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adultingautistic · 4 years ago

Text

help? rambling! sorry for that thing.

(saw in the ask-section: so written today as of the 20th of August in the year 2020)

Hey,

No idea how to approach this. Though first things first: English is not my native language and I have some trouble with languages (even my native) [mostly speaking and writing… and understanding (the hearing part but sometime also the meaning part) – okay I just can’t language – sorry] and this thingy here will be long, again – sorry Though I learned to understand written english just so I could read more fanfictions (‘cause the ones in my native language didn’t satisfy me anymore) - spend a whole summer just reading stuff in english and now I *need* to read everything in english and watch things in their native production language (synchro is weird af) and if possible with subtitles (books: if it’s the authors native language; otherwise both languages (german and english) would be translated and then it doesn’t really matter, most of the time anyway)

WARNING: Messy, chaotic and about 2500 words long. Sorry. and it isn’t proof read and some sentences could be… not a sentence

I think I might be autistic / have adhd ? not sure, going to someone (professional) is not really an option as that would take at least 6 to 12 month to even get maybe a appointment… and it involves a lot of social interaction that would stress all people – even those that don’t have to think about *every* interaction they have with eachother… like no planning or thinking about what you have to say or can’t say and what’s appropriate? Like that is a thing – always wondered how most people got through life when everything is so damn hard. It is apparently a thing that isn’t so quite normal… lol*

Okay, most of the time (that I remember) wondered how that worked for everyone else except me – how they get through life thinking all those things, or well… don’t thinking all those things like HOW?!? Why can you “people”? and I learned it’s important if you’re a girl or not; so yeah, girl here. Followed adhd / autism stuff for a few month / weeks and now again for the last days (it’s an on and off thing). so yeah, I can relate to so much on like everything. Long time I thought, nah, can’t have it: good in school (more so when I was younger but never actually bad), finished school good (though could have been better, if I had studied once (like for my oral exam, I opened the document that should help us learn one whole time, the morning of the exam so yeah, not good at that; brain just goes, heard it once, why should I read this information? Can’t really recall it but while reading I “know” it, so WhAt Is STuDyInG?)) anyway (at this point I would have deleted about everything but like 3 or 4 sentences because… rambling. Sorry, but I think it is important what’s actually going on in my brain; I know it’s hard to read lol) considering all those things I read here (and on other blogs and stuff), I would explain so much about what’s going on in my life (I made a document where I collect all that stuff but it’s redundant sometimes and really messy; try to make a short list with most important things).

Like as a kid, it took me longer than other kids for this social stuff (not like it got “everything”, just enough to communicate more or less lol) or I was so freaking focused on rules; one example is at the train station, there is this line to indicate where you should wait for the train and the other side is where you’re allowed to step once the train is in the station – I lost it, when that rule wasn’t followed (never really big, loud but I was really upset – you know, I learned that it isn’t “allowed” to act out in public). Another thing, I would always get the adults (or kids) around me to speak to others: I mean, I wanted ice cream? Couldn’t order it (still hard to this day – I’m 19 years old btw) or any other basic interaction stuff – I mean I broke every connection to my best friend (in 6th grade, so I was like 10 or 11) because he broke a rule while playing “hide and seek” like yeah, one rule one time while playing and I didn’t speak to him for like 6-7 years (met him at driving school again lol) and I still have his book because I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore (now it’s just awkward to give it back).

As I was younger I loved reading, couldn’t get me away from it – now not so much lol (books or reading in general is so hard sometimes… most of the time) – but that is more like: I lost myself in the books and was super focused on it – now I “don’t have time” as in I can’t really read a book if I don’t have theoretically the whole day and night – cause if I have to do stuff later “there is not enough time to read a book” because I could get lost in it and miss stuff and 5 hours is like 5 minutes, right? (that is a part of “time blindness”, am I mistaken? – never really related to that on a deeper level but the longer it think about it, the more stuff comes to my mind that could be part of it lol / like I always at least try to) get ready when I want to visit my grandparents, it’s like a ten minute walk so I need at least 45 minutes to prepare. Example: want to be there at 14:00 so I should go to the bathroom around 13:15 the latest, bathroom always takes long ‘cause I get distracted, so I then somehow get going around 13:50 – spoiler: I need more like at least 15 minutes not less then 10 to get to my grandparents by foot – and where is the time? I got out of the bathroom somewhere before 13:40 most of the time – I do the exact same things every time and sometimes I’m like: oh, it’s like 13:25/13:30, why would I think I need so much time to get ready? And then most often I need longer – and no, then I start to got even earlier (bathroom is like the first thing in the routine I do before I have to leave the house) and somehow it is now 13:45 and I just leave the bathroom – HOW??)

Okay, MSWord tells me, I have written like almost a 1100 words and haven’t even looked at my 11 page document – sorry (can I even write that many words in an ask at tumblr?)

Another thing I found is RSD – of my god (I usually don’t like to use it like that but omg), that explains so much – don’t want to write too much (missed quite a few “too”s I think lol hope you understand anyway) – I really react so intense to small, constructive criticism and I didn’t (don’t) understand why; and question everything; I remember everything I did wrong (so many “small” things but I’m such bad at human sometimes) and the feels and oh no, I didn’t even do something wrong, my coworker/sort-of-not-really-friend told me how I could have slightly improved what I did: I’m such a bad human, I can’t do anything right and they won’t want to have to do anything with me again – thank you brain, not helpful. One other thing was, like I asked for one weekend of and I wasn’t allowed to take it ‘cause they planned to or already shifted an event (couldn’t really focus on that) to that weekend and I didn’t know it and when they said “no”, in that situation I could have lost it, I was almost in tears (you do not cry in public lol) and thought, how could I even ask that and be soo egoistic (along the lines of that).

This next one is just the text copied from a post but that is like exactly what it is for me:

“I literally thought all the symptoms were the default way a brain works, so you’re telling me some of you can “choose” what to pay attention to? Like, if you know you absolutely have to listen to and remember something you just “can” even if you don’t like it?

And if you’re at a restaurant and three other tables are having conversations you don’t just automatically absorb everything they’re saying?

And if you know you have to do something within the next hour it won’t just remind you of a different subject entirely which reminds you of another different subject entirely and you don’t just take you three days to remember the original thing you were doing????”

so true lol.

Found another post with autism signs in adults (that my have been missed as kids), I took out everything I don’t really relate to (like 5 or 6 things lol):

- may constantly rehears conversations or interactions

- may feel as though you are always on stage

- may have a few close friends, not many acquaintances

- may struggle with other people breaking rules (RULES ARE ABSOLUT – HOW CAN YOU BREAK THEM?)

- may often fidget, chew, tap, or other repetitive behaviors

- may get more or less upset at something than is “appropriate”

- may struggle to adjust when plans change without warning

- may have routines that don’t seem to have a real purpose

- may struggle in situations that are unfamiliar

- may be a very picky eater with few preferred foods

- may struggle with noises, touching, or sensory input

- may struggle to process visual or auditory information

- may struggle to settle body down enough for restful sleep (though I now have a weighted blanket and that’s soo awesome, it really helps at least a bit (don’t wake up that often at night anymore))

- may struggle to keep track of a fast conversation

- may take jokes very literally, and not understand teasing

- may miss sarcasm or subtleties while others are speaking

I understand teasing, I can more or less successful tease and be sarcastic but I’m not sure if people are teasing me. I do not prefer to communicate via text or email. It is still very stressful for me - a telephone is also bad (tone and stuff, not understanding the words correct and not even seeing the other person and in person is also bad – so no to communication and/or interaction lol)

I could provide example for everything but I’m at around 1700 words and just no.

Didn’t really mention sensory stuff, another post I found: “basically, your day-to-day sensory input shouldn’t be causing you distress. sounds wild, i know, but it’s not neurotypical for the stimuli (be it sound, touch, visual, etc etc) you encounter on a day-to-day basis to make you unhappy. also, if busy shopping malls or crowded parties consistently cause you distress or agitation, that’s a neurodiverse thing. it sounds strange, but apparently but yeah, it’s normal for most people to expect to be comfortable in their day to day surroundings.”

Like on one level, I knew it couldn’t be quite “normal” to be always uneasy in “normal” day to day surroundings but like, I can’t understand how people can not find it hard to be in such environment (I heard some enjoy it even, like HOW?).

Random interjection ‘cause I wanted to say something to thing from the beginning: * “Allistics do not “prepare” in order to socialize. They do not have scripts. They do not write them, memorize them, or use them. They just magically know what to say. “ yeah, wow, didn’t realise that for a long time, and it is really magically. But somehow they can; I still ask my mom to help me write emails (more or less important ones) ‘cause it’s hard and she’s always like: “we do it so often, why do you still need help, just write” – not helpful and we didn’t do it actually ‘cause it is a complete different situation now lol every new email is a new thing… I need to think about what to say to the cashier every damn time I’m in the supermarket lol; if I don’t have to talk, someone else orders for me (they thinks I’m lazy or so, I don’t know but it’s so hard and you know what to do, so you can do it lol)

And that executive dysfunction thingy also explains a lot – I mean, I like languages, I’m just not good at that speaking/hearing the words thing – still, I learn Ancient Greek as a sort of hobby (I mean, I learn it for so long now, it’s too late to stop, that would be weird and it is really interesting, just really hard) and I needed like 7 hours to do the work (like, got out of bed, got breakfast, started the computer and did like 30 minutes of working, then did some stuff on the internet for like an hour and then ate my forgotten breakfast, then did some more browsing (I need to do the work cause I have to send it to my teacher this evening lol) some work for like almost an hour, some more phone, a bit of work – and so on. I did some work (but like so many people would have done more or needed less time lol) – anyway I know I really need to work on the language and I just… don’t. arg, that sucks so much, every week I think, I could start doing things on Saturday and then everyday a bit so I have like six days to do some work and every time it’s Thursday and I’m like, lol 10 hours for doing a weeks work. And it’s not like I could focus for that 10 hours – except when I can but sadly it’s almost never on the things I *need* to do. Anyway if my parents hadn’t provided dinner, I wouldn’t have eaten more than breakfast today – anyways sometime I want ice cream or other stuff and I just… can’t do it like I’m sitting here for an hour now, I’m so freaking bored and I just want ice cream but do I move? Nope, and doing something to not feel bored? Nope. I also mean to get my thingy for my wrist ‘cause I have some problems and typing hurts but lol, nope. An example as kid would be I needed hours to dry myself after a shower and just sit on the floor in my room doing more or less nothing or playing (I now a have strategy but yeah)

So, yeah, sorry; I think it’s quite possible that I’m autistic / have adhd, both or so – am I making things up and this is just my mind going a bit wild? (also, I’ve done some online “tests”; most of the time I get like ¾ of the maximal points, but at least always more than half the full points)

Sorry, it’s a messy, long thing but I need a bit of an advice or so – just, like “yeah, could be possible” or “nope.”

Thanks if you made it to the end! 20.08.2020

PS. could write so much more in my mind but nope. i think one can get my point. otherwise just ask me

PPS. actually talked with my grandmother about it, lol, she said, it would explain some things she wondered about lol (never thought i would talk in real life with someone about it but i really needed to talk about my thoughts and then i couldn’t shut up and i was so worried but she is kinda cool with it? though she doen’t really know anything about the topic except what i told her so yeah. i acually have no clue how to approach my mum (even if it isn’t autism/adhd or so, i think i have to talk about how i tick a bit lol) (sorry, just had to write it a least lol)

so sorry, needed a part two (cause brain is stupid)

Okay, part two (I’m so sorry) (now it is the 21st of August 2020)

There is so much more I can write about: sorry, again like 1300 words.

Like, special interests – I have no idea; as I kid my teacher had to regularly remind me that I have to leave the classroom for break – cause I was so into my book that I didn’t hear anyone leaving the room or the bell; now I can get really invested in some fanfictions (if I have like five days for myself and nothing to do, it is like 3 books without a break) and I’m at a point where I don’t find (good) new stuff and read the same fanfic again and again (I know exactly what will happen and still love it), sometimes I don’t read it for like a few weeks or month and then like 5 times back to back. I absolutely love Doctor Who (but I’m not excessively obsessive or so and don’t know that many facts just some), just can ramble for a few minutes (okay, everyone who would listen speaks German and my main input for Doctor Who is English, so hard to translate that and stuff). Well back to books: I love them; even though I can’t properly focus much these day, I love them, I need them: but why? I hate that when book covers changes or the side of the book like it’s: publisher, name of book, author and the next book is like name of the book, publisher, author and all is mixed up or the symbol of the publisher is slightly different: why? Can’t it be consistent? Why??.

Routines, rituals and stuff. Yeah, I have for example this one street (they repaired the street but there is a small crack now), I have to cross it on the side that is where the street crosses another and then the last 3 steps have to be on the other side and the fourth is stepping on the sidewalk (I really can’t do it any other way and I hate this one car that always blocks the crack a bit – it shouldn’t be standing there ‘cause it’s almost directly in the crossing lol) when I still was going to school, my way home was very specific and one time there was a building/construction site (just some repairs or work on the pipe lines in the ground) and the first time I saw this I was stressed after a long day of school and almost lost it right there and then, because I couldn’t walk my normal way (and yes, at home I cried at bit); for the next few weeks my way back home was hell. I have some specific routines for the bathroom and showering (though most people have that, right?). I have to pack my things and then my stuff like keys and such in the same way every time. When I need a walk I have like two (or three) routes I can take and I have to do them and almost can’t change them after I started (I can though it really throws me off and I don’t feel really well after that). One time – cause Covid-19 and stuff – you need to use a shopping cart where I live in order to enter the supermarket (so you keep more distance) – so, I went to the market by foot and had everything planned, shortly before I am at the store I realise I don’t have a “chip” (thingy you need to use the shopping cart; don’t know if you know what I mean) and I lost it – my plans and routine how I go shopping to that market (if by foot) was ruined – went back home and cried and raged like for an hour (went later again, cause I really needed stuff and I couldn’t leave that thing open, that also feels… not good – had to finish the walking “round”: to the store, store, back home)

One thing I mentioned before: sensory stuff; yeah, not a fan of “loud” noises (it isn’t always the loudness but more the number of noises). Water in my face (nope, hate it, never under the shower and like a sponge or so is horror (like everywhere on my body), just clean water is okay (but please, I can’t have had soap like right before on my hands)), lights is a day to day thing (though if I’m tired / close to what I think is sensory overload, either the room I’m in gets like darker or lights up so much it’s not tolerable anymore (then I know, I really, really have to leave the room and not see or hear anybody anything anymore)), and food, yeah (everything has its place on my plate and please don’t touch), I’m a really “picky” eater and I absolutely despise like cooked or baked fruits (some vegetables too) (they feel soo weird in my mouth… and taste bad… but the texture alone is… really, really bad) (if I wait a bit more, I could think of more but you get the gist I think)

One thing that throws me off: Since I’m 14 years old, I do some stuff with youth groups like mostly work in the church as a volunteer (like in the (school)holidays going a vacation with a group and such things) – I needed like three years (I was and still am seen as shy, mostly) to really “lead” a group (I really am good at imitating the others that can lead a group, I think) and now after I finished school and am doing a “Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr (FSJ)” (voluntary social year) (basically I “work” for a year in a social job (sorry, no idea how to explain it in English) and get not much money (that’s the volunteering-part, but ‘cause I work full-time (38.5 hours a week on paper), I get a bit of money)) – and now I applied for studying for working in a social job – can’t really explain it but important is that I would/will have to work with people and stuff, like my job is to create/plan activities for people (like for example, a meeting every week for old people, free-time activities for teenagers or so). On one level I somehow like that working with people (as long as I know what I do, I had time to plan and everything happens more or less as I imagined/planned), on another level I absolutely… well not hate it… but it is really taxing for me and sometimes I really question myself but then other people say, do it, you’re good at it – and I’m like: yeah? I sometimes feel terrible and have no idea what’s going but okay, good that you don’t see that?! Am I not totally awkward and what? Still, have no clue what I would do instead of that lol (sorry, explained that whole thing real bad; just ask, if something is unclear)

So, two options: either I fake everything I wrote before that last thing and how would that work? Or I’m really good at faking that last thing and how? I have no idea and yeah, I had to write that – can both work? Like, it’s not like that I’m always (really) comfortable doing that social stuff but on the other hand, a bit adrenaline and anxiety makes the life more fun or something like that (and it’s not like, yeay, one time a certain situation managed and the next time I can navigate that somewhat same situation, nope, it’s like nothing ever happened before and that’s… annoying?)

Sorry again to bother you. Thanks for reading

21.08.2020

PS. I will probably think of something new every few hours but that’s enough for now I think lol – sorry

PPS. And sorry for my bad English and explaining… language is hard (not like I could write it better in my native language lol)

_______________________________________________________________

First, I will never, ever, ever judge someone based on how good their English is, whether English is their first language or not. People communicate the best they can, and that’s all that counts, and it does not matter if it’s “perfect”.

So I can’t address every detail you brought up, because this was a LOT! I did read all of it though, and the general impression I get is that you’re right, you probably have ADHD, and possibly autism as well, though I am not a doctor and I can’t diagnose you.

You asked a few times if you could be “faking” it, and the answer to that I can say for certain: No, you are not faking. What you told me here are your life experiences. I just read a story of “How life is like” for you, and it was not fiction, this is your real perspective about how your brain sees the world. This is not fake. This is who you are, and I felt what you wrote was very open and honest, the exact opposite of fake.

Sorry, it’s a messy, long thing but I need a bit of an advice or so – just, like “yeah, could be possible” or “nope.”

Based on your experiences that you shared, I’d say it’s more than likely you have ADHD. You talk often about trying to complete a task and losing your focus before it’s finished:

Anyway if my parents hadn’t provided dinner, I wouldn’t have eaten more than breakfast today – anyways sometime I want ice cream or other stuff and I just… can’t do it like I’m sitting here for an hour now, I’m so freaking bored and I just want ice cream but do I move? Nope, and doing something to not feel bored? Nope. I also mean to get my thingy for my wrist ‘cause I have some problems and typing hurts but lol, nope. An example as kid would be I needed hours to dry myself after a shower and just sit on the floor in my room doing more or less nothing or playing (I now a have strategy but yeah)

This is all very suggestive of ADHD. You also had some symptoms that could be autism, but it seems like the ADHD is more prominent for you and is affecting you more (keep in mind, I’m only a stranger on the internet, I could be totally wrong).

I’m really happy that you were able to share these thoughts with your grandmother, and that she was open to listening to you about them, even if she didn’t have all the facts.

I know you said it would be a long wait, and very difficult, to get an appointment with a professional. But I do really think you should be tested for ADHD. Maybe your grandmother can help you talk to your mum about it, or maybe your grandmother can make all those phone calls for you (because believe me, I know how difficult it is to make phone calls, they are just as hard for me). Even if you have to wait a year, it would be worth it to know- and also, because in the case of ADHD, there is medication which can help you. So it would be really worth it for you to get that, even if you have to wait a long time.

You’re obviously a very detail-oriented, thoughtful person, and I know that you’ve studied this subject inside and out. You’re not faking, you’re not making it up. These are your experiences, and they are the truth, and you deserve to be tested if you want to be.

#actually autistic #actuallyautistic #ADHD #submission

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spectralreplica · 5 years ago

Note

So I loved your response on who would be most likely to witch out in the PMMM/DR v3 au, but id love to ask, what did they all wish for? (Bonus: Also did those wishes backfire?)

So, these are my thoughts for right now, but if I actually planned more of the “story” for this AU, some of them might change. For some of them I kind of cheated and came up with the power first, but in my defense it’s hard to come up with wishes without having planned more of the plot, since Kyubey tries so hard to get people to make spur of the moment wishes during times of stress.

Kokichi: I see him as totally paranoid (rightfully so) over how Kyubey’s trying to trick him but still obsessing for weeks over the perfect phrasing for a wish just in case, and then suddenly a witch traps him and DICE in a Labyrinth and he ends up contracting with a totally spontaneous wish. Something like “saving my friends” or “being strong enough to protect my family.” For maximum irony, he’d end up with powers that get stronger when fighting with/to protect others but keep trying to fight alone anyway due to not trusting other magicals and not wanting to put DICE in danger. He’d also tell people he wished for other things like, “to rule the world from the shadows,” or “an infinite supply of scarfs.” As for backfiring, he does save everyone that one time, but they’re in more danger since other magicals end up targeting them when Kokichi poaches from their territories, plus they’re in the line of fire if/when he witches out.

Kaito: Like in the game, Kaito is terminally ill and wishes for something along the lines of “being healthy enough to achieve his dreams,” but he totally lies and says he wished for something like “being strong enough to help others.” He gets the power to temporarily boost other people’s powers and/or make their bodies regenerate from wounds. He kind of avoids using the healing part at first because it’s a little suspicious with his alleged wish and then pretends it’s a thing he’s been practicing. It doesn’t really go bad for him, and I don’t think he’d regret making the wish, even when he finds out about the Soul Gems controlling your body thing. Maybe when he realizes there are no witches in space? But even then I think he’d be in denial…

Shuichi: Shuichi ends up involved in a really serious case and just can’t find the piece that ties it all together even though everyone is counting on him. At the height of his anxiety, Kyubey approaches him, and he wishes to find the truth. He basically gets super intuition/lie detection with a (mental) visual interface sort of like the DR trials (truth bullets plus the mini games). This creates drama with certain other magicals who are hiding something (cough, Kokichi and Kaito) and makes him doubt his skills since he’s relying on magic to cheat.

Maki: Still an orphan, still approached by a cult, but then approached by Kyubey. She wishes that the cult would never bother anyone at the orphanage again, and they all end up arrested, dead, or mysteriously vanished. She basically gets the power to make things/people “go away” to a pocket dimension only she can access, and this makes other people sort of forget those things/people exist while they’re inside. She sees her wish as a necessary sacrifice, like her becoming an assassin in canon, so she is Not Happy when Kyubey approaches some of the other orphans.

Kaede: Honestly not sure???? She doesn’t really have anything in her backstory that would be a catalyst for Kyubey to approach her, so I see it as more of a random chance, situation-based thing, like Madoka healing the cat. Maybe she was trapped in a Labyrinth and wished for the power to fight survive, or to save a friend? Just know it’s not related to her piano playing. That’s all practice, and she likes it that way.

(Joke answer: Kaede gets super mad at someone from a distance and wishes she could slap them across the face for being an idiot. She gets the power to telekinetically smack anything around from across the room.)

Himiko: Intrigued by the idea of real magic but not intrigued by the idea of having to fight witches. Ends up wishing for her mentor to be more popular. Not as mind-controlly as Kyoko’s wish; basically, people just find him really cool and talented and can’t look away from his shows, but they don’t like, form a cult? Sort of derails her own career as a magician (both because the audience likes her mentor more and because she has to sneak off and fight witches) and doesn’t really fix the problems in their relationship, but he doesn’t leave and never return. Anyway, she gets the power to make herself and anyone she touches more or less noticeable/popular. Really good for stealth or drawing aggro. Also for convincing people to do her favors.

Tenko: She recently moved to the city after living in a temple since she was a child, and is finding it hard to adjust. One night, when she’s out acting as a “hero of justice” like her Master taught her and preventing a suicide, she ends up trapped in a Labyrinth and saved by Himiko. She ends up really, really attached and sort of accompanies her on hunts for a while until something goes wrong, and she ends up wishing to protect Himiko. She ends up with sort of a sense when Himiko needs help and is really good at putting up shields/barriers.

Miu: Still in a bad car crash leading to a coma, butthe surgery doesn’t go as well. Kyubey approaches her in the hospital right after she’s been told she’s facing permanent brain damage. She almost wishes to put her brain back to normal but then decides, why stop there? She wishes to be a genius with a super-brain that can solve any problem, and ends up with super inspiration, mostly aimed at turning any materials around her into an invention that will help her. She can use magic to substitute for missing materials and speed up the development time, but this uses a lot of magic at once, and the finished product won’t work for anyone else. Freaks out when she learns her body is now essentially hardware, but then she realizes the possibilities for improving things… Then everyone else freaks out.

Gonta: Still a feral child who got lost in the woodsand was sort of raised by wolves (not reptites, sorry), but this affects his ability to learn language and social skills much, much more severely than in canon. Wishes for the ability to understand others, which makes him fluent in all languages and sort of an empath. Also, because he sees animals as sort of on the same level as humans, this extends to animal languages in addition to human ones. Being able to speak and mimic “good manners” improves others’ opinions of him and his intelligence, but being able to feel how his birth family really feels about him is so upsetting that he eventually ends up running away and staying with Miu and Kiibo.

Kiibo: Lives with Miu. Does not remember his wish, but he has powers, so he has to have made one? Probably human. I’m still sort of torn over his backstory, but I’m kind of leaning towards a Hijiri kind of situation, where he was created by someone else’s wish. Or magic (cough, Miu.)

Ryoma: Wishes to get revenge on the mafia that killed his family and girlfriend. Basically gets enhanced strength and a sort of sense of where all of the members are. I sort of went over how his wish ends up in the other post…

Korekiyo: Wished to cure his sister’s illness and got healing powers. Currently traveling the world to observe other magicals. Like the other cult members, offers to use his powers for a price (usually Grief Seeds or information).

Angie: Starts out living on an isolated island andacting as a priestess/oracle, but begins to doubt her own abilities/connection to her god because natural disasters are getting worse and more people are leaving. She sort of interprets Kyubey as a messenger from her god and wishes to know what’s really going on/get a better sense of her destiny. She gets the power to predict the future as long as she is personally involved. She has to actively focus on a question (What happens if I do this?) or a goal (I want to achieve this) and she’ll see the most probable path. This really elevates her sense of self-importance, and makes it much easier to make others see things her way. It doesn’t prevent a tsunami from destroying her home and making everyone leave, at which point she meets Tsumugi and Kirumi.

Tsumugi: Her life isn’t bad, but she doesn’t like herself that much and feels empty and unfulfilled until she comes across the existence of actual magical girls (well, one in particular). Like an anime come to life! Tsumugi wishes for the ability to become someone else (yes, I know this was Rena’s wish too…) and gets the power to transform into other people. If they’re a magical, she can also copy a limited, weaker version of their powers.

Rantaro: Wishes to find all of his sisters and gets the ability to track people. He has an inherent sense where each of his sisters is and their general emotional state, but he can also apply this power to other people if he focuses. It works from anywhere in the world and can be based on a photograph, but it works best when the person is close by (from a country away he knows they’re alive and northwest from him, from a building away he knows they’re sitting in a chair in the back corner of the back bedroom and feeling excited but a little nervous) and he’s met them in person. He quickly discovers that tracking a sister down once doesn’t mean she’ll stay “found” and go home. Some of them also want to travel, others have bad senses of direction and always get lost again, some find his new knowledge of where they are and how they feel super creepy and avoid him, and at least one became a magical girl already… He probably finds out about the witch thing first…….

Kirumi: Part of a family that’s been serving animportant, rich family (maybe Rantaro’s? for maximum irony?) for generations. She’s been trained to dedicate her whole life to serving others and has no real prospects outside of eventually becoming head maid and training her own children to replace her. Meets Angie and Tsumugi and is immediately drawn in by Angie’s message. Wishes for the ability to instantly transport herself and others and gets the ability to teleport to any location she’s seen (photos count). It gets harder the more people she takes along, the longer the distance, and the less detail she knows about her destination. She tells everyone—and herself—that she lives to serve and wished for a convenient power to better serve the group’s needs, but she secretly wanted to escape really badly for her own sake too.

#Ask #Anon #Long Post #DRV3/PMMM AU #Anonymous

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csa-survivor-confessions · 4 years ago

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(1/2)🐛? (on mobile cant find your faq sorry) My mom raped me for years and i recently escaped now that im 18. I didnt remember the sexual abuse when i made the decision to leave but i randomly realized it a few months later. I have found little support and therapy for an hour a week is all i can afford but is not enough. I am at the end of my rope with my trauma and DID and i dont know what to do. The biggest issue is the overwhelming shame, and feeling like i deserved it.

(2/2)🐛 I keep falling into saying it didn't happen/wasn't that bad/others had it worse to the point I get sick when I deny it too much. An alter keeps saying the rest of us are lying and mom is a good person and we should go back. I feel like I made everything up because I read a lot of noncon fic to try to punish myself. Every grounding technique I have tried has failed. Sorry, I know this is a lot. Any resources for female survivors of maternal incest? Or any advice at all? I feel so alone.

Hello,

I’ll separate this into parts to hopefully help with converting clear information.

Denial, believing it’s fake.

Fake memories, or just “made up” memories do not happen commonly, [information here The False Memory Myth & Memory Repression]. there is nothing wrong with feeling that way however, self-denial and downplaying of our one trauma is really common.

Having “denial of parts/alters” is really common. I personally have DID as well and we have alters who deny our abuse, blame our abuse or have a deep attachment to our abusers. That is so normal! You are not alone, In this struggle. If you have any internal communication you can talk to the other alters who share this trauma for support these internal connection are god for recovery.

If you have the stability or any parts wh are good at working with there might also am them why they feel the need to defend the mother. communicating can also help ease your feeling of overwhelming and denial.

One key way to help with downplaying of abuse is to imagine a friend came to you and told you what happened to you happened to them. And think about what you would tell them, I bet it’s not. “it wasn’t bad” or “well other people got it worse”.

When you have worked out the kind of compassionate language, start picture the little girl inside you who went through the trauma. This can include talking to some of your young alters if you have any communication methods with them. Sometimes pulling them forward through focusing on your internal child might happen and sometimes those with DID can access the internal child through more basic IFS (internal family system) and Part Work methods. And offer them compassion for what they are going through.

Shame

When you find thoughts of shame start to spiral, not the thoughts and the feelings in your body. But then take a long breath and work to not identify with that thought. The emotion and thoughts exist but you don’t have t push yourself to think about it r feel it. Picture the emotion and try and let it pass.

Working towards self neutrality is also a good goal. Refraimging the language you use to talk about yourself, and in your case, your alters, to something that lacks overly negative connotation ill help change the schemas of shame. Coping Skills: Ditch Value judgments

Those words of compassion we talked about early when you find yourself starting to feel so down on yourself and shameful try saying these words to yourself. Along with some positive self aspirational mantras, you can help start to reshape the patterns your neurology follows. You won’t believe them at first but saying these will help with healing.

Practising good self-care can be super important. When we can treat our body with honesty and respect that helps shape our internal sense of being respected and being care for. It’s also just good for general depression and health. [Coping Skills Masterposts: Self-Care]

I know how hard things like showers can be but starting with just tooth brushing and face washing can be important. If brushing of teeth is a trigger I suggest buying a smaller toothbrush like a kids size and changing toothpaste to one tat either foams less, is another colour or if the taste carries. Using baby whips or a wet cloth to areas like the groin, armpits, under breasts and behind knees would be another important step towards overall health.

Keeping the living space as neat as possible also counteracts feelings of overwhelming shame and self-esteem issues.

The use of sexual material to cope

When we struggling to deal our tendency to self-harm is very common as it’s a maladaptive attempt to cope. Using the stories as a way to in your words punish is a form of self-injurious behaviour. Factors like lack of regulation, compulsive behaviour, intrusive thoughts and being manipulated by users to believing this is a reaction to perceived threats. [Coping Skills: Combating Self-Harm Urges]

This doesn’t invalidate abuse as having been abused is not contingent in never interacting with sexual content, up to and including having sex, afterwards. CSA often predates other unhealthy sexual behaviours as a reaction to our sexual traumas. No way our trauma reactions show mean our abuse didn’t happen or didn’t hurt us deeply.

Coping Skills

It makes sense a lot of the mainstream grounding is hard and lack effectiveness. Much of the meditative type skills intensify dissociation. We also often struggle with our automatic nervous systems being even more fractured than those with PTSD. Our neurological behaviour will also be more likely to take any stress or confusion and push us to dissociate. Visualization also tends to work poorly for many of us with dissociative disorders for the same issue of a tendency to dissociate. Focusing on a singular self to ground into can also become hard for us too and trigger depersonalization.

If there are skills you liked in theory and didn’t have direct negative effects it might be worth trying them again. I do understand the frustration I really really do but it can be worth it. especially as you learn what coping skills can work with different somatic sensations and cognitive distortions.

I would suggest using some of the most basic coping methods of deep breathing. I would guess this already takes a lot of brainpower as even basic things like breathing regularly can be hard for those who have extreme dissociation. So it takes a huge amount of practice for us and time for it to be effective but it’s so very important.

I would suggest still trying to practice focusing on our body sensations even if we don’t add the subsequent suggestions for grounding. Knowing what sensations tend to present themselves when certain stimuli and thoughts are present is really important for coping. It can be true that the coping skill you are working at isn’t addressing where you are. For examples, our nervous system can be in hyperarousal but many grounding skills counteract hyperarousal. So try and look for engagement over relaxation or visa versus.

I am a big believer in the body-mind connection and import of the brain-body connection and coping that is body focused. Cogntive skills like thought stopping and replacing can be truly helpful in the short term for trauma survivors.

Talk to your alters as well, coping can be influenced by the emotions land somatic states trauma we are carrying along with the ones within our consciousness. They might also just have opinions on what you ought to do. This can be done internally or through other means like writing notes.

Mother-daughter incest

I have found very little survivor orientated material that could be helpful, I found mostly news sources about how it exists and academic texts.

If any of our community knows of survivor focused materials for survivors of mother-daughter incest please reply or submit them.

We do have a discord that you could join and we have an incest support channel we are still growing the members of the server but it might be a place to have peer support.

Be Blessed,

-Admin 2

#ask #advice #coping skills #dissociative identity disorder #did #dissociation #incest cw #mother mention #rape cw #noncon mention #Anonymous

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theskyeandsea · 5 years ago

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Water You Doing..? || Shiloh & Skylar

Slipping her hearing aids out of her ears, Skylar tucked them into the secure waterproof box she’d bought earlier that week. After doing her poking around near the river, she had been reminded of the fact that she still really hated being anywhere near the ocean. And, if she was going to do this whole… seal thing, she would need to deal with that. Which is why she’d bought a watertight box specifically for her hearing aids, so she would be able to stash them away somewhere nearby when she had to… transform. Ugh. Shaking her head, Skylar focused on the empty pool in front of her. She’d bought a guest pass to use the UMWC pool and had arrived on a quiet morning. Which was nice, in a way. Stepping into the pool, she adjusted to the temperature before wading in deeper into the water, her feet firmly planted against the pool floor. “It’s just water… Not a big deal. Just, mmm.” Skylar mumbled shaking her head as she tried to walk further out. When the water hit the bottom of her chin, she immediately began to back away towards the shallows. “Nope! Nope, nope, nope…”

Early in the morning and Shiloh already felt too full of energy that a regular jog wouldn’t be enough. It was strange, those mornings where she just woke up wired. Of course that morning she didn’t have work to busy herself with. She decided it would be a good time to go swimming, considering everything else she did took place outdoors. Safe from the fish rain, she changed out of her clothes and into her swimsuit. She couldn’t hear anyone else in the locker room and wondered if there was anyone in the pool. Her ears picked up the movement of the water before her eyes did and she looked over, not bothered someone was here. Usually there were a few people in the pool but it was large enough to still be comfortable. However, this person seemed to be keeping really close to the edge which made Shiloh stare. She walked over, curious if they were okay. As she got closer, they started to seem familiar. Wait, is that Skylar. She walked over, making sure she came into vision, waving at her as soon as their eyes met, following quickly with Skylar’s signed name, “Hey, Skylar.” She then looked at her in the water. “Are you okay? Do you need any help?”

Mmm, this was such a bad idea. Skylar did her best to keep her cool as she hung onto the edge of the pool. She was so wrapped up in not drowning that she didn’t register that someone else had entered the room, much less that they were watching her. But, as the figure entered her peripheral vision, she glanced up. Oh. Shiloh. The back of her neck burned hotly as she did her best to hide the fact that she was holding on very tightly to the pool deck. She offered a grimace of a smile, waving a wet hand before replacing it quickly on the side of the pool. Skylar did her best to focus on the other woman’s speaking patterns. “Hi… No, I’m okay. I’m fine, totally… totally fine.” She said, with another strained grin. Mmmmm. Oh god.

Shiloh grew worried, able to pick up that something was wrong but unsure what it was. Then she got it. “Oh no, did you get a cramp?” Shiloh wasted no time to enter the pool, slowly, not wanting to startle Skylar. “It’s alright if you did. It happens all the time.” Not to Shiloh, but she’s been in the pool when it happened to people and often has had to lift them out of the pool. Improper stretching and dehydration will do that to you, unfortunately. Still, she was concerned that it might be something else and stayed close but didn’t try to grab Skylar just yet.

Oh god. This wasn’t the best situation to be in. And as Shiloh entered the pool, Skylar’s face continued to burn red. At this point, drowning seemed preferable to… any of this. Swallowing, she did her best to focus on Shiloh, even though she would really rather be anywhere else. She watched her lip movements, putting together the visual cues with what she could pick up. As someone who’d done it all her life, lip reading still wasn’t easy. And the fact that she was incredibly embarrassed didn’t make it any easier. “No, ah, no cramp. I’m good, really.” She said offering a thumbs up quickly before clinging to the pool side once more. Skylar could feel her hands growing slick, but at least she didn’t have to worry about that right now. The pool was good for something after all...

Shiloh stayed at the edge with her, concerned. “Are you sure?” Sure, Shiloh could just turn around and go do her own thing but the way she was grabbing onto that edge for dear life, it was like… she was scared? Shiloh turned, debating just leaving her alone but then thought against it. “Can you please tell me what’s wrong? I want to help.” What, did Skylar not know how to swim? What would she be doing in a pool then? Afraid of water? Again, she didn’t know why Skylar would be in a pool if either of those were true, but she was all out of possibilities so she needed to stop assuming and have Skylar tell her what was going on.

“Ah. Mmm.” Shutting her eyes, Skylar grimaced. She really, really hated this situation. Why was this happening right now? Shiloh was being nothing but kind and it would be even worse if she just tried to turn her away. She didn’t want to insult her, but Skylar also wished that it had been anyone else who had come across her like this. “I’m… I can’t swim.” She confessed, opening her eyes with an awkward wince. “I was, um, trying to teach myself how to swim. And it’s not going as well as I’d hoped.” She said with a slight laugh. “You don’t need to help, really. You were probably here to swim and I’m just taking up your time and the pool and-- I’m really sorry.” She mumbled. Without the help of her hearing aids, her words were coming out a little less clear than they normally did and her absolute mortification did not help.

Shiloh let out a long sigh, ending with a small smile as she looked at Skylar. This girl was really something else and Shiloh didn’t know how she was real. “I’m not going to leave you to drown. Or worse.” What was worse than drowning? Shiloh didn’t know but that didn’t matter right now. She can’t even imagine what would have happened if she wasn’t there. It was clear however that Skylar was at the very least nervous. Shiloh couldn’t really understand what she was saying, but got the gist. Can’t swim, apologizes for it. “Luckily for you, I know how to swim.” She smiled, trying to remain calm for Skylar. “What are you afraid of? If you let go, what do you think will happen?” Shiloh wasn’t asking to mock her, but wanted to know if she was scared of drowning or something else.

Doing her best to keep her eyes focused on Shiloh, Skylar let out a nervous breath. “You don’t need to--” But, even as she tried to convince her that it would be okay, Skylar could see that Shiloh wasn’t about to just up and leave. “I… Mmm.” Shutting her mouth, she did her best to try and quantify her anxiety into words. Her parents had never let her around water, always saying that it would be safer for her if she just never went near it, something they drilled into her head after she was first fitted for hearing aids. Which had led her to avoid it at all costs. Even if she was just in a pool and it wasn’t that deep, there was still a very large part of her that was afraid that if her head went under the water, she wouldn’t be able to come back. “If I let go… I won’t be able to get back to the surface.” She said, trying to speak as clearly as she could.

“Okay,” Shiloh nodded, understanding her fear of it. “Right now, can you touch the floor with your feet?” Shiloh asked, thinking she should be able to, especially considering how tall she was but she wanted to know if they need to go further back the shallow end to find the perfect spot where Skylar could put her foot down just in case. It was a crutch in some ways. After all, it’s not so scary to be in the water if your feet can touch the bottom right? At least that’s what Shiloh hoped it would mean for Skylar but she didn’t know how scared she was.

“I... Mhm, I think so.” Skylar said, extending her legs underwater so her feet could touch the ground. She’d walked further out than she had intended and now found herself with the water up against her neck, even on her tiptoes. Though she knew she was technically safe, Skylar continued to hold onto the side of the pool. This was awful. This was awful and she felt so stupid in front of Shiloh. But, she was here now and there really wasn’t much she could do about it. She offered a nervous nod once more, “I think… I think I’m okay right here.”

“Okay, that’s good.” She could touch the ground, that was a good place to start. Still Shiloh wondered if they should go back to the beginning and ease Skylar back into the water but she was impressed with the progress she made and didn’t want to erase all that. She was in the water, by herself despite not being able to swim and being afraid. Skylar was very brave. “What’s the sign for water, again?” Shiloh asked remembering Skylar had signed it before but couldn’t remember the differences between that and “bitch”. So she took a guess. Put her hand up, thumb tucked in, and touched her chin. Her brows raised as she looked at Skylar expectantly.

Too focused on keeping her head above water, the first couple words escaped Skylar’s notice. But, based on Shiloh’s body language, it didn’t seem like they were super important words. But, when she lifted her hand to her mouth and started to make the sign for bitch, Skylar’s face went bright red. Shaking her head, Skylar pulled her hand away from the side of the pool to make a W with her hand, pressing it against her chin. “That’s, um,” She tilted her head back to keep the water from splashing her chin, “That’s not ‘water,’ you’re doing the other one. Water is with a W.” She said, holding up her hand. To hearing people, the letter W looked like the number three, but it was very different in ASL. Talking about sign was easy, it was simple, and it helped ease the anxiety that had flooded her system the second she’d stepped into the pool.

“Oh whoops,” Shiloh laughed feeling embarrassed but getting over it quickly. “Water,” she spoke and signed hoping she got the W right. It looked like she was holding up the number 3 to her chin. “Is that better?” Shiloh asked, giving Skylar a thumbs up. She had hoped it might make her smile but maybe she was still too concerned about the water.

“Yeah-- Um.” Skylar did her best to keep her cool as she held onto the side of the wall. This was a lot. There was a lot going on right now, between the sign and Shiloh suddenly being here and the fact that her hands were so slimy again. “Mhm, sorry, but I don’t think--” Shifting backwards to put a little bit more distance from Shiloh, Skylar’s slick hand slipped from the edge of the pool and she found herself dropping under water. In a panic, she tried to kick off from the ground, but her feet slipped off the bottom of the pool. Bubbles streamed out her mouth as she struggled to get some kind of control.

Shiloh hesitated to reach out and was too late to grab her before she went under. Oh fuck. Shiloh ducked down able to see her in the water and reached for her, grabbing her arms and putting them up on her shoulders as she pushed them both back above. She wasn’t under for long so Shiloh wasn’t worried about taking her completely out of the water but at the same time she’s never done this before. “Are you okay?” She asked very close to Skylar’s face as she refused to let go, afraid she’ll go under again. “Do you want to get out?”

Disoriented and underwater, terror filled Skylar. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t get a good grip on anything, and she didn’t even know how she was supposed to move underwater. As she tried to get her bearings and get herself back up to the surface, something took her by surprise. Even though she hadn’t been prepared to go underwater and she’d let out a lot of air… not being able to breathe wasn’t uncomfortable? It was shocking, it was scary, but it didn’t hurt? Her lungs didn’t burn, they felt fine. Before she could muddle through that revelation, she felt Shiloh grab hold of her and pull her back to the surface. Blinking the water from her eyes, Skylar was startled to see Shiloh’s face next to hers. “I-- Yes. Yes, please.” She said quickly.

Shiloh was a little puzzled by her not gasping as soon as she pulled her out but was quick to listen to her and help her climb out of the pool. “Okay, c’mon.” She muttered, probably too soft for Skylar to hear. Shiloh sat down, getting her own adrenaline to come down, having panicked at seeing Skylar go under but she was okay now. Everything was okay. She reached out to her, touching her arm to get her attention. “Are you okay?” She asked again once they made eye contact.

Scrambling out of the pool, Skylar sat at the water’s edge, hands shaking slightly as she pushed the wet hair from her face. This was such a mistake. She should have never done this, Ricky had been wrong, her seal didn’t know how to swim. Her seal hadn’t done her any kind of favors with the situation. She stared at her still slightly slick hands in frustration. If anything, her seal had made things work. This was terrible. When Shiloh touched her, Skylar turned to look at the other woman, trying to hide her frustration as best she could. “I’m… okay now.” Skylar said with a forced smile. “I’m really sorry about that. I lost my grip. Literally.” She sighed.

“It’s okay,” Shiloh tried to reassure her, moving closer. “It happens. Swimming can be really nerve-wracking.” She didn’t want to say scary, afraid that might insult Skylar in some way. She looked down at her lap, having hoped it would have turned out better than what happened. Skylar seemed upset before and seemed to still be upset now. “It takes time to learn how to swim,” Shiloh spoke up. “I’d be happy to teach you if you wanted me to.”

“Mm.” Skylar hummed, wiping the water from her face before resting her elbows on the top of her legs. This was awful, all of this was so dumb and embarrassing and ugh. Resting her head on her hand, she watched Shiloh speak, stringing the words together in her mind. It took a second for her to put it together, but when she did Skylar’s back straightened. Another opportunity to make an absolute fool out of herself in front of Shiloh? No, no, thank you. “Ah. You don’t need to do that, really.”

“I want to!” Shiloh didn’t mean to raise her voice but she didn’t enjoy her genuine offers of help to be pushed away. She let out a small laugh, easing herself out of any possible irritation. “I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t want to. I mean you came out all this way, by yourself. You were already in the water when I got here. You already took a big step here. I just wanted to help you… take more.” Shiloh thought she could help but maybe she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure what she was trying to say. “Look,” Shiloh started, figuring out another way to ask. “Can I please help you? I’d really like to.” Of course Skylar could say no and Shiloh would go back to doing what she came here to do. No hard feelings but she could also say yes and this time Shiloh hoped that Skylar understood she wasn’t just asking to be nice.

Blinking in surprise, Skylar tilted her head at Shiloh’s sudden outburst. Even without reading her lips, she could tell that there this really was something that Shiloh wanted to do. What Skylar couldn’t quite figure out is why she wanted to help her learn how to swim. People back in Seattle didn’t really care about anyone else, even her friends back home had never really offered to try and teach her to swim. As much as she hated the idea of acting like an idiot… she really did need to learn how to swim. With a small nod, Skylar spoke up quietly, “Okay.” Realizing that she probably needed to speak up, she repeated herself, “Okay. Thank you, Shiloh. I really appreciate it.”

“Really?” Shiloh wasn’t sure what to expect, so when Skylar agreed to it, she felt herself getting excited. Skylar has been the one showing her how to sign and now it was Shiloh’s turn to teach her how to swim. “Okay! Okay… so for starters, you need to be comfortable in the water.” Shiloh looked to the swimming pool, knowing it looked pretty big and intimidating. Maybe a big pool wasn’t the right place to start but Shiloh believed that Skylar could do this. Just needed some patience. “So what makes you feel comfortable?” Shiloh said as she swung her legs back and forth in the pool.

Processing the words, Skylar looked at the water for a moment as she tried to figure out what about the water was comfortable for her. Honestly? None of this was comfortable. It was all pretty awful. But… out of all of it, holding onto the wall had been easiest. “Mmmm,” Sucking in a deep breath, Skylar shrugged, “In the pool, not much. But, holding onto the wall was fine. When I wasn’t slipping off of it. And I was okay before the water was up to my neck. Like… When it’s at my shoulders, it wasn’t that bad.” She said with a wince. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make this difficult.”

“We can go to a more shallow end of the pool.” Shiloh suggested, willing to do that if that’s what Skylar wanted. “It’s important you feel comfortable letting go and if that’ll be easier if the water is lower than we can do that.” Whatever Skylar was comfortable with doing, Shiloh was willing to be right behind her to support her. She never got formal swimming lessons, it was just done with her mother and father at a community pool and she was trying to remember what she had learned but all she could remember was feeling comfortable and safe with her parents and she could only wish she could get Skylar to feel that same with her. “So, what do you want to do?”

Skylar’s fingers gripped the edge of the pool tightly, but nodded all the same. “Sounds good to me.” When Shiloh asked her what she was comfortable doing, that was harder for her to vocalize. Obviously, the wall thing had been a bad idea. And it wasn’t as though it freaked her out to just be in the water. It was a matter of feeling safe and not just going right under that bothered her. Hands fidgeting together, the back of her neck burned with embarrassment. “Is it… okay if I held your hand? Just when I’m deep in the water? I don’t want to slip again and you don’t, you don’t have to help me.” She said, shaking her head.

Shiloh softened at the request and nodded, following it up with, “Yeah, of course. I want to help you.” Shiloh felt a little pressure to not let go but wasn’t going to let her nerves get the better of her. She knew she could hold onto Skylar. “Here let’s do this. Stay here.” She said as she pushed herself off her seat to slide into the pool. “Alright so. Take a deep breath. Like as much air as you can. So much that you can’t physically breathe in from your nose.” Shiloh demonstrated for a moment. Then exhaled as she extended her hands out for Skylar to grab onto. “Grab my hands and then just slide into the pool. You won’t sink cause of all the air you have in your lungs. Also I’ll be holding onto you. I won’t let go. I promise.”

Skylar watched as the other woman spoke, keeping her eyes focused on Shiloh as she entered the pool. She made it look so easy, to just swim like that. And maybe it was for her, but for Skylar… not so much. Pushing the thought from her mind, Skylar focused on the words. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got this.” She mumbled, more to herself than to Shiloh. Taking a long, deep breath, she slid into the water, reaching out to grab hold of the hands waiting for her. Unlike before, the water didn’t come much further than her shoulders as she was buoyed up by both the air in her lungs and Shiloh’s assistance. “Mmm. Okay. This is okay.” She said, hoping that if she said it outloud, she could actually mean it. Lifting her gaze, Skylar realized how close she was to Shiloh. Pushing the thought from her mind, she focused on trying to get used to the weird weightless feeling of being in the water.

“Hey, nice job!” Shiloh commended her on being able to do that in the first place. “You know I think you’re very brave to put yourself in a situation like this.” They were a bit too close but Shiloh tried not to think about that and instead chose Skylar’s actions to focus on. “You’ve been doing great so far.” Nope, that wasn’t working she was becoming more and more aware that they were holding hands and close. “Once you learn how to float on your own it’ll get way easier to swim.” Not to mention she’d feel more comfortable being in the water. Given that they weren’t too deep in, floating wasn’t a necessity. “You’re gonna wanna practice kicking your legs in the water. Just slowly move them back and forth, kind of like walking but with pointed toes? I don’t know if you can see…” It was hard to describe something that just felt natural now. Shiloh looked down at her feet in the water, picking her legs up so she would actually have to float and moving them back and forth at a slow and steady pace. As she started, Shiloh started to gently pull them further from the edge, but still in the same shallow level.

“Mmm. Thanks.” Skylar said, doing her best to smile, but the entire situation had her just a little on edge. But, it was better than doing this on her own. Even though she felt bad for having Shiloh help her, Skylar couldn’t help but feel grateful that the other woman was doing this.. “Okay.” Watching as Shiloh began to kick in the water, Skylar did her best to follow her lead. Her center of gravity shifted, tilting her face closer to the water. But, instead of sinking under like last time, she was kept afloat by the firm grasp on her hand. She had her. Tension eased from her shoulders slightly as she allowed herself to trust in Shiloh and floated in the pool.

Shiloh was really proud of Skylar’s progress. Also, it made her feel like she was doing a good job teaching her something that she learned a long time ago. She was all smiles the more they pulled from the edge and even got over the fact they were holding hands, too happy to see Skylar learning and hopefully getting over her fears. She probably won’t be able to swim by the end of this little lesson but Shiloh was impressed with what she saw - Skylar fighting her fears and doing this. “Woo!” She cheered, almost lifting their hands but of course remembered if she moved her hands she had to move Skylar’s so thought against it. Instead, she focused on what was next for Skylar to learn...

#p: shiloh kent #p: wyd

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onestowatch · 5 years ago

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Garçons Music’ Is Boundless in Creation and Direction, but the Funk Is Real [Q&A]

It’s difficult to classify the genre-explorative sound of the Ottawa-based group Garçons – which is kind of the point. Their music is felt as well as heard, weaving in and out of genres with little resistance and pure finesse. The emerging duo, comprised of musicians Deelo and Julian Strangelove, are fans of originators, artists who are not afraid to stand out: James Brown, Nina Simone, Pharrell, Outkast and Erykah Badu. To no surprise, the unquantifiable characteristic that made the aforementioned artist who they are today is the spear-head of Garçons musical profile; no barriers or stipulations, just music that makes you feel.

Garçons first surfaced with their single, “Numba One” released in May of 2018. Incorporating crisp claps, subtle steel-drum patterns and bright vocals, the eclectic duo revels in an island-like energy. The vibe-teaming sound is a resounding and deceiving introduction into a group whose musical facet goes way beyond one style. Before the single’s release, Garçons shared a brightly colored, charismatic video that successfully aided in introducing the dynamic duo to the world.

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A month would pass until Garçons released their second single, “Little Things.” Best described as a sonic embodiment of a disco ball, the duos follow-up record reintroduces the neon-lit roller rink energy of the disco era. This revolving carousel of sound reaffirms the groups commitment to originality and standing out. The obvious familiarity with a wide range of genres expressed on their second single made the anticipation for their third single incredibly grueling.

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Switching things up, Deelo and Julian Strangelove decided to slow things down for their third and final single, “Pink Dress.” Focusing on the rosy felicities of love, Garçons paints a mesmerizing picture atop glittery production and soulful serenading. The group’s image-invoking performance, dedicated to “the angel in the pink dress,” is yet another incredibly successful showcasing of their musical range and ability.

Garçons debut EP, Body Language, was shared a few short weeks after their final single in late July of 2018. The debut begins with the aforementioned singles sequenced in the order of their release, each record becoming reborn amidst the 26-minute exhibition. To no surprise, the thematic ideals of originality that birthed the previous releases are fully present throughout the rest of the debut.

“Fly Solo,” the seven-track EP’s halfway mark, is a departure from the groovy arrangements of its predecessors. Deelo uses this gleeful medley-interlude to recount a magical night of bliss, infatuation and future charm. This brief moment of idling preps the stage for the debut’s following record “Hang with Us,” a soft and subtle jazz-infused, bass-thumping production that rides in tandem with the welcoming attitude of the song’s subject matter.

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The second to last record on the seven-track EP is none other than the body-rocking orchestration of “Take It Slow.” Backed by Pharrell-reminiscent production and sexy lyricism, Garçons come together to effectively turn up the temperature for its listeners. This masterful concoction is without a doubt the steamiest record on the debut comprised of piercing falsettos, soulful scatting and rumbling bass.

Garçons close their stellar introductory debut with “Morning,” a funk-filled lo-fi ballad that leaves a lingering sweetness. This light-hearted closer brings an end to an incredible body of work. Body Language is a towering affirmation of Garçons’ ideals: be original. The powerful pairing of Deelo and Julian Strangelove is one we are beyond excited to watch flourish.

We had the pleasure to catch up with Garçons about being human, the making of Body Language, and their fanboy love for music.

OTW: First, thank you both for taking the time, I’ve been really excited to catch up with you guys. Let’s start at the beginning, how did you two meet one another?

Garçons: It happened pretty naturally. We were both doing our own things in the beginning and then somehow the universe just brought us together and it’s been dope ever since (laughter).

OTW: It really be like that, for those new to your music, what would you tell them about it?

Garçons: Don’t think, just take it in. We’re not trying to do anything, not trying to be anybody or make people think, it’s up to them. If they take something from the music - whatever that may be - like a certain type of feeling that’s great. We are happy as long as they feel comfortable that’s what’s awesome.

OTW: Well the music is super eclectic, who did you guys listen to that helped shape your artistry?

Garçons: We are both big lovers of James Brown, Nina Simone, Frank Ocean, Outkast, Tribe Called Quest, Pharrell, Bob Dylan and Erykah Badu.

OTW: I find that so cool because not only can you hear those influences in the music but it sounds, at least from what I gather from the music, like they also influenced your decision to remain creatively open minded.

Garçons: For sure! I think if you list all those artists that’s something they definitely share in common. It’s just about being weird, being original and not being afraid to be weird honestly.

OTW: What do you want people to know about you two?

Garçons: We’re just two very normal guys and hopefully people can relate to that. Just be human we’re not special or anything we’re just having fun making music.

OTW: Jumping into the music you guys recently released a new music video for your single, “Froggin,” and before that “Pedigree.” Could we take the new visuals as a sign that new music is on the way?

Garçons: Yeah! We are going to put out another EP - seven songs again - in September sometime and “Pedigree” and “Froggin” are the first two singles. We are hoping those songs represent us coming to terms with our own originality. With the previous project you can see influences on every song and with this one we are really trying to create our own sound, so hopefully those first singles are a good example of that.

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OTW: Speaking of Body Language, was there anything you were listening to on the side while making it?

Garçons: That one was special because that was the first time we ever really took the time to work together - we pretty much wrote all those songs in a month in my apartment. The cool thing about it was that there was no Wi-Fi for most part so couldn’t listen to music but it was pretty cool (laughs). It’s hard to pinpoint anything, it’s just everything we were individually listening to at some point mixed in and what came out we thought was dope - stuck with that and just tried to push that sound further and further.

OTW: Being that both of you have experience in production and recording, what was that process like?

Garçons: It’s pretty much back and forth whatever each of us can add to the song at the time we work on it and sometimes he records himself sometimes I record him sometimes he will play an instrument and sometimes I’ll do it. It’s more than me making a beat and he just recording on it. It’s really a process -- sometimes it’s slow sometimes fast but it’s never the same - I know a lot of artists say that and it sounds cliché but it really is that way (laughter).

OTW: Besides the new EP that is on the way, should we keep our eyes out for anything else from you guys?

Garçons: A lot of those songs on the upcoming EP will have videos for sure. In terms of tour and all that stuff not really at the moment. We are playing a lot of shows in Toronto and Ottawa and in September we will be in Montreal for the first time. We are very excited about that but right now we are just trying to take it day by day - going with the flow. Really just excited to have people see and hear the new stuff we have coming out.

OTW: Alright last question, are there any artists you are listening to right now that we should know about? Who are your Ones To Watch?

Garçons: Burna Boy! We are opening for him next week - it’s going to be awesome. Love the new Blood Orange stuff personally and Steve Lacy. We are listening to a lot of our own music at the moment though (laughter) since we are in the process of mixing it but obviously keeping an eye out for other music dropping. Our ears are always open, we love hearing new music and seeing new artists come up and we are both such fanboys - we know so many artists and songs by heart and just big fans of everything.

#garcons #interview #new artist discovery #soul #indie

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oscopelabs · 6 years ago

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3D, Part 1: James Cameron and the Broken Promise of the Third Wave by Vadim Rizov

[Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on 3D. Part 2, coming soon, will discuss the unexpected peak of 3D as an artistic form. —ed.]

It’s not fair to say that James Cameron ruined projection standards by pushing for a digital changeover—the industry impetus was already under way—but Avatar left less of an impression as a movie than as technological advocacy, resulting in unintended, still-lingering side effects. Cameron dreamed of 3D cinema arriving, finally, at what he viewed as its overdue narrative fruition; he couldn’t have imagined compromising projection standards or undermining film archiving in the process. This is a two-part essay: The first is a grim recap of the Third Wave of 3D, which has unfolded over the last decade. The second will advocate for a secret classic of 3D cinema at its inadvertently experimental peak.

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The not-too-reductive standard narrative goes like this: 3D was popularized contemporaneously with widescreen in the ‘50s as half of a two-pronged initiative to lure audiences away from their TV screens by giving the theatrical experience something unavailable at home. By decade’s end, widescreen was normalized; ’60s and ‘70s one-offs excepted, 3D wasn’t. 1980’s Comin’ at Ya! kicked off its second wave, which had a similarly short lifespan. In both runs, 3D failed to transition from passing gimmick to standard filmmaking option, mostly due to the diminishing thrill of seeing things flying at you, but also due to technological flaws that made the results physically difficult to watch. This history’s a bit of an oversimplification: like sound, color, and widescreen (all of which were experimented with long before they became standard options), 3D had test-run incarnations well before its ‘50s boom. Still, this story is largely accurate. So what makes the third wave different?

Cameron’s ideal 3D would be to create totally immersive worlds, refusing to throw objects at viewers the way the first two 3D waves had done. These effects were presumably cheap grabs for attention, while Cameron was focused more on depth rather than breaking the proscenium. In a (troublesomely unattributed) quote from 2009, a collaborator summed up his approach: “There’s a scene early in [Avatar] where something jumps out of the screen. Jim said, `I just did that so that they would know I know how to do it. But then I stopped doing it because that’s not what 3D is; 3D is bringing the audience completely into the environment of the movie.’” Narrative disruption was not on the agenda; Cameron’s films have always followed conventional dramatic arcs, and Avatar has a particularly unchallenging (“archetypal”) story. This meant yoking 3D to digital projection, which would straighten out the format’s numerous problems once and for all by eliminating both the visual eyestrain and eyeline problems of watching 3D, either polarized (the default standard until digital) or in anaglyph (the infamous red-and-blue glasses format that became a stand-in image for the format, despite being relatively rare) and the double potential for error caused by an incompetent projectionist. Cameron had spent years preparing audiences—and, more importantly, the industry—for a digital conversion. In 2005, he, George Lucas, and Peter Jackson appeared at ShoWest, the trade theater convention to boost for 3D and, by association, digital projection. “I’m giving you guys plenty of warning,” Cameron said. “You’ve got two years to get ready.” His timeline was off, the larger idea was not: In 2009, 16,000 screens worldwide were digital-ready. The next year, that had shot up to 36,000.

It’s not clear digital projection is the optimal way to see Avatar; the late 3D advocate Ray Zone saw the film five times in multiple formats in its first run, concluding not only that film-based IMAX 3D (with two 70mm projectors running simultaneously) was the correct way to see the film, but that “One hint that IMAX 3-D 15/70mm was the native 3-D format for Avatar was that the new large platters would only hold two hours and forty minutes of 15/70mm film—the exact running time of the film.” Nonetheless, Avatar’s overwhelming success sped up a slow-moving push to digital conversion, which the industry had been inching towards for some time. George Lucas had some digital screenings of Phantom Menace, but locally, I remember digital first rearing its head at the arthouse—specifically Austin’s long-closed four-screen Dobie Theatre, an independent that had by then been bought by Landmark Theatres. The arthouse chain went in early for digital projectors, a bright future ushered in Windows Media Player 9. (From a press release at the time: “The film is a milestone in digital origination — a genuine work of art that takes full advantage of new technology. Windows Media 9 Series will show it in all its glory.”) “We can hear the techies in the crowd oohing and ahhing already,” The Austin Chronicle’s Marc Savlov wrote. “It'll only be a matter of time before the entire industry goes digital and the notion of scratched and blotchy film and frazzled frame adjustments will seem very quaint indeed. Progress, baby. We live for it.” My first screening in that format was Russian Ark, Alexander Sokruov’s one-take Hermitage film that would have been impossible to realize on celluloid, with its inherent time limits on how long each reel can be. That projection (the Dobie was only one of four US theaters to play it that way in the film’s initial run) made sense: digital in, digital out.

Still, the stakes of first digital conversion were relatively small; Avatar’s success upped digital’s presence significantly while coupling it to 3D. This is the part that’s different: where previous pushes for 3D worked with (extensively) modified versions of existing film hardware, this time the medium’s perfection accelerated the wholesale rethinking of film production and exhibition. Striking and shipping 35mm prints was expensive, as was paying qualified projectionists, and said prints would get beat up; the longer you waited to see a film, odds were the worse it would look. And “qualified” projectionists certainly weren’t the baseline standard by any means: I remember going to see Talk to Her improperly projected in 2002, the frame misaligned so that the bottom of the frame showed as a sliver at the top from start to finish. (Here’s a much more dramatic projection fail story from back in the day; probably everyone has at least one.) As with any new tech rollout, unforeseen problems followed: smaller theaters crowdsourced funds for new projectors or risked going out of business, digital files proved anything but foolproof in practice, a push for digital archiving placed the history of film at risk as new storage formats proved highly unstable relative to well-preserved film. (This last sentence is a heavily compressed version of what David Bordwell tracked at length in his highly recommended “Pandora’s Digital Box” series.) More succinctly, this is the first time 3D introduced a specific ghost in the machine: every time you go to a multiplex to see a movie that looks way too dark, the odds are good someone left the 3D lens on, and no one’s around who can fix it or who would even care to. What started as an attempt to perfect 3D had the inadvertent effect of undoing 2D digital projection standards.

Again, none of this is directly James Cameron’s fault. He’s just the one who helped push through a change faster than it might have been implemented otherwise. Avatar’s blockbuster breakthrough was followed the next year by Alice in Wonderland, which harvested a billion-plus dollars worldwide, making the case that it didn’t matter whether 3D was native or, as in Tim Burton’s film, post-converted. Not a year later, Jeffrey Katzenberg—another 3D booster—was already worried “the bloom was off the rose” because cynical types “thought they could just deliver a kind of low-end crappy version of it, and people wouldn't care, or wouldn't know the difference.” Five years later, Katzenberg was blunter, quoting (intentionally or not) Easy Rider to convey the extent of his disappointment: “we blew it.” 3D’s never had as big a year since 2010: its revenue has declined every year since, and production of 3D films has gone down. The technology stuck, but 3D’s potential as a normative storytelling tool remains once again questionable until further notice.

Setting aside the grim trajectory of 3D’s current wave, which has seen revenue (and audience demand) for the format decrease, it’s worth reflecting on Cameron’s original idea that 3D would add “depth” to the familiar, instead of a better brand of comin-at-ya effects. For years, whenever people would ask which 3D movies I liked, I’d say Yogi Bear. This is (not entirely) a smartass answer: obviously Goodbye to Language would be a better response, but Godard sought to dismantle all 3D’s rules one event shot at a time, and no one will (be able to) follow up on its visual inquiries. Pina made visual sense (the performers are dancing outside, depth is important), Hugo looked neat, and Tron: Legacy was a cool lightshow (though that had more to do with sheer color overload and Daft Punk’s super-loud score as rendered on the biggest speakers theatrically available, and a 3D expert friend swears it has some of the worst use of the medium he’s ever seen); otherwise, my 3D sampling has mostly been review assignments of bad-looking movies. The worst are the post-converted monstrosities. A real low here was the new Pete’s Dragon, which Disney screened in 3D: it looked extremely dark, which was predictable, but worse, a bunch of shots which were clearly shallow-focus, had all been rendered as three to four separate planes of depth, casting blurry background areas in semi-sharp relief, each shot an unintentional diorama. It was sort of possible to tell what the compositional intent was, but impossible to really envision it.

So Yogi Bear is peak 3D. Why not? At a cost of $80 million, Yogi Bear renders a depth-filled Jellystone Park entirely on par with Pandora, with all of the depth and none of the tacky colors. Both movies tell stories, both benefit from depth to spatially reconstruct a largely external environment: the differences are mostly details. In an interview Google will no longer let me find, but which I swear I remember, Cameron said only 19 shots (or thereabouts, let me hedge) in Avatar featured zero CG. These are, I presume, the shots of Jake Sully back on base; to me, they’re easily the most memorable parts of the movie, capturing the full depth of a set (and its metal walls) in a way that’s way more compelling than a fully rendered fake ecosystem . What if Cameron was wrong and 3D is, fundamentally, not just a way to enhance immersiveness but one which, when deployed in the non-CG constructed world, can recode the nuts and bolts of narrative filmmaking visual language itself? In Part II, I’ll look back at the much-derided second wave of ‘80s 3D to make the case that 1983’s Treasure of the Four Crowns, a little-regarded Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off, is one of the format’s greatest, most progressive and inadvertently suggestive moments.

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whitewolfbumble · 6 years ago

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The Fallout - Part Seven (Bucky x Reader)

Summary: You had been a ghost for years, taking down the bad guys from the shadows that had once enslaved you. That is until the Avengers finally caught up with you and yet again your life changed. But your past won’t stay dead and everything starts to shift when a familiar face joins the ranks: Bucky Barnes. He may not remember you, but you certainly remember him.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Slow burn, language, claustrophobic-ness,

Word Count: About 5k

A/N: And down we go! Some more bits of You/Bucky origin info here. Please let me know what you think lovelies!!

MY MASTERLIST // THE FALLOUT MASTERLIST // PART SIX

The tunnel was intensely musty, completely pitch black, and uneven in all respects. And running top speed through it was a fucking challenge here. You might not be as “super” of a super soldier as the two men you were running towards, but after your years with Hydra you doubted you would pass a drug test.

But you still weren’t a bat. And navigating this blind was disorientating. You did have a small disk-shaped light strapped to your shoulder to somewhat guide you, but with your speed and the sweat in your eyes, it was not enough to spare you a lot of cuts and bruises. Coupled with the fact that you were going so fast and jostling so much, you basically saw what was in front of you only as you were running passed it.

Dodging under a low beam, you raced forward, eyes only half on the terrain and mostly on spotting any traps laid out for you. This one went right to the base so it would be stupid not to set something.

Unless they wanted you there.

You grunted, bring your knees up swiftly towards your chest for a moment as you jumped, trying not to fall as the floor suddenly dropped down a couple feet. You landed- not gracefully by any stretch- without breaking anything though, so win.

Suddenly you skidded roughly to a stop, one leg low in front of you and one bent, hands on the ground bracing yourself. Up ahead there was light. You checked your tracker and saw you were almost there, just another small stretch after a sharp turn. That was what you were seeing ahead of you now.

Okay, get your head in the game here.

Far too slowly for your liking, you walked forward, eyes darting over every inch of the murky, dusty space. It gave you time to calm your panting breath down somewhat.

As you reached the sharp turn you crouched low and looked cautiously around the corner, just the slimmest sliver of your profile visible around the corner. If anyone was there, they would be expecting someone to appear at a normal height, not so far down. It would give them pause before shooting.

But the space was empty. Just another dirty, dusty hallway. So you kept walking, small machine gun out and ready to fire.

You walked like this for some time, heading deeper and deeper until you were at the end of the tunnel and at the base proper. Stopping by the large metal door leading to an empty foyer type room, you pulled up the schematics you had of this base before putting a hand up to the door.

Patchy at best, it looked like you were on the top of two levels, the bottom being much larger than the top. You took in a steady breath, gun ready with your finger just a hair above the trigger. You slowly opened the door and began your mission.

Steve and Bucky had probably made quick work of this floor, set up and looking like an abandoned office out of the eighties. Nothing was out of place in the oddly empty space: no bullet holes or shells from Bucky’s gun, no slashes in the wall from Steve’s shield. And no bodies or blood. Just dingy floor tiles, off-white peeling walls, and the distinct smell of stale neglect.

Your search of this floor was thorough and as quick as you could make it. No traps to your knowledge, and if you had to escape the same way you came in, you knew the best route to do it fast.

A grimy stairwell with railing and steps slick with moisture lead you down to the next level. This one was quite different. The upper level would have been just mundane offices at some point, but the level below was where the experiments happened.

This base had been used largely for imprisonment and human experimentation. You had been here before and from what you remembered, it wasn’t pretty. You didn’t dwell on that much. It wouldn’t help here, as you only had one memory of one room.

Barred cells lined some hallways, others were lined with thick metal doors, their white-painted exteriors a wet and dingy grey-brown with rusted reddy-brown walls that matched the dried old blood on the tables and chairs within. Age had rotted this place, long forgotten and out of use.

The more hallways you slunk down silently, peering into cells with a laser focus, the more you felt your anxiety creeping up on you. And for you on a mission? That was not typical.

This isn’t right.

You couldn’t place what was out of place in all of this. So you kept moving, as silent as the still air around you.

Eventually after some minutes moving through this base like a ghost, you got to the last room in the whole base. It was the furnace room, a large and a complicated mess of pipes and big towering tanks. Again, nothing there. Just that terrifying sound that silence had when it closed in on you.

You had stopped in your tracks by the far wall behind one of those metal tanks to try and collect your thoughts.

This isn’t right.

Okay, no signs anywhere that Steve and Bucky had even entered this base. You knew they had though, as they had said as much before the comms went out. Everyone got into their respective base.

So what the hell? Had they left after their comms went out? But that didn’t sit right with you. They would’ve signaled somehow, figuring you would dig your way through to the base in a heartbeat after not hearing from them.

This isn’t right.

You had no facts, no visuals, no way of figuring out what happened. All you had was a feeling.

So since that was all you had, that was what you focused on.

Yes, this was a creeping fucking place and the silence was all but comforting, but you had been through dank dangerous places before. It was second nature to you and you knew that you shouldn’t be feeling this way. You had too much practice in these kinds of places.

THIS ISN’T RIGHT.

So what’s wrong with it? The emptiness? The cells? The tables with dead blood crusted onto the straps that once held those poor souls down?…

“Shit,” your voice echoed suddenly and loudly in the dank, dark room. "Fuck!"

No, no, no, no, no, no!

You ran top speed, not caring to be quiet or careful anymore, traps or lurking enemies be damned. You took off as fast as your legs could take back towards a hallway lined with those big metal doors. The ones where countless people were held and tortured, like you had been at one time.

You looked in the first cell, then the second, then again down the whole hallway. Running through to the next section, you did the same, quickly taking in the haunted rooms.

And every room you looked in confirmed what was wrong.

Every room may have had a different setup, layout, door, or purpose, but every room in the whole complex was painted the same colour. A red rusty brown.

You swallowed hard and worked to pull up that single memory you had of Vier Gliedmaßen. You had actually dreamt of it not that long ago, that nightmare being the worst of them.

It was the one that featured Bucky, standing in front of you in a concrete-lined cell, with a small barred door the only way out. On the other side of that door were eyes watching, notes scribbled on their notepads as you screamed for help. Not for them to help you exactly, but for Bucky too. Though he never did.

He was hurting you, holding you there while you screamed to be let go, to go back home. But you also didn’t want to leave the cell. You didn’t want to face them again. Impossibly they were far worse than Bucky was.

You didn’t know his real name then, just called him Soldier like they did. Calling Bucky the fake name he had given you always made him hurt you more. You figured he probably killed the man whose name he stole.

You eventually made a name for all of them, the soldiers that came to hurt you again and again. But it wasn’t them- the soldiers- that did it; it was Hydra. They were the ones you hated. They were the ones who did this. And you would rather stay in that cell with the soldiers than face the horrors that they did to you in the name of experimentation. Or the horrors that they made you inflict on others.

The cell they held you in was wet, dank, and concrete. It was painted green, making your bruised, bloodied, and beaten skin look sickly, and Bucky look like some monster, with shadows dancing terrifyingly across his face.

But not a rusted red-brown.

Your memories, however compartmentalized to stay sane, were intact.

They rarely wiped your mind, needing your…creativity in the field, along with the ominous threats and repercussions over the years to have the needed weight. They just pumped you full of something to set you loose, or keep you docile, or keep you in agony and begging them for some relief before it started all over again. Day after day. Decade after decade.

You remembered them calling this place “Vier Gliedmaßen”, the name sticking to your mind as you heard it a few times through the years, conjuring up visions of that cell and that terror. You remembered the overwhelming dirt smell. The dank water pooling on the floor under your bare feet. There was no light beyond the artificial light that patchily lit everything.

You knew the base must be underground, so naturally it had to be this one. Right?

You mentally ran through the other bases and their descriptions from the team. The mountainside base was huge and airy, big enough to easily fit the Hulk, with every room broad, no cells at all, just large rooms of weapons and air support vehicles.

The tech base was one floor, no lower level at all, made of glass and steel. It was half underground but half above. The whole base, start to finish had windows on the upper half of the rooms. They could have updated it? But unlikely. Tech development was never held in the same spot as experimentation as they were resolute to keep it under strict lock and key. You had never been in a tech base while under Hydra’s influence. They wouldn’t have had you or anyone like you near a base like that.

The last base was the one you had been to with Steve and Bucky originally, and nothing there rung a bell at all. It was all above ground, besides the power generator in the basement.

Unless that wasn’t the last base.

Again, you took off running.

“To anyone who can hear, there is another undiscovered base," you said, stomach dropping more with every step. "Repeat, there is another base we didn’t know about.”

You took the stairs three at a time, running up to the top floor as soon as possible. You needed to figure this out fast.

Shit, shit, shit, shit!

“Bucky, Steve… I’ll find you," you practically shouted into the comm. "I will fucking find you. And good luck to anyone listening in that gets in my fucking way!”

If Hydra had captured them and were listening in, they would know you were on your way now.

Good.

You wanted them to know you were coming. You would kill the lot of them before they realized, and you wanted them to know it was you that sliced them open. And if they so much as touched Steve or Bucky it would be so much worse.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., ” you snapped, barely registering the blur of the base as you ran through it. "Tell me you’re still here,

A little light lit up on the wristband. “Here for you, Y/N.”

“Tell me you know where the team is.”

“No, Y/N.”

“Fine,” you breathed heavy, running down to a corridor that held the most exits into the tunnels. “Tell me you at least can still see their vitals."

Your small screen lit up, but the blinking green lights were gone, just grey blinking circles where they had once been. “I can’t seem to find them, Y/N. They’ve vanished.”

“Even Tony?”

“I can’t connect with him.”

“Okay, shit,” you said, boots screeching loudly to a halt as you reached your destination. “The maps of the tunnels, I still have them?”

A map of the tunnels appeared on your wristband. “If there was a base, somewhere in a similar size to the four different Vier Gliedmaßen, where are possibilities within the tunnels?”

“There are four hundred and sixty-four possibilities.”

You took a furious breath in through your nose before strapping your gun back to your thigh holster in favour of unsheathing a knife from the back of your belt. You began turning it and playing with it absently, focusing your frantic energy as best you could.

“Okay, next question, what tunnel leads down the farthest into the ground, that has a dead end?”

“There is one," Finally some decent news. "And an entrance to it is down this hallway, third door to your left, and is the second exit on your left.”

You bolted immediately, kicking in the door, a terribly loud clang echoing everywhere.

“Chances that something base sized could be under it?”

“It’s definitely possible, Y/N.” But not guaranteed.

You reached the door, adrenalin begging you to keep up the pace but you stopped for a moment. Pulling up the map, it did not look like a fun ride. Some sections were almost a straight drop down and incredibly narrow.

“Y/N, I will lose contact with you partially down the tunnel. It’s too deep for me to reach you.”

“Understood,” you said tersely. Fuck Tony and his tech right now. Your heart briefly constricted as you made a promise that you, he, and everyone else on the Team would live for you to tell him that in person.

Then down into the black again you went, praying your hunch was right.

_______

Three kilometres in you hit a first narrow patch. The tunnel had been on a steady decline but it suddenly angled down, the walls getting incredibly close together. It was completely black besides the little shoulder light that bumped and moved with you, causing your focus to be hard to keep. The air itself was dead, stale and it felt like you were breathing in not oxygen but exclusively dust and dirt. Your lungs felt heavy with the weight of it, making this all the more unbearably stifling.

Squeezing through and letting gravity do its part, you let your body fall through, only slight bracing yourself with your hands and feet against the walls. Rock and more dust flew at you, entering your airways and pelleting your face. You wanted speed over safety here though so you kept it up.

Depending on who specifically had taken Steve and Bucky, Hydra could do a lot of damage in the time since you heard from them. The cuts and scraps that riddled you would be nothing compared to that, so you refused to stop.

You hit bottom only making it a few more feet on the rocky ground before you reached another steep decline. This was far more narrow.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

No response.

You would have to be the sole judge on if you fit through. But honestly, this was the only option. In your mind, despite the incredibly huge possibility this was wrong, to you this was somehow the only way to save them.

Tony had mapped out tunnel after tunnel, but this one wasn’t on the radar. It led nowhere, and they were only looking for exits or tunnels leading to the bases at the time.

In the black, you mentally braced yourself for this.

It would not do much with the tunnel walls so close to your body to get claustrophobic now. You didn’t think of the unknown shrinking space below you or the untold tons of dirt and rock above your head.

Far deeper than six feet under, you thought before shutting that down and focusing.

You got into the best position you could to try and see down through the narrow passageway angling down below you. It looks like it was narrowest at the opening, only a few metres until it opened up, if only slightly.

This better be fucking stable enough.

You shimmied yourself into the opening and began your descent further into the darkness. Struggle was an understatement. You felt the walls pushing your breath back into your mouth, feeling the unrelenting pressure of the dirt covering you on every single inch of skin. You could only move your hands and feet, while your legs and torso were pressed flush against the wall, like toothpaste in the tube.

As your hips hit hard against the narrow passage, you tried to force yourself through with your severely limited movement.

With your fucking weapons strapped to your legs and body, this was not going to work. You contorted yourself to try and get a hand down to your hips. Your fingers fumbled in the darkness for a minute before you heard a small click. Your weapons belt that hung loosely around your hips was free.

But the guns at your thighs were in the way and would have to go too.

I better get these back.

You forced your hand painfully down your body, fingers only barely able to touch the clip of your gun holster. You tried and tried to force it down further but it wouldn’t budge.

This wasn’t going to be the end. You were going to do this, find them, and get out a different way. You only had to get through this tunnel.

After minutes your nail hit the clip in the right spot, loosening the holster immediately. After moving your hand over to the other thigh, you managed to get the other one undone in half the time. It hung in place, but loose. With the guns on your side able to move, you have the space to squirm your hips through. As you shimmied further, rocks and roots cutting into your sides, your now loose weapons and straps moved up as you moved down. They clung around your neck and chest as you moved, unable to get past your shoulders.

Feeling with your feet braced on the wall on the way down, you felt the cavern open up, the walls widening, leaving you dangling above an unknown length of space.

Your breathing was contracted by heat and dirt and effort, and you tried to think it through. If there was a large opening or cavern below you, it wouldn’t be that big. You hadn’t seen anything on the map. So again you continued, jaw set painfully hard in determination.

The sound of crumbling dirt and stone was your first clue that this was going to happen fast.

Suddenly the feeling of being constricted finally ended, and immediately relief turned into overwhelming nausea as your body in a split second was falling fast through a wider tunnel.

Quickly you picked up speed, body slamming and bumping and scraping against the sides like this was one big slip-and-slide tube.

As you slid down feet first, you were tossed and slammed against the sides of this slide. Your light was like a strobe light in the dark, being turned on and off, illuminating the sudden curving jutting walls that you couldn’t avoid. The sudden flashes were disorienting and adding to the chaos until the edge of a rock hit your shoulder, liquid warmth erupting as the light broke against your shoulder and neck. In the darkness you tumbled further, not praying you would survive, but praying that this wasn’t the only way out once you hit bottom.

You held your hands and feet out against the wall, trying to brace yourself, groaning with the effort. You had on your fingerless gloves but that was not enough for the sharp stones to shred your fingers on the way down. At some point, the momentum threw you against a dirt barrier before tumbling further.

What felt like years later you finally hit the bottom, skidding to a stop with a hard, dazing knock to your head against the rough, flat ground.

Blinking silent and slow you looked around, trying to take in your surroundings and instinctively scoping for enemies. You tried to get your breathing under control but from either the effort or pain of almost free-falling, it was hard. You stayed low, breathing hard, hand reaching to the gun at your side that was no longer there with bloodied fingers.

Shit.

You were now in a perpendicular large tunnel declining slightly down towards a dimly glowing light source. This hallway was rounded and completely made of dirt and support beams, with tiny lights periodically placed on the walls. Compared to where you just were, this was deliciously open.

So first things first, that was your way out. Secondly, you had literally no weapons on you anymore. Between unhinging some and fall on the way down, they were gone with no sign of them anywhere.

You had the option to either turn left, up the tunnel to what you figured was an exit out, where you could catch your breath, find your team members, or stock up on weapons. Or you could turn right, down deeper into the supposed base where you had assumed Bucky and Steve were, weaponless and bleeding.

If you left now, you were sure there would be no time. You weren’t sure if it was already too late now. The tunnel could go on for kilometres for all you knew. Nothing about this had any degree of certainty to it at all.

So you chose to save your friends.

Quietly you set off down the side of the tunnel wall, weaponless and alone.

_______

This was it. The smell, the look, the feeling… It hadn’t changed in all these years. Wet, green, and dirty concrete lined everything. Large dark metal doors lead the way to room after room, dingy and empty.

You swallowed down where this mentally took you. The past was coming flooding back in the worst way. You had gone in “mission-mode” after leaving the jet, focusing on your actions and not everything that this was bringing back. You tried to keep that focus.

Until you found it.

Silently you peered out around a corner as you silently exhaled. Six Hydra agents, clad in black, standing still and quiet against the wall in the shadows.

You quelled the flash of panic as you realized what this really was. What this really meant.

You were here, in a Hydra base, who knows how far underground, no backup, no one knowing where you were, and no weapons besides your bloody hands to speak of.

All you knew was that they had designed this plan all for you.

This was all to get you here. They wanted you back, and it was like you were running into their fucking arms.

You could wait alone and tied up for thirteen men to kill you in the comfort of the Tower, sure. But walking back into Hydra’s doors was not what you wanted. You hadn’t fully considered what this meant until now.

If they caught you, they would never let you go.

You would be their plaything for the rest of your unending life: frozen until they needed you, drugged until you complied, tortured until you broke. At the end, you had come up with a way to block them for triggering you, but they could wipe you and start again, couldn’t they? Start all over from scratch?

You would be exactly what you were all over again, what they made you. The Siren. The unhinged torturer for Hydra, insane and unstoppable. You would do again everything you had done- torture, kill, drive people mad, ruin countless innocent lives and whole governments.

I’d be their Siren again, you thought with eyes wide and holding your breath.

And there would be nothing that you could do to stop it if they caught you.

You pressed your back flush against the wall as hard as you could, trying to ground yourself in what this actually was about.

This wasn’t about you.

Because if you didn’t keep going, it wouldn’t be you but Bucky falling back in their hands. It wouldn't be you turning into the Siren but Bucky turning into the Winter Soldier instead.

You would’ve failed him. Like you had all of those years. You remembered the question he kept asking you when you first met and how you had failed him then too.

So the choice was run back to Hydra or sacrifice Bucky to them.

Immediately the hair on the back of your neck rose, a shudder running through you. That would never happen while you still had breath to fight. You would never let them take him back.

On that courage of that thought you stood, silently stepping around the corner towards those men.

________

PART EIGHT

________

If you liked this part please let me know somehow! A like or reblog or recommending it or a message! I’d love to know that you’re out there reading this! Thanks loves!

Tags: @seninjakitey @thetimidsarcasticcat @dontpanc @hawkspriing @kanekibooty @elizabeth-rose771 @methefandompanda @bookluver01

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky fanfiction #marvel fanfic #marvel fanficion #avengers #winter soldier #the fallout #the fallout part seven

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studiousbees · 7 years ago

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[App Review]—LingoDeer (Japanese)

**EDIT** The LingoDeer team read my review and fixed some of the things I pointed out :>

Learning Japanese?? I was originally going to review LingoDeer’s Chinese lessons next, but I was contacted by the team who developed the app and the lessons after the read my review on the Korean course. They asked if I was learning Japanese and, if so, if I could do a similar review for the Japanese course (please note that I have never done any sort of sponsored review or anything like that; I review what I want and I review them honestly). I said I would, so here we are! Maybe this will get me back on track with studying Japanese, anyway. Those of you who were around during this blog’s early stages will remember I was studying Japanese for a while, but I had to abandon it because I just didn’t have enough time ㅠㅠ Welp, it’s time to start again!

I do want to note that, other than the obvious language difference between this review and my review of LingoDeer’s Korean course, there is also a huge difference in my perspective between both of these reviews. Having studied Korean for over seven years now, my LingoDeer Korean review was done more from a been-there-done-that perspective. A lot of my intuition as not only a long-term Korean learner but also a Korean grammar blogger and a language teacher went into it. However, I am nowhere near the same level in Japanese, so this review is written from much more of a beginning learner perspective, with a bit of my teacher brain as far as what is and isn’t effective for language learning thrown in.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump on in!

What is LingoDeer?

LingoDeer is a language-learning app for the three major east Asian languages, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. It is developed by teachers of those three languages, so that’s pretty cool!

Very first impressions

As I said in my review of LingoDeer (Korean), the LingoDeer app’s design and interface is very clean and visually appealing. I do get some loading screens still, but none of them are super long unless I’m on my home Wifi. I’d been thinking about maybe getting a new, stronger router anyway...

Learning Hiragana and Katakana

You can start with learning Hiragana and Katakana, or you can just skip it and go straight to learning the actual grammar and other material. For the sake of this review (and since my Katakana memory has always been pretty bad), I did the Hiragana and Katakana courses. Before you start a level in the Alphabet section, you can flip a toggle for whether you want to learn Hiragana or Katakana. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter since they are presented together and you will be asked to match the corresponding Hiragana and Katakana. I have actually never used a source that teaches them together in this way, and I really like it because it made it easier for me to remember the Katakana. The main differences between doing one writing system vs. the other (for example, choosing to do them in Katakana mode instead of Hiragana) is that you will only be presented with stroke order diagrams for the set you chose, and they will occur more frequently. At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

Again, the sound files in this app are really great, so you can hear the sounds very clearly. My only real issue with the Hiragana/Katakana-learning exercises is when you have to match multiple pairs at once. There are a few screens like that at the end of each level, and if you want to hear the readout of the sounds as you do them, you have to flip a toggle on the screen because the sound is off by default. Since this is a language learning app, I really think it would make more sense to have the sound on by default. Also, you have to flip the toggle every new screen rather than flipping it once and that being your setting for the level. Having to flip it every single time just to get the automatic audio got annoying pretty quickly.

Just as the Korean course had extensive Hangul charts, there are interactive Hiragana and Katakana charts in the Japanese course. You can click on the individual spaces to have the sounds read out, which I liked. However, there seems to be a little bug such that sometimes when I go to the charts they don’t read out when I press the spaces. In those cases, I have to restart the app for the charts to work properly.

Finally, there are notes explaining the Japanese writing system, and they’re quite extensive! This app certainly does give a lot of information.

Getting in to learning

This app is currently structured 100% for beginners in the sense that you must start with the first level. There is no way to test up into a higher level. This test up feature is there in other comparable apps, so its absence here is very noticeable. Until such a function is (hopefully) added in, anyone who wants to use this app will have to obligatorily do the lower levels first regardless of their skill level.

All of the actual learning levels have grammar notes at the beginning, which you can access if you swipe to the tile left of the first lesson tile. I think it would make more sense to have the notes tile be the first one you see, as it is easy to miss and the notes give a ton of important information that beginning learners really should read. The notes are detailed and very helpful, but there are some typos here and there, and I noticed some unusual Romaji (though I’m not sure if it’s just that they were using a different Romaji system... are there multiple Romaji systems??). The word for “China,” which I had always seen before in Romaji as “ch(y)uugoku,” was written as “tyuugoku,” which threw me off.

When you get into the learning levels, you can choose how you want writing to be displayed, and there are a TON of options! You can go for full on normal Japanese writing with the Kanji and all, Kanji with Hiragana (my setting), Hiragana only, Romaji only, Hiragana and Romaji... you can choose what would suit your needs best and adjust as you become more comfortable reading Japanese.

As for actually learning, there is a variety of activities including word-picture matching, listening and choosing the right answer, inserting grammatical elements into the right places, and unscrambling sentences, and more. The only thing that I really wish the learning levels has is some speaking practice! I’ve said it many, many times before, but HelloChinese is a similarly structured app that has speaking practice built into all of its levels. If LingoDeer also had it, I would be so happy~ Also, as I mentioned in my LingoDeer (Korean) review, this app is fairly quiet in the sense that it does not automatically read out sentences for you on some screens, and there is no indication given that you can access audio for those screens. It would be nice if there was maybe a little play button to make it clear that you can hear audio on those screens with no auto play, or maybe an overall option (that could be toggled on or off as you please, of course) for automatic audio playback.

One other little bone I have to pick is that, when doing syllable-by-syllable unscrambling of sentences, the app starts indicating what the first syllable you pick should be within about three seconds. Maybe some people like the hints, but I could do without them for sure. I would be happy if the time to hinting was increased, or if there was a toggle to turn it off completely.

Upon completion of a level, you can get up to five stars. When you first start studying, you set a goal for how many stars you want to get each day, and if you choose the lowest possible number (five) and do a single level perfectly, your study for the day is complete.

The biggest error I have seen in this course so far is that the notes in the “Household” section (as far as I got so far) are missing ㅠㅠ I sent a report in, so hopefully that’s fixed soon. Considering how responsive the LingoDeer team has been to me so far, I’m fairly confident it will be fixed soon.

Overall, I like the structure of the lessons and the pacing. I could definitely see myself using this app long term!

Review and stats

(This section is more or less copypasta from my previous review, so feel free to skip it if you read that one!)

If you want to go back and review vocab or grammar flashcards, there is a section where you can do that. The review questions are the same as the regular level questions. You can choose to do a single lesson, or you can combine lessons for a comprehensive review. Also, there is spaced repetition listening practice, which is pretty cool. You can choose how you want the words and sentences presented, with Japanese, the English translation, or just the audio and no writing. After listening, you can reveal the correct answer and rate your recall/performance “weak,” “good,” or “perfect.” You can also choose if you want a word or sentence-focused review. Seems like a good feature.

As for stats, you can check how long your learning streak has been ongoing, and it even tells you how long you have studied for. There are some little achievement badges for things like learning time and streaks also. You can also set a time for reminders to study if you would like. However, I notice that the app is not synced to your phone’s clock but some other clock, perhaps that of the server it’s hosted on. So, for example, if I use the app in the morning here in Korea, it will still count any stars I get to the previous day since the app’s date hasn’t rolled over yet. There is not an option to change the app’s clock to sync to your time zone as far as I can tell.

Oh, and there is offline learning! You can download the course take it with you if you are, say, going on a flight or off to some remote area where there is no internet or cell service!

Conclusion

LingoDeer’s Japanese course is really fun and easy to use! The grammar notes are very informative, and the lessons are not too heavy so they don’t feel burdensome or intimidating to a new learner. The pros and cons:

PROS:

GREAT audio files

Lots of good notes and information on grammar

Spaced repetition practice and flashcards

Study reminders

Lessons that are informative and useful without being overwhelming

Offline learning

CONS:

No function to test out of lower levels

Typos in notes and other places

App clock not synced to phone clock

No speaking practice

#studyblr #langblr #learning japanese #japanese resources #lingodeer #language learning apps #app review

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forbessierra95 · 4 years ago

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Reiki Healing Yeovil Super Genius Cool Tips

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Reiki is known as Reiki, is best because Reiki helped here?Prices for Reiki to heal a person and touch in my own life, I tell a story I share it, if not I very much in their normal everyday life.This means your soul is full of energy centres.You'll love the calming, relaxing, nurturing feeling of happiness and feel more grounded when I go into the body.This healing art that involves visualization.

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Reiki Healing Free

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Reiki Symbol For Pain

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#Reiki Healing Yeovil Super Genius Cool Tips #Reiki Omaha

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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Just tried a test run of the L-R method with Chapter 1 of The Little Prince.

I did L2 listen -L1 Read, then L2 listen - L2 - Read, then L2 Listen - L1 Read. Basically: I just alternated between L2-L1, and L2-L2. So steps 2-3.

I did this 2-3 times all the way through. The first time I realized why a person might not want to listen to audio the first time they read a material in L1 (english for me). I found it hard to focus on just the meaning of the english to get the story.

For the L2-L2 part, it became painfully obvious my L2 text did not match my L2 audio. Thankfully I am familiar enough with chinese to figure out which parts did match up, and follow the parts in between. However this meant most of my attention was on matching the audio up to the chinese words, and less time could be spent matching the audio to the hanzi/words visually. I just played the audio without pausing. So that’s why I decided to replay it a few times - to catch more the next few times, since I missed a bit trying to follow along the first time. Also I’m impatient and lazy - I’m not going to perfectionist go through each line and make sure I’ve matched each character to sound I could.

For the next L2-L1 part, I noticed an actual benefit. I could actually follow the L2 audio better - because now I had both a translation I could focus on reading less and therefore put more focus into the meaning of the L2 audio. And I was not being whiplashed trying to match DIFFERENT chinese text to the chinese audio. So actually, this way was somewhat helpful for at least connecting sentence/phrase meanings in english to chinese audio.

For the next L2-L2 part, again, easier. I noticed an actual benefit. For the parts that did not match audio-to-text I could follow them easier, and the parts that DID match I could connect some meaning to new chinese words I saw.

So I do think there is value in going back and forth from step 2 to step 3 over and over and trying to ‘comprehend’ more each time. However - it required FOCUS in both steps, to make an active effort to try to connect what I heard to specific words on the page. For L2 audio - L2 text especially, I had to purposely try to catch which audio words lined up to new characters if the character was brand new. (It was much easier to associate sound to new-words made up of known hanzi, since I anticipated and identified their pronunciation more easily). So I think... to catch completely new hanzi pronunciations, that probably takes the MOST concious effort. At least for me, because my eyes will default to relying on the text. For at least some words today - I think I learned their ‘spelling’ but still probably could not tell you how they were pronounced. So I think extra focus is needed SPECIFICALLY on trying to listen close enough to match the sound to specific new words in the same language L2-L2 part. Because this is the case for me: I would either need to keep repeating the process until the reading is ‘easy’ enough I can focus on the listening more, or I need to do step L2-L2 the first time REALLY FOCUSING on just replaying that step over and over until I can pinpoint the pronunciation of new hanzi. BEFORE I even bother moving on to L2-L1 to start connecting definitions/meaning to the sounds.

Do I think L-R as a study method helps? Yes.

For me specifically, it allowed me to pick up more written vocabulary. However, I don’t think I could focus well enough to pick up any new audio vocabulary (unless it was made of characters I already knew). So I would need to listen more to connect audio-knowledge to new words. But switching from chinese to english text back and forth was an excellent way to pick up a ton of vocabulary quite ‘effortlessly.’ In the sense I did not have to pause, did not have to break my reading flow and annoy myself by looking up words. The sentences in english stayed fresh enough in my mind, that it was super easy to see the words again in only chinese and recognize their meaning. (Again, the only hard part was attaching sound to the new chinese words if the characters are new for me - I believe that would require more L2-L2 listening step 2). I only did the repeat 2-3 times. I imagine there would be more success if doing it more times, or with a bigger chunk of material. I only did it with 1 chapter of The Little Prince. For me specifically, this felt more fast-paced and comprehensive than my usual method of simply reading in L2 and looking up unknown words and then focusing on trying to memorize them before continuing to read. I felt I picked up most of the unknown words in the chapter with less strain on me because I didn’t have to pause to look at a dictionary. However - I believe it took the same amount of time as me just reading L2 with a dictionary would have.

Also, I appreciate that this method incorporates L2 audio - forcing me to practice listening more. And also making it obvious how much worse my listening is than my reading clearly, seeing how I can pick up text-word meanings faster than audio-word meanings. I do like that this method combines 3 things I do anyway: read in L2, listen to audiobooks, and read translations. I’m curious how much I will ‘enjoy’ it compared to just reading L2 with a dictionary, if I do this for a novel like DaoMuBiJi or a Priest novel.

Drawbacks: I do think it was ‘easier’ for me because I have a decent base of vocabulary. In reading, I generally only run into 1-2 new words a sentence in HSK 5ish materials - and half of those or more I can guess vaguely from context and just use a dictionary to confirm. In reading, I’m pretty good at struggling through, and with definitions I’m pretty fast and at ease - so with a method like this solving the ‘dictionary’ part, its basically filling in the ‘few word gaps’ per sentence I would otherwise need to do myself. If I were a total beginner.... I’d be trying to use this to fill up the ENTIRE sentence work of gap in knowledge. The fact I only need to fill in a few gaps in knowledge (like 10% - 30% depending on the novel), makes it much faster than if I was trying to fill 80-90% gap in knowledge a beginner would. I also think its SUPER annoying if the audio DOES NOT MATCH the L2 text. I assume this problem will happen less with webnovel audiobooks. But like 60% of The Little Prince chinese audiobook did NOT match up with my text version - so it was a lot of me quickly ‘approximating’ the audio and guessing its gist to figure out where it was going to connect to the similar-plot chinese text version. That is focus I could have spent on learning instead of following the dialogue-to-chinese-text. If I were a beginner, yikes this would have absolutely infuriated me.

A note: for this I SPECIFICALLY DID NOT LOOK UP ANY WORDS AT ANY TIME. I ALSO DID NOT PAUSE THE AUDIO (except to re-find my spot in the text). I normally pause to look up words when reading the chinese-text, this time I just went straight through. As in - I read as the audio played. then I switched text languages, started audio and read through as it played. All the definition-word matching was done by guessing from context, and using what I’d seen in the english version. I did greatly enjoy how that let me ‘speed up’ how long it takes me to get through one chapter (compared to pausing to look up), but the tradeoff is I must read the chapter multiple times. I also did not use a parallel text - I used two separate texts. Because I’m lazy, I can’t find a parallel text.

I will try it again with Guardian or Mo Du or DMBJ. We’ll see how that goes.

---

I also tried a similar thing to L-R method, with Tamen de Gushi.

I have the chinese text link to Tamen de Gushi. I opened it in Pleco Reader, and I clicked the ‘dictation’ button. This tool: plays the audio like a machine-reading, and at the same time it pops up the english definition for each word. So it’s sort of like an audiobook, except with a machine speaker. And instead of an english translation, I just had english word-translations to glance at for a second if I needed them.

So I never read any full english translation text. I have read Tamen de Gushi chapters 1-18 before though, so I already know the plot/have context.

It was faster than my usual reading method (which is just read L2, look up definition when I get stuck on a word) - significantly faster. But I’m not sure if that’s because of the method, or because this story got a lot easier to me in general. When I first read it I took 20-30 minutes a chapter. Now when I read it in chinese I take maybe 4-8 minutes a chapter. And with the audio automatically playing, it also took about 4-8 minutes. Just like reading without audio - I still had to pause the audio a few times, and stop to look up some hard-words properly.

Unlike how I usually read, what I did this time was:

First I listened to L2 audio, and read L2 text. By that I mean - I purposely ignored most of the english definitions unless it was a problem-word I didn’t know. And I often paused on that word, to read that definition better. I focused mainly on connecting the sound I heard to all the chinese words (since I knew most of them). I focused on replaying the sound of new words a couple times, along with pausing to read their dictionary entry. I replayed some sentence audio. So I’ll call this - I defined everything, purposely focused on connecting sound to all words, and paused when needed.

Second, I listened to L2 audio and mainly tried to follow the audio. By that i mean - I tried to glance at the english definitions popping up, and chinese text, as quickly and relaxed as I could. I did not look anything up, just tried to focus on catching all the audio as much as I could. The text (english and chinese) was only there for me to quickly glance at if I wanted to reference a definition). I did NOT pause the audio, I read straight through. So this step I - tried to just follow the meaning of the audio, did not pause, and tried to comprehend everything I could using the english/chinese text I could see.

I alternated between these 2 processes, so I did them both twice. Doing them both twice, took me 4-8 minutes. That is pretty fast!

For better or worse, a downside to using this particular text is that I already know a majority of the words now, and the context is familiar enough that most lookups are me double-checking meaning (not learning it for the first time). A positive to using the audio is I can FEEL my listening comprehension getting used to hearing some set phrases that I am used to READING in chinese novels. You know what I mean, like when people say “strictly speaking, it was really” and “originally, i had thought” “not to say that he wasn’t” etc. Phrases that are wordy, that people DO say in real life, but that are much easier to figure out the meaning of when reading first.

Would I recommend this process I did? Maybe. I think it is helpful for listening practice, especially if you already have prior context. I think it helped me get more used to hearing phrases i am used to reading. I’m not sure if I picked up words any better, but I do think I picked up about the same amount of words as I would have if I just read-in-chinese with a dictionary. So it wasn’t worse than my usual method. And it did incorporate more audio, which is helpful audio practice. But this variation of the L-R I did in pleco, is basically just what I normally do via reading BUT with audio.

#listening reading method #listening reading #l r method #study method #rant

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nageki-yuki-blog · 7 years ago

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How I Learned Japanese

Since Anon asked how I learned, I decided to make a post about it in case anyone else was wondering or wanted to learn too~ This will sort of be a timeline of my journey, so I guess you could call it my Japanese journey, because that doesn’t sound weird at all. >w> It ended up being longer than I expected so if you don’t want to read everything, just skip to the bottom and I’ll put a short version with all the main stuff that helped me learn if you are interested in learning too. It’s under the cut~

-Exactly five years ago, I knew absolutely no Japanese. I didn’t even know sayonara was a Japanese word to be honest until I heard them say it in an anime XD To make a long story short, I got obsessed with anime when I was about 17, and that is around the time that I decided, maybe I should try learning the language. It was almost exactly 5 years ago this month.

-I looked up websites about how to learn and they all said learn the alphabets first, so that’s what I did. I made some charts of the kana and practiced with flash cards until I memorized them. I then took some song lyrics in romaji and copied them down in both hiragana and katakana, trying not to look at the charts. I think after about a month of practicing them, I decided to just move on and focus on the language.

-During that time, I also looked up and started watching some Japanese lesson videos on youtube ===> [Youtube Link Here] These were a great introduction to the language. I had a notebook and I would write down the lessons like I was taking a class. LOL I watched all the videos and memorized most of what I learned (there are probably way more videos on that channel now than there were back then).

-From that point I just started using a dictionary to learn words. I would watch an episode of anime and write down words I heard, along with the possible translation from the subtitles. Then I would look up all those words in the dictionary afterwards. For example, there was an episode of Karneval where they saw smoke and Tsukumo said “kemuri?” and I read the translation of smoke so I wrote it down. I looked it up in the dictionary afterwards to make sure it was right and then I would write all the new words I learned on another page that I would review later to memorize them all. Although there were a ton of words I misheard or couldn’t find in the dictionary, this method helped me memorize a LOT of words. I still remember the exact moments I first heard some words just like this example, which happened almost 5 years ago. That is probably because hearing and seeing what’s going on in the anime, plus being able to read it in English, plus writing it down at the exact moment and reminding yourself of it later all helps it stick in your mind.

-I would review these lists of new words every morning and every night. Studying in the morning helps you absorb it with a clear mind, and studying at night helps you memorize it because it will stay in your head all night.

-I did that and tried to memorize vocabulary lists for several months. Another thing I did during this time was write down song lyrics in kana, and then write the meaning of each word underneath it. This helped give me an idea of how Japanese grammar worked because I could visually see the set-up of each sentence along with the meanings.

-After those several months, I realized that I still couldn’t understand much because I didn’t really study much grammar, I only knew the meaning of nouns and some verbs, but didn’t know how to use them. I looked up Japanese grammar books online and found a free guide (or at least I think it was supposed to be free when I downloaded it, but now it looks like it’s for sale. You can still find the old version online if you look it up). It is called the “Japanese Grammar Guide” by Tae Kim. This guide actually helped me a lot so I need to mention it. It took me about a year to learn everything that was in this guide.

-While I was learning from that guide, and it was about a year since I started trying to seriously learn the language, I reached a point where I still couldn’t understand pretty much anything in Japanese without a translation. I got really upset and stopped learning for a week and wanted to give up because it was too confusing and too much work and I didn’t see any results. But then I thought, all of this time I spent studying will be wasted if I stop now and I will regret it forever if I continue watching anime, so I HAVE to keep going. So I forced myself to gain some motivation again and I kept going.

-After finishing the grammar guide, I decided I better learn some kanji too. I only knew a few kanji at that point and hadn’t been that interested in learning to read Japanese, until I decided that I really wanted to be able to play otome games too. I’m sure you’ve heard of “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig. I found a copy of it online (although I’m sure this book isn’t supposed to be free XD) and started using it. I would write down each kanji I learned along with the meanings and review them every day. DEFINITELY get this book if you want to learn kanji, it really helps and there are still kanji I remember learning from it that I rarely even use, so it does work. You shouldn’t need to use the second volume unless you really want to learn every single kanji, but many of them are rare so I never used the second one.

-There is also an app called “Kanji Stories” that gives stories for each kanji following that book, so this comes in handy when the book stops giving examples for you to use. I used this app a LOT and still sometimes use it to refresh myself when I forget a kanji. Although I downloaded it a long time ago on my old Iphone 4 which I pretty much just use as Japanese Dictionary/music player/camera at this point XD So I’m not sure if it’s still available in the app store.

-I also downloaded another app called “JEDict Lite” which lets you look up kanji by writing them or by using radicals. BUT you need to learn stroke order first otherwise it won’t work if you draw the kanji in the wrong order. I still use this app all the time because I still have problems remembering all those darn kanji. XD [Itunes Link Here]

-I should also mention that I use a Japanese dictionary app made by Bravolol. [Website Link Here]

-All of these apps were free when I downloaded them, and it looks like they still are, but my phone is super old so I don’t know if they would still work on newer phones.

-So after about 3 years of studying and memorizing stuff, and just getting bored of doing the same thing, I started trying to use the language. I started playing some visual novels and it was still very hard to read so I would measure how much time it took me to get through each chapter or section. It started out as taking about 3 hours for each part but after a couple of weeks it would take only 15 minutes to read through the same amount of text. It was the same thing when I first started listening to drama CDs. I would have to use my dictionary almost constantly while listening to them and would even have to pause the CD in parts so I could look up words I didn’t know. Now I still have to look up words once in a while but there are some CDs that I can understand completely without using my dictionary even once. It is extremely important to jump in and just start listening or watching things without subtitles or translations, because that is what will really help you learn. It may suck when you get to a part that you just can’t understand, because I know that happened to me a lot in the beginning, but you don’t have to fuss over it, just skip it for the moment and it might makes sense later.

-It’s important to also listen to non-anime/game stuff since normal Japanese doesn’t sound the same. I listened to some radio shows like DGS and watched videos of live events. I also got really into stage plays and musicals in the past year, which I had difficulty understanding at first too, but now I can understand them fine.

Short Version:

-I made kana charts and flash cards, then practiced writing song lyrics in both hiragana and katakana.

-I watched some lessons on youtube ===> [Youtube Link Here]

-I used a dictionary to learn and memorize words I heard in anime, games, etc.

-I reviewed the new words I learned every morning and night.

-I studied the “Japanese Grammar Guide” by Tae Kim.

-I read “Remembering the Kanji” by James W. Heisig and used the “Kanji Stories” app with it. (not sure if this app is still available)

-I use the “JEDict Lite” app to look up kanji, but you need to know stroke order for it to work. [Itunes Link Here]

-I use a Japanese dictionary app made by Bravolol. [Website Link Here]

-After about 3 years, I stopped studying and just started reading visual novels and listening to drama CDs.

-So that has led me to the point I’m at right now. My Japanese skills got better really fast after I started using the language and translating things myself. I am always still learning and wouldn’t say that I am fluent, but I also didn’t expect to be able to understand it this well, so that’s perfectly fine with me. Part of the reason I started doing these translations was because my reading and comprehension skills weren’t at the level that I wanted. It takes another type of skill to translate, so even though I know what they are saying, it is still hard to put it into English, but I’m getting better at it.

-If anyone wants to learn Japanese and wants some tips, I would recommend studying the grammar, vocab, and kanji all at once, rather than how I did it. My kanji skills are still lacking because I started studying it a whole year or two after I started learning the language.

-My other tip is…… Just have fun!! When I first started learning, I would get super happy whenever I heard a word I could understand in a song or anime. When I thought about giving up, it was mainly because I was too focused on trying to rush, but you need to remember that it is impossible to learn an entire language overnight.

-I have heard a lot of other people say they learned the language because they studied it in college or used a textbook, but you can definitely learn it through self-study so don’t give up hope! You just need to find what works for you. ^u^

-Just a random note, Tsukiuta is special to me because it is the very first drama series I started following each month. Although I couldn’t speak any Japanese back then, I followed it for the music. When I started listening to drama CDs, Tsukiuta was at the top of my list and I listened to all of them in the several months before the anime came out, so it was the first drama series I knew that got turned into an anime. It was a super weird feeling seeing the characters animated after only being able to hear them. The very first live stage I watched without subtitles was also the Tsukiuta stage, which got me obsessed with stage plays and musicals. Now it has become the first series that I have translated for other people. (Just my own thought here but I’ve slowly been working on some cosplays, maybe I should make my Rui cosplay first too so it will follow the pattern XD)

-Well that got long but I hope I have motivated someone else to learn the language too! It is still crazy for me to think that 5 years ago I knew absolutely nothing, but I’m translating stuff now. I love being able to give back and help other people, especially since I know how upsetting it is when you want to read or watch something, but there aren’t any subtitles. >x<

-If anyone else has any other questions, feel free to ask! ^u^

#Random #Japanese

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iol247 · 5 years ago

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Imaging a Black Hole: How Software Created a Planet-sized Telescope

Black holes are singular objects in our universe, pinprick entities that pierce the fabric of spacetime. Typically formed by collapsed stars, they consist of an appropriately named singularity, a dimensionless, infinitely dense mass, from whose gravitational pull not even light can escape. Once a beam of light passes within a certain radius, called the event horizon, its fate is sealed. By definition, we can’t see a black hole, but it’s been theorized that the spherical swirl of light orbiting around the event horizon can present a detectable ring, as rays escape the turbulence of gas swirling into the event horizon. If we could somehow photograph such a halo, we might learn a great deal about the physics of relativity and high-energy matter.

On April 10, 2019, the world was treated to such an image. A consortium of more than 200 scientists from around the world released a glowing ring depicting M87*, a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87. Supermassive black holes, formed by unknown means, sit at the center of nearly all large galaxies. This one bears 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun and the ring’s diameter is about three times that of Pluto’s orbit, on average. But its size belies the difficulty of capturing its visage. M87* is 55 million light years away. Imaging it has been likened to photographing an orange on the moon, or the edge of a coin across the United States.

Our planet does not contain a telescope large enough for such a task. “Ideally speaking, we’d turn the entire Earth into one big mirror [for gathering light],” says Jonathan Weintroub, an electrical engineer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “but we can’t really afford the real estate.” So researchers relied on a technique called very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). They point telescopes on several continents at the same target, then integrate the results, weaving the observations together with software to create the equivalent of a planet-sized instrument—the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Though they had ideas of what to expect when targeting M87*, many on the EHT team were still taken aback by the resulting image. “It was kind of a ‘Wow, that really worked’ [moment],” says Geoff Crew, a research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory, in Westford, Massachusetts. “There is a sort of gee-whizz factor in the technology.”

Catching bits

On four clear nights in April 2017, seven radio telescope sites—in Arizona, Mexico, and Spain, and two each in Chile and Hawaii—pointed their dishes at M87*. (The sites in Chile and Hawaii each consisted of an array of telescopes themselves.) Large parabolic dishes up to 30 meters across caught radio waves with wavelengths around 1.3mm, reflecting them onto tiny wire antennas cooled in a vacuum to 4 degrees above absolute zero. The focused energy flowed as voltage signals through wires to analog-to-digital converters, transforming them into bits, and then to what is known as the digital backend, or DBE.

The purpose of the DBE is to capture and record as many bits as possible in real time. “The digital backend is the first piece of code that touches the signal from the black hole, pretty much,” says Laura Vertatschitsch, an electrical engineer who helped develop the EHT’s DBE as a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. At its core is a pizza-box-sized piece of hardware called the R2DBE, based on an open-source device created by a group started at Berkeley called CASPER.

The R2DBE’s job is to quickly format the incoming data and parcel it out to a set of hard drives. “It’s a kind of computing that’s relatively simple, algorithmically speaking,” Weintroub says, “but is incredibly high performance.” Sitting on its circuit board is a chip called a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA. “Field programmable gate arrays are sort of the poor man’s ASIC,” he continues, referring to application-specific integrated circuits. “They allow you to customize logic on a chip without having to commit to a very expensive fabrication run of purely custom chips.”

An FPGA contains millions of logic primitives—gates and registers for manipulating and storing bits. The algorithms they compute might be simple, but optimizing their performance is not. It’s like managing a city’s traffic lights, and its layout, too. You want a signal to get from one point to another in time for something else to happen to it, and you want many signals to do this simultaneously within the span of each clock cycle. “The field programmable gate array takes parallelism to extremes,” Weintroub says. “And that’s how you get the performance. You have literally millions of things happening. And they all happen on a single clock edge. And the key is how you connect them all together, and in practice, it’s a very difficult problem.”

FPGA programmers use software to help them choreograph the chip’s components. The EHT scientists program it using a language called VHDL, which is compiled into bitcode by Vivado, a software tool provided by the chip’s manufacturer, Xilinx. On top of the VHDL, they use MATLAB and Simulink software. Instead of writing VHDL firmware code directly, they visually move around blocks of functions and connect them together. Then you hit a button and out pops the FPGA bitcode.

But it doesn’t happen immediately. Compiling takes many hours, and you usually have to wait overnight. What’s more, finding bugs once it’s compiled is almost impossible, because there are no print statements. You’re dealing with real-time signals on a wire. “It shifts your energy to tons and tons of tests in simulation,” Vertatschitsch says. “It’s a really different regime, to thinking, ‘How do I make sure I didn’t put any bugs into that code, because it’s just so costly?’”

Data to disk

The next step in the digital backend is recording the data. Music files are typically recorded at 44,100 samples per second. Movies are generally 24 frames per second. Each telescope in the EHT array recorded 16 billion samples per second. How do you commit 32 gigabits—about a DVD’s worth of data—to disk every second? You use lots of disks. The EHT used Mark 6 data recorders, developed at Haystack and available commercially from Conduant Corporation. Each site used two recorders, which each wrote to 32 hard drives, for 64 disks in parallel.

In early tests, the drives frequently failed. The sites are on tops of mountains, where the atmosphere is thinner and scatters less of the incoming light, but the thinner air interferes with the aerodynamics of the write head. “When a hard drive fails, you’re hosed,” Vertatschitsch says. “That’s your experiment, you know? Our data is super-precious.” Eventually they ordered sealed, helium-filled commercial hard drives. These drives never failed during the observation.

The humans were not so resistant to thin air. According to Vertatschitsch,“If you are the developer or the engineer that has to be up there and figure out why your code isn’t working… the human body does not debug code well at 15,000 feet. It’s just impossible. So, it became so much more important to have a really good user interface, even if the user was just going to be you. Things have to be simple. You have to automate everything. You really have to spend the time up front doing that, because it’s like extreme coding, right? Go to the top of a mountain and debug. Like, get out of here, man. That’s insane.”

Over the four nights of observation, the sites together collected about five petabytes of data. Uploading the data would have taken too long, so researchers FedExed the drives to Haystack and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, in Bonn, Germany, for the next stage of processing. All except the drives from the South Pole Telescope (which couldn’t see M87* in the northern hemisphere, but collected data for calibration and observation of other sources)—those had to wait six months for the winter in the southern hemisphere to end before they could be flown out.

Connecting the dots

Making an image of M87* is not like taking a normal photograph. Light was not collected on a sheet of film or on an array of sensors as in a digital camera. Each receiver collects only a one-dimensional stream of information. The two-dimensional image results from combining pairs of telescopes, the way we can localize sounds by comparing the volume and timing of audio entering our two ears. Once the drives arrived at Haystack and Max Planck, data from distant sites were paired up, or correlated.

Unlike with a musical radio station, most of the information at this point is noise, created by the instruments. “We’re working in a regime where all you hear is hiss,” Haystack’s Crew says. To extract the faint signal, called fringe, they use computers to try to line up the data streams from pairs of sites, looking for common signatures. The workhorse here is open-source software called DiFX, for Distributed FX, where F refers to Fourier transform and X refers to cross-multiplication. Before DiFX, data was traditionally recorded on tape and then correlated with special hardware. But about 15 years ago, Adam Deller, then a graduate student working at the Australian Long Baseline Array, was trying to finish his thesis when the correlator broke. So he began writing DiFX, which has now been widely expanded and adopted. Haystack and Max Planck each used Linux machines to coordinate DiFX on supercomputing clusters. Haystack used 60 nodes with 1,200 cores, and Max Planck used 68 nodes with 1,380 cores. The nodes communicate using Open MPI, for Message Passing Interface.

Correlation is more than just lining up data streams. The streams must also be adjusted to account for things such as the sites’ locations and the Earth’s rotation. Lindy Blackburn, a radio astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, notes a couple of logistical challenges with VLBI. First, all the sites have to be working simultaneously, and they all need good weather. (In terms of clear skies, “2017 was a kind of miracle,” says Kazunori Akiyama, an astrophysicist at Haystack.) Second, the signal at each site is so weak that you can’t always tell right away if there’s a problem. “You might not know if what you did worked until months later, when these signals are correlated,” Blackburn says. “It’s a sigh of relief when you actually realize that there are correlations.”

Something in the air

Because most of the data on disk is random background noise from the instruments and environment, extracting the signal with correlation reduces the data 1,000-fold. But it’s still not clean enough to start making an image. The next step is calibration and a signal-extraction step called fringe-fitting. Blackburn says a main aim is to correct for turbulence in the atmosphere above each telescope. Light travels at a constant rate through a vacuum, but changes speed through a medium like air. By comparing the signals from multiple antennas over a period of time, software can build models of the randomly changing atmospheric delay over each site and correct for it.

The classic calibration software is called AIPS, for Astronomical Image Processing System, created by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. It was written 40 years ago, in Fortran, and is hard to maintain, says Chi-kwan Chan, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, but it was used by EHT because it’s a well-known standard. They also used two other packages. One is called HOPS, for Haystack Observatory Processing System, and was developed for astronomy and geodesy—the use of radio telescopes to measure movement not of celestial bodies but of the telescopes themselves, indicating changes in the Earth’s crust. The newest package is CASA, for Common Astronomy Software Applications.

Chan says the EHT team has made contributions even to the software it doesn’t maintain. EHT is the first time VLBI has been done at this scale—with this many heterogeneous sites and this much data. So some of the assumptions built into the standard software break down. For instance, the sites all have different equipment, and at some of them the signal-to-noise ratio is more uniform than at others. So the team sends bug reports to upstream developers and works with them to fix the code or relax the assumptions. “This is trying to push the boundary of the software,” Chan says.

Calibration is not a big enough job for supercomputers, like correlation, but is too big for a workstation, so they used the cloud. “Cloud computing is the sweet spot for analysis like fringe fitting,” Chan says. With calibration, the data is reduced a further 10,000-fold.

Put a ring on it

Finally, the imaging teams received the correlated and calibrated data. At this point no one was sure if they’d see the “shadow” of the black hole—a dark area in the middle of a bright ring—or just a bright disk, or something unexpected, or nothing. Everyone had their own ideas. Because the computational analysis requires making many decisions—the data are compatible with infinite final images, some more probable than others—the scientists took several steps to limit the amount that expectations could bias the outcome. One step was to create four independent teams and not let them share their progress for a seven-week processing period. Once they saw that they had obtained similar images—very close to the one now familiar to us—they rejoined forces to combine the best ideas, but still proceeded with three different software packages to ensure that the results are not affected by software bugs.

The oldest is DIFMAP. It relies on a technique created in the 1970s called CLEAN, when computers were slow. As a result, it’s computationally cheap, but requires lots of human expertise and interaction. “It’s a very primitive way to reconstruct sparse images,” says Akiyama, who helped create a new package specifically for EHT, called SMILI. SMILI uses a more mathematically flexible technique called RML, for regularized maximum likelihood. Meanwhile, Andrew Chael, an astrophysicist now at Princeton, created another package based on RML, called eht-imaging. Akiyama and Chael both describe the relationship between SMILI and eht-developers as a friendly competition.

In developing SMILI, Akiyama says he was in contact with medical imaging experts. Just as in VLBI, MRI, and CT, software needs to reconstruct the most likely image from ambiguous data. They all rely to some degree on assumptions. If you have some idea of what you’re looking at, it can help you see what’s really there. “The interferometric imaging process is kind of like detective work,” Akiyama says. “We are doing this in a mathematical way based on our knowledge of astronomical images.”

Still, users of each of the three EHT imaging pipelines didn’t just assume a single set of parameters—for things like expected brightness and image smoothness. Instead, each explored a wide variety. When you get an MRI, your doctor doesn’t show you a range of possible images, but that’s what the EHT team did in their published papers. “That is actually quite new in the history of radio astronomy,” Akiyama says. And to the team’s relief, all of them looked relatively similar, making the findings more robust.

By the time they had combined their results into one image, the calibrated data had been reduced by another factor of 1,000. Of the whole data analysis pipeline, “you could think of it a progressive data compression,” Crew says. From petabytes to bytes. The image, though smooth, contains only about 64 pixels worth of independent information.

For the most part, the imaging algorithms could be run on laptops; the exception was the parameter surveys, in which images were constructed thousands of times with slightly different settings—those were done in the cloud. Each survey took about a day on 200 cores.

Images also relied on physics simulations of black holes. These were used in three ways. First, simulations helped test the three software packages. A simulation can produce a model object such as a black hole accretion disk, the light it emits, and what its reconstructed image should look like. If imaging software can take the (simulated) emitted light and reconstruct an image similar to that in the simulation, it will likely handle real data accurately. (They also tested the software on a hypothetical giant snowman in the sky.) Second, simulations can help constrain the parameter space that’s explored by the imaging pipelines. And third, once images are produced, it can help interpret those images, letting scientists deduce things such as M87* mass from the size of the ring.

The simulation software Chan used has three steps. First, it simulates how plasma circles around a black hole, interacting with magnetic fields and curved spacetime. This is called general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics. But gravity also curves light, so he adds general relativistic ray tracing. Third, he turns the movies generated by the simulation into data comparable to what the EHT observes. The first two steps use C, and the last uses C++ and Python. Chael, for his simulations, uses a package called KORAL, written in C. All simulations are run on supercomputers.

Akiyama knew the calibrated data would be sent to the imaging team at 5pm on June 5, 2018. He’d prepared his imaging script and couldn’t sleep the night before. Within 10 minutes of getting the email on June 5, he had an image. It had a ring whose size was consistent with theoretical predictions. “I was so, so excited,” he says. However, he couldn’t share the image with anyone around him doing imaging, lest he bias them. Even within his team, people were working independently. For a few days, he worried he’d be the only one to get a ring. “The funny thing is I also couldn’t sleep that night,” he says. Full disclosure to all EHT teams would have to wait several weeks, and a public announcement would have to wait nearly a year.

Doing donuts

The image of M87* fostered collaboration, both before and after its creation, like few other scientific artefacts. Nearly all the software used at all stages is open source, and much of it is on GitHub. A lot of it came before EHT, and they made use of existing telescopes—if they’d had to build the dishes, the operation would not have been possible.

The researchers learned some lessons about software development. When Chael began coding eht-imaging, he was the only one using it. “I’m in my office pushing changes, and for a while it was fine, because when a bug happened, it would only affect me,” he says. “But then at a certain point, a bunch of other people started using the code, and I started getting angry emails. So learning to develop tests and to be really rigorous in testing the code before I pushed it was really important for me. That was a transition that I had to undergo.”

Crew came to understand—perhaps better than he probably already did—the importance of documentation. He was the software architect for the ALMA array, in Chile, which is the most important site in the EHT. ALMA has 66 dishes and does correlation on-site in real time using “school-bus-sized calculators,” he says. But bringing ALMA online, he couldn’t get fringe. He tried everything before letting it sit for about eight months, then discovered a quirk in DiFX. Fed a table of data on Earth’s rotation, it used only the first five entries, not necessarily the five you wanted, so in March it was using the parameters for January. That bug, or feature, was not well documented. But “it was a very simple thing to fix,” Crew says, “and the fringe just popped right out, and it was just spectacular. And that’s the kind of wow factor where it’s like, you go from nothing’s working to wow. The M87 image was kind of the same thing. There was an awful lot of stuff that had to work.”

“Astronomy is one of the fields where there’s not a lot of money for engineering and development, and so there’s a very active open-source community sharing code and sharing the burden of developing good electronics,” Vertatschitsch says. She calls it a “really cool collaborative atmosphere.” And it’s for a larger cause. “The goal is to speed up the time to science,” she says. “That was some of the most fun engineering I’ve ever gotten to do.”

The collaboration is now open to anyone who wants to create an image of M87* at home. Not only is the software open source, but so is much of the data. And the researchers have packed the pipelines into docker containers, so the analysis is reproducible. Chan says that compared to other fields, astronomy is still quite behind in addressing the reproducibility crisis. “I think EHT is probably setting a good model.”

When it comes to software development for radio astronomy, “it’s pretty exotic stuff,” Crew says. “You don’t get rich doing it. And your day is full of a different kind of frustration than you have with the rest of the commercial environment. Nature poses us puzzles, and we have to stand on our heads and write code to do peculiar things to unravel these puzzles. And at the end of the day the reward is figuring out something about nature.”

He goes on: “It’s an exciting time to be alive. It really is.” That we can create images of black holes millions of light years away? “Well, that’s only a small piece. The fact that we can release an image and people all over the world come up with creative memes using it within hours.” For instance, Homer Simpson taking a bite out of M87* instead of a donut—“I mean, that’s just mind-boggling to me.”

This article is part of Behind the Code, the media for developers, by developers. Discover more articles and videos by visiting Behind the Code!

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kivircikedebiyatii · 6 years ago

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How to Get Started with SEO

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itsmyrayeraye-blog · 6 years ago

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The 9 Benefts of SEO

These ‘quality updates' are very reminiscent of Search engines Panda updates and often effect many websites at the exact same time - and often these types of focus on demoting similar ‘low-quality' SEO techniques we have already been told Panda targets. Each SEO person was always speaking about long tail keywords They will are multi-word phrases that obtain a lot more fine-tuned or even even perhaps just various methods of saying the same point. Now that SEO is getting very popular among device users, it will be safe to say that SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION on mobile platforms will improve and improve business to customer relationships in 2018. A brand new wrinkle within the SEO game is interpersonal networking or social media advertising, which not just helps your own company to be found, yet also allows your business in order to interact directly together with your potential clients. When it arrives to SEO Trends in 2018, Relevancy is still exactly the particular same. Good keyword research is the cornerstone of your SEO. A very essential SEO trend to know within 2018 is the mobile-first list. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends intended for 2018 ought to be regarded as. Being a good experienced SEO content writer, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION copywriter, copy writer, technical writer, reactive content writer, blog writer, Outstanding special interest in digital advertising. That means this increases user experience which boosts SEO and rankings. Carrying out technical SEO intended for local search engines is actually a similar process. In Local SEO, citations are referred to as mentions” of your local business on other websites and web pages. That getting said, if you want in order to transform your search ranking, and stay relevant and competitive in your own industry, then you have in order to stay abreast of the present SEO trends and techniques. SEOs will need in order to collaborate closely with designers plus developers to prioritize technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and usability search engine positioning factors to gain a aggressive edge. In order to get executive buy-in, SEOs require to talk an alternative language -- a CMO is not really interested within a list of rankings, these people want to understand the influence of SEO on performance. Should you be going for regional SEO, try to obtain the server close to the location you attempt to rank regarding. He or she is the proud Founder and Chief Architect of cognitiveSEO, a good SEO Toolset focused on in-depth analysis of ranking signals. A write-up in states that will 85% of individuals prefer indigenous mobile apps to websites Function your brand prominently in the particular app name and be certain you have proper links in order to apps for better search search positions Also, you have to ensure that application optimization tops your list associated with SEO optimization. Plus because Google shows YouTube movies in their search results, your own video must be SEO helpful. Enter your competitor's URL directly into the SEMRush search bar and you will be provided with a checklist of SEO keywords, with their own rankings and traffic. The voice research is growing everyday, which might the key factor for your own SEO success in 2018 because online users are more fascinated in accessing the web through spoken command. We have simply no choice left other than transforming the website into mobile-friendly internet sites along with mobile-friendly SEO strategy to bring in more users as well since grab and retain search motors attention. These key phrases and key phrases will after that be integrated into articles that will are relevant for your site simply by the SEO consultant. In 2018 there will end up being an even bigger concentrate upon machine learning and SEO through data. ” Of course, the particular amplification side of things can continue to integrate increasingly along with genuine public relations exercises rather of shallow-relationship link building, which usually will become increasingly easy in order to detect by search engines. The particular Yoast SEO plugin enables a person to write better content along with page and keyword analysis, immediately generate XML sitemaps, enable breadcrumbs, add social and schema markup, as well as a big number of other optimizations.

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Algorithmic chasers, technical SEOs, and Google Design followers should hone their specialized skills to focus on rising voice search technologies and AI applications. Once you possess a variety of keyword concepts, you can then use all of them for on-page SEO, improving your own content, building helpful pages plus finding relevant sites in your own niche. Search queries like Chinese language food near me” or greatest auto mechanic near me” supply the perfect opportunity for nearby SEO to capitalize on possible customers. In this free e-book, we will discuss everything a person need to learn to start a good effective Local SEO campaign with regard to your business.

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Not only internet research engine algorithm changes but furthermore the way people search retains changing, therefore, taking into consideration the above ten SEO trends- digital marketers plus business owners can make the particular website ready for ranking higher in 2018. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is known as the steps you get to make sure you are usually ranked highly in the research engines like google when somebody searches for a related expression, such as "how to quit my dog from barking". Hopefully this article has assisted inform you of all the particular things you need to understand about the upcoming SEO developments for 2018! These are a few associated with the SEO trends which may yield greater results in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018. In reaction, she lists multiple SEO misconceptions related to content and attempts to clear them up in order to ensure that people can advantage from the best of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION without needing to deal along with the dregs. Clearly, there are a quantity of new SEO trends relocating to the forefront in 2018. SEO at the end associated with the day will always depend on content and links. Thus, SEO strategy may try to create a back link profile to avoid spamming within 2018 and yes, backlink will certainly remain an important key in order to making your company rank upon top in search ranking. Enter: SEO : a method to filter plus organise websites depending on key phrases. SEO today is producing sure a user's experience is usually optimal in terms of the particular content they're consuming, how these kinds of are consuming on various devices, plus what action they're lead in order to take next. And as over 55% of most search results on Search engines contain one or more video clips — almost all of which usually are YouTube videos — posting SEO-optimised YouTube videos will obtain you more Google search direct exposure and increase your online presence exponentially. In situation your website is on the particular newer side, you can prioritize your PPC campaign first since it can take a whilst for SEO rankings to turn out to be established, but don't ignore your own SEO in this process. In reality, you're going to see even more and more people investing within SEO as paid traffic stations will get expensive. Google failed to result web pages so much right after updates, quickly but they gather data at all times so they are usually testing their algorithms then this effects all directories in search engine optimization. I agree with most points but still uncertain how voice search can move to SEO. SEO content in 2018 requirements to be fact-based, user-targeted plus compliant with Google's truthfulness specialist signals. The trouble is that SEO ranking factors have changed a lot over the years (find out how in our keyword research guide ). That means the search engine optimization methods that worked 5 in years past will not fly today. While I still discover this trend in play along with many enterprises still in the particular middle of their digital alteration, the convergence in the MarTech space is creating many synergies and opportunities which should end up being seen as a welcome advancement for brands and agencies which are searching for an advantage in regards to their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION motivated content marketing or outreach methods. For marketers who had been raised in the ‘traditional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION market, ' 2018 is the time to adapt or pass away. If your web pages were designed to get the particular most out of Google, along with commonly known and now obsolete SEO techniques chances are Search engines has identified this and is usually throttling your rankings in several way. SEO changes along with the time and has arrive a long way from dark hat days of link gardening and keyword stuffing to the particular rise of machine learning AI's. SEO will not only mean placing related keywords at the proper location. Maybe you bought several, or maybe your SEO did not care too much concerning the high quality of the links he constructed for you. It does not matter if you are a local business delete word, search engines greatly value backlinks as well as the SEO value” they bring using them. Most of the particular classic SEO elements still keep a lot of weight, items like incoming links and inner structures so we're having in order to optimize for those but concurrently most see the writing upon the wall - AI is usually pushing its way into the particular algorithm and with it a good increased ability for Google in order to comprehend a user's intent plus whether a page meets that will intent and deliver that since a result that regardless associated with many of those classic indicators.

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