Bygone Jocundity / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Bygone Jocundity.

Author Post

Zesc 25 Aug 2021 21:17

Having given up any pretense of actually finishing this project in the original one week timeframe, here's the penultimate emotion: Sadness.

Worst of all, this article didn't really underwent any non-cosmetic changes since the original draft from the 15th, so my perfectionism once again got the best out of me.

I still think this might need another Appendix, but until then, I'll just act like the bathos is intentional.

Image Sources: Sunny sea-scape with cliffs and Low view on cliffs and surf under cloudy light by Fons Heijnsbroek, released under CC0.

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Eschew elucidation, espouse obfuscation.

Re: Author Post

Meta Wonderrat 31 Aug 2021 20:46

This, indeed, was a downer

Implications and further interpretation

Cant wait to put everyone who has seen the video and currently has no love interest into the Ferris wheel and see if all the results are the same person and how these persons will than react to the video. How does one react to seeing once own dead body after having an affair with yourself?
on the other hand
How does editing the video change things? Packing 17 years into three minutes is a feet to be repeated and if we can nail how the movie does this we can probably fabricate custom pasts for people who got completely mind-wiped.
on the other hand
Whom ever fabricated this in universe was clearly an artist (in universe) and knew what he was doing. I don't believe a work of fiction (anomaly induced or otherwise) can be created without a creator. Someone did make the original after all.
on the other hand
There are various things that can be used to triangulate the real events. Starting with shipwrecks that ruined people (not as common as one might think) cross-reference that with sudden deaths in the age range of 15-23 (accounting for the "same age girlfriend" and "memories up to year 17") from a treatable but untreated decease, limit the search via required existence of private color video recorders. I don't consider it reliable that her parents were dead (accounting for the dead parents troop) in the events that inspired this, but considering it anyway it narrows the search quite a bit more.
on the other hand
Can we do this to non humans? If so, do they react in the same way? There might be some fun applications when we can make something sufficiently powerful wish to bring a non-existing girlfriend back to life.

+1

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Fighting Monsters and Language since 2016.

Re: Author Post

Zesc 01 Sep 2021 14:25

What, exactly, made you feel the Item is a work of fiction and not a factual documentation?
There are places much stranger than this. You have been there.
Editing isn't going to change anything; it really is less of a video than a collection of roughly 5850 individual frames that each carry a part of the effect.
Making you remember what you desperately tried to forget.
I wonder why you are so focused at getting that girl to live, when we can use this thing to give random persons retroactively childhood traumata (relatively covertly, even).
You still miss her.
Feel free to try the Ferris Wheel approach (if we get anyone out anyway, might also want to fill up the Identity Receptacle with them) and see where it goes. I'm open for everything as long as the result is sufficiently disturbing.

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Eschew elucidation, espouse obfuscation.

Re: Author Post

Meta Wonderrat 01 Sep 2021 18:17

And over the cliff of reason we go...

I don't think you can accidentally cram 17 years off memorable experience into a coherent 3 minute video by accident. Also the blurred pictures tipped me off. How ever blurred it is, considering the length of the video I assume the foreground cliff and the background cliff to be the same across the whole video. This can not be the case as the top of the background cliff is only green/dark in the second picture. Even blurred and perspective shifted the cliff could not be the same. (Yes I saw that before I even read the article. It crept me out at first sight as combined with the top box it suggested that the thing could mess with geological memory. Think being able to walk a few steps and be somewhere else without an apparent disconnect in walking from the white-house to the Kremlin in 1 minute. It is perhaps worse in my head as a can explain here. It basically turns object permanence against you (Of cause it is the same cliff, what else should it be?)).

Getting fictional persons into realty is just something I like to think about. In a world where fiction and realty are as intermixed as in the world of the Insurgency all the more. It makes more sense if you have my background information. Basically I have an explanation for all the questions I raised and it is only funny and significant for me. A joke no one else can understand even if you explain it. It is most defiantly not what you intended.

I do touch on the possibility of producing fake pasts, but I am not so sure on the trauma angle. Your usage is adequate, but I do believe that memories that have a hint of being not your own might not work well enough to count as trauma, especially on subjects that are working in an environment like the Insurgency or Foundation.

Onward towards disturbing it is. Removing shared memories from existence proceded by mass broadcast of the thing distributed via sports event ad.

~There is a hole in all of your lives, a place you will never find.
The man in the sky.
(Sky as in the pay-TV station, but also maybe god)

I feel weird. Not like actually sitting down and writing, but just thinking to write while my head is suddenly empty.
What does it feel like to not remember something important, but you can not care or be anxious about it? It is not on the emotion charts I consulted. Is there even a word for that?

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Fighting Monsters and Language since 2016.

Re: Author Post

Zesc 02 Sep 2021 15:54

Try to remember

Perhaps it's not accidentally. Perhaps this all really happened to someone, and their emotions were so strong, they spilled over into the recording?
Somebody all too familiar.
The cliffs are supposed to be coherent; keep in mind it is a walk along the shore. The stuff you see in the second still is "around the curve" of the first picture. It's probably not something you can reach at a comfortable walking pace in under 3 minutes, but I can just make the recording longer once I return to this article in the post-write-a-thon clean-up.
A déjà vu of a jamais vu.
(I may or may not have an SCP-DE canon where such a shortcut from Moscow to Seoul exists.)
Only when we forget what we have forgotten…
Of course this thing might not work against people trained to identify and handle cognitohazards. This thing was never intended to really be "useful", and more something that is being kept around because it requires no real maintenance.
A problem shared is a problem halved.
I think that feeling is called Saudade. Though the term "Weltschmerz" might be a better fit, considering the scale involved.
One day, happiness died.
Edit: Having perhaps peeked into certain places, I can also answer how the originally was destroyed: The physical version was in Insurgency possesion, but was lost when the entire base was raided. Since they made copies, nothing of value was lost. But I cut this segment because it's boring and doesn't add to the basic premise, so whatever.

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Eschew elucidation, espouse obfuscation.

Last edited on 04 Sep 2021 21:11 by Zesc Show more