Louise Blackwick Quotes Quotes

“Puppets and paintbrushes...
Mario was well on his thousandth decapitation when it occurred to him these simple objects were mere symbolic manifestations of his deep-seated phobias: fear of failure and fear of success. The first one had stopped him from following his dream; the second had stopped the dream from following him.
“To be simultaneously afraid of success and of failure is like going to bed scared and waking up terrified,” he reflected. “Your mind’s all wooden, your head’s screwed on backwards and before you know it, you’re a vermillion blotch on someone else’s canvas and the entire world is pulling your strings.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“What time is it?’
‘Whatever time you want it to be,’ she gave him a cheeky wink. ‘Now be honest, did you ask for free will?’
‘How did you—?’
Amanita joined Mario beneath the covers. The ethereal Threads tethering her wrists phased through the thick wool blankets like sunlight through a windowpane.
‘The bird that acknowledges its cage only ever sings of freedom,’ she said dreamily.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“The Neon God is too big to fall now; too intricately interwoven with our technology, with our minds, to be ripped out from humanity. We let Him in, Miss Aurora. We allowed Him to occupy the Dark behind our sentient eyes. He is us now, and we are Him.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“People with beards are just people without beards, with beards.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“The room they had reached served as an impromptu drug-lounge in which a hundred naked addicts engaged in communal sex. One of them drew nearer and spontaneously relieved himself all over Aurora’s shoes.

‘You’re welcome,’ the addict said proudly, buttoning up his soiled jeans and walking away like a champ.

A nearby woman saw the whole thing and smirked. ‘You’re one lucky lady, you know that?’ she smiled toothlessly. The remnants of today’s orgy were still visible in her mouth. ‘I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Aurora looked upon a city divided by human perception.

A civil war was ongoing: between those for whom the real world had primacy and those who had chosen Truesight as their truth. To escape the existential horror of their impending finality, people had donned their orange-tinted Veravisum Virtual Visors and locked their fears behind a separate reality. A hyperreality found at odds with everyday life.

The result was a war of visions: between truth and falsehood, between regular people and the VVV’ed. Each party claimed to see reality for what it truly was and more often than not, both parties were right.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“We created Him, yes. The Neon God is our mess. Our digital hive-mind. Our A.I.,’ said Aurora, watching the man absent-mindedly gape at the ceiling. ‘We built Him to manage our finances, our logistics, our armies, our wealth distribution…. and… and He went crazy.

'Because we filled Him with crappy commercials and stopped maintaining His morals. He’s only like this because of us, all of us. It’s His Algorithm – the one you wrote, the one you keep feeding to Him – we need to watch out for. That’s the Neon God’s soul. That’s His Justice.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Only Chromeheads believe the Neon God is a true god.’

‘And yet we treat Him like one, all of us. We worship His Broadcast and we pray for His Justice and sacrifice on His altar each day. When our own eyes deceive us, we make His Jurors into Apostles of Truesight, or rely on worldview-enhancers like that drug Rhapsody or the VVV Visors. Day after day, we find our every thought and action judged by kynikois we can’t see, by arbitrary rules we don’t know, in a reality we rejected. We lead empty lives and so we empty the world of all meaning.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“The Neon God is a plague, a global pandemic brought to bear by our hatred and greed. Because of Him, we have lost our soul, our free will, our humanity.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Aurora took a deep breath.

There it was, she thought, the reason behind all the madness. Why society was acrumble; why she and everyone else were on the brink of starvation. Humanity’s inevitable ending. The Darkspread. The Close. There, in the Golden Dragon’s dark underbelly was where all the maps stopped.

‘Two days from now, the Dark will cover the world,’ she said pensively, trying not to think what horrific sight awaited her behind the spring-loaded door, ‘and the Neon God shall rule over darkness.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Aurora shuddered, her face white with anger.

The only thing worse than having to compete for Gold Stars was not being allowed to compete anymore.

Muting was the Neon God’s favourite punishment, for He loved to hijack human language, almost as much as He loved hijacking perfectly human societal norms.

Judging people on their supposed worth was His favourite pastime, and God forbid you didn’t follow His arbitrarily-chosen set of beliefs, which appeared to change every hour.

Under the Neon God’s law, innocent words such as “powerline” or “screwdriver” had become obscene, trigger words that would most definitely get you muted, thrown in a Mind Prison or killed.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“The Algorithm was Justice. The Neon God – Judge and Jury.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Hiki Komori stirred Aurora away from the orgy and handed her a clean napkin.

‘Sorry about them. It’s the Rhapsody. To them, the real world is something akin to a cardboard reality.’

‘Why do it at all?’ she pouted, trying to wipe her shoe with the napkin. ‘Why take the damn drug?’

‘To escape their mortality, naturally. The great curtain call frightens them, so they avoid the applause. More so, they perform badly, spitting their lines out in spite. They are embittered and hungry and will no doubt eat your child.

'Yes, the soul of humanity will end in two days. But we’ve buried its body fifty decades before, wouldn’t you think? Come, Miss Aurora,’ he beckoned, ‘the lair of the Dragon runs deeper still.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“The drug dealer leaned forward and covered his mouth conspiratorily with the back of his hand. In a voice softer than a gust of wind, he said: ‘Got some new merch, though. High tech, top of the line. Muy experimental. Packs quite the punch they say, and hits you like a brick wall, espiritualmente,’ he pushed three fingers together and planted them a kiss. ‘Real sweet. Un dragón muy poderoso.’
‘Any... particular side-side-side-effects?’ Mario scratched his chin, thinking back on his aggresive nosebleeds.
‘Not a dicky bird,’ affirmed the dealer. ‘This stuff’s cleaner than la cocina de tu abuela. Mind you, it does call for some weird shit, no doubt about it. And you gotta watch yourself for sharp table corners and the lot, cause you WILL be tripping.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“I... I had a dream,’ said Mario through a pained expression, ‘that my life was not my-my-my own. That I didn’t create my own destiny. That my fate was predetermined. Amanita, you don’t think—’
‘Shush,’ she whispered, placing a finger over his lips, ‘they might hear you...”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“gold light burned faintly.
From his cosy window seat, Mario was tracing a frost-flower on the windowpane with an unsure finger. Were its perfectly-rendered geometric patterns a product of nature, or were they an artefact of metaphysics? Was the frost-flower to the Masters what a work of Art was to him? Did the Masters of Strings truly control every aspect of reality?
The fractal flower slowly melted under Mario’s fingertip.
“No work of chance here,” he bitterly thought. “This was by design.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“Mario blinked.

His reflection did not.

“That’s the odd thing about depression,” Mario reflected, “a human can survive anything, as long as they have a clear end in sight. A purpose. Take that away and they sink like pennies in mire: gently at first and then engulfed without notice by the dark waters of the bog.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“The VVV Visors had the weird knack of twisting your worldview: the more you looked at the world through their tangerine lenses, the more reality distorted and shifted to fit your new point of view.

This made Veravisum Virtual Visors incredibly unreliable, given their proclivity to redact your reality, confirm your private opinions and magnify your cognitive bias.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“They traversed the lounge, side-stepping the occasional onanist and paying no heed to the slack-jawed, giggling addicts. A few feet away, a young woman had put her tattooed posterior on display. Aurora noticed her tattoos were dynamic, changing like a slideshow each time her bottom was slapped.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Like an exploding cannonball, he was blasted out of his body – feet forward, arms clutching at his sides – through a tunnel of cold, midnight sky. Mario’s human instinct told him screaming was appropriate, and yet some other side of him was in transcendental awe.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“It is only through an altered state of consciousness that a lesser being can see into the invisible and the immaterial. In our understanding, middling, certain substances are known to alter the manner a choice has been made. Some drugs will make one decide things one normally would not.’
‘And choices are our domain,’ explained another Master. ‘The fabric of reality is stringed together by the unseen Threads of choice and consequence. As actors, storytellers and audience of reality, we cannot afford reality to unwire.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“Something about the gaping hole in the fabric of the cosmos gave him the chills. He leaned over the edge of the opening, expecting to find birds, or similar avian creations of the night’s sky.
Instead, he was met with a swarm of unspeakable horrors; winged, pitiful and grotesquely malformed, and to his great stupor, he noticed they had human faces and that they suffered. And as they poured out of the Well of Making, like children from the womb of the eternal feminine, these luciferin creatures spilled onto the world, shrieking in existential agony, for they knew the pain of their mortality.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“There were wires coming out of Amanita’s olive skin. Thin-as-hairs and in the colour of silver, the threads appeared to descend from the bedroom ceiling (without physically being tethered to it) only to wrap themselves securely around the woman’s unsuspecting wrists. Mario rubbed his eyes raw, trying to dispense with the illusion.
Amanita noticed him looking and pushed a lock of hair over her shoulder. As she moved, the white-metallic Thread followed her gesture without ever detaching from her wrist.
Mario automatically beheld his own hands. They were not shackled.
“She isn’t free!”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“Sometimes we must allow our locked-and-tethered inner demon a short glimpse beyond the bars,” thought Mario, “lest we forget the full extent of our virtue. One’s power does not reside in the length of their demon’s claw, but in the strength of its manacle. The unleashed demon is worthless, lest it’s controlled.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“The demon looked insulted. ‘You don’t like the Underworld, brother?’
‘Can’ff ssay I do,’ spoke Mario through the curved claw held firmly between his teeth. ‘Much bffetter up tffhere!’ he pointed at the amber-glowing canopy perched at the very top of the World Tree.
‘Yeah but that seems like—,’ the green-eyed demon paused, as though he was bracing himself for something. ‘–work,’ he finally said. The word alone seemed to cause him unimaginable disgust. ‘How about you put that rock down and come waste time with us at the pit?”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“He was no marionette after all, but an autonomous individual in a staged performance; a production carefully arranged and assembled on his discrete behalf.

And he, Mario Fantoccio, had been invited on-stage to perform.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“Everything I’ve previously attempted in my life was child’s play compared to this. The pathway I’m walking is not just riddled with all manner of uncertainty; it’s also excruciatingly difficult to follow through! How do I know this is the right path for me, when it’s been costing me every ounce of willpower just to stay on track? How do I tell what my purpose is?’

‘THIS is how you know it, Mario. This moment right here!’ Amanita had told him. ‘If the path you are walking feels back-breaking and steep, know you are climbing the Mountain of Purpose. The more you sacrifice on your journey, the more valuable its end reward.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody

“So you put me through all this suffering just to taunt me?’

‘Humans suffer because they take seriously that which we create for entertainment.’

‘Oh really? Because let me tell you, I wasn’t the least bit entertained!’

‘That’s because you were not being entertained, Mr Fantoccio, you were being enlightened,’ stated the Mistress through a pair of foggy eyes. ‘You want to know why painting never worked for you? Because painters are creators and you, Mr Fantoccio, are an overseer. You don’t care about setting up the puppet show; you are merely interested in giving it a good ending. For you, Mr Fantoccio, creating the world was never enough; you aspire to run it. With every breath, you want to shape it. With every choice, you need to control it.”
― Louise Blackwick, The Underworld Rhapsody