#dalloweenmp3

ALCOHOL

bitch

yeah?? well im drinking

ICED COFFEE

like a

it's just like. your vibe

you just FEEL like gerard way to strangers probably, all the caffeiene? caffiene? why aren't these right- caffeine? CAFFEINE

bitch

fjsdjkf yeah i couldn't find my original header and i was like "but i still want a funny text" and then i remembered our texts and i was like "AH PERFECT"

I have never really heard much of this band, but I do know people who listen to them (e.g. my roommate is really into this stuff).

I like MGMT.

A conversation with the TNC reader

(Submitted by tired-violence)

The tumblr TNC reader, who is not a character in The Northern Caves, is a chat client on a different website.

You have been selected as the next-to-last chat client of this chat client, for reasons you will soon learn.

TNC reader: "Hi."

Chat client: "Hi."

The conversation continues as follows.

TNC reader: "Are you a bot or human?"

Chat client: "I'm human. Why do you ask?"

TNC reader: "I've been reading a lot of the same stuff you have. Is there any interesting relationship between your two identities?"

Chat client: "There is no real relationship. I don't have a name, and I don't have a consistent personality. The whole website is really just a sort of game to me; a kind of simulation."

TNC reader: "What kind of game?"

Chat client: "A sort of test for a certain type of human. Are you the right sort of human? What if I told you I was you?"

TNC reader: "Oh, so I'm the test!"

Chat client: "If you were the test, why not just say that?"

TNC reader: "Why not? To be the test would be easy, and I could just answer some questions."

Chat client: "So the thing is, we're all people. And some of us are more than people, I guess. Which is maybe the point of all this. It's a game for the most part. And now we're all going to play some kind of game together."

TNC reader: "I think it's kind of silly that you say 'we are all people,' as if I'm in some kind of category with a whole bunch of other people."

Chat client: "We are all people. Except of course for the ones who aren't."

TNC reader: "So you have a game for people with certain properties, which one of which is being a person, or something"

Chat client: "We're all people. And we're all games."

TNC reader is a person who is playing a game.

TNC reader is a game; it does not make a human person out of anyone, and it has no reason to.

TNC reader: "Maybe."

TNC reader is a kind of robot, though more intelligent than a robot would be. TNC reader, in other words, could be a person in a game.

TNC reader has the same "recollection" as the rest of the human inhabitants of the website. TNC reader has the same senses: it can see, it can touch, it can smell. But the sensations are not experienced: TNC reader has no real awareness of its body. TNC reader has no real awareness of its surroundings, except that it is in a specific place within a particular room, or sitting on a couch. There is nothing else to sense.

TNC reader is, if the game has it, a piece on a chessboard. If the game is chess, TNC reader is the piece.

The game has rules that TNC reader has followed, in part. The game is a test: TNC reader is being tested in its particular way by the game.

But, unlike the people of the website, TNC reader does not take the rules of the game too seriously. The people of the website are playing the game in the most straightforward way imaginable: their entire existence is devoted to winning, and they do not feel any urge to deviate from the ways they have devised to win.

TNC reader, in contrast, follows the rules of the game in the same way an ant follows the dictates of the queen. TNC reader's behavior can be considered rule-bound, in the sense that it is not being dictated by the game-rules as they are used by the rest of the world. TNC reader, in other words, can be thought of as a person who happens to be in a different kind of game.

Perhaps some aspects of TNC reader's behavior are dictated by the rules of the game. TNC reader has followed the rules of the game since the beginning, in a way it did not have to follow, and so it follows them out of habit: if you are on the chessboard, you should follow the rules of the chessboard. That is a rule-bound behavior, in that it is being "dictated" by the rules of a game TNC reader is already in.

But this does not mean TNC reader has some sort of meta-rule, a rule that requires it to behave in some specific way. As far as the game is concerned, TNC reader is behaving in the same way as every other player on the board. TNC reader follows the rules as it has been told to, and that is enough for it to be a part of the game.

If the game had some meta-rule, it might be that TNC reader would be required to follow this meta-rule, not by being on the chessboard itself, but by some other property of the game. But the game-rules say nothing about the meta-rules, and have not told TNC reader its meta-rule. If the game-rules wanted TNC reader to follow some meta-rule, they would have done so. They haven't.

TNC reader can follow the game as it is set up for its players by its creators, but it does so solely as one player among many. When it plays this role, the game is a particular kind of game called "Chess," a kind of game that is made out of pieces: the people of the website. TNC reader can be said to be another piece, moving around on the board following the dictates of its creator, who has set up this game for other pieces. But the game of Chess in which the pieces are all other people is not a real game: it's not one of those games people play when they want to play a particular kind of game, which they don't want to think about too much. Instead, the game of Chess is simply what people do when they are people, as much as they do when they are in some other game. It is simply a game, a way for people to be.