SpikeSpiegel walks around the streets with a blue suit, freshly tailored from Napoli, with dark bronze tan from a few days in the south of Italy.

Time ticks by here. Different second. Different minute. Different hour. Different day. Different month. Different year. There’s always something the same. There’s always something not. But the world tends to revert back and forward between similar camps, similar ruling classes. Plainly put, it cycles. And it’s fun to watch, and even more fun to contour and shape, and mar. The yin and yang of opposing forces enveloping each other and taking control like amoeba, once smaller, then larger.

In this world of ours, history does not escape us. It defines us. Sure, you can say that it’s all a fresh start, and cover your ears and eyes, but that is a fallacy. That is political nonsense. The castles we make in the sand do not fully ever wash away with the tides. The scars we have left for others and those we have taken ourselves do not ever fully heal. The raised and toughened skin of a past slice across our throats, a reminder of the sins of our pasts, the wound from another time and person. We define ourselves by our actions. We define ourselves through all generations by what we have done, and what we will do. Our fathers, our children all step to the same beat.

The grey, musty, and dusty fabric scrolls of the past unroll to reveal trends. There are characteristics among bloodlines. Actions repeated. Habits repeated. Time repeated. But most importantly, associations repeated. One of the most important things to observe in this world is who associates with who, and the opposite. Knowing this creates definition to an era. Where their lines intersect, where they collaborate, where they disintegrate, where they conflict and oppose each other, where they attack.

Knowledge of this is very useful. This world is mainly defined by community. The power of this world is its community. Without it, there’s nothing. There’s silence. There’s inaction. But the power and strength of the segment of the community that chooses to run things is defined by how tight knit they are together. How they work together. Trust each other. Play off each other’s strengths, give aid in their weaknesses. Their collaborative persistence. Ability to rely on each other to each stand on solid ground, and grab the wrist of another to pull them from the mud when they slip and sink. No leader. No person. No one has ever thrived in this world on their own. At the same time, no one in power has ever truly lost power individually, if they had enough strength among their allies to hold things together. A band of brothers and sisters. Together strong. Alone, weak, miniscule, and meaningless.

So, in assessing how you dismantle power, you observe where the glue, ties, and knots hold things together. Imagine a bridge made of toothpicks as a school assignment. If you build a bridge and use no glue, you rely on gravity simply to keep things in place, but the moment you put an object of any weight on the bridge, it collapses. You try again. You use some glue between the toothpicks, perhaps some string as well. For the next attempt at weight baring, the bridge lasts longer. The stronger the bonds are, the more weight the bridge can handle. The angles, triangles, all add to the bridge’s strength. Shapes, forces, and bonds, together it creates a balance.

But even the strongest bridges do fall. If one wants to break a bridge, you find the cornerstones. The sections that bear the most force down on them, the tension points, and you target those. They break. The surrounding toothpicks snap, the glue flexes and cracks, things crumble.

When assessing a regime in power and how to collapse it, you always have to look at the ties each person in power has with each other. You need to judge who is really in control, and who they can rely on to continue their control. The targets must generally be those of strength, not the weak ones. However, targeting weaker targets can cause the herd to have to thin themselves out, and to have to take risks using even weaker wood. Some armies are stronger and tighter than others, but there is always an opportunity to strike and splinter.

The current era of the last nine months was created by several different armies who collaborated to collapse the previous structure. The loose sections of the prior structure were targeted, the failings of the last era, rotting wood, and things fell. They did a very good job at this. The structure was not maintained, the opportunity was taken at the right time, and there were enough people to collaborate on one ideal and execute it, which was change. Change is always needed, and hands are not meant to be held forever. Peace is not the objective of this world. It should only be fleeting as ambition and drive of this world are fueled by blood.  

As for the armies that took over mid-last-summer, it was mainly SALT, some of Transistor’s/Molson, Bjorn people, Goku people, and others. Over the last nine months, many of those factions have primarily fallen into obsoletion to the stronger powers. This is called maintenance. The primary power, which is SALT, has mostly eliminated those who might be a danger to them. We can look at Transistor and co. in Chicago. They were wiped because of a vague threat towards Dixxon. We can look at Valentine’s threat to old Detroit. This is normal. This is maintenance. Kill the opposition and threats. Debride the tainted flesh. Nothing is wrong with this. The core maintains power.

However, at this juncture, there are two large powers that be. There is what lies in the West and Detroit, and there is what lies mainly in New York, Numbers people, a group that is not supposed to exist, but does. Personally, I like them around as competition, and even still I respect a few of them.

This is rough sketch of them, incomplete and also without newly added partners. Aizen = Ace. Yankee = Morty. Klein = Acid. RocknRollStaaaar = Ginsters. Tangerine=Firenza? Visible = Technical. Woot = Lush. The deceased Drieza=Mako.

These names specifically have stood together across generations, over twelve years. This is NOT a coincidence. And in those twelve years, they have been effective a couple times in those cycles I have described before. Albeit committing fraud in at least the first, or some subsequent ones… Now, they wear a different Uniform than they chose to in the past, but those relationships are still the same. They are still glued and fastened together. Some more motivated than others, sure, but the loyalty is still there intact. BellaBrusca=KingPitt doesn’t count obviously.

In the West, we have Grin, Bonkers, Borkers, Meow Meow, and it would not surprise me if Disorder was somewhere in the mix. Other lines from at least two eras of collaborative dominance over this world.

When I look East, they have other’s collaborating with them, not just within their core. Whether that have been fully inducted or not, I am not sure. But that said, you can see another correlation to a sister world of ours. One that I have previously called the Land of Misfit Toys before. Additionally, they have brought in Bjorn and Remus, who in antiquity did not get along with the Numbers group, but sometimes time can heal wounds, even if they’re a liability. Whether Nilf is around or not, that’s another question, but likely they were fed up with being used an abused, except for Lydia.

In the West, it’s a bit of a hodgepodge, and less apparent in terms of their allies, some Molson/Fuckerish, some other things going on.

Where does this all go from here? This world is all about dominance. For one to have dominance, they have to perform maintenance. They have to find the weak points in their own structures, and remove them. They have to find their liabilities. Between multiple factions, they have to collaborate to find threats. Failure to do so, as described previously, results in collapse. Results in obsoletion, deletion. As time goes on, a structure can no longer use the same assets it has deleted. Those deleted, debrided, destroyed, and in some instances, damned, do not generally rejoin a structure. Eventually, that number grows, and like with the old era, it can encircle, envelop, and execute a structure in order to create a whole new one, change and revolution.  

I believe and know that in time all structures collapse. Whether I help build the structure or I help destroy a structure, I am comforted in this inevitability. There is no need for anger. There is no need for frustration. There is only the need to continue piecing people together, your allies, your enemies, and breaking those enemies where necessary. Know your enemy. Know your enemy’s friends. Know your friends. Know history. Know where things break. Know where things bond. Knowledge is a directive tool, a compass on an otherwise grey, amorphous, and cloudy battlefield. We are only as strong as our allies. Likewise, our enemies are only as strong as theirs. Persistence/stamina, friendships, and knowledge together are essential towards success in this world. Given the nature of the terminal timeline of our world, death is everything. It is only a start to growth as the brown leaves are cleared away.

As we enter spring and things warm up, we must also remember that summer is coming. Humidity, sunshine, and popsicles. Will the glue hold? Will the Uniforms become too warm in the heat? What will crack? What will collapse? What more will decay and fragment?

All I can say is your line has a very strange obsession with certain other lines. Are you planning to ever be productive again? Or is this all that we should expect? 

can i get the coles notes version of this word salad?

Somebody get this man Colonel Chat-GPT. You're the reason the rise of the machines has happened. Utterly bonkers and nonsensical stuff.

SpikeSpiegel, I appreciate you coming here and giving this lengthy speech that has caused you to suffer cotton mouth. There used to be a time when rank, cities, and (in more recent times) districts meant something. But now? Fuck all. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a group of sandbox kids who grew up together because of their parent's or grandparent's relationships having close bonds. But when an Earner, Goomba, Wise Guy, or whoever else can manage entire districts to be wiped, or whose word is more golden than a Don, it becomes a comedy special.

It went from being able to build the most impressive city, to only being worried about getting revenge on the guys who got revenge on you bcus you got revenge on them for getting revenge on you for that one time you got revenge on them after they got revenge on... well you get it.

Or maybe I'm not apart of any special groups, I don't have B0085 and I'm also lonely. Who knows.

I would like to join one of these factions. If the books are open, reach out, and I'll do everything I can to put our incredible new friendship over the needs of my family. And if there's even an update on these great nickname lists like done here, I'd like mine to read: 'TBMRPGM = Cool Hand Text'. I'd need to bring my assistant, DaveGoggins, along with me into your faction, whose nickname would read something like Roid Rage Dave or Cream Of Rice Dave or Mugged Recently By TBMRPGM Dave. We'll land on a good one, but you get the picture. 

I'll proceed with a crash course in what I can bring to your organization: 

My greatest strength: longevity. 

My greatest weakness: sometimes I care too much.

My greatest fear: that I'm too much of a perfectionist.

The thing I hate most in the world: failure. 

What's my ideal vacation? Sun-chair propped up in front of the office until it's time to hustle.