The idea for a great film...
... just came to me as I was sleeping, and in my sleep considered the fate of the various powers-in-their-own-mind-and-there-only of the fiat world. The SECs, the IMFs, the US FEDs and the ECBs of this world were my example, and their eventual fate at the hands of Bitcoin, at my own hands the point of consideration.
The film would go like this : a young man, beautiful and happy, comes of age to the throne of the greatest empire that ever was. That ever will be. An empire founded by the gods themselves, and destined to outlive them. A place of beauty, of ancient rolls conserving ancient lore, of elegant columns supporting splendid arches, of marble and gold leaf, where women dressed in bedsheets hang around their husbands dressed in bedsheets on the side of warm crystal pools, and eat grapes. This world.
He has ministers, as any Emperor would, and in his case, he has the best ministers one could possibly have. It's not that the various barbaric states where the light of the Empire hasn't shone yet don't have ministers nearly as good, as smart, as penetrating. It's that it wouldn't be possible for them to. Like there can't be a larger binary digit than 1, and so if you have the 1 you have the maximum. That's how good his ministers were, and under them an entire bureaucracy, in design perfect, in operation flawless, easily capable of compensating through its marvelous workings for any individual failure on the parts of the lower echelons. Because, let's admit, it's hard to find good plebs, plebs as good as the ministers are great (for the Emperor himself, in his divine greatness, would ipso definitio be a bridge too far). And so is the army, and so is everything else : a perfect clockwork mechanism, made out of the best materials by the best watchmaker, populating the best world that there could ever be.
And all this beauty, all this marvel, all this plain, unabashed perfection is well displayed to the viewer, so he may understand it all. And then... perhaps slightly out of character, a younger bureaucrat rushes in the banquet hall, during a banquet. He is clearly excited. His nostrils flare, like a horse's once he's smelled the wolf. But he regains his composure, under the emperor's inquisitive half-frown, and whispers in his ear. We hear.
We hear that some barbarians - from the North, or East or West or anywhere barbarians come from - are restless, and they are moving, and the army will be taking care of them. This scene makes or breaks the whole film, because the emperor doth not quite understand why all the excitement then ? And the herald can't find a way to say, or perhaps doesn't even understand himself.
The barbarians continue to be restless, and the bureaucracy stays on top of the situation, and the army continues to have the situation well under control for a whole set of seasons, during which we can leisurely characterise the empire, its people and beliefs. Until one day...
Until one day when the eternal, daily, repetitive banquet is interrupted by a ruckus, and by the ghostly faces of all they present, especially the women, especially the women with small children. Their white faces nicely reflect the white marble, polished by hand. The emperor inquires as to the meaning and source of this! and the bureaucrat assures him it will be readily seen to. And yet... the noise does not abate, but grows, and as it grows there's silence growing in the great hall too, under the marble arches, over the limpid pools. The emperor bids his guests eat, but they swallow knots, he bids them merry, but the one courtly concubine that starts to talk, trying to tell a joke, runs hoarse.
And then, a centurion busts in, a different sort of man. Rugged, bearded, covered in soot and dried blood, he screams that the West gate fell, and this is the last hour.
Completely thunderstruck, the Emperor turns to his closest adviser, the eldest bureaucrat, the wisest man in the world. "The end of what ?" "The end of everything". Here follows a discussion, that will have to be written by Quentin Tarantino (or if not, by someone just as good with words that just so happens not to be an ignorant lout from Knoxville, Tennessee), and in this discussion the soon to be ex-emperor learns a thing or two about his life and life in general, about his empire and empires in general, about his men and men in general. And then the barbarians bust through.
The emperor becomes a concubine at the barbarian's court, castrated but otherwise well kept, wearing adequate harem clothing among a bevy of similar boys made women, and girls made women, for the pleasure of a man that's actually a man, in point of fact as opposed to mere pretense and consensus-enacted reality. In point of fact, and readily verified for the benefit of anyone with the curiosity.
The emperor now lives in yurts, among luxurious, natural furs, hand polished leather having replaced the marble, the gold leaf still in place. The emperor now competes - earnestly and effectively - with all the other harem slaves for the attention and the favours of the actual emperor of the entire world, the entire world that is, or that could ever be. The real one.
And in his journal the emperor writes that while he is now an eunuch, and his asshole used at his master's pleasure like any woman's, he nevertheless is more a man today than he ever was before, and more than he could have ever been, before. For at least today he rubs his delicate inner skins against actual reality, as opposed of a pretense thereof, and even if today he could no longer father children, at least the children he today could no longer father are actually his own.
The end.
Who wants to write the screenplay ?
Friday, 2 May 2014
[08:15] i propose a different ending for the movie mp
[08:15] which ?
[08:15] as it strikes me as imbalanced
[08:16] the ending is the barbarian's own advisor, proposing
[08:17] nah. that's imbalanced. it proposes the idiocy is somehow okay.
[08:17] no it proposes the order and chaos are cyclical
[08:18] (because they are)
[08:18] i guess it does that. and yes they are. but it ain't the political statement i wish to make :)
[08:18] art is, after all, politics.
[08:18] it's the political statement i wish to make
[08:19] that your statement is no more "right" than the other
[08:19] that's why you're in the marbles and i'm in the furs, because you actually believe that :D
[08:19] nah i'm just the delusionist
[08:20] i wear what suits you
[08:20] ;)
[08:20] lol
Friday, 2 May 2014
For clarification: http://devilsadvocate.biz/i-wear-what-suits-you/
Friday, 2 May 2014
Ah, but you never specified the epoch. So, we have an opening for a twist ending!
'And then, a centurion busts in, a different sort of man. Rugged, bearded, covered in soot and dried blood, he screams that the West gate fell, and this is the last hour...' The emperor opens a hatchway in his chambers, and descends into a small vault. Inside, four stone walls, nothing of interest - but one has a small hole in it. Emperor takes off his signet ring and pounds it in. Scene zooms out to a yurt, far from the city - barbarian village. An old man stands by a flock of goats, watches the sky. On the horizon, where the city ought to be, a second sunrise; farther, in all directions, other suns, mushroom clouds.
Friday, 2 May 2014
Lol if only. Except that'd be a different man.
Nah, more like it, the whole court gets slaughtered, the purpose of the little room long forgotten by all the newts and feared by the still thinking men involved. Accidentally rediscovered by Ugalf the Fucktarded, a beast of a man nine feet tall, he takes a piss on the ex-emperor's face right by its open entrance. Such power has his urine flow that the emperor's ringfinger is severed, and the torrent carries it into the little room, where it falls into an indentation on the floor with a dry click. Scene zooms out to a yurt, far from the city - barbarian village. An old man stands by a flock of goats, watches the sky. On the horizon, where the city ought to be, a second sunrise; farther, in all directions, other suns, mushroom clouds.
Friday, 2 May 2014
The beginning should introduce many threads of courtly intrigue, such that the soldier reporting the barbarians seems like a minor detail, of little importance to the main plot of the movie. As the subplots approach a climax from two or three directions, that is when the barbarians invade and none of the subplots ever get resolved.
Friday, 2 May 2014
Yeah, as many of those as the structure may carry.