A Short Word And Updates

Hi. Brian Joseph Johns here and of sound and sane mind, versus my earlier excursion into the out of doors where I was set upon by the representation of predatory ideologies during my trip to reload and resupply. In the near future, I will make an effort to explain what I believe motivates such activity from others, and elaborate on it enough that it might serve to protect more people than just myself. That is soon to come.

Once again, I hope to continue writing by Thursday or Friday, and once again after I've had a bit of time to heal. 

I'm certainly sane, thankfully, but maybe that's the problem. Maybe in life, it pays to be a little bit off kilter at times to deal with the rough parts, though I'll never cease my efforts to rationalize and expose such activity when its clearly organized and of malicious composure and intent. There are far too many other people out there who don't have the perspective I've been fortunate enough to have acquired in life that would likely be harmed if I withheld such insight.

 

When our ancestors took their first steps off of their own front doors (of caves presumably), they drew maps, and told stories of what they encountered beyond in order to entice the imagination of and protect the next generation from the perils out there. Like a grand tapestry of moments. The height of ecstasy, or the depths or horror or somewhere in between.

In many ways, I'm just as much an explorer as I am a storyteller, and just as often as I venture into the heights and light of the emotional and existential experience in my writing, I as a Scorpio have to delve into the depths and darkness of experience and sometimes undo the wrongs I've seen incurred along the way or there before and with one of the greatest non-physical elixirs of healing, and perhaps the one capable of harm when wielded recklessly: words.

Updates for Butterfly Dragon Reimagined are coming soon, but I'd prefer to write them when I'm ready, because this is going to be a big emotional exploration of ideas and concepts true to the spirit of Butterfly Dragon and likely to martial arts and many philosophies. Something so whimsically graceful and meek bound to something so potentially devastatingly powerful and ferocious.

Grand Tapestry of Moments Episode 4 is also coming soon thereafter, but only when I'm ready to write it. Its difficult writing in this day and age, because what I write can become weaponized against me very quickly by the very predatory ideology I've been exposing for some time. My writing is often attributed to other people, while my own identity is removed and replaced with that of another person. So in the height of my accomplishment, its most often someone else receiving the credit, while I'm being pounded and squashed by an abusive predatory ideology who have been doing this very thing for a very long time, but not if I have my way. 

Imagine that you're an actor, or a filmmaker, or a artisan tradesman of some form. You work on something for a long period of your life, maybe a year or two on a single project, carefully honing and shaping it into something of renown, almost literally putting your soul into it. Meanwhile, during that process, the entirety of your effort has been taken the credit for by other people who secretly watched you doing it the entire time, scheming a way to take it from you. Maybe by claiming it not to be your work, or by something so crazy as claiming you to be possessed by someone else who has dabbled in the same vocation and artistry, but into which you've literally poured a good portion of your life's effort. You get to the finish line and, someone else is wearing the credit for your devastatingly exhausting work and effort, while you've been socially branded with a completely different identity and reputation, and one that you are unendingly abused and punished for, despite it not being your identity at all.

I've worked more than a decade and a half creating Shhhh! Digital Media, though it began long before 2010, and all the way back to the early 1980s, when I wrote the first stories that would become A Lady's Prerogative (now called Tales of the Sanctum and more recently Era of the Spellbound) and The Butterfly Dragon, which was originally a story about the environment from the perspective of an immortal eastern dragon, who watches the activities of a bee in a field unfold, the bee choosing to give its attention to a pop can, while a nearby flower with the most succulent nectar is completely ignored. 

It wasn't until I was in high school that my writing began to gain acclaim (at Marc Garneau Collegiate), but I never pursued it at that point. I had many ambitions and interests (and lived to pursue almost every one of them to a great extent). I had friends who also dabbled in writing, and now that I've pursued something I gave up on so many years ago, I find their ghosts (through predatory ideologies) returning to lay claim to the credit for my writing. Meanwhile, I was writing before I'd even met them and that was the case for both A Lady's Prerogative and The Butterfly Dragon. I started both when I was 11 years old, back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Fifteen years before The Craft (1996) and about fifteen years after Bewitched (1964) first aired.

I'm stating these facts because I want you to know what Shhhh! Digital Media means to me, being its creator and the only writer to have ever graced its pages so far. That might change in the future. I'm not getting any younger. Maybe the mantle will be passed along at sometime forth, to a human or non-human writer or even something more outlandish that would truly be very much a Shhhh! Digital Media-ism.

So, look forward to the current and next episodes of Butterfly Dragon Reimagined, because they're really going to be a spectacle, while Grand Tapestry of Moments Ep4 will be a voice for those approaching the next stage of their existence.

Stay safe and be well ;-)

Once again, I'll stick with my Shhhh! Digital Media colours of red black, red white, red yellow and red grey and Zoo Bobby isn't a dragon on Shhhh! Digital Media ie he isn't Weltherwithsp and never was.

Credits and attribution:

Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 

Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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