“Something has changed.” SIGNALIS (2022) ▷ dev. rose-engine
“I think about my daughter now, and what she was spared. Sometimes I feel grateful. The doctor said she didn’t feel a thing; went straight into a coma. Then, somewhere in that blackness, she slipped off into another deeper kind. Isn’t that a beautiful way to go out, painlessly as a happy child? Trouble with dying later is you’ve already grown up. The damage is done, it’s too late.”
True Detective, Season One - “Seeing Things” (2014) dir. Cary Fukunaga
"I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself.. we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal."
Rustin Cohle, True Detective
define hole / is a hole a real thing? / Marco Poloni, Black Hole, from The Majorana Experiment, 2010 / Flatfields Fotografien / What We Talk About When We Talk About Holes / Dark (2017-2020) / post / Disco Elysium / Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) / Donnie Darko (2001) / Outer Range (2022) / Kaveh Akbar, from “The Miracle,” Pilgrim Bell / post / Weizmann Institute of Science / Mathworld / post / post / post / post / Anne Boyer, from “Woman Sitting at the Machine,” in A Handbook of Disappointed Fate / Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords / Dennis Patrick Slattery, The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh / The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio, 1601–1602 (detail) / The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Bernardo Strozzi, 1582-1644 (detail) / Don McKay, from “Twinflower,” Field Marks: The Poetry of Don McKay, intro. Méira Cook (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006) / thierryetherve / Pathologic / post / Gregory Orr, from How Beautiful the Beloved / Tomas Tranströmer, tr. by Robert Bly, from a poem titled “Track” / Disco Elysium / Anne Carson, Economy of the Unlost / Pathologic 2 / Jonas Burgert, Sand brennt Blatt (2010) / Disco Elysium / Carl Phillips, from “Givingly”, Wild is the Wind / from “The Man With a Hole in His Head” by Rick Bursky / Rosario Castellanos, ‘Memorandum on Tlatelolco’ (tr. Maureen Ahern) / post / Pathologic / The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene | 1990) / John Banville, Eclipse / Twin Peaks / Disco Elysium / VectorStock / True Detective / Night in the Woods
I am the King!
The Hand of the King stood across the way, looming large and intimidating in front of the smoldering remains of the throne. He wouldn’t move from there no matter how long Behead hung around out here. Or at least his patience for standing around was always far greater than theirs. Even during the instances they’d done their best to taunt him, he hadn’t responded. Like the real pain in the ass he was, he’d only move once they entered into his arena trap. Where he’d ‘kill’ them again as he’d done many, many times before.
Beheaded had killed him a few times before too but not in a long while and they didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell this attempt either. Their health flask was empty and their body was far too damaged to survive more than a blow or two from his massive blade. It was annoyinglosing so many times to him, especially in a row. Did he even remember any of it though? No one ever seemed to comment on the fact that the island was stuck in a time loop so was Beheaded the only one who remembered or knew? Other than Time Keeper anyway, presumably the one responsible for the looping and thus had to know by default. Or was it common knowledge and thus not something worth mentioning? … Perhaps they should try to ask someone sometime.
Speaking of asking about things though, a handful of runs ago they’d finally managed to defeat the Giant. He’d called them ‘King’. It had been odd but they’d quickly put it out of their mind. In part due to their frustration with losing to the Hand again, ruining their good mood gained from beating the Giant. But now that they were thinking of it again as they sat on the ground in a small pool of their current body’s blood, staring across at the impassive Hand, why had he called them that?
They had no memories outside of this time loop but they’d already determined they’d probably once upon a time been human – or at least created from a human body – based off stuff they’d found in the Undying Shores. But the King? How likely was that in truth? Impossible for them to say for sure since they didn’t know about what might or might not have happened to him before everything completely fell to ruin. But it didn’t really matter to them much either way. Except for the fact that if they hadbeen the King that would mean the Hand of the King had been their Hand. It would also explain their irrational anger at the sight of the ‘King’ on the throne. … But wouldn’t having seen him there contradict the Giant calling them ‘King’? … He hadn’t seemed very alive though, not reacting at all to anything so clearly something was up there. Plus the whole time loop thing made for some pretty weird happenings. So it was still possible Beheaded was the King and thus the Hand was theirs.
Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting [experience], registering and storing it up.
-- William James, Principles of Psychology
"Das Verhalten des Traumgedächtnisses ist sicherlich höchst bedeutsam für jede Theorie des Gedächtnisses überhaupt. Es lehrt, daß „Nichts, was wir geistig einmal besessen, ganz und gar verloren gehen kann" (Scholz, S. 34). Oder, wie Delboeuf es ausdrückt, „que toute impression même la plus insignifiante, laisse une trace inaltérable, indéfiniment susceptible de reparaître au jour", ein Schluß, zu welchem so viele andere, pathologische Erscheinungen des Seelenlebens gleichfalls drängen."
-- Freud, Die Traumdeutung
“You’re alive, Brother. We can’t be killed so easily, you and I. Though... I had begun to wonder...” The Foundling and Twin-Sister || Mortal Shell
Ancient Reptilian Brain, Limbic System, Neocortex
- Disco Elysium fanart -
“It was a strange challenge. I had a former career as a dancer, and Thomas wanted that to be part of the film —but it was 30 years ago! Thomas wanted the scene to be ambivalent, to see a man who wants to fly and wants to fall at the same time. I was reluctant; I was afraid it could be pretentious in a film that’s so realistic. I eventually realized Thomas was right; dance was perfect for that. It’s not so much about the aesthetic of dancing, it’s about the inner journey of this character. He’s lost something dear to him, and also gained something dear to him, all within an hour. We wanted that reflected in the dance. I hadn’t danced in 30 years and it was tough and I was sore, but it felt liberating.”
MADS MIKKELSEN as Martin in ANOTHER ROUND (Druk) dir. Thomas Vinterberg
