, following his demands. it's the kind of thing that makes a man wonder, what purpose does honor serve? what does good matter when it won't put you on top?

but dumb cared. dumb cared about being good. so stormz fell in line, fell back into that supporting role despite knowing how to be so much greater.

but here, there's no dumb, is there? and stormz is tired. tired of being sidekick, tired of trudging down the path destiny's laid for him, tired of being just another pawn in the game whoever's in power is playing. he knows how to be the arbiter of his own fate - he's known for so agonizingly long. isn't it about damn time to use it?

gah. ghrahrahrahrahgh. here's a compliation of my chat messages from tongiht. im going to go Insane.

[thewintercorner]

are you happy with this?

of course not, but i can't say i'm surprised. he's never been willing to wait things out, and always been one to act too quickly. always so close to heaven, close enough to get a glimpse of it on the way back down. so terribly complicit in his own cycles.

i hope he knows that having a ghost you can still see in passing is worse. i hope he knows that he will be haunted not just by visions of home in the eyes of other people but by flashes of shadows in the corners of rooms, in maybe-there footsteps in the grass behind him, in every off-time sound of a breaking block as he builds his new base. i hope he knows that the walls of that place will come lined in regret and grief and aching, that he'll never be able to live in that place without wondering if it could've been different. i hope he knows that having new ghosts doesn't make the old ones go away. i hope he knows ghosts don't die twice, no matter how hard he tries to kill him.

i asked you the other day, "is there a difference between true predetermination and a self-fulfilling prophecy?" i talked about how self-fulfilling prophecies function on someone having such a firm belief that they are fated to follow a certain path that they refuse to acknowledge any attempts to turn them from it, believe they're futile, pointless, and foolish. are you starting to see what i meant?

how are you meant to save someone who doesn't want to be saved?

(ouroboros marches ever on.)

[thewintercorner]

I don't think you can really call Spoke and Mapicc worldenders... Spoke's on a different level.

i 100% agree that spoke is on a different level!! however, i also think zam and mapicc (more as a package deal than individually) classify as worldenders for the following reasons:

at the end of season 4 (and kind of just in general for zam honestly), i firmly believe spoke was training them to become worldenders in his place, which is a belief i held prior to season five and i think is supported by the fact spoke didn't take up a worldender role at all in season five (potentially as a test for them to see if they could do it on their own)

even though the world didn't actually end at their hands in season five, they (and bacon) were still the main driving forces behind the end of the world. they were the ones that made the deal with wemmbu to turn the world hardcore (and also likely knew that wemmbu's other policies would contribute to the end of the world), they recruited clown and ro, they were the ones pulling the strings in the background.

in general, they understand the cycles and why it's important that the world ends eventually, which i believe is an essesntial part of being a true worldender. (mapicc understands this primarily in terms of violence, but i still think it gives him most of the picture, even if it's tainted red.)

mapicc and zam are absolutely not as strong of worldenders as spoke; frankly, i think no one ever will be. spoke's understood most of this cycles stuff since he ended season 2, and anyone else who wants to take his spot is playing a pretty monumental game of catchup. but that doesn't mean that other people aren't worldenders, and it doesn't mean that zam and/or mapicc aren't worldenders. they didn't (and probably never will) do it in the grand, nearly single-handed fashion that spoke is able to, but they did still end the world. they may not understand the cycles as inherently and deeply as spoke does, but zam has a pretty damn good idea of them, and there is no one that understands violence on lifesteal better than mapicc. they'll never be spoke, but you gotta give them credit where it's due.

[thewintercorner]

I saw your post discussing worldenders, and then I saw a someone else's post pointing out how the 1000 withers in season 2 was PARROT'S IDEA, and Spoke was the one who was trying to reel Parrot back, and then I saw Parrot's unstable video (hunted by minecraft's deadliest players), and I had this lightbulb moment and I NEEEEEEED to talk to someone abt this even though I might be wrong and just sleep deprived

Parrot could technically count as Lifesteal's first worldender.

Except in his case, his motives for being a worldender would not be out of understanding lifesteal's cycles, but out of pure rage and desire for vengeance. I've always thought that his biggest character flaw was his tunnel vision towards his ambitions, but having him tunnel in on vengeance against Clown in S2 basically set off all of the cycles that came afterwards because of how devastating it was. I was heavily reminded of this fact while watching Parrot's unstable video.

While not on Spoke or even Mapic/Zam levels, I'd argue that Parrot was the progenitor of even the concept of worldenders. Sure, Clown became the deadliest player, and he dominated the server for a whole, making it super competetive, but Parrot's revenge path set the tone of revenge and destruction for the rest of the seasons after that, and that was how Spoke became a worldender, and how all the lifesteal season endings after that became just as chaotic.

hello anon i have been thinking about this ask for weeks

i've also gone back through and watched spoke's s2 mega vid a couple times recently and my thoughts mainly revolve around how you define a worldender (in terms of lifesteal, at least). if you just take the word at face value, you get something approximating:

world: a planet or universe; in the context of minecraft, a server

ender: one who ends things

worldender: one who ends worlds

which is a totally fair definition! i mean, it's what the word says, right? by that definition, parrot is absolutely a worldender; he's the guy that (co-)ended the world.

however, in the context of lifesteal, i think it's important to define the term a little differently. that definition technically includes whichever admin pulls the plug on the server itself; if you wanted to stretch it, you could even say the withers themselves are that kind of worldender.

we could restrict it to people who do things, who carry out their actions and/or lives, in pursuit of intentionally ending the world. that's a lot closer to what we mean, and is also a valid definition! parrot also falls under this; he was definitely trying to end the world.

however, i'd like to make one further distinction: between people ending the world because they want to and people doing it because they have to -- in other words, people doing it in service of the cycles. you can kind of think of the distinction as worldkillers and worldenders; worldkillers do it of their own accord and desires, as a choice they alone make. worldenders do it because they know they must; someone has to put the world down, lest it agonizingly wither away and bring all of them down with it.

this is where parrot splits off (in my view). i think there's a fundamental difference between his motives and spoke's, even if the result is the same. i don't know that spoke really wanted to end the world, but he saw where things were going and knew someone had to. parrot wanted the world dead.

essentially what i'm saying is parrot was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. he did end the world, but he wasn't doing it as a Lifesteal Worldender with an understanding of the cycles and why that was a good thing to do, why it was necessary. to me, part of the essence of being a true worldender is having this understanding, being able to meditate on your decision and still come to the same conclusion time and time again, world after world. parrot isn't able to do that.

i also think it's interesting how he relies on spoke to see his vision unfold. i think this speaks to some broader havocduo dynamics, for one, but it also rings to me as parrot knowing that he is not able to end the world himself. he has the vision, has the plan, but he knows it's out of his scope. i don't think it's lack of dedication, either; parrot was the driving force behind so many of the poggies' big traps over the course of the season. and yet, he tells spoke "you're the only one who can do this."

i think (whether this is something parrot knew or not) this comes down to really a simple difference between them: parrot wants an apocalypse. spoke's willing to become one.

you can kind of feel this in the final fight. parrot's concerned about dying, still, about getting jumped and losing hearts; spoke's getting hunted for much of the time as well, but he doesn't care as long as he gets the withers down. parrot says at one point "spoke, look what you've done!" and spoke replies "this is our mission! our mission is complete." parrot also continuously mentions m.o.b as their enemies in this, as if the reality that this event is much, much bigger than their war hasn't really set it.

the fact that spoke goes out to his own final wither really exemplifies this, i think. dying to your own apocalypse is an extraordinary show of acceptance and of relinquishment, of saying "i did all this and it will end the world and i am proud." parrot is still fighting to stay alive the entire time, even after the final wither. spoke goes out with it, a death for a birth, because he knows his work is done, and he knows the world will die, and he chooses to go out on his own terms instead of fighting for life on a sinking ship. parrot wanted the apocalypse, but he wasn't ready to die in it, wasn't ready for it to take down his allies just the same as his enemies. spoke was.

i guess as a nice, succinct way to summarize all of this: parrot wanted to end a war, definitively. spoke understood he was ending the entire world.

as a final note, i don't want to discredit parrot as the genesis. i believe that every blossoming worldender needs a catalyst to push them to their full revelation and potential, and i think parrot very much acted as that for spoke. parrot was, in many ways, the reason season 2 ended, but he is no more responsible for the apocalypse itself than the chemical signals that tell the puppet master's hand to move.

(these are, of course, only my opinions; believe whatever you want to about the block guys :))

[thewintercorner]

guess who's back to yap about vitalasy!

looking so deeply at s2 recently got me back onto the worldender and cycles analysis grind but from a different perspective and ohhh man has that been fruitful

i've always had this feeling about vitalasy that he got the cycles but didn't Get them. he saw the cycles, could identify them as they were happening, but didn't understand why -- except he did seem to understand why? okay, so maybe he gets why but he doesn't get enough of the indomitability of that why to know it's impossible to overcome it. except he knows when to give up. and he knows when the big sacrifices are necessary and effective. and--

point is, i always had this weird dissonance about vitalasy that i couldn't ever really overcome. for pretty much all of the time i've watched lifesteal, i've operated off of an assumption that reckoning with the cycles, understanding them, would inevitably lead a player to become a worldender. in my mind, there was no world in which a player saw their world for what it was - constantly decaying, dying from the moment it comes into existence - and doesn't then seek to put it out of its misery as quickly as they can.

and yet, there was vitalasy. there was this player that fought so hard against the end of the world, and yet seemed to understand on some deep level that there was only so much he could do. here was this player that started preparing to fight decimation almost as soon as he learnt their name. here was this player, ever self-sacrificial, who always seemed to know exactly when and what to sacrifice to let the server live on.

he acted with such calculation and talked about the server in a way that clearly spoke to at least some understanding of the cycles -- certainly much more than the average player, at least, especially in season 3. and yet, he wasn't a worldender - and yet, he fought to save it, over and over again. why the anomaly?

then, i watched spoke's s2 video again, and something about worldending clicked. the thing about worldending is that it is a wildly selfless task. to end the world, you must be willing to give up everything you have ever cared about, everything you have ever loved, in pursuit of a more graceful end to the world that it would give itself. and it's not just giving up; you have to be willing to kill, to annihilate all those things. it is selfless destruction of your entire existence. nothing you care about can remain.

it raises a question: where's the compassion? where's the room for it, for humanity, in an act like that? the answer, i think, is simple: there really isn't any.

turn back to vitalasy. here is this player, this person, with so much love to give that it seems to spill out of his heart at every opportunity. vitalasy loves fiercely, loves his friends and his home and his server. he loves all of it so much i couldn't imagine him ever ending the world.

worldending is selfless. selflessness is a choice one has to make. therefore, is there not another choice? can one not choose instead to be selfish?

im going to start quoting the original flow of thoughts (written in the back of my linguistics notebook; i loveee not paying attention in class) here, because i think i wrote it better then than i could rephrase it now:

"perhaps there is another option: to be selfish. to reckon with the cycles and the inevitable decay, to look in the eyes of death and still choose your friends. to foresee the apocalypse is not to accept it; by many moral codes, it would be a an act of monumental apathy to sit back and idly watch - or worse yet, fight to accelerate - the end of the world as you've seen it. understanding the cycles is a predisposition, not the diagnosis. to quote jacob geller (go watch his vids if you haven't!!), some people can more easily imagine learning to die that learning to fight. in the context of lifesteal, it's understandable. but amongst the war and fire, there is still love. vi loves fiercely, vibrantly, stubbornly. of course he is going to fight. of course he will use the reckoning to understand how best to fight the cycles. yes, they are inevitable. yes, he fights for an infinite end, an eternal battle. is an extra day of loving not worth it? he claws moment from the death grip of the reality he exists in because the love is worth it. the sacrifices he makes are worth it because he's buying them more time. the world is cruel, but he refuses to be part of the cruelty."

tl;dr: the other option is to let the love win over the despair, to fight to live instead of fighting to die.

this is what vitalasy does. in knowing the cycles, he turns himself into a more effective weapon against them. he's self-sacrificial to a fault, but it becomes an advantage when he uses that to take the moral cost, take the heart cost, to take his entire life and fight the fight that no one else is ready to touch. vitalasy is so often villianized because he uses the same methods as the bad guys; the part people miss is that he uses their techniques against them. yes, he dupes in s4; how else are they meant to fight the other dupers when the end the world? yes, he feeds one more death to decimation in his sacrifice at the end of s3 -- because it lets six others get revived.

there is not only dread. in the darkness, there is light. vitalasy just eluded me for so long because he was the first to see it.

(there is a whole other discussion to be had on the implications of this on oath!zam, especially in light of recent events. i plan to write a companion post to this sometime soon going through all of those :))