URGENT - Project Update! DELTA

Fabrina Glitchlace's SUDO BANG BANG

Two Weeks left in this crowdfunding campaign!

There's been a theme to these so-called URGENT! updates. SUDO BANG BANG isn't just a pulp sci-fi story. This quirky tale might just change your life—if you’re paying attention.

“What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

—Herbert Simon

The Central Role of Attention

It’s All About Attention. In running the crowdfunding campaign for SUDO BANG BANG, I've been circling a single theme: Attention—directing Attention, capturing Attention, controlling Attention, and optimizing Attention. This fascination is not new; it has been a recurring motif in my work.

These recent campaign updates and promotional efforts are a reflection of my contemplation of how 'attention' operates, not just as a psychological mechanism, but as THE fundamental element of existence... human or otherwise.

Attention In Storytelling and Art

Where we focus determines the stories we tell and how they impact us.

Attention is a common element in the craft books I've read and writing masterclasses I’ve immersed myself in over the years. I've learned that how artists direct attention is crucial in storytelling and art—it’s what shapes narrative and drives engagement. Every decision in storytelling: description, plot development, character PoV—all of it hinges on where and how attention is directed(or mis-directed).

In the same way that attention shapes and defines stories, attention shapes and defines our lives.

"The Past is just a story we tell ourselves."

—Samantha, Spike Jonze’s HER (2013)

What we pay attention to(real or not), is what becomes significant to us, and so, the quality of our existence is defined by our attention.

Eyes on the Prize

The profound significance of Attention is not a new idea. Our ancestors knew that attention is priceless, and yet it’s a lesson we still need today. The idea is encoded in some of humanity's most pervasive and most ancient cultural symbols:

The Eye of Providence:

The Eye of Horus

The multiple Eyes(and ears) of Marduk

Many of our symbols, parables, myths, and legends, allude to the paramount value of our attention.

Attention in "The Zero Day Proposal"

Prequel to SUDO BANG BANG, one of my previous novellas, The Zero Day Proposal, explored how attention can be both a strength and a limitation. On a surface level, it’s a cyberpunk whodunit, but it’s also a critique of Standpoint Theory and Intersectionality when used as Organizing Principles.

I was inspired to do so because I was reading some fairly dense postmodern Critical Theory texts attempting to understand the many footnotes of a friend's Marxist-feminist Sociology Master's Thesis. Suffice it to say, I was seeing a lot of problems with how those ideas could function outside of theory. It’s here that my interest in attention was piqued.

The Zero Day Proposal's protagonist was an empath, capable of 'intersectional lensing’. I called this ‘Perspecting’, wherein characters intensely direct their attention to "grok" other people's perspectives and instantaneously learn everything they want to know about that person.

My critique of Standpoint Theory was, regardless of how much attention is directed at the intersection of a unique person's traits, that can never reveal the most important things about them. By paying attention to the wrong things the ‘power’ was a weakness, for both the protagonist of the story, and us in our real lives.

Since publishing The Zero Day Proposal, I've witnessed these theoretical frameworks operationalized in very counterproductive ways, and my understanding of the importance of the proper application of Attention has increased in resolution to the degree I decided to make it an integral element of SUDO BANG BANG.

The Ontology of Attention

In SUDO BANG BANG, attention isn’t just a concept or mind power—it’s the very fabric of reality. A section presents a fictional media review titled, "Alyss Fatt’s 'Trolling: A Total Perspective Vortex' - Tutorial Layer Review, by OmegaPhi (2029.02.12)." This fictional non-fiction review touches on the primacy of attention in the architecture of thought.

This conceptualization suggests that for beings of similar cognitive configurations, ‘frames of attention’ exist as ‘subjective universals’, bridging the gap between subjective and objective realities. Reality in that framework is distributed and decentralized among groupings of any size, and that which is agreed upon between individual observers is the most real.

Focus Pocus: The Magic of Attention

SUDO BANG BANG uses attention as a ‘magic system,’ blending cognitive science with fantasy. While not traditional magic, this system includes various technologies—hardware & software mechanisms—that direct, divide, or amplify attention: These take the form of Somatic macros, dance moves, mnemonics, loopholes, filters, mods, etc.

Much of the system draws from elements in gaming culture, where distributing focal points, lifting the fog of war, enhancing the granularity of details, or zooming out for a broader scope(in space and/or time), are all operations of attention. The conflicts in SUDO BANG BANG are all ultimately Attention battles.

The magic system is intentionally 'soft'(in that its rules are not explicitly detailed), yet it has 'hard' aspects grounded in real-world concepts from both cognitive and computer sciences. The system will seem more or less 'tangible' depending on the reader's familiarity with those concepts. However, I aimed to use this system to explore deeper themes rather than to resolve plot points, so ultimately one's familiarity with hard sciences or arcane philosophies of attention aren't needed to receive the important message I'm trying to transmit.

Advice on Attention

During the final stages of SUDO BANG BANG's production, I gave out a few Advanced Reader Copies to friends. For a friend who resonates on a similar ADHD frequency as me, I inscribed the following:

“Always pay attention to when you are paying attention so you can decide if you want to be paying attention to what you're paying attention to."

I was echoing a passage from the aforementioned "review" section in SUDO BANG BANG:

"We must train a part of ourselves to pay attention to when we are paying attention, so we can consciously decide if we want to be paying attention to that which we are paying attention. Learning to consciously mediate that which had previously been unconscious—this is in essence the transcendent path to ultimate power..."

Master Your Reality

tl;dr: Through my work on SUDO BANG BANG and beyond, my focus on attention has proven it to be more than merely a limited resource. It's inseparable from how we experience and interpret the world, and an extremely powerful tool when wielded efficiently. What we pay attention to is important and things become important to us, because we pay attention to them.

If there is one lesson I’d like to be grokked from SUDO BANG BANG, it is this: Pay Attention to Attention. Notice where your focus is, and choose to apply it wisely. This advice—both philosophical and practical—encourages a mindful approach to attention and emphasizes its fundamental role in our lives. Attention shapes our reality.

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