Author: Dennard Dayle
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Nerding Day: HYBRIDđźŚ
Want to play a normal game?
Me neither.
Leave Midjourney behind. No eight-fingered stillbirth says more than this eye-punching rectangle. It hints at the authors’ era, state of mind, main interest, state of mind, sense of aesthetics, and shattered state of mind. That’s connection. That’s art. That’s losing your entire fucking mind.
Some art guides you through the creator’s brain. Hybrid’s like a tour in a language you don’t speak, on speed. In fact, this simile doesn’t need the tour. Hybrid’s like speed. Let’s take some speed.
Apologies, HYBRID V0.30. Precision’s important today: it keeps us accurately baffled. You wouldn’t want to misread this manic, 64k-word, single-page rulebook. HYBRID V0.30 is the future of tabletop RPGs. Assuming mankind evolves into something unrecognizable. It is for nerds made of light.
Just to establish base reality, for people with outdoor hobbies: this is, in theory, a game like Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, or Bully Annihilator. In Matthew’s vision, four-ish friends would play HYBRID together on purpose. These games typically involve dice and a story lifted from Tolkien. Matthew makes different choices.
Here’s the disclaimer, which follows the color earthquake above.
I’m lucky. A reporter or adult would start with a futile stab at context. An analyst would touch that equation. I’m free to drop everything, and ctrl+f HYBRID’s mathematical explanation for homosexuality. Even if Calc 2 was my Verdun, I can’t turn that down.
Rule 187 gets us…
Slightly illegible. The highlighted bit says “but I’m sure Dr. Strange would prefer RULE # 187, to find or/and create the perfect woman.” Odd, when cosmic realdolls sound more Baron Mordo. I’ll mash enter until the equation pops up.
Ah, the mathematical explanation for homosexuality is also illegible. While black on blood red or laser blue is great for Creech-era character design, it’s an HTML hate crime. Fitting for the concept; advantage Matthew. I’ll switch to readable quoteboxes going forward. Just know that your eyes would struggle harder than your psyche to decode this:
Standard cloning equation.
Fucking what? After decades with Jamaican Baptists, this is the most insane theory of gay I’ve heard. My back catalog trained me for fraud, hate, and incompetence. Not sex ed for shoggoths. The lunacy’s so dense the brackets around young barely register. Don’t read this out loud: you’ll summon the creature under St. James.
The thing about HYBRID is…fucking what? I’m adrift. Mocking HYBRID’s horny (I think) regressive (I’m pretty sure) and deluded (certifiably) math feels like catching a fish with a cloning equation. Or describing basketball in Flatland.
And don’t worry, you didn’t miss twelve years of math. Or maybe you did, I don’t know your story. But whether you’re the next Turing or Mayweather, you’re unarmed for Matthew Math. The numbers are impressionistic. “COM” isn’t explained anywhere in the text. Just try to see the shape of rolling for hardness.
Here’s the closest we drift to a definition:
Nice and intuitive. Don’t worry if you don’t get it–COM only appears 111 more times. Mostly nested in other, equally intuitive equations.
We might not survive this. This psychic landfill’s between HYBRID’s equation for FTL travel and soul value. My mortal neurodivergence tells me COM’s something like battle fuckability and cribbed from a superhero game, but don’t quote me there. HYBRID is as far beyond mutants as mutants are beyond mankind.
Nah. Different sentences. Making FATAL gets you in Blackgate, laughing at Penguin’s jokes to survive. HYBRID lands you in Arkham, laughing at Joker’s jokes to die. Society gets half the blame.
Back to the equation for homosexuality.
Remember doppelganger theory? Simpler days. Matthew’s waifu-design rules demand eight times the patience for none of the dignity. Sorry, I mean 8*LOG(Clozapine)/Electroshock times the patience.
Sometimes, a madman demands less mockery, or even narration, and more translation. Those are long days. After squinting at this alleged English for a month, bothering other clowns (you can guess who) to triple-check if HYBRID’s a parody, and studying cutting-edge divination, I think I’m ready. Maybe.
Cool.
Matthew splits hotness into two stupid stats, and likes his TI84’s LOG button. Said stats are more racist than your parents, but less racist than your leaders. Then he cribs terms from a real game to deflect less-determined clowns, but the most brilliant jesters persevere to find: nothing. Research was a trap. Matthew Math is a poem made of numpad keys. Six number theory PhDs couldn’t tell you what that soup means. But one stoned editor can tell you that Matthew digs Caucasian men and Korean women.
Easy, right? If you’re not up on your anticalculus: “G” is the deviance powerstat. Expect an executive order against min/maxing within the week.
Give up that whole line of thought.
Against all odds, the equation explaining homosexuality’s a decent tutorial. HYBRID’s simple: the rules aren’t rules, the equations aren’t equations, and HYBRID’s not a game. It’s longform tranquilizer withdrawal. You’d never play HYBRID with a friend you want to keep. I haven’t followed the author, but I hope he’s having fun as health secretary.
The best part? We’ve only decoded the disclaimer. We haven’t started the game or this article. Now we’re ready to begin.
Handy warning. Hell, that’s practically the real disclaimer. Fair play, ashes of Matthew’s mind.
Handy summary. Though why you’d base a game on log functions remains unclear. Torturing Dante’s old DM? Texas Instruments cross-promotion? Culling weaker RPGNet users? HYBRID did start out there, where it remains an object of derision/love/fear. That’s the joy of old forums: they hunt madness, instead of breeding it. Insanity never needed a neolithic revolution.
Fair.
My point: Matthew’s basic motive is here, kind of. Maybe. He’s found the golden rpg ratio. By smashing the rest of pop culture into the LOG button, Matthew can create the perfect game. Bet. HYBRID’s risen from incomprehensible to baffling. Maybe we can decode the rules now.
I get this one! It’s dumb and flattening, with a crater-sized copout. But comprehensible. We’re learning to speak HYBRID.
I get this one less! It seems Matthew’s lonely, and has buried it in algebra and retro TV. You, however, can avoid this fate by raising your battle-charm. I think Matthew invented looksmaxxing twenty years early. Or rather, personal grooming six thousand years late. HYBRID’s grammar is elusive.
Zilch. Each letter defies me. We’ve learned next to nothing, aside from more loneliness. We can’t speak HYBRID at all.
Still, I think we’re closer. Too close to turn back, even. Matthew has more faith in his universal equation than I do in my neighbors. With why in hand, maybe we can reach how.
My goal today’s simple: to dig from “DISCLAIMER” to “RULE # 0.” Then we can be the second humans to understand HYBRID.
Ah, a second disclaimer. I’ve actually learned nothing. My birth itself was a mistake.
We persevere.
Finely understated. I owe Disney secondhand royalties for talking about HYBRID. Matthew’s version of the afterlife trampled three copyrights in one sentence. If The Mouse finds me, that blood is on his hands.
On that note: why Tron? Must we still prop up dork film’s false king? A Tron flick came out closer to this article than HYBRID, and I’ve already forgotten about Tron. I’m writing about Tron and I’ve already forgotten about…light cycle movie. Daft Punk? I love Daft Punk! Remember Daft Punk?
I feel for him here, and not just for medical reasons. It’s a rough lesson in perspective. Matthew takes the lack of d20s as HYBRID’s marketing problem, and host backstabbing as his biggest threat. Don’t let bitterness stop you from seeing the algebra in the room.
It didn’t shake out. And not just print publishing, which never had a shot. You may have noticed more than one stat, from more than one system, next to more numbers than there are stars. But now we know we’re only supposed to care about Psyche, and everything else is a pharmacy failure. We’re closer to speaking HYBRID.
Absolutely not. Try to keep up, I’m already confused enough for two.
Now, with the disclaimer behind us–
Another layer! I could pretend that this almost made me quit, but I’m half lunatic. A daywalker, really. My father self-published 101 Steps to Rasta Manhood: A Foundational Wytch’s Guide to Replacing Sons With Chatbots. Now my life is revenge. Matthew can loop disclaimers until the end of time, I’ll be there.
I could also jeer at the Dr. Doom wank, but I’ll always love the concept. What if someone had everything but enough penis to appreciate it? We only see that play out with money. Victor’s twenty minutes with a student therapist from melting Reed into gluons, and it’ll never happen.
Matthew expounds on Doombots and Doom 2099 for a bit, before changing Lunatic Studies forever.
Don’t panic, but Matthew’s killed us all. This Necronomicon-coded headache is inspired by the Anti-Life-Equation. It might be the anti-life equation. At the very least, the CostCo version. While the fancypants version punishes all life, HYBRID’s elf girlfriend rules focus on human neurons.
However you spin it, Matthew’s possessed. If you believe him, by soul-erasing space math. If you don’t, by pop culture and a fictional safety net.
I, for one, have no incredulity left. It’ll rule when we reach Rule 0. I have so many people to feed to Darkseid, and only half of them are in office.
Oh shit, the game’s starting! I skipped a Super Bowl party for this, so I appreciate the confidence. In fact, fuck the 1986 Marvel Universe TSR game. I bet it has fluff like characters and line breaks. Fuck that. Anti-life for life.
Fucking… have clowns overused Groundhog Day? We need a new go-to time loop. Palm Springs. I’m stuck in Palm Springs.
I’m still not quitting, there’s too much Matthew in me. I did curse in person, confusing an already-confused guest. Evidently it’s their first Valentine’s Day studying HYBRID. Mixed dating has challenges, but I think it’ll work out.
HYBRID’s disclaimers finally give way to examples. None of which are our first rule. I suspect that I imagined Rule 0. Or at least my chances of reaching it. Reading HYBRID linearly is like reading HYBRID linearly.
A trap. Matthew’s definitely trying to shake us. Nothing else explains pre-equation citations of later equations, pitched as tutorials. I hope Matthew’s still pitching publishers—name-dropping Tesla’s enriched frauds with half his spirit.
What a beautiful tangent. Not even in the same orbit as the words before, with more forethought for Operation Iraqi Freedom than the entire White House. From what I get of HYBRID Math, Iraq would’ve become unstoppable two weeks before the singularity. Matthew is now, sadly, my favorite pundit.
That’s the last example. Less instructive than the endless disclaimer, but that fits HYBRID’s style. Bringing us to Rule 0.
I’m not a total idiot. If I keep on saying it, eventually I’ll be right. Matthew can only insult the game he swiped his non-calculator stats from for so long.
There’s a novella of text before “2nd” and “3rd,” which are just time travel. Not knowing drove me insane, and I want you to sleep tonight. Said novella discusses Iceman, Thundarr, the stats of Earth 616 Mysterio, Ares’s sex life on Xena: Warrior Princess, Matthew’s resentful boner for Xena: Warrior Princess, and HYBRID’s simplicity.
Once, I thought there were a few thousand languages, generally scaled to history’s largest armies and wallets. Today,I know there are as many languages as movements and ailments. I’m learning Matthew’s because it looks insane and self-destructive. In my tongue, that means “commence.”
And boy, is this section commence. This note’s longer than my tax audit, and covers every six pack on nerd TV. Until, finally, we reach Rule 0.
Wuh?
log(Wuh)^2?
Matthew is no longer my favorite pundit.
Clearly, I bear the 1860’s darksign. Slavery rants will follow me until I die. Ideally free, though we’ll see what the next executive orders say.
Can’t have gold-diggers stealing Matthew’s HYBRID profits. Well, hypothetical gold-diggers stealing hypothetical profits. Shadowboxing phantom harlots is par for Matthew’s diagnosis, but should give abandoned men pause. The lonely lobby sounds like HYBRID without the fun parts, or structure.
Bringing us to anything but Rule 0. Eh? How about that.? Fake me out. Please.
Lesson learned. Don’t tempt the devil, or he’ll turn you into a low-fat baker.
The optional/HYBRID part is mixing blueberry cake mix and brownie mix. With strict limits on flavor-enhancing, cookware sparing oils. Personally, I prefer savory flavors with my fucking madness. The Lecter experience. Still, I love that Matthew’s victims get a sugar rush before the end.
My maniac blood begs to bake this. My sane blood begs to finish this article on time. My bro mind agrees about the sugar, and wants to find a linear squat machine. I’ll skip it for now.
[Update: It’s alright. Get ready to lose half the brownie to your ungreased pan.]
Every book longer than Pippi Longstocking should come with a recipe. Or at least a takeout number. “Eat this while I dazzle you” is a nearly romantic flex. If Matthew applied this to asylum dating, he’d be divorced by now.
Rule 0 isn’t next. Now that you’ve eaten, you can probably handle that.
That’s a lot of math to say “Will Smith is expensive.” I hope that, despite his quirks, Matthew can review movies for The Washington Post. They seem ready for his method.
Next recipe?
Nice try, but our fate is clear. We’ll journey toward Rule 0, forever. HYBRID loves us, and wants to keep us forever.
Finally! Our training is complete, and worthless. I don’t know what these sounds mean in this order. I suspect this text is alive, and stealing strength from its hosts. But that’s based on the blood trickling from my nose, not “Rules and/or equations grow.” Our journey here is meaningless, save learning Matthew intends to write more rules.
By tabletop rpg tradition, Matthew gets a saving throw.
My bad! Matthew’s message is simple.
See, I spent ages convinced HYBRID was a prank. Timecube by way of Real Ultimate Power, if you will. A polemic against rules-obsessed game design, from fans of the theater approach. Instead, it’s a polemic against Nurse Ratched for fans of rules.
And beautiful. My notes should clarify things. Here’s an abridged summary.
Do you see?
Do you see?
You see. Congratulations! Now you can speak HYBRID.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Christopher Worthen, who has three PhDs in math and still didn’t fully grasp the rules here. But that’s okay becau- DROP KICK
Categories
Nerding Day: Portraits of Personality
Categories
Learning Day : Slavery 101
Meet Lochlainn.
Lochlainn writes Confederate propaganda for kids. He’s tried other lanes, but his grown-up books are as childlike as his children’s books are doglike.
Lochlainn Seabrook wants to be white. To us, he already is. But he wants the white cartoon. The love, respect, and gratitude of The Filth. Every keystroke kills that dream.
Col. Lochlainn Seabrook will never be white. He wouldn’t deserve his dream if it existed. He mourns a lost life as a KFC mascot. Other reenactors don’t like the faces or sounds he makes.
Col. Lochlainn Seabrook, Jefferson Davis Award winner, wrote a defense of Antebellum slavery. As a table book. Table books are like kids’ books, with lower standards and smaller words. Seabrook might do better. He won’t, but he has 84 chances. 101, if he weren’t a lazy shit.
Interesting opening. Did Lochlainn plan to write this book? Or was it an accident, like half his brain surviving the vacuum? “Slavery Existed Before Forrest” is my strawman of Seabrook, and he’s sprinted ahead. On the first page. What the fuck is Fact 84? “My wife loves me more than the bull?”
Here, Lochlainn rambles about ancient Greece, the ideal gauge for 19th century choices. That’s why we still treat miscarriages with dung.
Yeah, I’m probably descended from slave owners. I’d call that one of the darker problems.
In a vacuum, I should stop giving nazis brand tips. But they don’t take monkey advice, so whatever. Generally, Lochlainn, when chanting “I am not a racist,” one avoids ranting about Africa.
Fun fact: semantics also began in Africa, the cradle of discourse.
Lochlainn knows the pain of getting kicked out of a party early. This bit’s personal, so I’ll let it fly.
Seven is early to start reusing material. Even Every Day Magic made it to Valentine’s Day without plagiarizing itself. Yet Lochlainn feels the labor behind his livelihood is beneath him. Weird.
Lochlainn lists every Bronze Age society he can think of (it’s a short entry), and ends on/emphasizes “the Hebrews.” Antisemitism’s still reactionary autopilot. Martian nativists will blame them for migrants from Pluto.
Lochlainn tilts a summary of the Barbary Wars. Against reason, he’s worse at it than the Civil War. He rambles without the words “pirate,” “corsair,” “privateer,” “navy,” or “ship,” failing as both a historian and children’s author. When the records give you pirates, use pirates. That’s the sugar around the redpill.
For many of you, these articles hit before the third coffee of the day. So I’ll spell it out: this wing of the book rewrites Roots in white crayon. Lochlainn’s Dixie is a revenge fantasy for eons of white bondage. I call it Bizarro Wakanda.
Suspense! Want a remedial lesson in DARVO? Guess the answer. Lochlainn isn’t a master, or literate, but boy does he try.
Lochlainn’s answer: “by increasing the monetary value of African slaves, it greatly reduced instances of their abuse, torture, murder, and sacrifice by fellow Africans.”
Frankly, magical. In rhetoric, they call this tactic “cerebral hemorrhaging.” Slavery 101 came out in 2015, so it’s too late to get Lochlainn a doctor.
I swear, Real America won’t let you have anything. Seabrook’s swiping chattel slavery like its rock n’ roll. Who should play Indentured Elvis in Roots II?
I write on a hideously overpriced and perfect e-ink typewriter (glorified Notepad emulator) with a 7-inch screen. It attracts artsy descendants of indentured servants. Then, they see that I’ve typed “IN EARLY AMERICA A WHITE SLAVE WAS WORTH LESS THAN HALF THAT OF A BLACK SLAVE.” And I limp back to Hinge.
This bit of spin’s where the repetition starts in earnest:
Now Seabrook’s stuck in a loop. One with a divine sentence:
Remarkably efficient worldbuilding. Lochlainn’s written white power’s “The door dilated.” Any reader knows, from here, that Seabrook’s out of his tiny mind. And that we’re in a new, fantastic world. In Bizzaro Wakanda, anything is possible.
Experienced Seabrook scholars know he loves this line. I’m still baffled. I can’t even tell if it’s my imagination failing, or his. With his agenda, I’d hide that trivia in an underground vault, and split the keys among Four Invincible Country Star Generals. Yet here it is again, in bold all-caps text.
Eyup. I’d call them the second worst place to be black in North America.
Lochlainn deeply envies people barred from writing. He could’ve skipped a lifetime of humiliation.
Lochlainn’s a brilliant kids’ writer. Every book is like “I Spy” for equivocation. “Look, Mama! Horseshit! Mister Seabrook’s lying through his missing teeth again. It’s because of his small pee-pee.”
It sounds like a Tom DuBois joke, but he’s talking about early Boston’s favorite prank. Beware alcoholic reparations.
Sure. Monetary reparations should go directly to the state’s black humorists.
The worldbuilding continues with a mind-bending riddle: what’s authentic slavery? Solve it, and become authentic king of Bizarro Wakanda.
Each writer hides something worthwhile. In Lochlainn, it’s fighting history itself. What a struggle. You can feel his heart break with his mind. Said mind is a bruised, battered Rocky Balboa mess. Yet Lochlainn gets up one more time to fight the idea of knowledge. He’d have done well in the Mandingo fights.
FACT 44’s taught me a new technique. Against my will, but that’s par for this topic. Here, Lochlainn owns a fake idiot arguing against their own nested punching bag. I call it the Mobius Strawman. Nothing else explains coming at this angle.
I wanted that DARVO joke earlier to be hurtful and unfair. So it’s sharp for Lochlainn to just do it. I look forward to reading about the Yankees attacking Fort Sumter, purging Fort Pillow, and teamkilling Stonewall Jackson. Our perfidy knows no bounds.
No one’s grasped at a straw this thin since Lochlainn’s wife.
For all of Lochlainn’s microfailure as a thinker, historian, and biped, he inspires. You can type anything. No god or standards will stop you. I’m braver today because of Lochlainn. If the not-colonel can believe in himself, why not you?
Davis was picked for his elastic spine. Slavers preferred someone that wouldn’t muck things up by governing. I could see him telling the soldier that caught him ditching his family this.
I’d love to paste the Cornerstone Speech and move on. But I must honor generations of tryhards before me. So I’ll note that Lochlainn quotes Vance’s predecessor on his deathbed. When you’re dying and believe in hell, your memory gets flexible. That, or you start screaming.
I know this quote, by heart.
Or some vapid equivocation. My brain started sparking 40 slurs ago.
There’s such a sweaty desperation to Lochlainn’s writing. The point’s smothering thought, but he sounds like he’s trying to catch up to his own dignity. What would he even tell it? It’s been decades. Let it die in peace.
He adds a picture.
Perhaps Godwin’s law was meant for flamewars about nothing, rather than vanity publishing or imperial disintegration. But it jumps to mind when Hitler appears in every Seabrook book about the 1860s. After writing my own Civil War fever dream, I’ve gotta say: Adolf doesn’t come up much.
Again, sprinkles of the truth. The South would’ve ended slavery at some point before the heat death of the universe. At the very latest, when half-man, half-machine Server Servants merged with Aristocrat Hivemind Zero. Ending mandingo fights was short-sighted cultural tyranny, and one day Dixie will be avenged by Roko’s Gentleman.
Lochlainn hates Yankees for ditching slavery when profits dipped, instead of putting cool whips first. It makes Dixie gentlemen look like art purists, choosing passion over solvency. I suspect Lochlainn would pay for the privilege, and skip planting anything.
Lunacy? Or proof that a medium’s quirks become features? In this case, the quirk’s bottomless cruelty. And the medium.
Three in a row! Again, I see why Lochlainn’s dead brain resents losing free labor. He’d need three Bagger Vances to get through middle school.
“Fact 71.5: Harriett Tubman was a poop face with a stinky butt. General Lee called her Harriet NoTubman because of the smell. P.U.”
I like this game! Ramses didn’t run a “Pyramid Regime.” The vast majority of buildings were dull rectangles, holding the living. Stop talking about pyramids. Volunteers worked hard on them.
Lochlainn’s published more books about Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the biggest Southern slave traders, than any other moron. Living or dead. This erases more than Forrest, history, or sanity. This erases Lochlainn Seabrook.
I see why younger nazis went mask-off: the mask looks fucking stupid. If Steve Harvey asks for five symbols of white supremacy, what’s your second guess? The frog has no staying power, the CMT logo’s too niche, and Charlie’s neckhole is already played out.
I didn’t appreciate Lincoln’s complexity before Seabrook. In the same pages he’s a bigot, race traitor, monkey-lover (abstract), monkey-lover (sexual), monkey (literal), imbecile, shrewd tactician, Mr. Bean, snake in Eden, and three-headed nemesis of Godzilla. A total lack of principles and research keeps Lochlainn’s eyes clear, and allows him to see every imaginable side of Abe. Helpful, as he makes them up.
Man did it work. Nothing but net. We’re still mopping up iced tears from that one.
Their names? Albert Einstein. Your move, liberal. Just remember you’re arguing with the father of relativity.
This is the closer, which caught me off guard. If I’d jerked 84 pieces of fantasy worldbuilding into a Prussian Blue notebook, I’d at least *try* to crank out 16 more. We broke the seal on repetition two entries in, so there’s nothing stopping Lochlainn from printing “Slaves still exist” in sixteen different fonts.
But I have a fact. Straight from Gilead’s leading scholar, L. Seabrook. Enjoy five footnotes from Slavery 101.
Sorry, that’s cherry-picked. Here are twenty footnotes from Slavery 101.
Lochlainn cites himself! 113 times! 115, if Emphasis is a pen name. While Lochlainn’s never been rigorous, this is research inbreeding. He should return his made-up award. And life.
Enjoy the last black history month! In the spirit of brotherhood, I’ll wait at least another week before waterboarding Lochlainn again. Maybe two! Peace is possible in our time. For you. Not Lochlainn and I, we’re tandem-diving into a lake of fire.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Gareth. There’s not a lot I can say about Gareth. Not because he isn’t impressive, but because I am filled with so much awe that my mind draws a blank.
Categories
Nerding Day: Zodiac FacesđźŚ
A whole week of effort, and divination still eludes me. That’d be fine, if the present sucked less shit. Half my neighbors support execution by lottery, and cooler heads want more affordable coffins. Reliable spoilers would make me King Gambler of the wasteland. Yet I’m stuck treading time.
Maybe it’s my skillset. Numerologists memorize numbers, but my bachelor’s is in puns. Tarot readers talk to people, but my master’s is in typing alone. Horoscopes just need my birthday, but I’m an adult. It’s not going well.
There must be a better way.
Clearly not. Back to pendulums.
Wait, I’ve read this. My brain just buried it. I’m a Libra chin/Gemini nose, you know how we are.
Don’t try to make sense of that yet. You’ll black out and get Taurus wrinkles early. I just want you to absorb the tone. Cheekbone scrying has its own grammar, and your mind needs time to adapt. Think Retinol, for your brain.
Welcome to Meta-Science. You’ll hate it.
I, on the other hand, am in love.
Today’s stargenics guide comes from the Organization for Professional Astrology. Russ hasn’t channeled a full book yet, so we’re meeting a master early. I look forward to his rise in the Great Fraud Era. Mediocre grifts are a memory: the path ends in the stars or a cell.
Russ von Ohlhausen has the rare genius I can only find 48 times a year, by Tuesday, with rent at stake. A mind that can type “Astrological Physionomy” with self-esteem intact. And he knows it. For this is no conjurer of expensive, subscription-based tricks. Russ is a scientist.
Or at least loves the word science. Deeply. I’d call it manifesting, if Russ were a wordy wizard in denial. But that would make me a professional cyberbully, and those couldn’t exist in the Age of Wisdom. Instead, I’ll call it channeling.
Out the gate, Russ makes sure we know he’s smarter than those other astrologers. While their non-science prints money, Russ recreates academic tone, publishing style, and profit margins. Noble. So noble, I’ll die not knowing why. It’s like seeing YouTube’s most famous clown wrestle Rey Mysterio; at least two industries are broken.
As for astrology’s definition, our modern opinions don’t count. For the first time, my playground jabs at your harmless hobby mean nothing. Russ is on some whole other shit.
Official sounding shit. With at least two science words. You can start retaining information here, as long as you stretch afterwards.
Sorry: whole other rectal scorpion. That drawing’s from the 1800s, when more doctors winged it. Their work’s an important stepping stone to measuring Peter Dinklage’s skull. Before the taint poison reaches your brain, let’s learn scientific racism.
Sorry again: this phrenology isn’t for racists. Racism grasps at straws, and Russ doesn’t even have straws.
I don’t know where we’re headed. But science says it’s not racist.
True, Qin Shi Huang bought into this. And a mercury-based diet. As a wytch, I can’t speak to the science of chugging liquid power. But my tuna-and-tuna meal plan honors the first emperor.
The takeaway: face science goes back further than science, and you should ignore the foul lies of Han historians. Now that you’re convinced, we can move on to examples. As a scientist, Russ has heard of repeatable results. He might try them later.
First, moles. If you’ve got a birthmark/scar/food smear, you love to fuck.
Simple enough. With an open mind, “people want sex with movie stars” is like the scientific method. In fact, it’s much more repeatable than that heathen devilry earlier:
Now, mole-based hookup detection’s settled science. But Russ’s next jump tends to lose faithless scientists.
“What the fuck am I looking at, and is there a subscription?” Research, and yes. Stick with me, and learn about horsepower:
True, that still looks insane. And “centaur teeth” seems mean. Like something your fiance calls you before meeting a Trojan archer. But there’s logic to it:
Your fucked-up horse teeth make you a firebender! Along with your furrowed, “is he still talking about astrology” brow. While I didn’t know gum reading could help me catch the Avatar, I’ll take any chance to restore my honor.
He doesn’t close those parentheses. The rest of the article is a side note to “look at those chompers.” As a star neophyte, I don’t know what sin’s getting December babies dragged today. It must be worse than whatever breakup labeled Geminis emotional terrorists.
As an Oscar-bait neophyte, I don’t know what sin’s getting Judy Dench dragged today. It must be worse than Philomena. I could feel the academy in the theater with me.
Elegant bullying. Can The Pinch compete?
Not quite. All the skull-measuring gets in the way of ice burns. And some mumbling about Scorpios that undermines the whole enterprise. I respect covering your tracks, but Russ should go the Silver Route and lie through his horse teeth. If you’re a non-centaur with visible gums, your parents lied. You’re a Sagitarius, switched at birth for two grand in unmarked bills. Your father loves you, but he doesn’t love the truth. Flee at dawn.
Sidereal-bar: this is the first time I’ve read “sidereal” outside of Exalted. My dumb ass spent two decades thinking White Wolf made up star grammar. Maybe “horse brain” is a Libra Sun trait.
Russ may meet Judy’s lawyers. Or Mozart’s ghost.
We’re almost ready to read Tyrion’s pores. But first, a refresher on why this is science. For you. I’ve already bought everything on the OPA webstore.
For a science paper, my magick background is surprisingly helpful. The point above isn’t Russ’s spiritual development. In fact, that’s impossible to care about. The point’s the number of 203 course titles in the paragraph. The first sentence has at least six prog metal album titles. Properly bullied prog metal, not this new thing where prom-goers play and attend shows. Or that half-decade everyone decided they were Meshuggah. If that joke didn’t scan, pretend I said something about Dr. Stone monologues. If that joke didn’t scan, pretend I said something about offing the president. Scientifically.
Who could reach such attainment? It’d take some kind of OPA-published wunderkind. We will have to dream of the savior in the darkness, under unchecked Aries tyranny.
To grasp Russ’s vision of science-based martyrdom, it helps to misread Foundation. After that, it helps to skim another Russ paper. It’s on Medium, which draws alternative PhDs the way Substack draws blood libel.
Prometheus Unbound sounds egoistic, until you understand the power at an Astrology Scientist’s fingertips. If we’d just listen.
He’s writing from the peak pandemic, so current reality looked grim. In fact, for all the tumult, the 2020s experience is notably consistent. Less Summer of Love, more Winter of Discontent.
Russ confronts a recent issue: God wants to blow up the world again. Allegorically. But literally. But allegorically.
Wayward technology? Machine-driven chaos? Unlike reading gumlines, this part’s nonsense. Though the cure’s more interesting: a new age of wytch-nerd hybrids, trained in both the Zodiac and things that matter.
Russ puts it a bit more simply:
Again, retain that at your own peril. You need new antibodies for each article. In fact, they should be done about now:
There, now you can process his point. It takes a lot for me to call something overwritten—my book of the month is one long sentence. But Russ combines the broad appeal of science writing with the specificity of horoscopes. All to describe a theoretical god-king named Russ.
He’s Neo. I thought I was joking with the messiah complex, but there it is.
Now we know: Russ isn’t just a scientist. He’s the scientist the Enshittified Age needs. And his vision as The One? The fluff-free, science-based truth mankind needs to survive itself?
We’re saved.
I know what a doppelganger is. Anyone that would or could read this knows what a doppelganger is. If I wanted to watch someone regurgitate Naomi Klein, I’d be on BlueSky.
A skeptic might ask: are you saying Dinklage and Laurie look alike, if your liver’s failing? Is that your entire point, made across countless run-ons?
A skeptic would be right. Skeptics stay winning. I miss sitting at their table of success. Becoming a wytch has exposed me to genres of failure my mortal eyes thought were impossible.
Holy shit, right! Richard Dawkins used to be a biologist. I thought he was just my Ghost of Christmas Future. If I kept screaming about religion without off-brand Power Rangers or broomsticks, I’d host a podcast about Defending The West by now.
Holy shit, right! That’s why I repressed this lost art. After all these words, Russ sprints through the astral link between Hermione and The Self-Indulgent Gene.
These two don’t look alike. I’m from a family of black vampire bats. My hobbies are reading in the dark and blinking-free Hades II runs. I’ve got the facial recognition skills of Kharn the Betrayer during the Siege of Terra. These two don’t look alike.
Again: Russ isn’t a chud sun or non-political moon. I’m careful enough with other people’s vanity search results to repeat that. But he might not enjoy meeting his fans.
After the celebrity revelations, we take a detour. Another detour, fueled by Russ’s dream of becoming Neo. By now, we’re used to mentors defying skeptics. Instead, Russ saves his harshest words for other astrologers. They’ve skimped on the scientific rigor that once put scorpions in assholes around the world:
Russ deploys the B. Rabbit strategy. Step One: admit other sorcerers don’t respect you. Say you ate a thesaurus and don’t know what a pisces is. Concede that your work doesn’t make sense, or even entertain tourists. Step Two: be an analogue of the main actor. Draw yourself as the Chad, while your haters forget how to rap.
There’s a point here, somewhere. Imagine the study of space, from a more scientific perspective. What would such a field be called? Or the sailors of the stars, taking the first small step into the aether? How much funding would they lose to diamond mining incels?
You’d be bitter too. Imagine a convention’s worth of astrologers telling you “that’s a waste of fucking time.” I’d break. I’d fight Batman in a calendar costume. I’d become Secretary of Faces, and ban blush for hiding Prometheus’s truth.
Negritude?
Negritude. If race science is pseudoscience, what do you call pseudo-race science? Racecraft? I.C.E. training? FSU orientation?
Russ underestimates how many people would listen to him, and overestimates their brainpower. It’s careless grifting, like Uber prices on St. Patrick’s Day. Woogenics end in crystal calipers and Thanksgiving rants about Leo crime stats.
On the plus side, looksmaxxers can Fit Face their way to a new star sign. Or try invasive surgery, I’m on Earth for the show. Either way, the merger between magick and science Russ dreamed of is possible. The new Neo’s bonesmashing as I write.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Greg Cunningham, ol’ gemini balls they call him. Greg twinsack. Just means his scrotal folds predict twice as much wealth and vigor.
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