Huffa and I have been working on something called The Mycelium Matrix, like a psychedelic animist cyberspace (perfect for my animism setting whenever I get around to properly writing that up besides anima crafting and the appendix-n).
Part of the Mycelium Matrix are the Freaky Fractals, these weird micro-events that are like psychedelic incursions, augmented realities layered on top of one's perceptions, crossing the boundary between physical reality and dream.
As part of the full set of tables and features of The Mycelium Matrix, we're planning on chopping up these writeups into bullet-points that will hopefully be a little more obviously usable, but I still like these writeups as-is and wanted to share them, so here they are.
Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix
Within the Mindscapes of the Mycelium Matrix, reality and rumination intertwine in a synesthetic transposition. What at first appears as mundane reality infinitely unfolds into a kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings, each layer replicating onto the subsequent layer like a rainbow. Imagine any one (or two, or three…) illogically interweaving with reality like a dream.
1. A red sky and portents of crisis. Red-faced anger and shame on incongruous faces. Butt-busty baboons bawling incessantly; nagging and distracting and out of place. The baboons are really getting in the way of things. Individually they are not too powerful, but they multiply through murder. For every baboon murdered, two more fall butt-first from the red sky like little bright red comets. The baboons have the taste and nutritional value of cinnamon candies. An incorrigible chaos, at best its proliferation may be aimed before being set loose.
2. Avaricious ASMR anteaters, long tongues licking orange juice slime and nuggets of gaudy gold glitter from unsuspecting ears. A deliciously disgusting smacking sound. The more polite anteaters will trade treasures for your delicious ear stuff. For every nugget of ear stuff dug out, a chunk of perceived reality is replaced with orangeness. Battalions from the fire ant military industrial complex pour from the orangeness with a mission to colonize cleaned ears.
3. Streaking yellow arrows guide you along clear cut paths bending over the horizon. While traversing the yellow arrows, you never grow tired, hungry, thirsty, or taller. The sun shines brightly. Everything is soft, round, bouncy, smiling, and everything sings. Heatwaves burst like bass beats from Mr. Sunshine Man, everything vibrating in a heat haze. Mr. Sunshine Man is a font of knowledge, but will never tell you anything you don’t want to hear. For every truth he shines a light upon, another truth becomes a saturated parody of itself, a clearly misremembered memory, a crisp mirage seen through a polarized lens. The yellow arrows guide you down a path that could neither be more clear nor more clearly wrong.
4. A lush forest of deep time folded around the present moment like an emerald ring. Glittering mineral richness, neon bioluminescence, absinthe dew and chartreuse ponds; floating freezing superconductor monoliths, geometric patterns on circuit board forest floors. Glutinous mossy flora, fatty fauna feeding on fruits and each other, full of life and vibrancy and danger. An algorithmic maze where monsters hunt the ignorant as easy prey, stalked in the shrouding shadows of their own minds, their small worlds closing in around them. A mathemagical forest, predator and prey, man and monster. Those seeking only an exit will fail to find one; this is a survival game that must be played, but the clever define the rules for themselves.
5. Beyond the fourth wall, the world reveals itself to be a stage. Structures made of flimsy paper diorama and cardboard cutout character collage. The sky is lapis lazuli, the stars periwinkles, streaking petal comets inducing visual snow and CRT static. Like a paper fortune teller or a game of he loves me / he loves me not, frivolous premonitions and portents alike reign from the whims of the astrological astronomical Witch Qing. The Silly Stage is a duel, dance, and discourse between the Witch Qing and their audience. Who rules and who fools? Only those who do both receive a standing ovation.
6. Ultraviolet ultraviolence in a blinding white light discothèquenological mosh pit. Physically demanding freedom, free-form destruction, fertile frenetic femininity in ballroom vogue. No grudges are kept, even those are destroyed. Spiral-shaped primordial anti-monsters ambulating in non-integer dimensions like plants in hypertime, meta-rainbow mantis shrimp mod squads, a genetic sequence unhinged in the universe for good and ill, solidarity through singularity, and other such things. The only escape is through destruction. When you return to reality, something is missing, but the gaps have not been left unfilled.
Neato burrito
ReplyDeleteThanks :). Also you might appreciate that the butt-busty baboons have already shown up briefly in our Against the Grey campaign.
DeleteThe baboons are pretty awesome. I'm also partial to this bit: "Ultraviolet ultraviolence in a blinding white light discothèquenological mosh pit." I must find a way to work the word discothèquenological into more conversations.
ReplyDeleteI was happy with how that line turned out haha. I had come up with that word a while back knowing I'd eventually find a good use for it.
DeleteVery cool. The idea of these fractals as "incursions" feels sort of Fear of Loathing- base reality is ongoing, but there's something completely gonzo happening in a tear or rip to which the normies are oblivious.
ReplyDeleteThe colours are an excellent way to "code" the fractals and could also be used to flesh out further in a synaesthetic manner. What I mean by this is to start exploring the other senses through those colours, something you touched on with how the baboons taste. What is the soundtrack to the Sunshine Man's bouncy false optimism? What does Ultraviolet ultraviolence smell like?
Kudos too for linking the antecedents to this post: I've been out the loop for a wile so it's nice to be given sme catch-up reading. I have a better grasp on concept crafting now, something you'd mentioned on the iconoclastic server. Gave me food for thought about just smashing psychedelic entities to gether to make new one (and, conversely, splittin them apart).
I'm likely to be popping up in your comment son some of those other posts now! As ever, good material and plenty to think about. Thank you.
I often prefer to think of it less so that these things are hidden or obscured to normies; it's all out in the open, it's just that most people "choose" not to engage with it; but in any case ya, the idea that it's overlayed on top of material reality as we think of it is definitely along those lines :).
DeleteThe choice to call them Fractals has more to do with the actual mathematical concept (to my somewhat limited but nonetheless researched understanding) than to the pretty pictures of self-similar fractals most people think of, but it works on both levels and intentionally so.
I like your idea about the other senses, I should have leaned into that more on top of the colors, especially since that was very intentionally linked to the synesthesia idea. Maybe I'll add more of that kind of stuff when Huffa and I rework it. I'll need to think more about Mr. Sunshine Man, but Ultraviolet Ultraviolence my gut says has the smell of dry ice fog machine or ozone or something like that, mixed with club smells; sweat and body chemicals and alcohol and synthetic cleaners.
No worries I've been out of the loop as well! I try to be good about hyperlinking, but some day I need to put together a proper blog post index or something...
Wrt the Anima Crafting, like I say in that post, I wanted to lean into that kind of Pokemon-y / collection idea, but also emphasize that the nature of the relationship between Dreamer (still don't love that term...) and Anima is more complex, and also that the Anima Crafting is itself a reflection of the fluidity of reality and perception and how one interfaces with it; it uses this very materialist and mechanistic idea of Crafting, but with abstract symbolic Concepts, operating at different metaphysical scales (leaning into a kind of continuity between the spirit in all things, and super-organisms operating between things, not hierarchically, but heterarchically, as I am increasingly trying to integrate into my worldview).
I'm glad you like the idea! I've been meaning to write more stuff for this Animism Setting, there's a whole lot more to it and how the Anima Crafting and some other mechanics tie into it. It's starting to veer from the original premise of being more paleolithic or neolithic which is kinda how I roll haha, but these ideas around Animism and Psychedelia are still very much core to the setting.
My gut says ozone too!
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