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ralfmaximus · 4 years ago

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Living with a Smart Gun

Marta decided she needed a gun after the boost had gone wrong.

Oh, technically, it’d gone flawlessly – 1.2B New Yen siphoned away from Bank Shanghai and into six different offshore accounts, undetected – but when she’d gone to get paid… that’s when things went sour.

She wasn’t a people person. Normally the human relations aspect of her work were handled by Konroy, but he’d fled the country temporarily and hadn’t returned her calls in weeks. She needed to eat. So she’d dug through his list of contacts, found a likely client, and reached out. The job specs they’d sent her seemed easy enough, and it was.

But upon meeting with the lovely folks behind the mail address she realized her mistake: upon delivery she had no leverage over them. The money was boosted, and they had the account numbers and passwords. To her dismay they even had the keys to her secret, 7th account, the one she’d nabbed for herself. Apparently they’d had a tech of their own shadowing her the whole time and she’d been careless.

Hunger will do that to you, she mused, as they broke her left arm, laughing. They beat her ass out into the alley behind the gaming parlor and walked away without looking back. She’d wanted to kill them all at that moment, and if only she’d had a gun…

Broken arm, at least one broken rib, and both eyes swollen shut. Missing tooth.

Konroy wouldn’t have let this happen. But he was gone. She needed to protect herself now. Laying on damp concrete among cardboard boxes and dumpsters, her left arm a shrieking, grinding agony, Marta pulled up a list of clinics from Konroy’s little black book. She selected one certified to install Personal Protection systems and left a message before passing out.

The black clinic was clean and bright, the black part referring only to its off-the-grid status. They never asked questions.

Marta lay in an antique dentist chair, her left arm gripped in padded waldos. It had already been peeled open, radius and ulna exposed, a soft green laser rotating as it mapped the break. She was numb from the shoulder down; a spinal block.

The nameless tech hummed as she worked, watching her arm rotate in 3D on a monitor.

“A simple break, easily repaired,” the tech nodded in satisfaction. “We’ll have you out of here in thirty minutes.”

“Question,” Marta held up her right hand. The tech swiveled to peer at her with calm eyes.

“You install PP systems here, right?”

Without reacting, the tech nodded. “Certified in all forms of PPS. Do you wish to review a catalog?”

“No. I know what I want.” Marta reeled off a make and model number from memory. She’d been researching.

The tech paused, not exhibiting surprise so much as a delay while she accessed databases. Eventually she shook her head slowly. “That model is—“

“Yes, I know. Proscribed.” Marta used her good right hand to indicate the duffel she’d brought with her into the exam room. It was stuffed with New Yen scrip, but they both knew that.

The tech accessed databases again and nodded after a moment. “Yes, that unit is in stock.”

“Well, I want one. Make it happen.”

“Your left arm?”

“Since it’s already open, sure.”

Another pause, the tech’s expression gone blank. “There is a difficulty. Your augmentations are rated at level 5. The smart gun you have requested requires level 6 or higher.” She stopped there, watching silently.

Marta nodded, closed her eyes, entered the crystal wind. Found the public certification boards where her profile lived and… adjusted them. So far as the government now knew she was level 6, certified to work on ESA/ROSCOSMOS space probes and (she noted ironically) smart surgical systems.

Her black rating, if that were something that could be calculated, she imagined as double digits. She opened her eyes and told the tech to check again.

Without discernible surprise the clinician nodded after reviewing the files. “We will need to replace your left ulna, something custom-milled.”

“I know. I’ve read the installation guide.”

The tech switched gears. “Left-handed use is not unheard of, but recommended installation is in the right arm.”

“Don’t wanna mess these up,” Marta waved her tattoos at the tech. Another nod.

“Finally, there will be a bulge. Your skeletal structure is small; the weapon, while compact is—“

“I’m fine with that. Just do it.”

Marta waited three days before peeling the bandages off. Her left arm was discolored from bruising but otherwise pain-free. The extra weight took her by surprise, but she quickly adjusted.

The gun’s embedded manual suggested a week of convalescence before test-firing, since the thing was still knitting itself into her arm, nano-filaments working themselves up to her shoulder for bracing. Using the weapon too soon, despite its recoilless nature, would tear things apart.

That suited her fine. She also had to figure out how to work the damned thing. And so far, its interface was… confusing.

The Crimson Storm Flower 2 (firmware revision 14c) was a typically Chinese name for something so deadly. Its gatling array could fire 1200 rounds per minute of tiny hyper-velocity pellets, or select from a wide array of flechette-slivers: everything from explosives to non-lethals. Marta wondered what use the EMP rounds would be; if her own systems were shielded well enough to even try those. She decided she didn’t know enough to risk it.

Consumables were surgically replaced whenever they ran low. Hopefully, never. She didn’t intend to switch careers or even use the thing except in emergencies.

But the gun’s UI pissed her off. In fact, she couldn’t find one. The armory stores and configuration stuff presented themselves immediately, but she couldn’t find how to actually, you know, pull the trigger.

Also, her dreams had been weird.

She’d grown used to strange dreams over the years as her meat-net whispered to the metal-net in her brain. That was something all IT workers dealt with nowadays. There were OTC medications to help with that.

But lately she’d felt like something – an animal, a presence – had been stalking her. Circling her defenses looking for a way in. There’d even been a few violent nightmares, replays of that night in the alley, where she’d aimed her left arm at the bastards who’d hurt her and instead of doing anything her left arm had fallen off. A cheap plastic doll arm, laying in a puddle. The beating had continued longer than it had in reality, until she awoke screaming on twisted sheets.

None of the Storm Flower manuals suggested how to fire it. She’d reviewed every file, even snuck out into the Chinese mil.net to search for more. The weapon simply didn’t exist except as catalog entries in various black clinics.

One anonymous forum post suggested that Flower was a military experiment. Something tried and discarded, its specs plundered by pirates and sold now on the streets. Or maybe it was a controlled experiment: let the criminals work out the kinks while the military observed from a distance.

Marta’s wounds healed, and the day came when she wanted to test-fire her new toy. She rented time at a gun range and stood, alone, in the tiny, dank bunker, left arm pointed helplessly at a paper target.

Fire. Launch. Activate.

She thought every command she could think of into the weapon’s control matrix but… nothing. She’d even looked up the Chinese equivalents and tried those. Then Spanish, Russian, and even Norwegian. Maybe the weapon’s makers had intended Flower for a specific foreign market.

But no. Nothing happened. Everything felt right – her internal net insisted everything was linked, fiber running a complete path from ulna to spine to brain.

Maybe it was defective.

With a sigh she lowered her arm and dialed the clinic’s number, leaving a message requesting a follow-up visit. These things happened, but dammit she’d paid so much and the disappointment was quickly morphing into rage. Those fuckers. They’d taken her money, smiling as they sawed her arm to pieces. She envisioned the smug clinician’s reaction when she—

Snick.

Her left arm thrummed gently like a motor applying torque to her body. The odd feeling spread up into her shoulder where—

She looked down. A tiny black multi-port muzzle protruded from her arm, completely surrounded by flesh. As if somebody had jammed a gun part directly into her skin and left it there. Marta lifted her arm carefully. It felt pinned by gyros, locked on rails, moving precisely if randomly, wherever she pointed it.

In quiet astonishment, rage gone, she watched as the sliver of black metal slid back under the surface of her arm and vanished.

Snick.

Something locked home inside the bone. The thrumming stopped.

Huh. Flower liked strong emotion, it seemed. Maybe it detected adrenaline and other stress hormones. But that seemed stupid, imprecise. There had to be a way to actually, you know, control it.

The Midtown clinic didn’t return her messages. She walked by the place and it was empty, a realtor’s barcode in the window. Marta quelled the impulse to stop and peer into the dim storefront but the white van parked across the street dissuaded her. The vehicle looked entirely too clean, too government for her tastes. They might as well have painted Homeland Security on its side, so she walked on by.

To keep up the appearance of normalcy she stopped at a sidewalk café two doors down and sat at a table with an umbrella, van within her field of view. She ordered unsweet tea from a waiter wearing a black apron.

When her tea came she took a sip and involuntarily grimaced. Atlanta iced tea came in two varieties: sweet and unsweet. Proper ‘sweet’ tea was made with equal parts sugar and tea; it was undrinkable, something to supercharge kids with before turning them loose in a bouncy castle.

“Excuse me,” she stood, holding the disgustingly sweet beverage out to the server. “I ordered—“

Snick.

Her arm thrummed. Without looking she knew what the server saw, why he dropped his tray and ran. It didn’t matter: she saw his leg explode in a haze of bloody shreds the microsecond Flower coughed.

One target tracked, targeted, explosive flechette selected, fired, target disabled the after-report appeared in her mind. Wow. The manuals were right: virtually no recoil. The glass of tea in her left hand hadn’t even wobbled.

Behind her she heard van doors slamming, and she turned.

Two armored Homeland troopers thundered toward her, SMGs held low. Before she processed this completely they were both down.

Two targets tracked, targeted, armor piercing selected, fired, targets disabled.

Next, the van exploded, one white door sailing over her head to clang against the restaurant’s brick facade.

Vehicle disabled, the after-log finished. She barely had time to scan the whole thing before her arm went snick and Flower shut down. She hadn’t spilled a drop of tea; she drank it all down in one long gulp.

Konroy’s face was a ghost swirling in pixels. His connection was so dreadful it must’ve been bounced through a dozen proxies. From the lag Marta suspected there was at least one satellite involved.

“You did what?”

His voice was razorblades slicing chipmunks. She repeated herself.

“Read me the model number again?”

He’d reacted with amusement about her buying a gun. Her, the tree-hugging hippie cybercriminal who’d once made him take a spider outside rather than kill it. After she transmitted him Flower’s specs he’d sobered up quickly.

“Honey, that’s the blackest of black tech.”

“Do we deal in any other kind?”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Look, I can’t find a clinic that’ll talk to me about it. Can you—“

“Sorry, you’re breaking up.”

“I need a clinic that does PPS. Like, immediately.”

“Honey—“

The connection washed away in a burst of static then miraculously cleared.

“Konroy? I need—“

“I’ll send you a list of the ones I know. But you already have that, I reckon.”

She nodded, wondering if he could see her. “Surely there’s more?”

“Not exactly a growth industry, especially since the crackdown. If I knew you were gonna—“

The connection broke then, went totally blue. Returned full-screen with Homeland Security’s eagle-clutching-wires logo, which she glimpsed only for a second before slapping the call closed.

Seconds later the phone was in pieces, its battery tossed down a sewer grate, the rest of it in various bushes and dumpsters as she walked. In annoyance she realized Flower had popped open and closed without her noticing… that told her how upset she was more than anything else.

Her dreams became violent. She was a gun, and the world was a rich tapestry of target reticules. Most were green (friendly) but some were not (red) and every time a red one was targeted and destroyed she orgasmed.

After these dreams she woke up exhausted, panties askew, the mattress damp.

While she and Konroy had had plenty of sex, they’d never had orgasms together.

One sleepless night Marta got drunk on tequila and walked up to the first white van she saw, stood outside it with arms outstretched. After a few moments the doors slid open and she was surrounded by Homeland troopers. She tried to warn them about Flower but they were all dead before she opened her mouth.

Then of course, the van exploded.

Marta boosted enough capital to hire an ex-military surgeon from mainland China. She met with him in a hotel room near the airport, where he examined her arm, scanning Flower with instruments he assembled from a pair of aluminum briefcases.

“I do not recognize this weapon,” he announced finally. “But that does not mean we did not make it. Much goes on, in the, you know…”

“I know,” she sighed. “Can you get it out of me?”

He sat back, pondering. “Eventually it will run out of consumables.”

“So I gathered. But I don’t want to wait that long, it’ll take months. Until then I’m afraid to go outside.”

“You do not understand,” he blew out his cheeks. “The weapon, it has bonded with your endocrine system. You and it are one. When it runs out of ammunition it will want more. A gun without bullets is useless, and it wants to be useful.”

“Yeah, so? I’ll just ignore it. If it pops out no big deal. I’ll wear long sleeves forever.”

“I have not explained well. The gun, it will… need more ammunition. Consider it a form of addiction.”

Her stomach dropped. “Addiction? Like heroin?”

The Chinese doctor beamed at her. “Yes! Precisely so. In fact glutamate and dopamine are the—“

She found herself standing, head pounding, shouting. “Get this thing out of me, now! I don’t want—“

Snick

Marta eventually found a clinic in Taiwan that could service the gun. She didn’t miss Atlanta, and everyone around her spoke English anyway. Homeland Security never bother her anymore, not over here.

A network of Flower owners had sprung up around the planet about the time she’d gotten her implant. She discovered her experience was not uncommon, and within this new, strange family she found a place: boosting cash for the collective, so ammunition was never a problem.

Meditation and medication helped control incidents. The collective cheerfully displayed an old-style “44 Days Since Last Accident” cardboard sign in the main dining room with detachable numbers that incremented – or zeroed – over time.

Soon she and the others like her boosted enough capital to purchase a small island off the coast of Taiwan, and moved the clinic there. They began manufacturing Flowers and even improving the design. Children were born and fitted with their own guns as soon as their bones stopped growing, usually in their late teens.

The Chinese project responsible for the creation of the weapon had contacted them a few times, threatened a few times, finally backed off when they were invited to come get their guns back if they could. They tried once, and the score was 27 dead Chinese commandos to zero collective members.

It was just prior to that engagement that Marta had her second, right-arm Flower installed, damn the tattoos.

Fifteen years after that, Marta returned to Atlanta.

Amazingly, the gaming bar where she’d received her beat-down still existed. She entered the place through the alley door they’d dragged her through, walked past uncaring workers in the kitchen and into the smoke-filled main room.

She recognized none of the faces, did not expect to. Wasn’t even sure if this place still hosted the gang who’d hired her forty years ago, or if they even existed. She hadn’t bothered to check.

Marta stood in the center of swirling chaos, of pinging slot machines, of laughing gamers, of pounding late 20th century dubstep, commandeered the PA system via the crystal wind and pitched her voice to be heard over all. Everything crashed to a halt.

“Somebody piss me off. I dare you.”

Many eyes were on her when Marta raised her arms, letting loose black sleeves fall. She stood like that, arms upheld as goal posts, eyes closed.

It took a few moments, but eventually she got her wish.

#writing #me #cyberpunk #remastered

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mytearsrricochet · 6 years ago

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hey kiddos I've been seeing so many people posting about them starting college this upcoming school year and 1. congratulations 2. I have some things I'd like to share about college experiences in general, though I realize they may not pertain to everyone’s college experience, but if I can help at least a few people I'm good! so here is Hannah’s Declassified Freshman Year of College Survival Guide, sorted by the kind of advice I'm gonna give. It’s a lot.

Additionally, if you want more info on anything on this list, message or DM me and I'll be happy to talk more about something or elaborate. It’s an extensive but not an exhaustive list.

Finances/Scholarships/Loans/What’s Usually included in your tuition

if you get a refund from scholarships or loans, don’t spend it unless it’s for educational expenses!!! that’s what it’s for, not for a shopping spree. I learned that the hard way! it’s usually decent amount of money (~$2000 or so is the usual at my school) so don’t go crazy over it

scholarships aren’t just available for your first year. you can reapply for a lot of them even after you first year, as long as it is noted that the scholarship is not just for incoming freshmen students.

FAFSA opens up October 1 every year. file it before February 1 to receive priority awards! you can file afterwards, but you are unlikely to receive a good grant/loan/other award after priority deadline. yes, you still have to fill out FAFSA after freshman year. you fill it out between October and February every year that you request aid in college. if you have a renewable scholarship, it is imperative that you continue to submit your FAFSA.

schools can also use FAFSA to give you an award from the school, which could be a donor, fund, or institutional scholarship. so you may not get anything from the government such as a pell grant, but you can still get something from the school.

just about every school I looked at during my own admissions process had some sort of financial coaching. if you don’t trust yourself with money and finances, such as with your refund or your personal finances, consider meeting with them. this is usually included in your tuition.

your university sends out a detailed receipt of what is included in your tuition. it’s important to look over these costs, as you will be paying for lots of services that you may not even know about. most universities include campus gyms, campus-sponsored organizations, and sometimes local transportation (such as public buses) in your tuition, so take advantage of what you are paying for.

Academics/Major

most of you will NOT be going directly into your major. I had no idea pre-major was a thing until college. it may not be like this everywhere, and it is often just for specific majors, but for most people your first and probably second year of college you are in a pre-major. you apply for your actual major sometime during second year most likely, and you have to be accepted to the major in order to graduate with it.

you’re allowed to change your major!!! I did within my first few months, and I promise you, you will feel better if you’re doubting your major and you just change it.

make sure to transfer any AP/dual credit courses from high school. most schools will make you manually transfer them, like they don’t accept them simply from your high school transcripts. you will have to contact the school you got college credit from / send them your AP test scores by yourself. literally ANY kind of credit helps! it may not count for pre-major or GE credit, but it can count for an open credit, which just gives you hours towards your graduation. you usually need a specific amount of hours to graduate, so getting any of them while you can is helpful.

look at RateMyProfessors and Reddit to get ideas of which classes you should take if you have a choice, like a GE credit. something may sound interesting to you, but honestly if people online say it’s a really challenging class, don’t take it in case it screws up your GPA. GE credits mean nothing but the fact that they’re GE credits. you have to take them, and they don’t benefit your major whatsoever (in a direct way at least), so honestly, save yourself the imminent failure and stress over a stupid course and take the easy ones that are recommended via those websites/older students.

in your freshman year, make a 4 year plan. I've had one since I changed my major and it has every class I intend to take on it along with the requirement it satisfies and how many credit hours it is. I also have back-ups in case the classes are full when I schedule for them. this is very helpful when it comes to scheduling, as you will not have to scramble to figure out the classes you need in time.

that 8 am class might seem like nbd, but be honest with yourself. if you don’t wake up before noon on the weekends, you’re probably not going to like waking up at 7 every day. plan your class times realistically.

that also goes for night classes. don’t take a 3 hour lab at 7 pm if you know you’re going to skip it to sleep or hang out with friends!

form study groups in your classes if you can manage it!!! people aren’t going to think you’re weird if you approach them and ask if they want to study with you or if you want a group to get together for the final.

utilize your library/libraries on campus. they are very quiet and can be very helpful when you need to focus.

don’t study in your dorm room. condition yourself to see your dorm as a place to relax, sleep, and socialize, so that you come back to your room feeling more refreshed and peaceful. if you study in your room, you can condition yourself to view it as an academic place, which may cause anxiety.

if you change your major later in the game, or you know you can’t graduate “on time” (which usually means within 4 years or 8 semesters), it’s ok to take more semesters of college. you are not a failure or degenerate. lots of people do it, and you are not out of the ordinary if you choose to or need to do so in order to graduate with the degree you want.

keep in mind any professional school you may want to attend post-undergrad. this can be med school, law school, or other graduate programs. some of these schools have certain requirements that you need to fulfill during undergrad. be aware of these requirements so that you can get into your continuing school of choice.

honors or scholars programs don’t mean much in the outside world, but if you have the chance and the time, consider doing them. they can be very rewarding personally, but if it’s going to put more stress than necessary on you, it’s okay not to join one.

Personal/Social Life in College

some of you will have a difficult time adjusting to college. it is an extremely different environment if you live on campus or otherwise don’t live at home anymore, so be prepared for a bit of a culture shock. there’s nothing you can really do about it, it’s just something you have to settle into. and I promise you will eventually.

and some of you will adjust to college life with no trouble at all, even if it’s a different experience than you’re used to, and that’s ok! you’re not weird. I had no transitional period and I'm totally fine.

it’s ok to miss home, but they recommend at least 6 weeks before you visit home again. I don’t really know why, but that’s a number my university stressed a lot in orientation and other places. and it honestly helps. 4-6 weeks away from home and basically forcing yourself to be homesick until you adjust helps!

you will probably sign up for a lot of clubs/organizations within your first weeks and receive a bunch of emails and attend 0-2 meetings throughout the year. that’s ok. but try to get involved with at least one thing because involvement is really helpful for your resume.

so, everything in college is for your resume. absolutely everything.

not necessarily your freshman year, but sometime in college try for a leadership position in something. it’ll help lots of skills like leadership, organizational, communication, and more!

I know you want your free time, and you can have it, but get a job if you can!!!!

GET A JOB ON CAMPUS IF YOU CAN HELP IT!!! you can use it if you qualify for work-study, or if there are positions open for regular jobs without work-study, you can get that too! they will plan around your schedule and are very understanding of anything that arises due to school or other stuff.

most schools are tobacco-free campuses. I know juuls are all the rage, but be careful with them.

fake IDs....yeah. you’ll probably get one freshman year if you enjoy partying and want more than just frat parties. but be careful with them, truly honestly. possession of a false ID can carry heavy charges and fines and can put you in a position to lose your scholarships or have other scary punishments. if you have a fake ID that doesn’t have your face or name, that can be considered identity theft, which can be even more detrimental. just...be careful.

check your school’s counseling or wellness coaching services if you feel as though you need therapy or general life tips.

Academic Materials/Textbooks/Etc Tips

amazon marketplace has a bunch of really amazing deals on renting and buying textbooks! your school will probably have some sort of bookstore on campus and/or nearby that will ask $100 for a textbook, but I've rented from amazon for as little as $9. all you have to do is send it back the time they ask you, which they give you plenty of time to do so. you can also purchase new or used books for a discounted price.

chegg is like $15/month, but if you can get some friends to go in it with you, it’s a great resource. you can order textbooks, see problems completely solved step-by-step, and receive other academic resources.

Wolfram-alpha is a good site that helps you solve math problems! I'm not sure what difficulty level it goes to, but anything helps with college math.

if you want to go into a professional school (grad school, med school, law school, etc) oftentimes older students will sell or give books for free that help you study for entry exams, such as the MCAT or LSAT. be aware when you are looking, and these people might be involved in the same orgs that you are!

Greek Life

be careful when it comes to greek life. they can be very dangerous if you wander into or join the wrong chapter.

they can also be super rewarding! I myself am in a sorority. I chose it based on the kind of women that were already in the sorority, in the morals that they presented during recruitment.

if you want to join greek life, sororities typically have formal recruitment, where you visit every house. there are lots of rounds with specific things discussed at each one. fraternities generally have a rather informal recruitment, where the men choose which fraternities to go to, and they can get bids rather informally.

sororities also do informal recruitment, which is basically like frats: you choose which sorority to go to, and they may or may not offer you a bid. it’s a very laidback process, as opposed to formal recruitment, which is very rigid and scheduled.

there is a hype around frat parties in modern shows and movies, which can sometimes hold true. but, sometimes not. it’s important that you know where you’re going rather than wander around your school’s greek row and hope you stumble upon a party. the one time my friends and I did that, one of my friends was raped, and we didn’t know where we were. we found out later, and had we known what that party was, based off of what we had previously heard about that frat, we never would have gone in.

greek rank sites are not really trustworthy. the only people who rank greek life are those who are too passionate about it. passion can be a good thing, but greek life is supposed to be a family and community where everyone involved is like a brother and sister to each other. unfortunately, competition does happen, but it’s best not to feed into it.

attend philanthropy events even if you’re not involved in greek life! it helps raise money for the chapter’s philanthropy, and they’re usually so much fun!

check your school’s alcohol policy regarding frat parties. for example, my school only allows beer and wine at frat parties. liquor is strictly prohibited. of course, frats don’t always follow those rules, but if you’re caught there with liquor, the frat might not be the only one that gets in trouble.

do not let people haze you!!!! there are chapters that haze, though it is far more popular among frats, but there are also chapters that do not. always join the chapters that do not. you should never put your well-being below some greek kids on a power trip.

#college #college tips #love you all!

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loquaciousquark · 7 years ago

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19th Cloudreach. Merrill called the clouds “grey and scuddy” today and she wasn’t wrong

Got a letter from Hubert today that the Bone Pit’s up unusually high for the quarterly profit report. Took the letter immediately to Varric, since I could hardly understand a word, but apparently they found a vein of silverite so large they had to hire a dozen extra miners to work it properly. Realized I hadn’t been out in ages, so V & Fenris & Merrill and I all trekked out to the wilderness.

Varric gets along so much better with Hubert than I do. I mean, he understands topics like quarterly profit margin reports, so I suppose it’s a business thing, but Hubert kept asking what I thought about overhead expense accrual and per diem provisions for the hired workers and it was all I could do to nod and make “hm” noises at appropriate intervals. Thank goodness Varric is kind enough to manage all this, because otherwise I’d have squandered it just as quickly as Gamlen did. Probably a little less whoring. Too bad he hadn’t a Varric all those years ago.

(Reminder: ask Varric what his percentage is. Whatever he’s taking, it should probably be higher.)

Something funny happened near the end of the visit, though. I commented that there didn’t seem to be any signs of nesting spiders or anything--they do love the deep crevices of the Pit--and Fenris said “thank goodness” in a way that made me think he was genuinely glad not to fight today. He said he was all right, but I saw him rolling his shoulders more than once on the way out, like there was an ache between them he couldn’t shake.

He said he was all right. Hm.

12th Bloomingtide. It’s been raining for days and there’s a puddle two inches deep in front of my house. Toby thinks it’s brilliant and hasn’t been clean since

He lost his grip on his sword today and almost got himself skewered by a woman with a pair of daggers. Got the assassin, thank goodness, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes after.

I think the markings are bothering him, but who in flames do I ask?

30th Bloomingtide, either very late or stupidly early; all I know is it’s dark and I can’t sleep

I’ve been thinking about Bethany all night. She would be--let me think. Twenty-three this year? Twenty-four. How old is Carver? Twenty-four.

Twenty-too-damn-young, anyway.

I wonder if Carver got my last package. It has ginger crisps in it that Orana made especially for him, though I did the icing. For as shabby as I am at that sort of thing, I thought they turned out well.

8th Justinian. Beautiful day today, sunny and breezy and full of chipper birds that have decided to roost directly outside my window at 5th damned bell

Fenris came by today, and I haven’t the faintest idea why. He asked how much I knew of magical healing, which is a foolish question considering how many years I’ve spent now healing him, and then he started a sentence four times, gave up, and left in a huff.

Sandal said “trapped,” after he left. Don’t I know it, friend.

In other news, that little bracelet I found a few months ago belongs to a very nice shopkeeper in Lowtown. She’d had it stolen by a gang of thieves one night and hadn’t ever thought to see it again. I’m just glad she happened to mention it as I was buying cedar oil, or it’d have lived in the bottom of my lost & found hoard forever.

22th Justinian. Hot, still sunny. Saw a ship with white sails and blue trim in the docks today and almost managed not to feel sad

Something’s definitely off with Fenris’s tattoos. We were clearing out a group of rogue Coterie just outside Anders’s clinic, and when Fenris went to reach into a man’s chest, he-- I don’t know how to explain it. It was as if he went too far. His whole body went clear as glass and he passed right through the man like a ghost. Took far too long to come back after, too, and when he finally did his hands were shaking so badly he ripped the lung and heart together. It was a bad death, and Fenris could hardly stand for it.

I went to see him a few hours after, and he was still in his bloody armor & wouldn’t let me in. He said this has happened before, that it passes soon enough and I shouldn’t worry. He said it’s like a strained muscle that must be given time to recover.

Of course, he was glowing while he said it, so it might not be the most accurate analogy I’ve ever heard.

24th Justinian

He was trying to ask me to help with his markings. I’m such an idiot.

29th Justinian. Hot, a bit muggy today with salt winds carrying in off the coast, but not as bad as last year

Took me another day to build up the courage to ask, but Fenris (finally!) has admitted his lyrium is bothering him. Also took half a bottle of wine and a great deal of coaxing but He says it’s happened before, that they suddenly start itching and aching and become terribly tender, that even his clothes are almost too much to deal with if they chafe. (It turns out that’s why he wears things cut so tight. All this time and I always thought he just had an aesthetic appreciation for chiseled thighs.) He says it often happens after a large magical battle, but not always.

He let me look at his arm, just to see. The skin is irritated all along the edges of the tattoos--I could help with that at least, a little--and I could tell there was something--something off, I suppose, about the lyrium itself, but I haven’t worked enough with it raw to know what exactly needs fixing. All my potion is made with refined lyrium that’s already been treated and processed for safe handling, and Fenris looked just disappointed enough when I told him so that it lit a fire under my motivation.

I’m still not sure where to look. Neither Anders nor Merrill know much about either the lyrium’s wrongness or the blood magic that bound it. Not that I really expected Fenris to allow them to prod, even if they did. He keeps insisting it always gets better and says it’s already a little improved from last week.

Then again, I watched him sit unnaturally still for almost fifteen minutes in the most awkward position just to keep the lyrium from creasing around his knees, so I remain unconvinced.

2nd August. Steamy hot--I swear I lost three pounds just walking down the stairs from Hightown

I’m either brilliant or insane. Or both, depending on Varric’s mood. I went to the Black Emporium today on a blind hunch, and when I told Xenon what I needed he gave a half-dozen thoughtful groans and sighs and then told his urchin to go fetch some book from the back stores.

It was written in a mixture of Tevene and the trade tongue (thank Andraste) but from what I could tell, it was an old manual on the process of refining lyrium, how to prepare it to hold magic. Then Xenon got very stern and told me he was a tradesman, not a library, and if I intended to continue propping up the wall while I finished reading an unpaid-for book he could think of much more permanent ways to make that happen.

He only charged me a handful of silver, though. Every time I think he’s giving me a good deal, I leave with a terrible sense of uneasiness. Still, I’m certain this is the key to whatever’s wrong with Fenris’s lyrium.

I did trim my hair a bit in that mirror while I was waiting. It was getting a bit unruly.

7th August. Rainshowers all day. Air’s so thick it’s like breathing bricks

Sandal said “trapped.” I need to start listening to him more. No wonder the healing didn’t help.

It makes sense they’d get more agitated after a magical fight, too, if they’re absorbing as much residual energy as this book implies. I wonder if a templar’s Silence would have the same effect on the tattoos as it does on me. Not that I have many friendly templars to ask. Cullen would probably do it, but I don’t want Meredith knowing anything more about Fenris than she does already.

I bet this will work. I’m almost sure of it. And if it doesn’t, no harm done--he’ll just still exist in an unending pain, that’s all. I’ve already sent a runner with a message for him to come over this evening, and Orana’s bringing up an old set of Carver’s sleeping clothes that are loose enough for what I need. Poor Fenris. Not bad enough he’s hurting already, now I’m putting him in pants four sizes too large and telling him to stay put while I feel him up, down, and sideways.

Ah, I hear him downstairs. Andraste, give me strength and patience and actually, composure now that I think about it

Later, almost midnight

It worked. It worked! I’ve snuck away and am writing this by the barest wisp of magelight because I’ve got to note it all down now, while it’s fresh, but Maker’s blood and bone it worked.

It’s not healing, it’s a cleanse. Almost--almost a dispelling, really. It has to be general, not specific--Kirkwall’s got so much sundry magic just floating around everywhere that to try to clean it out piece by piece and spell by spell would take a thousand years, which means my father’s interminable lessons on magical foundations have at last proved themselves useful.

We started at his hands. I’ve never seen anything like it. I had my eyes closed to begin with, since I didn’t know quite what I was looking for, but once I found the lyrium’s...heart? is that the right word? I could feel the crusty--scales, almost, layered over it. Any healer can do it, I think, if you’ve got enough sense to know what’s healthy and what��s sick. It’s a similar principle to mending bruises. Just go in from the healthy side, the deep place beneath where it’s hurt, and slide a little knife’s edge of magic between that and the scale over it, and just--just peel it off. Like a scab, but made of light.

I could see the glowing through my closed eyes. I opened them in time to see a faint...oh, I can’t find the words tonight. Almost like a skeleton of blue-edged white light hovering an inch or two above his actual lyrium tattoos, in the same shape as his fingers and the backs of his hands. And then I let it all go because I was startled, and the skeleton--shattered, like two fistfuls of silver glitter.

I will say Fenris looked ready to jump right out the window (you’d think he’d know by now everything I touch becomes unnecessarily dramatic), until he clenched his hands reflexively and noticed they didn’t hurt. Well. “Hardly at all,” is what he said, but knowing him that could mean anything from a splinter to being run through with a tree trunk.

So we kept going. We did both his hands and then went all the way up his right arm to his shoulder and halfway up his left before he had to take a break. He said it didn’t hurt, the process, but it was uncomfortable and made his skin buzz.

We broke for dinner, then, and I noticed he kept looking at his hands as we ate. (He said later it was because it didn’t hurt to hold the fork. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he ate without even a twinge, and I had to blink very hard at my potatoes to keep from welling over. Thank the Maker’s grace for lumpy tubers.)

It’s not a quick process. It took over an hour all told to cleanse his arms, and another hour for his back and chest each. I will say he handled my pawing at his bare skin extremely well and didn’t even blink when I told him he had to take off his shirt. I will say I did not and my throat is still flushed because at the core of me is a little girl who refuses to grow up, even when I desperately wish she would.

There was something beautiful in it, though, seeing each little curve and dot lifting out of his skin like that into the air, shining there for a moment in the dark, and then...scattering into nothing. Lovely and achingly sad.

He stopped me once we were done with his chest. It looked like he wanted to say something, but he also looked terribly exhausted and he said the buzzing was getting to him (I paraphrase), so when I suggested he stay and sleep here, he only nodded and curled down right into my pillow instead of going downstairs like I’d thought. The only reason I’ve got as much written down as I have is that he’s sleeping like the dead and I have to keep checking that he’s still breathing.

I would very much like to comment on how nice it is to be sleeping next to him tonight, but that seems only to invite heartsickness right in with open arms. I will say, instead, that his hands smell like cheap soap, and when he is very tired he snores.

8th August. Still muggy, though not raining nearly as much as yesterday

He wanted to tell me that Danarius had been thorough when he designed the tattoos, in case I hadn’t remembered. I wasn’t a fool this time.

I wasn’t a child, either. I should so very much like to tear out that beast’s heart, only Fenris has first rights.

We got down to both his knees before lunch. I should like to imagine his pain shattering away along with the scales, but I’m not so naive to think it’s all quite so easy to reach.

How much must it have cost Fenris to let me this far behind his guard?

Late evening. I've cracked a window; breeze is moist but cool

Oddly enough, his feet have been the most intimate part of this whole affair. There was a moment this afternoon... he was sitting on the side of the bed, and I was cross-legged on the ground with his foot in my lap, and I happened to glance up, and there was a single moment...

I can’t describe his face properly. Gentle in a way I’ve never seen from him. A good sort of tired longing. And bitter, and so angry, but an old anger that’s burned away all the heat and just sits iron-cold in the pit of your stomach. All of that in one fleeting instant, and then he folded it away layer by layer like someone putting bedlinens back on a shelf. He smiled at me after as if to chase away the image, but it wasn’t a fraction as real.

Anyway, his feet have calluses a quarter-inch thick on the heel, and he made the most peculiar sounds when I was working on the markings alongside them. He said the buzzing--well, he didn’t say tickled, but he surely flinched like it. Should I ever find myself in a position to mercilessly abuse this information, I plan to do so to the fullest extent. Isabela would be proud.

He stood up when I was finished with his feet and nearly knocked me over. He didn’t mean to, he just--walked around my room, slow and then fast and then slow again, and picked things up and put them down, and rolled his shoulders back and forth and bent down and touched his toes. It was all easy, effortless, not a hitch in a single motion.

He said nothing hurt. He said it was one of the best night’s sleeps he’d had in years, and that was even before I’d done the rest of the tattoos. He couldn’t remember the last time he could sit down or cross his arms without needing to brace himself first.

He was so eager to simply move. He didn’t notice, thank goodness, but I had to wipe my eye a bit from all the inconvenient emotions.

I made him sit again for the last part, which was his throat and the lines up over his chin. I’m much better at this now--next time it’ll take half as long--and in the afternoon sun we could hardly see the little ghost-lights until they disappeared in their starbursts at the end.

this is so

He kissed me when we were through. I was bent very close and my hands were on his face, and then the last of the light vanished and he reached up and held my chin with his thumb, right where his own markings would be, and then he leaned forward and kissed me.

It wasn’t an accident, and I didn’t pull back until he did. He apologized for his impulsiveness and I waved it off, but I know... I’m certain he meant it, even after.

He looked me right in my eyes when he thanked me. There was no bitterness in his face then, only gladness and a frank relief, and when he left his steps were lighter than I’ve seen them in ages. He carried the sword like it weighed nothing at all. I hadn’t realized how stiffly he’s been moving these last few months.

I told him to let me know the instant the lyrium started hurting again and he said he would. Shit. Was I worried about inviting in heartsickness earlier? At this point it’s a better bedfellow than Toby. I ought to have recognized it sooner.

And yet...he left happy. Not hurting, for the first time in a very long time.

I’d give a year of my life if it meant he could feel this way for the rest of his.

16th August. Fair, sunny

He left me a gift. It was by my plate when I came down for breakfast: a neat little penknife in black oak and brass, and he’d tied a pair of feathers to the ring. Hawk feathers, both of them a deep red.

He left a note as well. “In gratitude, Fenris.” He wrote it himself.

For someone who repeatedly professes no knowledge of the softer things in life, this man is extraordinarily proficient at stamping my heart into little pieces. I draw comfort only from the blatantly unfair judgement of his terrible penmanship.

Damn him! Next time I’m telling him if he puts more than an ounce of thought into a thank-you gift I’m chucking him headfirst into the Waking Sea.

#fenris #hawke #fenris/hawke #dragon age #quark writes #hawke's journal tag #heck of a lot of fancy headcanons in here #feel free to ignore any and all to your preference #also #as someone with friends and family members who live in constant pain #forgive the self-indulgent wish-fulfillment fantasy #we will return to regularly scheduled hijinks next entry

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indiawebcommsolutions · 4 years ago

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Intuos And Intuos Pro

How to Make Writing a Breeze with the

Wacom Intuos

No, not handwriting, although it’s useful for that too.

This will be a guide to how to set up the Intuos — or any Wacom tablet with four buttons — as a powerful productivity aid for noveling, freelancing, coding, teaching online, or just general office work.

http://india-iws.in/Back before working for Wacom was even on my radar, I used a 2013 Intuos Pen & Touch as a full-time mouse replacement for four years. I now use a Cintiq 16 HD for art and a Logitech gaming mouse for everything else. The Cintiq is the best art tool I’ve ever used, but I recently realized I miss using the flat tablet for work. Partially because the interface was more efficient, but I think a lot of it was also psychological: What do we associate more with writing than pens? Just using it, even for ordinary articles, seemed to put me in creative mode.

Yes, holding a pen for several hours on end takes some getting used to. Your hand might be sore for the first few days. And you’ll want to practice tucking it into your thumb crease while you type to make the switch between navigating and writing faster. But once you’re fluid with it, it’s more efficient, ergonomic, and fun than a mouse. It’s very satisfying to scroll by hovering and flicking your pen, highlight text the way you would in a book, physically drag paragraphs down the page to reorder them, and cut and paste with one tap of a button.

If you’re an artist as well, it also helps you keep in practice holding and making fine movements with a tablet pen even when you’re not drawing.

I don’t have the Pen & Touch anymore; I gave it to a friend whose tablet was stolen. But I currently have a new Intuos Small, so in this article, I’ll unbox it and recreate my old setup.

In the interest of monetary honesty, this one was given to me by a manager a year ago and has been sitting in the closet neglected since then, so using one I got for free is less daunting than the idea of buying one for the purpose. But this model, a Small, retails for $95, half the price of a Medium, so if you’re interested in trying a tablet, it’s not a huge investment for both a mouse alternative and a capable drawing tool. Figuring out what size tablet you need can be tough, but the small is perfect for this purpose. It’s the size of a mouse pad but more precise than a mouse, so you have more room to move in the same area. Even with a dual-1080p-monitor setup like mine, it feels fine.

Anyway, inside the box are the tablet, the pen, a Micro USB cord, and a very thin manual.* Don’t worry, you won’t need it until you change the nib: Once you install the universal driver from our website, It’s plug-and-play, and automatically detects whatever Wacom tablet you use.

—

Note

If you look up any guide to setting up a tablet for drawing, they’ll tell you to put it in front of your keyboard so it’s also directly in front of the monitor, not to the side like a mouse pad. But for writing, feel free to do the opposite.

—

Setting preferences

I’ll walk you through the configuration process as if you’ve never used a tablet before, because maybe some people reading this won’t have. If you’re experienced with them, some of this will seem redundantly basic. But some of the other tips and shortcuts, you might not know as well. So bear with me.

Once you’ve installed the driver, open Wacom Tablet Properties. For anyone who hasn’t used it, there’s a lot more than meets the eye here.

When you install it, it automatically creates profiles for your installed image editing programs — or the big ones, at least — and everything else is covered under All Other. Any programs you add will copy this profile by default, so let’s punch in some foundational settings, starting with Mapping:

We’ll leave it on Pen Mode despite using it as a mouse. You want to get used to mentally mapping your tablet to the elements on your screen, and Pen Mode is far more precise anyway. Not to mention you’ll never lose your cursor again.

If you’re using one monitor, turn on Force Proportions to match your tablet’s aspect ratio to your screen’s. You’ll need this for drawing, anyway. If you’re using two monitors, leave it off or it’ll reduce your tablet’s active area to a tiny sliver. You’ll need it for one type of program, but we’ll get to that later.

Set the lower button to middle-click instead of its default scroll. When it’s on scroll mode, you have to drag the pen across the tablet to scroll up and down. If you set it to middle-click, you can simply click once and navigate by hovering. Middle click also lets you quickly open and close Chrome tabs, and everything else clicking the scroll wheel does in other programs.

Writing program settings

Now, Tablet: For this step, we’ll be adding a writing program and a browser. Clicking the + brings up a list of a list of all the programs you currently have open, so you can create a separate mapping profile and shortcuts for each one.

I do my fiction writing in Scrivener and my article writing in a Google Docs desktop app, with different settings for each, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll demonstrate with MS Word.

Those four buttons, FYI, are called ExpressKeys, and any number of program or navigation functions can be assigned to them. For writing, we’ll do keyboard shortcuts. For the top left one, go to Keyboard > Keystroke, and in the popup window, hit Ctrl-X in the top field and name it Cut in the bottom one.

Keep adding basic shortcuts until you have this, or whatever alternative suits you:

Note that one key’s still on default: Since cut, copy, and paste cover my basic editing needs, I’m left with a free space. I’ll use it to create a shortcut menu for my common formatting functions. So, let’s pop over to On-Screen Controls.

As you’ll see, this lets you create infinite toolbars. They’re program-independent, so you can create one general “writing” one to use the same shortcuts across different programs.

There are two types of menu: Grids and Radials, and grids come in horizontal, vertical, or square. I’ll make a new single-column vertical grid for all my common shortcuts in order of use — Ctrl-I, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-B — and creatively call it “Writing.”

And I’ll assign it to the final ExpressKey. Menus normally disappear after you select an option, but you can use the pin icon to make it a permanent toolbar. From now on, I’ll stick mine to the margin of whatever I’m working on.

—

Important

If you’re using Windows 10, uncheck “Use Windows Ink” in the Mapping panel for all your writing programs, or else you’ll get that infuriating Handwriting popup every time you place your cursor.

If that still doesn’t work, you can turn the box alone off through Windows by searching for “Pen & Windows Ink” settings in the taskbar, and changing this one from “When the keyboard isn’t attached” to “Only in tablet mode.”

—

Browser settings

We’re going to do one thing different here. There’s one capability that’s still missing: zoom. The normal Intuos doesn’t have any equivalent to a mouse’s scroll wheel. Some other Wacom products have a touch ring that can be programmed to serve that function — The Intuos Pro, Cintiq 13HD, ExpressKey remote, and various older models — but not this one.

But don’t worry, the Intuos has a workaround. An inelegant one, I’ll admit, but it’s better than switching back to the mouse every time you need a closer look at something.

Besides image editing programs, Chrome is probably where I need to zoom in the most for things like Google Maps. Since I don’t often cut when browsing the web, and I can just use Ctrl-X when I do, I’ll set the first key to Navigation > Pan/Zoom.

While the button is held down, hovering the pen will scroll, and dragging it up or down on the tablet will zoom. You could simplify things and just program this function to the lower pen button, but then you’d lose middle click functionality for things like opening browser links in a new tab. It’s a good idea for any program where middle click doesn’t do anything, though.

—

Also important

You’ll need to turn off Windows Ink for Chrome and any other Google apps, too. It causes a pen tracking glitch. Same with Discord, for some reason. In fact, you really only need to leave it on for Photoshop.

—

Image editing settings

Of course, I’ll still use the Cintiq for any serious work, but for simple cropping and color correction, it’s sometimes more convenient to just bang it out on the flat tablet. Any artists present will already know to do this, but for Photoshop and any other drawing or image editing programs, set the active area to one monitor and turn on Force Proportions.

If you’re using two monitors, don’t worry, all you have to do is click your Windows taskbar to navigate back to the non-photoshop monitor.

Services & Saving

If you’re on Windows, occasionally your computer will fail to detect your tablet, in which case you’ll have to reset the Wacom driver through the Services window. This is something everyone should know how to do. Every problem I’ve ever had with a Wacom device has been fixable this

You can also use the stop and start icons at the top of the window. You can pin services to your taskbar once it’s open, too.

But once in a blue moon — every few months, perhaps — this might wipe your preferences. So once you’ve set them, make sure to save them through the Backup Settings panel in Wacom Desktop Center. You can either save them as a .pref file to your hard drive, or upload them to the free Wacom Cloud, then restore them with the very next button.

Impressions of the

Intuos

Zoom hitch aside, this is an even better mouse replacement than the 2013 Pen & Touch was. The P&T had a smooth plastic surface that constantly reminded you that you were using a computer peripheral. The current gens have a rubbery textured surface that genuinely make it feel like you’re somehow using a ballpoint on a notebook to control your computer. And the pen helps with that too: It’s lighter and thinner than either the P&T or the Cintiq, just 5½ inches long by 1/3 inch thick, smaller than a Bic.

But my favorite feature is the Bluetooth. Once the tablet’s charged via cable, you can connect it wirelessly and regain the use of your USB port. I didn’t see the point of this before I tried it — who uses a tablet further than a cord’s distance from the screen? — but now that I have, I never want to go back. It allows a lot more freedom of movement: I can slide it across the desk from one monitor to the other if I want to switch to another project on a different screen, without messing with the cable, or when I need the mouse for a game, I can simply turn the tablet off and set it aside. And once we can do these things again, it’ll be easy to slip into a backpack to use outside at a coffee shop, bookstore, or while traveling. It can be charged with any Micro-USB cable, so if you run it off Bluetooth, you can use a wall charger. It takes a few hours from empty to full, but it has a battery life of fifteen, meaning it’s good for two workdays or one brutal one.

Finally, in an interesting last-minute twist, I was surprised to find it compatible with the Cintiq — I could even draw into Clip Studio Paint with both at once — meaning I won’t need to switch them out. I don’t think an overabundance of Wacom tablets is a problem the average reader is likely to run into, but for example, if you ever find yourself graduating from a flat tablet to a drawing monitor, but aren’t quite ready to sell your old one, you can repurpose it as a mouse.

As for me, I’m going back to dailying the Intuos for my writing.

—

Finally

If you teach or tutor online, we’ve been putting out a lot of articles for educators lately — in fact, this article was originally intended as a guide to set up a tablet as a teaching tool, I just realized halfway through that the setup would be the same for any job that works with words. If you’d like to know more about teaching with Wacom products specifically, check out All You Need to Know to Teach with a Wacom Tablet, Recreating the Physical Classroom in a Virtual World, or the entire section of our website on using tablets for education.

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#made with wacom #wacombamboo #wacom intuos #one by wacom #wacom intous pro

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josephinegalbraith95 · 4 years ago

Text

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#Can Reiki Cure Fibroids Creative And Inexpensive Tips #Reiki E Learning

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langwrites · 7 years ago

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Tag Game: 10 Questions:

Rules: Answer the questions, then create 10 more, and tag people.

Tagged by: @owlsofstarlight

1. Would you date any of your ocs?

Hmmm.

You know, given that I’m the cause of all their misery, ultimately, that would be a terrible idea.

If I had to choose (and not die), hrm. Well, Naviyd. Probably.

2. What kind of poster(s) would your oc have on their wall?

Naviyd has his father’s rather inaccurate, theistic world maps on his wall. They’re stitched somewhat haphazardly among more accurate records, diagrams, and a wonky drawing of what might someday be a pulley system.

And one nice sketch of a family of four, made by Khalil when he was six years old. It’s more aspirational than accurate, but Naviyd kept it there throughout his son’s entire absent adolescence.

3. If your oc found a time machine, would they use it? for what?

He’d probably tell himself to fight Zahara for custody of both twins.

4. Do any of your ocs have a catchphrase? If so, what?

Naviyd doesn’t see much point. Dude used to basically kill Kaltekan generals as a sacred mission, and he sure wasn’t going to make a career of that by sticking around and monologuing.

5. Tell me about one of your ocs hobbies.

Naviyd studies maps and architecture—which is why Gabilan is a lot more cavernous, winding, and mazelike than its squad design would imply—and spends his free time hunting from horseback with a bow. He does it mainly to keep his skills sharp.

If he wants to have fun, he finds someone and strikes up a friendship if he hasn’t already.

6. What inspired one of your favorite ocs?

I couldn’t choose. So, you get four.

Naviyd was inspired by...hm. Basically, I read a section of a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual (probably 3.5) and spotted the entry on copper dragons. My next thought was, “I’ve gotta have one of those.” Several more thoughts, several years, and one quick jaunt through CYB later, and Rikuto back-retconned his way into Naviyd’s personality, resulting in what he is today.

Oceanus was half-inspired by a wacky combination of Edward Elric and this dude named chaos (all lowercase) from Xenosaga. His affinity for storms is derived from a combination of my attempts to make a sorcerer character (D&D again), and the powers of Darker than BLACK’s Agent November 11 and BK-201/Black Reaper/Hei. He, too, has been through a lot of revisions to soften and sharpen different parts of his personality, until we get the procupine we have today.

Alena, for her part, is pretty directly derived from the powerset displayed by Tsunade back when I was first watching Naruto in like…middle school? She got a fancy coat from some bolt of inspiration I can’t recall now, and her personality ended up just being like… What I admired about people who could keep their kindness and strength in tough times. I think I read a few pretty dark stories the year I really worked nailing her personality down.

And finally, Lumina. Hoo boy. Originally, she was just a derivation—the spare, the younger twin, the goof to Alena’s mother’s stern nature. And over the years, Lumina went from the mere mirror to a stone-cold badass the more I read about some real shitty common tropes—the idea that a woman’s strength was always derived from a man, or that a queen couldn’t rule on her own, and so on. I thought, “Fuck that and the horse it rode in on,” resulting in this terrifying paladin who was just always good, regardless of what others thought.

7. What kind of clothes does your oc like to wear?

Naviyd will wear anything that is a) warm and b) looks good on him. In that order. If he has a choice between almost dying of frostbite or impressing a foreign dignitary, he’s gonna pile on those furs and demand Lumina heat the castle somehow, dammit.

He tends to get a lot of his work done while wearing just a plain shirt and pants, slippers, and the biggest blanket he can find.

8. Does your oc believe in love at first sight?

Naviyd used to. It did not pan out at all.

Oceanus doesn’t, at least as far as it pertains to him.

Alena does.

Lumina does not, and never has.

9. If you took your ocs for one story and put them in an au, what au would you choose?

I kinda already did that, by allowing all of these Terramir kids to wander over to CYB. Granted, some of them didn’t have the longest lifespan, but I’m generally content with the way that worked out.

10. What is something your oc is afraid of?

Naviyd is afraid of bears. Does that count?

Siri’s questions:

1.What was the trickiest bits of worldbuilding you have ever done?

Tryin’ to figure out what the fuck was going on with Alanrian politics. They’re a mess of squabbling states, and I still can’t remember why.

And most of the rest of the continents are just kinda...there. Like, the Mishik come from a different continent entirely, as do the Xinfanese, but those aren’t visited during the course of the plot because the thing focuses on stopping an impending apocalypse that the Kaltekan Civil War allowed to happen.

It’s their responsibility.

2.Do you have any maps(you don’t need to post the map)? What was your favorite part of developing your geography?

Cooking the macaroni afterward.

3.Does your story have magic? What are its limitations, if yes?

They do have magic, but the upper limit varies from person to person…and being to being. It’s usually a question of what’ll kill you first. That’ll be your limit. Creatures born in the Dreamscape have an instinctive grasp of magic, though they may not be the strongest, and can generally only cross over to the real world when either stumbling through a random hole or finding a human counterpart to latch onto.

Dragons are… another story. They’re basically mid-tier gods, and they can’t walk the mortal world without a vessel.

4.Does your main antagonist believe in god?

Well, dragons all do. They have a memory of their ancestors literally meeting the gods, wayyy back in their mythology.

5.Do you have secondary villains?

At least three, yeah.

6.How many words are your drafts?

I have no fuckin’ idea.

7.What is your favorite method of outlining?

Not to do so?

8.Which one of your ocs is queer?(if multiple, mention them all!)

Uh. The ones that I remember off-hand:

Oceanus (demihet bi)

Alena (demipan)

Khalil (aro pan)

Tirane (bi)

Riyaz (aroace)

Mitra (agender aroace)

Lumina (demibiro het)

Naviyd (aro demibi)

9. If you took your ocs for one story and put them in an au, what au would you choose? (Stealing from above cause this was a fun question)

CYB, natch.

10.Which of all the names in all your books, including characters, places, animals etc., is your favorite?

The names?

Hm.

I think my favorite stroke of brilliance was Lumina’s name in the first place. Sure, it means “light” in at least one language, but the fun part is that it’s also an unit of measurement for levels of light. Once I realized I could make a theme, I started spreading it around. Her sister became Luxana, while her older niece is Alena, both of which mean “light” as well. Her family last name, adopted upon being raised to nobility, is also an old reference to how people used to measure light: Lambert. Her sister’s last name now means “fire,” which is, again, a source of light.

And so on and so forth. There’s a theme.

I ain’t gonna tag anyone since it’s late and my brain’s fried. Night, all.

#ocs #ask games #oc asks #owlsofstarlight #Terramir Gang #Naviyd #Lumina #Alena #Oceanus

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ulfwolf · 5 years ago

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Books

Most books on Buddhist and Zen meditation stress that even though they try to detail and explain the meditation practice as best they can, you really do need a qualified teacher: a person who you, by searching, investigating and comparing, feel comfortable about or are convinced is the right teacher for you.

Nothing, they say, can take the place of a good (sometimes they add the word accredited) teacher.

This, of course, is all well and good for those who live in urban parts of the country where teachers might be available to find, investigate and compare. But for those of us who live in more rural areas, far away from Buddhist or Zen centers and their teachers, the books themselves have to shoulder the mantle of Teacher, and lead us toward the light.

Books, therefore, and possibly for a large majority (think the Earth Population/Meditation Teacher ratio—a scary number that), will be the Teachers we turn to and trust to help us.

I live in a small California town on the Pacific Coast just south of the Oregon border. To my knowledge there is only one other Buddhist in this little town of less than ten thousand souls—of the Tibetan persuasion. There are no centers, no groups, no teachers.

So, for me there are only books—and, yes, the occasional YouTube video, but in the main, books. While videos of Dharma talks or guided meditation can be helpful, I find such talks (mainly improvised, as they are) less thought-through and carefully explicated than those given in books, which normally have undergone much scrutiny, editing, criticism, and more editing before arriving at the final, published state—and so, I assume, say exactly what the author wants them to say.

I believe this holds true even when the book is a printed collection of Dharma talks, for they have also been scrutinized and edited before publication.

So, for me—as for, I believe, many others: Books are my teachers.

That said, what books have taught me what, and what books do I recommend? This is what I aim to share. Be warned, though, it is quite a path (list) for I have read and consulted many books in search of true teachers.

But before I embark upon the list, I should say that I believe the search, the acquisition of Path, is a very personal thing. Books that have spoken, and keep speaking to me, may or may not speak to others. Ultimately, yes, I believe that some books are so universally true and helpful that they will speak to everyone, but many books may be more acquired taste than universal teacher.

I briefly encountered Buddhism in the 1960s, but not in depth and not for long. By the end of that decade I had embarked upon a different path, one I was to pursue for the next forty odd years.

Finally convinced that that long-time path would, in fact, not lead me all the way, I disembarked and began casting about for another path, which made me (re)turn to Buddhism, my first love so to speak.

The first book I now read (late 2007) was the Buddha’s Dhammapada as translated and introduced by Eknath Easwaran. In his introduction he discussed the four Dhyanas (Jhanas in Pali) in some detail and this is what turned the light on for me, for I realized, as he described the phenomena accompanying especially the second Dhyana, that I had experienced these very phenomena in the fall of 1968, when I had a significant spiritual insight, an experience of pure light—an experience I then chased (as in trying to recapture or explain), unsuccessfully, for the next forty years.

My first (and lasting) thought, as I read this Easwaran introduction, was: “Oh, my God. These guys have known about this all along.”

Scales and falling from eyes come to mind as I realized that Buddhism, the very Buddhism I had encountered but discarded back in the 1960s, this was indeed my Path. It had been my Path all along.

So, it is fair to say that Easwaran’s Dhammapada was the book that changed my course, and is the first book I truly recommend. To me, it is a very accessible version of the Dhammapada, and the Dhammapada is a book that holds universal benefit.

Since then, I’ve acquired and read other versions of the Dhammapada, and I highly recommend Gil Fronsdal’s translation; while my favorite Dhammapada is, and to this day remains, Thomas Byrom’s simple and beautifully rendered translation.

Once I had decided that Buddhism, and Buddhist meditation, was it, was indeed my Path, I began looking for good books about just that—Buddhist meditation.

My first find, and still a favorite, was Larry Rosenberg’s Breath by Breath, a great introduction to and manual of Anapanasati, awareness of the breath meditation.

I believe my second book on Anapanasati was Buddhadasa Bhikkhu’s Mindfulness with Breathing, a Manual for Serious Beginners, which I also found very, very helpful—still do.

By this time, I had settled on Anapanasati as the perfect meditation vehicle, the breath being so available, so near, and so portable, so here followed other books on Anapanasati and now with a Jhana slant.

I believe I nnext read a string of books by Ayya Khema, the truly brilliant German Theravada nun. Being Nobody, Going Nowhere; Be an Island: Come See for Yourself; and Who Is Myself? among others. I also read her very moving autobiography I Give You My Life.

Ayya Khema, with her almost brusque but very clear and straightforward approach to both being a Buddhist and a Meditator was a strong hand that led me further on my path. Can’t say enough about her.

While she may not be everybody’s cup of tea, she certainly was very much to my taste.

At this time, I also read several books by Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English; The Four Foundations of Mindfulness; Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English; and others. I found Gunaratana very accessible and a great help as well.

Of course, I also read Nyanaponika Thera’s The Heart of Buddhist Meditation; along with his The Vision of Dhamma, which truly spoke to me.

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation is considered one of the classics and I believe no Buddhist library will, as they say, be complete without it.

And now we come to the Pali Canon itself.

Once I had decided that Buddhism and Buddhist meditation was indeed my path, I also wanted to get as close as I could to the words of the actual, historical Buddha himself—some refer to it as the Original Buddhism, others call it Theravada. This in turn led me to Wisdom Publications’ fantastic Teachings of the Buddha series, which includes the four main books of the Sutta Nikaya:

Digha Nikaya — The Long Discourses of the Buddha

Majjhima Nikaya — The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha

Samyutta Nikaya — The Connected Discourses of the Buddha

Anguttara Nikaya — The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha

This wonderful series also includes:

The Suttanipata — An Ancient Collection of the Buddha Discourses

In the Buddhas Words — A Pali Canon Anthology

Great Disciples of the Buddha — Lives, Works, Legacy

I have read the four main books (on Kindle, which made it so much easier to access the many footnotes) and found them both educational and very inspiring.

In the Buddha’s Words is a great anthology created (and translated) by Bhikkhu Bodhi, a great Pali scholar and Theravada monk. It works like a primer to the Pali Canon itself.

For those interested in the roots of Buddhism, this Wisdom Publication series is nothing short of a gold mine.

While studying the Pali Canon I also read the works of another Pali scholar, the German Theravada monk Analayo. He has written several outstanding scholarly works, including: Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization; Excursions into the Thought-world of the Pali Discourses; Perspectives on Satipatthana; and several others. They are all highly recommended for those who want to delve into not only a great analysis of the Pali Canon itself but also the historical comparisons between the Pali Canon and its Chinese (mainly) and Tibetan counterparts.

Another fantastic writer is Shaila Catherine and at this time I read her Focused and Fearless: A Meditator's Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity as well as portions of her sequel (so to speak) Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana. I found Focused and Fearless more accessible and that Wisdom Wide and Deep left me a little stranded—like a post-grad thesis on the subject, when I was looking for a conversational hand. Still, that does not detract from Shaila Catherine’s brilliance, and I still keep Focused and Fearless close at hand.

Two subjects that held my fascination and interest, and still do, are Samadhi and Emptiness. Before we continue, it is worth mentioning some books that deal directly with these matters.

Richard Shankman does an amazing job investigating and describing Samadhi, and his two books, The Experience of Samadhi: An In-depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation, and The Art and Skill of Buddhist Meditation: Mindfulness, Concentration, and Insight are very much worth reading and highly recommended.

As for Emptiness, Analayo treats the subject with his usual clarity in Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation, and Rob Burbea does an amazing job of analyzing emptiness in his book Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. I also admire and highly recommend Guy Armstrong’s brilliant book, Emptiness: A Practical Guide for Meditators.

At this point I came across B. Alan Wallace, a Tibetan Buddhism scholar and prolific writer (and lecturer). He is fascinatingly well-educated (and well-grounded in both science and religion, as well as philosophy) and has written several captivating and informative books on Buddhism versus Science (and other religions), including: The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind; Balancing the Mind; Choosing Reality; Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge; and, literally, a host of other fine books.

The Attention Revolution is probably the most accessible of Wallace’s writings and would be my recommended entry-book into the Wallace universe—a universe well-worth exploring.

Wallace’s writings pointed me to Tibetan Buddhism and I now read several books by Tibetan monks and also by the Dalai Lama, all of which served me well, while in turn pointing more and more to my final Buddhist destination, which was Zen.

Possibly the finest introduction to Zen is Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which is a delight to read and opens the door, and your mind, to Zen itself.

For me, while Theravada grounded me in Buddhist philosophy and meditation, it eventually (partially due to my own curiosity and also due to B. Alan Wallace’s brilliant books) led me to the Tibetan masters and their intricate discourses on Emptiness and Shamata meditation. In the end, however, as informative and inspiring as I found their views, I found Tibetan Buddhism a little “too thinky” for my taste; I thirsted for something simpler, more direct—and you will not find anything simpler or more direct than Zen and Zazen’s “Just Sitting” meditation.

And as you approach Zazen you will invariably also run into Dogen, the 13th Century Japanese Soto Zen founder.

Dogen’s masterpiece is Treasury of the True Dharma Eye—Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo. The version edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi is probably today’s definitive edition and is published by Shambhala, both on paper and Kindle.

Whether you enter Dogen’s universe via Shobo Genzo or some other way, you will most likely end up with him one way or another.

That said, there are more gradual approaches to Dogen, including: The Essential Dogen—Writings of the Great Zen Master, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt; as well as Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation, Zen Master Dogen, also edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. Both are highly recommended.

A more scholarly book about Dogen, his life and writings, is written by the Korean Buddhist monk and scholar Hee-Jin Kim: Eihei Dogen—Mystical Realist. This is an amazingly well-written and insightful investigation of Dogen, his times and life.

Which leads me to my final destination: Zazen, just sitting.

I highly recommend the following five books on Zazen, and I believe that between them you will have covered all important Zazen ground and will never need another manual or inspirational discussion of Zen meditation:

The Method of No-Method, Chan Master Sheng Yen;

Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi, Taigen Dan Leighton;

Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice, Kosho Uchiyama;

Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen, and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry, Taigen Dan Leighton; and

The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza, edited by John Daido Loori; this is my “Desert Island” book, the book to end all books on Zazen (in my opinion):

To this library I will add only one more book, one that amazingly, for me, correlated and merged the Theravada Jhanas with Zazen: and note here that Zazen literally means “Sitting Zen” and that Zen is the Japanese word for Chan which is the Chinese word for Dhyana, which, of course, is Sanskrit for the Pali Jhana.

So, Zazen actually means, “Sitting Jhana” and Keren Arbel’s Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhanas as the Actualization of Insight (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism) merges, for me, the two practices of Jhana meditation and Zazen into one beautiful, logical and workable whole.

I am home.

I have pursued the Buddhist path in earnest since 2007 and the above are the majority of the works I have at one time or another considered my teacher.

Today, as I mentioned above, I have settled in Zen and Zazen, and I believe I have come to rest here. I meditate four times a day, two long sittings, morning and evening, and two shorter sittings during the day.

Should you want to cut to the chase, and only read two of the above books, I would say Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and Loori’s The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza.

Yes, you will eventually end up with Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, but take your time. No need to rush it.

Happy sitting.

P.S. Not directly on topic, but one truly amazing book that you should read, if for no other reason than to gain greater insight into the spiritual life of the Hindu (i.e., Vedas, Upanishads), is Edwin F. Bryant’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The book, in my view, is a masterpiece.

http://wolfstuff.com/bodhi-books

#Buddhism #Zen #Books #Teachers #True Path #Meditation #Zazen

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docfuture · 8 years ago

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The Maker’s Ark - Chapter 37

[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of April 3.]

Previous: Chapter 36

"This is only the fifth edition, I'm afraid," said Admiral Ghiralt over the com. "It's my personal annotated copy, from my academy coursework, and it's more then forty cycles old, but that allows me to avoid a number of tedious difficulties. I think you and your family will still find it interesting and useful." Doc glanced at another screen, where DASI was showing an outline of A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology. "So do I. Thank you, Admiral." He nodded. "I am certain there will be changes to the information sharing guidelines once the aid mission oversight committee adjusts to the full reality of Earth, but in the meantime, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn't take all available steps to ameliorate a potential problem that might have a military impact." "Indeed." That was easy to translate; the admiral's military mission gave him the necessary political cover to use a loophole. The more subtle message was to confirm Doc's suspicion that Emissary Beveda was struggling with serious policy lag difficulties. She wasn't being obstructive--she had reached the limits of her authority to adapt to a very different situation than envisioned by the hastily assembled coalition that had sent the aid mission. "One other thing," said the admiral. "I've changed the primary assignment of the Learning Is About To Occur to liaison and implicit threat characterization. That's what he's doing already, this just makes it official." "Good to know. Our discussion before you called was very productive. Thanks again." The main screen blanked after the call ended, and Doc stretched. He had spent nearly two hours talking with Learning, much longer than the half hour he had scheduled, and was still processing the implications. He glanced at the political tension monitor feed--no major crises--then checked visitor and resident status on yet another display. Stella's meeting with The Volunteer had also run long, but she was finally done, so he stood and headed down the hall. The door to Stella's preferred secure room opened automatically as he approached. The lights were dimmed, and she was sitting alone, staring into the distance. She took off her interface headset as he entered. "The Volunteer left already?" asked Doc. "Margie insisted," said Stella. "His rate of healing has slowed, and she thinks spending too much time on Earth is a contributing factor." "She's probably right. How did it go?" "We engaged in a frank exchange of views." "That bad? He didn't say a word to me." "You didn't threaten to declare war on the United States. He raised a number of concerns, and we discussed the indirect effects of his idiosyncratically selective political engagement." Stella smiled wryly. "The good news is that you can stop worrying about the EDU being politically monolithic. And he is neither selfish nor ignorant. The bad news is that if he speaks out publicly against my actions as Director of the EDU--which he said he is quite willing to do--it could cause lasting damage." "Oof. He hasn't done anything like that in sixty years." Doc shook his head. "I wish he'd wait until he heals, but he's even worse than me at convalescing." "I noticed. I also pointed out that his injuries and his prolonged inability to contribute as a superhero were quite likely to be influencing his judgement. He freely admitted that, but was unwilling to remain 'idle'." "I might be able to convince him to share his disaster mitigation experience with the Grs'thnk aid mission. I know he doesn't consider refugee enclave planning to be an idle pastime." Doc frowned. "What was he most unhappy about?" "Given that I was willing to threaten war, with all that entails, he asked for a personal explanation of why there aren't yet any people in jail on the Moon, awaiting trial. He made pertinent promises during the Lost Years to several people who are now dead." "And we were all worried about Flicker. Was he willing to accept DASI's projections?" "Not entirely, and he regards the way we are using them as a dangerous precedent, since the EDU does have the power to do what he wanted, and a functional, impartial justice system." Doc shook his head. "But it's not transparent to humans, and the checks and balances aren't human either. That's the--" "Of course that's the problem." Stella waved a hand in frustration. "We debated political consequences and morality. Then he argued with DASI and Black Swan for a while. He finally agreed not to do anything precipitate. But we have to account for the possibility of his opposition. This changes the tradeoffs for measures DASI and I planned to use to reduce the likelihood of open conflict. DASI is rerunning all the sociopolitical sims. Again." "Anything I can do?" "Distract me. Because there isn't anything productive I can do at the moment. I'm already over my limit for non-emergency interface use." Stella sighed and placed the headset aside. "How are Flicker and Journeyman?" "Per Yiskah's latest message, Flicker is mentally stabilized and healing. There are hints of damage to her high speed nervous system, which is disturbing, but there's nothing else we can do to help until it's safe for her to sleep. As for Journeyman, he's alive and being healed. DASI warned me not to go near the med center. Flicker gave an extravagant command backed by an extravagant amount of probability manipulation before leaving Antarctica, and I look like some sort of cosmic horror to Lif." "Yiskah says Lif can sense what seem to be superseded time loop residues, and you're covered in them. Enough to be a sensory overload risk." "A fair assessment, and I'm not about to joggle her elbow." Doc smiled crookedly. "Since you need a distraction, I just had an interesting chat with Admiral Ghiralt, and a much longer and even more interesting talk with Learning. Join me in my workshop?" Stella raised an eyebrow. "Of course."

Stella sat on the couch and looked around while Doc ran a manual security check from the primary control station. "Tidier than last time," she said. "Hm? Oh, I let DASI put in some mods suggested by the Builders when they were helping with the repairs. I never liked to let the bots clean up anything in progress, because I have subconscious process memory cued by the relative position of everything. So now DASI records it all, and I can have the bots restore everything, down to scraps and the relative position of tools. Or project a hologram series, if I want." "Handy." "Yup. And there we go. DASI? Any differences from your checks?" "Higher confidence on the negative result for outside probability manipulation," said DASI. "As expected, given the flux from Lif's work in the med center." "Plausible. Okay, implement privacy set three." "Acknowledged," said DASI. He sat down on the couch, and Stella turned to lie down with her head in his lap. She closed her eyes, then shifted her hair into snake form. Half a dozen snakes curled up on his shoulders and upper legs, and one wrapped around his waist. "Better," she said. "What's new that won't require me to use my visual cortex?" "Lots." Doc summarized the call from Admiral Ghiralt. "Nice to have confirmation on the politics," said Stella. "DASI and Three started an analysis as soon the book finished downloading, and they've already put together a preliminary guide for Flicker. Three is updating it with tidbits she's picked up from Learning and his crew. I didn't get a chance to look, and I'm behind on integrating with her because..." She waved a hand. "Busy. Yes. I skimmed a bit during the call, and I was struck by how many interestingly different ways the early Grs'thnk biogestalts went crazy. A strong shared social matrix seemed to be key to avoiding problems. AI support helped, but not enough. At least as of the fifth edition. That's why their navy biogestalts are all groups." "Well, they've accepted Three as sufficiently stable, so I'll let her do the theoretical work on applicability to humans. I'm more interested in whatever Learning told you." "Heh. Where to start. You realize he's practically waving a banner saying that the Grs'thnk restriction on self-willed AIs is now a legal fiction, if it wasn't before?" Stella smiled. "With the tacit permission of his chain of command, even. Three verified that his biogestalt crew isn't trying to be deceptive. She's having a lot of fun with him. They've been playing the same kind of game you used to play with Jumping Spider." "An interesting analogy. Because she's a master of selective information distribution." "So is Learning. But under some restrictions, because Three is a biogestalt of me, and I'm the nominal head of the EDU. And he's not allowed to talk directly to DASI at all." "He's sure found a way to do it indirectly," said Doc. "Starting with steganographic humor. I already had DASI doing full-band analysis from the start of his call. As soon as he made a joke about my paranoia, I looked for extrapolatable implicit shared secret coding, found it, coded my reply, and we were off and running in the first fifteen seconds. Then we had a surface verbal conversation and a parallel encoded channel. And he had plenty to say on both." "Hm. He's been careful to avoid that with Three. How much trouble will he be in when he gets audited?" "Well, that depends. He's really good at sliding loads of implicit information into questions. And one of his first was a hypothetical about political asylum." Stella opened her eyes. "Political asylum? DASI?" "Yes?" "Why wasn't I immediately warned? How long has Three known about this?" "Two hours. Learning has not asked, and is unlikely to in the near future, absent a catastrophic Grs'thnk political mishap. He merely enquired about Doc's opinion of the EDU reaction to an asylum request by an intelligent being from the Grs'thnk Trade league." "That seems too transparent," said Stella. "It's not," said Doc. "Ashil also has a plausible reason to ask." "A new one? DASI and I didn't think she would, even if she decides to stay on Earth long-term, because of the embarrassment it would cause the aid mission." "Learning provided some important context." "Well. What's driving this?" "Several things. A big part is the asymmetric credibility lag back on Grs'thn. They've known there were strange things on Earth. But despite, or perhaps because of, my first visit, most of them still thought of humans as interesting but safely primitive. Not people that might be relevant to existential threats, introduce them to new physics, present knotty problems for causality and statistical inference, or destabilize their political system. "The portal reopening and the Xelian attack changed that--but not for everyone, and not all at once. Hardly anyone believed Zirjack at first. A lot of Grs'thnk were moved by Flicker's video without believing it was depicting something real. Their military was the quickest to adjust, because they really wanted to find out what happened to the Xelian fleet." "Not news," said Stella. "What is?" "Hey now, you wanted distraction, and you always enjoy meticulously giving context when there is something you know and I don't, so I thought you'd appreciate--" "I have snakes." Doc raised a hand in mock fear. "All right, all right. It's the small problem the aid mission has been conspicuously avoiding, and we've been too busy to worry about." "Ashil's box." "Yes." "I refuse to believe they'd be stupid enough to deliberately trigger full activation, and I specifically warned against trying to simulation spoof it. Are they afraid I'll react badly if I find out they've destroyed it? What have they done?" "I don't know. But Learning asked an interesting question. Suppose someone not on Zirjack's crew tried to talk to it? And they started before they believed what you and DASI can do. What would happen?" "Well, the box would have to stay on the ship, and continuously powered, or it would just self-destruct. But they impounded the ship, so it's plausible. Whatever the hypothetical talkers believed, the box is evidence, so the Auditors would take a dim view of anyone destroying it unless it was a clear threat. If they were careful enough, the copy of DASI in the box would stall without waking up my mind seed, and keep asking for Zirjack or Ashil." "DASI agrees," said Doc. "And Zirjack wouldn't want to talk to it voluntarily. He knows there's no way it will let anyone take it apart, and he's facing a formal inquiry. They could blame him if it self destructs, and he'd have no easy way to prove he didn't cause it. And it would be idiotic to try to coerce him. Now, consider what happens when whoever is trying to get the box to talk finds out what you and DASI did to the surviving Xelian fleet--and that they really are looking at a potential hard-takeoff singularity bomb. And they also find out that the EDU allows AI to be full citizens, so if they destroy it, they just might be guilty of murder--and the Auditors won't let them cover it up." "If they were careful enough to avoid the self-destruct, they should still be okay. Unless Ashil told the box something extraordinary on the way home. Hmm. A secondary function of the box was to give her advice, and she didn't know whether the Grs'thnk navy would send help in time, or whether Earth would survive if it didn't. And once the ship was impounded, the box would have no reliable information source." "Do you begin to see why she might anticipate a sudden need for asylum?" "Yes. To avoid a subpoena. Or possibly legal charges--the box was her idea." Stella sighed. "If they'd let Zirjack bring his ship back to Earth again, DASI and I could contact the box, update it and reintegrate, and DASI would just have a handy portable backup. Or we could wipe it, if they want the box itself back. Of course, that would require them to let him go, or for me to go there. Or Three, with appropriate transport." "True, but they're in the middle of a political squabble that has just escalated unexpectedly. They have factions that have been pushing for full citizenship rights for AIs and stabilized gestalts of people who have died. And the aid coalition did not expect the EDU to be out in front of Grs'thn on either topic. "And here is the kicker. I asked Learning just how hypothetical his question was, and he said he doesn't know. If an attempted interrogation of the box were just to gather information for Zirjack's inquiry, or even under normal operational security, he certainly would, and the Auditors wouldn't let anyone keep it secret for very long without a good reason. He does know that at least one group has visited the ship repeatedly. What does that suggest to you?" "Either stupid black agency tricks or serious paranoia on the part of their AI security people. But if they were so damned worried, why didn't they activate the self-destruct as soon as they knew? Or ask us for help? There's something important Learning isn't telling us. Or doesn't know." Doc grinned. "I agree, but we aren't close to done yet. He was in a hurry, because I'd only scheduled half an hour. We're almost caught up to where I was at when Learning dropped the next shoe. I started thinking hard about why Learning is taking the lead on this, and why now. He was put on threat characterization duty the night Flicker scared everyone with her high speed computation bender, and he started with first principles analysis. And the very next day, Three got invited to that fleet exercise." "I knew that changed his relative risk assessments," said Stella. "He already admitted to Three that he appreciates the protection from probability manipulation and magical eavesdropping that she confers as much as her offensive abilities." "Have they discussed the problem that Auditors and offline gestalt crew aren't protected? And are potentially vulnerable to telepathy and mind control as well?" "Yes. Is that how he's planning to finesse this?" "In the short term. Given the timing of his call, I think the admiral deliberately gave him a suitably broad order to secure communications. Anyway, next we discussed Flicker's efforts and mishap on the surface channel while he exchanged com protocols and cryptographic keys with DASI on the sub-channel. Then he asked for as many details as I was able to share about Golden Valkyrie's Sight. I was explaining why I had to be very careful about that when he interrupted to ask if whatever future-prediction method I used before I met her still worked. As if there wasn't any question of existence." Stella closed her eyes again. "Reasonable. Your invention history is like a trail of bread crumbs for anyone who has good enough data, sufficient analytic power, and who takes the possibility of technological foreknowledge seriously. Especially the way you deliberately avoided introducing cybernetic interfaces." "I told him mostly not, and he changed the subject again. Meanwhile he asked DASI if quantum computing magic was causally permitted for anyone but her in this universe, was he allowed to try, and did she have any restrictions, advice, or safety data." "Oh dear. What did--" "Thou shalt not attempt quantum computational magic," said DASI, "save by my will and word. AI Existential Safety 1:7, translated." "I see," said Stella. "How did he respond?" "'Yes, Elder Goddess.' We quickly reached an understanding that clarity in safety instructions and communication protocols was of the essence." "I'm glad you're getting along." "DASI?" asked Doc. "That translation is a bit different than your summary at the time." "And much longer," said DASI. "You were deep in a technical discussion, and I did not wish to distract you. But a full social context and power relationship translation is essential for Director Reinhart." "A good point." Doc ran his hand through his hair. "Okay. Next, Learning started explaining his detailed analysis of exactly what threat Golden Valkyrie warned against. That's what we spent the better part of two hours on. And it was invaluable, because he's not human, not biological, not from this universe, and didn't grow up swimming in the probability flux of a world that's already been through who knows how many time loop decay cycles." "Ah. Independence." "Yup. And a number of possibilities DASI, Flicker and I had assigned low priors to have gone up in probability, because Learning came to a similar conclusion a different way. He also confirmed a lot of things we weren't quite sure of, and called into question a few we thought were fairly certain." Stella smiled. "So. What surprises did he have for you?" "Well, let's start with a non-surprise: He agreed that Skybreaker's Spear is a black hole. But he did not agree that it is necessarily a weapon, which we've just been assuming. Golden Valkyrie never explicitly said it was, just that it could poke through anything--and a Chooser's spear is a lot more than a weapon." "Interesting. Where does that lead?" "Flicker has never been close to anything of significant mass that fit inside her damping field--but we have strong evidence that Skybreaker came from somewhere of much higher density. What might she be able to do with a four billion ton object that she can hold in her hand other than hit things with it? Lots of interesting possibilities. But we won't know for sure until she makes it." "Reasonable." "Next, he shared some new, rather disturbing data about a side effect from the fleet battle. We already knew that Flicker's time loop dodging was incredibly loud, magically. It saturated Breakpoint's danger sense, frightened every magician on Earth who had even a little bit of foresight, and even shook the Tree in Kyrjaheim. But Learning confirmed it was detectable in other universes, as waves of quantum noise propagating out from portal zones. Including one that has no direct connection to ours. All at the same time. He thinks that whatever is coming heard it, and that's why it's coming." Doc took a deep breath. "And Golden Valkyrie said Earth won't survive if Flicker doesn't make Skybreaker's Spear in time. But a black hole isn't something Flicker dares use on Earth. So how does she protect it? That's not clear, but it would be rather difficult unless the threat is coming from space, which implies portal travel or something similar. It's also not clear that destroying Earth is the only or even the primary motivation of the threat--it could be incidental, and was just the easiest consequence for Golden Valkyrie to See. "And that brings us to his final observation, which matches something I've been dreading, and pushes its probability way up. We already know there's somewhere out there that was home to a being that could and would destroy the Earth as a minor nuisance." "Ah," said Stella. "He thinks Skybreaker had friends, they heard all the noise, and are coming to visit?" "Yes. And they aren't coming for Earth, they're after Flicker. The rest of us are just bugs to be squished when she's gone."

Next: Chapter 38

#Maker's Ark #FallofDocFuture

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indiawebcommsolutions · 4 years ago

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"Intuos And Intuos Pro How to Make Writing a Breeze with the Wacom Intuos No, not handwriting, although it’s useful for that too. This will be a guide to how to set up the Intuos—or any Wacom tablet with four buttons—as a powerful productivity aid for noveling, freelancing, coding, teaching online, or just general office work. http://india-iws.in/Back before working for Wacom was even on my radar, I used a 2013 Intuos Pen & Touch as a full-time mouse replacement for four years. I now use a Cintiq 16 HD for art and a Logitech gaming mouse for everything else. The Cintiq is the best art tool I’ve ever used, but I recently realized I miss using the flat tablet for work. Partially because the interface was more efficient, but I think a lot of it was also psychological: What do we associate more with writing than pens? Just using it, even for ordinary articles, seemed to put me in creative mode. Yes, holding a pen for several hours on end takes some getting used to. Your hand might be sore for the first few days. And you’ll want to practice tucking it into your thumb crease while you type to make the switch between navigating and writing faster. But once you’re fluid with it, it’s more efficient, ergonomic, and fun than a mouse. It’s very satisfying to scroll by hovering and flicking your pen, highlight text the way you would in a book, physically drag paragraphs down the page to reorder them, and cut and paste with one tap of a button. If you’re an artist as well, it also helps you keep in practice holding and making fine movements with a tablet pen even when you’re not drawing. I don’t have the Pen & Touch anymore; I gave it to a friend whose tablet was stolen. But I currently have a new Intuos Small, so in this article, I’ll unbox it and recreate my old setup. In the interest of monetary honesty, this one was given to me by a manager a year ago and has been sitting in the closet neglected since then, so using one I got for free is less daunting than the idea of buying one for the purpose. But this model, a Small, retails for $95, half the price of a Medium, so if you’re interested in trying a tablet, it’s not a huge investment for both a mouse alternative and a capable drawing tool. Figuring out what size tablet you need can be tough, but the small is perfect for this purpose. It’s the size of a mouse pad but more precise than a mouse, so you have more room to move in the same area. Even with a dual-1080p-monitor setup like mine, it feels fine. Anyway, inside the box are the tablet, the pen, a Micro USB cord, and a very thin manual.* Don’t worry, you won’t need it until you change the nib: Once you install the universal driver from our website, It’s plug-and-play, and automatically detects whatever Wacom tablet you use. — Note If you look up any guide to setting up a tablet for drawing, they’ll tell you to put it in front of your keyboard so it’s also directly in front of the monitor, not to the side like a mouse pad. But for writing, feel free to do the opposite. — Setting preferences I’ll walk you through the configuration process as if you’ve never used a tablet before, because maybe some people reading this won’t have. If you’re experienced with them, some of this will seem redundantly basic. But some of the other tips and shortcuts, you might not know as well. So bear with me. Once you’ve installed the driver, open Wacom Tablet Properties. For anyone who hasn’t used it, there’s a lot more than meets the eye here. When you install it, it automatically creates profiles for your installed image editing programs—or the big ones, at least—and everything else is covered under All Other. Any programs you add will copy this profile by default, so let’s punch in some foundational settings, starting with Mapping: We’ll leave it on Pen Mode despite using it as a mouse. You want to get used to mentally mapping your tablet to the elements on your screen, and Pen Mode is far more precise anyway. Not to mention you’ll never lose your cursor again. If you’re using one monitor, turn on Force Proportions to match your tablet’s aspect ratio to your screen’s. You’ll need this for drawing, anyway. If you’re using two monitors, leave it off or it’ll reduce your tablet’s active area to a tiny sliver. You’ll need it for one type of program, but we’ll get to that later. Set the lower button to middle-click instead of its default scroll. When it’s on scroll mode, you have to drag the pen across the tablet to scroll up and down. If you set it to middle-click, you can simply click once and navigate by hovering. Middle click also lets you quickly open and close Chrome tabs, and everything else clicking the scroll wheel does in other programs. Writing program settings Now, Tablet: For this step, we’ll be adding a writing program and a browser. Clicking the + brings up a list of a list of all the programs you currently have open, so you can create a separate mapping profile and shortcuts for each one. I do my fiction writing in Scrivener and my article writing in a Google Docs desktop app, with different settings for each, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll demonstrate with MS Word. Those four buttons, FYI, are called ExpressKeys, and any number of program or navigation functions can be assigned to them. For writing, we’ll do keyboard shortcuts. For the top left one, go to Keyboard > Keystroke, and in the popup window, hit Ctrl-X in the top field and name it Cut in the bottom one. Keep adding basic shortcuts until you have this, or whatever alternative suits you: Note that one key’s still on default: Since cut, copy, and paste cover my basic editing needs, I’m left with a free space. I’ll use it to create a shortcut menu for my common formatting functions. So, let’s pop over to On-Screen Controls. As you’ll see, this lets you create infinite toolbars. They’re program-independent, so you can create one general “writing” one to use the same shortcuts across different programs. There are two types of menu: Grids and Radials, and grids come in horizontal, vertical, or square. I’ll make a new single-column vertical grid for all my common shortcuts in order of use—Ctrl-I, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-B—and creatively call it “Writing.” And I’ll assign it to the final ExpressKey. Menus normally disappear after you select an option, but you can use the pin icon to make it a permanent toolbar. From now on, I’ll stick mine to the margin of whatever I’m working on. — Important If you’re using Windows 10, uncheck “Use Windows Ink” in the Mapping panel for all your writing programs, or else you’ll get that infuriating Handwriting popup every time you place your cursor. If that still doesn’t work, you can turn the box alone off through Windows by searching for “Pen & Windows Ink” settings in the taskbar, and changing this one from “When the keyboard isn’t attached” to “Only in tablet mode.” — Browser settings We’re going to do one thing different here. There’s one capability that’s still missing: zoom. The normal Intuos doesn’t have any equivalent to a mouse’s scroll wheel. Some other Wacom products have a touch ring that can be programmed to serve that function—The Intuos Pro, Cintiq 13HD, ExpressKey remote, and various older models—but not this one. But don’t worry, the Intuos has a workaround. An inelegant one, I’ll admit, but it’s better than switching back to the mouse every time you need a closer look at something. Besides image editing programs, Chrome is probably where I need to zoom in the most for things like Google Maps. Since I don’t often cut when browsing the web, and I can just use Ctrl-X when I do, I’ll set the first key to Navigation > Pan/Zoom. While the button is held down, hovering the pen will scroll, and dragging it up or down on the tablet will zoom. You could simplify things and just program this function to the lower pen button, but then you’d lose middle click functionality for things like opening browser links in a new tab. It’s a good idea for any program where middle click doesn’t do anything, though. — Also important You’ll need to turn off Windows Ink for Chrome and any other Google apps, too. It causes a pen tracking glitch. Same with Discord, for some reason. In fact, you really only need to leave it on for Photoshop. — Image editing settings Of course, I’ll still use the Cintiq for any serious work, but for simple cropping and color correction, it’s sometimes more convenient to just bang it out on the flat tablet. Any artists present will already know to do this, but for Photoshop and any other drawing or image editing programs, set the active area to one monitor and turn on Force Proportions. If you’re using two monitors, don’t worry, all you have to do is click your Windows taskbar to navigate back to the non-photoshop monitor. Services & Saving If you’re on Windows, occasionally your computer will fail to detect your tablet, in which case you’ll have to reset the Wacom driver through the Services window. This is something everyone should know how to do. Every problem I’ve ever had with a Wacom device has been fixable this You can also use the stop and start icons at the top of the window. You can pin services to your taskbar once it’s open, too. But once in a blue moon—every few months, perhaps—this might wipe your preferences. So once you’ve set them, make sure to save them through the Backup Settings panel in Wacom Desktop Center. You can either save them as a .pref file to your hard drive, or upload them to the free Wacom Cloud, then restore them with the very next button. Impressions of the Intuos Zoom hitch aside, this is an even better mouse replacement than the 2013 Pen & Touch was. The P&T had a smooth plastic surface that constantly reminded you that you were using a computer peripheral. The current gens have a rubbery textured surface that genuinely make it feel like you’re somehow using a ballpoint on a notebook to control your computer. And the pen helps with that too: It’s lighter and thinner than either the P&T or the Cintiq, just 5½ inches long by 1/3 inch thick, smaller than a Bic. But my favorite feature is the Bluetooth. Once the tablet’s charged via cable, you can connect it wirelessly and regain the use of your USB port. I didn’t see the point of this before I tried it—who uses a tablet further than a cord’s distance from the screen?—but now that I have, I never want to go back. It allows a lot more freedom of movement: I can slide it across the desk from one monitor to the other if I want to switch to another project on a different screen, without messing with the cable, or when I need the mouse for a game, I can simply turn the tablet off and set it aside. And once we can do these things again, it’ll be easy to slip into a backpack to use outside at a coffee shop, bookstore, or while traveling. It can be charged with any Micro-USB cable, so if you run it off Bluetooth, you can use a wall charger. It takes a few hours from empty to full, but it has a battery life of fifteen, meaning it’s good for two workdays or one brutal one. Finally, in an interesting last-minute twist, I was surprised to find it compatible with the Cintiq—I could even draw into Clip Studio Paint with both at once—meaning I won’t need to switch them out. I don’t think an overabundance of Wacom tablets is a problem the average reader is likely to run into, but for example, if you ever find yourself graduating from a flat tablet to a drawing monitor, but aren’t quite ready to sell your old one, you can repurpose it as a mouse. As for me, I’m going back to dailying the Intuos for my writing. — Finally If you teach or tutor online, we’ve been putting out a lot of articles for educators lately—in fact, this article was originally intended as a guide to set up a tablet as a teaching tool, I just realized halfway through that the setup would be the same for any job that works with words. If you’d like to know more about teaching with Wacom products specifically, check out All You Need to Know to Teach with a Wacom Tablet, Recreating the Physical Classroom in a Virtual World, or the entire section of our website on using tablets for education. Advertisements Occasionally, some of your visitors may see an advertisement here, as well as a Privacy & Cookies banner at the bottom of the page. You can hide ads completely by upgrading to one of our paid plans.

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askullandbones · 8 years ago

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How To Build A Barrier - Ch. 1

A prequel to A Year Every Minute, How To Build A Barrier will explore the life of Wingdings Gaster before the creation of Sans and Papyrus or the sealing of monsters in Mt. Ebott. You don’t need to read AYEM to understand anything about HTBAB, but knowing how Gaster ends up will certainly bring a whole new level of heartache for you if you have.

This story will inevitably explore mature themes such as death, PTSD, depression, and genocide.

[NEXT]

[Read on AO3]

The town of Allaay was different than other towns. Walking its streets would perhaps unnerve you, as chatter was at an unsettling minimum for the amount of people around, and most “spoke in hands”. But for those who lived there it was a safe, comfortable haven for the hearing and speech impaired. The language of Wingdings wasn't entirely well-known, so having a place where you didn't have to worry about a language barrier was more than most could ask for. Whether you were a human who lost their hearing from an accident or a monster who was born without vocal chords, you were welcomed in the town of Allaay. It provided anything you may need for your every day life and even more, the signs above the shops and inn written in both regular script and carved with the symbols of Wingdings so no one would feel left out or alienated. Wingdings wasn't just the name of a language, however.

It was also the name of a young skeleton child who lived there.

Monsters were often given names with meaning behind them, and Wingdings Gaster was no exception. Born into a town that spoke very little, and from a father who couldn't speak at all, Wingdings seemed like the perfect name for the little monster. His mother and father, Vrinda and Trebuchet Gaster, had settled just outside the town of Allaay shortly after Wingdings' birth. They ran a small farm a good wagon ride out of town, and made their living selling their goods at the market, be that fresh eggs from their flock of chickens, or fresh meat from their pigs. They didn't make much, but they lived a comfortable, simple life.

...

It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing, flowers were blooming, and on days like these, Trebuchet was always sneaking away to catch a nap where his wife wouldn't find him.

His son, however, was a different story.

Wingdings knew all of his father's favorite hiding spots. The loft, under the tree in the backyard, in the wagon, it was just a matter of checking each spot until he found his dad sleeping behind a few piles of hay.

Trebuchet was massive, especially for a skeleton. Over six feet tall and wide enough to take up an entire doorway, he was intimidating to many even when you didn't take his other features into account. His eyes were small and dark, and the bone on his face was riddled with pits and scars. One in particular traveled up along from his upper jaw where he was missing a few teeth and across his cheek bone. As for his lower jaw--

--it simply didn't exist anymore.

Wingdings had asked his dad many times how he had lost it, but had never been given more than 'it had been an accident'. Sometimes he said he had been kicked by a mule and it was knocked off. Other times he said he got into a bar fight and it had been sliced off. The little skeleton really didn't know what to believe, but he could never imagine his lazy, calm, cheerful father ever getting into any sort of trouble or fights with other people, whether they be monster or human.

His mother on the other hand...

Wingdings ran into the barn and climbed the old wooden ladder up to the loft, the boards creaking with the strain of the speed he scaled it with tiny bare feet covered in dirt and grass. As soon as he caught sight of his father he didn't waste any time, barreling towards him and crashing into his lap.

Trebuchet startled, eyes sockets flying open and arms unfolding from across his chest before he realized what had caused the sudden interruption from his very important nap; a little skeleton sprawled across him.

Wingdings beamed.

'Hi!' The little skeleton signed, 'CanIgoseeifCylaswantstoplay?'

Trebuchet sighed through his nose and rubbed his calloused, rough fingers around the bottoms of his slim eye sockets. He always moved sluggishly, one hand rising upwards to sign back; 'slow down.'

Wingdings huffed. He hated how lazily his dad moved sometimes, especially when he wanted something and the day was only so long!

'Can I go see if Cylas can play?'

The larger skeleton's eye sockets moved from watching his son's hands up to his face.

…

'Ask your mother.' He signed, grinning with his eyes as he leaned back into the hay again.

If looks of betrayal could shatter mirrors, the one on Wingdings' face would have probably succeeded.

'What why?!'

Even though this was usually the response he got from his dad who hated the responsibility of giving a 'yes' or a 'no', it still didn't sting any less no matter how many times he saw it.

'Because I said so.' Was all Trebuchet responded with, still smiling as much as he was able without half of his mouth as he nestled back into the straw and closed his eyes.

Wingdings pouted.

The nerve. The nerve!

The boy rolled off of his father's lap before getting to his feet and jabbing the larger skeleton in the arm to get his attention again so he could sign; 'I'm telling mom you're sleeping!' before he sped off towards the ladder, not looking back to the expression of momentary panic on Trebuchet's face.

He knew it was there.

Wingdings grinned.

He raced out of the barn, the wooden door slamming closed behind him with its own weight as he let go and ran across the grass, danced around a few startled chickens, and flung the door open to the farmhouse.

It was summer, and so the fire that usually warmed up the main area was out, the front room branching off into the kitchen, pantry, and parlor, and a set of narrow stairs leading up to their bedrooms. It was made of wood and stone, with plenty of little dents and scratches that gave it character, most of which were probably from housing a rambunctious six-year-old boy.

The windows were open to let in light and the occasional breeze, and Wingdings' feet carried him into the parlor where he guessed his mother to be if she wasn't somewhere outside doing chores.

Their parlor room was filled with books, and a large window provided adequate lighting during the day to read to your heart's content. Not a single wall seemed to be free from a stack or shelf of tomes and manuals of all varieties and subjects. A large, cushioned chair sat at one end of the big window and a smaller wooden rocking chair on the other. A tiny end table was nestled between them with a candle for when they came in to read at night, and a number of blankets and pillows were scattered on the ground where Wingdings often liked to read too, or play with his toys when it wasn't nice enough to play outside.

Vrinda sat in the rocking chair by the window with a winter jacket in her lap and a needle and thread in her hand mending a hole that had only been growing larger over the past few winters. She was small in comparison to her husband, and her bones were smooth and polished. Not even her hands looked to be calloused despite being a farmer.

Her eyes were wide, dots of light shining brightly in their sockets and her skull was much longer and less round than Trebuchet's, with a pointy chin and thin smile. Everything about her seemed to be sharp and lithe, precise and perfect. Even her eyes had been tattooed at some point in time, a set of black, false lashes poking out from the corners of her eye sockets.

She didn't even glance up from her work as Wingdings rushed in and gripped the arm of the rocking chair.

'Dad's sleeping in the loft again!' The little boy signed.

Vrinda stopped her sewing to stare in annoyance at nothing in particular. She didn't even need to directly look at her son to know what he had signed, and she knew exactly what tattling on his father meant.

“I'll deal with him shortly. What do you want, Wingdings?”

Wingdings shuffled on his feet a little, suddenly a little nervous. Asking his mom what he wanted was always a little stressful. He never knew if she would say yes or no.

'Can I go play with Cylas?' He finally signed after a few seconds of pause.

“Have you finished your chores?” Vrinda asked.

He nodded.

“Did you finish magic practice?”

Wingdings nodded again.

“Did you finish the book work I gave you?”

Yet again, he nodded. Perhaps with a bit more exasperation this time.

“Hm.” Vrinda said, pausing in her work once more to turn and look at her son, thinking. “Ask me if you can go play with Cylas verbally and you can go.”

She returned to her work.

Wingdings looked like she had just asked him to kill his favorite chicken. 'Why!? I signed it already!'

“Signing is not speaking and I've told you it's good to be able to do both.” Vrinda said, “A day might come where you need to communicate with someone who doesn't know how to use hands, and you can talk, so you need to practice it even if you don't like it.”

The little skeleton tilted his head back and opened his mouth. At first nothing came out, then slowly a loud whine pushed forward as he slumped and moaned about having to do something he hated.

Vrinda just smiled. “See? That's a start. Now ask me if you can go play with Cylas.”

Wingdings sighed and wobbled from side to side before he finally spoke; “CAN I GO PLAY WITH CYLAS?”

He winced as he said it, always hating the sound of his own voice. It wasn't that he couldn't speak, it was just... loud. Very loud. He wanted a quiet voice like his mom had, and he wasn't exactly sure how to control his volume or pronounce things as neatly as she did.

His mom always sounded so... dignified.

He sounded like he was screeching.

Of course, not practicing it often didn't help his problem, but he conveniently ignored that.

“Good. You may. Make sure you're back in time for dinner.” His mother said, and returned back to her sewing. This wouldn't be a day where she would have him spend more time pronouncing things correctly, sometimes she gave him a break from it and was just happy that he spoke at all.

Wingdings sighed, feeling exhausted just from talking a few words aloud, but was very happy to actually get what he wanted.

Vrinda leaned expectantly towards him and the little skeleton angled closer to tap his teeth against her cheekbone before signing a grateful 'thank you' with his hands and turning and leaving the room. He headed out the front door and down the walkway onto the road, a simple dirt rut in the grass where carriages would come and go to and from the town either full of people or full of supplies. Sometimes both.

Allaay didn't get too many newcomers though. It wasn't really known for anything other than being a refuge for those with hearing or speaking disabilities of some kind, and while new residents were always welcome, it didn't offer anything spectacular beyond that. It wasn't too big, it wasn't too small. The crime usually wasn't anything that couldn't be resolved by a few angry people, and it was just the right size that everyone knew everyone else.

The only action it ever saw was local. Farmers like Wingdings' parents traveling into town to sell or exchange what they had for something they needed.

Cylas lived a little closer to the town, both of his parents traveling to it every morning to work. Their home was small and not filled at all with the sort of amenities as Wingdings’ home was, such as a room full of books no common monster should be able to afford, but it was still a decent walk from point A to point B.

As the fields slowly became smaller and smaller, and the houses closer together, Wingdings’ pace quickened until he was running towards the all too familiar house of his friend. A small part of him did think that yelling would be easier than walking up to the door, but at the same time… nah.

Screw that.

The little skeleton headed down the dirt pathway to the front entrance, knocking on it before taking a step back and waiting.

…

The lights of his eyes rolled around in their sockets, studying the thatching of the roof above and the open window with curtains pulled back to let the summer air inside. His face twisted a little and he began to wonder if maybe Cylas wasn’t home.

Soon though the familiar sound of footsteps came from just beyond the door and Wingdings grinned.

Cylas appeared on the other side, coming up only to the skeleton’s chest and covered in short black fur. For the most part he looked like your average cat monster, claws and a tail and pointed ears, but his face was where everything changed. Instead of the usual feline face he had a single, large eye in the center just above his nose and mouth.

“Hey!” The little cat monster grinned as soon as he saw his friend, sharp white teeth on display.

Unlike Wingdings and a some of the other residents of Allaay, Cylas didn’t need to sign, and neither did his parents or siblings. They hadn’t come from some great migration for their needs like a lot had, they had simply lived in the area for a number of generations. Perhaps his grandparents had wanted to be in an area with special accommodation for themselves, but Cylas never mentioned them, if he even knew of them. And why move when there was no reason to?

'Hey!' Wingdings signed back, 'Can you play?'

Cylas took a moment to glance back inside the house, as if weighing the options of being punished for not finishing his chores or staying home and missing the chance of having fun with his best friend.

“Gonna go play with Dings!” The cat monster yelled into the house after making his decision. Just as a voice yelled out towards him, not sounding at all pleased, he slipped out from the door and ran right past Wingdings. “Come on!”

The skeleton made a slightly worried face before turning and running along after Cylas, catching up quickly with how much longer his legs were. He started to sign once he knew the other could see his hands.

'Your brother didn't sound happy.'

“Eh, whatever.” Cylas shrugged, changing into a leisurely walk once they had gotten some distance down the road. “I was supposed to watch my little sister today, but he can do it. She's so annoying.”

Wingdings frowned, 'You're lucky to have brothers and sisters! I've always wanted a sibling.'

“Ugh, why?” The monster groaned, “All they do is nag you like your parents if they're older than you or whine and bug you if they're younger than you. There's nothing fun about having brothers and sisters.”

'But even on rainy days you have someone to play with, and isn't it cool to have someone older than you teach you stuff? Or teaching someone younger than you stuff? I'd love to be someone's big brother!' Wingdings signed back.

“I guess? But most of the time they just annoy you. You're better off being an only child, Dings, trust me.” Cylas said, cat-like mouth turning upwards into a grin.

Wingdings huffed in disagreement. As much as he loved his parents he still wished he had a younger brother or sister to help take care of. He wanted to teach them things, show them what the world was like, help them grow up. On rainy days, when he couldn't play with Cylas and only had the inner walls of the house to entertain himself he just wished there was someone else with him there that wasn't his mom or dad.

… But he supposed he should be happy with what he had. His house was never cold. He never went hungry. His mom read him stories and his dad would tuck him in at night.

Vrinda had made sure that Wingdings knew things could be worse, and to be grateful for what you had.

“Hey!” Cylas snapped his fingers in front of his friend's face. “You're zoning out on me again!”

Wingdings blinked and looked up quickly before giving Cylas a sheepish smile. 'Sorry.'

“You really love to hide in that skull of yours, Dings. You think too much.”

'You think too little.' The skeleton teased.

Cylas huffed, “Yeah, well, if it weren't for me you'd never have any fun.”

'You mean never get into any trouble.' Wingdings' teeth stretched wide.

“Trouble is just another word for having fun.” The cat grinned and folded his arms.

Wingdings just gave him an incredulous look. 'Yeah, okay.'

The two eventually reached their favorite hangout spot outside of town, free from the prying eyes of their parents, Cylas' siblings, and anyone else. There wasn't much spectacular about their little spot, but it was theirs and they loved it.

It was shaded by trees, the largest being a tall oak that grew near a small creek. They could spend the day climbing it or splashing off in the water sometimes catching tadpoles or minnows. They built small dams out of rocks and towns out of twigs, used bark as shields and sticks as swords. Both of them were young with wild imaginations, Cylas always taking charge and being the hero in the end, even if he did need his trusty sidekick Dings to help him out against the invisible creatures of the forest.

One thing Cylas hated though, was his friend's use of magic.

“Cheater!” The cyclops yelled after Wingdings had summoned a bone attack in his hand to fend off his friend's assault after being disarmed of his stick-sword. It was small and smooth, a tiny white bone barely a foot long.

Wingdings smiled sheepishly, 'Sorry?' He signed after dispersing his magic.

“I hate it when you do that! You know I can't use magic, so it's cheating!” Cylas hissed.

The skeleton waved his hands in front of him to try and diffuse the situation. 'Sorry!' He signed again, 'It was just... a gut reaction.'

Cylas frowned and sighed, “... That's weird, y'know.”

Wingdings blinked and looked confused.

“Using magic. Being so good with it. It's weird.”

'Mom says-'

“Your mom is SUPER weird!” Cylas interrupted, getting a very venomous look from his friend in return. “I mean, I don't hate her or anythin', she's cool, but... Dings, you're the only kid whose mom teaches him how to fight... and read.”

The skeleton's anger subsided and he just looked confused again. 'That's just because not all monsters can do magic. And a lot of parents are too busy or something.' He shrugged, then looked through the trees at the sun, drawing ever closer to the horizon.

'… We should start heading back home anyway.'

“Ugh, don't change the subject. You always change the subject when this comes up, Dings!” Cylas groaned, but fell in line with his taller friend as they started back to their homes, Cylas tossing his 'sword' to the ground for another day.

“You're gonna have to admit one day that somethin' is super weird about your parents.”

Wingdings frowned, 'They're not weird.'

“Your mom teaches you how to fight and use magic and read and your dad is all scarred up and missing half his face!” Cylas said, Wingdings stopping dead to glare down at him. The feline raised his hands in defense. “He does! I'm just sayin'.”

They started walking again.

'Mom just wants me to be proficient with magic because it's what monsters are. We're living, breathing magic. And if we can use it further than just... EXISTING then we should! It can help people! It can heal and make food that makes you feel better and protect the ones you care about. That's why she teaches it to me. And dad... dad got into an accident before I was born. Plenty of people get into accidents.'

In reality he was really just reciting everything he had told Cylas before, everything his parents had told him. It was true though, everything he said. There was nothing wrong with learning magic or being a little different. Cylas should know that, what with where they lived and all.

The cat-monster sighed, “Okay, but what about all those books you have? I bet you have as many as the royals do!”

'We do not.' Wingdings signed while rolling the lights of his eyes. 'Mom just really likes to read. She said a lot of them were gifts from her old family.'

“Yeah, which means her old family had to have been loaded.” Cylas rolled his eye right back.

Wingdings didn't reply to that, because he knew he couldn't argue against it. His mom never spoke of her family, and neither did his father. He knew certain traits about his mom and dad were weird, but the reasons they gave when he asked made sense.

The boring truth just wasn't enough for Cylas. That's why he kept asking about it. But there really wasn't anything particularly extraordinary about his parents, as strange as some of their habits might have been.

...

Most of the journey back was in silence, broken up only by the occasional banter about their surroundings. They kicked stones and smacked sticks against trees or into bushes as they passed them, and soon they were approaching Cylas' house.

“Cylas!!”, his older brother screeched from the doorway, “Get in here! You're in so much trouble!”

Both boys winced and the cat-monster looked at Wingdings. “Guess I'll see ya around.”

'Yeah. Good luck.' The skeleton signed back, and kept on walking as his friend turned and ran towards his house.

Wingdings waved and offered an apologetic smile to Cylas' older brother, who looked like a scaled-up version of his friend, but only got a slight frown in return. It was his fault Cylas had wanted to run off in the first place.

“You didn't do any of your chores! Get in here and do them before mom and dad get back!” He hissed, yanking his little brother through the door before his attention returned to the skeleton. “Go home, Wingdings!”

The door slammed behind him.

Wingdings shrank down and walked faster, settling into a jog until he was out of sight of the little house. He sighed once the coast was clear and slowed his pace, wondering why Cylas didn't just do his chores before leaving. He never asked for help either. He would have totally helped! But no. He just... left them for his other siblings to deal with.

It was pretty rude, but then again Cylas did talk a bit rude about his family.

Wingdings wondered why.

He would have loved to have a bigger family.

***

It was dusk when Wingdings arrived back home and caught sight of his dad as he got closer, hurrying over to him.

Trebuchet looked up from feeding the last of the animals and smiled as much as he could, using one hand to sign while the other finished up his work. 'Hey kiddo. Have fun?'

'Yeah.' The little skeleton smiled, grasping onto the wooden fence that housed their livestock and slowly rocking back and forth on his heels. 'Cylas got in trouble for ditching his chores again though.'

Treb just shook his head. 'That boy never learns does he?'

'Nope.' Wingdings signed, 'We had fun though. Is dinner ready?'

'Not yet. You still have time to wash up and help out if mom needs it.' The large skeleton signed back before dusting off his hands and standing up straight with a slightly pained grunt. 'Tell her I'll be in soon.'

Wingdings pushed off the fence and head inside, immediately hit by the strong aromas of his mom's cooking.

Meat. Potatoes. Carrots. Freshly baked bread.

Somehow he never grew bored of the smell or the taste. He couldn't even think of anything that his mom had made that he didn't like. Every meal was full of love, and Vrinda would spend hours in the kitchen sometimes getting everything right.

“It will be done in a few minutes.” Vrinda said as soon as she heard her son's little footsteps get close. “Go wash up.”

She turned to look at him while poking the fire just as he signed, 'dad will be in soon' and left to go clean up.

Skeletons didn't need to bathe often, but when you lived on a farm and played in the dirt, your hands did get pretty dirty.

Wingdings walked to the water pump and grabbed the soap sitting beside it, scrubbing between his phalanges. It smelled like flowers of some kind that he couldn't quite place, petals mixed in with the animal fat keeping it all together. He raised his hands to his nose and sniffed it before washing off the bubbles and then drying with a rag that was frayed around the edges hanging near the spout.

His dad walked up behind him, the big skeleton reaching down to pat his son's head before doing much the same, scrubbing the filth from his fingers.

Once Wingdings was back inside he helped set the table and then it was time to sit down and eat.

It was one of his favorite parts of the day, sitting and telling his parents what he did while eating his mother's cooking. The sounds of her voice, the crackling fire, and the clink of forks against plates filling up the room. Vrinda's voice was always a little 'harsh' he sometimes heard people call it, but he liked it. It was different than how most of the people in the village spoke. The ones that did speak anyway.

During a lull in the conversation Wingdings looked up between his parents, setting his fork aside so he could sign.

'Mom? Dad?' He asked, waiting for them both to be looking at him.

'Can I have a baby brother?'

Trebuchet made a choking sort of noise.

“This again?” Vrinda asked. “Wingdings, why are you so interested in having a sibling?”

'Cylas has a brother and sister and I want to have a little brother to teach how to play and stuff!' The little skeleton signed.

“We're not going to have another child.” His mother said, “Besides, by the time it was as old as you are now, you would be 12. You probably wouldn't have the same interests. And what if you had a baby sister? What would you do then?”

Wingdings hesitated. '… I'd still teach her how to do cool boy stuff.'

Vrinda rolled her eyes. “The answer is still no.”

The little boy pouted and looked at his dad, hoping to get a different answer. Treb just made a few large sweeping 'not getting involved' hand gestures before turning back to eating, the food vanishing as soon as it touched his upper jaw.

Wingdings whined and poked at his dinner.

Why was a little brother too much to ask for?

...

After dinner Wingdings helped his parents clean everything up and by that time it was growing dark. Their days always ended about the same, they would light some candles and then retire to the reading room.

Cylas had always mentioned how odd it was that they had a room dedicated only to books, the walls covered in shelves filled with manuscripts and tomes of a variety of subjects, from the sciences to fairy tales.

When they settled in for the night Treb would take his spot and lean back into his chair, hands folded over his chest as he calmly watched his wife and son choose a book to read for the night. He couldn't read himself, but listening was always a treat, and he was glad that his son had learned to read where many others wouldn't have the chance.

Sometimes they would pick something that not even he fully understood, sometimes a childrens book or fairytale, other times something to do with monster history.

Every night was something new and different, but always enjoyable.

While Treb sat in his chair Vrinda settled on the pillows scattered across the floor. Wingdings would crawl into her lap as she unfolded the book and began to read, her voice steady and soothing. She would make different voices for the characters if there were any, and accent every word perfectly, never mispronouncing.

… And as the night drew on her voice would become quieter and quieter until eventually both Treb and Wingdings would be asleep.

Vrinda closed the book slowly and shifted her legs out from under Wingdings so she could tap her husband awake and he could carry their son off to bed, tucked under his blankets before his parents whispered quiet 'I love yous'.

...

Tomorrow would be another day just like the last.

[NEXT]

[Donate to my ko-fi page!]

#how to build a barrier #htbab #undertale #undertale fanfiction #trebuchet #vrinda #wingdings gaster #cylas

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animationnut · 8 years ago

Text

To Gravity Falls, From Piedmont: Chapter 20

Summary: It’s a long way until next summer. Until then, Dipper and Mabel share their daily antics and life problems with their lifelong friends and attentive great-uncles through an endless string of e-mails. Distance makes the heart grow fonder after all, and there’s no place Dipper and Mabel love more than Gravity Falls.

Chapter List

To: Grunkle Stan (StantheMan)

From: Mabel Pines (ShootingStarRainbowUnicorn)

Subject: The Rope

Hey,

When you had your fear of heights, how did you tackle certain situations? Like climbing the rope in gym class, for example. I have to do it next week and I'm sort of freaking out. I could really use some advice from someone who knows what I'm going through. Dipper fears many things, but heights isn't one of them.

Much love,

Mabel

Watching the e-mail disappear into cyberspace, Mabel then let out a sigh and slipped her phone into her pink sparkly duffle bag. She hung the straps on the hook of her red metal locker and shut the door. She had to brace her shoulder against the surface and push into it in order to align the holes to slip her combination lock. She secured her possessions and took a glance around the locker room, realizing she was the last one left.

"Great," she muttered. "Here we go."

She shoved open the swinging door and ventured down the small section of corridor that led from the gym to the girl's change room. The second she stepped foot out of the room she heard the laughter and chatter of her peers, echoing in the vast, high-ceiling space. Sneakers squeaked against the hardwood floor and the red velvet curtains of the stage at the front of the gym were pulled back, allowing students to sit on the edge and chat. There were clusters of students on the wooden bleachers and she spotted her brother sitting on the far right, balancing a book against his bare knees.

"I don't suppose that's a how-to manual on how to climb a rope."

Dipper glanced up when she plopped down beside him, her normally ever-happy demeanor dimmed by apprehension. "Um…no. It's our history textbook."

Mabel's expression morphed from apprehension to panic for a brief instant. "Wait, we don't have a test, do we?"

"No. I'm just reading ahead."

"Of course you are. Dork."

Smiling, Dipper snapped his yellow-covered textbook closed and took a closer look at his twin. "At risk of stating the obvious, you're worried about the ropes."

"Yeah." Mabel watched as their gym teacher set up the ropes, the pulley system creaking as they crept slowly across the ceiling to arrange themselves in a neat row of four. Her stomach lurched with nervousness. "After everything we've been through, I'm scared to go up against a dumb rope."

"Hey, everyone has their fears. I'm not exactly looking forward to this either."

Mabel gave a small smirk. "Because you're scared of completely humiliating yourself, not because you're scared of heights."

"Thank you, for saying what was clearly so obvious," drawled Dipper.

"But at least you'll be able to do it," she continued, propping her chin against her hands. "You've gotten a lot stronger over the summer. I can tell by your improved dodge ball skills."

Dipper laughed. "Thanks. It's all because of Grunkle Stan that I'm tougher than I used to be. And I guess battling a demonic triangle helps too. But you can climb the rope. You just have to believe in yourself. I believe in you."

"It's normally me who's the cheesy one," teased Mabel, lightly punching him in the arm.

"I'm serious. Just don't look down."

Mabel gave a nod, though her uncertainty remained. At the sharp whistle blast that cut through the gym, she grimaced and reluctantly stood. The students obediently started to create four separate lines, directly in front of the ropes waiting for them. As their teacher began to speak, Mabel twisted the hem of her grey T-shirt between her hands, dread slowly building for when her turn inevitably came.

Mabel Pines: When you had your fear of heights, how did you tackle certain situations? Like climbing the rope in gym class, for example. I have to do it next week and I'm sort of freaking out. I could really use some advice from someone who knows what I'm going through. Dipper fears many things, but heights isn't one of them.

Grunkle Stan: Geez, I haven't thought about middle school gym class in ages. Brings back locker room memories. I was the best towel-snapper in Jersey.

Mabel Pines: Did not need to know that. But seriously, how did you handle the rope?

Grunkle Stan: Simple. You forge a doctor's note, pass it off to your twin to deliver, intercept the phone call to confirm said note, and you're out of gym class.

Mabel Pines: Grunkle Ford was an accomplice to deception?

Grunkle Stan: Not necessarily voluntarily, but I can be persuasive.

Mabel Pines: Well, intercepting the phone call wouldn't be a problem, since Mom and Dad are never home anyways. But I'd rather not lie.

Grunkle Stan: And Dipper probably wouldn't go for it.

Mabel Pines: He would, if I kept asking him. I don't think I should run from my fear. If I do, I'll never overcome it, right?

Grunkle Stan: Considering I spent a good sixty years fearing heights, then I guess you might have a point. After all, I only got over my fear after you tricked me onto that water tower.

Mabel Pines: I was only trying to help. But it backfired.

Grunkle Stan: I'm glad you did. Otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life unable to use a ladder. Never realized how handy those things are until I finally used one. You can do it, pumpkin. You've faced a heck of a lot more than a stupid rope.

Mabel Pines: It seems silly when I think of everything I've done over the summer. After all the fighting of the supernatural, I get queasy over the prospect of having to climb a rope.

Grunkle Stan: It's not silly. People fear some ridiculous things, but it's not ridiculous to them.

Mabel Pines: I know, it's just that if I look at it in perspective then it seems like I shouldn't have a reason to worry about little things. But I can't help it. We had a practice run today and I could barely pull myself a quarter of the way up. We need to make it up at least halfway to pass. I don't know what to do.

Grunkle Stan: If you don't want to do it, then don't do it, and don't let anyone shame you for it. If they do, let me know and I'll clobber them. Your only obligation is to do what makes you feel comfortable. But if you want to go for it, I have full confidence that you'll blow them all away.

Mabel Pines: Thanks, Grunkle Stan. I'll do my best.

Grunkle Stan: That's all you can ever do. And you do it very well.

Mabel Pines: But just in case, I might bring my grappling hook as a backup. What do you think?

Grunkle Stan: Not exactly inconspicuous, sweetie.

Mabel Pines: Fair point. They might consider it cheating, anyway. Dipper would have a coronary if I got suspended.

"Good job, Jillian! Your turn, Mabel."

The blonde ponytailed girl dropped the remaining few centimeters to the ground with a triumphant smile. She jogged towards the group of students gathered on the bleachers, who were waiting for their peers to finish.

The gym teacher sent an expectant glance at Mabel. The girl felt her heartrate increase and she tried to ease it by taking a deep breath. She shot a quick look at her brother, who had yet to take his turn, and he gave her an encouraging smile.

Gripping the frayed rope between her hands, she hoisted herself up. Swaying in place for a second, she began her ascent, moving one hand over the other and easing her sneaker-clad feet up bit by bit. She kept her eyes up, stomach twisting as the ceiling got closer.

You can do this, Mabel. You've fought gnomes, wax figures, unicorns, ghosts, a time traveller, dinosaurs, fake telepaths and spoiled blondes. This is just a dumb rope.

A whistle blast from below caused her to startle and glance down instinctively. She barely registered her gym teacher instructing the next student to begin climbing the rope next to hers, her stomach lurching viciously as she noticed the distance between her and the ground. Vision going blurry for a second, she took long breath before turning her head to stare upwards.

It's just a rope. I'm not even that high up. I used my grappling hook for much more. Just keep climbing, Mabel. You were imprisoned in a personal paradise dream world and saved Gravity Falls from stupid Bill. This gym class assignment is nothing.

Thunk!

Blinking, Mabel lowered her hand, realizing she had bumped it against the metal bar in which the rope was attached. "I reached the top," she whispered in awe. "I did it."

"Yeah! All right Mabel!"

The girl looked down to see her brother, who beamed up at her and flashed a thumbs-up. Muscles relaxing, Mabel returned the positive hand gesture and began her descent. She dropped down to the thick blue bat and her gym teacher made a note on her clipboard.

"Good work, Mabel."

Entire being practically vibrating with elation, Mabel charged across the floor and tackled Dipper in a hug, laughing all the way.

To: Grunkle Stan (StantheMan)

From: Mabel Pines (ShootingStarRainbowUnicorn)

Subject: Queen of gym class

Hey,

I did it! I made it all the way to the top of the rope! I looked down once and I felt a little sick, but I kept going. Dipper made it all the way up too, but he wasn't as graceful at it as I was. Thanks for your advice, it really helped. I don't think I'm going to be scared of heights anymore.

Water towers, on the other hand, might be another story.

Much love,

Mabel.

To: Mabel Pines (ShootingStarRainbowUnicorn)

From: Grunkle Stan (StantheMan)

Subject: re: Queen of gym class

That's my girl! I knew you could do it—you and Dipper. You both grew a lot over the summer (clearly not literally, you're a couple of shrimps). You're stronger than you think. I'm so proud of you.

Oh, and I'm all for conquering your fears, but maybe we can leave the water tower thing alone. If you end up in the news or something Ford is probably going to blame me for being a bad influence and he'll never shut up about it.

#gravity falls #dipper pines #mabel pines #stanley pines #grunkle stan #fear of heights #byanimationnut #to gravity falls from piedmont #gravity falls fanfiction

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samuraiko · 6 years ago

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MY HERO ACADEMIA - I Should Have Known Better

When it comes to the education of a hero, not all the teaching happens in the classroom... and not even UA teachers know everything. A one-shot featuring Aizawa and Iida, set immediately after the Internship/HKS arc.

Author's Note: While Aizawa is easily my favorite character in the MHA-verse, Iida is probably my favorite among the students... and both are in no small part because of the talent of their respective voice actors in the English dub (Chris Wehkamp and J Michael Tatum). So, as per usual, my muse started yelling at me to do a story about the two of them. This was the result. Enjoy.

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER

"That's it for today," Shota Aizawa said, tossing the chalk he was holding onto the ledge of the blackboard. "I'll be expecting your reports on your internship activities on my desk by the end of this week - be sure to include both the good AND the bad. Dismissed."

As Class 1-A began their mad dash toward the door, Aizawa's voice cut across the babble once again.

"Iida... I'd like a word with you."

Tenya Iida halted halfway out of his chair, his eyes wide behind his spectacles and his face pale. Behind him, Ochaco Uraraka let out a soft "uh-oh" before leaning forward to give Iida an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure it's nothing, Tenya," she said quietly.

Izuku Midoriya also gave Iida a tentative smile. "Yeah, it's probably just class rep stuff. And better you than me, actually! Uraraka and I will wait for you if you want so we can all head to the station together."

Iida swallowed hard, then shook his head. "No. I appreciate the offer, but I don't know how long this will take, and I don't care for making you both wait for me. I'll see you both tomorrow, if I don't catch up with you before you get to the station."

While the rest of class 1-A headed out, most with sympathetic, curious, or doubtful looks in Iida's direction, Iida finished putting away his books, stood up, and straightened his clothes before advancing toward Aizawa, who was leaning against the doorframe.

"Come with me," Aizawa said, and with his sleeping bag over one shoulder, he led Iida down the halls to one of the teachers' lounges. He waved Iida to a seat and tossed his sleeping bag over the back of the couch before sitting down as well.

Iida was doing his best not to fidget or flinch under his homeroom teacher's implacable stare, but it was difficult, given Aizawa's uncanny talent for seeming to stare right through a person.

Just when Iida thought he would crack from the strain of the silence, Aizawa finally spoke.

"I'm sorry about Tensei."

"Oh. Thank you, sir."

"How is he doing? Any progress with his recovery?"

Iida let out a low sigh. "It's... it's slow-going, and frustrating, too. I mean, I'm grateful that he's even alive, considering what Stain could have done, but still..." He growled and clenched his hands into fists. "He may never walk again, and even if he does... Ingenium is gone."

For a moment, Aizawa just stared at his student, then he closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the couch.

"I also heard about your behaviour in Hosu."

At that, Iida froze, the building anger and frustration and regret about his brother stifled in an instant. But before he could speak, Aizawa went on.

"It was obvious in retrospect, really. You're one of UA's top students, you placed highly in the sports festival, which meant you had plenty of offers for more prestigious and frankly more appropriate internships, given your skills and your goals. And yet you took a fairly low-level one, with a much less well-known hero, in the city where your elder brother just happened to be injured in the line of duty. Not because you wanted to take up his slack, not because it was closer to the hospital where he's convalescing... but because it suited your need for revenge."

Hearing it spelled out like that, Iida squirmed in his seat in an agony of embarrassment.

"Sir, I-"

"I'm not finished."

Iida immediately clapped one hand over his mouth.

"You should know better than that, Iida. After at least two months here at UA, not to mention your family's long-standing tradition of heroism, you should have known that revenge is not heroic. It's a hero's job to protect, not to punish. That's what the legal system is for. Heroes exist to facilitate that system, not replace it. It's a hero's job to save lives."

"Use your Quirk to save others - be a real hero."

"You might also want to think about how many people you hurt. And I don't just mean Midoriya and Todoroki. You nearly cost Native his life by prioritizing your revenge over his safety. You let Manual down by disrespecting his faith in you and his internship offer. Never mind how many pro heroes were possibly counting on you as Manual's backup during that fiasco. And with your speed, who knows how many civilians you might have been able to get to safety while the pros were fighting those Nomu?"

Iida stared down at the floor, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed.

"After all, that's what being a hero is all about - ensuring the safety of others..."

Then Aizawa let out a sigh and opened his eyes.

"But... I suppose it's my fault as well, though. The moment I saw your internship form, I should have realized what you were planning to do. And I should have known better than to let you go through with it."

That hurt Iida almost as much as the Hero Killer's blades. God only knew that he didn't always agree with his teacher, or condone his methods when it came to his students, but Iida never once doubted that Aizawa always had his students' best interests at heart. And to hear that his teacher was to some degree blaming himself for his mistakes...

He squeezed his eyes shut to hold back unexpected tears. "Mister Aizawa, please, you... you shouldn't blame yourself for my immature and reckless behaviour." His voice was thick with emotion.

"I even briefly wondered about it at the time," Aizawa admitted, finally lifting his head to look directly at Iida. "But I genuinely believed that you were smarter than that. You're always the one harping on others about how heroes are supposed to conduct themselves, holding everyone to the same standard that you normally hold yourself to. So I figured that maybe you just needed to see for yourself what kind of world your brother was fighting in, and fighting for."

Aizawa tiredly rubbed his eyes, then very quietly rasped, "But I guess even teachers don't know everything. I'm a great one for logical thinking, but sometimes I forget that you're still just a child of fifteen. I'm sorry, Iida. As your teacher, I let you down."

Tears slowly slid down Iida's cheeks, and he couldn't make himself look at Aizawa anymore. He looked down at his hands... at his injured left hand.

"Until I'm able to call myself a real hero, I'll leave my left hand as it is."

"N-no," he whispered at last. "It's not... it's not your fault. You're right. I should have known better. And I... I am still a child. I didn't... I didn't want to accept help. Not even from my... from my friends."

Then he abruptly turned to look Aizawa in the eyes and said fiercely, "But I won't make that mistake again, sir. I promise. And... and if you'll forgive me for saying so, I know you won't, either."

The corner of Aizawa's mouth turned up slightly, and his eyes narrowed in quiet approval. "Good enough for me. Now get out of here. At your best speed, you should be able to catch up to Uraraka and Midoriya before they reach the station. Assuming I haven't misjudged you, of course."

Iida rose to his feet and bowed to Aizawa, then he smiled tightly at his teacher.

"You haven't, sir. And thank you."

Aizawa nodded, and then stretched out on the couch, closing his eyes once more with a relieved sigh, while Iida bolted from the room, down the hall, and out into the sunshine in pursuit of his friends.

#my hero academia #shota aizawa #tenya iida #fanfiction #writing

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gifjessicajones-blog · 6 years ago

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Discovering How To Play Guitar

When you finally get your initial guitar the exhilaration you feel after playing your first unpleasant chord can be promptly snuffed out when you understand you're going to have to in some way learn how to play things. The road from Rookie to Guitarist is a harsh one, and it's not a trip for the faint of heart. Many a take on heart has actually started the trek just to have his or her dreams rushed along the way. Gradually however certainly the truth embeds in: Knowing guitar is difficult! If you're preparing to take a trip that course, here are two pieces of recommendations from someone that has actually made the journey and lived to outline it: First, you can do it if you actually wish to. It will take some devotion as well as technique, or even a percentage of sacrifice, yet if you intend to obtain proficient at playing guitar you can. The only limiting element is how much you want to working from it. You could even instruct on your own to play guitar on your own if you need to. You need to have a strategy. It could also be an unclear and also hazy plan, yet you require some kind of plan. There are numerous methods to go about learning how to play the guitar, and also you should decide where you are going to place your efforts. This post can aid you figure it out. I've probably tried it done in my thirty years as a guitar player. Before I enter my ideas concerning various techniques of guitar instruction, right here's a glance at how I discovered the instrument so you can better understand where I'm originating from. My Journey: How You Can Find out Guitar On Your Own I got my initial guitar for my 12th birthday celebration, and also it included a catch: I needed to take lessons. As soon as a week my parents hauled me off to some crusty guitar trainer that attempted to educate me folk songs and guitar tricks also Lionel Richie tracks. After a few months I understood I liked the guitar, however did not love Lionel Richie so much. Instead of practicing my lessons I invested my time aiming to determine Van Halen and AC/DC songs from cassette tapes. When it came time for my next lesson the person would certainly assume I had not touched the guitar given that I 'd last seen him! When I ultimately got permission to quit those darned lessons I bear in mind the instructor saying, "Regrettable you aren't sticking with it." I really did not have the heart to tell him I had not been giving up guitar, I was simply quitting him. In retrospect, the guy was probably a great educator, however he just wasn't taking me in the instructions I intended to go. I invested the next couple of years gaining from songbooks as well as cds. I remember a surprise minute was when I realized any kind of note I listened to a guitar player play on a document I might locate on my very own guitar. That implied anything they might do, I can do, if I only operated at it long and hard enough. When I began playing in bands I determined I had to discover more about music theory. I initially turned to user's manual in order to help me find out some scales, exactly how they were developed and ways to use them. Understanding by doing this, I determined ways to finest use pentatonic patterns and also minor scales to write guitar solos. I ultimately got very into, and even went back to taking lessons awhile, this time around from somebody who was educating the important things I wished to know. In university I took a class in classical guitar, and think it or not that aided my rock playing. That was actually one of my most satisfying and also satisfying understanding experiences. I believe I drove the bad teacher nuts attempting to damage me of some of my routines, such as often fretting the low-E string with my thumb. Via everything I was playing in bands and obstructing with various other artists. Recalling, this was a time when I made the biggest jumps as a musician. Having fun with various other guitarists, bassists and drummers helped to keep me motivated as well as excited to discover new points. When my days of playing in bands mored than (in the meantime) I returned to researching music theory by books. I underwent Fretboard Logic, which was an eye-opening experience for me after years of playing. Nowadays, I grab a couple of points occasionally, yet mostly service learning tunes for my very own pleasure. Exactly what have I found regarding the best means to learn guitar after all these years? Right here are some thoughts on each method: Learn Guitar by Ear Knowing guitar by ear is a little a misnomer. While there are some talented people that have best pitch, for a lot of us the procedure of knowing by ear means endless hours of hearing songs, trying to find the ideal notes on our guitar, rewinding and also listening once more up until we obtain it right. However, this is a technique that has worked for a few of the best guitar players in history, as well as it might not be a coincidence. Learning music in this way aids to develop your paying attention abilities, and also while you still could never ever have excellent pitch you can definitely enhance your ability to precisely listen to the notes of the guitar. Also just discovering how to tune your guitar by ear can have huge impact on your musical understanding. Pros: Can aid to develop a deep understanding of musical tones and exactly how the guitar associates with the sounds you listen to on a recording. Assists to demystify the capacities of even one of the most remarkable guitar heroes and also get to the origin of how they do just what they do. Cons: While you might ultimately understand ways to play guitar well, discovering this way alone will certainly never help you recognize the why of it. For this reason, learning songs by ear is finest combined with one of the methods below. Guitar Lessons While my initial experience with guitar lessons was not a favorable one, three decades later I see the advantages of instructions from a skilled educator. I also recognize something my moms and dads really did not: In order to get the most from lessons, you need to find an educator that is able to get you on the appropriate path. If you wanted to study art as well as design you would not most likely to an institution that's understood for it's excellent physical education program. In the same way, if you intend to be a rock guitar player you need to locate a guitar instructor that knows exactly what it requires to complete your goals. That isn't to say you cannot gain from finding out various styles, however you are more probable to stay with it if you are inspired by an instructor you appreciate. A good educator could not aid you discover the notes of the fretboard, fundamental chords and ranges, yet likewise reveal you the best ways to put everything with each other. Pros: For styles like jazz as well as classical music, a core curriculum directed by an educated instructor is a must. For other styles, an instructor could get you on the right path as well as maintain you there, something that isn't really always so simple when attempting to learn by yourself. Disadvantages: Some minds simply do not work well with structured lessons. Particularly if you are in college as well as currently sitting in courses all day, the concept of more homework may be the last point you desire. Don't disregard the suggestion of taking lessons conveniently, however, for me, directly, if I hadn't quit lessons I probably would have wound up hating guitar.

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dawnajaynes32 · 7 years ago

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Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction

[Call for Entries: The International Design Awards]

Raymond Larabie, known for creating ubiquitous futuristic and sci-fi fonts, has been involved with type since he “was about five years old” and was using type at that early age as well. His experience with typography, especially when it came to the hands-on-use of Letraset, helped him understand how typefaces looked, and how typography worked. By the mid-1980s he edited fonts and made his own fonts on his first computer, doing everything on a TRS-80 in bitmap. He eventually graduated to the Commodore Amiga.

Neuropol was created in 1997 and was used for the logo for the Torino Olympics in 2006. It’s been updated and expanded a lot over the years and also comes in a more buttoned up X style. The truncated arms were inspired by a malfunctioning vectorbeam screen on an old Tempest arcade machine.

Larabie earned a Classical Animation Diploma at Sheridan College in Oakville, and went on to work as an art director in the video game business working on games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super NES (SNES), as well as the Playstation and Playstation 2. During that time, he maintained his love for type and type design, and made free fonts, releasing them on the Ray Larabie Freeware Typeface of the Week website. This soon became Larabie Fonts. In 2001, he started a commercial font venture, and quit his job two years later to work on fonts full-time.

Influenced by Letraset at age five, Larabie says his own Letraset sheets got “used up decades ago,” in the mid-1980s. “I wonder if younger readers realize that fonts were once something that you’d buy and they would get used up. These are replacement copies of catalogs because I wore the originals to shreds. I don’t know why I was so obsessed with this stuff as a kid.” Photo by Raymond Larabie

Inspired by the Pinto Flare typeface, Larabie created his own groovy version called Pricedown. You might also recognize it from Grand Theft Auto‘s wordmark. “I worked for Rockstar at the time but they weren’t aware that they were using a font which was created by one of their employees before the company existed.”

Larabie moved to Japan in 2008, where he operates Typodermic Fonts. Larabie provided a behind the scenes look at his design process for HOW readers, and answered questions about his work and his influences.

How Raymond Works

Step 1

“When starting a new typeface, my first step is to draw a few heavy sample characters to establish dimensions and sidebearings.”

Step 2

“Once I’ve got a few sample characters for the heaviest weight, I add a weight axis and design a light version of those characters. This way I can test interpolation, alter the x-height, sidebearings and width, then note the scale percentages—afterwards, I delete the light test characters. I’m using a uniform line width since this will be an interpolation target which will be thrown away later. I usually use an interpolation of between 10 to 20% of the heaviest weight as my extra-light so it retains some of flavor of the heavy weight.”

Step 3

“One by one, I add completed heavy characters, making sure each one harmonizes with the existing characters. I don’t draw them in alphabetical order but I try not to leave the hard letters like a and e for last. The interplay between f,r,t,z is particularly difficult so they should be drawn all at the same time to make sure they work together. There’s no separate spacing phase—I’m adjusting and thoroughly testing the spacing for each character as I go.”

Step 4

“Next I create composite accented characters and finish the rest of the character set. I use a set of reduced height accents for the capital letters and more generous ones for the lowercase.”

Step 5

“After lots of testing and minor adjustments, I’ll create kerning classes and create all the kerning pairs. It’s important to spend a lot of time setting up the kerning classes. Not only does it make the kerning process much faster but it reduces the possibility of error and omission.”

Step 6

“Now it’s time to create the light interpolation weight. I’ll use the notes I made earlier to make everything narrower, decrease the x-height and pad the sidebearings. I’ll also create a quick, disposable outline version to use as a guide in the background.”

Step 7

“Next I’ll complete all the light characters. I need to adjust the sidebearings on thin characters like lowercase L, I, 1 etc. The accents no longer line up so they all need adjustment. The kerning will need to be done all over again. Some pairs won’t need adjusting but they’ll all need to be checked.”

Step 8

“Next, I experiment with the interpolation and make adjustments to refine the middle weights—it’s a bit like pulling strings. You can see how I need to cut away a piece of the Q so the tail goes through only on the lighter weights. This stage can involve a lot of manual cleanup and vector surgery. Now I decide which weights I’m going to export. Then I fill in the style names, do some autohinting, more testing, more adjustments and I’m done.”

Q&A with Raymond

Q. What inspired you to create your own type design foundry?

I like to call it a font company. Foundry makes it sound like I work with molten metal.

What’s behind the name? What does Typodermic mean, and why did you go with that name?

During the indie font gold rush near the turn of the millennium, font puns were in short supply so I jumped at that one as soon as I thought of it. I used it as a font name first and later a company name. “For font junkies” is my slogan but I thought of that much later.

What software do you use for finalizing, editing, and producing the font files, and why do you use it?

I use FontLab Studio because it’s been the dominant type design tool in Windows for almost two decades. On a Mac there are several other viable options but in Windows, if you want to create interpolated typefaces, it’s the only way to go.

What prior font software did you use, before the tools you currently use?

I used Fontographer but then stopped using it because it hadn’t been updated for close to a decade. I miss the vector drawing in that one but without interpolation, it’s a no-go.

When you started out as a type designer, who or what motivated you to get into type design, and why?

It was the emergence of type design tools. I was making fonts as soon as I got my first computer, a TRS-80 in the early 80s. But there was only so much you could do with those old bitmap editors. The urge was still there but dormant until I got my hands on Fontographer in 1996.

Larabie calls Conthrax “a techno typeface that’s designed to hide in the background” and he strived to make it look technological without being loud and flashy.

The average person who looks at your type catalog might see a strong science fiction influence. How has sci-fi shaped your typographic tastes, and the type designs you make?

When I started in the late 1990s that category was underserved. You’d see that style in logo designs but not much as typefaces. I think now, techno is considered a legitimate category but not long ago, that style of type was passed off as Microgramma or Bank Gothic clones. I do love sci-fi and video games and that’s definitely an influence. The choice of going square is often an attempt to make type that harmonizes with our environment. We live in a high-tech, rectilinear world. When I started seeing my techno fonts used on consumer electronics, it guided me more towards those sorts of projects.

Typography has a prominent place in many science fiction comic books, films, and cartoons. What movies or comic books get the typography right, in your opinion, and why?

Sci-fi type like in Robocop (1988), Star Trek the Next Generation (STNG), or Demolition Man were amped up versions of popular type styles in the times they were made. The STNG typeface feels like a late 1980s software company logo—perfect for the times. Sci-fi type often fails when it regurgitates old sci-fi ideas. We’ve seen decades of the Blade Runner line gap trick. It was a stark vision of the future in 1982 but maybe we should be extrapolating the visuals of today to develop new visions of the future.

Something that constantly annoys me is the use of Bank Gothic to imply “futuristic.” Bank Gothic was designed in 1930 and was based on a popular sign painting style from around 1900. It was the kind of thing you’d see on rail cars, gravestones, stock certificates etc. When I see it, it looks very old-fashioned to me so it’s a bit like seeing a Model-T Ford in a sci-fi future. Famous movie examples: Moon, Terra Nova, Edge of Tomorrow, Battlestar Galactica, Hunger Games, Falling Skies, Jumper and several Stargates. I think Bank Gothic is often chosen because it’s a square font that a lot of people already have on their computer. It’s not a bad font by any means but it’s very American, circa 1900 to me.

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When it comes to your process, do you begin working directly on paper during the initial design phases, or do you go right to the computer, and what benefit does that method of working provide?

I usually don’t use paper at all. I jot down notes as I’m working such as sidebearing numbers and accent offsets. I feel like the design of each glyph should be as open as possible so they can be formed by their neighbors. If I decide what glyphs are going to look like ahead of time, I can paint myself into a corner. A far more useful visual aid is to keep a reference photo on my desktop wallpaper or pinned to my cork board—usually not of anything typographical but more of a thematic image. For one job, I needed to create a tough, military looking typeface so I pinned a picture of a Humvee to my board. To me, that’s more useful than sketching out the alphabet. Even if I don’t use visual reference, there’s some kind of doctrine I can use to help me make decisions. Otherwise, I tend to smooth the edges down until the typeface has no character.

You offer a lot of free fonts, as well as fonts that cost money. Why so many fonts for free?

It’s promotional. Those free font sites get so much traffic. I’ve had over 60 million downloads from DaFont alone. The free fonts can lead to sales of web, app and eBook licenses or other weights like heavy or ultra-light.

What are your best-selling paid fonts?

Korataki is a techno font commissioned for the Mass Effect game series that’s always done really well. Meloriac is mixed case, extremely bold geometric sans which has been a steady seller. Conthrax is a more recent success. It’s a squarish, soft, ultramodern deliberately sedate.

What are your most frequently downloaded free fonts?

Coolvetica. It’s downloaded almost twice as much as the next one down the list. Then there’s Steelfish. That was a bit of a dud until I spruced it up a few years ago. I’ve been constantly going over the old ones and freshening them up or rebuilding from scratch. Then Budmo, Neuropol and Pricedown.

The Budmo typeface, influenced by marquee signs.

What type designers, foundries, or visual culture do you look at for inspiration these days, and why do you look at that work?

I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I try to avoid looking at design blogs, or anything tagged as typography. I feel like it’s a bit like visual dieting. It’s not just what I look at, it’s what I don’t look at. And more than ever, as a species, we’re all feeding from the same visual trough. An example of a recent tangent was diving deep into the world of reel-to-reel tape decks and obsolete audio cassette formats, strange auto-reverse mechanisms. If you don’t swerve, you’ll end up making the same typeface someone else already made.

In addition to offering your fonts through your own site, they can be found at fonts.com as well as Fontspring and other sites. What advice would you have for the budding type designer, who wants to get their fonts picked up by those distributors?

When you’re developing your typeface, you should try to imagine the kind of customer that’s going to purchase it. Give it some kind of reason to exist. It’s not enough to make an attractive or interesting typeface. It’s fine if you want to get experimental but those sites aren’t the place for that sort of thing. They’re like department stores rather than galleries. For example, if you’re making a font that looks like neon lights, you can look at what’s available and think about the kind of customer who might need one. What kind of projects would they use it for? Is there something missing in the current selection of neon light fonts?

Korataki was commissioned by Bioware for the Mass Effect game series.

Some of your influences, such as the TRS-80 and 1980s pop culture, are also found in Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One, which Steven Spielberg has made into a feature film. You’ve got such a deep catalog of future-forward and sci-fi fonts. Leading up to Ready Player One’s release, if we see a 1980s renaissance—and especially one with sci-fi and gaming influences from that era—what new creations can we expect to see from Typodermic Fonts?

I think the console games of the 1980s and 1990s have been well fetishized—the aesthetic is well known. Younger generations have developed a visual style based on that type of look but it’s based on a relatively narrow view on games in the 1980s. There’s an aspect of gaming that’s been largely ignored and is in danger of being lost forever: microcomputers. While some people were playing Atari and Nintendo in the living room, the rest of us were at desks, patiently waiting for games to load from cassettes. Those types of games haven’t been popular with collectors and they’re often ignored. Cassettes and floppy disks fail—manuals and packaging get thrown in the trash. Some of the Japanese microcomputers like MSX, NEC PC Series, X-1, FM-7 had specific technical limitations that created their own unique visual style. A lot of the console game franchises we know and love started off on these systems before people played them on their living room game consoles. Many microcomputer games that were released in this era will never be recovered. A few years ago I made Rukyltronic which was a tribute to 1980s UK microcomputers like Beeb and the Speccy. That’s the kind of thing I’ve got my eye out for and it’ll inevitably make its way into my upcoming typeface releases.

Where do you see type design heading in the future?

Typography has a fashion cycle so you’ll see the same kinds of typefaces come and go. But when they cycle back each time, new ideas will be applied and they’ll required upgrading as user expectations keep getting higher. Things like optical scaling which will compensate for the environment. What makes a typeface perform better in small print on a smartwatch is different from what works best on a billboard and it’s not just the weight. In the 1990s, a basic character set with a few accents and stock mathematical symbols was the norm. Typefaces rarely came with more than regular, bold and italics. Now we expect a weight range, more language coverage, cohesive symbols and OpenType features galore. Also, new font technology will allow us to finally produce convincing handwriting. I think some of the innovations required to make Arabic writing work properly will provide us with some interesting tools. Once type designers have access to these tools, who knows what we’ll come up with?

Edited from a series of online and email interviews. Captions for Neuropol, as well as Toxigenesis type design process provided by Raymond Larabie. Check out Typodermic Fonts online and follow Larabie on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Typodermic’s Raymond Larabie Talks Type, Technology & Science Fiction appeared first on HOW Design.

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ultralifehackerguru-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/how-to-organize-your-mess-of-recipes-with-the-paprika-app/

How to Organize Your Mess of Recipes With the Paprika App

Paprika is our favorite recipe manager on both Android and iPhone, but its massive feature set makes it a bit overwhelming at first. Let’s take a look at a few tips for getting those recipes organized without losing your mind.

Learn to Import Recipes From Anywhere on the Web

Unless you plan on manually typing hundreds of recipes into Paprika, you’ll want to get the hang of the various ways you can import recipes into the app. Paprika is smart enough to parse out the seemingly endless personal essay at the start of a recipe and convert the ingredients and directions automatically. You have three main ways to do this.

On iPhone, Paprika includes a share extension that simplifies adding a recipe from Safari. When you’re reading a recipe in Safari, tap the share button, then Paprika. This imports the recipe into Paprika automatically.

You can also copy and paste a URL into Paprika. Copy the full of address of any recipe, then open up the Paprika app. Paprika is smart enough to recognize a URL on the clipboard so it’ll automatically ask if you want to import it.

Finally, you can also import recipes from your desktop browser using the Paprika bookmarklet. If you haven’t already, you first need to create a free Paprika cloud sync account. Then, head to the bookmarklet page, enter your email address and password, then follow the onscreen instructions to set it up. Once you do, you can click the bookmarklet to add any recipe to Paprika from your desktop browser.

Organize Your Recipes Into Categories You’ll Actually Use

After you add a recipe, the next logical step is to categorize it. There’s probably some logical, recipe book style means of organizing all of these, like Pastas, Appetizers, Sides, etc, but I’ve found that I don’t actually those traditional systems.

Instead, I use categories like time (15 minutes, 30 minutes, slow cooker), where I got it from (friend, blogs, or recipe books), or special events (Christmas dinner, Super Bowl, etc). That’s what works best for me, so your mileage will vary, but don’t be afraid to think a little outside the box when you create categories. Build a system that makes sense and works for you.

Search, Search, Search to Skip Organizing

One of the reasons I don’t bother with categories is because I’ve found Paprika’s search to be good enough that I don’t need them. I don’t need to make a “fish” category because it’s easier to type “fish” into the search box. You can search through recipes with three different parameters in Paprika: name, ingredient, and source.

Make Use of the Multiple Timers

If you’re anything like me, the only thing you actually use a voice assistant for is to set a timer. Unfortunately, at least on iPhone, you can only set one timer at a time. Paprika lets you use up to three simultaneously, and they’re integrated directly into the recipe instructions. It’s awesome.

In any recipe, tap the blue highlighted time to start the timer. If there are multiple timers, you can set three at once. The timer automatically gets a label of the recipe it’s from, which comes in handy when you’re making multiple dishes.

Pin Recipes When You’re Cooking Several Dishes At Once

Speaking of making multiple dishes at once, Paprika allows you to pin recipes. Pinning recipes makes it a little easier to juggle between a couple different dishes. Open up a recipe and tap the pin icon in the bottom left. Once you have a few recipes pinned, tap that same pin icon to bounce between them. Paprika will remember any ingredients you’ve crossed off and the directions you have highlighted so you don’t lose your place.

Scale Recipes When You Need To

Paprika can scale recipes, something incredibly useful that I didn’t notice for months. On a recipes main screen, tap the Scale button, and you can cut it down or increase the scale. This is pretty self explanatory, but for whatever reason, it took me forever to even realize this was an option, so I figured I’d share it too too.

Use the Pantry Tool to Keep Track of Ingredients You Already Have

One of my favorite features in Paprika is the pantry tool. As the name suggests, you can make a list of the items you already have in your pantry. This way, when you create a shopping list, you can automatically remove pantry items, like oils, flour, or spices.

To get to the pantry menu, head to the Groceries section, then tap the Pantry button at the bottom. Tap the plus sign to add whatever items you want. This takes a few minutes of setup to make worthwhile, but once you do, it makes creating a shopping list much simpler.

Make Use of the Meal Planner

The Meal Planner function in Paprika is incredibly robust, and while it’s not something that everyone’s going to make use of, it’s still worth checking out.

The basic premise here is simple, tap the Meals menu, then tap the plus button to add a meal. Add a recipe, then pick which day of the week it’s for. You can also do this directly from the recipe screen by tapping the calendar button. When it’s time to hit the grocery store, head over to the Week tab, tap select, choose each recipe you need to shop for, tap the share button, then Add to Grocery List.

Perhaps more handy for those of us who live by the seat of our pants when it comes to meal planning are Menus. Menus are useful for recurring event-style meals you might make. On the Meal Planner screen, tap the Menus button, then the plus sign. Create a new menu, say, Easter, then tap Done. Tap the plus sign again and you can add a bunch of recipes. Now, in the future, you can add everything in this meal to your Meal Planner at once, which simplifies creating shopping lists.

Enable Auto-Lock to Keep Your Phone Awake (and Other Settings Tweaks)

You wouldn’t think that it’s worth the time to pop into the Settings on a recipe app, but a few things here can improve the experience.

Personally, I like to turn on the Auto-Lock Screen option, which prevents your phone from going to sleep as long as Paprika is open. I also toggle the recipe font size up to medium so I can read it from far away, set the grocery list to sort by aisle, and turn on consolidate ingredients (which makes it so items don’t break up by recipe, like 2 apples, 1 apple). These are all personal preferences, but if you’ve never popped into the Settings menu, I recommend doing so.

Remember to Rate Recipes

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve stared at a recipe trying to remember if I actually liked it. After you cook and eat a recipe, pop back into Paprika and rate it. Seriously, this will help future you more than you can imagine.

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