The Codex of Aegis

Where is this guy?

2020-12-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

I wanted to give a long overdue update to anyone who happens to just stumble upon this blog in the future. I now write on my own domain at jacob-robinson.com, and you can catch up to all my current writing there. In addition, I've recently come out with Codex of Aegis: Stories 2013 - 2016. Those who look back in the archives of this blog might notice that I was planning to come out with a compilation. Well, here is that compilation, four years later -- with added content, of course. You can check it out at the link above. Have a good day!

Christmas at the Maratzzos

2017-12-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

If you haven’t been to Christmas at the Maratzzos, then you haven’t been at any Christmas at all.

Indeed, it was a splendid gathering for a splendid time of year. Often while purchasing supplies for the party, members of the Maratzzo blood would look upon other shoppers and silently look down at them with condescending glares, knowing that their Christmas get-together could not even come close to one that has been in esteemed practice for the past one hundred years.

However, this year all members of the Maratzzos knew it would be much different. It was not too long ago that Joseph Maratzzo, son of Don Maratzzo and next in line to be patriarch of the family, was released from the state prison. It was some time ago that Joseph raped and murdered a 14 year old girl of the bank of the Philamabury river. He was caught almost immediately, and was originally set to be sentenced to thirty years; however, lucky for him, Joseph’s father knew many people in the state legal system and his sentence was reduced to six.

Despite this, it wasn’t Joseph’s crime that was the problem. The Maratzzos have had a long history of running bad into the law – perhaps almost as long as their Christmas tradition – and so Joseph’s behavior could be easily excused. What was the real problem was Analissa Maratzzo, sister of Joseph, who for quite a few years now had been indoctrinated into a fledgling feminist movement. Analissa had known about Joseph’s felony and asked the family multiple times for him to not only be declined an invitation to the Christmas party, but also to be exiled from the family altogether – two punishments that carried much the same weight. Of course her pleas had fallen upon deaf ears, and eerily in the weeks coming up to the fateful Christmas gathering she had suddenly gone silent. Now was the night.

The first to arrive were cousins Pesco and Maribel. Pesco was a good friend of Joseph’s – their history extended much before Joseph’s prison sentence, and they in fact kept up their relationship via regular prison meetings. Maribel, born Maribel Shaufter, had been indoctrinated into the Maratzzos via marriage, and by this point had become used to their ways. She, much like Pesco, Don, and Don’s wife Maria, believed Joseph to actually be innocent, despite overwhelming evidence otherwise.

Ironically, the one person who believed this evidence was the next to show. Analissa came slung on the arms of her own boyfriend, Monticello, a hippy man from the west that her parents despised. Analissa herself said nothing off suspicion – in fact, she even gave her cousin Pesco a hug when she first saw him, which had always been seen as out of the ordinary, and likely the first hit that something was wrong.

After this followed some brief time where the family all got together in the living room to talk amongst one another. Monticello was introduced to Maribel by Analissa – though beyond that, she hardly said a word. Maria had thought to bring up Analissa’s disfavor towards Joseph multiple times, but continually decided against it. This all lead up to Joseph’s ultimate arrival.

He came with no one. He wore a fresh suit with a mahogany tie. His father was the first to greet him – then his mother, who embraced him with a warm hug. All this time Analissa stayed in the living room, never moving, waiting along until everyone else had finally gone into the dining room. She followed.

It was only when everyone finally settled that Don realized something was wrong. He turned toward Analissa to his right and in a gruff tone asked where Monticello was.

Analissa shrugged. “No idea, pa. Probably out having a smoke.”

“We’re about to have dinner and he’s out back having a smoke?”

“I’m not his mom.”

“I’m not saying you are, but he needs to be here. Go get his ass back.”

Joseph, who was aware of his sister’s distaste for him, perhaps tried to remedy the situation by siding with her and calming his father down. “I’m sure it won’t take him too long. Let’s just start now, alright?”

As agitated as Don was, he couldn’t help agreeing with his favorite son. And yet, as dinner went on, Monticello continued to be absent. By the end of the dinner, both Don and Maria seemed completely agitated. While they were distracted, Analissa tapped on Joseph and Pesco, who were sitting together.

“Can I talk to you both, for a bit? In private.”

Pesco knew what was coming, though perhaps Joseph was a bit more ignorant. Though Pesco tried to convince his cousin not to go through with it, Analissa had rushed them just enough that Pesco had no time to do it. And so the three made their way to the garage.

Perhaps a more romantic writer would say that, in the end, Joseph got what he deserved. But I am not a romantic – I, in all honesty, am more of a realist, and can say with complete certainty that Joseph Pescetti Maratzzo spent his last moments on Earth choking on a mixture of lead, vomit, and his own blood.

Pesco squirmed back into a corner while Analissa held the gun shakily in her hand.

“What the fuck, are you crazy? What are you thinking?” Pesco no longer seemed to have the mental stability to bargain with his captor. Though, as it appeared, Analissa herself didn’t quite know what to do either.

“I’m doing exactly what needs to be done, Pesco. I know injustice when I see it. I’m sorry you couldn’t see it the same way.”

Time stopped as Pesco looked for an out. In a quick and desperate leap he dashed toward the button to open the garage in hopes that he could get out just before Analissa could get a clear shot. Yet, as the door opened, he realized what was really going on.

The opened garage revealed Monticello in his black pickup. Analissa hopped on, though not without giving some last words to her cousin.

“I’ll be watching you and this family. Don’t try to pull any shit like this again, or I’ll know.”

By the time everyone else had come to investigate the noise from the garage, Analissa and her boyfriend were long gone. Don and Maria loomed and sobbed over the corpse of their once renowned son. One thing was for sure – Christmas would never be the same.

Monday Chat #7 – Album Roundup

2017-09-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

So as it turns out, college has left me much more busy than I had originally anticipated. So much so that Monday chats might actually not occur every Monday after all… just a quick warning. I’m also planning on only uploading these on the original blog from now on, simply because it’s much easier on me and I don’t have to fix formatting and insert images over and over again. Fortunately I do have a pretty good topic for today, and that is my current listening roundup.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had little time to consume heavy focus media like movies of videogames, so I dedicated most of it to listening to music. New music. Some of it I loved, some of it… not so much. I figured I’d share a few quick fire opinions on the albums that I’ve listened to, as well as what I plan on checking out next.

God Tier

Brockhampton – Saturation

My friends have been going on about Saturation for awhile now, but it was only shortly after the release of Saturation II that I finally decided to fall into the hype. To be honest, I knew nothing about the album going in – I didn’t even know that it was a hip hop album. So it came to a pleasant surprise that it was exactly the type of music I usually really like listening too; a good mix of modern R&B mixed with group rap. Saturation II might as well be here too, though I haven’t actually finished listening to most of that album yet.

Carissa’s Weird – Songs About Leaving

Okay, this one’s a lot more special. I found this album by complete coincidence – those who know me know that, in addition to jazz and hip hop, I also listen to a lot of dark music (fits with some of the Monday chat topics, doesn’t it?). So I was looking through an emo rock thread on /mu/ where there was only one song posted. I was about to leave this boring thread when I decided to give the single song on the thread at least a try before I did. That song was “So You Wanna Be A Superhero” from this album.

Usually most “dark” songs have either one thing going for it: either really good lyrics and a pretty basic rhythm (a la A Crow Looked at Me) or really shitty lyrics but damn good bangers (a la The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me). So I was surprised this song had a good mix of both. So I listened to another song on the album. And another, and another, and another…

Soon enough I had listened to the whole thing and I could say I loved pretty much every song on it. This is a pretty special occasion for me personally because this is the first album which I’d say would fit into my top 25 favorites of all time and yet no one I know has ever heard of it. That includes my really in depth music fan friends. I imagine there’s probably a lot of emo rock that sounds like this (I’m not very well acquainted with the genre) but damn does this album sound really, really good.

Good Tier

Mac DeMarco – 2

Based on the wide amount of negative criticism Mac DeMarco gets, I would have assumed I wouldn’t have liked him. However, after listening to “My Kind of Woman” I decided to give the whole album a shot, and honestly… it wasn’t that bad. Some of the songs are just generic indiefolk which I hate, but there’s some decent bangers in there.

Mobb Deep – The Infamous

Though I still think this album is a little overhyped, I’ve gotten to appreciate it more over time. “Shook Ones” is still one of the best old school hip hop songs of all, and most of the album has a pretty consistent quality level.

Mark Ronson – Uptown Special

After being a big fan of Mark Ronson in elementary school, I kind of skipped out of town after he became famous. I figured Uptown Special would be, for the most part, a cop out album – however, after finally deciding to listen to it, I can say it’s actually not that bad. The quality and theme is consistent, and there’s some nice bangers in there that were simply overshadowed by “Uptown Funk”.

Slime Girls – Vacation Wasteland

I normally hate chiptune music, but the sort of shoegaze infusion that occurs in this album is super tantalizing. Probably has one of my favorite intro preludes ever. Worth listening to even if you aren’t into 8 bit (or 16 bit? 32 bit??) music.

Meh Tier

The Antlers – Hospice

Not going to lie, this album would probably down into Shit Tier if it wasn’t for the fact that the main vocalist in this band is really good. Like, really good. This is coming from the guy who thinks some of even the best singers in the world sound kind of cringy. This is the first time I’ve ever listened to a song and actually said to myself “Oh wow, this guy is actually really good”. It’s worth listening to at least a few of the songs in here to at least get a grip on how good this guy is (I recommend “Kettering” and “Wake”). Other than that, unfortunately, Hospice lacks a whole lot of substance. The lyrics are pretty meaningless, and the sound is simple.

American Football – American Football

This album is full of pretty nice emo math rock, the only problem with it is that… well, all of it sounds pretty much exactly the same. Like, literally, exactly the same. It gets old after awhile.

Shit Tier

Giles Corey – Giles Corey

And now we get to the one album here I really just didn’t enjoy. The lyrics on this thing are so basic and obnoxious (one of the songs is just him repeating “I’m going to kill myself” over and over again) and the beat is so practically non existent that there’s not really much to talk about here.

On Deck

Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t bend! Ascend!

Black Emperor – Yanqui UXO

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

David Bowie – Blackstar

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell

Sunny Day Real Estate – Diary

Television – Marquee Moon

Mf Doom – Mm… Food

Slowdive – Pygmalion

Slowdive – Souvlaki

- -
Currently reading: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee!

Currently watching: Narcos Season 3!

Currently playing: Nothing!!

Currently listening: I think you know what I’ve been listening to.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #6 – Ideas for the original Codex of Aegis blog

2017-08-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

This post will be a lot shorter, mostly due to the fact that I’m still trying to get used to this whole college thing, but I think it’s pretty important nonetheless.

For awhile now I’ve thought about going through the old stories that I have on the Codex of Aegis blogspot (http://codexofaegis.blogspot.com) and deleting ones that I don’t think are good anymore. My standards for my writing are way higher than they were when the blog started around 2013, and I feel like it’s time for the content up on there to reflect that.

Of course, I don’t want to outright remove them from existence. I know that there’s probably some people who like ones that I don’t like, and besides that I find it fun to look at old stories even if I don’t think they’re good. In that case, I’ll probably bring back something similar to the Astuka Looks Back series – a series, this time having its own separate blog entirely, that deals with looking at some of my older, less good stories in a more critical lense. This way people will still have access to them, I will be able to learn from them individually, and the whole process will be much sweeter.

I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to start this process, but hopefully it will be sometime soon. I will start by actually removing the stories, then go back and begin on the new critical series. Anyway, I’m short pressed on time now like I mentioned before, but I still wanted to release a Monday Chat, and this is what I’ve come up with.

Currently reading: I’ve decided to drop all my previous reads, mostly because each of them I either didn’t have time for or just wasn’t interested in continuing. I’ve now begun a book I have been meaning to read for quite awhile now, that being The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. So far I’m only 30 pages in, so I’ll update as time goes along.

Currently playing: Nothing! No really, nothing. The laptop I’ve brought to university is pretty bad, and it can only play the SNES/N64 roms I’ve downloaded onto it (that being literally every single SNES and N64 game in existence). But besides that, I just haven’t really been motivated to play much recently. I was meaning to play Overwatch again when I visited home, but I was too busy doing unrelated stuff that I didn’t really have time to fit in.

Currently watching: Also nothing! Though this one is a bit more concrete – I did catch up on Twin Peaks, a series I had kind of lost track of for a bit due to university stuff and everything, but now I’m back in. I’ve also successfully dropped Game of Thrones seeing that I now fortunately don’t have the time to keep up with it and that has helped me stay away from that burning dumpster fire. Unlike with games, I do have some plans to see some movies – Michael Haneke has been brought up recently, and speaking that I haven’t seen any of his movies and nearly his entire filmography has been on my watchlist for years (the only other director to have that honor is Kurosawa), he’s definitely in my sights now.

Currently listening: Recently discovered Brockhampton, and have been listening to Saturation Parts I and II almost constantly this week.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #5 – Video Games: A Constant Cycle of Rehashed Ideas?

2017-08-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

So today’s topic originates from this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/6slno9/cartoon_network_stole_my_game/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=user&utm_source=reddit

Basically what happened is that the creator of the flash game A Dance of Fire and Ice found that their was a Cartoon Network flash game strangely similar in concept released on their website…

Now, to be fair, A Dance of Fire and Ice is one of the top rated (and most played) Kongregate rhythm games whereas Cartoon Network tends to throw out their flash games every month or so to make way for content more relevant to the current programming; so overall, this specific instance isn’t that big of a deal. But what about the concept in general? After all, this has happened plenty of times – Bejeweled and Candy Crush, Crush the Castle and Angry Birds, and Pandemic and Plague Inc (just to name a few). So is there something inherently and morally wrong with the concept of “Great artists steal”, or is there some justification in it after all?

Now in order to really get a case on what a true “rip off” is, we need to focus on two things: style and substance. Let’s take an example with the CN debacle. A Dance of Fire and Ice and the CN game both have the same core gameplay element – rhythm based timing game based on two constantly rotating sprites that one has to time correctly to keep on the path. However, in style, both games differ – Dance has more of a concrete, minimalist style that models after the two elements which the game is named after, whereas the CN game… just has a bunch of shitty Gumball sprites. Secondly, there’s the substance – there’s the fact that its clear the CN game doesn’t run on Dance’s stolen code, cause the game runs like shit. That means that there’s only on real similarity between the two – the gameplay. But is gameplay copyright-able?

As you’ve probably been able to tell, of course not. There’s plenty of turn based RPGs, or first person shooters, or 3D collectathon platformers. Once one person makes a subgenre, its free for people to refine and edit themselves – as long as they make their own source code. After all, we don’t see people paying royalties to the creator of Wolfenstein, do we?

Another thing though, and perhaps a bit bigger of a deal, is with the size of the business. Bigger businesses can market better than individuals, and thus the mainstream appeal of two very similar games can go to a later game rather than an earlier one. Rovio probably had a much bigger budget to advertise Angry Birds than Armor Games had for Crush the Castle, and Armor Games had a bigger budget than all the other small developers doing similar games way before that! There’s also the choice of distribution. Crush the Castle was originally flash exclusive, which only has the audience of the every diminishing minority of those who play flash games. Rovio, however, took a chance with the ever expanding mobile app market and it ended up paying off big time. So, although people might not like it, business sense does play some part in it.

Now, all these games discussed so far have been fairly different in style and substance, but there is a possibility of blatant rip offs succeeding over the originals. Such is the case often within the mobile market. For a specific example, back in 2014 the app Bad Apples, a blatant stolen version of Cards Against Humanity, reached the top of the app store, causing it to overshadow Cards by over tenfold. Fortunately, due to some clever marketing by Cards Against Humanity – and the poor development upkeep by the Bad Apples creators – Cards was able to regain its spot in popular culture as the original adult party game. Still, one might consider poor moderation of the App Store like this proven case to lead to many other undiscovered rip offs that succeed the original in popularity by many times.

Now, to go back to the main question – is the original always the best? After all, is it really that much of a shame that the content rich and well maintained Plague Inc is more popular than the fairly barebones Pandemic series? Honestly, I think that as long as there are not blatant rip offs of a game, it’s fine to have a sub genre generate and to enjoy better, later games that come out of it. It’s always good to remember the roots, but it’s not mandatory to love them. So while the developer behind A Dance of Fire and Ice isn’t exactly justified in his worry, I think he’s in pretty safe hands.

- -

Just a quick heads up – there will be no new Monday Chat next week. I’m moving into university, and then on that weekend am going to a related camping trip, sparing me no time to write. But hopefully after that I’ll be able to make room for continuing to make new posts in my schedule.

Currently reading: I finished Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in a single night, and damn was it darker than I expected – a great read, and worth spending a couple of hours on. Still, I’ve decided I’m going to chill on the digital library for now, seeing that my physical book collection is pretty sparse and I can probably run through them fairly fast. I’ll probably make this my main backlog goal going into university.

Currently watching: As I mentioned before, I saw Dunkirk in theaters. While I really enjoyed the movie, I still don’t understand Christopher Nolan’s insistence on adding some level of non-linearity to his stories, even if they don’t make any sense. In this movie its particularly blatant – each story takes place a certain amount of time from each other, a la one week, one day, and one hour. But the stories all end up lining up in the end… so what’s the point? It seems like Nolan just added this in since people know him as “the weird mindfuck story guy” and kind of as an afterthought. I feel like the movie would’ve been a bit more cleaner and more coherent without this in place. Still, despite this – I mean, it’s a Nolan movie, right? – it’s still damn good. 8/10.

Currently playing: Mostly Skyrim and Mount and Blade Warband mods… though I DID start running a new NCAA Footbal 09 dynasty game (you know, what all the cool kids are doing right now) with the plan of making a long game that would use the import feature for Madden 09’s franchise mode (pretty basic stuff, everyone knows this), but then I remembered I was going into college and probably didn’t have time to do all this. Whoops.

Currently listening: Been picking up on a few new tracks. INOJ’s Time After Time cover has some pretty bumpin’ aesthetic. My Dead Girlfriend’s Danke is a solid banger. Other than that, I’ve been listening to some miscellaneous KPM tracks.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #4 – Response to “Google’s Ideological Echo”

2017-08-07T19:11:00.001-07:00

Originally this was going to be about some of my older writing on the blog, but my friend just happened to tell me about some drama going on in Google that I think fits pretty well with stuff I’ve talked about in my past (2014) articles, so I figured it would be better for a Monday Chat.

Just yesterday (August 5^th as of writing) a pastebin was leaked from apparently an anonymous engineer working at Google, decrying their overarching corporate goal of diversity due to its effect of silencing certain ideas for solely “moral reasons” and forcing a completely equal corporate society where one doesn’t have to exist. As always, many have already thrown the essay off as inherently sexist – however, word from inside says that many of the engineers, no matter their background, agree with what it says. So, I figured I might as well take a neutral look to see whether or not this really does have some merit.

The essay starts with the writer defining some of his language, just as left and right political bias, psychological safety, as well as Google’s own biases (I won’t go into detail his precise definitions, as they’re extensive and also pretty much how they’re used in the everyday. If you’d like to see them yourself you can read the pastebin for itself. I’ve included a link below my thoughts). He describes that Google tends to have an extremely left wing bias, which is where its extensive diversity mantra comes for, and that it is generally bad for any business to have an extreme political stance (which is true). After this then comes the more controversial part of this so-called manifesto.

The writer decides to explain some of the biological differences between male and female, and how that might explain why not as many females go into the software engineering side of the workforce. His first point is spot on – the concept between empathizing versus systematizing. This concept explains that women tend to be more attached to people than to things (and men vice versa) which causes them to pick jobs that follow this logic, such as teachers, psychologists, and doctors, just to name a few. And this makes sense – these jobs have a much greater percentage of females working in them than men, while men work in more technical jobs such as software engineering. And really, there’s nothing wrong with this – a teacher is easily as economically valuable as an engineer (for if there are no teachers, where come the engineers?). These social jobs were once primarily suited toward men, due to an actual case of gender discrimination. Now, that’s not to say that their can’t be female engineers – biology and genetics aren’t end alls, especially when it comes to humans, and so there should definitely be a sizable group of girls wanting to become engineers and scientists, and they should have all the right to hold those jobs. But you can’t force a girl who doesn’t want to be an engineer to be an engineer – just like you can’t force a boy who doesn’t want to be a teacher to be a teacher.

His second point here is a bit more questionable. He states that women are more agreeable over assertive, and therefore have a harder time negotiation for salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. I’ve found that this concept is pretty universal among all human beings, not just women. Many people will go for the easy but small win rather than the hard but big one just because they’re too afraid to speak for themselves, and I’ve never really seen this connected to women specifically outside of typical discriminatory portrayals. I feel that there is a large amount of weak, agreeable people in this world and a small amount of strong, assertive ones and that this is not dependent on gender, nor any other case – especially not biologically.

Same general feeling with his third claim – that women tend to be higher in neuroticism. I’d actually argue the exact opposite for this – in highly stressed environments, women tend to react more solemnly, whereas men deal with their situation with high anxiety. It’s also more common for higher intelligent males to pick up the trait of neuroticism than it is for higher intelligent females to. After this, he makes a few smaller claims which I all disagree with – such as “men have a higher drive for status” and “women are on average more cooperative” – but I’ll save talking about those and instead come back to his main point.

Where I completely agree with him is the fact that companies – and in fact, people in general – should not moralize ideas in order for them to be bulletproof. The concept of “diversity” shouldn’t be invincible from argument because its, well, “diversity” – in fact the only concepts that should be invincible from argument is fact and truth itself. But diversity is not in its entirety fact and truth – there is parts of diversity that is derived from facts and truth, but the concept itself is not completely impenetrable. And, of course, there is business fact that taking such a far left ideological stance not only hurts your employee’s opinion of you (such is the matter of this pastebin) but also might ward off potential workers as well. So I do believe all of the writer’s suggestions are sound. As for the people throwing this off as blatant and inherent sexism – well, I know it’s a long read, but I feel like making generic defamation articles without actually reading the work seems pretty silly, no?

But really, overall this is probably one of the more poorly construed calls for action that I’ve seen. A lot of it does get muddled in the core of the piece – making multiple assumptions on the opposite gender always seems like a pretty bad idea, as human beings and our naturally contradictory nature don’t tend to follow the stereotypes all that often (which is why I’d say take my own assumptions with a grain of salt). But, as for the idea of Google moralizing certain parts of their policy so that others cannot argue against it, it’s clearly a bad idea that doesn’t exactly work in the companies favor. In sum: If someone wants to be an engineer, let them be an engineer. If they don’t, then don’t. If someone wants to speak up against a policy, let them do so and then argue for or against it formally and logically. No topic is too holy to be argued – what one should do is show with facts and truth why diversity is as good as it is, don’t completely dismiss arguments against it in calling in “belligerently sexist”. I have seen some articles that have in fact taken this stance, taking what the pastebin says and making the arguments of why it is completely wrong. And while I am more in the gray area in terms of how I feel about it, I can find myself appreciating those who argue for or against it without just saying “its completely sexist so you shouldn’t even read it” or “google is an authoritarian SJW engine trying to destroy us with its liberal propaganda”. And that’s the conclusion I find myself writing at the end of all of these, but people still seem to not get it, and so I have to repeat myself every time. Oh well!

Link to the pastebin: https://pastebin.com/nJwfKjZc

Currently reading: I’ve begun to focus solely on House of Leaves and the Military Battles book, as I’m the farthest in both and am honestly just ready to finish them. I’ve also started back up my e-library after my last one with 5,000+ books was destroyed in a terrible accident (Library of Alexandria 2.0). I’ve decided that this time I’m not going to bulk download and instead just add a few at a time and read them. I’ve added a couple of science and mathematics papers as well as a few literature classics like Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick. I’ll get around to them… eventually.

Currently playing: My attempts last week of organizing what I play have gone horribly awry, and I’m now at the point where I have to hold off what I play because I straight up don’t have enough space on my computer to handle it. I’ve started playing, among others: Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, Age of Empires 2 (I think I included this last time?), and Mount of Blade Warband (which includes a bunch of mods I installed, which is why it makes up the bulk of my playtime). Something’s got to go here.

Currently watching: Much more fruitful have been my attempts to organize what I watch. I’ve decided to go down the infamous “1001 films you must see before you die” list, speaking that I’ve already got 60 of them down I figure I might as well tackle the beast. Right now I’m on Les Vampires, a crime series from 1915 which is considered to be the first miniseries ever made. And to be honest, for being completely silent and in black and white this thing is pretty damn entertaining – though the fact that it’s 6 hours long in total has me worried. As for TV, I had actually planned to drop Game of Thrones this week but Showtime changed the show time (!) of Twin Peaks to one hour earlier without telling anybody so I was forced to watch Game of Thrones yet again while I waited for the Twin Peaks rerun. On a much better note because of this I ended up staying for a playing of the newest two episodes of Rick and Morty which were actually surprisingly great. I’ve always had a grudge for this show based on its obnoxious marketing schemes (this newest one was particularly bad) so I had never watched the show until now. But… at least the show’s good I guess? Also planning on seeing Dunkirk in theaters tomorrow (or today as of writing).

Currently listening: Not much new. Some Scum Fuck Flower Boy and some of the Dunkirk soundtrack. That’s about all for new music!

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Monday Chat #3 – Kid Shows Take on Reality

2017-07-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

While this is not what I promised the next episode of Monday Chat would be about, but I did go on one hell of a weird tangent this week. For these past seven days I have been looking up a bunch of cartoons and advertisements from my childhood, seeing if I recall anything that I’ve forgotten or gotten some nostalgia boost out of it. For the most part, I didn’t – I did get Heroscape, though.

And while I did not discover anything crazy from my childhood, I did discover something else… something that I could have only discovered as an adult now. And that’s the way kid show’s try to take on serious topics in order to teach kids about them.

From what I’ve seen the greatest example of this – and the first example I’ve found – is Sesame Street. Sesame Street deals with so many topics like these at the onset its kind of hilarious. I mean, canonically within the Sesame Street Universe, Elmo received PTSD at a very young age. Also, his Uncle Jack died “in the war” (what the war is we’re never actually told) which then later causes Elmo’s dad and his neighbor Ricardo (Eduardo? I don’t actually remember his name) to join “the war” and when they come back Elmo and his father’s relationship is stunted not to mention that Ricardo doesn’t have fucking legs anymore. And beyond the deployment trilogy, there’s also other small tidbits here and there – Gina is apparently given death threats for being in a mixed-race relationship, Mr Hooper (who’s store burned down, thus giving Elmo PTSD) is later found dead, and Lil Oscars father is apparently incarcerated. These revelations just lead to more questions – what is this so called war? What are its combatants? Does that mean there’s a greater world outside of Sesame Street? Is there prosthetics in the Sesameverse? What about funerals? What is Sesame Street prison like? If there’s racism and incarceration, does that mean that there’s a Sesame Street Aryan Brotherhood? Sesame Street, however, leaves these questions up to the imagination.

But when you take the videos into the context which they are actually meant to be taken, it is equally interesting. The method of trying to teach a kid about things like death or war or racism are hard for anyone to do, so it is interesting that these cartoons and other children shows have decided to step in and help in describing such things in a way kids will understand.

Sometimes they aren’t so blatant as Sesame Street, though, and are instead worked into the plot of the show itself in which the characters directly are impacted, and their responses are used as guidelines for the children watching. Such is the case in Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, where Linus’ playmate Janice is diagnosed with leukemia.

I prefer this method (though it is more difficult) because you’re enhancing the narrative while still giving people – including kids – something to think about. These serious moments in children’s TV can help teach people how to cope when dealing with a troubling situation like this while also help develop characters and story that will engage the audience.

Of course, Janice never actually appears outside of that episode. A more appropriate example in this case would be in Doug, where Doug’s crush Patti ends up falling into an eating disorder due to constant media outpouring on how the ideal female body is unnaturally slender – a problem that was very real at the time that the episode came out.

Throughout the episode Doug struggles to get help for her from other adults, though merely throw it off, also falling into the ploy of the media. This all escalates when Patti actually passes out during a track and field match, in which the previous satirized adults now take the topic very seriously. Doug in itself is full of moments like these – which may make it good for a full analysis on its own.

And, of course, this topic as a whole has more to be discussed as well. These are just three examples of such introspection in kids shows that I find the most poignant. Of course, there’s always the lighter side of cartoons to – what makes the best ones accessible to kids and adults alike – and that might be a topic for later as well. I know I’ll probably continue this binge into next week, so there might be some sort of continuation then, but for now this has been this week’s topic for Monday Chat.

Currently listening: I have spent about 90% of my listening time this week dedicated to Scum Fuck Flower Boy and my honest opinion is that it’s just as good as any of Tyler’s other albums. I’m one of the music rogues who really did heavily enjoy WOLF and Cherry Bomb (not Goblin though, we don’t talk about that) so I’m mostly just glad that most other people now have the respect for him that I already had. I honestly can’t really tell the quality difference between this and other albums he’s done, other than that the songs are much more catchy this time around. A solid 8/10, as always. Favorite songs: See You Again, Pothole, Boredom, I Aint Got Time, 911.

Currently watching: Uh… late 2000s ads? Honestly I had a bit of an existential crisis when I found out my childhood years happened then. 2007 still seems real damn recent – I mean, I guess it was, in the grand scheme of things – but I still feel pretty comfy watching them, so I guess I’ll keep doing that. In other news, Twin Peaks and Game of Thrones is tomorrow (I am once again writing this not actually on Monday). I honestly would have dropped GoT by now since the episode was in fact exactly like the leak, but the action sequence brought me up just enough that I felt some weird purgatory state with the episode itself (which really can describe my entire feeling with the show), so this time I’ve decided if I hate the next episode OR feel “meh” about it I’ll probably drop it. I also think I watched like, half an episode of House of Cards before I remembered why I dropped it.

Currently playing: Mostly been Skyrim and Age of Empires II this week. Not that I dropped Rome Total War, but as fun and hilarious as the elephants are to use it does kind of get old of being so easily able to wipe out a massive enemy army. There’s also the fact that the game crashes 66% of the time with them in it. Mistakes were made.

Currently reading: Nothing new. I am a very slow reader and all the books that I’m reading are 500+ pages – what did you expect?

Monday Chat #2 – Perfect Blue: The Avatar is an Illusion

2017-07-24T17:36:00.001-07:00

I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler for my “Currently Watching” segment, but last Tuesday I saw Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue for the first time, and it left me a lot to think about. So much, in fact, that I’ve decided to write about it here.

I’ll try to stray away from spoilers to the actual movie as much as I can here (though there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to the actual movie as well). Instead, I want to crack open the themes of Perfect Blue – more specifically, that of the avatar.

The idea of the perfect version of oneself never really hit me that hard until I saw this movie. In this Internet Age, we really do live double lives – the life we live and the life we want people to see. I try my best not to make them too different, but often I can see myself trying to frame things in a way that make me look better than I actually am.

It’s an interesting concept. The avatar is really a shell of the person – the tweets, instagram photos, facebook statuses, and even likes/favorites are all meticulously designed either consciously or subconsciously to hide the flaws of the person who uses it. In this way the fantasy of the screen is different from the reality.

Though Perfect Blue does not really touch on how our virtual selves effect us (the movie was released in 1997, right before the internet received mainstream uses. Though a few years later Serial Experiments Lain does in fact dive into this conundrum), but it still keeps to the main theme of the avatar in a different, also still very relevant way. Mumi is torn when she decides to leave her job as a pop idol singer in order to pursue an acting career that holds more maturity. Firstly there’s the clear difficulty in the act of switching professions like that – especially someone who already has minor celebrity. But on top of that, there comes doubt – does she want to be an actress, or a singer? This creates a horrid complication where she must keep up the guise of her loving the acting world while in reality being completely distraught over who she is, until it finally consumes her.

Many times people insist on holding in their greatest problems and doubts in order to make the outside – the world the rest of us see – as clean and orderly as possible. But this habit – an ultimately self-destructive habit – only continues to fuel the fire of suffering. For when everyone acts like they are perfect, its hard to see imperfections; and in this way, it makes many believe that they are much weaker, because they do in fact have these imperfections. Then, the cycle continues. Just as Mumi turns down multiple offerings of help, the person behind the avatar often does as well – the show must go on, whether it be for a young actress or for the average person and their snapchat account.

Still, more could be uncovered here. I admit that I have only really dug into this idea at the surface, and there is much more to talk about – especially in our modern, digital world. That’s why Perfect Blue I feel would be one of the few movies to really benefit from a reboot conceptually; given the right amount of everything else (director, writers, budget, etc. etc..), a new Perfect Blue could really expand upon the ideas inlaid in the first one while still staying true to Satoshi Kon’s original ideas.

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to discuss for the topic of the day. Now for the highlights:

Currently watching: In addition to Perfect Blue I also saw Baby Driver in theaters. It was pretty damn good – especially with that second half – but I felt like I got underwhelmed by certain aspects. I feel like a lot of my disappointments of the movie came from knowing so much about it before watching (such as watching the trailers, reading reviews, etc. etc.). The soundtrack was also pretty underwhelming throughout, which was kind of sad speaking that it was pretty much the most advertised part of the movie. Still it surprised me with how well the tense scenes were developed so that managed to get all it’s points back, and I still gave it a 9/10 (remember to check out my letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/astuka/ !). As for TV watches, I’m continuing on with Twin Peaks, and if episode 2 for GoT is exactly how its described in the leak (which you’ll know by the time this blog comes out), I’ll probably just drop that show entirely. Honestly I’m tired of its stand still plot and boring characters, and with Twin Peaks on at the same time it’s a pretty obvious choice of what I’m gonna watch instead.

Currently playing: For the most part, this week I’ve only really been playing Rome Total War and Guild Wars 2. GW2 has got me back into action by re-enticing me into WvW, So I think its safe to say I’ll probably put another decent chunk of hours into that before I’m done. Also, since I’m back into MMOs, I thought now might be a good time to start up FFXIV again. When it became (partially) free, I got up until about level 8, then I was bored. But with the massive amount of people saying they’re super into it, I figure it deserves another shot. As for Rome Total War, my game keeps crashing because apparently it can’t handle elephants. And my army has a lot of elephants. Like, a LOT of elephants. Don’t ask why that is, it just… it is.

Currently reading: Nothing new, though I feel like dropping House of Leaves since nothing has really happened in it for awhile. I’m still reading the excerpts from my English book, as well as more on battle history. A particularly good excerpt written by Feynman in the English book has got me reading his Lectures on Physics series, though as of writing I’m not that far into it.

Currently listening: Since Tyler’s new album Scum Fuck Flower Boy just came out I’ve mostly been listening to that in terms of new music. I’ve only done one complete listen to that album, so I don’t really have anything to say about it just yet. As to what I was literally listening to while writing this, it included some classics such as Hope Sandoval’s On The Low and Billy Joel’s Where’s the Orchestra.

Monday Chat #1 -- Introduction to Monday Chat

2017-07-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything of real substance on either of the blogs, and I’ve an itch to write more as of recent. Yet, as my free time becomes smaller and smaller and yet my interest in writing more increases, I had to form somewhere a compromise. This is where Monday Chats come in.

The format of Monday Chats are similar to my political posts of late 2014 + 2015, but shorter, across a variety of topics, and once a week. While the tone of these are much more conversational (a tone that I’m terrible with) I will be able to save the real good stuff for more short stories while still retaining a lot of my skill by writing regularly about important topics. It will also help in wrapping my mind around certain things.

So here is the structure: I’ll start off with the discussion of the “topic of the week”, going in depth into what I feel and hopefully making it fun enough to read on your end. I’ll also end it (because I know people like knowing this and I know it helps me stay on track) with what I’ve been doing recently, ie what I’ve been listening to, playing, watching, reading, etc. etc. Something you can expect from a person who actually keeps a log of every movie/book/game they’ve ever consumed (which apparently is not popular at all? What? Potential Monday chat topic??).

So, let’s run a practice round. This post’s topic will be the old conversational pieces I used to do on Astuka’s Blog. What do I think of them now? How have my thoughts changed?

Easily what I’ve written about the most (and subsequently what I’ve been known for the most) is my series of blogs on Gamergate (the hilariously stupid named video game scandal) and the later national debate that came out of that which dealt with radical feminism. Well, the Gamergate crew – which I left pretty early on due to both my own changing focuses and also the incredible stupidity among its ranks – ended up taking new people under its wing, including religious conservatives and white supremacists. As it got bigger it left a huge snail trail of outraged media and unfunny memes, eventually being renamed by the media “The Alt-Right” and following under the footsteps of their new political mastermind, Donald Trump. Then, Trump got elected. So I guess in a really roundabout way I was somewhat deeply responsible for getting Trump into office. Whoops! Won’t happen next time – I promise.

Still, have any of my opinions changed in terms of how I defined equality and feminism? Looking back at old posts (though I admit some of the older ones are pretty cringy to read), not much has changed. I still believe there is a clear distinction between radical feminism (which really is a dangerous ideology) and “actual” (???) feminism. And I still believe that there needs to be better attempts to differentiate between the too – I mean, it’s gotten so bad that we accidentally got a retard elected because of it. I don’t really need to explain this part anymore, do I?

Still, I suppose there is definitely still room for political talk on Monday Chat. I think one of the main pros to blogging like this – at least to me – is that you can make an impact on the world however small based on what’s currently happening right now. Instead of being a spectator to current events, you get to be apart of them – and that’s pretty cool.

Anyway, that’s about all for this first post. Hopefully this does become its own regular thing. I’ll try to keep each entry fairly brief so they’re both easy to read and easy to write. Anyway, let’s end this off with what I’ve been doing:

Currently playing: A lot of stuff. My second attempt to limit the amount of games I have playing at once to one has failed again. Just today I reinstalled Rome Total War for the first time in forever, hoping to go through the games in chronological order til Napoleon (the last one I own). I’m also halfway to completing Shadow of Mordor, and given how easy that game is I’ll probably go for beating it. Guild Wars 2 is also back on the menu, surprisingly – though my concerns involving why I stopped playing in the first place are still there, there’s also plenty of new cool stuff (WvW reward tracks!!!) that have lead me to giving it a second chance. Finally, seeing that the game is shutting down only after a year, I decided to pick up The Tomorrow Children… only to drop it. Yeah, I can see why it’s shutting down. It is kind of sad though – the concept of being a worker in a collective commune all trying to build a town together isn’t bad, it just doesn’t hold attention for long. I’m also not even sure how this game made money in the first place.

Currently reading: Also a lot of stuff. I’m up to the weird part of House of Leaves now, and my feelings for it still are pretty mixed. On one had the writing isn’t bad, and the concept is still interesting… but on the other hand, its filled with a whole lot of nothing. Weird, postmodernist, intentional nothing. I’ve also gotten back into being interested with military history (as evident by me playing Total War again) so I’ve been reading up on some old battles as well – though the book is written in such a way that I’m not sure if it’s made for kids or not? But who makes a kids book about famous military battles? I don’t know, it’s probably just me. Finally, I’ve been reading my textbook for English next year since it has a couple of pretty interesting excerpts in it. Except now I feel kind of scammed since the entire book is filled with these excerpts and I’m pretty sure all of them are free. Shit.

Currently watching: I’ve gotten a bit farther into Black Mirror – now onto Season 2 episode 3. While I still don’t really find myself enjoying it, I’ve found the episodes in this season are much easier to watch in one sitting. Their plots are still pretty uninteresting, but as I’ve begun to appreciate the cinematography and actual storytelling methods more and more I’ve used that to deal with the story itself. I’m hoping that by the time I’m finished I’ll at least be able to say I enjoyed at least some of the episodes. As for currently going TV, Twin Peaks is still kino and Game of Thrones is still a snoozefest (and, based on those leaked episode summaries, it appears that Game of Thrones will continue to be a snoozefest). And in the film department, I’m hoping to see Baby Driver in theaters relatively soon, though I’ve been too busy to find a chance and do it.

Currently listening: XXL freshman cyphers. Because I enjoy suffering and do not long to be in this world.

Well, that’s all for now. Remember to follow Codex of Aegis on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

Bluesnake Lake

2017-04-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

The boy met the girl on the rooftop of the Best Inn at the outskirts of the city, just as they had planned. It was peculiar – not many times, at least from what the boy could count, did she come before him. But this wasn’t like any other time. This time, the boy’s heart thumped irrhythmically. The only other time it had done that was when he saw her for the first time.

He sat next to her on the edge, overlooking a good portion of the city in front of them. At first, they didn’t speak. The boy offered his hand on the cement between them, and she took it. Her hand was small, and soft to the touch. He softly caressed it with his thumb, just as his mother had once done, when he was a child – when he came crying to her and she would let the boy put his head in her chest and put her hand atop his head and caress it, ever so gently, and it would calm the boy. It was one of the things he remembered from being a kid, and he hoped to apply it. He applied it that night.

“Talk to me. About anything.” He didn’t look at her, nor did she look at him – they just kept their hands interlocked, not firmly grasped but restfully handled.

“It just… it still hurts. It hurts and I don’t know who I can tell about it. I normally wouldn’t put this pressure on you, but… I just don’t know what to do.”

The boy had woken up that morning well-rested and a little complacent. It was only an hour after he had woken up, when he was still up reading the news and sipping at french roast, that he got the text from his childhood friend saying she was raped. In a few ways, he anticipated it – he never liked her boyfriend, and made it clear to at any point he could. The three used to go out, along with a group of separate friends, but the feud between the boy and the boyfriend continued to such an extreme that it was clear one of them had to be removed from the outing. The girl chose to bring her boyfriend.

In a vain and abhorrent way, he even wanted it to happen – not out of any sort of vain jealousy, but based on the fact that as the years went on the boy and the girl’s relationship began to dwindle from the peak it had reached during four years before. They say that the ultimate test of a friendship is its length, but the boy would tell you otherwise – it seemed that the longer things went the more distant the two became. He needed something to bring her back to him, and for them to rekindle their friendship. He believed that an incident of this proportion could have her consoling him first, and as it turned out, he was right. He quickly texted back, telling her to come to the roof of the Best Inn alone that night. Hours passed, and here they were.

“I know it hurts,” He replied back, never making eye contact. “I tried, but… I couldn’t figure out any useful advice to give you. I just want you to know that… I’m here for you. I really am.”

“I should have listened to you,” she kept in her tears, “I never should have done that to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Now his eyes diverted, and he began to look at her figure. Her head was tilted down, and her eyes were shrouded by long black hair, that seemed to hide her emotions and describe them at the same time. “No, don’t. Don’t bother being sorry. The last thing you need to feel right now is guilt. None of this… none of it was your fault.” Rain began to fall, but only sprinklets. A car alarm went off somewhere in the northeast. “Maybe… maybe you could talk to your mother about it. She’d help you.”

The girl used her free arm to rest her chin on. “She really liked him. Plus, you know, my relationship with her hasn’t been the best. Not anymore.”

“So? She has unconditional positive regard for you, you know she does. All mothers do.”

“Unconditional positive regard is bullshit. You know that.” A tear streamed down her face, but under the shroud the boy could not see it.

The boy didn’t have any reply after that. He had spent so much time hyping up this moment for himself, and now there was nothing. What could he say? What was there to say? At some point the rain began to fall just a bit harder, hard enough that both of them, who had worn jackets due to the cold weather, put their hoodies up to stop the pit-pattering of the rain from getting on them. A useless exercise, to a certain extent. But after all – what now?

Finally, the boy spoke back up.

“I guess… since you trusted this whole thing with me, maybe this would be the good time to tell the secret I kept from you, wouldn’t it? To make things fair.”

She looked over at him, faint curiosity glowing from her eyes yet suffocated by her traumatized indifference. Thought she looked him in the eyes, he could not tell she had been crying. Rain and tears look the same. He continued anyway.

“I already told you I had social anxiety. You know that. Hell, everyone knows that. But, back then... they told me something else in the diagnosis. They wanted to address my apathy, since that’s not common among people with social phobia… and he told me – they told me – that I also was antisocial. They called me a medically-defined psychopath.”

She looked at him like she wasn’t even surprised. He went on.

“They told me I had to get special treatment for that… that I had to go to a facility to get help. I knew what they meant by that, so I ran. I told them that I needed to go to the bathroom, and just walked out of there. They tried to contact me on my phone, but I blocked the number. I mean… what else was I going to do? I knew I was different, I could just never pinpoint it. I told you that countless times. And yet that whole thing was such a long time ago, but I can’t help thinking about how… how it…”

He looked out upon city lights and sounds off in the distance. The hotel roof was far from the downtown center, yet the faint dim of activity still held its place within the symptoms. After taking a brie moment of contemplation, the boy’s story reached its finale.

“It makes sense. All of it. That’s the real reason I’ve had so much trouble with others. Why I’ve had so much trouble with you, and with your friends, and with… with everyone. I was thinking, a couple of nights ago, back about Bluesnake Lake… and I can honestly say I’ve never really felt that about anyone else. That… level of compassion. I’ve always hated everyone. Just hate. Hate, hate, hate. But that was never the same with you. That’s why I’ve known you for so long, and we’ve been friends for… That’s, I mean, that’s it.”

He looked on the face of his companion for some sort of equally passionate reply, but there was none. At some point her hand had slipped out of his and she began to thumb nervously in her lap. She looked down below to the floor of the hotel, where during this speech a Latino man had begun to sweep up some beer vomit from the parking lot. But make no mistake – she had listened. She heard everything.

“Well?” The boy asked, masking the desperate strain he felt. The girl finally spoke up.

“Well, what?”

“Well, I mean, don’t you have something to say?” The boy accidentally choked, and it became apparent his tone was out of frustration, even though he meant to hide it like so many times before.

“I… I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want to hear.”

“I just want to hear… what you felt. I want to know your reaction. I don’t care what it is, I just… want something. Anything. Please.”

But she didn’t respond.

“You… you remember Bluesnake Lake, right?”

No response.

“You do, don’t you? Late during the night I’d leave my cabin with the guys and sneak into yours. We’d hide under the covers and just… read. We had to keep our voices down, and I remember… I remember we almost got caught because we were laughing so hard, and one of the aides came by the hall to see what the hell was going on. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life-” he laughed “-and it seemed like one of yours too. Anyway, we’d do that for an hour or so, then I’d get back up and sneak back to my cabin. But on the last night, one of us had the idea – I think it was you – to go down to the docks to watch the stars. But the docks were closed, so we just went to the shore instead. We slept together on the shore that night. I woke up that morning and you had your head on my chest, and I had my arm around you, and I realized for the first time… for the first time ever… that I didn’t have any regrets about our friendship anymore. I didn’t regret always knowing you but never quite getting anywhere with it. I didn’t regret the fact you always seemed to choose other friends over me. I didn’t regret the fact that in middle school I fell in love with you but you were busy with other guys. Everything just felt… felt right. And I felt at peace.”

Of course she remembered Bluesnake Lake. But she didn’t feel the same way. She did remember it… and in a lot of ways she did look back fondly on the experience… but none of that meant anything anymore. Because now the girl had understood the real reason he responded to her text that morning.

So that’s why when he asked if she remembered any of it, she shook her head, and his heart was broken.

“Fine. I just…” The boy now didn’t bother hiding his frustration with the girl. Tears merged with the rain, for both of them. “...I just, just, whatever. I don’t… Fine. I don’t have anything else to say. I’m sorry. I don’t. I… hope you feel better.”

He got up and went back down the service stairway, and the girl was alone again. Under her breath, she mentioned something harshly about men – “They’re all the same.” But it wasn’t men she was thinking about.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

Codex of Aegis State of the Union 2017

2017-03-04T14:54:00.001-08:00

For those of you who don’t know, at the beginning of every year I set up a list of goals for the year in the form of a blog post as a way to plan for the entire year. Apparently I don’t know either, because I went to go check the State of the Union for 2016 to see what goals I passed, but as it turns out I didn’t actually make one. So I guess I’ll just check the State of the Union for 2015 and hope that I completed all of them?

Checking 2015 Goals

Goal #1: Release the Codex of Aegis Compilation Book

I mean, we might as well say this is complete. Though I ended up having some trouble releasing this for-pay on an official store, you can easily just click the shop button right above this post (assuming you’re on the blogspot site) and download it for free. It’s finished, it’s out, and although part of the goal wasn’t finished, the core of it was.

Goal #2: Add more Activity on Astuka’s Blog

I guess this would be a good time to point out the fact that, while all the other State of the Unions have been posted on Astuka’s Blog, this one is on Codex of Aegis. That will be important for later when I get into the goals for this year.

Anyway, it’s kind of hard to judge this since this was a goal for 2015. In 2015, yes – there were quite a few posts on Astuka’s Blog, most political, and enough to which I would say it passed the test. In 2016 not so much, but I feel like if I did make a State of the Union in 2016 (oops) it would say I was going to cut back on Astuka’s Blog posts. Once again, we’ll save the details on Astuka’s Blog future for my 2017 goals.

Goal #3: Astukagaming Season 2

This never actually happened, but I never did give a grandiose promise to this. I have been ranting for the past few years or so that gaming-related content, though it gains a lot of views, is quite tedious to make, especially for something that is supposed to be fun. I really just don’t see the point in making gaming videos anymore, except for games or topics I have a lot to talk about. We’ll be talking about this more in depth later.

Goal #4: Codex of Aegis Branding on Youtube Channels

This I feel like was the easy one I set for myself that I did right after I finished the post. Yes, there are banners on the youtube channels that say “A CODEX OF AEGIS CHANNEL”. That was pretty easy.

Goal #5: Casual Streaming

This was my second failure, and for much of the same reasons as the first one. Not that big of a deal, it’s just not worth it for the investment. You have no idea how many times I’ve ragequit because I can’t play two-thirds of the games on my computer on stream. NOT worth.

New 2017 Goals

Goal #1: Major Dialback

If you thought the past few years barely had any content, you’re in for an unfortunate surprise. As it turns out, I’m going into college later this year (though seeing how convoluted and broken the process has been so far maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much yet) and I’m assuming the workload is gonna be heavy (spoiler alert: it really already is). That being said, I’m going to go on a cautious route and not promise too much this year. After I get the hang of things (if I get the hang of things) things will probably go right back to normal.

Goal #2: Favoring Codex of Aegis instead of Astuka’s Blog

I hinted at this previously, but I don’t really like the Astuka’s Blog blog anymore. First of all, do you see how awkward that sentence is? Why even name something “Astuka’s Blog”? Codex of Aegis is just straight up more elegant, not gonna lie. The website link is also pretty embarrassing – astukagaming? What does this website even have to do with gaming anymore? I did just say previously that I’m barely doing any gaming coverage as of now.

So here’s what’s going to happen. In addition to short stories, Codex of Aegis will now also hold political and philosophical content, which is going to be my main goals for content this year. I mean, they do all fit the same tone, don’t they? Anyway, Astuka’s Blog will probably only be used now for advertising new gaming videos, since the site still gets a fair bit of viewership. I’m also going to extend the use of the Codex of Aegis Tumblr site, since Tumblr is admittedly a much more popular blogsite. Do to this popularity, Tumblr will be used to both rehost CoA articles as well as also advertise gaming vids.

Goal #3: Youtube and Twitch won’t have as much focus

Whoops! Looks like I kind of spoiled this one earlier. Like I said, only going to use the Youtube now to do gaming reviews and such that might be too much work writing-wise to make and would be easier to just talk about casually. As for Twitch, I might do an occasional stream if I’m really feeling it, but I really think this one is gonna be dormant. I made an attempt earlier this year to try streaming every day, and got about two weeks in before I just got sick of it. With so many technical issues popping up constantly, it made me feel like I was spending more time trying to fix these issues than actually playing games. No thanks.

Anyway, this has been a quick little sum of my plans for 2017. They’re mostly for my benefit, but I know some of you like to read this, so I’m posting it again anyway! Hopefully I won’t forget to make this again in 2018.

Old World Blues

2017-02-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

There’s a saying back from where I’m from – Old World Blues.

It’s used to describe a person who’s so stuck within the past that they can’t seem to see through anything else. I remember that’s what I was thinking about that summer morning. The Old World Blues.

I opened up the shop early, not out of necessity or desire but simply out of convenience. When I drove down that morning I had just happen to arrive a few minutes early, and instead of waiting it out I felt I should just open it up instead.

Private detective work doesn’t get too many customers – at least not on a daily basis. Standard investigations usually last two to three months, padded by small moments of hiatus in between. This was one of them. My last investigation – with which I can’t recall the details of – had ended a few days before. Now, I sat, waiting, thinking about those Old World Blues.

It was two minutes before the office usually opened that I heard a knock. The sound scared me, because I had grown so accustomed to later day calls – not early morning visits – that I forgot about the possibility. I had expected it to be some delivery man ready to give me a package that had been coming a few days late. What I ended up getting wasn’t that at all.

The woman at the other end of the door was clearly in some mix of distress and depression. I thought her to be on the older side, though that could’ve just been due to the stress in her eyes. It was clear that she didn’t choose me first – she had seen a couple of other agencies and all of them had declined. I’ve seen that look of desperation before. It worried me – most of the time when I’m not the first call it’s because they asked for too much, which is usually much more than I myself can handle. And yet the woman had a sort of urgency to her, and urgency that lead me to want to at least humor her in case.

“You’re here a bit early.” I told her, pointing to the Business Hours sign out front.

“Oh, I’m sorry… It looked like the lights were on.”

“Well they’re certainly on now,” I beckoned her, “Come on in.”

Either of us had barely gotten seated when she began her story. From the beige letter bag she had at her side she pulled out a folder, slightly worn, with the slightest dab of a coffee stain on its front center and filled to the brim with what I could only assume she was about to tell me.

“Listen, I’ve contacted a lot of place about this, but… My daughter is missing – she has been for a long time, you see – And I just-”

“Cold case?”

She stuttered. “W-what?”

“Has the official investigation ceased?”

“I mean, yes, but-”

“Sorry, I don’t follow through with cold cases.”

Already I could see her frustration boiling back up once more. She knew exactly what I meant – she had heard it many times before. But she was hoping I wouldn’t have said the same. Now, I did; and she came back to that ever present state. “What? Why?”

I got out my cigarette holder from amongst a pile of old scans, pulling out a very specific card – the only yellow one in the bunch, an old aged Japanese Musumi. They had always given me an age in heated negotiations. And so I lit it.“They’re dead ends. Nothing anyone can do about it. That’s just the painful truth.”

“Could you just… just listen to what I have to say? Please?”

The Musumi always works. Always did work, I should say… but Old World Blues was still on the mind. I struggled to resist the force that had already overtaken me. Following her up, giving her more hope – it was a mistake. But I couldn’t help it. The air was too thick with the scent of cigarette smoke and mystery. I had thought about my own life… the own mysteries I had experienced, as well as the closures I hadn’t. I decided it was time to break the rules.

“Alright, give me the foundations.”

Her eyes perked up. She was never able to convince anyone else. She began: “We were on a trip… we stopped, at a hotel not too far from here, just the two of us. There wasn’t anyone else there, not from what I could see. We got our room together, got ready and went to bed. Last thing I said to her before I dozed off… she was playing with her tablet, and I told her to get to bed or else she’d be tired in the morning. She nodded to me, and I turned and fell asleep. The next morning...”

“She was gone?”

“Yes. Out of nowhere. Tablet and everything was still there. The bed looked fine too… looked like she had just gotten out of bed and never came back.” The nameless woman began to quiver to herself under the recalling of events passed.

“Did you not hear anything during the night? Like her getting out of bed, anything?”

“I heard the bed ricket – her getting out of bed, I think – but nothing else.” The guilt that weighed her down was clear. I felt a tinge of sympathy; but I had seen and heard of many worse cases before, and my empathetic thought had been sanded down by so many years of hearing the same dreadful things over and over again.

“Did you hear the door open or close?”

“No. I heard nothing.”

“And what did the official investigation come up with?”

“That she must have wandered off during the night, or worse… someone got her. I… I just want to see my daughter again, that’s all.” I could feel the mood dampening even lower. She began to shed a tear.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Not… not long. Almost exactly five days since.”

I thought about it. I thought about the case, and about the mother, and about her missing daughter. I’ve been brought people wanting closure before. Even I myself have felt the pain of not knowing the end of a story. Perhaps that was what brought me into thinking about the Old World Blues that morning in the first place. It was either luck or fate for that women, for in the first time of my entire investigative career, I sat down and decided to accept a cold case request.

“Oh, thank you sir! Thank you so much.”

I shrugged it off, pretending it had less meaning to me than it actually did. “Don’t mention it. I’ll get on it soon.”

I watched her slowly leave her seat, leaving some trepidation behind her, and move silently towards the exit. But right before she turned the brass knob, I recalled one case that I could get closure to.

“What is your name?”

She turned back to me, her panicked hair created a shadow that guised true meaning in her face. “Maria. Maria Cartwell. My daughter’s name is Susie Cartwell.”

No one else came that entire day. No one else needed to. I grabbed the stained portfolio she had left on my desk and flipped it open. It turned out to be a mistake, for the first thing I laid eyes upon was Susie’s smiling face. A smiling face that, perhaps at the time, was meant to have joyful meaning. Meant to be relaxing and peaceful, to calm one that was feeling particularly neurotic. But the context had changed now. For what I now saw in the young daughter’s face now was a beckoning. A plea. Save my mother, she told me. Save my mother, for I am already dead. But if you cannot save her… then at the very least, go and save yourself.

[END OF EPISODE 1]

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

The Big Bear Screams Again

2016-12-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

When I moved into my apartment in Queens I had a lot of complaints but didn't have a chance to share them. After all, my life at that point had fallen to one of its greatest deeps, and money didn't come to me easily. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy things about the place wasn't the smell of rat piss that diffused through the halls on a near constant basis, or the lack of communication between the ethnic landlord and his audience of tenants, or even the fact that the lock on my door simply held as a ruse and not an actual lock for the first three months of living. No, the biggest, perhaps most important aspect of that apartment, was the walls.

It's not uncommon for a tenant to hate the walls. Every wall is paper thin to everyone, unless you're living in some expensive condominium down with the bourgeoisie. But you'll have to trust me when I say that these walls were a very special case. Privacy was already very sparse in 1963, but when it came to the apartments, community was everything. I say that speaking of nearly every single sound-wave passing through your side could very well be audible on the other. Every day, at 3 pm, I could hear Robert's boys coming home from their classes in the ghetto and turning on the TV to watch some early sitcom I couldn't be arsed to recall the name of. But it wasn't the Robert and his boys I was thinking the most about, but rather the man who stayed in the room opposite to where I held my own bed; the man I knew only as Leubeto.

I didn't know Leubeto was a communist at first. There was nothing about the guy that really struck me as strange; he looked like the same kind of muscular, straight out of the navy, first-rate thug you'd expect to live in these types of places. Occasionally when I'd get home from work I'd see him having a smoke right outside – he'd give me a small nod and I'd give a small nod back – and that was about the extent of our direct acknowledgment of one another. And yet, every Friday night – every Friday night – Leubeto would bring a whore from the shack down at Wilhelm Pier with him, and I'll be damned if I didn't hear every god damn piece of it.

Listening to Leubeto fuck a woman was like listening to a cheap public school symphony. First came the introduction; Leubeto would bad mouth the girl and she would bad mouth back, and then as the clothes came out the language would get more and more filthy to the point where things were finally ready to get heated. From there was when things really began to escalate, but not for very long. It's strange, from a man with the strength and sexual determinacy of Leubeto I would have expected him to last longer, but every time I predicted his breaking point it would always be a little bit before. Perhaps it was because I always had the habit of overestimating Leubeto, but I digress.

As you could tell, this was a bad fuckin' time of day for me. My time in Korea taught me to sleep under hard circumstances, and Leubeto wouldn't last that long anyway, but for that simple five minute period I swear it was a hell of a lot louder than it needed to be. Still, I am a patient man by heart, and so I preserved until a Wednesday night where I had brought my own love over, and right as we were ready to begin, Leubeto's horrifying grunts permeated the room. Turns out he had decided to change schedule on me. It was then that I decided action must be taken.

The first thing I wanted to figure out was what in the hell the big fuck was even doing in there. I obviously couldn't just ask him – and if he caught me watching in the act I might have already been dead. So instead what I devised was an ingenious – if a bit perverse – plan. I figured that Hashraj wouldn't mind if his already deteriorating complex was deteriorated just a tiny bit more, so I took the liberty of constructing a very small and precise that gave a very nice birds eye view of Leubeto's eloquent bedroom. In that case, even if he had discovered the hole, it was easy for me to conclude that it must have been done by a previous inhabitant, and that I myself did not even know who put the hole there or what its purpose served.

I clearly remember the day the plan first came into fruition. It was winter, heavily snowing – must have been early December – and I had been able to get off work early claiming I was suffering from the same stomach bug that a few other employees had been getting. I ended up not getting any pay that week, but it was worth it; I watched through the looking glass down anxiously as Leubeto finally brought in his escort, and they immediately went to town.

I was holding in my laughter and having an existential crisis at the same time. I often wonder what I look like to other people; when I saw Leubeto that night the thought transformed itself to some twisted reality. For the Leubeto I had known – the one who seemed like he can pulverize anyone else in the hall to a pulp, the man of few words but many intimidations – if you told me that man was the same one as the red-faced, lumping, intensely sweaty and slightly emotional man I had seen in the bedroom that night, and you were to say that with no connection between the two bodies like I had, then I would be right to not believe you, as I probably wouldn't. And yet, things came to the head they did, and now my seemingly miserable life had at least one positive – the self-fulfilled enjoyment of a nice Friday night.

…

“You're telling me he's a fuckin' communist?”

“I understand this may come at a great surprise to you, but you must believe me in what I say. In every word. I have already given you the proof; and now I am asking you to step up and help your country one more time.”

“I mean, it's not that I'm going to decline the invitation or anything, it's just – what the hell is he spying on? The lame duck couriers down at the pier? Little Ol' Hashraj? Is he spying on his own ballsack?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly what we believe he's done. All we can tell you is what we want you to do; go to that little hole you made in the wall and plant this camera there.”

It was a whole three months that had passed when I found the FBI agent at my door. I had been carrying some groceries up when I found him in all his black suited glory, beckoning to me, explaining the situation briefly but offering to explain it in depth over some coffee at a place in the uptown. Being both scared and starving, how could I refuse? I put down the bags inside and then went straight back out to meet him down at his car – a terrible idea in retrospect – but he did keep his end of the bargain and I ended up getting a damn good coffee out of it. I don't recall the entire exact dialogue, but I do remember the key points; so that bit of fictionalized discussion should set up my situation pretty well for you.

The Friday was the first Friday since December since I felt as jittery as I did, although now it was for all the wrong reasons. It turns out my casual fun had attracted quite the pair of wolves, and seeing that I was now between pissing off the KGB and pissing off the CIA, I decided to score one for the true motherland. And so, while Leubeto gave his classic rhythmic thumping, I took the liberty of setting up the camera exactly as I had been instructed.

After that, truth be told, not much else happened. I waited nervously another three and a half weeks before the feds finally busted down Leubeto's door, probably due to the fact that they had enough evidence of whatever the fuck they wanted to know. And then, things went silent. Life moved on. To be honest sometimes I wonder why I treat it so much more than a funny anecdote in a much greater life. I tell this story at parties a lot and it does a lot of good. I figured I'd write it down too.

Leubeto, if you're still out there – sincerest apologies.

Saturn Devouring his Son

2016-10-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

The reason is because the painting was hung up right inside Richard's office. It wasn't the actual piece of course, though if he really wished it he could easily procure the money to obtain the original. Still, he liked the picture. Really liked it. Where all others obtained a sense of fear and anxiety from it, Mr. Richard felt calmed. By intimidating the others who entered the room it aided him. He prayed it would aid him tonight.

There was the expected knock. Richard opened it an out came the expected son. The two of them sat down across from each other on Richard's old mahogany table. The following conversation occurred:

“My son.”

“My father.”

A short period of silence.

“So you know why I'm here, correct?”

The father didn't answer.

“You know why I'm here, correct?”

“I have the idea.”

“I... I... I, listen, I talked about it to Marilyn. In full detail. Now I'm not saying you're lying to me, but you should-”

“I know exactly why you're here. There, I said it. I know exactly why you're here.”

“I'm of age now.”

“Yes.”

“I am the eldest.”

“Yes.”

“So, I am wishing to make the transaction now. To make it easier for us both, down the road.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“This isn't a negotiation father. This isn't a deal – hell, it isn't even a wager. This is set in stone. You promised me this a long time ago, and I've come to take-”

“I'm not giving it to you.”

“So you're going back on promise?”

“That's not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about? 'Cause I'm beginning to have a hard time-”

“When I wrote your inheritance, I declared that I would only give you it if I knew for sure you were going to be something worthwhile and do something successful with it.”

“Oh, god, please. Don't go down this route. Don't do this.”

“At the time, it seemed like nothing. Of course you were going to get the money. That's why I was so hopeful about it, that's why, at the time, it may have seemed like a promise to you-”

“It was a promise.”

“It was a promise that you'd get it if you followed the conditions. Now, I was certain you were going to be successful, but... do you even remember how I became who I am-”

“Even? What's that supposed to mean?”

“Do you know who I am? I am a deal maker. I have gotten schinded by a lot of people who I otherwise thought were really great business partners. I know how to make contracts. I've been doing this for fourty years. Fourty fucking years. I made my clam business when I was a little fuckin' hoodwink Albanian immigrant in the middle of chink town.”

“It wasn't even a business...”

“Oh, huh? Really? It wasn't? You say that like you've got some authority. Please, please – if you – if you at all have any expertise in business, or entrepreneurship, or … hell, I'll allow anything. Anything at all. Listen all your fucking accomplishments out, right here. Just spell them out to me.”

“I wrote a book.”

“No you didn't. No you fucking didn't. You didn't write shit. You said you were going to write a book and you didn't write shit. Waste of fucking talent.”

“I did write- no, now hold on. Don't you speak like that to me.”

“What? What? You're my son, not the other way around. I can say what I-”

“Don't. Speak.”

“Haha, what? Whatya fuckin' doing? Are you threatening me right now?”

“I made my own fucking fortune without you. I lived my own god damn life without you. While you were busy fuckin' two-cent Bolivian daddy's girls twenty years younger than you who probably felt like having your ancient wood was worse than rape but they did it for the money... while you were doing that... I was establishing a community. I have a fuckin' community of people coming after me, looking after me, caring about what I say, because I wrote that book. What, what you think someone cares about what you have to say? Like actually, genuinely cares? The fuckin' shareholders are just dealing with your shit by this point because they can't force you to resign since you're the piece of stubborn shit you are. And don't even get me started... don't even get me started on Tony and Lewis... ha ha, if you think Tony and Lewis like you, then you really are fuckin' delusional.”

“Well I'm certainly sure that Lewis has done a lot more in his short life than you have in your miserable one.”

“Miserable? Oh no, my life isn't miserable. It's just when I have to talk to you. When I have to talk to you it feels like Hell has invaded the land of the living.”

“I... can't... do this, not right now. Fuck this, I'm getting a drink.”

“How does it feel?”

“I said I'm getting a drink.”

“Don't walk away from me, I'm not done until I have my money.”

“I'm only walking to the alcohol cabinet, calm the fuck down.”

A short silence.

“Alright, alright. Listen, we can make a deal.”

“Yes, we can make a deal. You give me all the money I deserve.”

“No.”

“Fuck you.”

“I am not giving you one point five million dollars. But I'm willing to go a bit lower than that.”

“Oh, so when I first walk in you're adamant that you're not giving shit. Then I knock you down a few pegs and you say you're willing to negotiate?”

“I'm giving you a fair deal, don't talk shit.”

“Yes, and my fair deal is the million. The one that is owed to me. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then we don't have a deal.”

A quick silence.

“Jesus, the fuck are you-”

“Listen. Listen to me. I am done playing around, alright? You come – look at me – look here, at me – I am done with the fucking deals. I am done with you. I am not standing here all damn... LOOK at me.”

“Good fucking Christ, were you trying to hit me? Calm the fuck-- AH GOD, JESUS.”

Silence.

More silence.

The door is shut.

Heavy breathing.

“What have I done.”

The painting is taken down.

Some minor scuffling.

A vault is opened.

“For the better.”

The door is opened.

The door is closed.

Last Stand of Buckweed Ranch

2016-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you now the tragic tale of Buckweed Ranch.

Back in Texas, during the Great Depression, there was a wave of crises that involved landlords going to the farmer's home in order to evict them from the property in the fear that they could no longer produce profit. This caused a wave of terror among the farmers themselves, calling for the government to amend these so called discriminatory violations and be able to stay in the place they raised their families. And yet, despite all this anger and fear that developed out of these unplanned evictions, all of the families ended up leaving – begrudgingly or no. All of them, except Walter Forsen.

Walter had always been the stubborn type. Ever since he was born he had lived on that Ranch, he had a strong devotion to it. As men and their families began to be evicted, Walter had barely batted an eye. Even Lando Holmes, the owner of the ranch and lifelong friend of the Forsens, begged Walter to leave early, offering him large sums of money to go live in a more stable area. He told Walter that it wasn't him, but the banks that were throwing Walter off. Walter didn't listen.

At it was in February of 1932 that Lando himself was finally forced to come down to the ranch with a tractor and force Walter off the land. He got all the way up to the door and prepared to knock when Walter opened the door himself.

From the beginning the last Forsen's disposition seemed incredibly odd. Whereas he had been sending Lando crude and hateful replies to his letters from that point on, at the door the man seemed eager to see him and completely oblivious of what was about to happen. He welcomed Lando in, told him to sit at the kitchen table, and then wait while Walter went to go finish something up. The way Lando sat at that kitchen table meant he was facing the windows of the kitchen with the door behind him – meaning he was completely ignorant when Walter fired the two shots from his revolver straight into the back of his head.

They say Lando didn't die at first, but rather fell off the chair and began convulsing on the floor for a few moments before his official death finally came. It didn't matter to Walter. The man he had once called a friend was now a significant threat that needed to be eliminated. As all men know, property is valued more than friends.

It didn't take the police too long to gather what had happened to Lando. They had warned Lando of Forsen's speech before, when he had first began sending the letters. Lando, in his ignorance, refused to believe them. He believed that he was the only man who could convince Walter to leave that place. Now, everyone knew no one could.

They send the entire Alberton county police department to that farm. The cop cars were perfectly lined up around the perimeter so there was no escape. They wanted to bait him out, so they waited. Waited until the man himself finally appeared at the second story balcony.

He was only able to shoot the rifle once before a flurry of bullets decimated his body. The one shot was actually quite interesting; the bullet was a long way off from hitting any of the policeman. This is the shot where the story tends to differ. Some say Walter Forsen was just a bad shot. Some say that the rifle he was using was old and worn out, and so the bullets trajectory was much different than Walter probably anticipated. Others say that he wasn't trying to hit the police at all, but rather for they to hit him.

Buckweed Ranch never had an occupant since. The Depression wore it out, and its newly found dark history destroyed it. Some men in Alberton county believe that's what Walter wanted – for it only to ever be a Forsen ranch. To some men in the county, Walter is a pioneering hero. To others, he is the ultimate fear, and the ultimate villain.

Montague Family House

2016-09-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

And so he lay, writhing on the floor.

The daughter could barely comprehend what had transpired. She knew she walked in with the boy a few moments before – that the two of them were laughing all the way up the stairs to the family house. She knew that, once she had open the door, her father had been waiting. She knew that her father said something, but wasn't exactly sure what it was. And now the father held the pistol in his right hand; and there lay her partner, writhing on the floor.

She screamed. It was her first instinct. Her second was to run to the phone to call the police. Her father held her back, trying to get her to stay calm. She slapped him, and while he was dazed ran for the phone anyway. She had barely gotten on the line with the responder when her father pulled the cord on the phone and ended the call. All this time, the daughter's boyfriend lay lying, writhing on the floor.

Now a vengeful fury built up in her. She pushed the father away, calling him terrible things at the top of her lungs. Perhaps he deserved it, perhaps not. After all, none of us know exactly why he shot the boy. Not even the daughter knows why. All we know is that he stays laying, writing on the bloody floor.

It was at this point that the daughter had given up all hope. She, much like the boy, collapsed to the ground, crying in a neat corner of the room. Her father did not bother counseling her. Instead, he looked toward the cause of this commotion; the boy, who no longer was writing, but lay motionless. Motionless on the bloody floor.

Fat Man, Little Boy

2016-09-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

When I first got across the street, I didn't quite understand what I was looking at. There was a grand group of people all surrounding a small little pocket of shadowed area on a sidewalk. Two bikes had been discarded nearby. An older man ran across to a cul-de-sac right around the corner. In all honesty I don't like moments like these getting to me – whenever there's a moment that draws peoples attention I always look away. Keeps me more focused than those around me. Yet this time I couldn't help but be curious. I figured I might as well check it out; I had to go down that path eventually.

As I got closer the figures which I had only been vaguely able to discern became more and more clear. All these people, for which there must have been seven, were all surrounding one boy. The boy was only slightly younger than I was, with much more fat. One of the men handed him water. He took it silently. They asked him questions, but he said nothing.

But perhaps the most interesting feature about the boy was the blood peppered across his body. It wasn't streaming, or dripping, or falling. It was merely there. In the time I looked at the kid, although brief, I couldn't find any source to where the blood came from. In fact, it some ways it even looked fake. The blood had mixed with the sweet and became much lighter, giving off the impression of a used marker rather than blood. Hell, the only reason I did know it was blood was because the group had mentioned it so.

I didn't get that long of a chance to look at the boy. The second I took a peek his eyes instantly found me, even with all the others around. They looked, expectantly. What they were expecting, I never found out. I continued on my way.

A few days passed before I saw him again. The crowd of people were no longer there. He was still laying down under the shade of the same tree. The blood was now gone. I took another brief glance at him. Part of me was tempted to ask him what had happened but I never did, reason being is that he gave me the same eyes he did during our previous meeting. Expectant eyes. He wanted something from me, something I wasn't giving him.

After that second meeting I became fully engrossed in the boy. What did he want? Was it something only I could give him? I tried thinking of someone he might have reminded me of, but came up with nothing. I searched around campus for him but the trip turned fruitless. I asked a close friend if she had heard of any accident that happened on that street recently. She shook her head.

Those next few days I went across that street fully wishing to see the kid again, to ask him what I had not gained the courage to ask before, but it was to no avail. It was only after, when I had begun to become frustrated, when I began to doubt myself, when I had forgotten about the fat boy entirely, that I saw him again.

My initial reaction was anger. Was he taunting me? Did he in some way know that I was looking for him and plan accordingly? I got right up to his face. He gave me expectant eyes. I didn't bother wasting any time.

“Do I know you?”

No answer, though for the first time he did look away, trailing off towards something in the distance before looking back up to me. I knew he wasn't deaf. He could hear me.

“Why do you keep showing up here?”

Once again there was no response, but the focused look on his face began to fade. Whatever I was saying, it was weakening him. I decided to go deeper.

“What happened to you last week? When you were bleeding?”

Then, he stopped looking. Just stared off into the distance. Into nothing. I asked a few more questions. Repeated some others. Now, nothing changed. He just stared. I started getting angry again.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The answer was nothing. It was the answer I expected, but not the one I wanted. I got closer to his face. He didn't react. I could feel myself rising in fury but I didn't want to do anything. So I left. I didn't want to leave, but I had no other choice. I took a long look behind me and he was still there. Hadn't changed position at all. I stopped turning around by the time I had reached the next block and just kept going.

I never saw him again.

It was only a few years later that I finally found out what was the deal with the little boy. It turns out, unlike what I thought, he didn't suffer from an accident. Rather, he came home to his father – a father who had a history of being particularly violent. The two had an argument, and the father hit him until he was unconscious. They say the father spoke These will make sure you don't talk again when he used the scissors to snip out the boy's tongue. They say the father only realized what he did when the tongue continued to move and slip within his hand, as if controlled by an act of God. They say it was the tongue, not the boy, not the argument, and not his life, that made him kill himself not long after. They say that ever since his father's death the boy, at some hour of the day, will go sit down by the shade of the shadow of that tree and just wait. Occasionally someone will come back and he would just stare at them. Stare at them expectantly. No one could ever really find out what the boy was after. Perhaps he was looking for someone to love him. Or perhaps someone to blame. Perhaps he wasn't looking for anything at all, he just sacrificed his own life to become an observer in our world, looking up at us expectantly to make some sort of move. Or perhaps, perhaps he was looking for someone to finish the job.

INCIDENTAL EVENTS

2016-09-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

Picture this: a highschool sophomore. Lost in the world. Younger than most of his classmates. Male. Brown shaggy hair with the same color eyes to match. The school day had just ended, he didn't learn anything. Review in math and chemistry. In English he spent the entire hour staring at a girl he was sweet on and then got yelled at by the teacher for not paying attention. The rest of the classes didn't matter because he spent the rest of the time focusing on thinking about the state of life. He was thinking about it just then, when he saw the girl.

The courtyard was empty, save for her. To the boy, she was ugly. But that's not what drove his attention. The girl was kneeling down, face in her hands. She wore a black weather knapshack and typical gothic clothing. A nicely crafted beanie sat atop her head. She was crying.

As the boy approached, he thought out the scenario in his head. What if he were to talk to her? Pat her back and say, 'Why are you crying'? How would she respond?

Perhaps she would say it was a personal conflict. Maybe she lost a friend. A good friend. A best friend. Or maybe it was more romantic. Maybe at a point earlier in the day she had a relationship, but it's second half said it just couldn't be. Maybe it was something more material, like a bad exam grade. Maybe it was just depression. Whatever it was, however, it would cause the two to talk. He would tell her the story about the teacher, how she yelled at him and caused him to feel embarrassed. He would say how he felt the rest of that day: betrayed. Betrayed by the teacher, betrayed by the girl he spent the time looking at, betrayed by himself. And maybe the ugly crying girl would understand him, and he would understand her. And then they would talk different subjects, different things, different thoughts. The girl would stop crying, and the boy would stop thinking.

But then he got scared. What if they got to know each other very well? What if he stopped thinking she was ugly? What if they fell in love?

What would happen to the girl in English class? Would he never have a chance to love her again? Would his colleagues laugh at him again, now that he had to settle with this girl? Would he look worse to them than he already did?

From their the conflict drove from the girl to the boy's own head. He almost cried, too; but he managed to hold in his tears. He was close to the girl now. He had to make a decision and his subconscious made it for him. He steered clear of the girl and went on his normal way out the school. At first, he was ashamed of his decision. But by the time he had reached those school gates he managed to convince himself that it was the right move.

After all, what was the point?

The Lonely Road

2016-08-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

Four boys make their way across a desert using an old used sedan. The road is long – the desert goes on in all directions, and the only sign that it does have an end is the mountains off in the distance. The road isn't, however, lonesome; occasionally an 18-wheeler or a family RV come out of seemingly no where, keep up with them for a few moments, before going on and passing by.

The boys didn't care. They were in full spirits, making joke and comments to pass the time while one of them kept his focus on the road. The boys were old enough to drive but young enough to still be called boys. Old enough to start thinking about life, but young enough to not yet understand death.

But one did try to make the effort that very night. While the others stayed oblivious, he put his face to a cold car window and thought deeply for the first time about the world without him. It was a strange idea. A foreign one, one he didn't particularly like. And yet he kept thinking of it, kept trying to piece it all together.

“What do you think happens after we die?”

The question was just loud enough to stop the other three from laughing. They turned to the companion who had made their lighthearted romp reach a morbid conclusion.

“What are you going on about?” One of the boys pepped out.

The philosopher shrugged. “I'm just curious.”

The conversation would've ended there if it wasn't for his curiosity also infecting one of the boys who was driving, even though he didn't necessarily understand the question.

“I mean its a safe to say that we probably go to some place like Heaven, right? Well, maybe not Heaven exactly, but something like it. Like a place where people can all hang out with their previous generations.”

“No, I didn't say where we go, I said what happens.”

“What's that question supposed to mean?” The original skeptic pointed out. “I mean, we die, we're no longer in the world, that's it.”

“But, I mean, people miss us, right? Our families miss us, our friends miss us-”

“Hey,” the driver spoke up again, motioning towards the fourth member who had not yet spoken. “Think Lisa from 5th grade would miss you if you died?”

“Oh, I don't think so.” Though the fourth gave a definitive answer, he shrugged. “Well, I don't know. I mean, how is she gonna figure out I'm gone anyway?”

There was a moment of silence that followed in which each of the members of the car digested those words. Gone. Died. How could they apply to them? Then again, don't they apply to everyone?

“What made you think of this, anyway?” – That would be the skeptic's last question.

The philosopher, just like before, shrugged. “I've just been thinking out it. It's weird, y'know? I mean, when some old dude dies, its expected, there's just some family gathered around, but if it happens to one of us.”

The fourth now vocally addressed his opinion on the subject. “Can we stop talking about this, please? Jesus, it's like you're out to jinx us or something.” That didn't stop the philosopher from continuing.

“I just wonder like, have we done enough in the world to warrant us being of any real importance? Or maybe our deaths would be more important, cause a lot of people we know about are still around-”

The driver, one of the philosopher's original allies, now spoke against him. “Hey, maybe it's not the best time to talk about this, okay? I don't want to be stuck on this long car ride talking about this.”

And so the philosopher finally quit, but the car ride never did quite get back to the positivity they had beforehand. Now, they all had death on their minds. Their own deaths.

They say that, near your death, you begin to take these things into consideration. No one knows how the body and mind are able to predict these events, nor does anyone know whether it's really true that they can. Only one thing is for sure – a hell of a lot of men on their deathbed tend to find God in those final moments. You can only wonder why.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

The Atmosphere of Souls

2016-08-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

On a business trip I once made my way up to the Chinese province of Tibet. The place was, in my opinion, completely beautiful – richly decorated sculptures, murals fashioned in exorbitant detail, and fanciful shrines carved out of the stone of the sturdy Himalayan mountainsides. One day, when I was visiting one of these grand religious monuments, a local beggar stopped me in my steps and asked me, incredibly in English, if I could spare him some money.

“And what reason would I have to do that?” I replied to him.

“Because, I know within my soul,” the man gave a pump to his chest with his hand, “that you are a good man. And I know, within my soul, that I am a good man. And I know, within all our souls, all people are born good, and when their soul is still good and not yet soured, they commit good deeds.”

It sounded like a scam, so I laughed and took advantage of the moment to see if I could take the conversation down an entertaining path. “So, you believe all men are good?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe I am good?”

“Yes.”

“And so you believe that I should give you money, because I am good?”

“I am not saying that, because of the purity of your soul, you are required to do me any service. Indeed, I did not beg – I questioned. I asked you, 'Do you have a dollar to spare'? I understand in your country that can be taken as a demand. But here, to me, it is the truth.”

“You still did not answer my question – what do you have that will make it worth my while to throw away my money to you? How do I know you aren't the town drunk, or a rambling madman?”

The man stopped, and looked at his chest. “Because I know that you can see the good in souls too. I know you are hesitant, but I also know that you know what I would do with the money.”

“And what would you do?”

“Give it away.”

“And what if the person you give away my money to isn't worthy?”

“Well, it isn't your money anymore, is it not? You have no reason to worry.”

I gave a chuckle. The old man was clever, but not wise.

“So, you believe everyone has a kind soul?”

“Yes.”

“And what of those with evil souls?”

“Anyone's soul can be persuaded to evil, just as any evil soul can be rehabilitated back to good.”

“But don't more souls turn evil than evil to good?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, stories of men turning evil are much more common than those of evil men turning good. If you are true, shouldn't men be able to convert back to good at the same rate that they turn evil?”

My question caused the old man to think for a moment. “Evil souls are turned evil by the atmosphere. If the atmosphere does not change, they stay evil. If the atmosphere does change, they turn back good.”

“So people do not change atmospheres often?”

“They can't change atmospheres often. Not many souls have that ability.”

I began to understand the point the man was trying to make. “So the money you want to give, isn't to the good souls...”

“...It's to the evil souls, to change their surroundings.”

“And you don't need the money, because your surroundings are clean?”

“Of course.”

I smiled. “Well, my friend, I'd say you won me over.” I pulled out a few silver coins and dropped them into the man's outreached hands. He eyed them carefully, and just as he made his revelation, I continued to speak: “They aren't currency. They are better than currency. There's a man who runs a restaurant not to far from here, by the bay. Give these to him, and he'll give you what you want.”

“And what is that?”

“A chance at changing the atmosphere of souls.”

The old man was reluctant at first, but eventually he clenched the coins within his fist and dropped them into his bag. “I know I can trust you. I can see your soul is pure. May we meet again, my friend.”

“May we meet again.”

Later that day, I went back to the restaurant at the bay. The owner, cleaning off one of the tables, turned and greeted me when he heard the entry bell ring.

I asked him, “Have you had any new customers?”

“Yes, indeed I did. One came in today.”

“And what did he look like?”

“Old, hunched back. Tattered clothes.”

I smiled again. As it turns out, the old man did come straight to the restaurant as he had said he would, and didn't give away the coins. I continued: “So, where is he now?”

The man I had partnered with continued to put his brush to the table. “On the path to Morocco. I still have a repayment to Fariq – when I saw the man it was the first thing I thought of.”

“What will he be used for? He's old, bony, frail, and has a bit of an attitude – he seems more of a liability for laboring work.”

The man stopped cleaning tables, and partially turned his head toward me. “I never told you, did I?”

“What?”

“The truth.”

“What truth?”

“Fariq doesn't use his slaves as laborers. He has his own hired force for that. Instead, the man has a bit of a special interest.”

“What interest is that?”

“The consumption of human flesh.”

The image of it gave me a chuckle – Fariq, an old, fat, stout king nibbling on the legs of a hunchback while the frail wiseman rattled off some line from Confucius, Fariq barely listening. I suppose that is the fate of those who get their philosophies wrong.

Later that day, I went to explore another temple.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

Writing Prompt Challenge -- Prompt 4

2016-08-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week's Writing Prompt challenge!

Today’s prompt is: You are a teenager with the ability to measure how "Dangerous" people are on a scale from 1 to 10 just by looking at them. A normal child would be a 1, while a trained man with an assault rifle might be a 7. Today, you notice the unassuming new kid at school measures a 10.

I've had this gift for awhile now.

I can't exactly pinpoint where it started, mostly because I didn't really believe it fully until a few years ago. It's not a literal numeric scale, but I like to refer to it as such for sake of implicity.

Basically, I can tell how much of a threat people are.

It's the same instinctual feeling we all have, that feeling of protecting your loved ones, except a few differences. First of all, its not just people who threaten my family, it's everyone. Second of all, it's always right.

I've tried looking at myself in the mirror to determine which one I was a number of times, but each time I got some result from 1-10, never straight. My mother is a 2 when around me or the family, but a 5 when around strangers. I took that this followed her sharp wit and unfortunate beginnings, as she could be quite a tough and intimidating woman when she needed to be.

My boyfriend, Pierce, is a straight 3. Don't see how, though – he honestly wouldn't even hurt a butterfly if he had to. I guess that it was something he kept in the back of his brain just in case the need arose, just like my mother. The rest of my friends are around 2-4, and the most “dangerous” man I've ever met is my principal who had a 6, likely due to his ex-army experience.

He was the most dangerous man. Until Wednesday.

The second the kid walked out of his parent's sedan I was already getting bad vibes. On the outside, he looked pretty damn normal: glasses, waved back blond hair, and a red polo. He practically didn't have any muscle. But as he got closer to the school, and to me, I began feeling worse and worse until the number finally came to me.

“Ten.”

“What?” My boyfriend asked it from my side. Besides my mother, he was the only one who knew about – and believed – my ability.

“That kid over there. He's a ten.” I pointed to the person in question.

“How? He doesn't look threatening at all.”

“I don't know, but I want to find out.”

And so I did, or at least tried to. He was a grade above me, so besides passing each other in the hall once, in which I saw nothing, I didn't really get to see what was up. I decided to wait until it was after school to get Pierce to spy with me.

We hid behind a bush, getting quite a lot of suspicious looks, but fortunately the man himself didn't notice.

It seemed still that he was entirely normal, and I was about to call it out until Pierce whispered to me in a shocked voice.

“Look, his hand!”

It wasn't much – not much for those paying attention to notice – but it was obvious. The kid's hand was on fire.

Instead of reacting to it in the way of, well, having your hand being on fire, he instead simply patted it down with his other hand until it was gone. It was at the moment that it clicked.

“He has a power, too.”

“Of what? Setting his hand on fire?”

“It explains the ten, doesn't it?”

That night I got to thinking how many more of us their could be out there. It's clear his power is much stronger than mine, so perhaps there is a whole group of people whose powers range from large to small. Maybe like me, the person doesn't believe they have the power. Or maybe, they simply haven't figured out what it is yet.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

LEVIATHAN 008

2016-08-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Leviathan Tape 004

Date Unknown

Location Unknown

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease (encephalopathy) in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration of the brain and spinal cord. BSE has a long incubation period, about 2.5 to 8 years, usually affecting adult cattle at a peak age onset of four to five years, all breeds being equally susceptible. BSE is caused by a misfolded protein—a prion.[1] In the United Kingdom, the country worst affected by an epidemic in 1986-98, more than 180,000 cattle were infected and 4.4 million slaughtered during the eradication program.[2]
The disease may be most easily transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses.[3] However, the infectious agent, although most highly concentrated in nervous tissue, can be found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including blood.[4] In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD or nvCJD), and by June 2014 it had killed 177 people in the United Kingdom, and 52 elsewhere.[5] Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989.[6][7]
A British and Irish inquiry into BSE concluded the epizootic was caused by cattle, which are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread.[8][9] The cause of BSE may be from the contamination of MBM from sheep with scrapie that were processed in the same slaughterhouse. The epidemic was probably accelerated by the recycling of infected bovine tissues prior to the recognition of BSE.[10] The origin of the disease itself remains unknown. The infectious agent is distinctive for the high temperatures at which it remains viable, over 600 °C (about 1100 °F).[11] This contributed to the spread of the disease in the United Kingdom, which had reduced the temperatures used during its rendering process.[8] Another contributory factor was the feeding of infected protein supplements to very young calves.[8][12]

Source: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy”. URL: http://darkblackdesires.proboards.com/

Writing Prompt Challenge -- Prompt 3

2016-07-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week's Writing Prompt challenge!

This prompt is:You are legally allowed to commit murder once, but you must fill out the proper paperwork and your proposed victim will be notified of your intentions

The afternoon began pretty normal for me.

I had just gotten off work, parking the car in place when I got out and noticed an envelope sticking out of the mailbox. Of course I had assumed that it was just another piece of mail, so I brought it inside and sat it down on the table. It was only once inside that my heart quaked upon the realization of what the letter was.

DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN OVERPOPULATION RESOURCES

For Mr. Ryan Schaffer

LETTER OF PURGE NOTICE

I guess I never thought too hard on the idea that anyone could want me dead.

But once I read the message, it was obvious; my brother.

I had always overshadowed him. He always believed that our parents cared about me much more than him, and that I had more friends, more relationships, et cetera. I had always tried to reason with him – that it wasn't true, that there was plenty of times that people cared about him just as much as they did me.

By the time we graduated high school, he went somewhere else and none of us had ever heard from him again. I always felt pity for him, but now I had no choice. The hunt started on 5 minutes from when I finished the letter. I had to defend myself.

I did mostly what I remembered from the advice the surviving defenders of the hunt had given in various interviews and internet posts – I boarded up the door, the windows, got my pistol, and headed upstairs.

It was quiet for a while. I had locked myself in my bedroom and had waited for what seemed like an eternity until I heard a load scratching noise in the backdoor. At this moment my body shut down in fear, as I realized the mistake that I made.

I had only barred ONE door – the front one. I had totally forgotten about the backside of the house, save the windows. I kept my gun close as a soft thud continued from the backdoor, through the house, and up the stairs.

Finally, it stopped.

My hands were shaking now, pointing the gun at the door in front of me. With a loud crack the axe made a whole in the door. And another. And another. And another.

Finally the door burst opened, and I shot.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis

LEVIATHAN 007

2016-07-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Leviathan Tape 003

Date: Unknown, 1995

Location: Concord, Connecticut

TRANSCRIPT START

I remember … we were in the library, Donna and I... we were doing some project for our history class or something. Anyway, there's a loud pop... and, well, the chem lab is right next to the lab so we just figured that... maYYBe it was chem, right? But t hen this kid... bobbie... he comes in a ND STARTS SCREAMING BL OOODY MURder. So we realize something is really wrong. Me and DONa...

…

“Are you okay?” and I said yeah. It was... a close call. I've never experienced FEAR or anything like that in my life. It was scary. But I'm glad both me and _____ made it out alive.

Writing Prompt Challenge -- Prompt 2

2016-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week's Writing Prompt challenge!

This prompt is:

Serial killer has been monitoring his next victim's movements for months. She is a loner and the perfect target. One day she disappears and nobody notices but him.

What I do is an art. An art that takes time, work, and dedication.

Why most people look down upon it is no wonder, and that's not my issue. I'm not hear to tell you what I do is a good thing, and that the public has misguided you. I was born with the taste of blood: from the start of my days the idea of pain, of blood spilling, it all calmed me. The only time I felt truly alive was depriving that of others.

But the best part was never the victim, it was what came after. The pain of the friends and families. Of wanting justice to be done, but it was just out of reach. You see, my method is different. There is no motive, no gimmick. I don't write cryptic letters to the police, or target specific people. What I have is something else entirely.

It's an algorithm – a distinct one at that. It was fortunate that I was born into a family as wealthy as mine, or else I wouldn't be able to do what I do. I fly around the world you see; as each target is different. An old Mongolian stable-master to a newborn from Ohio – there's no difference. We're all the same in the end, as I am not specific in who I kill. All that matters is someone must die.

I've been among you for awhile now. No one has been able to find me. You may be next, but who knows – it all lies within the cards.

Samantha was one of the ones the cards picked. She was fresh out of high school – no real known friends or family, but known to delve into the gothic. I'm used to high-pressure situations, but its always good to have a laid back kill like this. 5 foot 8, long dark brown hair, goes to the neighborhood university, listens to metal, goes on a walk every Sunday, from 7 AM to a quarter after.

But why should I tell you this? Doesn't writing this down lead to a weak point? To being caught and crucified? You are right, but these are peculiar times: as I think someone might have gotten to her before me.

There's a lot more to her routine, but the reason I pointed out the Sunday walks was that was when I first noticed. 3 months had passed; it was almost time for the killing. However, I waited, and she never came out. I assumed she may have gone out earlier than normal, so I waited some more. By the time I next checked the clock it was 9 AM, and Samantha was no where to be seen. My heart started racing.

I decided to check the house – I had before while she was out for her classes, so I knew the rooms very well. For the most part, it goes well – with the exception of an Ontario trip when the teenage daughter of my target had been present. Besides a switch of victims, the trip did fairly decently. But this was different – now I had been going into the house with the full expectation that there may be someone there. I thought about the different situations I may be faced with, but in the end it was pointless. I had to go in. I had to find her.

But I couldn't. The house was not stirred. I checked her bedroom and the blankets were disturbed but otherwise no different. The shoes, keys, everything all in its right place.

I have seen this sort of scene before. I have caused it many times.

Someone took Samantha before me. No one takes my prey – whoever they are, I will find them. Rarely am I motivated to kill a certain target, but this is different. Much different.

---

Twitter: @CodexofAegis
Facebook: facebook.com/CodexofAegis