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witflitmanict · 1 year ago

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Trauma in the Living Place

As stated in the rules, if I miss one day I need to make it up the next day. Whether I missed 1 day or 2 days is a little up for debate because technically I did not think of this idea until I was in bed late on Oct. 1. It may have even been Oct. 2 by the time it truly occurred to me…but also I said for the month and well…it is the 3rd.

Who cares? Here is a short essay based on a discussion my brother and I had last week.

….

When I was growing up I kinda knew that the world I was growing up in was off. Mostly I felt this because the TV was very good at showing me this. But I was also painfully aware of how cliche it was to compare your life to the people on TV because TV was fiction and life was real. I have always been far too painfully aware of my own existence.

The thing is I look back on baby me and I think “Damn I was right.”

The environment I grew up in was kinda fucked up. Not in a horrendously violent way, although it did have these peaks of violence, but more in just the way that every day felt like a battle and it felt like that for me from a very, very young age. And worse, as far as I could tell it felt like that for everyone around me. And I was pretty sure that couldn��t be right.

It was the therapist I started seeing after my most significant manic moment who pointed it out to me. This therapist, a kindly, sweatered, not that old man who had an office in an old apartment building in Japan that smelled like cedar and had sliding windows that opened up towards the railway, was the first one I had ever seen with any amount of seriousness. I had seen others before, but it’s hard to go to therapy when some of the things you struggle with most came at the hands of a therapist. Kinda puts a real damper on the whole trust bit.

But this therapist, he was different. He didn’t just want to talk, he didn’t want to tell me what I could do to ‘improve my condition’ (shortcut to me - don’t tell me what to do). Instead he had a focused approach he wanted to do - EMDR.

EMDR, for those who don’t know, is a type of therapy that uses what to me, a lay person, comes across as almost a hypnotic approach. EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing”. And that is what the therapy is. Some therapists use a sound, some use a motion, others use light…but basically, they give you an external stimulus to focus on. Then, they ask you to share a traumatic memory. They guide you to go deeper and deeper into the memory, asking about details, asking you to locate where in your body you are feeling the memory (ie is your stomach tight, your neck flushed, etc) and then they try to help you relieve that emotion through breathing exercises, visual exercises, whatever.

Here is a nifty little youtube video that tries to visualize it for you.

How EMDR works? Look at this animation (English)

The point of this therapy is to try and deal with your trauma. It originated from a woman, Francine Shapiro, who said she noticed while working in the woods one day that moving her eyes side-to-side like this reduced her anxiety (or something like that, you’re on the internet you’ve got Google). She then took this movement and used it when working with trauma victims, and found that there was demonstrable improvement in their flashbacks and the way they reacted to the trauma. Thus, EMDR was born. It is, in fact a bit controversial as some people say it is just another type of exposure therapy but it is also recommended by a lot of health agencies to deal with trauma. And, as a personal aside, I found it incredibly helpful.

So, it was in one of these sessions, that my therapist asked me, essentially, what was the first time I remembered recognizing that the adults around me could not in fact take care of me. He was likely working off the theory that I had to “grow up” at too young an age, and it had left me quite affected.

And so, I started in on the first strong memory I have of recognizing that adults are useless. I said I was about 9, maybe 8. I was at a friend’s house with my siblings. It was the sort of house that seemed to always have people about, but the mother was a wonderful woman who cared a lot about us, and her kids were about our age. This particular day there was a group of adults and some kids I was less familiar with. I remember this even now, some 20+ years later, that I was particularly curious about a bleach blond lady who seemed off to me. She just seemed like she was trying too hard, and I didn’t really like her…But it didn’t matter, the kids were in kid world and the adults were doing whatever adults do, so I just ignored her.

At least it didn’t matter until suddenly it really, really did. We were playing outside when an adult came rushing out and told us we all needed to get inside right this minute. It was clear this adult was panicked, and we were mostly all old enough to understand that an upset adult meant something dangerous, and obliged. We made our way inside and into my friend's room, the one farthest down the hall on the opposite side of the house. We sat on her bed and were wondering what was going on when we heard a lot of noise and looked out to see a man walking past her window to the back of the house.

The guy, I registered him only as “adult” at the time, had shaggy brownish blond hair, a white T-shirt and jeans. And a look on his face that sent me into a panic. It was intense. He didn’t look our way, instead he seemed really focused on something else. Something none of the rest of us could see. He walked with such purpose towards the back of the house and everything about him screamed danger.

And in the panic that followed as we all realized that this must be why we had to come inside, I realized that my younger sister was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t in the room with us, and as far as I knew she wasn’t with my brother. So I went out and tried to get an adult’s attention. But they were in hysterics. That blonde lady was crying and the other women were trying to reassure her. My friend’s mom had her new baby in one hand and her phone in the other and was calling…her boyfriend. Not the cops.

This is the moment where I first had the thought that adults really can’t do anything. I understood that we were in danger. That the man I had seen outside was a bad guy and he would hurt people. And rather than call the cops these grownass adults were calling the boyfriend of my friend’s mom who was all the way in Plymouth, a solid 20 minute drive at least. And more importantly, none of these adults seemed to have noticed that my baby sister was standing in the glassed in backroom, directly where that guy had been headed, playing pool by herself.

The guy came around the bushes and headed towards the sliding door of the pool room. And I yelled at my sister to get over here, so scared to go down and get her but desperate to get her out of there. The image of her looking up from chalking the pool stick and seeing me, and then the guy, as he began to kick the sliding door, is still pretty fresh in my head.

For me, that’s where the memory ends. My brother remembers the next bit. We were all taken into the mom’s bedroom, and told to stay there until the adults came to get us. There was a lot of commotion going on, but my brother and his friend, they were old enough to recognize that they needed to do something to hide it, and put on some dumb 90s comedy. He doesn’t remember what it was, just that we all sat and watched it until the adults came and got us, and we went back home shortly after.

I guess my trauma figures that I don’t need to worry about the part where someone, another child really, took over the situation. But I do need to remember the moment I stood in the kitchen, looking at the adults, and recognized that they were not taking the right steps to protect us. That their flimsy plan of calling a boyfriend who would take at least 20 minutes to get there would not protect us from whatever was happening in that moment. And I remember that after this I began to view other adults with increasing distrust and a distinct impression that they would, in fact, not be able to take care of me or my siblings.

I relayed this story to my therapist and he was stunned. Normally we would move into talk about how this felt and what I saw when I relayed it, but instead he asked me, eyes a little wide and voice full of concern, if I thought this was typical of my childhood. Did things like this happen often?

Not really, I’m sure I told him. At least, things didn’t usually explode to this level. I mean sure I can remember other instances of being places where I knew there were dangerous adults. Dads who showed up to softball games they weren’t supposed to be at. Uncles or brothers or whatever of friends of mine that I just instinctively knew to stay away from. I knew that there were parts of the woods you could go to, and parts where the cops had been run over and shot at. But these things didn’t really have to do with my family directly. They were just around us.

And that’s when he laid down a truth that struck so true that to this day I consider it one of the greatest revelations to have been revealed to me…”That is not a typical environment. It sounds like that whole town and a lot of the people you knew were dealing with a lot of trauma of their own. I think you have a really skewed perspective of what ‘normal’ is.”

Reader let me tell you that in the 27 or so years of my life that I had been grappling with the fact that my life was not like that on TV, never once had it occurred to me that I might actually be correct in thinking that my life was the odd one out. I had simply lived it knowing that TV was not real, and that my life wasn’t as bad as others. After all I wasn’t the kid of the guy who kicked in the back door and shattered that sliding door while a 7 year old ran up the stairs. I wasn’t related to the men who then grabbed him and held him down as they smashed the car door onto his head until he collapsed. Sure, I was friends with the girl whose dad would hit her and her brother with a switch, and I was close with the one whose dad disappeared and reappeared at softball games unexpectedly…but that wasn’t my trauma. My trauma was tame in comparison to that.

Except that, just by being around all that trauma, I had convinced myself that anything bad that happened to me or my family wasn’t that bad because I mean damn look at what the people around us dealt with. And of course my parents both worked in social service-like jobs, so we knew full well the reality of the world around us from a very young age. There were no starving children in Africa who would happily finish the food on our plates, there were starving kids in our town or the homeless shelter down the street.

But it took seeing this therapist in his safe dusty office 9000 miles away from where I had been born for me to realize that all of this was really, really wrong. And to be clear here, there is nothing abnormal about towns like this. Places full of disenfranchised people whose only outlets, or only chance of survival, are drugs, drinking, and illicit activities exist everywhere, in all countries. But just because they are normal doesn’t mean they are ok.

Places like the town I grew up in breed generational trauma that no one can get out of. And they distort what is “normal” for the people who grow up in them. And that distortion means that they are more likely to put up with things that are in fact traumatic for the entirety of their lives because, well, it could be worse couldn’t it?

Except that just because something is normal doesn’t mean it’s the standard to base our lives on. And that then became a through line for so much more in my life. Yeah sure, I only got migraines once or twice a month, and that was a great decrease from growing up where I would get them weekly…but it’s probably not normal to be in that much pain, is it? Or for that matter, it isn’t normal that my stomach hurts and I want to throw up almost every day, or that my joints seem to ache so badly that I can’t move them sometimes…or for that matter, that soy seems to make my mouth feel like it is full of tiny little cuts.

And once I realized that I needed to stop basing my idea of “normalcy” on what I grew up around and instead see what people outside of it all had to say, I gotta say, my life got a lot better.

Word Count: 2397

#Writing #nonfiction #childhood #trauma #generational trauma #therapy #thinking about it

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fellcharas · 3 years ago

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my deltarune theory(ies?)

DISCLAIMER: i am not an actual theorist and i wrote this all from memory! this is taking into consideration the possibility that chara is involved in the making of deltarune (1, 2) as well as other widely believed theories (gaster being involved)

putting a read more because this shit is LONG so buckle up

start with the basics?

something i was thinking about last night is how it’s interesting that we don’t know very much about susie’s home life or her reason for being “the bully.” while there are certainly hints that point to it not being great at all, there’s nothing directly confirming what it’s like.

however something that many people have pointed out is that through the numerous odd similarities deltarune and undertale have, there is the clam girl. for those who don’t know, clam girl is a NPC that you encounter if your game’s fun value is between 80 and 89 and you’re not playing a no mercy route. she talks of her neighbor’s daughter, suzy, and tells frisk that they should become friends with her. but she notes the fact that frisk would have no idea where suzy is yet fate will find a way for them to meet.

in the true pacifist epilogue of undertale with a fun value of 81, clam girl explains that the time frisk (or we, the players) will meet suzy is “fast approaching.” this specific term is yellow in text and her sprite becomes grayscale. then she abruptly vanishes, the noise as she does so being the same noise used for the mystery man and gaster follower 2 sprites when interacting with them. interestingly, her grayscale sprite is “spr_clam_goner”, not much different than goner kid. this dialogue was also added right before the release of deltarune.

so... who is suzy? while it is possible that suzy could just be susie with a different name for undertale’s sake, it’s also possible that suzy could be susie’s sister, likely younger. catty, returning from undertale, has a little sister in deltarune named catti. there isn’t much significance that i could add that would make it likely suzy is susie’s little sister other than this, but i felt it was worth mentioning so do with it what you will.

so... what else?

after interacting with clam girl, if you do the work necessary to access sans’ basement (or “lab”), you’ll be able to find a description of a photo inside one of the drawers that points out there are “three smiling people” with the text “don’t forget” written on it. this has been pointed out several times before due to the fact “don’t forget” is the deltarune song that plays at the end of ch1 (and ch2 although remixed?). if i recall correctly there is no other way of finding this flavor text except for interacting with clam girl. interesting.

lots of people believe that the covered machine in sans’ lab is a time machine. with sans’ many connections to gaster, it’s also possible that this could be a machine gaster made and had broken. it is said to be unfixable.

gaster is confirmed to have created the core. but i don’t believe this is what he fell into. it’s never specified what he fell into, just that it was his creation. so i believe that gaster fell into the time machine. and by taking entry number 17 into account, we are met with the possibility that the time machine might involve a black hole. fortunately for you guys black holes is a special interest of mine, so i can explain this easily.

basically, the anatomy of a black hole, or the structure, consists of the following:

event horizon

singularity

photon sphere

ergosphere

the event horizon of a black hole is the shadowy dark sphere that we see in images. it is a boundary in spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. once having crossed the event horizon, the nature of spacetime begins to deform, causing space’s usual three dimensions (length, width, height) to form only one dimension (movement forward) and time’s usual one dimension (into the future) to form three dimensions (past, present, and future). spacetime is what makes up our reality. remember this. and, as predicted by einstein’s theory of general relativity, mass bends spacetime (imagine our universe as a flat plane, and the mass of our earth causes a dip in the space underneath it), so a black hole’s mass warps spacetime so strongly that any direction you try to go in once having crossed the event horizon will lead you to the singularity. (at least... for a non-rotating, non-charged black hole.)

the singularity is a gravitational singularity, a region that may lie at the center of a black hole wherein the curvature/deformation of spacetime becomes infinite. because all black holes spin (due to their last moments as stars involving very fast rotational speeds), the singularity in a rotating black hole’s mathematics smears out to form a ring singularity (ringularity) that lies in the plane of rotation. in this case (as well as the case of a non-rotating black hole), the region has zero volume. and because of all of the black hole’s mass being held in this region, the singularity can be thought of as having infinite density. within a rotating black hole it is possible to avoid the singularity, and extending this solution as far as possible reveals the hypothetical possibility of exiting the black hole into a different spacetime (region of reality) with the black hole acting as a wormhole.

the photon sphere is a spherical boundary of zero thickness in which photons (elementary, electromagnetic radiation particles, associated with light) that move on tangents (the tangent line to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point) to that sphere would be trapped in a circular orbit about the black hole. while light can still escape from the photon sphere, any light that crosses the photon sphere on an inbound trajectory will be captured by the black hole.

lastly, the ergosphere is a region of spacetime found in rotating black holes in which it is impossible to stand still. basically, it’s like a whirlpool, and any object near the black hole will tend to start moving in the direction of rotation.

okay, so... what does this have to do with entry number 17?

WELL, here’s the dialogue from entry number 17. i’ll bold the key parts that i feel tie the possibility of this being a time machine to the time machine involving a black hole:

ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN DARK DARKER YET DARKER THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPER PHOTON READINGS NEGATIVE THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT SEEMS VERY VERY INTERESTING ... WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK

as you can probably tell by now, it’s possible that this description of growing darkness, no photons, is similar to that of what a black hole is like.

but why would gaster create a black hole as part of a time machine? well, my idea is that he didn’t mean to do so. he likely concentrated enough energy or mass that caused a black hole to accidentally form. this black hole would have been small in diameter, thus having an incredibly short lifespan, its evaporation being violent. this would have broken the machine entirely. however, for the sake of undertale being a video game, it’s understandable why sans (and possibly papyrus or alphys) would be okay and why the machine is still relatively in tact.

it’s unclear to me why gaster would want to make a time machine. because time travel in the sci-fi sense (involving the grandfather paradox) is likely impossible without breaking the fabric of our reality, this could also be explained for why it went so horribly wrong for gaster. and - fun fact - once you cross the event horizon, you are lost to the universe forever. every particle you are made of, every little bit of energy you hold within your existence, is lost to the outside universe. forever. this is called the black hole information paradox. however, realistically, those who are outside of the black hole will still remember you, but in gaster’s sense... i don’t think this is what happened.

it’s possible that gaster managed to avoid the singularity, if the black hole he crossed was rotational. however, because he couldn’t leave the black hole, he could have traveled to different points in spacetime. this is why he was shattered across time and space as his followers describe, because undertale confirms that within its world, this possible existence of a black hole allows for wormholes to exist.

but... but wait. no, no, no. we can’t think of undertale as space-time. why? because sans himself confirms that the continuum of undertale’s reality is a time-space continuum. he puts time before space, which could be intentional and thus swapping their roles. within undertale this means that time is 3-dimensional, explaining the existence of save points and the ability to reset and load. space, on the other hand, is 1-dimensional, meaning you can only ever go one way which is to the end of the game. even if you load previous save files, you’ll still end up finished.

so if gaster was shattered across time and space, it’s possible that he was also shattered beyond. it’s believed that he had some sense of awareness, that he found out he was in a game with multiple different timelines, thus starting his “experiment.” he created the blueprints for the determination extraction machine, and because it’s also widely believed that he and chara were in cahoots with each other, maybe gaster wanted to extract some of chara’s determination and make something for himself. and maybe he succeeded in some way, not by extracting chara’s but by making his own somehow. it’s unknown right now to me. (though if he acquired determination somehow, that would make sense if the mysteryman sprite was him, considering the weird markings or drippy things on his face as well as the general blob-like look.)

so this implies that deltarune’s reality is a time-space continuum as well?

yes. gaster was smart, brilliant even, but it’s likely he didn’t know much beyond the nature of his own reality. when creating deltarune he made the reality of its universe something similar to undertale’s, with 3-dimensional time and 1-dimensional space. if gaster had the determination or something more, enough to persist even as a remnant of a shattered being outside his own reality, then this makes sense as to how he’d be able to create deltarune. if he’s forgotten to everyone within the world of undertale, and (in some abstract way for the sake of kris, jevil, spamton and possibly others) known to nobody in deltarune, yet he created deltarune, he isn’t dead. he’s something else. he’s a god.

and this is why chara is in cahoots with him, even now.

see, chara has determination. they didn’t fall into the underground intentionally; they tripped (1, 2). given these facts and theories it’s likely that chara had determination, or hope, the ability to persevere and keep going no matter what. chara had a red soul like frisk’s, which is what made their essence attach to frisk’s body. that’s why they are tethered to us via name and stats and narration. and as we all know, the red soul symbolizes determination. power.

but while chara is very much their own person, they are still what their name was meant to imply: a character. chara reflects the will of the player; they are not the player theirself, they are their own person, but due to their attachment to frisk (and by extension, us) they act as a mirror for what we do in undertale. and sadly for them, gaster is much more powerful due to his circumstances. gaster is more like us than chara is.

and given deltarune’s theme of nobody’s choices mattering, nobody having any real control over what they do or say, if we take into consideration the fact that chara speaks in the no mercy route about destroying "this" world and "moving onto the next" and asking "when were [we] the one in control", then it’s clear that they have something to do with the theme of deltarune. chara has only ever wanted control, whether that be a good or bad thing is currently out if the question. they wanted control over their own life when they were alive in undertale, and now they want control over other people. anything they feel is a good thing for them to have control over, they will reach for it.

the gonermaker sequence in chapter 1 is abruptly cut off by someone who speaks VERY similarly to chara, in contrast to the person from before who we all agree is gaster (in both japanese and english, it is very chara-esque way of speaking). now, why is this called the gonermaker? my guess is because chara has been discarding all these vessels, making gaster’s experiment much more difficult to start off and get going.

all the gaster followers from undertale, including goner clam girl and goner kid, show up in deltarune. they are fully colored sprites. the only goner character who doesn’t show up in deltarune is the one WE create in chapter 1′s beginning sequence. and i think that’s because they are set up to reappear, at some point in one of deltarune’s future chapters.

so, chara has been discarding all of the vessels, all the followers, all the now-goners because they know that these people will never have control over their lives. as long as they are shallow vessels meant to worship and serve our (the players’) and gaster’s desires (to play a game and experiment, thereby affecting an entire world/universe), they have no autonomy over themselves. and this resonates with chara for a multitude of reasons we can tie back to undertale. they state that "no one can choose who they are in this world," because it’s true. no one can choose who they are. not in a world dominated by gods like us and gaster. and that’s why chara discards these vessels and characters who were probably once their own real persons, as a means of sparing them from what they lacked for theirself: control. and no matter what, even if chara didn’t interrupt, we would have still ended up as kris because again No One Can Choose Who They Are In This World. chara was making gaster’s sick joke plain and simple for us, that it applies to us in some way too.

so then... what’s the deal with spamton and jevil?

well, i think they are people who encountered gaster (this is widely believed anyway) and convinced themselves that they were significant for this knowledge that they are in a game, knowledge gaster told them of, driving them both insane and robbing them of who they were meant to be. and because nobody can choose who they are in deltarune, when they try to break free nothing changes or has a happy outcome, because it’s sadly just not possible to change your fate in deltarune.

this presumably-fact becomes clearer with spamton, though. and that’s why kris becomes so afraid, both at the end of spamton neo’s pacifist battle and his snowgrave battle. because kris can’t choose who they are, either. kris is like spamton, a puppet. a heart on a chain. they don’t have full control over who they are and trying to break free only hurts them more, as we see whenever they tear their soul out of their body and disable our input. but, maybe it’ll be different for kris, because they ARE the protagonist. but right now it feels like they’ve given up on the idea of having control over theirself. the only rebelling they do is work to open a dark fountain, thereby continuing the story of deltarune and, really, only helping us more in terms of playing the game.

and i mean, it’s also obvious that gaster holds influence over kris, too, considering the weird hidden encounters where you interact with something and see a man smiling or waving at you or giving you an egg. and this egg doesn’t change into a ball of trash like every other dark world item once you return to the light world. it stays the same. i can’t really remember the significance of eggs when it comes to gaster other than his whole existence being left as an Easter Egg but i do know that on the date with papyrus in undertale, there’s an egg on the side with the dating hub so, whether that’s there for funny points or lore is unknown, but interesting too.

i also want to say that i don’t think gaster and chara are being pitted against each other in terms of "these are 2 different types of gamers." while that would make sense simplistically, i feel like toby would be much more in depth and nuanced with it, as he usually is with his method of storytelling. because even though chara is kind of god-like, considering their death in undertale and their soul being the same as ours, leading to them being attached to us like some kind of angel (and angels have lots of significance in both undertale and deltarune), they’re still only a character and not at all on the level that gaster is.

i personally think gaster and chara are, on a more hidden level because toby isn’t being very direct at all with these two, meant to represent a different side of the "player vs character" perspective. and that’s something that undertale and deltarune have both tried to convey to us in the no mercy and snowgrave routes, but unfortunately in undertale’s case it was widely misinterpreted in both ways. i think it’s a bit more sensible to go about it this way, because gaster is not us, as in we don’t control him like we can other characters, and the symbolism of what he’s meant to represent is there.

ok, one last question: how did chara access wherever gaster’s in?

that part is still very foggy. i can’t come up with a definite reasoning, but for now i’ll take a wild guess and say that maybe chara grew tired of being a ghost with no real autonomy. maybe they decided they wanted to break free for theirself, and by doing this their essence became detached from frisk’s body (and by extension our control), thus causing them to be shattered similarly to gaster or winding up in the void gaster has. however that happened.

there’s a lot of uncanny resemblance between chara and kris, though, especially if this is the case. chara breaks free and winds up in the void with gaster, and kris realizes that breaking free for theirself may not be all that they think it’s meant to be. given spamton neo and all. aside from the fact that chara and kris look similar, have the same family (though in different universes of course), and strangely both have a sweet tooth, this is especially odd to me.

i can’t quite put it into words, but it feels like, to me at least, chara is very much present in the world of deltarune. and they share similarities with kris that are hard to ignore.

so that’s it, then.

for the most part... yes. a lot of the theories i’ve linked here and there explain things i agree with, so you can read them as you see fit. i especially recommend nochocolate’s posts on chara if you’re interested, such as the ambiguity of freedom in undertale (and, though this was never mentioned in their post, by extension now deltarune).

but. there is one character that seems to be involved in some (or a lot) of this. and that’s papyrus. the only problem is, i can’t figure out what’s going on.

at first glance papyrus is just a very charming guy. but you know, he’s actually a lot more mysterious than sans. he shares similarities to chara and flowey/asriel, and holds weird possible connections to gaster. he’s also the only major character from undertale (aside from asriel) who hasn’t made a physical appearance in deltarune. while checking sans and papyrus’ house will have you met with narration describing “a distant trousle of bones”, it’s worth noting that in chapter 2 it’s described as getting farther and farther away. so... why? is this world’s papyrus just shy, or is there a deeper reason?

again, i can’t tell what’s going on with papyrus, if there even is anything at all. but there’s a lot of weird and mysterious little oddities involving him that i don’t think are unintentional or accidental.

anyways... there. hoo boy. that’s my theory. or theories. i don’t really know. like i said, i’m not a theorist, i don’t know everything and i don’t expect any of this to be true. it’s just what makes sense to me. and it’s important that if you believe this, you also recognize that toby is the creator and he does what he thinks is best when it comes to the story of deltarune and the possible connections it has to undertale (even though toby’s said that the two have no connections, it’s not uncommon for him to be untruthful about things).

if you read all of this... thanks! let me know your thoughts!

#inkling.txt #deltarune #deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune analysis #deltarune meta #deltarune theory #undertale #undertale theory #wd gaster #chara dreemurr #w.d. gaster #chara undertale #ok to reblog

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chemicalpink · 3 years ago

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Hiiii! Can you do a reading on Alba Baptista who stars in Warrior Nun if she is gay. Her fans on twitter claim she is gay and they are waiting for her to come out as gay. She has performed as a gay character in Filha di Lei and there are news her character Ava in Warrior Nun season 2 may be gay. I'm so excited for her. She gives off gay vibes so much. Her fans say she has never discussed her dating life and there are always fake rumors of her having boyfriends but she never steps out with one because she will come out as gay. Can you please check her energy? Is she afraid? Most of the people always judge LGBT.

Hi love! I am fully aware that this ask should’ve gone to one of my other blogs but I found it important to clear some stuff regarding it.

I see where you’re coming from and I’m sure it from a place where you mean no harm. I am 100% with you in how some fan spaces, regardless of the fandom and age groups, have targeted the LBTTTQIA+ community and even have gone as far as demonised it.

Note: this comes from my personal spiritual knowledge and 15+ years studying, my academic and career knowledge, and personal opinion.

The thing with celebrities, is that they serve as mainstream media ambassadors, which is specially relevant to talk about when incorporating queer theory and fan behaviour into the mix. The most straightforward answer would be the creation and nurture of safe spaces when us fans start reflecting some of our traits onto these celebrities, all of it due to the fact that the transformative experiences that following a celebrity and projecting of certain traits onto them by the large following is able to build a community that serves as a safe space, mainly online. This is basically called ‘queering mainstream media’. Given how fandoms has a heavily-gendered nature and specially heavily lgbtttqia+ oriented, it is no secret that everything involving fandoms is looked down upon in ‘popular culture’ or by the cis-het community (fandom or not). As Constance Grady writes, “there’s a special ire reserved for the particular corner of the web where people make transformative works about the media they love — and given that this corner is primarily composed of young women (and queer people) it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this ire is gendered”

By writing and portraying favourite characters and celebrities as queer or any other minority, fans who consume media but fail to see themselves represented within it are able to create the scenarios that they most aspire to relate to. Especially in an environment where LGBTTTQIA+ young people have very differing mental health experiences than their heterosexual counterparts, thus producing media and narratives online that are able to depict complex, realistic LGBTTTQIA+ experiences when talking about celebrities and characters from mainstream media can be a form of encouragement and support for otherwise marginalized groups.

Kellye Ann Guinan has a quite interesting approach in which creating narratives via fan-consuming content has a communal aspect of reiterating similar tropes, much like historical communities repeat stories as part of their communal folklore.

Queer people (and women) use fan-targeted consumption content as a means of showing their struggles and needs via reinterpreting popular media (and thus the celebrities contained within them). In this sense, television shows, movies, comics, video games, artists, celebrities, public figures, etc. all function as a shared symbolic language through which individuals can explore identities closed off to them in real life. Fan-consuming content is the only way in which minorities can give themselves a chance at being portrayed the same way non minorities groups have grown accustomed to. And because it takes the same story cores and reuses them time and again, no matter how ever growing the intricacies of each content type is, it can be seen to follow a process of folklore.

In this way, fan-directed content is culturally subversive, but also connective: it allows individuals to bring out the pieces of themselves they would otherwise hide away/the current world’s dynamics force them to hide away. It challenges cultural norms while evolving creativity, shaping individual expression into collective expression, and forming a subculture of its own.

Now onto the pressing matters of what concerns us regarding tarot and these lgbtttqia+ fan-oriented content.

As I’ve mentioned time and time before, tarot, specifically celebrity tarot, is very heavy on the grey lines of consent and respecting privacy, us readers have to build a certain level of trust for us to not drain ourselves and maintain a certain level of ethics in the game so that we can continue to practice correctly and efficiently.

Evidently, sometimes there’s a lot of deeply personal information that comes out when we read for celebrities, at least in my personal experience it has become quite a regular thing to have celebrities’ energies ‘coming out’ in readings, but just like any other inner paths people may walk on, they do not have a reason for us to read to them (celebrities or otherwise). Queer people’s processes, especially coming out and even more so, celebrities, are quite personal paths that none of us outside of their inner circle have any right whatsoever to acknowledge until and if they decide to do so, celebrities and privacy are already quite a topic, they deserve as much privacy as us the general public can empathise with and grant them.

And I really understand that it isn’t ideal how some queer topics are handled in fandoms and mainstream media, as I’ve stated up above, there are some experiences that aren’t ideal whatsoever and unfortunately we have to watch them unfold. There’s really no need to get digging into things that do not correspond to us in any way. Giving people their own time and space to decide what to share with others is the next best thing we can do in the middle of this already too fucked up world.

So I’m sorry love, I do not read on people’s personal journeys. Be that sexuality or spiritual journeys as I have no right to do so and even less so, the right to put it out there for people’s consumption. I hope you understand.

#marinette answers #well this took a while #im sure there’s a lot more to it

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years ago

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I recently saw a video where GRRM talked about how he saw two different kinds of writers. He mentioned the gardener(planting the seed of an idea and letting it grow) and the architect(who plans out and organizes everything ahead of time). Obviously, every writer is a little bit of both but I was wondering which you relate to more and if you’d be willing to share some more about your own writing approaches and processes :)

I think I've answered similar questions in the past, but it'd be near impossible to dig it out in this ridiculously big, chaotic archive of my blog xD so I guess I'll answer it again, and if we come across the previous answers I've given, it'd even be fun to compare if there's anything different in the answer these days (?)

Personally, I think the best way to go about this is to have a mix of both things, but for me, it's in a very specific manner.

While I absolutely see the value in letting a story spiral and grow into whatever it wants to be, I have to say I don't think my best work comes from that. The lack of structure is similarly liberating and dangerous, because if your story's purpose isn't something you, as an author, have really made up your mind about, it's 100% possible that the story will end up going in very strange directions that MIGHT not make much sense, when you look at where you started out.

I've told this story a few times, but it bears repeating xD my first "serious" attempt at writing (by which I mean, I took it seriously, not that the content itself was super serious, since it was a trainwreck more often than not xD) started off as a perfectly happy romcom high school story! And tbh, to this day I love it as it is... but I know, I KNOW, that I totally warped the initial purpose and process of the story when, upon fulfilling the first bit of conflict in the story and leaving some massive loose ends I had to wrap up, I found myself at a loss because I had no idea how to continue. I was seriously, genuinely, at a loss for ideas and storylines to keep going. What, then, did I come up with?

... my happy romcom characters ended up embroiled in an organized crime catastrophe that has ZERO build-up in the first part of the story xD

(To the eagle-eyed who might have picked up something here... yes. That is 100% what I was poking fun at through Yang in Gladiator during the Fire Lord's Shadow arc. Yes. I mock myself. More accurately, I make Azula and Sokka mock my most questionable writing choices :'D)

Now, then, I had a very weird mess in my hands and I admit, it wasn't a great place to be at xD you see me now with my very, very small likelihood of falling into writer's block? Well, back then, I spent more time blocked than writing, for sure :'D and one of the reasons why that happened is because, while I had some ideas for what I wanted to write in the future? I didn't really have a set direction beyond "I want these and these characters as endgame relationships!", which is pretty much the most basic level of "plotting" you can pretend to do, as a writer xD And ironically, even then I was far more malleable and willing to experiment with whatever character combinations came up later, which even resulted in me discovering, well into writing a story, that some characters I absolutely did NOT conceive in a relationship were actually pretty good together! :'D

But that I had very little direction when I started writing that story was still a problem. I actually found more direction and built some more structure as I reached the last part of the story, and I will say, it's the strongest bit of it, by far xD (as evidence of what I'm saying, it was the first time I ever wrote an OUTLINE DOC! XD) but I have no doubts that, if I'd had the foresight to actually know where I was going, the story as a whole would be much much better, no matter how much I love it for what it is.

So! This particular writing experience of mine taught me countless things, among them, to actually ponder direction and purpose in stories instead of diving in blindlly. It's not really about having foreshadowing hints every ten minutes, which is what some people take as a sign of quality (I'll dare be quite controversial and say that not because you know what you'll write ten years down the line does it mean your story automatically makes sense... xD), it's about actually having a purpose in what you're building, a real direction, character arcs and plotlines that, to put it simply, work.

Therefore... I know for a fact that I can't be a full-blown plantser (or gardener) because I've tried it, and while I absolutely see the merits, the drawbacks are pretty sizable for me, and it just really doesn't work with my approach to storytelling.

Thus... If I MUST choose a category out of them both, I'd say I'm an architect, but the truth is I'm not an architect in the most strict sense of the word, either :'D

If you want a super strong building, you obviously need the best foundations for it. But you don't stop there, of course: erecting a building takes a lot of different efforts and processes if you really want your building to not only stand tall but to be a proper, decent place to live in. And while in real life, the reasonable thing would be to have a plan for each of those little details you have to build in, from filling the walls, to the type of flooring, down to even the decor... in writing, THIS is where I take the gardener approach! :'D

I don't know if I've said it in the past, but while sometimes I don't know how to start a story (which, despite my carelessness with the matter in the past, I've come to realize is a VERY delicate choice to make, one that can actually destroy my immersion in a story if it's a choice made carelessly), usually, I try to make myself think about where it's going, first of all. Currently, I have a few potential original projects rolling around in my head... and I don't know where they start :'D but I DO know where I'll take them, what the actual, ultimate climax of those stories would be. This, then, is the most basic foundation for a story, for me. I choose a destination, kinda, and then build the journey there :D

This is, loosely speaking, how I've built up Gladiator. And yet Gladiator, being the ridiculously big mess that it is, required a very unique plotting approach that I suppose might be at odds with a lot of what I've said so far xD yet it also remains true to a lot of what I've said here :'D

When I first started to ponder this story, the first plot point was obvious and instinctive: Sokka's capture. When Chaosconetic (the one who first gave me the idea for this story) suggested it, he didn't quite put forward the idea of having Azula being the one who captured Sokka personally. I thought of making Azula and Sokka first come face to face in this way because... honestly? Because I just wanted them to interact as soon as possible x'DDDD it complicated matters, of course, but that was absolutely something I could work with.

Yet... where was I going with this story? It was a rewrite of ATLA as a whole, so what exactly was the direction for the story? Clearly, Azula and Sokka would wind up falling in love, and how exactly would that come about? And beyond that, wouldn't it be a seeerious mess for this to happen in a setting where Ozai is STILL in power? Why, of course it would be! :'D It added a new layer of complications to the generally already complicated Sokkla relationship, and instead of it being kept secret or being a forbidden romance for the reasons canon-based stories typically make it so, it's BEYOND forbidden here because Ozai is still a very much active factor in this story, and he makes everything worse :D soooooo...

With these particular factors in mind, I had several things to think about. With Sokka fighting as a gladiator being the core of the story, I had to figure out who would be his rivals, and in doing so, figure out what his power curve as a warrior would look like :'D in doing so, I settled very quickly on Toph for his main serious rival, but Sokka wasn't the only one whose story I'd be telling: obviously, Azula's arc would be important too, as I'd have to work with developing her FAR MORE than I ever had before, and while Sokka's personal opponents would be important, Azula is the one who chooses Sokka as her personal warrior, therefore, she had to have a purpose in doing so. Said purpose then materialized when I decided to make use of Zhao's character for Azula's main goal and foil, and so, I needed Zhao to have THE best gladiator of all... and I didn't need to think about it too much before I settled on Combustion Man for the role :'D

Thus, those were small, isolated yet pivotal elements that I had to articulate into a structure that made sense :D they were small things I settled on pretty quickly, from the very first few days of plotting. I can say for certain that, by the third day, I already had settled on the climax (... can't decide whether that's a fortunate or unfortunate wording choice, tbh xD) scene of Part 1, when Azula and Sokka have their fateful fight in chapter 96, then finally succumb to their attraction and act on their feelings without holding back, in chapter 97 :'D I knew I wanted this to happen after Sokka hit a low point upon failing to defeat Toph, either for the second time or after losing against her far too many times that he just was too discouraged to keep going, hence, I knew what the lead-up to this would be from literally day THREE.

But beyond this? At like... day one or two of plotting, once I settled on Combustion Man as the ultimate man to defeat? I also settled on how Part 2 would end :> back then, I honestly had no idea how much time there would be between the events from chapter 97 and the upcoming culmination of Part 2, I wasn't anywhere near advanced enough with plotting to even KNOW I'd split the story into parts because it would get too big to handle xD But what I did know was that I needed these two situations to happen, situations deeply entwined with Sokka's role as a gladiator. Everything in between was variable, and it was stuff I could figure out slowly, along the way.

The ultimate direction of the story, though? That did take me a long time to settle on xD In fact, I think it took me well over a year after I got started to really figure out where I was going with all of this. A close friend helped me figure out things by offering many ideas for Zuko and Suki's storyline, basically tossing them at me in hopes that I'd make sense out of some of them... and I don't really know if she even knows how much that helped me xD I really spent a long time unsure of what I wanted to do, what I COULD do... until at long last, I settled on one slightly ambitious direction that eventually turned into what you'll all know as Part 3 :'DDDDD

So... yeah, that's why I say I'm being contradictory as heck xD Yes, I worked out some core details of the story since the very beginning, but it wasn't ALL the core details, let alone the ultimate direction of the story, BUT... in building up Azula's character arc, that direction slowly became clearer to the point where, when this particular possibility stared me in the face, I knew it was where we had to go, I realized that what I'd written over that year was leading up perfectly to that outcome.

Ergo, Gladiator is 100% a work of gardening and architecture, woven together to a point where I have a hard time remembering what, exactly, was the result of each thing. There's some things that I settled on early on, like I said, structure things... and then there are some parts where the characters just went wild and did things I did NOT expect them to do xD There's one scene coming up, right before the climax of Part 2, where Azula actually does something that I honestly WASN'T sure of doing... and yet I couldn't resist the urge to go forward with it, once the idea came to mind, and so I did it. And now I regret nothing xD was it necessary? Possibly not. Will some people find it weird and out of place? Maybe. But was it CATHARTIC AS HECK!? Aaaabsolutely friggin' yes XD pardon me for being so self-indulgent, but that's part of what being a gardener is about (?)

So, I really think the best stories benefit from a careful approach to mixing the principles of both ideas. I know that some gardeners think that a structure can stifle creativity (not necessarily true, if you sense a lack of creativity in anything you're doing, it IS up to you to turn it around, switch it up and make it interesting, right...?), I also suspect architects might think gardeners would be utterly unable to tell a good story altogether in virtue of letting the story run away with them (also not necessarily true, as the quality of a story isn't quantifiable as easily as that, gardeners might just make masterpieces without as much need of direction as I personally require: Philip Pullman apparently had no set direction in the His Dark Materials trilogy and I could swear that's some of the best storytelling I have EVER seen).

Ultimately, each person gets to choose their ideal approach and what exactly they're trying to do with their work, as well as how they want to do it... but if you ask me, if your characters never seem to pull you in unexpected directions, you might just need to rework them or approach them differently to give them more life. If they DO pull you in those unexpected directions, but you're not sure if you can follow them just because you need to follow structure, it's really up to you as the author to choose whether to sacrifice the life/creativity within your own work and stick to structure, or sacrifice structure and potentially cause your story's course to crumble :'D

It may sound like I'm advocating for gardening so much more, despite I've labeled myself an architect, buuuuut... ironically, a very complicated but VERY rewarding scene in Gladiator Part 3 damn near WRECKED my structure when I was writing it a few weeks ago :'D I literally had to take a day off from actually writing so I could make a list of ALL the elements that would be impacted by this change if I went forward with it. If I chose against it, I would have to rewrite the complicated scene in a different way, and it might have been waaay too weird to make it work. If I chose to keep it, I had to tread VERY carefully or end up potentially making a mess of the ultimate direction of Gladiator's story, even threatening the themes and nuance that I have been counting on since I settled on this direction. Thus, sometimes gardening can be dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

I THINK I found a fair enough compromise that allows me to keep the best of both worlds... but I hope I've made it clear that both ways of working have their pros and cons, and why even mixing both things can have pros and cons xD but this is also why I, personally, think that a writer benefits the most from figuring out at least a loose outline, the broad strokes of what they want to achieve in a story, and then figuring out the many ways in which they could fill in those foundations, in whatever way they're most comfortable.

And so, I have rambled plenty xD I hope that was thorough enough, my position in this particular subject is honestly to oscillate in the middle of both things, where part of your job as the writer is to determine which situation benefits more from either approach :D Like I said before, I've found structure isn't something I can sacrifice easily, but more often than not, letting the story flow, letting the characters make their own choices, can enrich your story rather than hinder it. So... I lay the foundations, the structure, so that seeds can grow inside it, if that makes sense xD

#anon #woops #why do I talk so much #I just always do #minor tidbit spoilers here you could say though I don't THINK I gave away anything too important...#:'DDDD #but yep I am a gardenchitect #architardener (?)#whatever you wanna call it xD

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years ago

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mtmte liveblog issue 33

[sees rewind cover] time to be emo

swerve giving us a nice lil recap of the wild events of slaughterhouse thus far

and then the roll call page...I love how the last one is ‘rewind?!?’

OUGHGHGGHGHGH REWIND TINYYYYYYYYYYYY

I adore that nautica has a list of in-jokes to check off

ohhhh man I forgot that alt-lost light rewind doesn't really know skids?? bc the alt lost light never picked him up....

POOR REWIND he wakes up all elder scrolls style and then immediately autobot megatron is just There without explanation lmao this poor lil guy

love the casual gender stuff honestly

nightbeat: ayyyy rewind!! sup? what horrific slaughter happened here? spill the tea!

hvakjdfbskdf poor rewind is going thru it jesus

nautica and riptide hvbhkjasdsfasdfn ‘are jokes not funny where you come from?’ immmmm

nautica is so cute I love her

ohhhhh I love the panel of the two lost lights going off in separate directions with the title right below

‘I remember it well. kind of’ that's a really funny line actually hbvkdjfnasdfl

I really like how on the alt lost light, rodimus’s risky stunt with the sparkeater actually kills him - I mean I'm glad that didn't happen in the main story but that's such a cool jarring discrepancy

ok but its inherently VERY funny that the djd like, murdered the entire lost light, but later in the story the lost lighters are obviously still around and not dead...that's so fucking funny, the djd were probably like ????????????????? what the fuck didn't we kill these guys?????? but also they were tripping so they cant be sure

isn't it brainstorm who called the djd on the alt lost light??? oof

LOVE the continuity of the alt lost light being the place that the djd went at the end of the scavengers 2 parter wayyyy back in the beginning of s1

more horrific slaughter, as one would expect from an arc called ‘slaughterhouse’

jeeeesus I forgot how completely fucked up all the shit was for poor rewind 2. christ

also the like, thematic irony of alt-chromedome refusing to erase rewind from his memory and choosing to die horribly instead....SCREAMS I cant handle it

ITS SO HORRIBLE I'm so sad. poor rewind

‘silly string’ I love riptide

nautica is so smart I lov her

oooh skids going off on megatron is really good. I find the whole ‘cons are super anti-organic/alien life’ angle interesting, bc it like, Makes Sense that a race of robot aliens who live for millions of years wouldn't consider shorter-lived organic life to be on the same level as them, but its also like, not morally right, so the autobots are correct w/the whole ‘freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ thing...its LAYERED

rewind: ‘I'm tiny’

me, crying: yeah...

honestly I really really love the quantum duplication plot in this arc. its like, peak sci fi nonsense but it also like, Makes Sense, and is presented in a very understandable manner...plus its like, super entertaining and fun, so I just love it

love how they're perusing brainstorms lab and just stumble across a dead body. classic

aaaand the plot thickens, with the reveal that brainstorm is a decepticon????? whoaaaa

I love that twist too oh man. I cannot WAIT for the time travel arc yessss

oof nautica being in denial about brainstorm being a con :(

I find it kinda funny that getaway is IMMEDIATELY like, punching walls and going full that-one-wack-storm-trooper-from-that-star-wars-movie abt brainstorm being a con lmao, like what's even ur beef dude

when nightbeat is all like, wait there's a Type™ for decepticon double agents? and megatron says ‘hm. have you never been approached?’ bvhjaskdfbaksfd

mannn tho, I love all the character stuff this issue...I love the panels of megatron where he looks mad and crushes brainstorms mask, bc like, he’s gotta be thinking abt the fact that the djd, his personal squad of bloodthirsty attack dogs, were the ones responsible for all of this, as well as overlords presence, and brainstorm secretly being a con....

ok rewind and megatrons interactions are fantastic

like, rewind IS the nice one, but the definition of ‘nice’ is probably a little different than it used to be due to Big Ole War

how are they propelling themselves in space????

NOOOOOOO I'm so fucking sad, rewind 2 is literally like ‘I'm fine with being deleted from existence bc my husband and everything I knew is gone’ aughhhh

and then megatron lies and tells him that he and chromedome, on the og lost light, are ‘inseparable’ 😭😭😭 I mean I guess that's not a lie if you count cd rewatching rewinds goodbye video on loop...AUGHHH

‘let’s not drag out the goodbyes’ but rewind, what about one of the story’s themes, ‘how to say goodbye and mean it’?

and we cut off right there for maximum suspense...

omg I love swerve like, fistbumping cyclonus in the chest, and cyclonus is just like ?

skids,,,,,maybe surprising chromedome with his not-so-dead alternate-version husband isn't the best idea...like, this isn't exactly a zero-explanation-necessary kinda situation...

I adore rewinds massive shoulder pads tbh

oh god. GODDDDD. the panels of rewind and chromedome sitting next to each other, not saying anything, and just slowly moving closer to each other while looking out at the stars....literally these gay robots invented romance, thank you very much

I'm so fucking tender guhhhhhhh

like,,,,the fact that both of them separately watched the other die horribly and could do nothing to stop it, and now they're reunited here, and they don't even need to say anything...AUGH.....

OUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'm sorry I can’t. SO tender

and MANNNN I'm so so glad that rewind is back. I don't always love when characters don't stay dead but I'm completely happy w/it here for multiple reasons, like the fact that I really like rewind and chromedome’s story after this arc - like, I LOVE that they addressed the fact that rewind 2 is different from OG rewind, despite being fundamentally the same person, so he and cd cant just immediately get back together and pretend everything's fine, but also there's really only an 18 month (?i think) disparity between the 2 rewinds which is nothing compared to literal millions of years, soooo

ALSO I literally never considered this until this reread but it would've been kind of an L for rewind to die and stay dead considering that rewind and cd were The First transformers gay couple, and that's a really big deal! and I don't really consider it bury your gays bc like, rewind doesn't stay dead that long and also there are soooo many other gays, but STILL

plus rewind and cd ended up having a lot of story left to get thru, which is awesome

also I just love rewind so I'm glad he’s back :)

ok the fact that the suspense over brainstorm being a con still isn't resolved bc not everyone knows....spectacular tbh

don't knock the power of love, nightbeat!

the briefcaseeeeeee

ok but I really don't remember jros explanation as to why rewind 2 and the briefcase didn't get deleted hvbhjsdkhfk I gotta go look that up again

OHHHHHHHHHH I FORGOT THE EPILOGUE IS THIS. OHHHHH MANNNNNN THIS IS ONE OF MY FAV PARTS

BRAINSTORMMMMMMMMM ILYYYYYYYYY

I fucking love this scene bc this is basically the culmination of brainstorm being Completely Ominous for the entire story thus far, like, it really hit me this readthru that brainstorm was so totally sinister for like most of his screentime up until this arc...and this scene is the pinnacle, I love how everything brainstorm says is overlaid with so much tension for the reader bc of what we know now about him

like brainstorm saying ‘yes - here’s to fixing things’ is so fucking sinister even though out of context that sentence is just normal

and when atomizer basically voices what the entire audience is thinking as brainstorm opens the briefcase - ‘brainstorm, you can’t do that.’ bc yeah, what the hell, he’s opening THE briefcase, Oh Shit

AND THEN THE FINAL SHOT....brainstorm front and center looking SCARY AS HELL.... ‘I can do whatever the hell I like.’....everyone suddenly collapsed around him...the fantastic shadowy lighting...the ominously open briefcase...the clear segue Directly into the next high-concept arc....[chefs kiss] ART

seriously I love this issue so much. SO many good things. such good character stuff, really great interactions, some fantastic plot development, super creative sci-fi fun times...all around just an extremely solid and enjoyable issue, 10 outta 10

and MAN OH MAN I cannot wait to get into the elegant chaos arc, it fucking SLAPS, that arc and remain in light have always been my favs, I'm so excited to revisit it

AND ruth bought the physical comic TPB for like issues 34-38 or something and I'm so so glad I can read that instead of braving the many split-up double page spreads on the online comic

so yeah, cant wait!

#lj rereads mtmte

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sal2724 · 4 years ago

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IMPORTANCE OF READING

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, the man who never reads lives only once. ~ George R.R. Martin”

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a GOOD LIFE. The more you read the more things you know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go. I always used to wonder why some people are creative and some are not. But then when I searched about it every research said that reading is a great tool to success. It is said that Every reader may not be a leader but every leader is a great reader.

Reading is an exercise for the mind. It helps kids calm down and relax, opening doors of new knowledge to enlighten their minds. Kids who read grow up to have better cognitive skills. Reading is good for everyone, not only children or young adults.

Why reading is important for all age groups?

1.It helps you discover yourself

Every good book opens up new dimensions of thoughts for the reader. When you read a book, you somehow try to connect the events, emotions, experiences and characters in the books with yourself. This not only keeps you engrossed into the book but it also makes you realize how you would react and feel to those situations that have not yet occurred in your life.

It helps you broaden your dimension of likes and dislikes and things that would please you. So with every page that you read, you have a chance to discover a new part of yourself!

2. Imparts valuable lessons from years of experiences

Books are not written in a day. For an Author, it takes a lot of hard work, understanding, experiences, knowledge and in many cases lots of pain to come up with a single book. But we as a reader get to read them in just weeks or days thereby living years of experiences in considerably less time.

3. It improves your Focus and Concentration

The Internet has definitely revolutionized our world. But there’s a huge drawback too. For many of us, a large part of our day is spent surfing, chatting, watching videos, reading unnecessary memes and articles online. No wonder people are growing more impatient and losing focus.

However, reading books is one of those constructive habits that actually help us improve our concentration power. It helps us to train our brain to focus our attention and live in the present.

4. Reading improves your emotional health

Books are full of emotions. Sometimes they will make you cry with every turning page and sometimes they will just keep you smiling. It can fill you with anger when the antagonist of the story succeeds in his evil plan, but again it can give you immense pleasure to see your hero achieving his goal.

Books can make us happy, sad, jealous, loved, betrayed and so on! Books are thus an amalgamation of different mixed emotions that ultimately help us grow emotionally!

5. Importance of Reading in memory enhancement

There are a lot of things that we need to remember while reading a book. Name of the characters and their features, name of the places, plots and sub-plots, the sequence of events, important conversations etc. are some of the key information we need to keep in mind while reading. And the ability to retain these information keeps improving with the number of books that you read.

As your brain learns to remember the information from the story-line, it also becomes better at remembering other things of your life. So by reading books, you are also indirectly training your brain in improving your memory.

6. It’s a great source of motivation Life is tricky.

Sometimes there are moments in our life when we feel down and discouraged. We may lose our hope and interest in life and just want to give up. Well, in times like this, sometimes all we need is a little motivation, little push in the right direction.

Reading a good inspirational book during such period can change our way of thinking and give us hope and motivation. Books are no doubt a huge source of motivation. We can derive great inspirations from them and transform our lives positively.

7. It expands your knowledge and makes you smarter

Books are a very rich source of information. With every book you read, you get to learn new things. The more you read, the more you know about different people, their behavior and experiences, different places, different cultures and facts that otherwise you would not have known.

Reading books somehow or the other adds depth to your knowledge base. With your increasing knowledge, you become capable of making better decisions and choices in life. You become aware of your surroundings and tend to have an open mind.

With so many new things learned, people who read, obviously tend to be smarter than people who don’t!

8. Broadens your Imagination and enhances your creativity

“It was a bright cold day on April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. This is the famous opening line of the novel 1984 by George Orwell.

How do you interpret this line?

In reality, we hardly experience conditions like this. Standard Striking Clock strikes a maximum twelve times. Similarly, we rarely have a day both bright and cold simultaneously. However, George Orwell tries to paint the gloomy yet hopeful condition of life by some imaginative references. The interpretation can vary from person to person though.

This is the beauty of books. It makes you imagine things beyond possibility – things that would not come to our mind normally. Books give you a lot to think about. They also give you the opportunity to have your own perspectives and imaginations into play!

Apart from this, different creative characters, plots, and approaches trigger your creativity as well. You become both creative and imaginative!

There are also many books on creativity that can particularly shape and boost your creative thinking.

9. It makes you more empathic

Another reason why reading is important is because it makes you empathic. Being empathic means being able to understand and share the feelings of others. Books connect you with their characters and plots. You yourself become a part of the book and feel what the characters are supposed to feel. You understand their pain and grievances.

Books also somehow make you feel connected with the authors. You are constantly in some sort of conversation with the book. When you are attentive to reading books, you are actually listening to what the book has to say to you. This makes you a good listener. So reading books develop empathy and thus help you to understand what others feel under different circumstances.

10. Reduces stress and helps you sleep better

Reading is one of the best ways to relax your mind. According to a

Research by University of Sussex

Reading for even six minutes can reduce your stress levels by as high as 68 percent!

Psychologists believe that this is probably because when we are lost in a book, our mind is focused on reading and that little distraction from the real world and our problems into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and heart.

So the ultimate way of relaxing your mind is by losing yourself in a book! Read more and you will realize yourself that your stress level becomes significantly low with time.

Reading has a pretty positive impact on another important aspect of our life – a good night sleep! Reading books calms your mind and helps you sleep better.

However, avoid reading thrillers, horror, and mystery or suspense genre books before going to bed. If you are so lost in such books, you might end up staying awake instead. So, better read some calming, inspirational books that would give you positive vibes without making you impatient.

11. Importance of Reading in enhancing your critical and analytical thinking

While reading, a lot of information are being processed in our brain simultaneously. It opens up many different perspectives for your brain to comprehend. If you are reading a mystery or suspense book, your brain constantly tries to guess certain outcomes and events. It also has to relate one event to the other to make sense in the story. All this, in turn, sharpens our mind and enhances our critical and analytical thinking skills.

12. It gives you joy and pleasure

One basic reason why we read is simply because we enjoy reading. Reading brings joy and happiness in our life. We don’t have to depend on someone else to be happy and pleased. It’s true that sometimes reading can be little challenging or even boring, but such conditions are very rare if you know your taste and choose your books accordingly.

13. It makes you humble

Reading books not only enlighten you with knowledge, but it also makes you realize how much you do not know about the world. With each book teaching you something new, you can’t help but think how limited your knowledge is.

You read a book because you know it will add some new pieces of information in your mind which was so far unknown to you. However, it definitely does not mean you are not smart. It simply shows that you have accepted the truth that what you know is not everything.

There are so many things you can learn and this would not be possible unless you are humble enough to accept this truth!

14. Improves your vocabulary, language command, and communication skills

If you are a reader, you probably know the importance of reading in enhancing your vocabulary. Reading books is one of the best ways to improve your vocabulary.

Moreover, the conversations in the books also help you to strengthen your command over the language. Your sentence formation becomes quick, better and qualitative. You rarely get stuck for lack of words.

Once you have a richer vocabulary and controlled command over the language, your communication skills automatically become better.

15. Importance of reading in improving your brain functions

Books has tremendous power. It can shape our lives for good. It can also significantly improve our brain functions!

16. Being lonely will not bother you much

If you are a book lover, you are never really alone! You can always have a friend in the form of a book. And there’s reason why book lovers consider books to be their best friends. Books don’t complain, neither do they have any demands. They just be with you no matter what. You can carry them wherever you want and read them whenever you want provided you make time for reading.

17. It makes you a better person

One of the most significant importance of reading is that it helps you grow as a person. As mentioned above, reading makes you empathic and humble.

You learn about the hardships in life from experiences of others. You will learn to understand people and be kind and gentle. You will have a better emotional health. Your increased knowledge can also be useful for other people who may look up to you for advice and suggestions. With all this, you are bound to become a better human being!

SO YEAH YOU GUYS ARE AT THE END OF MY BLOG, SO IT MAKES YOU A VERY GOOD READER. CONGRATS. DO READ MY OTHER BLOGS TOO!!!

#writer #writers #reader #importance of reading #good reader is a good leader #leadership #blog #read me #reading is a great habit #red hairs #cute dog #blvm

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evilelitest2 · 4 years ago

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Why do Nazis even love Nietzsche? Isn't he the guy who said something akin to "only someone who is worthless person by himself would find pride in his country of origin" or something like this?

He also made fun of antisemitism, disliked Germany and wanted a version of the EU to emerge. There is a reason why Nazis stan Nietzsche, but lets be honest here, most of them haven’t read Nietzsche, or maybe they read Will to Power and a few segments of Thus Spoke Zarathustra) so its not entirely Nietzsche fault that Nazis like him, they haven’t actually read him. This is compounded by the fact that Nietzsche really loves to write super provocative statements whose meaning isn’t entirely clear out of context of his larger philosophy, so its super easy to read a Nietzsche quote and think its one thing when there are many quotes actually put it in a different perspective. This isn’t helped by the fact that Nietzsche philosophy is deliberately contradictory and he likes saying statements that don’t match each other, which does make his point but does mean he is super easy to quote to support your position, which is gold to Neo Nazis.

So most of this is Nazis not understanding the things that they like (I mean a lot of Nazis liked Tolkien) but its not just that, Nietzsche is kinda special because he was co-opted by them during his life time, and Hitler personally was attached to his writings so lets talk about specifics in Nietzschian world view that Naizs find attractive ( @afriendtokilltime you might want in on this)

1) An interest in violence

Nietzsche himself as far as I know, never did a violence, he mostly just stayed home and played video games, but he is super into violence as an aesthetic, he finds violence fascinating and he thinks that pacifist or non violent moral worldviews are hypocritical, sentimental, and pathetic. And unlike most people who dismiss pacifism, whose critiques tend to be super easy to dismiss, Nietzsche is one of the like 3 philosophers ever who have actually managed to argue in favor of violence in a way that is at least compelling. Possibly because he didn’t do violence, he just watched Hellraiser 83 times in a row, so he is approaching the subject more philosophically.

Problem is that Nazis LOVE violence, and are basically a violence worshiping death cult that prefer murder to sex (Umberto Eco was right) so their is a logic to them loving Nietzsche

2) Fetishization of force. Nietzsche is really into power and specifically the aesthetics of power, which explains both his popularity with teenage boys and Fascists. Now that isn’t inherently wrong in itself, there are are ways to appreciate force and power that doesn't necessarily lead to fascism but Fascists LOVE this shit.

3) A fixation on Will. Nietzsche is really into the notion of will and the power of the human spirit in overcoming adversity, and its relationship to fate, with this notion of human will power overcoming obstacles, even those of a cosmic nature. This can be a very interesting theme on its own, if you’ve ever read the manga berserk that is super Neitzsche in design, it kinda servers as a primer on Neitzsche philosophy. Fascists don’t take this idea as far as Nietzsche does, with their love of conformity and authoritarianism, but they do love the notion of WILL and the “Great Man”. This is made worse because both Fascists and Nietzsche define themselves by conflict

4) Romanticism. I can write a whole essay on the influence of Romanticism on fascism, but Nietzsche, while not a romantic, is clearly influenced by it. Nietzsche would eventually back down on, but there is a reason why he was super into Wagner before eventually being like “wow fuck that guy”

5) Hatred of Modernity. Nietzsche wasn’t impressed with the modern day world, far prefering the Ancient Greeks, though he wasn’t as much of a conservative as some he had a reactionary disposition even if he is actual world view was more complicated than just reactionary posing

6) Hatred of Christianity and sympathy for Paganism, which aren’t fascist beliefs in themselves but will win you points with a lot of fascists

7) Dismissal of Democracy.

8) Disbelief in human equality. Nietzsche doesn’t believe people are equal or even have equal rights, he thinks most people are sheep except for a few exceptional individuals. This would be corrupted into Nazism and Objectivism both of which I think Nietzsche himself would find abhorrent and stupid

9) because he watched Fight Club too many times, Nietzsche is really into Machismo and not that into women. There is a lot of masculinity focus in his work which is basically the gateway drug to fascism is problems with women and focus on macho culture

10) He has a very...Neo Classical fixation which Fascists also like, though so do liberals.

11) Finally, Nietzsche rejects most forms of morality, thinking them hypocritical and mostly followed out of peer pressure rather than true ideals. Fascists like his rejection of conventional morals, though unlike him they still stick to their own nonsensical ethic structures.

So there are some similarities but lets not go too far. Despite sharing a lot of assumptions, Nietzsche was hyper individualist, anti militarist, anti nationalism, rather ashamed of being german, he didn’t like patriotic attitudes and valued art more than anything. Also Nietzsche, while having some issues with jews was not as anti Jewish as you’d expect from a German in the late 19th century. Even his attitudes towards women got less shitty as he grew older.

Finally its important to understand, Nietzshche is basically the most intelligent 15 year old boy in history, who eventually morphs into a 16 year old boy. SO he is really creative, has lots of interesting ideas, he has a ton of interesting perspectives and is probably the best writer of all the philosophers but like...he is also a 15 year old boy at heart.

#ask EvilElitest #nietzsche #Fascism #thus spoke zarathustra #Will to power #the gay science #Wagner #genealogy of morals #birth of tradegy #nihilism #human all too human #beyond good and evil

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shinahbee · 4 years ago

Text

October Favorites 2020!

Hello!

i'm going to start bringing these favorites of the month from my deviantart to here on tumblr. Hopefully you will find something good out of the things that I have been liking recently, please leave in the comments anything that you have been liking this month ( books, manga, anime, tv shows...etc) I have been a little uninspired for a while, but I'm still working on a few new digital art pieces as well as continuing my painting hobby, so there's a lot of content on the way!

okay so on to the things that I've been liking this month.

So if you've seen my latest digital art " who's baby is it?" I have been delving into web toons which I have not read other than mo dao zu shi since I watched the anime and It just suddenly stopped after season 2. I thought reading the web toon would answer some of those questions i had. It lead me to reading a bunch of webtoons all in the shounen ai category for some reason...lol. and I've been really liking some of the stories, Until this point web toons never really interested me since I've been reading manga since I was younger , so i've been used to just seeing the black and white pages of art, since web toons have coloured pages, it makes me appreciate the effort they used to colour every panel, so a lot of work went into these so i appreciate it for what it is even if the story inst great.

let me preface by saying that even though i'm delving into BL, i've been exposed to yaoi ever since I was in high school by one of my best friends, she lent me her favorite anime which was " gravitation" and all remember was wanting a man that was like yuki...lol. don't we all?

since then I have been reading some yaoi manga...only ones that are NOT predicated on sexual violence and abuse, which I know is prevalent in this category, I just don't like it and the message it sends, so i avoid that all together.

unless of course it has a particular message it wants to convey, not glorifying it. if that makes sense.

okay so here are my recommendations, i'll give a very brief summary of each of them

Manga/Manhwa:

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Who's baby is it?

- “a man named yi yun wanted to be an actor and is part of an acting company for several years and still was not successful, apparently it was because he was born with really bad luck, so to change his life perspective he decided that he wanted to be a surrogate father and donate his sperm to a surrogate mother in order to have a child that is his blood. So he and his child were living happily together through yi yuns work periods and suddenly there is a man that claims he is the child's actual blood related father and wanted to take the child into his custody.”

please read the summary I have in my fan art, I've wrote my thoughts on this manhwa.

To be or not to be

- “A company president diagnosed with cancer and died has been transmigrated into his favorite novel, where he was reborn as the antagonistic emperor that the main character defeats in the end, on top of which the main lead is currently the captive of said emperor, so in order to survive he will do anything to protect the protagonist and make sure he stays alive inside the novels universe.”

oh to be or not to be that is the question...lol. it really is. currently is is one of my favorites, I like how modern day people can look at the acts of history and modify certain things so that it would less likey repeat itself for the worse, we need this sort of mentality at this moment...

Social temperature

- “Song Yuan is indifferent when dealing with people he is an elite student at T- university as a science major, one day his friend started to question his sexuality and set him up with a month trial dating app as a joke, as soon as he went to delete the app on his phone, he was suddenly matched with a boy named "Mu", who turns out to be his classmate/ rival in his science program, his named is Xaio Mu , he is an exchange student abroad and got into this elite science program, hoping to meet new friends he approached song yuan and proceed to converse with him only to be ridiculed by him saying that he wears too much perfume and it made him sick so then he became the class social outcast.But after using the app to converse with "Mu"...song yuan became curious as to what he is actually like...using the fake name and bio of " Andrew " they start to get to know each other more.”

omg , this is triggering for me, since Mu is basically me a few years ago when I was also in a medical science program minus the talking on tinder thing lol, I felt as though everyone in that program was in it for themselves and I didn't not like the how people think they are entitled to everything...that's why i'm not in it no more.lol. there are a few plot holes in the story that I don't really get but other than that I really like this story I read the chapters that are out so far like 3 times cause I'm waiting for the rest to be translated. I also actually read the Novel by the same author of the manhua called " social outcast" so if you just want to read it in text format please read that novel instead, I like the novel up to a point and then it didn't really make sense after wards..lol.

so i can't say that i recommended it completely. Also Mu's character design I really like, thus i'm going to make a fan art of him soon...omg he's so beautiful, i'm in love lol.

Salad Days ( tang liu zang)

- “This is the story between a young innocent ballet boy and a passionate, determined boxing boy. The two met at the children’s palace, and since then, they have grown up together supporting each other. May there be hardships, may there be obstacles, yet they never stopped pursuing their dreams. The beauty of the salad days is the sweat from the hard work and the bonding of friendship. Although they have completely different paths set up for them, what never changes is their beautiful friendship.”

wow this story so far is really beautiful, I was in ballet for 3 years so it was slightly relatable to me, I feel like the over all message is that people sacrifice a lot for their dreams and if you are very passionate about it, there's no on that can really stop you, the only one that can stop you is you. I can't wait to see this story progress further

K-dramas:

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it okay to not be okay - this probably has been mentioned as everyone's favorite, but rightfully so, I really like ko mun young's character as a person who seems like an assertive and powerful woman, but is suffering from a social disorder. and how moon gang tae has to not only deal with mental patients at his job but also his older brother being autistic, he himself is suffering from mental illness. this drama is something not a lot of dramas portray in dealing with mental illness and how the patients/ loved ones are feeling when watching them go through it all. I liked the story and the message and it made me cry in every episode, so fair warning...have tissues beside you as you watch.

itaewon class- I was not going to watch this because of the mixed reviews but I did any ways, and it was really good, a really good depiction of how money and power isn't the end all be all , and being happy is really the best revenge you can get, it also addresses racism and prejudice on one character and sexism on a trans-gendered woman. I also think this is a story that protrays something that really hasn't been exposed to in k-dramas specifically. It depends on your morals and what you understand so far in your life wether you would like this drama or not, so i understand the mixed reviews that it gets, but for me it was a really good story.

Anime/ TV shows:

---------------------------------------------

I don't have any anime recommendations this month mainly cause I have not been watching any, but there are some that i might watch soon so I will list those below, let mew know if any of you have seen them and should I be watching them.

- Nobelese

-yasha hime ( inuyasha new series)

-Haikyuu new season

-heavens official blessing ( same author of mo dao zushi) - just started watching

-scum bag saving system- just started watching

Music :

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so I have just been listening to a lot of OSTs,

I really recommend the itaewon class soundtrack, all the songs are so good!

my favorite on is " crush- No words "

also my friend has been sending me NCT and super M practice videos so I've been listening to their music as well, please listen to make a wish by NCT U, it has been stuck in my head and I cant get it out...lol.

------------------------------

that's all for this October faves summary. please comment below if anything interested you for the month of October, I would also like to read your recommendations as well, please also take care of yourselves especially now with all that's escalating in the world.

take care!

sheena

#monthly favorites #anime and manga #journal #manhwa #october favorites #drama favs #kdrama #manga favorites #whos baby is it #salad days #social temperature #to be or not to be

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hongism · 5 years ago

Text

finding beauty in your darkest places - chapter 1

Pairing: TBA (we’ll see where this takes us lol - let’s just call it OT7xreader for now)

Genre: Psychiatric Clinic!au, Heavy Angst, Some Fluff

Word Count: 8802

Warnings: deals with mental and emotional illnesses and disorders as a heavy theme of the story, future graphic depictions of disorders - please do not read if this makes you uncomfortable

Rating: PG-13/Mature (nothing sexual, but it deals with heavy themes)

Summary: Everyone has their issues, and everyone deals with them differently. Jungkook thinks that avoiding his problems is the best option out there.

aka

Jeon Jungkook is the newest patient at the Omelas Specialized Psychiatric Clinic, and he just wants to get in and out as quickly as possible so that he can go back to university and be with his friends again. Of course, that doesn't work out according to his plan.

also! this idea came out of nowhere and i kinda just ran with it. we'll see where it takes us! lemme know if you like it and if you'd like to see it continue! also, i am very curious as to what you think each person has in terms of disorders, if you have any idea thus far! i really only insinuated it with three or four people, but i'm very curious about what you guys think so let me know below!

Note: please know that nothing in this story is meant to be a glamorization of any disorder, this is meant to be a real approach and depiction of these things, and i did a LOT of research prior to writing this about every disorder mentioned so that i was careful about what i wrote about each one. I am trying to be as knowledgeable as possible in terms of the content written within this story. I do not intend to glamorize any disorder within this story whatsoever.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, I did a lot of in-depth research before writing this work, and I continue to do more research with every chapter I post. I truly try to be as accurate as I possibly can by reading articles, watching videos, and doing other medical research in order to write this with as much knowledge as I can. The last thing I want to do is incorrectly depict something as serious as a mental or emotional disorder.

That being said, some things contained within the story are altered or distorted from the truth, including the nature of the clinic the story is based in for the purpose of plot and characters. Note that I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or anything close to either of those things and that this is a work of fiction at the end of the day.

Chapter:

1 | 2

...

Finding Beauty in Your Darkest Places

Chapter 1: Jeon Jungkook?

The white room suffocates him. Of all places to be, this would be the last on his list, because he knows that behind the white door with the small rectangular window lies a number of unknowns. They know he hates the unknown, despises it and fears it with every fiber in his being, yet they still throw him to the wolves like this? It was supposed to be a warning, a mere threat, but now he’s sitting here in this cushionless white chair alone. One duffel bag in the seat beside him and nothing else.

“Jeon Jungkook?”

He lifts his head at the sound of his name, a crisp voice calling it out through the stiff silence of the whiteness around him. The door he has been dreading since he set foot in here now lies open, a young woman—you, L/N Y/N, he would later find out—in the frame, wearing clothes he would not have expected a nurse to wear. Also behind the door, however, is a man who seems quite a bit older than you, and he bears the pale blue scrubs Jungkook was expecting to see. The man sends Jungkook’s heart through his stomach, but the cold stare of the you imbues a strange sense of dread. He stands up, trying to ignore how his legs quiver as he does, and wipes his palms against the fabric of his grey drawstring sweatpants. You tap your foot against the white tile floor, piercing eyes glancing over his form, then place a hand on your hip.

“I’m assuming that’s you, since your voice doesn’t seem to work?” Jungkook chokes on his breath.

“Y-Yes, sorry, um, yes. I’m the new patient?” He balls the fabric of his pants into his fist.

“I know that. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be saying your name.” Jungkook tries to blink away the stinging sensation in his eyes and bites down hard on his lower lip. This is exactly what I was afraid of. “Relax, kid. I’m messing with you.” Your voice softens, and when Jungkook dares to bring his gaze back to you, you wear a more sympathetic and relaxed expression. “That’s how they treated me when I got here, but having been in your shoes, I know how hard it is. We’ll have to check your bag and belongings before I take you in, okay?” You walk closer to him, tapping your nails against a wooden clipboard. You blink at Jungkook as though waiting for something. “Permission granted?” Comes the question when he still says nothing.

“Oh, yes! Yes, sorry, I didn’t think you would ask,” Jungkook says, before adding hastily, “for permission, that is.”

“Right, gotcha. I’ll let him—” you motion over your shoulder to the man dressed in scrubs “—pat you down since you seem...nervous. Ah, right, he hates introducing himself, but that Nurse Kang. He doesn’t like being called anything other than that.” You drop your clipboard on the chair beside his duffel bag, and Jungkook shifts his gaze from you to the nurse — Nurse Kang, that is.

“Um…”

“The pat downs are part of protocol, so no, you can’t avoid it. But you should at least know his name before he basically feels you up.” You slide a coy smirk Jungkook’s way. The heat rises up his neck before he knows it, and you laugh at the expression on his face, whatever it may be.

“Stand over here, arms straight out.” He does as asked, facing Nurse Kang as the man searches his pockets for anything out of the ordinary. “Turn around.” When Jungkook faces you, your eyes watch him instead of the duffel bag in the chair. Well, to be more specific, you are analyzing Nurse Kang as he does his work. “No drawstrings, kid.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll have to take the drawstring of your sweatpants out,” you explain, finally turning towards his duffel bag. “The clinic doesn’t allow any object that could be a potential harm to any of the patients inside. Out of courtesy for your fellow patients and insurance of the utmost safety for all people within the clinic, you are asked to remove any such object from your being prior to entering the premises.” You speak with a cadence, a playful one, as though you’ve heard the statements a thousand times.

“Anything can be used as a weapon,” Jungkook argues. You spin on your heel, sending a pointed look at him, and shake your head. The playful gleam drops from your eyes, leaving Jungkook to stare into a cold brown color.

“If I were you, I would avoid saying anything like that once we’re inside. You have to understand this: the people inside have different issues, different brains, different wirings to their mentalities and emotions. Even saying something as simple as that could be a potential trigger for them, and it is highly recommended that you keep your mouth shut for the first few days so you can learn about your fellow patients. Safety is the most important thing here, then comes recovery. Understood?” He wouldn’t imagine arguing again when you’re speaking in such a serious tone.

“Yes ma’am.” Jungkook starts yanking his drawstring out, sighing as he does so because dammit these were brand new pants.

“Oof, no, don’t call me that. It’s weird, okay?” You cringe as though your whole body detests the word. “Pretty sure we’re close in age, I might even be older. I don’t know: I’m not allowed to see your file.” Jungkook places the drawstring in Nurse Kang’s awaiting hand with a huff.

“You’re good to go. Miss L/N, you’ll bring him in when you finish?”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

“You know the rules.”

“I’m not going to harass anyone, Kang.” You plaster a grin onto your lips as you face the nurse, who bristles at the way you say his name. “I’ll follow the rules. I’ve been here long enough to know them by heart. Besides, why on earth would I try anything with the receptionist right there?” You point at the lady behind a glass barrier that Jungkook spoke to when he came in initially. Nurse Kang rolls his eyes at your attitude. “See you later, Nurse Kang!” He ignores your pestering in favor of leaving through the door he came in, dropping Jungkook’s drawstring in the trash as he goes.

“What did he mean by that?”

“By what? The rules? The doctors were supposed to go over those when your parents agreed to ditch you here.” Jungkook opens and closes his mouth. “Sorry, was that insensitive?”

“No, I mean, yes kinda, but that wasn’t my question. Why does he have to ask if you know the rules?” You pick up Jungkook’s duffel, tossing it at his chest with no shortage of force. He coughs when it pegs him but catches it nonetheless. “What was that for?”

“For asking too many questions, newbie. Another thing you should know: don’t ask other patients about anything personal without asking if you have permission to do so or if they tell you themselves. Common courtesy of the clinic.” You snatch your clipboard off the chair, scribbling something on the paper there. Jungkook blinks at you again, examining your outfit of sweatpants (also without their drawstring) and a t-shirt.

“May I ask you a question then?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“What are you?” He inquires, and you scoff.

“Human, what are you?” You squint at Jungkook. When he shows no signs of laughing or even slight amusement, you purse your lips. “I, like you, am a patient. I’m not a nurse, and that’s why I don’t have permission to look at your files, so I don’t know what you have or how old you are, your tragic backstory — I know nothing except your name. Is that all you want to know?”

“If you’re a patient, then why are you doing this and not someone like Nurse Kang?”

“Because, Jungkookie — can I call you that?” You interrupt yourself with a smile.

“Um, no?” He denies, even though he suspects you’re going to call him that no matter what.

“Anyways, the clinic is special and unique for many reasons. One of those reasons is that it allows patients to pursue and do things that make patients feel less like prisoners and more like people. This includes helping induct new patients since it’s simple, easy work. So, I get to do fun stuff like this, and it’s best if patients give the clinic tours because we know all the secrets and best places in the clinic. You’ll learn more as you get settled in, and things will start making more sense in time. For now, why don’t you follow me, and I’ll show you around a bit before a nurse comes to snatch you away?”

“Please tell me that’s a joke,” Jungkook requests as he trails after you. He has never set foot on the other side of that white door with the barred window. All his previous visits consisted of staying in the waiting room or in the head doctor’s office, which is outside the area to which he heads now.

“Haha, of course it’s a joke, Jungkookie. Do you not have a sense of humor?”

“Apparently not one as morbid as yours,” he mutters under his breath. If you hear the comment, Jungkook doesn’t know because you make zero acknowledgement of it. Instead, you wait for him to cross through the threshold of the door, then let it fall shut with an echoing thud. Chills go up his spine as soon as it slams, the air around him dropping in temperature. You must notice the expression of discomfort that crosses his features, because you start up another conversation.

“Have you ever been to a clinic before?” The newfound warmth in your tone eases some of the anxiety growing in Jungkook’s gut.

“Uh, yes. Actually I’ve been to three others before this,” he admits, eyes trailing along the walls of white on either side of them. The confession causes his cheeks to burn with shame, as though the notion that three other doctors and inpatient facilities couldn’t help him is his guilt to bear. You motion towards the hallway, and he falls into step beside you.

“Wow, only three? How old are you then? Must be young if that’s the case.” Jungkook exhales a laugh, not out of amusement, rather out of disbelief. He welcomes your sudden desire to comfort him and make him feel more at ease.

“I’m turning 21 this year. I, uh, had to drop out of university for this, so I’m kind of hoping it’ll be my last one.”

“Damn, Jungkookie, here I thought you were younger than me.” Jungkook tilts his head to the side, glancing at you with mouth open and ready to ask the question of your age, but you cut him off before he can even begin to speak. “Anyways, what’re you in for?”

“Pardon?” The question catches him off guard in the worst way. Clenching his fists, he fights the sensation of tingling that starts on the left sigh of his head and trickles downwards. “What do you mean?” The rapid pace of his breath interferes with the words, and even with the chilly temperature, he senses a bead of sweat forming on his temple.

“Oh, hey, hey, sorry for asking. You good?”

“I’m fine!” he insists, although the white walls blend into one mass, and you turn into two people as his eyes start losing focus. Dammit not now. Get a grip. Can’t do this already, cmon.

“Right…” You don’t push the topic, which Jungkook supposes he should be grateful for, but it sends his brain further into a frenzy and convinces him that he has to justify his reaction.

“It’s anxiety, I’ve got anxiety. That’s all though.” You hum then click your tongue against the roof of your mouth. A pop resounds through the hallway. You stop walking to squint at Jungkook. He fidgets under your gaze, unsure as to what your reaction is supposed to mean.

“Bull—” you poke his shoulder with your index finger “—shit. Do you know the name of this clinic, Jungkookie?”

“Um, yes, it’s the Omelas Specialized Psychiatric Ward.”

“Exactly, and do you know what kind of patients Omelas takes?”

“Ones that need inpatient treatment?”

“Incorrect.” You tap his arm again, this time with much less force. “This is a specialized psychiatric clinic, meaning that any and all patients are admitted here because they have more than one disorder. So, that means that there is no way you can be here unless there are other things you’re dealing with.” Jungkook clears his throat. “I’m not saying this to be mean, Jungkook, and unless you’re a pathological liar, it would be best if you stick to telling the truth. If you want out any time soon, then honesty really is the best policy here.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“By the way, I have a question.” You take a step back, eyes lighting up.

“Please don’t ask about my disorder again,” he pleads, close to begging at this point because his heart rate still hasn’t returned to normal.

“No, no, no. I won’t ask again. Next time we talk about it will be because you want to, deal? That’s not what I want though. Um, do you have any cigarettes?” He almost thinks you’re joking and laughs aloud, but you blink up at him with a deadpan expression. Zero shame or embarrassment. He swallows, eyes narrowing, and hesitantly asks,

“Is this another one of your jokes?”

“No, I’m being serious this time.”

“I don’t have any cigarettes.”

“Vape pens? E-cigarettes?”

“No and no. All of those are bad for your lungs and health.”

“Oh great, that sounds too familiar.” You rub your forehead. “The last thing we need is another Yoongi.”

“Another who?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Miss L/N, you’re late to your appointment!” You and Jungkook both look down the hall where a woman in a set of blue scrubs stands, hands curled into fists and pressed against her sides. “How many times do we need to have this conversation? I said 9:00 sharp!”

“You said that would be tomorrow because of the new patient? I don’t have an appointment scheduled for today.” You shake your head, disbelief shining through your eyes as you confront the nurse across from you.

“Incorrect, Miss L/N. Plans changed. Need I remind you again?”

“Ah, you know how it is, Nurse Irene.” You maintain a smile even in the face of the nurse’s frustration, tapping your temple as though sharing some secret information with the woman. “I’ll head that way right now though. Please take care of Jungkookie for me, Nurse Irene!” You don’t stop to say goodbye to him; instead, you walk down the hallway and out of sight without another word, and once again, Jungkook finds himself alone with another unfamiliar face.

“You must be the new patient?” Nurse Irene asks, meeting Jungkook halfway down the hall. He nods in response, shifting his grip on the duffel bag, and keeps his gaze glued to the floor. “Well, I have a patient to tend to, but I will take you to someone who can show you around before I go. Follow me.” Doing as asked, he walks behind her, watching her short black heels click against the tile. “Did Miss L/N explain the basic rules within the clinic?”

“Um, no, but I heard most of it when my parents and I met with Dr. Choi.”

“Well that’s good, at least. I’ll explain some of the basics, and then I’ll leave the rest to your fellow patients. They can help you figure out the rules that aren’t so important, but must be adhered to nonetheless.” The stiff and cold tone brings a scowl to Jungkook’s lips that he hides from the nurse by scratching his nose. “Understood, Mr. Jeon?”

“Yes,” he replies.

“Yes what?”

“Yes ma’am.” The words hiss between his teeth, whistling through the air and leaving all the contempt and bitterness there for Nurse Irene to hear.

“Good. Now as for basic rules, here are just a few. You are not allowed to leave the building unattended unless showing high improvement in terms of your condition. Even if you do show high improvement and have approval from a specified staff member, you are not allowed to leave alone, meaning that another patient — also approved — must go with you. Otherwise, you can leave the clinic if accompanied by an assigned nurse. The number of times you can leave all depends on your condition and improvement. You must already know, but family members can visit once a week if they so desire, as long as it falls on a Sunday. All phones call must be monitored. You are free to walk around the clinic as you wish, but there will be certain areas that you may not have access to. This includes treatment rooms, meeting rooms, and other patients’ bedrooms. Questions thus far?” Jungkook lifts his chin at last, finding the surroundings to be quite different now that they are no longer in the long hallway.

“No questions, ma’am.” He peers around the open area, and the cloistering sensation of a typical psychiatric clinic breaks into his mind. The tingling of some unknown melody touches his ears, and for a second, Jungkook thinks he really must be going insane because he can’t find the source of it. The white on the walls has faded to grey but remains dull and monotonous still. If not for the color and the overwhelming steel bars over the windows, Jungkook would guess he’s in some person’s home, what with the couches and chairs strewn about. Tables that seat four, six, eight — the room, although large, leaves a boxed-in sort of feeling in Jungkook’s stomach. Despite all the available seating, no one fills a single place.

“This is our recreational living area. You have access to this area all hours between curfew. You can do whatever you like here. We have board games, card games, puzzles, books, magazines, and many other things. If none of that is your cup of tea, I’ll show you to our other amenities. If you look out this window as we pass, you’ll see we have a full basketball court for when you need fresh air. Then on our left, you’ll see our entertainment room, which includes TVs, game consoles, a piano, and two acoustic guitars. Oh, and one of your fellow patients happens to be here too.” Jungkook leans through the door frame, scanning the room, and finds the source of the unknown melody. There, sitting at the piano Nurse Irene mentioned, is a man whom Jungkook can only see the back of and whose black haired stands out in sharp contrast to the pale tone of his skin. Nurse Irene keeps walking, but Jungkook hesitates there, the melody transfixing him and holding him to his spot. The right hand of the player pauses in the air, and he tilts his head towards the door. Panicking, Jungkook ducks away and hurries after Nurse Irene before the man can catch sight of him.

“Now, to continue with our rules, Mr. Jeon, you should know that you will have a daily schedule that will include your medications, appointments, and any sort of group activities. Other than those things, you are free to do as you please around the clinic. Curfew is 11:00, meaning you must be back in your room by then. Breaching curfew will result in undisclosed punishment.”

“What the hell…” Jungkook whispers to himself. He speaks up a moment later, curiosity biting at the edges of his thoughts. “Um, Nurse Irene? How long do patients typically stay?”

“That all depends on the patient, Mr. Jeon. Usually, no one leaves in less than a year because of a willingness and a drive to continue treatment. Although rare, we have had patients leave in less than a year, but I wouldn’t say that they were fully treated when they decided to leave. Some, of course, do not put effort into getting better or improving, so they end up staying a long time. Others suffer greatly and tend to struggle with progress because of the combination of their disorders. We currently have two patients who have been here for almost six years now, but that’s the longest anyone has stayed.” Nurse Irene’s voice drops in volume. Her previously cold expression alters, morphing into a frown along with downcast eyes.

“Who are they?”

“That information is not my business to disclose. If you wish to know, then you may ask the other patients. Do keep in mind that it can be a sensitive subject. Those two patients have seen people come and go for six years, making friends only to have them leave later. It’s not easy.” Jungkook nods, finished with his questioning. Over a year? I’ll be so behind in my classes by then. Yugyeom and Mingyu will have moved up by then and I won’t be able to have classes needed for my major with them if that’s the case...God, am I gonna lose my life and my friends? He presses the heel of his hand to the spot between his eyes where a piercing pain arises. Nurse Irene just keeps walking and talking without a clue.

“We offer classes for all patients, seeing as most of our patients are at an age where they will be missing some form of school. You are not required to go to any, but we do recommend it. We’ve reached our last amenity, and this is where I will leave you. It’s our library and reading area. You’ll have access to all the books here and can take them out of the reading area so long as you check them out before you leave. Go ahead and follow me in, but give me a moment to speak to the patient inside.” The blue of Nurse Irene stands out now against the dark, rich brown of the bookcases that line the walls, as opposed to earlier where the grey and blue blended together. Jungkook takes in a sharp inhale at the sight of all the books. He should feel claustrophobic here, yet he finds himself more intrigued by the person within the library.

Though sitting down, Jungkook can tell that the man is tall based upon his long legs and how his head stands only a few centimeters shorter than the back of the chair. He seems well put together at first glance, certainly not someone Jungkook would expect to see in a place like this. When Nurse Irene clears her throat to announce her presence, the man looks up, a pair of thick framed black glasses over his eyes. The brown of the shelves around him makes his skin seem darker than it is in actuality, but even so, his skin is a deeper tone than most. He reaches for his face and dips a finger through the spot where a lens should be.

“Nurse Irene.”

“Mr. Kim, this is our newest patient—”

“—for whom Y/N is responsible for, correct?” He interrupts. Y/N? I wonder if he means the person who brought me in… Nurse Irene presses her lips into a fine line. “So where is Y/N?”

“Miss L/N is attending a pre-scheduled appointment at the moment. I have a patient to tend to, thus I am leaving the new patient with you so that you can finish showing him around and explaining the rules.” Pre-scheduled? That isn’t what Y/N said… The click of the nurse’s heel reaches Jungkook’s ear as she taps her foot against the floor. “I’m going to assume that you have no complaints and will do as asked. Thank you, Mr. Kim.” She turns on her heel as the man stands up, setting his book on the seat behind him.

“Of course, Nurse Irene.”

The nurse brushes past Jungkook as she rushes out the door. He watches her walk around the corner and disappear before bringing his focus back to the library. The man — perhaps not much older than Jungkook himself — wears a similar set of sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt, which gives Jungkook the idea that it must be a common outfit among patients here.

“Hello, you must be Jeon Jungkook? Y/N mentioned your name a few times.” He cocks his head to the side. The swell of panic rises in Jungkook’s gut, his throat threatening to collapse on itself before he gets a chance to speak. What had you said about him? What do you even know about him? “Don’t look so stressed, please. She just told me your name and that you’re the newest patient. I’m Kim Namjoon, one of your fellow patients.” The man extends his right hand. Jungkook blinks between the outstretched arm and Namjoon’s face, finding a soft grin on his full lips. The stark contrast between your greeting and Namjoon’s hits hard, but rather than inciting a sense of panic, Namjoon’s smile allows his heart to calm a bit. Jungkook grabs hold of Namjoon’s hand with his own trembling one. He attempts to hide all the signs of panic overwhelming his being by grinning back, but based on how strained and awkward it feels, he’s not sure he did a good job of concealing it. “I hope Y/N wasn’t too cruel to you. She lacks a filter sometimes and will say whatever comes to mind.”

“No, no, she was fine. I was a bit surprised and don’t do too well with new people, so…” Jungkook trails off, unsure of what to say because he would rather not throw you under the bus in front of Namjoon. The grin shifts into a slight scowl. Panic arises, and Jungkook tries to justify his words, but Namjoon speaks before he has the chance.

“She was mean, wasn’t she?”

“No! I promise she wasn’t.”

“Was it her humor? She thinks she’s funny, but honestly, her jokes are pretty much solely insensitive.”

“No—I—she’s hilarious.”

“Oh god, did she make you say that?”

“No, no, I—” Jungkook cuts himself off, a huff of air passing through his open mouth, “—I was trying to be nice, that’s all.” The smile returns to Namjoon’s features, a slight half turn to one side of his lips.

“You don’t have to do that. I won’t be offended if you admit that she was a little rude, because I know how she is. We can keep it between us though; she might get salty if I call her out for acting that way.” A heavy hands falls onto Jungkook’s shoulder, and he brings his chin up to look at Namjoon. “It may be a bit difficult to adjust at first, but I genuinely believe that you’ll enjoy it here, place and people both. Come on, I’ll finish showing you around and introduce you to some other patients.”

“Thank you,” he mumbles, bringing his bag to his chest and keeping it in a tight grip there. “Would it be alright if I asked you a few questions?” Namjoon laughs upon hearing the question. He motions for Jungkook to follow him out the door and responds once they’re back in the white hallway.

“Let me guess: Y/N told you not to inquire about anybody’s past or issues.” Jungkook shifts under the stare Namjoon directs at him, then offers a small nod to confirm his assumption. “Well, I am more of an open book than she is, so I’d be willing to tell you a bit about myself, if that’s what you are interested in. Otherwise, I can answer whatever questions you have about the clinic.”

“Well, all of that sounds nice actually, but I don’t want to pry or try to snoop around anyone’s personal life.”

Namjoon hums, hands pressed into the pockets of his sweatpants, then speaks, “Kim Namjoon. Age 23. Born September 12th. Majored in writing and literature at an online university. I read a lot, but I spend most of my free time writing and composing music. Hidden passion of mine. Good?”

“Um, y-yea.”

“How about you tell me a bit about yourself while we walk around? I’m assuming Irene showed you most of the amenities and such already, so we can simply wander in search of other patients for the time being.” The lump in Jungkook’s throat swells further, and despite not having any food in his stomach, the contents there still threaten to spill forth onto the squeaky clean floor. The overwhelming focus on him and his life sends waves of distress over his body. Brushing a few strands of wavy hair off his damp forehead, he clears his throat as though it’ll change the panic rushing through him.

“Ha, uh, well you already know a lot a-about me. Jeon Jungkook. 20 years old. Born Sep-September 1st. Yea, that’s all.” Namjoon sighs, refusing to elaborate on his thoughts about the response Jungkook gave. Does he think I’m weird or crazy? Probably crazy...can’t even function in a normal conversation. Dumb, stupid, idiot. Cmon Jungkook. Get it together. “So, uh, the nurses—do they all act like Nurse Irene?”

“Oh?” The question must catch Namjoon off guard, but he doesn’t reveal it with his expression. “No, not all of them. Irene prefers to have perfect control over everything here in the clinic. The other nurses and patients try to steer clear of her because of that. Not all of them are as bitchy and commanding as she is, but some of us are used to her behavior because we’ve been with her for quite some time.”

“We currently have two patients who have been here for almost six years now, but that’s the longest anyone has stayed.”

“She mentioned that...that two patients have been here for a longer time than anyone else?” Jungkook pushes an inquiry into the end of his statement, the uncertainty surrounding Namjoon’s reaction taking precedence over anything else. “Not that it’s any of m-my business, I’m just—well nevermind.”

“No, she’s right. Two patients have been here for six years. Well, five years and nine months, to be accurate. The identity of those two people isn’t important though. I mean, what good will knowing do?” Namjoon doesn’t care to look at Jungkook, but the younger feels the heat behind the words nonetheless. Blood rushes to his head as embarrassment takes over, and he regrets introducing the topic.

“Sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“One thing to know about your fellow patients: people talk when they want to and when they feel secure in a situation or a relationship with someone. I haven’t asked you about why you’re here in the first place, have I?”

“No.”

“I’m grateful you haven’t asked me that question either, but even if an inquiry seems harmless, it could prove uncomfortable or disconcerting to another person. We have to watch our words with great caution around here. It took me a long time to get into that habit. Y/N struggles with that concept too, but I would advise not learning from her.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a nurse and answer with such rigidity. I’m just trying to look out for you. I know how hard it is to adjust to this kind of situation and lifestyle, so it would be incredible if I could make it a bit easier for you to handle.” Warmth strikes Jungkook, and he blinks up at Namjoon, who smiles with his dark brown eyes more than his lips. “Why do you seem so shocked?”

“To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from anyone here, nurses or patients or doctors. The previous clinics and inpatient facilities I’ve been to...no one was like you. Everyone was there for themselves, and they didn’t who they had to step on to get out the quickest. I didn’t make friends in any of those clinics, because no one wanted that. Personal relationships were a completely separate entity.” The rant spills from his lips without thought, inhibitions leaving him in that brief moment before they rush back like a tide. Jungkook presses his chin against the top of his duffel bag, still maintaining the tight clutch he has on it.

“Even if some here seem a little rough at first, you’ll find that they all care about the people around them, no matter who they are or how new they are. Y/N too, she just...well, I don't know what excuse to give for her, but she’ll come around.”

“How many patients are here? Dr. Choi never mentioned it when we met.”

“Fourteen, now fifteen with you here. The nurses always say that they don’t want to exceed twenty patients at a time, since that would take away from treatment possibilities, so I guess we have a rather small clinic. I can’t compare it to another clinic; this is the only one I’ve been to, but I’ve read articles on other inpatient facilities. We’re rather lucky to have Omelas. It focuses on quality of life for the patients, which I’m not sure is the focus for other ones.” It’s not, Jungkook thinks. He opts not to vocalize what is on his mind, however, finding comfort in his own silence. The ease of listening to Namjoon talk is something new to him, but it calms some of the anxiety threatening to choke him still. “You mentioned that you’ve been to other clinics. Would it be alright if I asked how many?” Jungkook keeps staring ahead of him as they round a corner. The tinkling of music hits his ears again.

“Three. None of them were great, and two were overcrowded with patients who just dealt drugs and swapped medications right under the nurses’ noses. I’m hoping for a better experience here.”

“I promise Omelas will be better than that. We already beat out two of those clinics, right?” A huff of air passes through Jungkook’s lips. Namjoon pauses his movements outside the entertainment room Jungkook saw earlier, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the person inside. “Ah, we better not interrupt.” Namjoon clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the pop echoing through the hall, and motions for Jungkook to keep moving. “You’ve already seen this part right? What about the kitchen and eating areas?”

“Nurse Irene didn’t show me that part. Um, who was that playing the piano?” Jungkook jogs to keep up with Namjoon’s long legs and quick feet.

“Him? He's another patient, Min Yoongi.”

“The last thing we need is another Yoongi.” The words you spoke to him earlier ring in his head, and Jungkook does a double take, whipping his chin back to catch a glance of the man at the piano one more time.

“Not to pry, but is there some sort of bad blood between him and Y/N?”

“I swear, kid, every time you say “not to pry”, you pry.”

“S-Sorry, nevermind, um we can change the subject.”

“No, it’s okay. As far as I’m aware, there is no bad blood there, and there’s never been.”

But the way Y/N talked about him...Y/N sounded annoyed. I guess it’s none of my business though.

“Hey, Joon!” Jungkook snaps his attention forward, a surge of cold rushing through his body at the sound of a new voice.

“Mingyu!”

Mingyu? The stupidity of Jungkook’s hope is laughable, because how on earth would his friend be here of all places? And how would Namjoon know him? No, the face before him shares no resemblance to the person Jungkook knows so well. His hope dissipates as quickly as it came, leaving him with an empty sensation.

“Jungkook, meet Mingyu and Yesung, they’re patients here too. Guys, meet Jungkook.” Jungkook presses his lips into a thin smile as he looks at the two newcomers. One, a tall man with lengthy limbs, cradles a basketball under his arm, and a few droplets of sweat cling to the strands of hair across his forehead. The other stands a bit shorter than his companion but shares in the sweat on his brow, chest heaving a bit.

“Hey, you must be the newbie.” The one carrying the basketball sticks a hand out for him to shake, and Jungkook takes his hand, trying to match the force of the handshake. “I’m Mingyu. Sorry we aren’t in peak condition to be introducing ourselves; we were just out playing a one on one match at the court. Yesung here thinks he won.” Mingyu shares a lopsided grin with the person next to him.

“I did win, fool.”

“Oh ha ha, we’ve got a cocky one over here.”

“Respect your elders, Mingyu,” Namjoon cuts in, a laugh trailing after the words.

“Yea yea, I know. Say, Jungkook, you don’t happen to play basketball, do you?” Mingyu tilts his head to the side, a smirk playing at his lips as he shifts his grip on the basketball.

“Uh, I-I used to in middle school.”

“You ought to join us for some matches. I mean, you seem like someone who works out a lot.” Something constricts in Jungkook’s chest. He squeezes his bag closer to his body, fighting the chill that runs down his spine, and clears his throat. He doesn’t dare speak again, because he’s certain that if he attempts to do so, anything that comes out will be garbled nonsense and embarrass him further. Instead, he forces a few nods to Mingyu’s satisfaction. “Well, see you around, newbie. Take good care of him, Joon.” Mingyu slides around Jungkook, shoulder bumping against his right one, but Jungkook blocks the brunt of the hit by pushing back. Air rushes through Mingyu’s cracked lips, a noise akin to a laugh seeps out, and he says one more thing in passing before disappearing around the corner. “Wouldn’t want to lose anyone again, would we?” The question means nothing to Jungkook, but he catches the way Namjoon stiffens, his spine straightening as he glares over his shoulder at the man who leaves. What happened? What did he mean by that, and why on earth did it make Namjoon so upset?

“Don’t let him bother you too much,” Namjoon says after a heave of breath. He rubs the skin on either side of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. “Disrespectful kid with too big a head on his shoulders. He’s always been like that.”

“That’s the kind of attitude I’m used to honestly.” Jungkook shrugs, hoping that Namjoon drops the topic. He does, and Jungkook thanks him silently before they move on, leaving the incident in the hall behind them.

“Here we are.”

The area bleeds white, causing the people who occupy it to stand out even more. Jungkook looks to his right first because the people catch his eye more than the contents of the room. Conversation ceases, eyes find Namjoon and Jungkook, silence envelopes the circular table where four people sit. There are three similar tables staggered nearby, all sharing six similar plastic chairs. Namjoon redirects his attention by placing a hand on his shoulder, and he tugs him to the left rather than going towards the table full of people.

“You should have access to the kitchen at all times, unless the nurses tell you otherwise, but the staff prepares meals for everyone three times a day. The main purpose of this is for patients to be able to prepare snacks and stuff when they need to since meal times are set in stone. Typical kitchen utilities: oven, microwave, stove, fridge, toaster. You can sit at the bar counter at any time, unless we’re all having a meal, then everyone has to sit at a table.” Namjoon motions over the counter. The group of people who sit at the table closest to the counter maintain their stares on Jungkook, curious eyes driving a churning sensation to his gut. “And you get to meet even more patients. You must be lucky; most of the time, everyone is spread out and hard to find.”

“I wouldn’t call myself lucky,” Jungkook mumbles, turning his head so that only Namjoon can see his lips move.

“I’ll try to make it easy for you,” he replies, “I promise. Hey guys!”

“Hi Namjoon!” A boxy grin and crescent eyes fill Jungkook’s visions as one of the people jumps forward, leaning across the table to get a better look at Jungkook. “You must be the new patient. I got so excited when I heard we were getting someone new, and even more excited after they told me that we would be roommates!”

“Uh, this is—”

“Taehyung! Kim Taehyung, age 21. This is going to be my fourth year here at the clinic, and they tell me that’s because I get too distracted with other stuff instead of focusing on my treatment. And you?” The barrage of information throws Jungkook for a loop, and he struggles to follow along with the speed at which Taehyung is speaking. He blinks at the older man for a few seconds after he finishes speaking. Namjoon saves the day and steps between Jungkook and the counter, blocking Taehyung’s line of sight.

“Tae…”

“Oh! I forgot again. You always remind me, but this happens every time doesn’t it? I’m sorry! I got too excited because I finally get to meet my new roommate.” Taehyung backs away from the counter, teeth digging into his lower lip as he hangs his head and takes a seat again.

“Tae, could you please introduce the others for me?” Namjoon’s words flip a switch in Taehyung’s demeanor, and the man straightens in his seat, the rectangular grin returning to his lips in the blink of an eye.

“Sure! I’d love to! This is my best friend, Jimin, Park Jimin—” Jungkook only notices the hunched over man when Taehyung leans out of the way, and he offers a small wave in greeting, which Jimin returns without looking him in the eye “—who’s the same age as me. Then this girl with the short hair is Eunbi, and the other girl with longer hair is Miyeon.” Jungkook passes a similar way to both the girls. Eunbi returns the gesture with much gusto and a broad smile that flashes her teeth, whereas Miyeon nods at him.

“Hi! Welcome to the clinic,” Eunbi beams from her seat. “I hope you enjoy it here. I know it’s difficult to transition into a place like this, but if you need any help, feel free to ask!”

“Thanks,” Jungkook mutters in response, swallowing after he speaks, and the sound that follows seems so loud that he worries everyone heard it. “My name’s Jungkook. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

“Jungkook?” Taehyung’s eyebrows shoot up, and he glances between Jungkook and Namjoon. “Are you the one Y/N was supposed to help earlier this morning? If she was supposed to show you around and stuff, then...where is she?”

“Nurse Irene mentioned an appointment? I’m not quite sure though.” Namjoon folds his arms over his chest then shrugs.

“Appointment?”

“Um, the nurse—Nurse I-Irene—she told Y/N to go to an appointment before she could show me around.”

“No, no, no. That’s not right.” Jungkook draws his lower lip between his teeth, unsure what to say in response to Taehyung’s denial. “No, Y/N wasn’t supposed to have any appointments today. She even asked me yesterday to remind her that it had been moved. It’s supposed to be tomorrow, that’s when it was moved to.”

“Probably a last minute appointment then,” Namjoon reasons.

“She’s been doing well. There shouldn’t be any last minute appointments.”

“You can ask her when you see her later. Now, have you guys seen anyone else around?”

“I saw Chaeyoung go to an appointment,” Eunbi answers, pressing her elbows against the table. “Um, Hyewon was in the entertainment room earlier with Yoongi, but I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Ah, well, I guess you’ll have to do with not meeting everyone yet, Jungkook. You can meet the rest at lunch or dinner if they show up. Sometimes appointments and meetings cut into eating hours.”

“Jungkook, do you want me to show you the room? Since we’ll be roommates, that is? I can show you where it is and which bed is yours, if-if you want.” Taehyung fidgets in his seat and pressed his hands under his legs. Jungkook hesitates, unsure of what to do, but Namjoon nudges him with his elbow as though to encourage him to go along with it.

“S-Sure, yea, sure. That sounds good. I’d like that,” he rambles. His agreement pleases Taehyung though, because the man abandons the plate of crackers in front of him in favor of joining Jungkook in the kitchen and tugging on his arm.

“Cool! The nurses spent most of the morning cleaning it and making it perfect for the new patient, I mean, for you, since you are the new patient. They even woke me up early to start cleaning. I bet they’re almost done by now! Cmon, I’ll show you the way.” Before Taehyung has the chance to pull Jungkook away, the younger shares a glance with Namjoon.

“I’m gonna chill with Yoongi in the entertainment room for a bit. I’ll be back later to help you out if you need me, Jungkook.”

“Ah, thanks.”

Jungkook follows Taehyung as best he can without being dragged along, and once they reach another long hallway, Taehyung releases his arm.

“By the way, how old are you? I’d say you seem a bit younger than me, but I’m terrible at guessing age. Most people here are younger than Jimin and me.”

“I’m 20, turning 21 this year.”

“Wow, I was right! You are younger, although not much.” Taehyung links his hands behind his back, nodding as he laughs to himself. “So, since we’re gonna be roommates, we should maybe get to know each other a bit?” Jungkook stops breathing for a moment, fearing the worst out of Taehyung’s inquiries. “What kind of things do you like to do in your free time?” An exhale of relief follows Taehyung’s question, and Jungkook lets a relieved smile cover his lips before answering with a bit more ease to his speech.

“When I was at university, I majored in film studies and had a minor in music. I played lots of intramural sports on the side, anything from swimming to wrestling, just for the hell of it.”

“What a coincidence! I majored in film studies before leaving for treatment.” Taehyung laughs, eyes disappearing behind his eyelids as he grins, and Jungkook can’t help but to laugh back, if only because he’s grateful that he’s found someone similar to him here. “I’m glad we have something in common. That’ll give us lots to talk about whenever we have down time!”

“Yea...I’d like that.”

Taehyung points to his right all the sudden, making an indiscernible noise as he does.

“This is our room! Hehe, “our”, that sounds weird to say. I’ve never had a roommate in all the time that I’ve been here. The nurses are still tidying up, I guess.” Taehyung leads the way into the bedroom that vaguely resembles a hospital room. In fact, Jungkook would be willing to bet that the modeling of the room was taken directly from a hospital, because the layout so closely resembles one now that he stands inside it. “Hey, where’s my bear?” Jungkook quits looking around the room, redirecting his attention towards Taehyung, whose smile has fallen. It takes a moment for him to realize that Taehyung isn’t talking to him but the two nurses near the beds.

“What do you mean, Mr. Kim?” One steps forward, her heels clicking against the floor much like Nurse Irene’s did earlier.

“The bear. My bear. The stuffed bear that I always keep on my bed. It’s from someone important to me. I know it was there before I left the room earlier. I checked fifteen times, because I had to keep resituating him!” Taehyung’s voice climbs in volume, and Jungkook recognizes the descent into panic as his chest begins to rise and fall with accelerating speed.

“I don’t recall seeing it,” the other nurse explains, keeping his voice at a steady medium in the face of Taehyung’s loud one. “We might’ve taken it when we stripped the beds and cleaned them. It might be in the laundry room.”

“No!” Taehyung steps forward, about to get in the face of the male nurse. “You have to find it now! Immediately! You have to!”

“Mr. Kim, please—”

“Please, it’s important and special and I need it. I need it. I have to have it.”

“I understand that, Mr. Kim, but I need you to listen to me right now. Let’s calm down a bit first, okay?”

“No. Nope. Not happening. I am not calming down!” Taehyung pushes the nurse to the side, hands gripping the sheets on the bed in front of him. “You did this wrong too! This isn’t how I do my sheets. I told you before how I like to have my sheets!” He tugs at the white fabric, yanking and pulling in attempts to tear it off the mattress, clueless to the people around him.

“We put everything together in the order that you like and followed your instructions when doing so. It’s all put together the way you like.”

“It’s not. I would know. And you lost the most important thing!” Taehyung releases the sheets to grip his chestnut brown hair instead, tugging at the wavy strands with enough force that Jungkook thinks he might start ripping chunks out. A mirror, just like a mirror.

“Mr. Kim, did you take your pills this morning?

“No, because things weren’t in the right order. I have to take them with the yogurt at the end of my meal, but no one brought yogurt this morning. It makes me antsy, and I can’t take them if it doesn’t follow that order.”

“I understand, Mr. Kim, I understand. Why don’t we go get your pills and some yogurt, have a small meal and talk, then we can go look for your bear? Does that sound good?” Taehyung drops his hands to his side but keeps clenching his fists over and over. Is this some sort of sick joke? Why would they pair the two of us if not for that reason? Of course, one good step forward means ten bad steps back.

“Okay, okay. Yea, I need to calm down and clear my head. Need things to make sense again.” Taehyung swallows roughly, squeezing his eyes shut but they no longer resemble the soft crescent Jungkook noticed when he smiled earlier. The male nurse directs Taehyung out of the room, not acknowledging Jungkook in the slightest. Taehyung doesn’t do anything either, which leaves Jungkook with a bad taste in the back of his mouth and alone in a room with another stranger. The female nurse starts working straight away on fixing the mess Taehyung made of his bed and strips it to the mattress before beginning again. She must notice Jungkook standing by the door in silence, because she speaks to him in a quiet, even tone.

“Your bed will be the one closest to the window. Please know that Mr. Kim might be a bit difficult to live with for a few days, at least until you get to understand him better. We didn’t have another room for you to stay in, Mr. Jeon. This was the best choice.”

Jungkook doesn’t move an inch until the nurse finishes making the bed and walks out the room. Once he is truly alone for the first time, he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking down.

Bag hits the floor with a resounding thud.

Springs creak as he sits on the mattress.

Stiff, sterile scent of fresh linen in the air.

And nothing else.

He blinks at the empty bed across from him, a few wrinkles still visible from where Taehyung tried to tear them off. The speed at which Taehyung flipped from calm to panicked scares Jungkook a bit, despite the fact that he has seen similar things in the wards and clinics he stayed at before. The sight of brightness leaving Taehyung’s eyes and being replaced by something else was new though. Jungkook didn’t spend any time trying to get close to anyone in previous wards, stayed to himself as much as he could aside from group sessions. Taehyung wore a kindness and softness that Jungkook didn’t recognize, but the character that came after the switch flipped was something all too familiar to him.

...

written by: moonlightlino

p.s. i am very curious as to what you think each person has in terms of disorders, if you have any idea thus far! i really only insinuated it with three or four people, but i'm very curious about what you guys think so let me know below! ~(￣▽￣)~*

consider sending me a ko-fi!!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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jasmine5312353 · 4 years ago

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Week 8: Digital models

This week we worked on turning our physical foam model into a digital model on fusion360. Having some basic understanding of fusion and its tools from other course work as well as learning some great new skills from the fusion360 videos, I felt eager to undertake the task. I ended up finding this activity more challenging than anticipated but extremely valuable to the development and improvement of my fusion knowledge & skills.

Andrew Simpson razor video: Models informed this process as designers had the opportunity to test features and aspects such as ergonomics and weight that are reliant and only accurately defined through physical interaction. Sketches alone are unable to show this, hence, the importance of actively modelling when making a product. My take on the fidelity of a model is that low-fidelity refers to initial, lower cost model that turns an idea into a form/object usually exploring scale/size. In contrast, a high-fidelity prototype is generally more expensive to make and considers more complex features for example interactivity and user perception by detailing features such as weight and ergonomics.

Creating digital model:

Photographing: From my images I noticed that my actual blue foam model was not very accurate and symmetrical like it was intended to be since it was handmade. Hence, when making my digital model I had to tweak the angles and lines of the bottle to make it closer to the actual design idea. Going back to my orthographic drawing helped remind me of exact measurements and desired shape.

Digital model making on fusion:

Attempt #1: Initially I tried to create my model by tracing around the front face and using extrude tool. Although this did produce the correct form, it didn’t incorporate the angled/chamfered outer edges on the front face that were vital to the unique character and aesthetics of my bottle. Fortunately, this first attempt was generated pretty fast as I've had lots of experience with the extrude function.

Attempt #2: After paying greater attention to the learn fusion360 in 30 days videos, I realised an alternative approach to making this model: working off profiles vertically (top view) created by offset planes. At first I found this to be pretty difficult as the shapes of each profile weren’t as simple as the ones in the tutorial video. It was when I picked up my physical blue foam model created last week, that I was able to more clearly recognise what each section/plane would look like. Thus, reiterating the usefulness and informative nature of handmade sketch models when trying to understand a product & its distinct features. I came across an issue that seemed very minor, although, prevented me from developing the final model when using the loft tool: the rails guiding model were too sharp to create the form. After already taking so long to even get to the lofting point, I was beginning to feel quite defeated and decided to have a quick break away from fusion and then refocus to try and approach the problem from another angle. More determined, I came back to my work and decided to try create the loft as 2 separate components; one for the top half and other for the bottom which finally worked. I also had to make the centre diamond extend to front face edges as my original design didn’t touch the profiles. Although, the many benefits of digital modelling such as easy editing/changes, it can be limiting in terms of executing detail (especially sharp angles) & ergonomics which can be done in a physical model. Finally, I rendered my bottle model choosing a contrast between classic white and revitalising marigold/apricot for a vibrant and energising effect on the user.

Overall, this week was challenging— minor errors became major setbacks and my final model is far from perfect— but definitely a valuable learning experience which has greatly added to my knowledge of digital modelling. I learnt how to use a lot more techniques on fusion such as offset planes, mirror tool and rails and hope to continue utilising these tools in other digital models. I enjoyed being able to easily change measurements or lines, something not as simple to do when making a physical model. Something I could’ve done to improve my models ergonomics whilst still maintaining its unique geometric form, would be to use the fillet tool to slightly round the edges so that it doesn’t appear as boxy. In the future, I’d like to experiment with more organic forms as I feel these would prove to be even more of a challenge, further improve my fusion skills and allow me to be more adaptable to different designs; geometric or organic.

#ides1262 2020 week 8

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mitigatedchaos · 5 years ago

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More Thinking on Golf Carts

(1,800 words, ~8 minutes)

The humble golf cart could be the future of American personal transport.

Cities

The most basic nature of the human settlement is formed through its relationships between time, energy, and space. With energy we can control travel time, and thus access to space. We should envision cities as a pool of destinations accessible per unit time. The spacing between these destinations is determined by travel speed.

The number of accessible destinations reachable in a given time in an area can be roughly modeled as...

[network penetration] × [area density] × π × [transit speed]2

Due to the fragile nature of the human body, each increase in speed requires an increase in space. Apparently, the average driver hits the brakes after around 2.3 seconds. At 20 km/h, the vehicle will have moved around 12-13 meters before that happens. At 60 km/h, 38 meters. At 120 km/h, around 77 meters. As a vehicle becomes faster, it requires greater padding both in itself (to protect passengers) and in the environment (to protect others). This can be in the form of rules or procedures, but it can also be in the form of physical buffers, grade separation, signaling equipment, and so on. We can also constrain the freedom of motion of the vehicle, such as putting it on tracks, reducing the amount of information that others have to process to safely avoid it.

The padding takes the form of space, but it also takes the form of time, because it's largely about acceleration. (This suggests a theoretical maximum density of human development.)

But let's set the full discussion of my theory of city network power aside for now.

Density Considerations

Suppose a car travels at 60 km/h (~37 mph, the average US car speed) and has point-to-point access to an American suburb with a density of 700 persons per square kilometer.

In 15 minutes, the car could travel 15 kilometers. During this time it can go anywhere within that radius, for a total accessible area of about 706 km2. Let us imagine that destinations are directly proportional to population, and that the population is uniform. The car can reach about 495,000 destination... units, or 33,000 per minute. (In practice, it won't hit the average of 37 mph unless it reaches the highway, which it won't do in one minute.)

The typical walking speed is about 5 km/h (~3.1 mph). A pedestrian's 15 minute range is around 4.9 km2. As it happens, there are American university campuses of this size, with on-site restaurants, gyms, and other amenities, with parking decks around the edges. If destinations are proportional to population, we'll need to pack around 101,000 people into the area to equal the suburb.

Note that this doesn't include public transit. Even a New York City bus trundling along at 7 mph (~11 km/h) is twice as fast as a pedestrian, for about 21,000 residents / km2 - not far off the density of some parts of New York.

A bicyclist without much training can (apparently) achieve an average of 20 km/h (~12 mph). This is 4 times faster than a pedestrian. If we take that as around 78 km2, we get roughly 6,350 residents / km2.

Golf cart maximum speed is 32 km/h (~20 mph), giving us a range of 201 km2. That makes for a density of around 2,470 residents / km2, which we'll round up to 2,500.

How tall is that?

Assume each resident requires 80 m2 of space, and 35% of land area is dedicated to residential construction (350,000 m2 for each km2). The heights are then:

0.16 stories for cars.

23 stories for pedestrian-only.

4.8 stories for New York buses.

1.45 stories for bikes.

0.56 stories for carts.

Any number below 1.0 means we can (potentially) build a yard on the lot (if it isn't taken up by parking). Multiply by 2 to divide the lot in half by building taller. (If you've noticed European cities with lots of 3-story buildings, well, that makes sense.)

Golf Carts

Both The Villages in Florida and Peachtree City in Georgia are golf-cart-oriented communities. Peachtree City has "multi-use paths" mandated throughout. These paths wind through scenic forest and reach from subdivisions to stores, restaurants, schools, and other locations throughout the town. Look in on the parking lots from Google StreetView and Maps, however - they seem to be dominated by full-size cars, with only a handful of carts in any given lot. The Villages, a retirement community, does better in terms of the number of carts, but still has plenty of sprawling parking lot despite its wide-reaching cart path network. Why?

Simply put, these are largely conventional developments that have been equipped with a thorough, but auxiliary, golf cart network. Peachtree City has a median household income of $93,000, 66% above the statewide median, and The Villages is an extension of the retirement village golf course concept elevated to a new scale.

The parking lots aren't filled with golf carts because the developments aren't dense enough. In order to have the same number of destinations reachable per unit travel time by golf cart, they would have be about four times the density - around that 2,500 number we proposed earlier.

If we do this the carts may start to become a real traffic issue for each other. With the smaller size and slower speed of the carts, however, one lane's width of conventional road supports roughly twice as many golf carts, so road land use can be allocated to 1/3rd "Micro-mobility Path" (to be shared with bikes, e-scooters, etc) and 2/3rds conventional road.

The shorter length makes a difference much more for parking than it does on the road. A Toyota Corolla covers a minimum of ~8.27 m2, while a Yamaha Drive 2 golf cart covers around 2.87 m2, a factor of almost 2.9x smaller.

Is it walkable?

Golf carts move about six times faster than pedestrians. Cars move around 12 (average) to 24 (highway) times faster. A medium speed for a horse is apparently around 10-17 mph (~3-5.5 times faster). Golf cart and bicycle-oriented development is therefore more analogous to the speed of a horse than it is to the speed of a pedestrian or a car, even though everyone becomes a pedestrian at either the beginning or end of their journey.

...but this isn't necessarily the wrong approach. A town in which every resident has their own personal horse, cowboy hat, and six-shooter is very American in scale. It's also a suitable scale for bicycles.

You might have noticed that in some U.S. cities with high housing demand, there's some new construction going on in a more "New Urbanist" style, with townhomes being built with walking access to small stores or a grocery store. Their streets and parking lots are still scaled to automobile traffic, however, and actually reaching that grocery store from the center of the development might require walking one kilometer and crossing four lanes of loud, full-scale traffic. The small amount of groceries that can be carried on foot require more frequent trips. Most Americans would probably choose to take the car, as cargo bikes aren't really a thing in America (though they should be) and don't have much room for kids. Of course, if the grocery store is on the same side of the road, this is all easier.

...but if the New Urbanists are seeking to build old forms from the America that existed before the automobile, they may unintentionally be implicitly building for the power, mass, speed, mobility, and scale... of the horse. (And also the locomotive.)

Since there is a vehicle that roughly matches that description (the golf cart), and the modifications required would be relatively small (widening of sidewalks into multi-use paths, addition of golf cart lanes to roads, or similar measures), they would make an excellent choice to retrofit. And if we're building for golf carts, we're also building for bicycles, electric bikes, pedal quadricycles, electric scooters, and similar very light and comparatively slow vehicles, as long as we're willing to throw in some small bike and electric infrastructure.

Cars

If you've been following so far, then you probably understand why Americans love cars. They have extremely high network penetration. They have extremely high speed. This allows either tremendous utilization of space or enormous compression of destinations per unit time. They're air conditioned, armored, weaponizable, and just highly mobile in general.

They also get stuck in traffic.

Anyhow, with a car of your own you can go almost anywhere you want in a city, without asking other people, having to wait for public transit with public transit schedule and reliability, or needing to share your bubble of space with loud people. It's a lot of freedom, despite the costs that come with it.

Though slower and with a shorter range, golf carts offer similar radical personal powered point-to-point mobility. A cart-based community should also offer pockets of sufficient density for public transit and cart-based park & ride - residential development will be on the interior of blocks, while businesses will be on the exterior, which makes not having a cart or bike at the destination not as big a deal for commuting.

There is one other matter to deal with.

I like this has lockable doors, my biggest issue with bikes is they get stolen all the time.

- YouTube comment on a video for Veemo, an electric-assist cab bike

It might be more common than you think.

"We should make it so people don't need bikes as much to get around so it won't matter as much when they're stolen," or "if people were more secure in their income, they wouldn't feel a need to steal bikes," or "it's your fault for not properly locking up your bicycle" are not going to cut it. If you want the environmental benefits of the biking, the scooting, the golf carting, the accompanying density and decrease in infrastructure volume, and the reduction in fuel usage (and therefore CO2 emissions), you must arrest and prosecute bike thieves, and you must arrest and prosecute cart thieves.

Government programs such as drug clinics to keep addicts off the streets and job assistance for the poor are compatible with this transit mode, but people must be confident that their bicycles, quadricycles, e-scooters, and golf carts will not be stolen. If they are not confident of this, they will mouth all the correct words to you, then either move to some place where the median household income is $93k and the population density is 550/km2, or just use a car.

The ones that won't are the ones that can't, and are those who are the least able to afford losing their vehicle - the poor.

We can make security mechanisms a part of our transit strategy, such as locking bikestands, or custom keys for golf carts, and registration at city hall for all these vehicles, but all of these micromobility options are inherently lower security than cars, and crime within the town must be handled accordingly.

TL;DR

Math regarding density and speed of transit suggests that a town with the density of 2,500 residents / km2, multiple times the density of U.S. suburbs (with numbers like 500 / km2 or 700 / km2) could be economically viable, if it had a second transport network based on golf carts, bicycles, e-scooters, and so on. This level of density would allow each resident to have a yard and maintain the car-like point-to-point mobility, despite lower use of resources and space.

#concrete and steel #urban planning #urbanism #misneyland #longpost #long post #effortport #mitigated future

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adamatomic · 5 years ago

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Design of Doom Eternal

Wanted to jot down some thoughts while they were still fresh, and I hate writing threads on Twitter, so, here we are.

(Surprise! Male game designer has DOOM OPINIONS. BEHOLD LOL)

First, disclaimers: what follows is super subjective, pretty picky, and likely unjustified. I love a good mobility shooter - Doom 2016 and Titanfall 2 are the only western shooters I really enjoy, and each do super interesting things spatially, mechanically, etc. However, I’ve never worked on any kind of FPS type of game, and never worked on a AAA game, nor shipped a game during a global pandemic, and there’s a lot that I don’t understand about what goes into making this kind of thing, much less how it’s even possible. Making a followup to a well-loved and hugely successful game is also a terrifying prospect. Finally, I am about to "dwell” on what I perceive to be “negative” things about the game, which is pretty unfair, because there’s a LOT of positives (it’s fun, it’s gorgeous, the load times are crazy short, the vistas slay again, amazing accessibility options, perfect audio, etc etc). But I think this is a game where a lot of the positives are really in your face, and what again I personally perceive to be the negatives are a little bit harder to put your finger on. And this isn’t a review, and definitely isn’t yucking anyone’s yums. This is me trying to figure out why this one feels a bit different to play. Hopefully the unanimously positive reception of the game by literally everyone everywhere (including myself) balances out whatever acid might be in these queries.

OK!

Jungle Gyms Versus Canyons

Ok, so. Doom Eternal is structured a lot like 2016 in that it’s corridors linking big wave-based arenas, which is a good structure for a game about shooting all the things. Arenas can be flat-ish or tall-ish. Tall-ish arenas seem to roughly come in two flavors: jungle gyms, and canyons. Jungle gym arenas are the ones that I feel like took centerstage in the marketing and gameplay of Doom 2016, as a way of showing off the double-jump / ledge grab / launchpad vertical mobility stuff, and because they make narrative / thematic sense in the human-built oil rig environments that comprise much of Doom 2016′s level architecture. Jungle gyms are distinguished somewhat from canyons by generally having what feel like distinct “floors”, or solid planes creating multiple separated levels of combat. Canyons, even if they have some transverse traversal elements, are more open and chaotic, with less concrete divisions between elevations. I’m belaboring this essential difference because it has a bunch of second-order effects on gameplay - jungle gyms allow you to jump from skirmish to skirmish, you can use your mobility options to “interrupt” combat, while canyons are more continuous. Jungle gyms usually have more obstacles (like the aforementioned distinct floors) which make it slightly harder for long range enemy attacks to land, which reduces the overall ambient damage-soak.

The key thing about all these arenas - flat open spaces, distinct jungle gym environments, and canyon style playgrounds - is that you definitely want all of them in your game, because the strategy and tactics for playing these fights changes a lot based on these constraints. When do you want a roof over your head? When do you not? When do you want your back to a wall? These are valid and important differences for these games specifically, especially when basic resource management strategies in these encounters is pretty similar, and because the enemy behaviors and attacks have so much variety.

So far, though, Doom Eternal feels like it has a WHOLE LOT of canyons, and NOT a whole lot of jungle gyms. It’s possible that this changes later in the game, so take all this with a big grain of salt. But the first 3-4 hours of gameplay are really dominated by canyon-style vertical arenas, which isn’t necessarily ideal in terms of variety (and makes you angst a little harder for the wall-run affordances of other mobility shooters). They also tend to be slightly same-y, outdoor, rocky environments, versus the more oil rig-inspired, recognizably human-scale mining structures of 2016 (I’m sure this changes later in the game too). The oil rig-inspired stuff also lends itself to jungle gyms a lot more naturally, so I feel like these choices of arena shapes and environment types are kind of an interconnected and difficult problem.

None of this would really even qualify as a problem, either - this is nitpicking nitpicks, at this point - except relying on canyons so much exacerbates some of the “fussiness” of the combat changes (those are next). For me, anyways - I’m not sure anyone else is feeling like these are problems haha. And it’s a big game, so I’m not sure how much this stuff changes across the whole campaign yet!

Tactical Ballistics

A Doom thing I adored in 2016 and am continuing to enjoy in Eternal is the way ammo, health, and other arcade-style upgrades are thoughtfully placed around the arenas. It’s a nod to the strongest parts of Vanquish’s level design, and goes all the way back to using coins in Super Mario to lure players out to new places they might not explore otherwise. It’s a huge part of what gives the nu-Doom arenas their “chess-like” feel, and shifts the fights away from Serious Sam-style battles and makes them into four-dimensional puzzles. 2016 doubles down on this tactical approach by leveraging a kind of resource triangle of chainsaw kills, glory kills, and just plain firefights.

A lot of Eternal’s design seems committed to upping the ante on all of these strengths. Lower ammo capacities puts more pressure on the chainsaw kills. There’s a new technique called “flame belch” that turns the resource triangle into a resource square to accommodate armor. Monsters have “weak points” now, shortcuts that change their behavior or get you fast glory kills. It’s a pretty compelling jigsaw puzzle of abilities.

It also places a lot of strain on player attention and cognition, because all this is running on top of straight-up arena-wave firefights (with 7+ enemy types at a time, all with unique behaviors and optimal strats) AND beefy mobility controls (swinging, dashing, double-jumps, ledge grabs, launch pads, etc). It’s kind of a lot. But I don’t think this is necessarily the place for saying “this is DOOM, man, you got to keep it simple, just shoot the monsters, how come there’s even upgrades” or whatever. For so many reasons, but the primary of which is that most of this stuff rules, and throwing it away would suck. So what do you do?

I want to focus on two small, specific things that really stand out to me - I’m not totally sure that they’re actually “bad”, but I think they have a lot of weird secondary and tertiary effects that contribute to some perceptions of “fussiness” in some of the battles.

Weak Points

This is a big enough change that it is repeatedly tutorialized through video on every loading screen, after every game over, and after every new enemy is introduced... so I know it was on the designers’ radar haha. And it's an interesting addition - chess fights in Doom are already about hierarchies, and adding another tiny hierarchy within an existing hierarchy is a NICE bit of tension to add, it gives a kind of scrambly feeling that is good overall. The issue for me arises from an apparent or perceived damage scaling issue around these weak points. For example, the optional sniper rifle upgrade to the heavy cannon and the optional sticky bombs upgrade to the shotgun insta-wreck the arachnotron and revenant enemies’ weak points, while sustained plasma rifle fire doesn’t seem to ever do the job. Which makes sense on paper - this is a nice way of putting pressure on the player’s weapon choices and ammo, which is what it’s all about. Although I guess you could argue that it’s also all about movement, and that this particular combat pressure has a pretty tenuous relationship with mobility in general.

Either way, it means you spend a lot of time squinting at your weapon wheel mid-battle to see how many shots your shotgun still has, because you ran out of chainsaw fuel a while ago, and are still being actively bombarded at a pretty long distance (because its a canyon and not a jungle gym). I know, I need to git gud, trust me, i KNOW. But check out the weapon wheel ammo display size in Doom 2016 versus Doom Eternal:

I love the new color scheme and ammo icons in Eternal! But it’s 3-4x harder to read the actual, very important ammo counts.

All these small changes add up to something that feels like a pretty different gameplay experience compared to the more spatial (read: movement-based) and literally easier-to-read resource management stuff from 2016. Which, it’s a sequel - failing to sufficiently differentiate it is its own huge risk. And, to be fair, 2016 had its fair share of fussy (though more legible) weapon switching. But when you add this stuff up, the matrix of considerations in moment-to-moment combat in Eternal is pretty different from 2016, and I think it largely comes down to the damage scaling around the weak points. While you can technically choose to play through battles without leveraging weakpoints (thus sidestepping most of these cascading issues), this approach is heavily incentivized by the major behavior changes that happen after you hit weak points (in addition to the constant tutorializing) and the waves appear to have been balanced around taking advantage of these things. Whether or not these are even flaws, technically, whatever they are is exacerbated by the UI design of the weapon wheel AND the relatively popularity of the relatively unobscured canyon arenas. So it’s hard for me to judge weak point damage scaling in a vacuum.

Overall, these new combat options make the arenas feel more constrained and more prescribed. Design is a nightmare this way: sometimes by giving people more choices, you’re actually giving them less. My pitch for a small tweak that might engage with some of these issues would be to keep weak points, but get rid of the damage scaling and maybe make the hitboxes a little bigger. The goal here is NOT to make weak point enemies easier so much as to open up options about what weapons you can use against them, thereby reducing wheel squinting, thereby freeing up more attention to movement and all the other stuff that ruuuules about nu-Doom in general.

Also, I should clarify that it’s entirely possible that I completely imagined the weak point damage scaling, and am a big dummy with bad aim.

Flame Belch

This is a pretty small thing, there’s this new “flame belch” move, intended to complement the existing chainsaw and glory kill moves as a way of “farming” resources from combat, one of the things that really defined Doom 2016. It differs in one huge way though, in that it has to be committed to BEFORE killing a monster. Chainsaws and glory kills ARE kills. Flame belch adds a status instead, which is “cashed in” later when you do the kill. If chainsaw kills and glory kills and BFG shots are Super Mario jumps, Flame Belch is more like a Tony Hawk jump - it starts early and is carefully calculated. Which is pretty dope!! But in this environment where weak point damage scaling and canyon layouts are already putting huge strains on the player’s attention, it feels like a big ask. The “triangle button” mechanic from 2016, the BFG, was a kill move with cool-down, so really I’m just suggesting stuff they already tried anyways. There’s no way this is news to anybody, much less the developers haha.

But... I would love to play a build where flame belch was totally a thing, just it was a finishing move, not a status thing. Let it plug into that reload-replacing resource-farming punctuation pacing flow. That shit rules.

Of course, I have to wonder what the unintended secondary and tertiary consequences of these suggestions would be. Good action games are often tenuous and deeply interconnected things where results are really hard to predict. Maybe they already tried these ideas and they sucked, or they know their own game a lot better than I do, and have a big stack of reasons this stuff would suck for most of their player base.

But wait...

Where The Hell Am I?

Last section, I promise.

I am extremely not going to weigh in on whether or not Doom games need “Story” or not, or what that even means.

But...

If you are driving a monster truck, it is probably pretty fun to see a big line of cars in front of you, and know that you are about to drive all over those cars, and that at the end is a really big fancy car... and you are going to drive over that too.

The general conceit of Doom 2016, that you are on one end of a Mars base, and you need to get to the other end, and in between is a whole lot of cars demons, is a good one. It has good monster truck-ness.

So far this is something that I’m struggling to extract from Eternal. I’m not really sure who any of these grumpy folks are, or where it is that they are, or why I am going down this corridor (aside from the very Doom-like fact that it is the only corridor around).

The problem for me is decidedly NOT that I don’t understand the slayer’s emotional whatever, or that I haven’t been painstakingly expositioned into the specific hierarchies of the demon universe, or anything that I think would normally be described as a “narrative”. For me, it’s that I don’t get to sort of soak in the anticipation of the loooong line of cars I’m about to crunch.

Does Doom need a story? Idk. Doom might need a lot of about-to-get-crushed cars though.

Finally finally finally, and this is highly subjective, but I think the slayer is just more fun when he’s an X factor or a rogue agent. NPCs recognizing the slayer feels sort of weird to me? The feeling that he is a fly in the ointment I think is stronger and sexier when he’s like... outside the canon, almost. I’m not totally convinced that having him Kratos around is as fun as having a bunch of demons and priests both confused and terrified of what this dude is doing.

I need to get back to family stuff. They let me sit here and type this out, which was very kind of them. Only five tantrums so far. Either way, I’m looking very forward to playing more Doom Eternal...

...just as soon as I finish designing 17 more shirts in ACNH.

Hope everyone’s staying home and staying safe! Rip and tear, friends. Rip and tear <3

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tariqk · 5 years ago

Text

More Minecraft grumping

Cut to spare the dash.

Things I really don’t like about Minecraft, honestly:

The early survival game is inaccessible

Here’s the thing about early Minecraft survival: you’re plonked in the middle of the wilderness, with absolutely nothing, and literally the first thing you got to do is punch a tree and find a safe place to spend the night before you get beaten up by monsters.

That’s it. You could spend the night hiding in a hole, probably crafting and mining something in the middle of the night, while hostile mobs wander areas that aren’t lit up, waiting to, basically, kill you. And you’ll stay in this precarious situation for at least a few days, as you 1) make a place to sleep, 2) build shelter, 3) get supplies to venture out, and 4) don’t die, because if you die, you lose your stuff.

This is a game marketed to mass audiences. For children, even. And it can be so manifestly unpleasant I have no idea how it got popular so quickly.

I don’t actually have a problem with this, actually! I positively enjoyed some of that experience, and some of that tension makes for some fun gameplay and entertaining stories — like the one where I found a white horse, tamed it, named it, and then proceeded to take it to a foolhardy exploratory quest before it fell under a hail of arrows (RIP Binky 2019–2019).

And I don’t even have a problem with the learning curve, because I’ve learned and thrived in environments like Dwarf Fortress. I use emacs for gods’ sake. Low accessibility and high difficulty environments are my jam.

But getting here involved more than a dozen start-and-stop moments of gameplay where I literally quit the game, deleted the save, and went to bed in disgust. It’s stupid. It’s aggravating. I can’t believe that this was ready for mass market, what with the lack of telegraphing and the pretty damn high stakes from the start, that the only people who’d play this would be gamers who are familliar with the tropes, already know a little about Minecraft lore, and are invested to try and try again.

To be fair, they’ve made some things easier: they’ve included guidebooks with recipes to automatically load items you already know into the crafter, there’s an official guide online, and if need be, you have cheats. But consider:

If you need to cheat to get the game accessible, there is something wrong with the core game loop.

You can’t create a guidebook and then rely on players gaining “enough experience” to access them to make the game more accessible.

You can’t just bloody have a guide that a person needs to open a browser, or buy the book, to get by.

Survival is very much a non-starter if Minecraft is your first serious game, you get frightened or suffer from anxiety in trying to stay alive, and you have difficulty optimizing your moves to get the best result.

Redstone is a mess

Actually, I have no opinions on how redstone is implemented on a purely technical basis. It’s a system, it’s mostly Turing complete, that's… interesting. What pisses me off is how the Technical Minecraft community is… well, frankly, hard to get into, hard to gain proficiency in, and looks fairly clannish, insular and… honestly a drag to Minecraft’s further development, if Minecraft was to get developed further.

Like I’ve talked about this before, but the existence of the Technical Minecraft is entirely dependent on a class of software behavior that you could make an argument are actually bugs. Zero-tick pistons, anomalous sticky piston behavior with blocks, quasi-connectivity… these weren’t intended consequences for the developers of Minecraft, and they’ve said so before.

Say what you want, but honestly if the only reason why a developer reverted a bug-fix because a bunch of small, clannish, insular, and loud minority were making complaints, I’d honestly ask how much value those people should have in how you run your business.

But that isn’t all. I had taken to writing down notes because I wanted to figure out how certain redstone constructions worked, and even the simplest designs suffer from the following:

There appears to be no standard way of sharing schematics and designs for redstone creations.

Most of the instructions are in video, which is a terrible medium to instruct in, because you don’t have a way to skim through the resource, the presenter literally doesn’t have to say anything more than what they do on video (and thus can be as vague and contradictory as they want).

Most of the instructions are in the nature of, do everything this way, except this section, in which you need to do (flurry of movement as the presenter puts in a slightly different design that you better be able to catch). It’s “simple”. No, it’s fucking not.

Another thing that bothers me is that, fundamentally, most redstone designs are hand-crafted, which is mind-boggling. For one, if you are just starting redstone in Minecraft, you’re going to be sitting with the same toolkit that the most experienced users of redstone are. You’ll still be laying down redstone lines and putting in comparators. You’ll still be dealing with the janky and inconsistent behavior that experienced redstoners are. You’d still be debugging your creations with the same tools experienced redstoners are. And like, you’d be doing it with nary any institutional or technical support, because… reasons?

It’s like you progress from electrical engineering to low-level programming to high-level programming to virtual machines to virtualization… so that you can get back to electrical engineering again? Using skills that may or may not transfer well into other fields? Why?

And there are consequences for this as well, which I’ll get to in a bit, but also, I need to talk about how the community gets around this problem, which is basically…

Modded Minecraft replaces the problems vanilla has with other problems

Specifically? One of them is performance.

I don’t know if you’ve tried 1.12.x and then compared it with 1.15.x, but the differences are night and day. Like, I run a potato computer, mostly because we’re broke af and don’t have the scratch for a l33t gaming machine, but… well, yeah. What’s occasionally janky in 1.15 is literally unplayable in 1.12. What takes 5 minutes to load in vanilla takes up to thirty minutes in modded Minecraft.

And sure, this will sort itself out as modders eventually take advantage of the new architecture and optimizations within 1.15, but in some other ways, it won’t. Mostly because the nature of modded Minecraft is that it literally has to interface with the literal source files to generate or insert new code, and since mod-makers don’t have access to the code pipeline and the tools that they can use to optimize the game, well…

And we’ve only talked about the Java Edition, and not Bedrock, which I suspect will be even more tightly incorporated into the platforms that it runs, at the cost of having less open infrastructure, and as a result, more consequences to mod performance and stabilty.

But another thing that bothers me about modded Minecraft is how so many mods are just… Minecraft, but more. More power, more game mechanics, more technical additions, more mobs, more enchantments… but half the time the resulting game feels bloated and overly-complex.

This is funny because it literally sounds like I’m contradicting myself over the fact that early Minecraft survival had too little in terms of letting itself be accessible, so you’d think I’d welcome mods that worked out some of these gaps with things that made player lives easier.

But what I’m looking for is a realignment of how the game approaches players, not as a punitive, inaccessible system where difficulty is a mask for what is ultimately shallow gameplay, and what we get from modded Minecraft is more stuff. Sometimes, in some modpacks, just so many things that several mods do the same thing that the other mods do.

It’s kind of telling that every time I see a modpack that includes Draconic Evolution the first thing I think of is I better not get into Draconic early, because if I do the rest of the game will literally break, because I have no idea what the hell the mod creators are doing there, but when your damage scales allow you to three-shot the Ender Dragon final boss, that mod breaks the game. Doesn’t matter if you make a boss that’s three times tougher than, say, the Wither. Game’s fucking broken.

There are some good approaches: FTB Academy and other questbook mods do give players a chance to orient and align themselves with what to do, without forcing players to have to go through the anxiety and terror of not knowing what to do, and keeps them engaged far longer than they should be, but honestly… ultimately what you’re doing is more stuff, just through the lens of what the mod wants you to do.

Plus FTB Academy has Draconic and you can literally two-shot the Guardian of Gaia, which is supposed to be so tough that metal music starts playing and it can cause effects that are twice as worse as the Wither… well.

Is it just me or are there only dudes in this party?

If I have to count the number of people who weren’t cis men or boys in the time I’ve been lurking around Minecraft’s YouTube channels, I can quite literally say that the number would be less than half a dozen.

That’s very bad. When your visible community is 95% cis dudes and everyone else aren’t there, it tells me that:

The game alienates literally everyone who isn’t a cis dude

The player base are driving away anyone who isn’t a cis dude

Part of the reasons for #1 are, well, I’ve mentioned them above: it only really allows people who have the time and wherewithal to plug into an activity that offers no real benefit outside of the game itself, most of the fantasies it caters to is power fantasies of vanquishing more and more powerful opponents, and there’s barely any community support for newcomers.

So that’s no surprise that the kind of people who are popular Minecraft YouTubers are dudes who are either bad at explaining what they do, are inarticulate, or… well, to not put it too unkindly, dicks. I mean, Minecraft’s recent rise in popularity and relevance was, sadly, because PewDiePie was playing it. So that tells you everything.

And we haven’t even gotten into the fact that the playerbase looks pale as fuck, so you know that’s a thing. I’m seeing a few Indonesian-language Minecraft tutorials on YouTube, so that’s neat, but otherwise… it’s pretty white-dominated.

And this all assumes that the causes are all because of structural inequalities, not active fuckery against marginalized folks. I honestly don’t know how often that happens, though I wouldn’t honestly be surprised if it did. I mean, it’s not as if the game isn’t associated with nasty folk like PDP… and hell, even the original creator, who, to their credit, Microsoft and Mojang have sidelined, is a homophobic and racist dude.

But, yeah. I mean, $CHILD_1 and $CHILD_2 are still at it with Minecraft, and I’ll be around to help them through, hopefully to steer them away from the nasty stuff. But still, ugh. There are so many reasons to be grumpy about this game.

Mind you, at least it isn’t Roblox.

#Minecraft #grumping #accessibility #a whole bunch of things #structural inequality #representation

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