As I flew to the east I sat next to a tiny Chinese woman. For hours she sat in complete silence, not once did we swap the pleasantries of introduction with each other but I was to be confined in a small space with her for the next eleven hours of our lives. For the first two or three hours she sat eyes closed. Every three minutes or so allowing herself to fall deeper into her shallow slumber enough to almost have her head fall on my shoulder only to jolt herself awake when she felt her hair brush against me. I wanted to invite her to just do what seemingly was coming naturally, but I didn't. Eventually she found a way cat-like to curl up onto the seat. Forming an ouroborus of herself. Deep into the flight after she had gone herself, I went to go to the toilet. On the return to my seat completely bewildered by the darkness in the cabin, her small asian face called out to me From our row. We didn't talk for the rest of the flight. I imagined a life with this unknown woman, she slept.

What's the deal with aeroplane food? 

It's bad.

 

I was unable to sleep and soon found myself blinded by the reflections of the Gobi desert when I curiously raised the blind in the now pitch dark plane. I've never seen a desert before. I've never been so far from myself before. I arrived in China some five arduous hours later. First I went to the toilet, where only the echoes of raucous retching could be heard as a middle aged man summoned some 5 gallons of spit from within with which to fill his selected urinal. An hour in the back of a taxi to the hotel. From behind the green hills and reddish clay dirt rose giant grey apartment towers. Each more depressing than the last. It was big. Already I began to miss the quaint streets of England. Now all I saw were expansive motorways and soulless condominiums. I'm sure that anyone would take the concrete box in the sky with running water and air con over the wooden house out in the countryside so benevolently awarded to them by The Party, but these buildings are ugly. After 11 sleepless hours on a plane the spacious legroom in the taxi allowed me to rest my eyes momentarily against my will. Eventually after a perilous journey through the lawless streets of Chengdu I had arrived in the hotel I'd be staying for the next 9 days. My small island was so far away, its pot-holed roads, kebab shops, manor houses, over-politeness, the certain kind of green that even the continental western europe doesn't really have. All these things were gone. Instead I was met with red walls, green tiled roofs, golden ornaments. I'd chosen to stay in an overtly Chinese looking hotel. Proper Disneyland hotel. If I was going to China I was going to do it properly. Frank the hotel manager, the only person I'd meet for the coming days who spoke more than a hello in a language I could understand. This stuttering, kind, awkward man immediately endeared himself, his hotel and his country to me. He's good at his job. One day I hope I could be as good as Frank. We ate and slept.

 

The following day, already having the feeling of being so far away and not wanting to impose on Frank any further, who kept telling us we were staying for an extraordinary amount of time, I set out for a starbucks. Immediately I took a wrong turn out of the hotel to the south rather than north. Usually in a European city I can get a sense of the economic reality of an area of the city. Qintai Street, constructed in the classic Chinese style of red, golds and whites with ornate roofs but clearly made of modern stucco. The street was full of shops that seemingly sold meat and panda souvenirs or jewellery. The first thing I noticed though were the stares. I knew the white population of China was small and they don't get too many tourists but surely they have TV. The elderly stare at me, the young stare at their phones. The two age groups might as well be two different races. The rugged storied faces of the elderly with their eyes firmly planted on me. Their hair wiry and faces tanned, the young pale and all seemingly wearing wigs. This wrong turn I was confronted with Chinese roads, now no longer in a car I was in danger. The bikes were incessant, on the road and pavement. There was no button to press to ask to cross a road. Instead you waited for the light to go green, then just hoped the cars would listen to it. The cars were similar to the people. When interacting with most people they first come across as a wall, then something happens and the conversation begins and they instantly become polite and patient. The vehicles were the same. If you waited the cars would never stop, if you made your intentions clear they patiently allowed you to cross. I'd never left Europe before, and never been out of England before without some kind of parent or guardian. It was beginning to set in just how far from the world I knew I'd come. I thought years of wikipedia study and anime watching would have prepared me for Asia. 

 

The Starbucks in Kuanzhai Alley similarly to my hotel was in an old style chinese building. I was beginning to wonder if I was staying in some Potemkin Village situation. Everything was so clean and nice. The stores, though what exactly they sold wasn't always obvious, were all stocked full. Nothing I saw seemed anything like the Soviet bread lines of Communism's past, this was a land of commerce. Within an hour of walking China's streets I encountered multiple toy stores, how did little plastic toys help the plight of the worker? The people's park was raucous with the ringing of tong like objects begging for your attention to please come and eat at their restaurant. A starbucks, a Dairy Queen, toy shops, souvenirs, no one is at work.

 

Suddenly the streets gave way to Tianfu Square; just massive. A plaza larger than any I'd seen. A land so spatially rich that this paving slabbed monument to marxist plenty was completely empty. Mao stood tall at one end waving his magnificence over the land he liberated. Behind him the Tall colonnades of the Sichuan Technology museum before him a plaza shaped like a ying and yang and beneath this daoist floor pattern, what another mall? China, it seems, is actually the land of malls. We peered over the railing into the underground mall, back at Mao, then following his eyeline back towards the towering building opposite a giant billboard with Evangelion on it? After a translation it seemed that some kind of cosplay event would be happening in the area to do with Evangelion, I like Evangelion and it was on a day I'd be on my own, I'll have a look. Inside the mall immediately the first shop we encountered was an anime merch shop. Now, I thought there might be one of these here, a small back alley shop for nerds. This shop was clean with sheer white interiors and shelves lined with muscly bishonen. I was one of the only three men in the shop, one of those being a particularly effeminate looking guy at the counter, the rest were women. The mall continued on with more and more of these anime merch shops and lolita dress shops and starbucks and mcdonalds and KPop shops and where was China? Where was the PLA? If they have everything, why are they all so surprised to see me? The young Chinese seem to live entirely Japano-Californian lives but might just eat a bit more hotpot than others. Although these were anime shops and stuff I knew, nothing here was for me. Whenever this happens I begin to mentally spiral and think well is anything for you. Do you actually like anything or is it just a passing interest? What do I actually want?

 

We then had a hotpot. First time we had to order at a restaurant. They did not speak English. Eventually we got across what we wanted after a confused mix of English and Chinese. I don't think hotpot is anything special. If I'm at a restaurant why am I the one cooking? Sharing also, just give me the portion I'm supposed to eat or I will always under or over eat. The oil was too spicy to be enjoyable, the meat was just ok. Also the way I had to have things explained to me through gesticulation alone made me feel like an idiot. You really have to know mandarin to come here. As we sat in the hotel courtyard with a few Tsingtaos I grew hungry again. Not knowing what was open past 12 in the city I had a look on my Chinese only map app to find a seven eleven. Up the main road I found a Seven Eleven. I exchanged a Nihao with the only man in there. I bought a strange piece of bread with sausage in it and some corn dogs which unexpectedly the man heated for me. These were not very nice. I expected to love the food in China and the proper restaurant meals were great but they were all to share and I knew I had a lot of alone time upcoming. I had to learn how to feed myself.

 

I finished work at 9 o'clock on new years eve in 2023, an awkward time, it would have been much easier to just work through it but instead i was afforded the evening off. I don't really have many friends in the city apart from the couple that I live with. I mostly socialise at work which is fulfilling but sometimes those tuesday nights when you've had three days off and only left the house to get food can leave something to be desired. whatever projects I have on or anime I'm watching doesn't fill the void of human connection. I'm very comfortable with solitude, I'm used to it, however I wanted to do something. I'd managed to convince my roommates to go out, which already even though I love them both dearly, can feel awkward. Sometime near midnight they'd told me they might be going to China to see the League of Legends Mid Season Invitationals ESports event. Now, I really can't stand LoL let alone watching people play it but long being an orientalist in denial I with the new year's drunken courage invited myself on the trip. Very diplomatically I had been warned that I might have to spend a good chunk of time on my own, I've been on my own before, I know what it's like. I wanted to go to China. This was the first day in which this would happen. They had to be at the arena for 5 o'clock so we spent the early afternoon at Chunxi Road, the Oxford Street of Chengdu. More western brands and toys, none of these words are in the little red book. The one thing I'll concede to the Chinese is that their McDonald's is much better than ours. We stumbled into a Buddhist temple that was mysteriously hidden within the high luxury area of Taikoo Li. The statues I'd always thought quite gaudy in pictures in real life are really quite imposing. I'm sure it's quite well trodden ground for a western person to go so far east and be struck with awe at the religious icons of the people but it happened. Though the temple kept going, this seems to be a theme in China. Everything just keeps going. You enter a mall you think might not be that big and suddenly you're on the 6th floor. They seem to have forgotten moderation. I'm well acquainted with the way places of worship in the abrahamic religions work, this was entirely new to me. Then, LoL called. Often the death toll in any interaction I have with my friends. There was a panic in finding the place, a moment where the question of just skipping this match gave me hope that I might not have to fend for myself just yet. Eventually we found it. They both went behind the heavily policed spiked fences and I went out onto the streets. I had no plans and I was far from the city centre.

 

First I did a circle around the arena, not much was going on, it seemed a fairly recent development and quite cutoff so I decided just to walk back to the hotel. I didn't know how long it'd take, I didn't want to know, looking now turns out it would have been a three hour walk. I set off north up the motorway. Very quickly the road became inhospitable to pedestrians so I ducked into the nearest subway station to get a little closer to the city centre. Not wanting to get the train the whole way home I took the train north slightly and got out again. Not much had changed above ground but at least there was a pavement, until there wasn't and then I just had to follow the crowd all who seemingly did not care about the traffic and bikes trying to get past them, just staring at their phones. I can't walk at a leisurely pace on my own. I set a direction and I go. I took a long winding route around the part of the city Reddit threads had told me was the expat, youth nightlife area just looking for some English I suppose. I found it in Yulin but everywhere looked better off without me so I pressed on. Some kids were playing ping pong in their school playground and shouted "YO, WHITE BOY" at me, not sure how to react and pretty parched from the sweltering heat I gave them a big smile laughing internally but also thinking that the english I was looking for wasn't just about how obviously out of place I looked. Being lonely is one thing, being embarrassed about looking lonely is another.

 

I had been looking up nightlife in the city, particularly English speaking nightlife and the consensus seemed to be Yulin. The area I was now in. It seemed true, but there was a sea of Chinese faces and a cacophony of Mandarin. Having just been called out for my obvious differences to everyone else I didn't stop here. Most of the bars and things all seemed very empty anyway. It's hard to enjoy being on a street for the sake of being on a street when you have no one with which to intellectualise it. It's probably some personal perversion that my mind is a constant swirling soup of meaningless words and phrases, desperately I stir hoping that something either clever or funny rises to the top. To just be on a street in China isn't enough. I can do this on street view. Why am I here? That's why I'm writing this. Hopefully something interesting can come from my actually very uneventful time in this country. Eventually I got home and a few 10s of minutes later received a message that the other two had returned and the match mercifully ended in a 3-0 meaning it was shorter than expected, initially I thought that's a real shame for those that bought tickets to maybe only that game and didn't get a full experience but then I remembered that I wouldn't be on my own anymore so that's a good thing actually. That which serves me most is what's best I suppose.

 

The following day we were to go to the Chengdu Museum. It was a fine museum but I thought it'd be a museum in Chengdu, not the museum of Chengdu. My chinese history is spotty at best. I know the names and order of the dynasties depicted in EUIV and Victoria 2, understand their relationships with japan and the west in the 19th and 20th centuries, however anything older is a mystery. I chose to read Journey to the West not the Romance of the Three Kingdoms so I dunno, I was just waiting for Wukong to show up in the museum. Don't come here for the museum but if you happen to be here with a spare early afternoon, it's free so go for it I guess. When did I start writing a review?

 

 I had bumble installed on my phone by lonely happenstance, not realising it would update my location automatically on some earlier day when sitting on the toilet I began to swipe right on some of the locals. Harmless fun I thought at the time, no one ever matches at home and it's the only game on my phone. The next few days I received two matches. When sat in a Starbucks post-museum I realised this could be an out from the loneliness of the previous evening. Shamefully I paid for Bumble premium, and frantically just started liking every girl. My intentions were actually pure, they usually are (though oft-emasculating), but I was frankly reaching desperation now. I don't suppose I'm very good at holidays. I always feel like I'm doing it wrong. Now this was the first time I was personally paying for a holiday so also I had cost to think about. Is this really the best thing I could be doing with this money right now, is this worth it, am I worth it? Paying for premium worked in a way. I certainly did get more matches, but most didn't reply or just wouldn't have a proper conversation. The other two went to MSI again. This time I just waited, I didn't really have anything to do. What do you do when you're in a country and can't speak the language? When your internet connection is metered you suddenly realise just how much you use. This is all woe is me, and what can I say despite my best efforts woe quite often is me. We found a place that evening that offered us beer. I like beer so we went in and they gave us dice and a cup. I saw this in Shenmue. The other two seemed quite happy with this simplistic dice game, I can't ever seem to enjoy these things as soon as I learn the rules and get it I feel done. Is this gluttony?

 

There's a big Buddah in Leshan and I wanted to see it. It's old and big. largest pre modern statue in the world. The three of us woke up early to get a train to the southern city. Chengdu East train station is huge, I can't even recall what it looks like, just "大" (that's Chinese for big, I'm so clever). I had read that Chinese train stations were more like airports so going inside there was a man with which to show my passport to. The other two got in and then when he scanned mine, red X. He then shouted something at me in Chinese. I gave him my phone to translate but he refused to not speak into his microphone as well as my phone, completely breaking the speech recognition. Suddenly the once empty queue was full of chinese people who didn’t want to queue just pushed past me, I gestured to the man to give me back my passport and left the line. Failing at the first hurdle and knowing the train departs in 20 minutes I said don't worry about it, smiled as best I could and turned away back outside. The oppressive sun beat down but also it began to rain. I didn't care so much about the Buddha anymore looking out at the city I just didn't want to be aimlessly alone anymore. I went to look for a service desk, not being able to read anything. I saw a desk with an official looking woman sitting at it and hammer and sickle emblazoned upon it. I'm not sure how the communists could help me in this situation so I didn't bother asking her. Leaving this room once again I thought: No, I don't want to accept this. Copying the chinese behind me in the earlier line I went back and showed the man my ticket on my phone, he squinted, took my passport back, typed something into his computer and then let me through, rolling his eyes as he let me go. Next I was felt up by a woman with a metal detector who was checking pockets and she tickled my abnormally large wad of cash in my pocket because I don't have a wallet. Eventually I met back up with the other two at which there was another gate. Another person to show my apparently faulty passport to. I gave it to her this time I had my ticket ready to show, red X again I smiled and showed her the ticket. Like the previous man she rolled her eyes and let me through. I was through. I had beaten the communist bureaucracy. Turns out something like an auto fill or bug changed my passport number to UNITEDKINGDOM so when they scanned it looking for a ticket there was nothing there. I'm sure I looked a laowai.

 

We arrived in Leshan and it was just as big. Proper 大. I didn't know anything about Leshan but I didn't know it would be like this. I had imagined, hoped, it would be some rickety old town near a giant temple on a mountain. No it was miles around concrete towers, and it was hot. A man in a taxi took us to the big buddha. Again I thought it would be a little entrance and then a track down to see the big guy, but no it was a giant plaza with absolutely no shade, a giant ticket hall and an even bigger gate. I'm sure it's my own fault for being in megacities and tourist destinations but my experience in China so far felt entirely too well trod. There was nothing to discover here. Two girls interviewed us on our opinions on the Buddha before we entered with a big camera, I have to wonder if I'm on Douyin. My answers were non committal though as I had seen nothing yet, I'd just arrived. There was a cart up a hill to a cave with some statues in it. They were nice, it was impressive how much they'd dug out from the rock. After climbing some stairs with some impressive carvings of what I had just learned were Arhats I entered a box room in which I had found something commensurate with my capacity for wonder. Towering figures of the Four Heavenly Kings and a big fat buddha at the back. This was some real minecraft stuff. The carvings got bigger and bigger and it was genuinely very impressive. There were statues in these caves of full sized humans of which I was as tall as the space between their toenail and the floor. A scale at which I am very unfamiliar but the other domestic tourists seemed to pass by after taking a few selfies. We climbed stair after stair and were treated to some wonderful vistas. Though it was obviously all quite manicured, planned and for tourists, this is what I wanted: this was some Indiana Jones stuff. The actual big buddha was like the cities of Chengdu and Leshan, too big to be impressive or interesting. Maybe it was just the crowd that wouldn't let me get close to the railing to look at it but it was of a scale so large I couldn't take in its enormity. If you ever go to see the buddha at Leshan the under advertised caves to the north are better. After we returned to Chengdu and to our hotel I began to write this, this introspection I think after what was such an enjoyable day was surprisingly sombre. One day I'd like to write something in celebration rather than commiseration. After some cajoling I managed to get the other two to accept the idea of going out-out. Only to come to realise once we were on the empty streets at 11pm it was tuesday and everything was closed.

 

Today was the last day of friends. Bumble was looking less and less likely to be fruitful. My now 6 matches were unresponsive or dry, I'd have to come to accept I was on my own and it could be good. I was invited to Jinli street, it was nice here. There were more white people than elsewhere. I didn't feel like I was being stared at as much. I had what I thought was takoyaki on a stick, it was more like caramelised batter. I then had real takoyaki. It wasn't very nice. A lot of the food hasn't been that great here. It tastes too sweet, or too much like plastic or is spicy beyond enjoyability. I would kill for a hash brown. Jinli road had the same rows of shops I'd seen in the other touristy places. Like a permanent carnival of people selling the same street food, the same trinkets, the same nick nacks. It was all getting quite formulaic. Once you'd seen one of these streets you'd seen them all. Same with the real streets, extremely clean pharmacies, one of the multiple convenience store brands, a shop that sells pandas and meat or a shop that sells loads of the same hotpot sauce blocks. There's so much of the same here. Restaurant after restaurant all doing hotpot. I was having a good time today no matter how similar my surroundings were. Then the other two informed me that they wanted to watch MSI, I did not care for MSI but I had nothing better to do and the adventure of looking for a place that was showing it was interesting. We came to a mall that apparently had an internet cafe in it. I had thought it'd be small but like everything else in China it was slightly bigger than it needed to be and after climbing 6 floors we came to it. They had it playing on a screen outside. Eventually we conveyed our wants and the two nerdy looking guys working. They gave us a camping chair each and we sat in the middle of the mall concourse watching on their exterior monitor. This was a boring three hours for me. I tried not to show it but I think it was probably quite obvious. It was a unique experience though. If life is to be measured in small anecdotes to be shared I had collected another.The guys working there were kind too, I don't know if we would've been given the same treatment back home or told to make an account and pay for our time at the computers inside.

 

Next, we had Tibetan food. I feel kind of awkward when I think about the Chinese state. I'm enjoying my time in their country but then I think about the very real persecution of minorities and their surveillance and that they take a picture of me in the shops when I buy stuff. I refused a trip to Dubai on political grounds much to the upset of my family but I turned a blind eye when it came to China. Not good really, but Chengdu has a Tibetan district and I've never had Tibetan food before. Who knows how long Tibet will be an existing culture for before it gets subsumed wholly into the Han empire. The food was yak, bread and butter. It mostly tasted like food from home with a little bit of spice but mostly flavoured with salt. I liked it. The most like home thing I'd had here. Six days in at this point I felt as though I was warming to China. Though my mandarin was still all of about 5 words I felt like I was starting to get it.

 

Despite being told I was to be left on my own more often from now on, perhaps they sensed my passionate want to not be, I was invited to Du Fu’s cottage. This was to be maybe my 5th park visitation in this city. In honour of a poet named Du Fu his art was carved into standing stones dotted around the pavements. Rolling hills with small cottages and pavilions. Moments of tranquillity in watching a bird catch a fish from a river. I should not judge Du Fu’s poems too harshly, his audience is so different from me and I, so different from him. One day this very thing you’re reading may be scrawled into a holographic screen on Herne Bay seafront in honour of my memory. I did not like Du Fu’s poems. They were boring and hard to find any warmth or comfort in. Though they spoke of deep feelings there was a language barrier even when translated into my own. 

 

Today was the day. The big Evangelion day. The others had MSI that afternoon but came with me back to Tianfu Square to see what was going on. The square had hidden in plain sight from me what was essentially an otaku mall in an 8 story building opposite a giant statue of chairman Mao Zedong. The poor translation of the Baidu post about the event told me it was mostly a cosplay event. Entering the doors I was treated to a crowd of Asuka. A myriad of chinese girls dressed as a character I had an acute but what I tried to make measured fondness for. This was frankly a very sexually stimulating place to be. Even what was clearly a man in the animegao kigurumi. Girls practised their douyin dances in their Tokyo-3 school uniforms. Girls lined up outside white expansive stores at the chance of buying acrylic stands of their bishies. As I climbed upwards throughout the mall every store was otaku related. Maid outfits, cards, gachapon, figures, dolls. Everyone here starred as well. There was a stage where Chinese girls dressed as Asuka, Rei, Misato, 2B, Miku and any other myriad of cosplayers danced to Akihabara pop. 

 

When I was eleven years old and I was discovering who I was, I seemingly hyperfocused on Japanese nerd media. I didn’t have many friends in my first year of secondary school but I had anime. It was a very confusing time for me, my parents had just divorced, puberty had begun and it manifested mostly in me gaining weight, and I was at a new school and didn’t know anyone. I did, however, have anime. My other love at the time (we don’t need to talk about Minecraft right now) was youtube. I essentially allowed youtube to teach me who I was to be at this point. Much the rage at the time or at least what feels true to say was the “Otaku Room” this maximalist consumerist den where no sign of architecture resides, only anime. Also I have a strong memory from this time of enjoying this video diary of an above average American teenage girl crying that she has to hide that she is an otaku from the world. I did not hide anything, I proudly declared myself otaku to any who may call me a weeb without any real knowledge of what the word entailed in the original. I was Otaku. I am Otaku. Now here I was in a seven story version of the otaku room filled with chinese girls who need not cry about hiding their love of anime because everywhere they looked they saw a mirror. I, on the other hand, missed when I could feel alone in my love of a billion yen industry.

 

Near the top of the mall was what was the most convention looking construction. A shop with walls made of glass cabinets filled with Evangelion and Dragon Ball figures. Though today was an Evangelion event here this was the first time I saw anything I could buy, only meet. On the floor was a pile of boxed figures. I’d always wanted an anime figure collection, ever since those videos 13 years ago. Now I was faced with a pile of figures so affordable. I picked up a figure of asuka in a fully clothed yet seductive pose. I took the box to the woman at the counter. Seeing how attractive the woman was I hesitated at taking the figure to her but persevered. I fumbled my way through the “ni haos” and paid with alipay but then she handed me back the box with an awkward smile. I forgot the word for bag in chinese and instead said “bag?” and made the signal of holding something with my fist. She shook her head and apologised. Now I had to find some way back to my hotel room holding a box with a big picture of a seductively posed anime girl under my arm. The shop I bought it from happened to be on the top floor.

 

I made my way through the crowds down on each of the world’s slowest escalators through the mall’s ever increasingly populated floors. Feeling very aware that I was the most evident Asuka-fag to walk the earth in a sea of girls dressed as the character I had just purchased a sex totem of. None of them offered themselves to me, useless femoids. Next I had to find my way onto the metro which included putting the box through the bag checking machine and holding it on the train north back to my hotel. Then I had to walk through the hotel courtyard in full view of many Chinese diners. Finally I was home safe and had secured the package.

 

After unboxing and proudly displaying my new figure on my rented hotel bedside table I then returned it to its packaging and hid it in my suitcase so the cleaners may not see it. I was alone and I was hungry. Not wanting McDonalds again (although secretly I always want McDonalds) I decided I would treat China like home and look for a supermarket. The Chinese are new to supermarkets and so I knew whatever I discovered would be something to behold. I had to take a train to the furthest extent out of the city I had been thus far. I began my Pilgrimage to the RT-Mart. 

 

I thought the Buddhas were big. This was big. The supermarket stretched beyond the horizon. Underneath the supermarket people lived. This supermarket could feed a small British town for a decade. The rows and rows of incomprehensible spices. The tanks of self-serve live fish. Vegetables I have never known. Robots dancing with children. Shopping bags on tracks hanging above the store. Just wild stuff all around. With what I fed myself need not be discussed. Some processed meat and sugary green tea, not good stuff. 

 

Today was my last day in Chengdu. From now to the end there will be an obvious difference in the writing since I'm now writing it 6 months after the fact rather than on the days themselves. This day was of so little note in exploration that it stopped me from writing anything about it. So, in the interest of finishing this I have chosen to omit this day from the chronological series of events. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything. 

 

I had secured my train tickets for Chongqing. The next destination. This time I made sure to get the tickets under the right name lest I have another run-in with the Chinese authorities. It was exciting to be going somewhere so far on my own. To pack all my close worldly belongings into a suitcase and take them even further from home completely alone, in a land where I shared tongue with no one. I said goodbye to my friends and headed back to the train station. After a confusing lining procedure I managed to find my way onto the train. A two hour journey through the Sichuan countryside with a screen in front of me showing me all the benevolence and grandeur of the CCP. This was a cool experience. I allowed myself not to be concerned with the future during this train ride. I would not concern myself with worry of isolation, this was pure adventure. 

Eventually on the other side in Chongqing encased in the plastic white tunnels of the sprawling station tunnels I searched for the metro. I had to get to Linjiangmen station in the heart of the city. I had booked a studio apartment to stay in though it seemed difficult to find, it didn’t have an english name and I still struggled with the A-Maps UI at this point. I arrived at the metro destination, suitcase in tow, after climbing three hills and descending two on a five minute walk. Chongqing is pretty hilly. I met my host after she came to fetch me from downstairs. She wore flip flops with hair down to her ankles. She seemed happy to see me. Fumbling between her English and my non-existent Chinese she introduced me to the room, the password to get in, and politely demanded payment. She wanted to use Ali-pay, not having a Chinese bank account disqualified me from transferring money with Ali-pay and so I gave her about 500 yuan notes. It felt pretty cool to just be throwing around notes of such a high number printed on them. Mao’s face staring at me with each note counted. She left me alone.  

 

It’s so hot. There was a small shop underneath the apartment. I bought two large bottles of water. I immediately consumed half a litre in the lift back to the twenty-seventh floor. OH NO! I couldn’t get back into the room. That's it. I'm stuck in China. No access to my passport. I have no idea what floor she lives on. Do I just bang on doors until I find her? Giving a dui buqi every time I encounter a bewildered chinaman when a hulking sweaty gweilo darkens his door?  Oh yeah, I’ve got a phone. I sheepishly messaged her to say I can’t get back in. She swiftly arrived and smiled at me. Pointed at my large bottles of water and let out an audible laugh-shriek. To this day I still don’t know what this means. I’d like to know. She was a kind woman. You could see it on her face. 

 

I decided that my being here was a declaration to the world that from now on I would bring cessation to my lonesome wallowing and instead suck the very marrow from the bone of life from both ends. So I did what I had learned to do and chose a direction and began to walk. I walked some combination of east and north. Through the undulating streets. Chongqing had very similar shops to Chengdu. It seemed that China was a trinket economy. Just stuff. I’m sure that every shop in London is just full of things that are morally good and just to own and I’m not biased in any way. That was my impression though. Just stuff. China is so full of stuff. I came to Hongya Cave on the northern river’s bank. Its an impressive structure. After some apprehension of trying to enter I found my way in. The building is some kind of tourist mall filled with theming of different periods of Chongqing history. The same market stalls as every other market I’d traipsed through appeared here. I went up and down stairs. Just huge crowds of people making traversal all the more difficult. I’m sure I was supposed to be in awe at the spectacle on display but it was so hot I was more interested in just getting to the end. Eventually As i walked down some fabricated street a man called out to me. He said “beer, beer!” I was so sweaty and so thirsty I would love some beer. He sat me down and I saw a beautiful Chinese woman singing in front of her boyfriend who was just chaining darts, absolutely ripping through them. The kindly man who had offered me beer handed me a budweiser. Once I had paid he immediately gave me a plate of nuts and a cigarette. I tried to decline his cigarette as I had my own. Cigarettes aren’t the commodity here as I’m used to. I accepted his offer as he insisted and then upon putting it in my mouth I reached in my pocket for my lighter but he had already lit a flame in front of my face for me. Such service.  Another woman came over and smiled at me and said something to me in Chinese. I looked at her sweaty and confused. She put forward a glass of some liquid. Chinese drinking is still unusual to me so the glasses they use for beer look like what we’d use for a spirit. I assumed she worked there so I thought she was giving it to me as another layer of service. I guess the idea was to get me drunk and then I’d give them yuan after yuan. I tried to take the glass and she frowned. “No, Cheers.” she said sternly. She did work there but she was the entertainment. She was going to sit down with me until I appeared clueless enough to try and take her drink from her. Instead the owner guy called her over to the microphone and told her to sing Taylor Swift. Me being western they assumed I loved Taylor Swift. I finished the cigarette, he immediately came over and gave me a second. I knew now it was useless to refuse and instead enjoyed his hospitality. It was nice to be sitting here although the other two left. Suddenly I was on my own in this place with two workers eager for my money. “Please come sing” I was asked. I actually really like karaoke. If I wasn’t so sweaty and uncomfortable I might’ve said yes. “Please, Please. Come sing, It's my life”. This was such an odd turn of phrase I felt some kind of pity for him. I relented. I didn’t know when I accepted it would cost me £5. I sang Transmission by Joy Division. The song began and the beat was slightly off than normal. Whatever chinese karaoke app this was didn’t have the rights to this song. The bass riff stirred something in this guy, “OHHH ROCKK, ROCKK ONN” he shouted. This was awkward I was so preoccupied with how I looked, why the music was wrong, the tempo wasn’t quite right, this older chinese woman was smiling at me and oh god I wanted to be a different person who could do so well in this moment, this environment that I would immediately have sex with this sleazy older woman. But no. I finished the song. Politely finished my drink and escaped saying xie xie. He asked me to come back. I said I would later. I never returned. 

 

I was shattered. Chongqing left me wet and sticky. After finding some disgusting food in a supermarket I went back to my room. I intended to wait for the day to get cooler. Instead I found myself asleep until tomorrow morning. I slept for like sixteen hours. 

 

What about the Bumble subplot? Well, it wasn’t going well. The day I’d spent in Chongqing had yielded no results. Chongqing women were less interested than Chengdu women and that was saying something. Having only two days left that weren’t travelling I came to accept it wasn’t going to happen. I had dreams of being a charismatic westerner, bumbling but in a charming way. I guess it's something of the passport bro dream. You don’t get any in your own country so you go somewhere where you’re seen as wealthy. I should’ve gone to Thailand really. I promise I’m not as much of an orientalist as I seem and I only have a healthy amount of yellow fever. Please believe me, it's true. 

 

A new day in Chongqing. Time to pick a new direction. I wanted to find another one of those anime malls and I wanted to see the famous Chongqing metro system’s infrastructure on the way. I searched for one in the morning. I couldn't find one for definite but found one that seemingly was similar. These trains are crazy, you start underground and then suddenly you’re over a motorway and then you go through a building and then you’re back underground again. Why would you build a city like this? It seems really expensive but it's cool as heck. I got off the train at the station next to the famous building pass-through. I picked a direction from here and ended up climbing some underpopulated hill. The hill gave a full view of the city across the river. This country never failed to make me feel small. Eventually as I climbed the hill ever increasing in sweat I found a long staircase down.

 

At the foot of the staircase I seemed to have arrived at a park hidden under a motorway. The park carried signs saying: “Liziba Anti-Japanese War Memorial Park”. The park was a long stretch of green along one motorway and under the other. It boasted ruins from the final battle of the Sino-Japanese war of the 1930s and 40s. Remarkable how few people there were here. It was the most secluded I’d felt since being in this country. A wonderful place to smoke a cigarette. I continued my walk up the motorway to the next metro station. This one was up in a tall skyscraper and took me across the wide river to the northern section of the city. Here I was dropped into another large commercial area seemingly more like a European city center than I had been used to in China so far. The mall I was looking for was hidden underground but rather than the focus on anime goods the other one in Chengdu had, this one was full of Korean media or just general fashion shops. I was beginning to feel done already. It’s hard to enjoy yourself in a place when all you can think is I’m really sweaty. Also I look really different to everyone and I can’t communicate. It’s difficult to be in a situation where you feel the need to justify yourself but you couldn’t if you tried. On the return I visited the Great Hall of the People, a large old Chinese building the kind that’d be a wonder in Age of Empires 2. It was an impressive building but there was something about it that didn’t allow me to take it in. It was so far away from me emotionally that what I was seeing with my eyes was no different than a photo taken by someone else.

 

I went through another Chinese supermarket. This one seemed a bit rougher than the others, a bit older. Chongqing as a whole felt a bit rougher than Chengdu. The city certainly felt more lived in and less potemkin. More hostile. I stayed in the refuge of my room’s air conditioner for a while and watched the TinTin film. It’s pretty good. Night came and I thought I should really experience the cyberpunk-esque Chongqing downtown whilst I’m here. Walking through the neon lights and the high rises. The Hidden markets with plastic stools to eat on. It was all so aesthetic. It was sweet as heck. However the same feeling arose. I’m here in this present and yet I feel this experience is far from me. I’m watching my life in first person but it wouldn’t matter to anyone but myself if I was here or not. If you live your life and no one is around to see it, did it really happen? I found a McDonalds hidden deep in the bowels of a neon-clad concrete box. This hidden haven was filled with fellow white people. I considered talking to a similarly lonely looking guy. I didn’t. He was probably Russian and didn’t speak any English. Back in the night’s air I walked across a long bridge across another river. I wanted to turn and stare at the colourful blazing metropolis I was going away from but I was quickly marched along by the people behind me. There was no time to marvel. I ended up in a park on the other side. Alone I looked out at the view. In the dark. On my own. 

 

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like… sweat in chongqing. Time to die.

Translator’s Note: The title translates to My Summer Labour, a play on Millennium Kitchen’s 2000 video game Boku no Natsuyasumi [My Summer Break]. 

 

“An adventure is never an adventure when it happens. An adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.”

― Tim Cahill

 

An Ancient Campaign

In the halcyon days of June 2023 a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign was to begin. Born from my friend Rhys’ mind, a world made just for me. Emanation was, when first conceived, just a world with loose JRPG stylings in which a campaign could be held that wasn’t quite as stringent on setting as something like the average euro-tolkien fantasy. Rhys (without checking) has never played a JRPG but Pokemon, as far as i'm aware. I on the other hand have gone so far as to play the Slayers JRPG on the Super Famicom, so yeah I’ve played JRPGs I know what they’re like. I think possibly Rhys set these plans in motion to try and wrangle me back into caring about TTRPGs again, for that company we made together, after I’d spent the spring writing a book set in the universe I was supposed to be creating a game system for. 

The basics of the setting were written down and the group had made all of their player characters. Emanation was at this moment just the name of a Roll20 group. I created the character Helvia Dannica, a pretty simple Square-Enix adjacent character design with a meagre backstory fine for a nascent DnD campaign (particularly in a group that struggles with consistency). The setting was designed kitchen-sink-like with a prison inside a floating head of a dead god made by an evil emperor with varying tech levels all over the world. 

We had one session. 

 

Shut Your Mouth and Look at My .WAD

Around this time I had just so happened to play the original DOOM (1993). The allure of the .wad was calling to me. What if I went above and beyond and made my DnD character’s backstory in a Doom .wad. Has this ever been done before? There I was in GZDoom with such a large laborious task ahead of me. Writing a backstory for a DnD character. Are there any greater insurmountable tasks for the TTRPG player? However, I was writing a character backstory with non-orthogonal walls. 

Still waiting for the second session that I did not know then would never come. I was enthralled by this intellectual property brownfield site that laid before me of a TTRPG setting born of someone else. What if I were to take this setting and disguise it as my own cooking? Delightfully devilish.

 

He Was Aware He Was Still a Child

The Doom .wad idea wasn’t working out. I didn’t like the software, or at least, I didn't want to expend the effort to learn the software to make a mod in which narrative structure was already difficult. What if I went back to my roots? My 9 year old roots of using RPG Maker VX on my mum’s work laptop making Kingdom Hearts fan games where Sora meets Pikachu, Those really were the days. What better way to tell a short contained story than a terse 1-2 hour turn based top down JRPG. Perfect. I’ll just get started on that. Already in an hour I have a dramatic heart wrenching scene of a small girl’s parents being murdered in front of her at a young age. This will be so easy. I’ll be the coolest guy in a group of 4 people ever. 

 

Oh. What if…

What if I made an anime opening for my videogame of my DnD character’s backstory. 

Wow, ok. That took at least ten hours. What.

So by this point I’d maybe spent 14 hours on what amounts to at most 6 minutes of a game. I was planning 1-2 hours. 2.3 hours of work goes into 1 minute of game. So for an hour and half of game we’re looking for 207 hours of work. 207 hours of WORK at a wage of £0 an hour since nothing in that anime op was original and not really under fair use. I should probably just cut my losses here right? This is kind of a ridiculous thing I'm doing. However, in my experience that's not really how the creative process works. Also, It's fun. 

 

A Human Work

I pressed on. I lovingly crafted the opening moments of the game, the slums using music from The Pillows the Field and Ork’s cave with music from Nier Automata. The original plot was simple, Helvia takes a job from her friend who is essentially something like a fixer from the Cyberpunk universe, this job gets her into a situation, she fights the empire, tragically loses and ends up in prison beginning our DnD campaign. Oh but what if there's a cowboy town?

 

So south from the Slums Helvia lives in she ends up in a cowboy town to catch the train to the city Charalis. Of course it's not as simple as just buying a train ticket. OH NO! The train conductor and famous business owner the Great Sancho has been captured by bandits and is being held in the mines. Helvia goes and saves him, meeting Arabella and Alvin in the process. To keep the game simple there was only going to be one party member. With each party member comes a new class to properly fit with skills, weapons and armour. So the pair began solely as local NPCs that led Helvia on her journey. I kinda like parties though. I like a group of discordant people coming together in that style and growing together to fight evil. It’s pretty cool. Whatever, what's two more. That’s fine now I have three characters. It's a trio like Sonic Heroes. No problem. The cowboy town of Gilded Hills culminates in a shootout at high noon which in RPG Maker was very very hard to code and now a year and a half after making it I can't really do it myself. 

 

A Month Gone

Oh jeez, it's now July. I’ve been making an unsellable videogame for a month? Oh well.

Helvia saves Sancho and her Alvin and Arabella all climb aboard a steampunk train to Charalis. Now Charalis is important enough that I think it deserves a cutscene. So back to Sony Vegas I made another short video full of other people's art. It looks pretty cool though.

The sprawling cityscape of Charalis consisted of such a large space that I didn’t want to detail and so I bypassed this by having it a closed world overworld Mario style. There are points you can visit but you can’t walk around. So, you have a goblin who drives you around the city in a little yellow car. The job given to Helvia by her fixer takes her to the headquarters of the rebels against the empire, the Syndicate. Here the leader Maldor (it's ok he's an important character but not a party member)  asks Helvia to help him take down the evil empire. Cloud Strife like she tells him she's not interested. To earn some money, Alvin and Arabella do some jobs for him. Then Maldor joins the party (wait what? That wasn't the plan?) and the four of them attack a city checkpoint allowing the party to leave the city into the open world of the Hurkan Region. (What that was supposed to be the end wasn’t it?)

 

Now the game lasts about 3 hours and you have a full party with an adventure ahead of you. Here in the open world you can meet more party members, Sanjiro, Sophie and Dirk. So there's now 7 party members, 7 classes and 7 sets of weapons and armour. In this video game that’s just a backstory for a DnD character that hasn’t been played in about a month by this point for an audience of 4 people. Huh?

 

Scope Creep

But what if there was more game?

What if there was a big mountain with dwarves hiding inside. Ok so now I’ll need to make a mountain path up towards the stronghold. There aren’t many good mountain tiles baked into RPG Maker MZ so I must go looking online. I spent a very good portion of my childhood instead of growing or being outside scouring forums for RPG Maker, saving various free distributions from friendly pixel artists willing to give to me their free labour. Though this was some 15 years ago now. I was cast adrift from the bulging pictures folder on my mum’s work windows vista laptop. I had to scour once again which is as it turns out quite time consuming. I eventually found a nice tileset, nicer than anything in the RTP. It made me consider switching all the tilesets. However, this would mean remaking every single map in the game. For the first time in this journey I decided against the long life consuming option and just stuck with what I already had. No backtracking, only forward progression. 

 

The party climbs Mount Dornak and finds the dwarven citadel of Mazh-Douk at the top. Here the Maldor’s brother lives. Famed gnode crafter. Have I not talked about gnode yet? Conceived as a way to have power as a physical object in the world, gnode is what the world of emanation runs on. The gnode crafter asks you to retrieve the flame of his forge back from a dragon deep in the dwarven mines. After defeating said dragon you return the flame granting you access to the game’s crafting system. Yeah, it was getting to the point where this 1-2 hour DnD character’s backstory sprawling JRPG which was now around 4-5 hours had a crafting system too. 

 

The overworld also contained a yak farm, here is where the party could buy a yak granting the player access to the fast travel system. A cottage where the party finds a witch. If they can find the right herb from the swamp they can turn her back and gain Sophie as a party member.  Sophie is an optional party member, she’s also a magical cat girl. How cool! The other optional party member that you find during this portion of the game Sanjiro is a samurai. These guys don’t have much story in the game but I liked them. There was a plan at one point for each of the characters to have playable flash back sections. Sophie was going to have a soundtrack of purely city-pop karaoke tracks. Sanjiro’s section was to be black and white and use soundtracks stolen from Kurosawa films.

 

Emotional Weight

Going west from Mazh-Douk the party comes to the town of Veridora. After the checkpoint attack was blamed on the free city of Veridora rather than the Syndicate the empire is knocking on their gates looking for retribution. Dirk the sad knight is met in the tavern just outside the city. Helvia and friends convince him to stand up for himself and fight back. They sneak behind the bushes and watch a very long and lazily unedited cutscene which is actually just a scene from the anime Gate which I have never watched but it kind of fit what I was going for. After the cutscene you’re whisked away to a hilltop above the city where the General Gideon Ironheart is revealed to be Maldor’s brother. In a shocking unwinnable boss fight where the player takes control of Maldor alone he sadly falls in battle. After this calamity Another cutscene plays as the transition to another chapter in this “small” game introducing yet another character Pumazz the wizard.  

 

Arrested Development

It has to stop somewhere. The clock on the bottom right of my computer monitor now had an 09 in the middle of the date and here in the United Kingdom that means September. Summer had concluded and still there was no next session of our DnD campaign and STILL there was no backstory made for my character. What I had was an ever expanding notion of a JRPG. The notes written about this game will probably be as important as the Silmarillion. Pumazz was to send the party on an adventure to 4 different dungeons to craft the philosopher’s stone to then use that power to take down the Hurkan Council in Charalis. I had a few ideas of the ending of the game. It would be something like the party members were all actually employed by the governor to dispatch the rest of the council and in the end turn on Helvia, or that in defeating the authority structure the party would then find themselves having to replace it. 

 

However, we’ll never know how the game ends. All we know is somehow Helvia ends up in prison inside the floating GodHead above the world. As the sun set on 2023 and I spent a day of my life remaking the main menu of the game I could feel my attention waning from this project. It had grown too large for the confines of RPG Maker and what I wanted it to be now it would have to be restarted. So here lies the future for Emanation. It will become a TTRPG setting for now. The original game serves as the foundation of the setting’s atmosphere and eventually once we have enough fans willing to hand me their hard earned money with big grins on their faces we will see the Helvia Game in all its glory in unreal engine 5 made with the largest graphics you’ve ever seen. 

 

Emanation’s Continuation

I suppose I just kinda wanted to play with RPG Maker again, some childhood nostalgia. This adventure into my past mutated into a months-long obsession that I no longer want to finish. Yet, is any art finished or is it just abandoned? So here to the loyal reader able to reach the end of this winding blog post, you may play Emanation Origin’s: Helvia. There are some warnings though that come with this download. Yes, I did use AI art in this. AI art is a problem, I never want to see AI generated art replace any artist in the world. Seeing as the audience for this game was extremely limited and I sadly cannot draw and for expediency I used it for character art here. Please Forgive me. The other warning is that the game is very unfinished and even more untested. Please don’t allow yourself to feel hollow when you aren’t able to find an ending to this story. One will exist one day. What would be even cooler though is if you fan-wrote your own ending. Its extremely easy to soft lock yourself in this game or miss flags rendering the experience troublesome to say the least. Please excuse this and as I said above please give me money to make this again but better in the mid to late future. I use a lot of music in this I DO NOT OWN ANY OF IT please Square Enix don’t kill me. I promise it’s out of love.

 

The final thing I have to say is please wait patiently for the first release of Emanantion: The Goblins of Chipping-Slucis. A 5e adventure set in a distinctly unfinished part of Helvia Game. Here in TTRPGs Emanation will live for a while and I hope you enjoy playing in the world as much as I enjoy making it. The creative process can take you down many strange discordant roads but as long as the process itself is fun, know that in the end you’ll have made something you can be proud of. However, if you’re reading this and Goblins of Chipping-Slucis still hasn’t been released please berate me for my laziness here on the Megalithic Prints Discord Server or here patreon.com/kinbur.  

Hey guys, sorry I haven't made a video in a while.

What are we doing here. I live a normal life. I throw my disabled scrawl into an internet void that I "improve" with a slightly more erudite lexicon than the average English speaker lay bare on a black, red and orange webpage.(What is that, something ducks walk on?) Although sometimes that void has a way of coming back at you. The scant praise I've received from the few that have viewed this page feels unearned. It feels like I've used honesty as a shortcut to artistic merit. If I am to continue down this path I fear I am to run out of pain to share. I've only got so much pain to bare. A lot of it is boring. A lot of it is recurring. A lot of it is fleeting. By turning pain to text you create eternity of a moment and by sharing text you allow others to see themselves in yourself, but, I am myself. Maybe this was a mistake. I wanted to be Delicious Tacos, I wanted to be DigibronyMLP, I wanted to be Tim Rogers. I'm typing this now in a Sublime Text 3 window only because Tim Rogers mentioned the program fleetingly in one or two videos. I like the clean aesthetic. I have spent my meager artistic career in imitation. My first poast to this website is an imitation of Don Jolly, however the pain is my own. When others see themselves in my pain I have nothing left. Kill this author. Don't expect anything I write to be truth. Don't create a notion of biography. Everything here is a lie. My readership consists of people who intimately know me. Stop that. Stop knowing me. I wanted an internet fanbase (I think) I wanted hot E-Girls in my area. Any money, experience, fame I am to ever earn is in the pursuit of crushing puss. That is the goal. I have no other intent. This is a poast in response to event (I give thanks to my loyal fans who have reached out in my DMs). Take it however you want. I am dead and I have killed me.

Perhaps this is too harsh. I have issues with sharing myself. I have carefully built walls around myself in every environment that this website takes a sledgehammer to. I think that was the point, or did I just want to play around in HTML and then realise I needed content other than a lorem ipsum to warrant the £10 yearly domain fee. On the reverse I know to see yourself in art is a privilege. Any kind of relating to my writing should fill me with glee, but it doesn't. I mistrust my mastery of the English language to articulate myself properly to anyone who's opinion of myself I care about. I probably shouldn't have poasted anything to the internet that I would feel embarrassed if someone saw. I've got one of the most abstruse and utterly inane recalcitrant streaks. Just take the praise. Use it as fuel to make more. Make more until you are known. Surely that's what you believe anyway. It's okay. You're allowed to be here. No one is telling you to leave. Stop hiding. Just say something true with intent and resolve. There are enough depression merchants in the world. Be better. Create better things. Jesus Christ, edit your writing. Congratulations!

Kind of rambling. Think I lost the central thesis here a while ago. I'm happy that anyone has taken the time to read anything I've written. Listened to or watched anything I've made. Time is finite and you chose to spend it on me. Thank you, that extension of that is everyone who will read this which is presumably only people who have known me in real life, thank you for spending time with me. Pretty weird that this exists right. Who would do this. Fucked up shit that I post about my dick on a website then put it as my instagram bio, what's that about, weirdo. It's unfair that deep down I want every acquaintance to be an archaeologist and me Mohenjo-daro. Just put yourself out there, man. People like you. These poasts have all been written hunched over, in a tricky time. That's probably the best way to experience them. You can usually tell I feel better about my life if there are less poasts here. Which is good because there are some serious gaps.

One day I'd really like a video essayist to boil down my stuff into a simplified world view, I think that would be so awesome.

Jeez, there are a lot of references in this one. I'm trying to have more fun with this and I think it's working. I'm no Dostoyevsky nor do I wanna be. I'm me. I think what I've been trying to say for the last 821 words and 3,528 characters is that I don't see everything below this as me anymore. I'm getting older and I've trapped myself in amber here. I'm learning more and talking to more people. I'm starting to even feel confident about talking to people. Still no hot E-Girls in my area but that's ok, I'll live. I still want to do this but I don't want to imitate as much anymore. If someone is going to relate to something I've put my name on I want them to relate to me not my current muse. We're all gonna make it. :)

I sat on a bench at Whitstable train station. Though the night was not warm there was a slight film of sweat about my person, in all my folds. Strands of hair from my bulbous haircut cling to my forehead. My belt, which fit fine when standing, dug into my sides and my ill fitting jeans bunched on my knees.

"I wish you could've stayed"

About twenty minutes prior bridged by a The Smiths soundtracked walk to the train station I had been watching a film I love, following by playing a game I love, followed by reading a book she loved. All with the woman I loved. I quickly replied a disarming response.

"You have work anyway"
"I felt different tonight"

Previously I had declared my love to this woman on a railway bridge on my birthday sometime near midnight, after the last train. A long disappointing procession of feelings spilt on a beach followed by manic dancing. After that I had to walk a lonely two hours home along a motorway before going to work after three hours of sleep. Now 2 months later she was telling me she felt different. She wished I could've stayed. She was not single at the time of my declaration. Shamelessly I had calculated how to save my friendships from the unraveling of stealing a mutual friend's girlfriend. However eleven days after my birthday she was. Two months, she definitely was. The conversation continues telling me she had butterflies the whole afternoon we had spent together. This woman I had spent laying on my bed upside down just angling myself to view the corner of my monitor to see the online signifier on discord just to kill myself a little every time she went online and didn't message me. This woman had both ruined and liberated me. Never before this point did I want anything so earnestly, so desperately. Now, she was the one who wanted me. I told her I noticed that she felt different. Stretching my memory, I believe I convinced myself I noticed through implanting false memories. After a winding conversation it was decided we would get wine sit meet on a beach and see where that took us. Before we said goodnight she told me not to tell anyone else, at this point I lied little did she know I had triumphantly sent her message to "The Boys" in victory. That night I didn't sleep. I watched High Fidelity.

At this time I was living at my grandmother's house whilst my mother was in the process of evicting an abusing live-in cunt that was her boyfriend at the time. Not knowing what was in store for me in the evening I thought I'd need condoms. Having the lonely teenagehood that I did, at the ripe age of twenty-two, I had to ask my friend "what condoms do I buy?". Without telling my grandparents what I was doing I left and journeyed to Tesco. I arrived and stared at the condom aisle. Strangely one of my managers at the Tesco that I worked at was here also in the capacity of manager. I snapped up a box and covertly bought them. That evening I sat on a bench near her house. I sat and watched two rabbits run in and out of the bushes, two magpies pecked the dirt to my left, joy. She appeared from behind me, beautiful. Immediately she was disappointed i didn't arrive with the wine we had promised to get. I, deeply afraid of something so new, planned us going to the shop to get said wine as an activity to push the time of performance. A singular condom in my jean pocket we awkwardly walked to Sainbury's. She was quiet, she was unsure, she was upset I failed in providing. We didn't get to talk about feelings until we were at the seafront. After an hour of red wine lips and circling conversations of her old relationship I frustratingly had to sit through. I was so close. Months to this point. SHE ASKED FOR THIS JUST DO SOMETHING. She had begun crying. I decided this was the point I should kiss her. Not my first kiss, that was at the age of fifteen when my sister was having her eighteenth birthday at our house and I annoyingly hung around enjoying the feeling of being accepted by older people. I stumbled into a game of spin the bottle in which the bottle landed on me when some profoundly ugly girl was spinning. In my backgarden the same backgarden that I had had my fourth birthday in eleven years earlier some woman stole my first kiss which I eagerly gave up. Passionless, she asked me "oh my god was that your first kiss." Proud of myself having reached a milestone, at that point I wasn't sure I ever would, I answered in the affirmative. Now my second kiss seven years after my first was happening. Awkwardly I tried to prop myself up on the stoney beach and she pulled away and said "no, no, no you've clearly not done this a lot." She taught me how to kiss. From this moment I felt as though I had found the purpose of life. All moments of strife and sadness was all for this. We ran and jumped over the groynes down the seafront. Held hands and kissed. Eventually we came to a beach house. In the dark she instructed me to take her bra off. Fumbling my hands under her leopard print blouse I, with some skill, unhooked her bra without ever taking my eyes off hers. Now shirtless she attempted to give me a blowjob. Shamefully, I couldn't get erect. Nerves, cold and wine had all combined into an extremely disappointing sucking of my frustratingly limp penis. Trying something else I shifted her round off me and dove my hands down her back under her skirt and tights and back round and awkwardly plunged my fingers into her. Which I initially, expectedly, failed at again she taught me the right thing to do until eventually she told me to stop. Later she told me to strangle her. I certainly didn't want to hurt her but I wanted to do what she wanted and I obliged. Sometime after kissing she pulled back looked in my eyes and asked "why do you look so sad?"

Marie and Anna moved to their flat in Kentish Town sometime this year. One is an "influencer" the other works in an office, it doesn't which does what. Marie grew up in a brothel in Paris, Anna grew up on a cow farm in rural France like the opening of Inglorius Basterds. Anna's father would force his three daughters to milk the cows as he sat in his wooden wicker chair. The same chair he would sit on in his stained underwear and force his daughters to perform sexual acts on each other straight faced, milk moustached. Just like Inglorius Basterds.

The two would go to bars and find lonely looking men. There they would say all the right things take their drinks and cigarettes. They made this balding 24 year old trainee risk assessor feel like a Moorish sultan for the night, the girls being his captured occitan concubines. They would take these men back to their mandala covered grey flat where they would almost have sex with him and then tell him they'd rather wait. They'd discovered the best schedule for texting a man to make him completely dependent on their contact. After enough time the man would stop responding due to an unfortunate suicide. They wouldn't notice. This wasn't some feminist power fantasy getting back at the men that had wronged them, they simply didn't care. They were far too attractive to care about women's rights.

One night when Marie saw an aged white bearded man at what she called her favourite bar she saw her next target. His name was john.

"So where are you from?" Marie asked after hearing his distinctive Irish accent after ordering a cider.
"Everywhere and nowhere" John Replied

Marie laughed harder at this than was natural.

John was immune to her. He built adventure parks for a living. Seventeen year old girls would beg him to employ their chubby, greasy haired, gamer boyfriends because in six months he'd completely change them. John liked to surround himself with his improved boys and aged ugly women. In this community he was a king. He was a platonic ruler wise and caring but demanding. To him Marie was another person to make an unfunny joke to. John's dismissal of Marie began a deep infatuation. This isn't what she knew, she was beautiful and French. John's girlfriend was a crackling, wrinkled, Easter Island head. Marie had ruined herself thinking she could debase a king amongst men. John didn't care about her, John cared about the way the blood pulsed in his hands after a long day hauling logs and tightening screws.

The next day Marie had pre-paid for a double mastectomy. She began to take testosterone pills and dyed her growing scraggly beard and now unkempt hair a pale white. Anna was found hanging from the clothesline the week of Marie's strangely rapid transformation. Marie didn't notice, she continued to perfect her Irish accent by way of YouTube video. She began to sail the Regent's Canal looking for work in her rowboat. Blood pulsing in her hands. Ordering ciders.

The death of every pretty French girl births an Old Irish man.

It was one of those days where I'm trapped in my own head. It was one of those weeks where free time comes as a burden to be filled rather than a pleasure to be had. One of those months where I depend on the world to entertain me rather than myself. Another one of those years I've lived. Two days ago at a lull in conversation I stared too long and too deeply into a woman's face and she into mine, I feel guilty now. The silence in between songs sounds louder than the very familiar tunes. There are many kinds of love in this world and I count anyone able to experience any of them lucky. There is no quicker way to self hatred than to lay for an hour watching YouTube Shorts you can't relate to. Recently I've been asked more frequently about my romantic life or I've just began to feel self-conscious enough about it I've started to notice a pattern. People always mean well. People want to know me. Why do I always assume they want to judge me, why am I so unjustly quick to judge them.

These past six months I'm the furthest I've ever been from myself yet my soul continues to lug the prison of my flesh around with it everywhere it goes. This feeling reminds me of being 9 years old walking from the year 4 & 5 classrooms up the hallway to the year 2 & 3 classrooms, someone had recently told me that if you push against someones parallel palms with your own the fake feeling of a ball will appear betwixt your hands. This was another proof against the supremacy of reality. A great wish I had at this time and perhaps one I'd still have if i hadn't become so used to the reality of it was to be some kind of incorporeal personality. To be without a body. My belief was this was the answer to all the bad feeling. When I was a child i would silently cry in my mind asking God to show himself and give me an answer to the question I couldn't articulate there was nothing but silence.

When I hit puberty I put on a lot of weight that never left me. Throughout my teenage years this made me feel unlovable and so the thought of women did not cross my mind even if they actually did like me. A happy ending would've been to have been proved wrong when I finally did fall in love with someone. It was not a happy ending. Every ill conceived core tenant of my self hatred fell away in the face of love. In someone else I had found the purpose of reality. However, my hated body (among other tings) destroyed my hopes. The welling tears and feeling at the back of my throat when I began to type the opening line to this paragraph reminds me this teenage girl feeling of fatness is still an all encompassing part of me. For a decade I've rounded my shoulders to hide my chest and protruded my head forward in an attempt to destroy and semblance of a second chin. All my life people have told me I'm not that big, or that I carry it well. I don't want to be any kind of big or carry anything well. I heard once that anorexics hallucinate themselves as morbidly obese in a mirror when in actuality they are emaciated skeletons. I've long hoped this to be the case for myself.

I don't compliment people. I think about it, I think a lot of things about other people but I don't compliment people enough. I worry others will wonder of my intent the way I do when I am complimented. In this life I have learned you can be oh so smart or oh so pleasant, and it is truly better to be pleasant. Although, I find myself not brave enough to be pleasant. The connections between peoples hearts is all we have. My childhood wishes prove this me, as I understood it at the time I wanted to do away with anything that wasn't soul of ourselves. It wasn't necessary to me. I so deeply wanted to love and be loved for the contents of my soul and I remain the same.

Recently I went looking for someone from an old chat for a possibly unfinishable project of an extremely limited audience, and came across a message chain from someone I would have said was a good friend at the age of 10. She was asking about my widely publicised against my will ankle breakage some 4 years after I had moved schools away from her. Her messages were filled with laughter and Xs but most importantly genuine interest and concern. I could only ordain to give her one word answers until eventually I just stopped replying. She sent me two subsequent greetings garnished with 13 year old girl niceties that I did not see fit to reply to. I've done this to multiple people, I did this to the only woman I've ever loved.

I haven't got a date as to when I decided I would estrange myself from my father's side of my extended family but I have been for some years now. I'll be told they miss me, my sister relaying the harrowing message from my grandfather "I'll be dying soon. I just want to know what I did wrong." My aunt tried to get the address for my current workplace so that the family could surprise me. I don't feel guilty enough about this. I know the reason I hide myself from them is a feeling of inadequacy that I cannot give them what they want. I don't know where I got this idea of social-transactionalism from.

I want to apologise to everyone I've abandoned. Every time I feel lonely I feel extreme guilt for the people I've actively pushed away. Though I'm still not brave enough to say it to your face and I want you to continue to leave me alone,

I am sorry.

You can never go where you have never been
No matter how far, all you have seen
Growth but always from the same root
Twisted thorns and vines always in dispute
The weavers forever know whence you came
Past incapable of being aflame
A grove of your life
Not truly your fife

Destiny Islands the opening stage in Kingdom Hearts is my true home. I first played it when I was five years old, but I remember that opening level like I do my childhood bedroom. I can play the Destiny Islands theme song in my head for hours and never be sick of it. Video games have this feeling of “hangout-ability” to them that is entirely new for humans. I will never go to those islands, but I have lived there for 17 years. I’ve spent a good portion of my life hanging out on a Minecraft server jumping my character around abstract constructions in circles not focusing on the act of playing a video game but hanging out inside it. Every truly memorable game has these hangout spaces. Kingdom Hearts is full of them. GTA Online exists as one of these and works extremely well at doing so. There’s very little “game” there however the population for that world only grows.

The RPG town is a good example of the hangout spot. Its important for the flow of an RPG to give respite from the dangerous fields and dungeons and a time to just explore a well-designed European style but made by a Japanese guy town where you can talk to it’s natives and they give you a meaningless 2 lines of dialogue. Final Fantasy XIII’s downfall was not the different but good combat system or the way it tells its story through text logs found in the menu at the game’s beginning, but the eradication of the town. It happens in the story the characters do find townly respite in cutscenes, but the players never do. Square Enix clearly saw the town as superfluous thinking it slowed down plot and game progression.

For a generation Whiterun from the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a famous hangout location. The first city you most likely come to in the game holds most of the memes from Skyrim that are parroted every day. These spaces give you the ability to live in the world of the game. To really soak in the atmosphere that combat, or any other phase doesn’t allow. You remember the town you lived in 6 years ago much better than a film you saw 6 months ago.

I believe that Minecraft’s success is that the game that allows the complete design and construction of your own personal hangout space. Its not the first but its low resolution allows an ease of creativity and with a small barrier of material collection the creative spirit is exercised within limitations allowing a home to be crafted.

The leafless branches of the forest form a web of black over a deep blue-grey sky. Wind blows through the tunnels formed by the hiking path and gets caught under the nylon of her tights. Arms tightly crossed as she trudges through the night. Led by a phone’s torch only able to see a circle ahead of her. She thought she saw a scowling face behind a passing trunk, she angles her head lower and continues, ignoring her surroundings. Among the bushes and growth at the track’s edge she hears a flute in the distance. She stops for a moment. The flute lingers but is distant, so she recommences her lonely journey. The flute grows closer as she aims her torch light onto an oncoming figure on the path. The clop of hooves, the figure skips closer playing his flute’s dirge. She stops stunned at the strange creature. Although it moves erratically towards her its tune is unwavering. The torchlight uncovers thick backward-bending legs under a pot belly covered in fur, a beard draped overtop shrouding a scowling face topped with short horns. As it draws closer it tucks its flute into its navel. It approached her and stuck its face below hers as she stared at the ground away from it and screamed:

“A life spent in ignorance of one’s woes is the freest from grief. Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when you have seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed you should go back from where you came.”

Finishing its wisdom, it laughed a screech and jauntily passed her leaving her alone again in the dark forest. She dropped to her knees. The torch went out. After a moment of contemplation, the sun began to arise at the end of the tree’d tunnel. She pushed herself back up to her feet and glanced behind her. The beast-philosopher was gone. The winter sun brought little warmth to the now visibly frosty bracken laden forest. She turned away from the sun for a moment but refused to return whence she came and carried onward.

Slayers is old and therefore good.

I found Slayers by seeing the main character in an anniversary line-up image on /a/, I saw it was 104 episodes long with multiple OVAs and thought well I’ll give it a go I doubt I’ll finish it. Then came the decision of subbed or dubbed. The English dub is of that dangerously 90s quality, by no means bad, unpolished, and loud. Instantly upon hearing Lisa Ortiz’s portrayal of Lina Inverse in the pre-opening monologue I knew the dub was for me. A long-time watcher of anime I find that there’s something missing with subtitled anime when I watch it. I find I don’t take in the voice actor as much as I build a synthesis of their voice and my inner voice reading the subtitles. Watching subtitled anime puts too much of myself into someone else’s work. Gourry another main character has the same voice actor as Seto Kaiba in 4kids’ Yu-Gi-Oh, Amelia as Ash Ketchum in 4kids’ Pokémon and Zelgadis as Kyon from the dub of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I never watched Slayers as a child, but it feels like I did.

The show originally from an award-winning light novel from a bored office worker writing what he thought would win the competition is simple. A basic anime style with manzai comedy in a basic japano-european fantasy setting. Its simplicity is its essence, in my pretension I often surprise myself when I just find something fun, even though I keep doing it. If I can’t cite a work in a philosophical discussion is there any point in consuming it? Often, yes because its fun.

Slayers has notghing important to say. It doesn’t try to say anything really. It has strange pacing, its unfunny and sometimes very poorly animated. There’s very little to recommend about it. Except that I like it a lot. It’s plagued my mind since first seeing it. I haven’t searched eBay for “name of thing I’m into” like this since I was very young just typing in “Pokémon” to see all the stuff I wasn’t sure if I wanted enough to go to my parents, hat in hand begging to be bought a Groudon figure.

Adding something to your personal canon is a strange feeling, maybe only if you’re as autistic as I am. Do you have the space to champion more media as informative to you as a person? Do you deserve to have more? Does adding more dilute what is already there? If more things can feel this personal to you does that make you a simpler person? Does anyone care? Probably not.

Media worship always feels dirty and hollow to me even though it often is my main activity in life. Modern atomisation has left me without a local community, little attachment (that wasn’t built myself by constructing esoteric ironic belief structures) to my nation, and few friends. I do have a list of media though that I pretend explains me. A lot from Japan, a country I’ve never been to and have no gnosis of. It feels like I arrived too late to truly engage with the early online communities, but I spent much of my childhood lurking forums and seldom poasting. I certainly arrived too late to Slayers. I tried to join the Slayers discord under the promise of hidden media only being posted to the discord. My heist plan was set, I got in, but discord doesn’t allow you to lurk. Instantly I was given welcome messages, I ignored them. I trawled through their channels looking for the promised scans of manga or whatever it was I was looking for but instead I found people posting about their lives, selfies, and the meals they cooked. This wasn’t what I wanted, I’m not used to communities of shared interests I formed a personality of contrarianism and individualism around puberty’s inception branching off from the perceived norm and getting into manga, weird websites, and video games but deeper than other kids because I really get them. Except that’s a lie. I was in an anime club and played video games with my friends for years. I tell myself that I am unique in my media interests no one else would like “an unknown 90s anime” like I do, except the thousands of people that do and talk about it every day, no one else likes Kingdom Hearts as much as I do except everyone who does. I like to isolate myself in fandom monasteries, monk-like reading ancient texts I secured from the Romes of whatever is on the front of my mind at the time of my swirling canon. Never will I meet others of my faith because I’m frightened their faith is greater than mine. I’m sure it is.

An eccentric German café owner asked me in an interview, “why don’t you just stick with the writing to pay the bills”. Would anyone pay for the untrained ramblings of an unknown author. How does someone become someone worth reading? I pretend to write for myself, for the intrinsic value of the plotting of my being into words. In reality, I know my true hope is that I could be paid for it. That I could define myself as “writer” and not feel like I’m playing at the role. Is it to be published to become a writer, to have public readings in bookshops?

I have long been an artist without a medium if I could be so bold as to use that word. Although I truly believe the creation of art is a facet of humanity and that it is impossible to be a human without creating something of varying resolution during a lifetime, to name myself artist feels like a trophy I did not win. A month ago, I made the decision to write and post no matter the outcome. The outcome, meagre, but I have become proud of what I’ve written. So far, I’ve found writing has allowed me a more refined introspection that has made me more comfortable in endeavours elsewhere. I have rooted myself in the language and bled the radiator of my mind.

This past week I declared to that German that writing is my “dream”, or at least that I am discovering that it is. The kind of declaration you don’t realise you’ll make until someone of perceived authority makes you. The kind that you know in your heart of hearts will have deep introspective ramifications. This contract of creativity made between me and this man I most likely will never meet again will only weigh on my mind. No one else will care about the outcome of this.

A month deep has left me craving more than my ability allows. I find making anything to be a deeply scary activity. Any assertation to my existence feels entirely too impolite. To slink into the dark corners of life is all too easy.

Sometimes I think I died and didn’t notice. My room is filled with pervasive grey. It washes across the monochrome furniture. The toilet in the adjoining wet room reeks of piss. Stains cover the sides of the bowl. I allow the stench to fill the room. The only window in the room lets in a sliver of light. The street above filled with traffic causes the room to rattle. I am confined to my bed. I wanked earlier, the cum remains in my underwear. Trinkets adorn the room around me they’ve lost their meaning in the mire of the present.

BANG
BANG
BANG

A fist crashes into the firmly locked door to the room. I get up to make sure it truly is locked. I’m safe. I noticed my breathing has become heavy. I go back to laying on my bed. My roommates are having a house party outside in the kitchen/living room. A week ago, they slid a pamphlet under my door telling me it's okay to ask for help. It’s not.

The ceiling becomes concaved in my delirium. I’ve been awake since 5am on my trip to the nearby Tesco for my sustenance for the day. A meal deal and a loaf of bread to keep me going. Everyone morning I go I check the flat’s bins. The only time I enter the kitchen and the only communication with those I live with is emptying their bins. Four bin bags leak a foul sludge onto the floor. I lift them up and creep along the hall and exit the flat. The brisk winter air is refreshitng to my deeply stale body. I drop the bags into the large bin in the car park. The morning announcements at the train station next door begin to play. I must return soon before someone else wakes up. Time has lost its meaning in this life.

Emails scare me. Things I fully willingly signed up try to intrude my solitude with a kindly written email. They want to help me. They don’t understand that I’ve decided that I’m beyond help. One day I decide to change, upon removing the objects from my room a flatmate catches me:

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes”

I lived with them for 6 months.

I sent myself home, back to my mother. I am failed. The familiar walls of my childhood bedroom begin to grow old with mould. I waste my time here. I pretend for apply to jobs. A year goes by, I barely notice. A man moves in with my mother. Living with a terrorist can dull you into a sense of calm derangement. It was ok though because I had learnt to live in my room alone. One meal days, cowering in the safety of odd hours. When the world was locked in I was given a job. I pushed a trolley around a supermarket. I was given an offer to have a life I wanted to take it, I paid for it. I built beliefs to keep me in my prison.

Now I find myself living in the ruins of my life. A post-apocalyptic vision of my childhood bedroom. 5 years on from whatever event caused my statue of liberty to be buried in the beaches of my soul. I begin to pull back the vines and shrubbery and search for places to begin my settlement. Akin to the Anglo-Saxons living amongst Roman villas. I don’t know how this land was constructed but I will endeavour to build what I can in its grounds.

Jealous of a baby's focus on it's mother.
I am pulled from one place to another.
Life draws and quarters.
But only yourself possibility slaughters.
Uncounted personal promises you didn't keep.
The mountain wasn't always this steep.

In a lonely room even plastic flowers wilt.
A desperate feeling of guilt.

When the ocean is still on the horizon and the sun wanes in the sky the hollow feelings fall away. Missions and beliefs solidify in the brain cultivating permutations of unending futures. No danger can be found in this pristine garden, no height harrowing, no criminal haranguing and no thought disparaging. In this realm of heroes, only the myth of a great becoming can emanate from the soul. The dried grasses act as pillows for dreams to whisper in the reeds. Possibilities fall down the mountainside as the gods challenge their eidolon legion. Humanity's gift of the bountiful Eden to play out their lives of joy and sorrow. The dark clouds cannot gather under Helio's rays. The warm dusty haze turns any malaise into an epic. The myths arise from the wine-dark sea drunk on their own deep importance. They call from the past and the future in holy combination. Ancestor and descendent conjoined in the ever-lasting present. For their glory, they ask to sample divine struggle. Fear festers in the alleys and passageways of neurons forged in dark solitude. They evaporate in the sun's embrace allowing unused tendons to strengthen and old worries to relax. Worship the sun as the sun worships you.

Remain not in the corners of humanity's creation. Sustenance cannot be found in a concrete shadow. Fear rules in this controlled land. In God's garden, no man is alone, the earth walks with him. When no one else will the moon will listen. All has its place for serene perfection is a common sight in this wild land. God's country is all that the light blankets in its hope. Adventure is the only way forward without it the flame of the soul is smothered under mundanity's veil. New will always exist for those who seek it.

Too long I've subsided on life's offcuts. Like an ill-treated dog hoping for any scraps that may fall from a table. The mange of this lifestyle has killed my spirit. I threw myself into the oubliette of self-pity and inability. Slowly my roots crack these weak stone walls. My fire will not be unseen in this dark cavity. Through the tunnel of life's despair it guides me to that great light. His anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life. Do not allow those deep-seated demons to chain you in a self-flagellating ritual. Unapologetically declare to yourself and all who will listen a divine purpose. The only failure is those who will not face the task.

O, Magpie I salute you though
Still you find it within you to curse me so
Small whims that I desire
Are cast onto the pyre
As the fire grows
My life it slows

Rabbits that I follow through the wood
Take me to places I never could
Met with events I am not prepared
What foolishness to think I should be spared
The pain within, these amplified
From which I must refuse to hide

I used to save every picture I came across online that I liked, just in case I ever needed them. Somewhere along the line I stopped. Now my pictures folder lay woefully empty after a succession of childhood laptops with mysteriously empty hard drives. Media is getting lost. Servers are going dark, and their contents evaporate on the wind. Its time everyone starts hoarding anything they find worth hoarding.

yt-dlp can allow you to save all those Youtube videos that teeter on the edge of being taken down.

yt-dlp works in the command line so it can be strange to use if you aren’t used to such programs but its highly versatile and it’s father yt-dl was taken down from even DuckDuckGo’s search results so using it is going against big tech in some small way. Make sure you install FFmpeg too.

Pasting this into your command line replacing the red text with your youtube video/channel/playlist url will begin downloading.

yt-dlp --embed-subs --embed-metadata --merge-output-format mkv YOUTUBE HTTP LINK

Here is a sample command to convert a video file into an mp3 using FFmpeg

INPUT-FILE.mkv ffmpeg -i -vn -ar 44100 -ac 2 -ab 128k -f mp3 OUTPUT-FILE.mp3

Also, you can use the program HTTrack to download webpages to hoard.

One day you might be the only one left with a certain file, and it'll be your duty to host it.

As a young child my Americophile grandfather told me the story of the Alamo, I’m not sure I understood at the time what a Mexican was or when in history it was supposed to have taken place. Sometime between Odin and 1066?

We all grew up in America, even those of us who didn’t. The culture permeates the globe. The Marshall Plan Vassal States are fed ever increasingly with American ideas in cultural globalisation. As a British person sharing a language with such an alien nation is ever taxing in trying to maintain a separate identity. 9/11 has had a bigger impact on my life than 7/7 ever did and I had to look the second one up.

American politics rule in the Atlantic world. European opinion polls on American presidents as if Europeans are supposed to have an idea of who the president is and what they stand for implicitly. The French, the most resistant to Americanisation, have begun to cite American universities as the source of their political ills, a wonderful scapegoat.

As America ages and its face is smeared with decades of realpolitik shit the world’s “hero” has become a joke. America seems unable to find a puppet to lead it that isn’t a farce. At least Trump was entertaining. America was unfortunate to be in the lead at the time of great informational dissemination, any previous empire didn’t have to tackle the issue of armies of shit-posters mining at its foundations. On the other hand, no previous empire had the ability to give its population destructive catharsis through any niche media form the corporate parasite-ridden mind of a crypto-human could want.

The real issue as a non-American facing the colossus is, it isn’t evil. “America” has found itself at the centre of a global system it has no choice but to perpetuate for fear of what replaces it. Boundaries were drawn in the Zero Hour of 1945. A new destruction myth for the world to replace our creation myths, it’s no wonder we can’t think of anything better with that as our foundation. Our new foundational myth allows us to think anything away from that is better, it must be.

The world we live in was forged from a hell, the fires of hatred and raw unfeeling science gave way to a world of deep fear and the understanding that fear it turns out makes a lot of money. It’s been known for a long time now that the best way to move product is to fear the absence of it. Food, shelter, armies, nukes. Anyone born after 1948 has had a gun at their head in the form of an interlocking system of hellfire at the tip of rockets only stopped if everyone can just learn to behave. Sure, we have more food than ever before but annihilation in the most horrific way possible is closer than any medieval prophet could know. Don’t let Fukuyama fool you those nukes are still out there.

Since the rest of the world destroyed itself in ritual sacrifice America was the only source of cohesion left. A middle-aged man in an elderly care home America propped up and attempted to modernise an aged system. Anything they found in their new elderly adoptees sellable they packaged and sent away on the next freighter home creating a cultural swirl where you’ll see a Sailor Moon sticker that passed the Panama Canal in an Afghan market. Cities mirror each other. The human habitat becomes uniform. It’s not America’s fault its their parasite the corporation. They want you afraid and detached.

You must fight the fear, let the fear consume you and you’ll cling to the metal mothers like scared baby monkeys of modernist religions. Communism or fascism won’t save you. Both seem a good way to fight the corporatist structure that seeks to atomise you to the point of ever entering transient fandom-religions that reaffirm your most uncertain beliefs. These commodify your beliefs in a way a pre-Lutheran indulgence merchant could only dream of. Share yourself with the world as an act of kindness, know you are good and that you can create good. Seek not to sell yourself into the bondage of capital you are not a brand you are a human. Pay artists in secret, never pay for entertainment. Support the obscure and meaningful and do away with the known and vapid. Balance the weight of flesh with the freedom of the mind do not get trapped in either. You are both God and Mud.

Choose your hill, defend it. Feed the corporate brain worm when you must with the things you loved as a child, know that you can never return. Build your shamanistic cult in the woods, create your online zine, build strange constructions out of driftwood on beaches, and design your myths to inspire greatness in others, and spread them. Share these things with your people and create the world you deserve. Don’t be turned to the factory output of beings that don’t care about you. If you have no voice scream your spastic moans into the void until someone is forced to listen. Assert yourself onto the world until there is no place left unshackled to a cold algorithm.

Build your Alamo and defend it, no one else will do it for you.