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sparklingpax · 4 years ago

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Tales From Iacon - Part 1: Kalos

A/N:

-Set in the Aligned continuity! Specifically, TFP :3

-Ik this translates to something like "noble" or "good" in Greek and this is the title because of the character you're gonna meet (just someone I came up with on the spot,,,,please don't get mad if theres already someone like that in TF I swear I did not intend to copy anyone's stuff—) and also because of the "goodness" and "nobility" in the ultimate message of his character's existence, as well as a reference to the idea of the cause for equality on Cybertron and all. Idk that probably doesn't make sense. It made more sense in my head!!!! OK anyway,,

-Please forgive me for typos or atrocious grammar things idk most of this was written at 4 am because I couldn't sleep also sorry if it's incoherent or boring or ooc please have mercy on me I just wanted to have some fun and write about these two because I love them--

-Also this is originally from my wattpad! (@/kunixjiro if you’re interested in my other stories as well) I will be updating chapters as I write them both there and here <3 </p>

-I tried to use to terms that are specific to Cybertronian lingo. Please forgive me if there are any mistakes with the usages; I looked them up and tried to do some research based off a few of the books I have, but then again, I might have mistaken them to mean something else. Either way, pls leave a comment if you want me to explain what something means. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the story! :D

/ / /

The sky was a perfect, clear blue.

White wisps of clouds floated in the sky at a carefree pace.

Yet, said clouds did not mar the color of the sky—the beautiful, blue sky.

Sitting far below, on a bench in a park in Iacon City, Orion Pax stared up at it. He contemplated the shapes of the clouds, wondering what exactly they reminded him of. Regardless of success in such an endeavor (or not), Orion found absolute peace in quietly contemplating nature around him.

He was therefore contented at present. Right then and there, Orion would have been more than happy to stay for centuries to come.

The sky is, after all, endless. Much more than what his small optics could see was beyond.

That thought alone excited his scholarly curiosity. Planets, life, solar systems! So much left to find in such a great, big universe. Orion shut his eyes and smiled. How wonderful it is, this day. Thank you, great Primus, for creating such a lovely place. He opened his eyes again to survey the world presently before him.

Closest to his bench, Orion saw a group of sparklings playing catch. He shifted his gaze to his right, seeing two adolescent bots walking together, giggling carefreely. To his left was an older bot, manning his small "Energon Cube-sugar" station with a contented smile. Someone was reading a book on another bench. Over at the far side of the grass was a dancer showing off their skills to some music as onlookers cheered encouragingly. Outside the grassy clearing, many more citizens of Iacon moved about—to work or to play Orion did not know, but nonetheless, the world was alive around him.

Megatronus is taking quite a long while to show up. I know he is often otherwise engaged with matters in his political or gladiatorial life...though I wonder if he even remembered...

Orion picked up his holopad and began scrolling through his assignment calendar while he waited. Nothing had been updated, so Orion sighed a little and shut off the device, returning his gaze to the sky.

He wondered why he hadn't brought the pad that had books to read on it.

Megatronus...please don't tell me you actually forgot again—

"Pax!"

At the sound of his name, Orion jolted a little. He smiled to himself as he saw Megatronus's large figure striding through the park, across the clearing to his bench. Well, I guess I was wrong.

When the silver-and-burgundy-plated bot reached him, Orion stood up to greet him.

"Still alive after all those matches in the rink?" He joked lightly. Megatronus grinned playfully.

"Still alive after all those exams?" Orion widened his eyes in slight surprise, then they shared a laugh. "Well, I see how it is. I am pleased to see you are well." Megatronus extended a servo.

Taking it, Orion replied, "Thank you. It is good that you are, also."

They sat down.

Originally, Orion had wanted to talk about philosophy regarding the societal structures of Cybertron, which both of them had qualms with at present. However, after Orion had gotten food from the stand nearby, and the pair had begun discussing interesting sights Iacon had to offer...

"I can show you the very store I purchased this from," Orion gestured to the holopad in his hand. "It has a wide variety of tools, as well as a wider range of prices." Megatronus perked up a little at the second statement. "The shopkeeper is a nice, old bot."

"Is he, now?" The gladiator leaned back and stared at the sky, considering whether it would be a good idea or not. His eyes were lit with a strange mix of inquiry, annoyance, and amusement. "Would he permit a lower caste bot into his store, Orion? According to society, I should not be in this city at all, anyway."

"With me, he most likely will." Orion answered firmly. He then frowned. "And don't say that, Megatronus. You and I both know that anybot belongs anywhere they please. Freedom is a basic right of all, is it not?"

Megatronus gave his friend a sideways look, the corner of his mouth twisted into a wry smile.

"Huh."

Orion sighed, then elaborated a little bit. "His name is Kalos and he has been a kind bot for all the time I have known him. I have never seen him raise his voice or say harsh things. In fact, he's been to Iacon once or twice, and he and Alpha Trion are friends."

As he spoke, Orion realized just how silly it was starting to sound—that he would know just how a lower-caste bot like Megatronus would be received at an upper-caste level store in Iacon. As an archivist at Iacon Hall of Records, as well as a scholar, it would stand to reason Orion had never seen Kalos be disrespectful or harsh to him—even if Orion was still not part of the upper-caste classes. It was true that he was not explicitly owed respect as per the society's standards.

However, it wasn't impossible that the people of Iacon were kind souls on their own.

I feel as though he is a kind bot regardless of caste. Things could still go well.

"I suppose the only way to know is to go and see for oneself." Megatronus's voice pulled Orion out of his thoughts. He turned to see Megatronus standing up. "Lead the way, Pax."

Orion nodded, smiling a little himself as he rose from the bench. "If we get in with no trouble, I can use my card to get something for you. After all, you traveled such a distance to meet me and I earned a little from —"

Megatronus laughed a little, placing a servo on his friend's shoulder.

"If we get in. Though..." He paused as if to say something, then shook his head. He patted Orion's shoulder gently. "Thank you just as well, Orion."

The young archivist tapped Megatronus's arm as a return gesture. "Anytime, Megatronus."

/ / /

As it was a rather calm day on the streets, Orion and Megatronus met little traffic of people as they walked, all the while discussing mostly inconsequential things. They arrived at the threshold of the store within about 4 units.

Upon reaching it, Orion immediately drifted from Megatronus mid-speech to go stare at the display window. He remembered that Kalos often put in updated editions of things or entirely new items behind the glass, and wondered if there was anything new today.

Megatronus raised an eyebrow in curiosity, drawing closer to the window. He was amazed by all the little things in the window. Even if he didn't know what they were or what they did, he was still happy to look at the items anyway.

"These are such nice looking things, aren't they?" Orion commented as his gaze jumped from one thing to the next. Megatronus sighed lightly.

"Back on Kaon, there are no such stores as this one. We do not have much there, anyway." He murmured quietly. Nor Shanix enough to buy anything if indeed such stores existed.

Orion immediately felt bad and turned to say something to apologize, but when he saw Megatronus, he was relieved. His friend had a calm and light expression on his face as he stared at the display.

"Go in?"

"Let's."

Orion moved away from the display and walked through the front door. Megatronus followed cautiously behind, shifting his gaze from side to side at the clean, organized shelves and tables.

It was his first time in such a nicely kept store. He was content to be there even for a second.

Even if moments from now, this "Kalos" asks me my profession and I am thrown out for not following caste rules—

"Megatronus, come!" Orion called. He was standing by a small table in the back, upon which a few variations of the holopad he owned were placed neatly beside one another. On a paper below the table were listed the prices. As Megatronus drew closer, he made a noise of interest at the fair price for each device.

Though I don't have enough for anything, these seem proportionate. Not too much, yet not too little. Interesting.

Orion watched Megatronus as he leaned in to observe the details of the pads, then without saying anything, swiveled around to look at the other things on the walls.

He had such a large figure, Orion was a little worried he would accidentally knock something over. But, then again, Megatronus was not clumsy. Orion decided it would be safe if he walked to another part of the store and let his friend browse at his own discretion.

"Ahh, Orion! It is nice to see you again." The kind voice belonged to the bot walking down the aisle. Orion turned to greet the bot, smiling warmly.

"It is nice to see you as well, Kalos. The display outside looked wonderful as always." The old shopkeeper chuckled, patting Orion's back. His plating of many shades of green looked quite shiny, Orion noted internally.

"I had hoped it would! It pleases me that you enjoyed it."

They both turned at the sound of footsteps coming down the opposite side of the aisle. Megatronus was about to say something, but stopped as soon as he saw Kalos. His demeanor changed and became more guarded almost immediately—Orion sensed it.

"Good afternoon. You are Kalos?" Megatronus came to a halt next to Orion. Kalos smiled, nodding.

"That is me, indeed! Welcome to my store. I haven't seen you here before, are you new to the town as a resident, sir?"

"I am not..." Megatronus stared at the ground until Orion nudged him discreetly.

"Ah! Traveling from another city, then! How interesting." Kalos had the purest look of kindness in his entire demeanor. Megatronus took note of this. He could see why Orion had suggested things would go well.

"Yes..." He turned to Orion to see if the archivist could introduce him instead. Orion took the cue and made a gesture to Megatronus.

"This is a good friend of mine from Kaon City. His name is Megatronus."

Externally, Megatronus and Orion remained completely calm, but internally, they were waiting for something bad to happen.

...nothing did.

Kalos, without missing a beat, clapped his hands together. "Welcome to Iacon, Megatronus! Kaon is such a long way, and you have traveled far. Thank you for coming into my store!" He seemed not to care. Orion was relieved, though he did not show it.

Megatronus was shocked, but he simply laughed a little and thanked Kalos.

Minutes later, Megatronus had said his goodbyes and left the store to wait outside. Orion was at the checkout, thinking quietly about how he had been right (and how glad he was that he had been).

"Lost in thought, Orion?" Kalos began working the register. "I know who that bot is." He started quietly. Orion immediately felt his stomach churn. Oh no. He could report both of us—

"I agree with what he says. The idea of true equality and the end of this caste system—I always have. What kind of a world would this be if we were to pick and choose who gets our kindness and respect because they were born one way or another?" He shook his head and chuckled as Orion simply stared in complete shock.

Well...I did not expect this, for sure...

"You're probably wondering why an old bot like me would go with the new order rather than the old..." He handed the bag to the young scholar with a smile. "I think with all the wisdom I've gathered from my time alive, I'd be an utter fool not to see corruption when it happens. And I'm sure you believe the same as me."

Orion nodded slowly. He had an entirely new respect for Kalos.

What a great bot...he really is kind on his own.

The green-plated shopkeeper extended a servo and patted Orion's chest lightly, then drew it away and placed it on his own chest.

"That's all that matters in a bot, really. If Primus gave one to each and every bot alive, then it only makes sense that....Primus meant to say we all belong."

/ / /

Kalos stood at his shop's threshold and waved at Orion and Megatronus as they began to walk away. Orion turned and waved back.

"Thank you again, Kalos! See you soon!"

"Anytime, Orion! And Megatronus," The silver-burgundy bot turned at his name. "Safe travels back home! Come again sometime!"

Megatronus smiled back. He waved.

The pair made their way back to the entrance at Iacon, arriving just as the sun was going down.

Iacon was lit warm gold and pinkish silver as the rays of the sun touched the metal and sunk behind the great mountains in the distance. The sky above was painted a vibrant spray of colors, as if to dance one last time before the darkness of majestic, navy night came upon it.

"Here, Megatronus." Orion handed him the bag. "Don't break it." He joked, a trace of a grin on his face. His friend smirked.

"I'll only bring it when I fight lower-level threats." He shot back. They laughed.

Megatronus held it up to the sunlight, to look at the intricacy of the device. It was very elegant, just as the rest of the store had been. And Kalos...Orion didn't want to tell him yet what they had spoken about, but Megatronus sensed that Kalos was someone he could trust.

As Orion had put it, a true, kind-sparked individual.

"Thank you, Pax. I will take care of this and...try not to break it."

"You're welcome. Thank you for coming all the way here to Iacon. I...hope we can meet again soon, Megatronus." Orion and Megatronus shook hands.

As Megatronus turned to leave, he stopped, remembering something.

"Orion. I do have one question about this..." Orion tilted his head to the side a little.

Megatronus activated it. "How...exactly does this work, beyond activation?"

"Do you mean what can it be purposed for?"

"No, I mean.....I don't exactly know....how to use it...."

Silence hung in the air for a nanosecond or two, and then both of them burst into laughter.

The light of the sky shone on their plating, coating them in its soft, golden, pinkish light as they laughed together over such a silly thing.

Together, as good friends in the midst of the brewing troubles of Cybertron.

Laughing at how Megatronus now owned a holopad he had no clue how to use.

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dearestpodcast-blog · 6 years ago

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Hello again, Dearest Listeners

It’s been a while, and we’ve missed you. I wanted to drop a line to you, our ride-or-dies, our first supporters, about why we’ve been radio silent this winter. To do that, I’ll pull back the curtain a bit. (This is a bit long, but there’s a treat for you at the end.)

“Dearest” mainly consists of me (Clare, the voice you’ve heard a few times now) and Sarah, my incredible co-producer. It started with, quite literally, a shower thought. I wanted to collect your writing, your stories, and give them some voice. And you all answered the call in spades. I received hundreds of letters, and I promise you: I’ve read every single one. They gave me goosebumps and tears and laughter and I’m so grateful to you for sharing yours with me. I then had to narrow down our options to the letters I thought would make the best recording material. I chose letters for a number of reasons: the uniqueness of the author’s perspective, the resonance it had to my loved ones’ experiences, or the sheer poetry of the writing. I then reached out to my actor friends to set up time to record. And that part was fantastic: getting to hear your words aloud for the first time, watching a performer decide how to give each story life. I loved that part.

The editing process became the most challenging and exciting chapter of the process. We meticulously listened to every minute of recorded content, choosing the most authentic take from each letter and taking out breaths, pauses, and bloopers. It look a long time, but we ended up with what would make up “Dearest.” Finally, we had to organize all of this content into episodes. We tried to balance tone, mixing sad and happy, brief and lengthy, to give our listeners an exciting path to follow every episode. Then Chris, our wonderful composer, wrote music hand-tailored to each letter. Add to this the customized art for each episode by Manami, our logo and web design by Dom, and our marketing by Sarah, and we had created something complete, beautiful, and truly special. The first time I heard the final product, I cried.

All of this is to say that “Dearest” became much bigger than I ever anticipated. It took a whole group’s creative attention for a number of months, and resulted in one of my favorite projects I’ve ever made. I did learn, however, that it required much more production labor than I’d anticipated.

Long story short: We’re not going anywhere. Sarah and I are committed to making audio content together for a looong time coming. We’re excited to explore producing audio projects in larger series and releasing all episodes at once so that we can hold ourselves to our high production standards.

Mostly, I want to thank you. You’ve supported this idea from its conception and have been *incredibly* generous in your admiration since our launch. I can’t express how amazing it’s been to interact with you all through this project. As a thank you for sticking with us, here’s Episode Four of “Dearest.” Truly: thank you. Keep reaching out, and you’ll hear from us again soon.

Love,

Clare

#podcast #podcasting #dearest #dearest podcast #anon #update #diy #audio project #audio production #thank you #long reads #letter to the editor #dearest update #collaboration #collaborative #ama #self produced #chicago podcast #ask me anything

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kendrixtermina · 7 years ago

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Typing Misadventures - IN edition

So, typing and the difficulties therein.

Aside from person-specific ad-hominems, some that have been elaborated upon in attempts to explain them on this very website.

Sensors: Bad Sensor descriptions written by NPs, combining with the fact that Sensors rely a lot on developing a practical experential “feel” for things. A bad, vague and overly abstract description that doesn’t relate to their life is gonna be not very useful. (especially for SFPs for whom what they relate to is srz bzness) - Interestingly I’ve seen a lot of Sensors saying that they easily indentify particular types once they have encountered them IRL. (Speculation: With intuitives it probably depends more on wether they have their definitrions straight.)

Ne-Doms: Type-hop and doubt their type alot because they know they always could be mistyped and possibilities are the primary facet of reality for them. The “creative” nature of the auxillary, and their auxillary being a function that generates and handles belief systems, means they can always reinterpret the evidence by redoing their reasoning or reassigning meaning, also the lack of Si leads to less constancy in their thinking, they change opinion easily, which is normally an asset, but not so much for self-typing as every input generates new ideas. (The auxillaries also have this but to a much lesser degree - b/c)

—

But today, I want to talk about INs (I know, boring - but those are what I know the most about since I am one.)

You may have seen me caveat my posts with “Unless I am actually an xNFP or something” as of late Yeah. It went about like this:

Troll: Haha you’re mistyped!

Me: Why?

Troll: because X.

Me: I have an alternate, more fitting explanation for X and a lot of things which my current typing explains betters especially when you get into the nuance of mbti theory.

Troll: (*hamfistedly applies overreductionistic function definition*) “Anyone who ever quotes a source ever is a Te user”. Just like anyone who ever mentions memory is a SJ amirite?

Troll: *shifts the topic to my person and then accuses me of talking about myself*

Me: *blocks troll largely to curttail own tendency to waste time & energy with internet arguments*

So at my best, I believe in not dismissing inconvenient PoVs and double-checking, and the main point of replying them was to leave an alternate opinion for future readers hence no point in continuing after that had been done.

At my worst damn inf Fe makes it hard to ignore input even if I don’t believe it’s justified (except when it fails to pick them up - as inferior functions are wont to be its either sluggish or AHH with little inbetween. ) and that lil 8 fix of mine doesn’t want to “stand down quietly”.

So I ask a few reasonable, knowledgeable, non-troll person, one of which said “Hm, could be, you anecdote alot which X type also does”

I believed this was better accounted for by simple ol’ Si and w4-self revealing tendencies, but, how could I know for sure? I never denied having a pronounced 4wing and fix, but I thought that sufficiently explaining their perceived discrepancies insofar as I found them consistent with reality and indeed all data collected so far. Too much would just be filed away as “inf Te” as a blanket term, the way any sign that [fan favorite character] is ST rather than INFJ is “inferior Se” though that supposed “inferior” is 80% of what she does and all moments claimed for F or N are the sort of situations where anyone would display emotion or philosophizing and what intuition they display is distinctly Ne instead.

Like the proverbial man who dreamt of being a frog I couldn’t cast the doubt from my mind and went over reinterpreting my thought patterns throughout the day. How do I know I’m NOT X type? After all my idea of and criteria for type are based on the definitions I extracted from various mbti sources when first familiarzing myself with the topic… how do I know I understood it correctly? How can ANY human correctly understand a definition if they have to deduce/reconstruct/guess what the other meant with their own flawed mind?

(At this point the non-INs in the audience might be rolling their eyes)

I still thought my type made the most sense but the person, through trolling in that particular instance, was not alltogether clueless and had some good insights, and also, some ppl agreed with them (theres that Fe again) - I was pretty sure I was in the holographic-panomramic thinking style but I could be wrong, thats a fairly rarely used concept which I simply started using cause I thought it made sense. ENFPs can mistake themselves for introverts. I have been mistaken for extrovert b/c of my lack of filter… but I was pretty sure I was a very pronouncedintrovert and had Fe, and so I went over it over and over again.

They said I didn’t comprehend _ i had some theory as to why they thought the way they did (not just bias against xNFPs but assuming all Ti is like aux Ti. After all, an introverted function as a dominant builds a framework and may be reluctant to accept or need time to withdraw when said framework clashes with reality to the point of needing a full revamping, purportedly resulting in a certain stubbornness particularly if it’s a Ji function. )

but what if I really Didn’t comprehend? Then all my reasoning would be worthless! I dont think I have the skills of an INFP, but what if i misunderstood those? Was a lot of what I’d attributed to Ti just Ne? i thought I had rather typical Ti speech patterns (it was hard to unsee, like my brain used a highly predictable parsing alghorithm to make thoughts into words) but they disagreed and pointed to what they thought was Fi.

I thought that despite all the differences introduced by shared preferences and there were differences between I and the Fi doms I knew. The 9 and the 6 were much more lowkey, non-confrontational than I and way more perceptive in line with how socionics describes Fi as the “Ethics of Relations” and how Nardi calls it an “Inner state of listening/reacting”; I mostly listen to the contents of someone’s words; I’d spot a liar by contradiction or unbeliavable statements, or by deducing what beliefs they are operating from. Feelers supposedly use primarily tone of voice... but I have sure noticed tone of voice a few times, and this is a qualia. I can’t compare what “Fi” or “Ti” feel like without making assumptions of which one I am using.

Supposedly

The 4! INFPs should be the most similar to me, on the other hand, they tend to have a certain...absoluteness in their beliefs and statements in a way I wouldn’t be comfortable with. I’m more hesitant, more relativizing, adding qualifiers etc so bI don’t say anything incorrect.

I don’t mean to bash the INFPs here, they are usually just processing their specific feels and do not mean to imply things about others. (Tumblr INFP: “I, an INFP, experience X.”. Tumblr xxFJ: “Are you saying that other types don’t????? You can’t say that! How self absorbed are you?” Immature Tert Fe User:*distantly feels the same urge toward ,moral condemnation as FJ,but couldn’t care less if INFP offends anyone - settles for calling them a snowflake instead. * TJs and Ti doms: *roll their eyes, half-assedly consider correcting whoever they disagree with but ultimately just keep scrolling*) Of course Team Fe sometimes has a point if the INFP in question is young and/or irresponsible.

Example:

One INFP 4w5: “I be those shallow fake bitches look down on you just because you don’t wear as much makeup. I don’t think anyone who wears makeup can be trusted, unless it’s like,halloween makeup or something like that, they’re just putting up fake faces to be popular.”

Me (let’s say, presumed INTP 5w4): “I dunno... Like I agree that those girls are shallow bitches,if they had spines, they wouldn’ perform arbitrary fake behavior just to be popular.* But not everyone is the same - maybe some people might just wear makeup because they like how it looks. The real problem is people being judged by arbitrary conventions on principle. What does is matter whether someone wears makeup or not? Its a made-up convention with no real reason. It’s none of anyone’s business.”

* for the record I have since realized that there’s nothing bad about wanting to be popular as long as yopu dont harm anyone, and that for some people its genuinely what they want. I was, like, 13. Common (w)4 pitfall I guess.

As you see both I and this middle school friend of mine are expressing 4-ish povs, but I used to think the difference in our reasoning highlighted some differences.

Granted this is more 5w4 vs 4w5 than necessarily Ti vs Fi, Could just be the 5′s general disconnect toward action and desire to “know more first”.

There are 5 INFPs. after all. Mostly sx 5s and as such differentiable from the relatively intense, dramatic sx 4 as long as you’re certain enough that they’re sx. Thinking about how to describe them. More second-guessing and ‘drifting’ than the 4 ones but like them in their analytical nature. A different kind of contemplative. Still reasons distinctlylike an INFP - See, One of them was religious, for example, and I’m pretty sure an INTP would have had more posts about why they were religious or not, though it’s one of the types most likely to be a non-believer, the religious ones tend to have a theological bent and talk about the perfection and incomprehensibility of god, how god is totally logical etc. (Thomas Acquinas is a famous example) - their faith will be an ordered self-consistent system. A bit like that example of copernikus assuming the orbits must be perfectly circular because natture as he understood it would tend toward the most “perfect” forms. I’m not religious and I could likewise talk about that at lenght.

Arguments that convinced me: “This is how these beliefs came from, not an actual god” and “If were made out of single celled organism who die all the time as shed skin cells, how would the rest of them dieing at once be different?” “Even if your religion is true that means many, if not all others are not. So at least all some must be myths. How is your “true” religion different from them?”

Arguments made by famous Te-Fi users: “Occams Razor.” “We can’t disprove a giant sucker on the back of Pluto either, but its no reason to suppose one.”“Belief in god hampers human development and creates dependent, slavish mentality”

That 5!INFP’s attitude toward their belief reminded me more of another Fi dom I know (albeit an ISFP). “Yeah, I know the common objections, but look, it’s what I believe. Don’t come into my house and be a jerk to me about it.” or “[Assholish behavior] is not actually in line with my religion. My religion, and this aspect of it, are actually about love/peace/duty/etc”

If, while conversing, you hit a hard disagreement, that is, an axiom that’s not up for debate, your Fi-dom friend may change the topic/agree to disagree/ “It’s just the way I feel”

[This could apply to other moral or ideological questions religion is just an example; This is not supposed to be about religion it’s just here to illustrate a perceived difference. . I’m not implying all INFPs have the same approach to religion or even have to be religious.]

Another conversation I remember having with them actually on the very subject of Fi vs Fe. IDK how we got to that topic but I mentioned something I initially thought was an enneagram thing (my memory is vague on the details) but I mentioned something like lowkey feeling guilty for receiving praise that I believe was undeserved.

She deemed it a Fe thing and said that for her, as a Fi dom/ fe opposing type, a bit of praise she did not agree with might not cause any reaction at all unless she thought they had a point or otherwise had a reaction from her end, like deciding the criticism was unfair - why should she feel guilty b/c of what someone else says?

Granted that’s just an anecdote, but what am I to do? INFP 5s are not super common. Also I’m not making this decisionbased on any single of these examples but... not even from the “preponderance” so much as to how they can be best explained.

And of course, if I really did get everything wrong after looking into the topic for years, what guarantee is there that I typed any of those people correctly? None, as one of the trolls/claimants correctly pointed out.

After all what I want is the truth, it doesn’t matter what it is. Or at least that is what I strive for as much as human frailty allows. so what if I’m an INFP? INFPs are awesome. I even considered the type early on, I just thougnt INTP fit better especially once I found out about inferior functions. And I have always held that a person has no obligation to follow their “talents”. If I don’t have a “talent” for reason (which isn’t the same as mbti thinking anyways) all the reasons why I believe that it is a good way of life to aim for would still stand. Reason is a method to correct for human error and bias, after all, the error and bias we all have, no matter what Ji function we use.

Type insofar as it can even be said to be a real thing is a classfication of emergent qualities, not a hard measure you can get in an instrument.

As much as I’d want to figure this out, there comes a point where you just have to like step back and put it in context. it’s just a personality test/ little tool to facilitate communication in which “maybe this or that” is more helpful than nothing.

Striving for it despite not being handed talent at birth is all the more worthwhile - and if reason was only for certain kinds of people what’s the point of it? Regardless of what tropes people associate with “science” or “logic”, what they actually are by definition are simple basic methods.

Last but not least there was a moment

Soo, existential crisis. At least they can’t doubt that I’m a melancholic or an oldham ideosyncraticXD

Then, my doubt crumbled away to the “ mostly sure, dont think it could be anything else but im not omnicient” levels at which it was before.

What happened? Well, a rare event:

Well, I went outside and talked to people.

I visited my folks, saw new places, got into a few unscripted situations in other words.

I’ve seen one post detailing that INs may mistype because they analyze themselves as a whole, feature in less apparent traits and second-guess their reasoning worrying about bias, noticing what sticks out more than the norm etc. and so on and that may be it in part but I don’t think it’s only this relatively “noble”, too-much-of-a-good-thing mistake.

- It’s a matter about how we are all about ~extrapolating~ from data and using multiple data points and less about decisiveness and practicality. We brood away endlessly trying to come up with interpretations and conceptualizations that makes all the data points fit rather than just going with what they themselves largely seem to suggest.

One good description I once heard is that Intuitives think in networks while Sensors think in puzzle pieces - I went overboard trying to build ever more complex networks instead of going “Yeah, with all the puzzle pieces so far it’s probably this.”.

Sometimes the latter approach can be incomplete and miss game changing interconnections - but just as often, the former gets convoluted and therefore, both uselessly vague and too far removed from the actual data its meant to interpret.

Aaaand, well, almost every sentence I said was “Did you know that...?” or “I think so/ don’t think so because of [observation followed by possible deduction].

Sure, I could be biased in my observation or unconsciously “doing it on purpose to appear a certain way” even if I don’t think I am or care about that, , but some critical mass of “doing it on purpose” would itself be equivalent with 5 (or a 3)

I was a little afraid one time; I reacted by withdrawing and looking at the whole thing as an observatrion and it was a highly temporary thing. And as much as I complain about Fe users playing police, I may have been guilty of one moment of overreacting, unwanted/socially-chiding “help” myself there. (The person perhaps justly called me a know-it-all. They were wrong about one thing but I may have handled it all more constructively) I repeatedly expressed vague undifferentiated preferrences that were closer to analyzing what factors were at work rather than having clear like/dislike reasons readily available. .

I critiqued a TV show (myself and the local INTJ annoying all the non-NTs with our loud, animated critiquing ) and a big factor to being unabvle to enjoy it fully was the lack of High-Concept abstract sci fi content and mostly the lack of consistency - normally a lot of my enjoyment would come from extrapolatinmg and deducing what the world is like and how it, the themes and charactzers “work”, but here I coulnd do that because it was tacked onto a ‘verse it did not fit into. I observed how said INTJ and I reacted to us correcting each other on small things with like a brief thanks or apology & just moving on whilst similar things had gotten annoyed snarks out of our otherwise patient Feeler sister...

The nails in the coffin were those 2 tumblr posts, one about differences in how Fi and low Fe argue (the latter pile including 3 phrases I used verbatim in the last discussion with my SO just hours earlier) and a post by the afore mentioned “resonable poster” about, as she called it “oversharing in soc variants vs soc blinds” though the correct amount of sharing might well be in the eye of the beholder.

But that was the one objection of the troll I didn’t have a non-vague satisfactory reply to, what rly kept me wondering rather than “eh not gonna reinvent the wheel again”, something about “sp/sx woldn’t have long descriptions or emo rants” Apparently they do when they never have to dea with the person again (such as on the internets. )

IDK I did move the description so no one’s forced to read it but lots of peeps have one (This is like... a blogging site??) but the reasons for its existence had more to do with “completionist urges related to then-current obsession (typology)” and “So I like X, bite me.” sort of sentiment than whatever it was they presuposed.

Dear Causal-Deterministic peeps (ENTP, INFP, ISTP, ESFP): Instances of the same behavior can be caused by different causes! Look at this: 2 4 8.

What’s the pattern? - Could be “powers of 4″. Could also be “even numbers” or even “any increasing integer”.

Of course this whole mess is an example of where we H-P folks (INTP, ENFP, ISFP, ESTP) look at everything from multiple angels/Povs, (”Is it like this? Is it lika that? It COULD be seen this other way...”) rather than, well, decide which ones are most relevant here/ “Pick one”. At least the SPs have Se to “just grab one” or whatever it is they do.

Whereas we just stand there speculating XD The ENFPs sorta do it too but in a whole different way/ area of life?

Me: “Either he is nuts or I am nuts because we can’t both be telling the truth!”

ENFP: “Well I empasize with both of you so I don’t think either of you is nuts?”

Me: Sorry but this is a real dichotomy here for once. If he dun nothing wrong, then I would be wrong for accusing him thus, just as he says..

ENFP: Can we all agree to disagree and chil maybe? plz??

Might also be why there`s this overlap between ENFPs and Universalists? Though obviously not all ENFPs are universalists and vice versa.

So yeah. Kinda comical in hindsight. I started out all second guess-ey and entertaining both possibilities in parallel but in the end, well, I do think it’s INTP after all, at least, I’d say its the most probable by a considerable margin. Most definitely 5 tho. For all the occasionall 4 ness its by far the most overwhelming tendency in day to day life/thinking ugh cant I NOT spew nerd facts about everything in sight. What are other conversaton topics?

Bottom Line: By thinking about your own thinking you alter your thinking, and that way lie 2nd order chaotic systems, the Uncertainty Principle and Goedel’s Theorem...

So going outside both threw me out of that recursion and added new, raw data as a means to test the competing hypotheses. It forced me to see what I actually act like by and large in a natural setting rather than the many ways I could interpret or read the way I act like, which like, is not actually all that mysterious lol

#mbti #intp

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hazydreamerneko · 7 years ago

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Report of LH Live Tour 2017「Shingeki no Kiseki」8/7 Concert in Chiba (PART I)

Original Report (Chinese) found here

Original Text (Chinese) by：初霜翼 Image report by：-流曰-

Translations by: HazyDreamerNeko/LostNeko (Referencing Lyrics Translations by marchen-v-friedhof)

It’s been a while since I have done any translations, but I was very excited to read the report and have thus sought permission from the Sound Horizon Chinese Wiki site to translate and share the cuteness that is Revo with overseas Laurants ^^

It’s SUPER LONG so I will split it to 3 parts, this is part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Any use of the original text please contact the Chinese site/writer to seek permission. Any mistakes with translations please feel free to contact me!

Before the Concert

Merch:

Day 1 merch sales start from 11am in the morning. Perhaps due to the reservation system employed for the Premium seat audiences, the queue for the merchandises is not very long, it’s possible to see the head of the queue.

Right after 11, announcement was made by staff to conduct the sales of merchandises: We will now begin the sales of「Shingeki no Kiseki」Tour merchandises. Shinzou wo sasage yo!! (Offer up your hearts!!)

Linhora Corps Members: …?! Ha!! (Did the Heart Salute by reflex)

It took a moment for us to realize what we did, and everyone started laughing and clapping. This time, the staffs also did the heart salute to customers as they sell the merch. Entering the venue, purchasing the merchandises, getting the stamp, and taking a seat all happened as usual. My seat for day 1 was on row 13, which was rather close to the stage. I could even see the preparations going on behind the screen before the performance began. I could also easily identify YUKI who took his position with his guitar.

Announcement before the opening. As expected of Linhora opening announcements, even though it was not SH and there wasn’t Sascha making use of various popular SH lyrics, there were still bunch of settings incorporated to emphasize the story elements. The announcer is a female voice, and introduced herself as “Linhora Corps Relay team Recruit Isuka (TN: Iska?)”

Iska: Everyone from Linhora Ichihara branch, good evening. Welcome to the Live Tour organized by Linhora Corps, 「Shingeki no Kiseki」. I am Linhora Corps Relay team recruit Iska. I heard from our squad leader, Vial, that there are a lot of creatures bigger than Titans in the Ichihara branch. They are called “Elephants”. Even though they are not a species that eat people, I still get very frightened when I see gigantic creatures!

Subsequently it was various precautionary announcements. These were repeated twice, the first time emphasizing that photos and recordings are not permitted, and the second time to test the wristbands. Unlike Sascha, there are not much lyrics thrown into the announcements at these parts. Iska explained everything in a very proper manner. Her sentences always end with 「~dearimasu」(TN: indicating formality (?)).

After the second round of announcements, it was about time for the concert to start. The screen was still down, and the image of the (shingeki) wall was projected upon it. As we waited, a row of people came up behind the screen, presumably the singers, and they stood neatly in a row. Subsequently, someone whose silhouette closely resembled Revo walked to the center of the stage. Everyone screamed and cheered while clapping.

Main

All the songs from the main performance were fully accompanied by videos from SNK anime, it’s quite extravagant. Moreover the contents of the anime and songs are matched almost seamlessly.

After the show, someone commented that it is “An Ojisan that loves SNK and is a diehard fan of SNK. He brought together the singers and musicians he liked to create the best SNK music from his heart. This was coupled with the best edited anime clips to form the “official” huge MAD with concert music onsite.” That’s true wwwwwwwww.

Especially in the songs for the female supporting characters, the key sound effects completely match with the anime clips. Regardless if it was the sound of Carla being eaten by the titans, the sound of Ilse being eaten by the titans, the sound of the Petra’s body being tossed from the cart, or the sound of Annie’s female titan fingers being sliced by Mikasa, all these scenes was shown on the screen.

01. Nikagetsugo no Kimi e (To You in Two Months)

The sound of wind and the sea started after the venue darkened. The wristbands turned blue.

The prelude began with the scenes on the translucent screen. Across the wall, through the Titan Forest, and thereafter is the scene from the first episode of the anime. The wristband turned orange. At the same time the stage lit up, revealing the person behind the screen.

The main singer is Commander (Revo), 5 singers stood alongside him for the harmony. This included the chorus part at the beginning, and the refrain. The choreography is the same as ToLH (Theme of Linked Horizon), there’s a strong sense of déjà vu.

Commander’s clothes are the ones on the album cover. The five singers’ clothes are mainly white, with the Linhora style napoleon jacket in black with gold accents. Their hair are styled similarly to the main character of their songs. The other musicians’ clothes are also of the same standardized style.

At the part「Guren no hi wo matoi (Wreathing yourself in crimson light)」the huge screens inside of the stage lit up, showing a red sea.

「Ji ni moeru kusa no me ni wa ( grass buds sprouting from the earth)」the images were of fields with flowers

As the screen in front played clips from the first episode, the screen at the back shows the sea. At around the interlude the translucent screen opens and the anime clip transfers to the screen at the back. The dancers appeared at around「Korekara mo tsudzuku tatakai wa (This battle will only grow harshe)」, performing as though in combat with hand lights that looked like silver lightsabers to express the “Battle” here. There’s a total of four dancers here, theres seven on the concert publications. Unless more people are added during subsequent concerts, it should be alternating between the seven dancers.

The band also appeared during the interlude. During the guitar solo, Commander played along with air guitar.

When Sascha announced the song title in German, it was shown on the screen with the handwritten animation effect.

The dancer’s props were super cool this time. During this song we thought it was just normal silver lightsabre representing the blade of the omni-directional mobility gear. But the light effects are actually adjustable, and it was used in various unexpected ways as the concert progressed…

- MC -

After Nikagetsu , Commander made the scissors hands gesture before he even started speaking. It’s super cute!

He spoke too much during this MC and I can’t remember everything, so this is just the rough idea.

Commander: Good evening. We are Linked Horizon. The tour finally started. Ahh, the rehearsals passed in the blink of an eye. I wanted to practice for a while longer, but on one hand it’s the desire for more rehearsals, on the other hand I still wanted to meet all of you sooner.

Commander: This tour is already longer than the rehearsals. That rarely happens for my concerts.

Commander: I’m very happy to be performing with such excellent members. I hope this tour will become one that makes everyone increasingly love SNK.

Commander: Ah from my perspective the lights on the audiences are so bright. Even with my sunglasses it’s so bright! There should still be a lot of people in the back rows, right? Shine some light there for me to have a look~? Fighting for the opening tickets should have been an intense battle for you all, the seats should be quite full, it should be fine to shine the lights there I hope? If it happens that the back rows are not filled, I am going to feel uneasy.

(The lights are adjusted brighter towards the back)

Commander: Oh oh~ Among those seated here, regardless if it’s for Sound Horizon or Linked Horizon, who is the first time seeing us perform today~?

(A show of hands, mostly among the back rows)

Laurants: \Oh oh oh~/ (Claps)

Commander: Thank you, but I can’t see the show of hands like this! Stop clapping for a while, sorry, can the first timers raise your hands again?

(A show of hands)

Commander: Ah quite a few. For this performance, it doesn’t matter to what extend you like or understand Linked Horizon, you can enjoy it so long as you like SNK. Although I trust that there will be a lot of people here who know us very well, the concert today are irrelevant to past concerts! Everyone is on the same starting line. Perhaps the ones who know us well will feel that I am being too long-winded. But I hope to make this as easy as possible for the unfamiliar ones. (He repeated things to this effect several times)

Commander: We intentionally rearranged the CD song sequence for the subsequent set list. Please anticipate what the next song will be.

02. Moshi Kono Kabe no Naka ga Ikken no Ie Dato (If Everything Within These Walls were Just One House)

The moment the prelude’s pendulum sound began, everyone started cheering.

Although I had expected them to play this song, I didn’t expect it this early!

In hindsight, it made sense since both Nikagetsu and Guren are Revocal. It might be too tiring for him to sing back to back in concert, as per the sequence in the CD. Thus, it was necessary to insert a song by another singer between them. Inserting this song before Guren is seamless both in terms of music continuity and story timeline. After all, the ending to this song matches the beginning of Guren - it is the most suitable under all considerations.

It’s still fully accompanied by anime clips. The beginning is the same “door” as in Jiyuu e no Shingeki (TN: gate? I’m not entirely sure what they are referring to..) , with a young Armin beside the door. The subsequent video focused on the trio when they were young, and the part in ep 12 where Armin was shouting at Eren after he lose his mind in his Titan form. There were also home Eren imagined (?) and Armin knocking outside the window. The lyrics「Water made of flames, lands of ice and snowy fields of sand are expanding」were perfectly matched with the images in the video.

Unlike in the CD but akin to all the other songs in 《Shingeki no Kiseki》, Sascha’s German narration of the song title was added, with the title simultaneously displayed on screen with animated effects.

03. Guren no Yumiya (Crimson Bow and Arrows)

Moshikabe logically flowed into Guren no Yumiya.

The narration is of course the album version. The TV Size part of the song used the season one OP animation, thereafter it’s from the first few episodes of season 1, the start of the first episode and Eren vs Colossal Titan etc.

Narration for「That day mankind received a grim reminder…」used the same scene as where the narration appeared in the anime.

The Dancer’s hand lights which we initially thought to be silver blades changed in this song to look like they were spitting fire, such that when they swung them around they looked like burning arrows. What’s even cooler was when they spun it - the afterimage looked like flames!

The「Jäger」and「Eren」were standard Call & Response，「Wir sind der Jäger」also continued being audiences’ chorus.

Commander’s actions were also the familiar set of actions. Yet they seem subtly less than what I remembered from Kouhaku…

04. 14 Moji no Dengon (14 Lettered Message)

Sung by Eiko Matsumoto.

Scenes are of Carla’s highlights, so of course it’s mainly from ep 1 and ep 2.

During the thunder background sound effect at「Mata kikime no usui kogoto o kurikaesu (I scold you again, as ineffective as it is)」, the stage lights also flashed, imitating lighting.

During「Jikan'yotomare (if only time would stop)」, the images turned to black and white, and the lights on the wristbands faded away.

It switched to Carla’s final scenes at「Tatoe anata ga (Even if you eventually…)」. The rhythm and the sound effect of the titan’s footsteps starts to be almost in sync with the video.

The melodica at the end was live by Igarashi.

Finally, the sound effect when the Titan bit down M A T C H E S P E R F E C T L Y with the scene in the anime.

What was already a very impactful scene became even more emotional with live music accompaniment.

How daRE.

In the end the screen showed CG of three birds flying across a sunset sky, recreating the final image in the BK.

05. Guren no Zahyou (Crimson Coordinates)

The translucent screen is down. There’s the sound of rain at the start, and there’s also drizzling projected on the translucent screen.

At「Rakuen o samayoeru awarena hitokage (Pitiful silhouettes that wander in paradise)」the four dancers imitated the mindless roaming titans.

「Jäger」and「Krueger」are again standard Call & Response。

The two parts「Sono ishi wa Muda janai (Their dying wish won’t be in vain), Kono mama ja Owarasenai (I won’t let it end like this)」and「Kono ishi yo Toki o koe (Let their dying wish transcend time), Nandodemo Uketsuga re (To be passed on over and over again)」switch between the left and right channels as in the CD, and the light position also change according to the sound channels.

06. Saigo no Senka (The Final Battle Deed)

Sung by Tsukika

During the first part of the song, scenes from when Survey Corps depart for the 57th expedition beyond the walls were shown.

They start to use the OAD scenes in the second part.

After「Watashi wa saigomade kusshinai (I will never give up)」,「Kidachi chino kage ni (…from behind the trees)」was immediately matched to the scene of titans appearing. 「Yumiru no Tami… Yumiru-sama.. yokuzo (“…subjects…of..Ymir…” “…great….Ymir…” “Well met…”)」fully correspond to the image of the titan talking on screen. Tsukika will make the gesture of writing everytime she sings「Kusshinai (never give up)」

The second last part of the song fully correspond to final moments of Ilsa in the OAD, the sound (TN: of the notebook dropping?) and the image are totally in sync.

For the last part of the song, the stage was lit with purple lights.

- MC -

When the darkened stage brightened again, Commander is back with a change of clothes.

Commander: Thank you

Commander: As we kept singing, were you all thinking “Are there no MCs anymore”?

Commander (Turning to look behind): Ah-! Why did everyone disappear from the stage once I come up for MC? Is it because everyone at the Ichihara branch are too uncooperative?

\Eh--??/

Commander: Nah (Laughs). The next song will be one that is religious in nature. This song doesn’t need the band, instead there’s a choir – (turns around) Even though the choir is not here today, the singers will sing it with the audio of the choir. There��s no accompaniment, so there won’t be any band performing. But it would be boring if it’s only like that, so the band members will be here dressed as believers (Wallists) . They are now preparing backstage, so I’m here to buy time.

Commander: Does everybody know about the Church of the Walls? I don’t really understand their doctrine, but roughly it’s just that the walls are untouchable! If you touch it, you will provoke them! You can only look at the walls, but not touch it! If you touch it, you will offend them! You will be punished!

Commander: Since we can’t touch the walls, can we dig a tunnel from beneath it? No! Even though tunnels are really convenient, isn’t it? You have all travelled on things like Shinkansen right? Like the Tokaido Line (makes gesture of a straight line). If we can’t dig tunnels things will become very difficult (Gestures a squiggly line)!

Commander: In summary, the wall is sacred, you can’t do anything to the walls!

Commander: Has everyone seen the anime? (Image of the Wallists praying is shown on screen) That’s the feel of the Church of the Wall. Does it give you a sense of foreboding? Despite having considered that it might be fun for all of you to sing it, the song requires splitting the singers into different groups. I’m afraid once we start singing you might get confused like “eh? Which part was I supposed to sing again?”, and some will not be able to keep up. So for now – and it’s only optional! If you want, you can do this Wallists action, and link like a chain with the person next to you. It’s entirely voluntary! Absolutely do not force yourself! It’ll be bad if I’m suddenly telling you to link arms with the strange old man beside you, and in hindsight it becomes “I didn’t want to do it at all! We were sweaty and sticky and didn’t want to touch at all but this bastard Glasses Oji-san forced us to do it!” No, it’s voluntary. The band members know each other so it’s fine. For all of you, casually introduce yourself to the person beside you and ask each other “Do you want to do it?”. If yes, reply “Jäger (Looking very passionate)” , if not, say “No Jäger (Looking very disdainful)” like this. I hope I can let everyone have the sensation of being in a great church. After we are done we will be accepting everyone’s complains –– it will be received and managed after the tour ~

\(Laughter)/

But from my observations, at least most within my field of vision linked arms.

07. Kami no Miwaza (The Work of the Divine)

The five female singers were wearing white robes with necklaces of the Church of the Wall. They sang while standing on the stairs in the middle of the stage.

The band members stood on both sides of the stairs, cosplaying as Wallists.

There were three steps of stairs, the singers stood in the formation of 2-2-1 from top to bottom steps respectively. At the 「Thou～Thou～Thou～」part, the singers on each step repeat it once. At「Maria」「Rose」「Sina」, the singer on the first step sings 「Maria」, the second step「Rose」, the third「Sina」, symbolizing the three layer of walls.

(Continues in Part 2)

#translations #linked horizon #shingeki no kiseki #linhora #sh stuff #revo #sound horizon #sanhora

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cleargreengames · 5 years ago

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t i t l e:e l t i t

first post here, filler. i made a new blog because sharing content thats all informal and such didnt seem right for the page where i post my artwork . i guess though since i ramble a lot and talk about myself and other random shit in the game videos im gonna be posting here theres no reason not to also like reblog stuff and also use it as a personal blog (to an extent). im a little bit weird toward being open about myself online; i can never sort out my feelings on it. for a lot of reasons. like one thing is i mainly now use social media just for posting my artwork and i like to keep my person-self away from that so the art has to speak for itself because ive somehow transformed into the cliche of compulsive creating things to communicate things i cant organize into statements. . like this text post im making as a product of racing thoughts and because of anxieties that i need to put a line in the sand here for myself that this is separate from my work and its okay to like just be a person on the internet idek the social aspect of the internet is so strange and cool and in a way intimidating but also really inspiring. but enough about that im planning to wait a few days before i start posting any videos. they are a litle bit weird but not hyperactive or anything. maybe good background audio if you dont mind my talking. theres already some on my youtube channel and ive got some piling up to be edited. theres some aspects of sharing informal content like my gaming videos that makes me slightly anxious like time spent editing videos and my weird relationship with my voice. cause i have a weird voice and it used to be a big source of gender dysphoria for me but im pretty comfortable with my voice now and sometimes kind of like it as its just sort of become different over time. still strange though. and i hope that some people will enjoy my videos, so i guess i a little bit worry about people hating my voice. but then its like... oh well ! lol im used to it being a weird thing and also i feel like probably a lot of other trans girls have a tougher time with it so im lucky with some things, and not lucky with other things. idek ; at this point im sorta feeling like i might start rambling so im gonna stop. i just felt like i needed to get this off my chest so my head would be clear and id have more of my confidence/”ah, fuck it” back i think im mostly writing this to my self. if for some reason you read down this far, hi ! whats up? i hope you have a really good day <3 <3 <3 - becky u.

#venting #personal #anxeity #confident #dysphoria #trans gamers #youtube #social media #self #weird vibes #just a rant

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ixvyupdates · 6 years ago

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I’m a Black Gay Man, and Supporting LGBTQ+ Kids Is Important to Me

Brian Coleman, who heads the counseling department at Jones College Prep, has been named the 2019 National School Counselor of the Year. This is the second year in a row that a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) counselor has held the title. Maureen Kelleher of Chicago Unheard spoke with Brian recently about his journey from acting to school counseling, the ways Jones is strengthening college access for first-gen and under-represented students and how student advocacy has created safe space for LGBTQ+ students and improved sex education at Jones. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Tell us your story. How did you become a school counselor?

I’ve always been really passionate about human behavior and patterns of human behavior. I think that first manifested for me through acting. When I was in college, I started touring with About Face Youth Theater. We were doing really powerful pieces related to LGBTQ+ homelessness in Chicago high schools. We had talk-backs with the students after the shows, discussing identity, privilege and power, social justice and so many other issues. I was so moved by the discussions we were having, I began asking myself, “How can I engage in school work in a more intentional way? Who does this kind of work in schools?”

I quickly realized school counselors are best positioned to explore identity development with high school students and thought, “If I’m going to make a career change that would be the way to go.”

I interviewed at Jones College Prep, got accepted as an intern and have been there ever since.

I’ve seen the research showing that students from low-income neighborhoods at selective enrollment schools are actually less likely to attend selective colleges than either their wealthier peers in their school or kids from neighborhoods like theirs who attend high-performing neighborhood or magnet schools. I’ve also seen research showing that high-achieving Black and Latinx students across CPS are especially likely to see their grades plummet freshman year, which can have long-lasting negative effects on GPA. Taken together, these findings raise concerns that selective enrollment schools aren’t supporting low-income students of color as well as one would expect, particularly when it comes to college access. How are you working to change this?

It’s a work in progress. We’ve seen some of the research and data on how students of color do at selective enrollment and we’re asking how do we create buy-in around equity and access? How are we making sure all students have access to AP courses? What are the prerequisities?

When I started at Jones, our counseling work with juniors and seniors was almost exclusively about postsecondary, while with freshmen and sophomores the work was mostly social emotional. I started by working with freshmen and sophomores and it was painful to turn that relationship over to another counselor just as they were starting to work on postsecondary.

More than anything, counseling is relationship driven work. Starting a relationship with kids halfway through their high school process and jumping into postsecondary work did not serve student interests. You can’t replicate two years of work.

We moved to a model where we sustain relationships across the four years. Each counselor has a segment of the alphabet and works with those kids for all four years. This has allowed us to ensure we are constantly working on three strands of development: postsecondary, social emotional, and academic in the sense of understanding GPA, learning about time management, and so on.

Now we’re doing a better job of targeting. We went from not knowing our percentage of first-generation kids to tracking it. This is our second year of tracking intensively at each grade level who are our first-gens. [Coleman estimates between a quarter and a third of Jones’ student body could be described as first-generation college students.]

This is our first year offering a counseling group for juniors about what being first-gen might mean for going through the college admissions process. We’ve revised all our college and postsecondary curriculum to spell out the possibilities for students who aren’t in the junior group.

As the parent of a transgender daughter, I can tell you that Jones has a very strong reputation in the community for supporting LGBTQ+ students. How did it get there? How did you help?

That brings tears to my eyes, to be honest. It means a lot to me that Jones is known to be a welcoming space. It’s a very important piece of what brought me to this work.

When I started here there was a GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance]. I will never forget one of the first conversations I had here, with a student who said, “But I’m not gay or straight, so how is this an organization for me?”

That was a beautiful moment of learning for me and I realized we needed a rebrand to make a change. I immediately became the sponsor of the organization we had known as our GSA. We’ve been through some different names based on what spoke to students. About two years ago we rebranded to Jones Pride. I think that’s something students can get behind.

I came into Jones expecting students to want more of an advocacy organization. What I found was students wanted a safe and affirming space to talk about issues important to them. It was a good fit. In addition to our [Jones Pride] group, I ran a counseling group for students (Exploring Gender and Sexuality) where students could get structured support for the coming-out process. Over time a lot of that morphed into Jones Pride.

A lot of my work has also been helping rebrand counseling. I’m a Black gay man, I’m a big personality and from day one I said, “Supporting gay and gender non-conforming kids is important to me.” Students come up and tell me, “I heard about you before I got here.” I have facilitated many conversations between students and their counselors here. I don’t think prior to me participating in the counseling function did students think, “Oh, these are issues I could explore with my counselor.”

Staff struggle to know how to talk in an open and affirming way about choices and decisions students are making related to gender and sexuality. Those are many conversations I’ve had with our staff. Comprehensive sex education is a program we are still trying to get established across our school communities.

Tell me more about the changes to the sex education curriculum at Jones. Is there interest in sharing what you’ve developed with other Chicago high schools?

When I arrived, comprehensive sexual health education was offered to freshmen and given through outside providers. Students would say, “What about us—gender and sexual minority students?”

Jones Pride members talked with the sophomore student government association. They took it to administration and the P.E. department. Then the adults came to me and said, “Mr. Coleman, can you help us figure this out?” That’s not something I can say no to. The sophomore student government association wanted content on gender and sexual identity development, healthy relationships and laws related to sexual violence.

CPS and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance have created this incredible K-12 curriculum for schools to be using. I got trained on the full curriculum and found relevant options for the sophomores—healthy relationships, sexual violence. I said, “I can support this, but this has to be schoolwide, and I need more staff. Mr. Coleman will not be teaching comprehensive sex education to the entire sophomore class.” I put out a call to staff, and eight people were willing to get trained and help teach. Over a few days, 470 or so sophomores received three hours straight of curriculum provided by a duo of teachers. This year we’re revising the model to build a partnership between last year’s team and the P.E. department.

People in education want to do right by students. When you hear from students, “This is how you can support us,” it’s much easier to gain traction for new programming.

Is there anything else you want to tell our audience of teachers and parents?

What we’ve been able to do at Jones doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are powerful things happening at the district level around social-emotional learning and postsecondary planning. There’s amazing professional development coming from the district helping us understand first-generation students and postsecondary planning. I’ve seen that be powerful.

There is district support prioritizing counseling. It’s not just Jones. There’s momentum around creating space, time, energy and priority for counselors around the district. With things happening on the state level around special education, we were able to get a case manager about three months ago. There is money for schools to get additional support with case management.

With Kirsten Perry being the National School Counselor of the Year Last year, it shows we’ve been able to accomplish amazing things in very different environments. [You can read about Perry’s work at North Lawndale Community Academy here.] It really speaks to the wonderful work happening in our district.

An original version of this interview appeared on Chicago Unheard as Jones Counselor Brian Coleman Talks College Access, Sex Ed and Supporting LGBTQ+ Students.

Photos courtesy of Brian Coleman.

I’m a Black Gay Man, and Supporting LGBTQ+ Kids Is Important to Me syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

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topicprinter · 6 years ago

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I saw there was a post on this recently, and after reading the comments saw there was some good advice, and some bad. In today’s world online and social media marketing are becoming not only important, but actual tools to increase revenue and profit. There’s a bunch of ways to grow an IG account, and a bunch of ways to tank one. This will be a long post, so I’ll try and break into bits. Apologies for mobileSorry guys, I know I'm super late on this, I've just been really busy the past couple months. Here you go, and please don't hesitate to reach out for specific help or advice. Also I'm sure I missed some points, so feel free to add your experience. Just be very careful about using suggestions. Saw some advice in the comments on my last post that was good, and some that was bad. Do your research, and be careful. Have at itUNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCEIt really doesn't matter all that much what you're using your IG account for, whether it's to sell a product, to increase brand awareness, to create connections, or just to generate hype, if you don't understand your audience. Know the consumers you're trying to target and what kind of things they like and follow. Do your research, google searches, ask random people on the street, ask friends and family what they think and how would they feel. As with all things marketing, the most important step is to put yourself into their shoes and think strategically the best way to engage with themTHE IMPORTANT THING IS TO COME AT IT WITH A STRATEGY. Each post is an opportunity to gain followers. Your waves of followers will come from quality posts, so make sure you attack each post with a strategy and a hungry mentality. If you're on this sub, y'all are fucking sharks. Be a shark.THE ALGORITHMIn all honesty, we don’t really know what the algorithm is, but understanding how it works is far more important. Basically, like Facebook, Instagram has a formula that ranks its content (posts) in the feed and in the explore page (more on the explore page later). It has variables such as time of post, total likes and comments, hashtags, location, details on the account that posted, and even includes software to recognize what is in each post, and boost or demote it that way. Therefore, if you tend to only like pictures that have luxury cars in them, IG will boost those pictures in your feed. If you only pics of food or dogs, IG will boost pics of food or dogs in your feed and explore page. Each account has a slightly different algorithm in this regard.This is why it’s important first of all to understand your target audience, and get in their shoes, not yours. So if your product is a technology that primarily benefits middle aged woman, but you only post pictures of the technology, you won’t do as well as if you posted pictures that were applicable and likeable by middle aged woman. Like and comments are your direct assessment of your post. If your audience like it, they’ll engage with you. If not, they won’t.Also the algorithm changes every few months, so what worked last year or even last quarter, probably won't work the exact same way now.POST FREQUENCYSome of the comments on the previous post touched on this, but gave some poor advice. Do NOT listen to anyone who tells you you have to post as frequently as you can or post twice a day no exceptions. This is shit advice. Anyone who makes a sweeping rule is clearly not a real entrepreneur, or at least not a very good one. Theres more than way to skin a cat.In general, posting twice a day is a safe option. Once a day, isn't bad either, 3x a day can work. I've had success with even posting 3x a week. I would say somewhere between 3-20x a week. But make sure you aren't oversaturating your feed. You can easily bother your followers by making too many low quality posts. Quality over quantity every time. I know this probably sounds vague, but the important thing to remember is each account is different and unique. Please feel free to ask questions specific to you in the comments and I bet as a community we can really give some good advice.TIME OF POSTPretty simple here. 12-9pm EST tends to be best. 12, 3, and 9 specifically. This is when most people tend to be on IG. Sorry if you're international, but I would suggest a quick google search looking for best times to post on IG. Generally speaking, Sunday tends to be the least engaging day of the week, but I've still found plenty of success these days.CONTENTQuality content is so important to have. There are three types of posts you can make on Instagram. Just a regular picture, a video, or a gallery post, meaning multiple selections where the user has to swipe in order to see the full post. Generally speaking, videos that are 10-30 second long will perform best, but this is absolutely not a rule of thumb. All posts that have a clear resolution, aren't cropped weird, and are professional are capable of performing well. People are forgoing their websites to only use an Instagram page for their business. Therefore, you have to use professional and quality content on your page. I've only had one post that was blurry that performed well, and it was in the middle of a good week (all other posts were getting thousands, and some tens of thousands of likes and engagements). IG boosts accounts that show consistent positive results.I know that it can be hard to find quality content to post, so if you have questions in this regard specific to your account or business, let me know in the comments.Otherwise, there are a couple apps that let you pull down other profile's posts off the app. I like Grab the best, but it is a bit clunky to use. Buffer lets you do reposts, but I've had a lot of bad experience with Buffer, but one of my mentors has really loved it, so you can try it out and decide for yourself.Always tag people in your posts as well. Instagram lets you tag up to 20 accounts in one post, and you can now tag in videos too! this is awesome. So find influencers in your niche and tag them. Find big accounts related to your niche, and tag them. Find pages your audience follows, and tag them.We also need to discuss the concept of a powerlike. A powerlike is when someone with a big following likes your picture and engages with you. Your post is then much more likely to be displayed in their followers feeds and explore pages. Certain accounts likes have more value than others, so use this to your advantage.EXPLORE PAGEYour ultimate goal through organic growth is to consistently get on the explore page and get promoted this way. The explore page is the page you access through the little magnifying glass at the bottom of the mobile app, or the compass when using desktop (don't use desktop, IG's desktop sucks). It shows suggestions to you based on your previous likes and comments and who you follow. This is a great way to utilize OUTSIDE ENGAGEMENT, which I'll get to later.HASHTAGSProbably the best improvement you can make on your content is the correct use of hashtags. Each post can have up to 30, so use 30. I also suggest “hiding” them in the comments section by posting them as a comment, but there’s no evidence to support that this truly makes a difference. Use hashtags relevant to your niche. If you’re niche is in to cars, but your using hashtags like #hairstylistlove or #cutedogsoninstagram, IG will actually tank you for incorrectly “gaming” the algorithm.There’s a couple of strategies you can use. 10/10/10 is a good start. Basically, there are big hashtags (over 500,000 posts), medium hashtags (50k-500k posts), and small hashtags (under 50k). You’ll see these ranges vary depending on who you ask, but for 10/10/10, I like these ranges. 10/10/10 basically means to use 10 big hashtags, 10 small, and 10 medium sized ones to properly market your post. Pretty simple. There’s also 25/5, and all smalls. In this case I’d use 25 hashtags under 100,000 and 5 over, or all hashtags under 100,000.The important thing with hashtags is to keep experimenting and find what works. Not all posts are going to do well in a good set of hashtags, and not all good posts require a good set of hashtags to do well. Ik that sounds confusing and tricky, but if you take the time, and put effort into making quality content, Instagram will reward you. They want people to USE the app, to SPEND TIME using their product. The more you use it the more you’ll gain.Geotagging is using a hashtag specifically related to your area. So for example #beverlyhills90210 or #minneapolisweather. These can be great if you're specifically trying to grow your brand in an area.Tagstealing is a term I use, but basically, it means going into the explore page and searching a hashtag relevant to your niche. Find a post that performs well compared to that profile's usual posts. So if someone posts a picture and it gets 500 likes when all their other posts get 50, use the hashtags that they did. They already gamed the algorithm and did the hard part for you.SHADOWBANNINGThis is a widely misunderstood concept and its important that we cover it in its own section. Shadowbanning is where Instagram bans certain hashtags from showing your posts in the explore page. usually these hashtags are porn related or can be porn related. So for example, #petite is banned and won't show results when searched. You can just Google banned hashtags checker and find free online tools that determine whether or not something is banned.Shadowbanning is NOT however, Instagram demoting your posts for whatever reason. it is strictly related to hashtagsCAPTIONSCaptions are the voice of your posts. It gives you an opportunity to share your opinion, connect with your audience, drive engagement, or really determine the direction of your post. I almost always recommend having a call to action ("let me know what you think in the comments below") to help drive engagement on your posts. Encourage people to want to interact with you, but don't be desperate. That shit turns people off. Some people have long winded, winding stories as captions, while others have maybe a sentence at most. It really depends on you and who you are. Be genuine and real with your audience, and they'll respond to that. Never try to do something just for the likes, always attack IG with the mindset of being yourself and putting your best content and effort into the page.You can use hashtags here, or you can post them in the comments section. I like utilizing the comments method because it "tricks" the algorithm by showing your post as having an extra comment right away.LOCATIONThis is a tricky one but can greatly be used to your benefit. This mainly affects the explore page. Basically, you want to use a location that garners a lot of activity, and more importantly, people on their phones. Stadiums, famous malls, public monuments, or popular Instagram spots are good locations to use. I’ve had mixed results when using restaurants. If you’re trying to grow in a specific city this is wonderful. But make sure you get a little more specific, if you’re just going to do a certain city. Use a neighborhood instead, i.e. Brooklyn not New York, Beverly Hill not Los Angeles.OTHER TOOLS BESIDES POSTSThis is going to be things like Stories, Live, IGTV. Instagram wants you to use the app, so that they can make more money off of ads. Therefore, they're going to boost you for using the other aspects of the app. Post stories once a day or 5x a week, as a general rule of thumb. An easy strategy with stories is to just do reposts on similar accounts and encourage them to engage with you. Minimal effort for decent reward. also turning the camera around and showing you, talking into the camera, showing your workspace, or you in the field is great as well. More effort, but also probably more reward. Live feed maybe once or twice a week, or more, if you have the content/activity. Things like talks, lectures, videos, lessons etc. Sometimes you can do giveaways exclusive for your live viewers. This encourages viewers to come back consistently and engage in your live stream. IGTV is the newest tool here, but I've best seen it used and used it in the form of interviews, similar to a podcast, or in lectures or announcements. Amanda Bucci has a really great use of stories, live, and IGTV, so check her out for inspiration. These are now so much more important for gaining followers. Make sure you're using hashtags and tagging people in your stories etc as well.OUTSIDE ENGAGEMENTThis is where you'll really separate your account and make huge strides in growth. I grew an account from 3k followers to 10k in 3 months throug this. You should be spending 30 mins to an hour a day, going out and liking and commenting on other people's posts, to help drive engagement to your page. If you haven't noticed by now, the key word in IG is engagement, and you have to give if you wanna get. You can open a post in the explore page, like it, leave a comment that opens/starts a conversation, and move on in literally less than 10 seconds. Great, swipe right, and do it again. and again. and again and again and again for 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after each post. I've seen this strategy work, but also doing this multiple times throughout the day. Experiment and find what works for you. Each account is different and unique. Each method is going to be different and unique. More than one way to skin a cat.Also make sure that youre replying to all your comments on your posts. This will not only increase loyalty and motivation among your followers, but also trick the algorithm. if you get three comments on a post, and reply to all of them, you now have 6 instead of 3. Always be engaging and active with your followers, and try to reach out to other accounts in your niche and bring them in.I saw a question about bots and stuff, there are plenty of bots on instagram. If they leave a comment, then leave a generous reply, and ignore, unless they respond and seem to be more than just automated. Bots are another follow, but having a group of loyal active followers will grow your account much faster than a bunch of bots who don't engage.DONTsDon't buy followers. Most of them tend to be bots, or the wrong type of followers, and won't engage with you at all. Instagram tries to ban these accounts, which could negatively affect yours. Organic growth is infinitely more valuable than buying followers.Don't forget about it or give up. Stay consistent. IG rewards consistency. If you keep at it, you'll eventually break through. Ik trust me, it is very tough and difficult, but can be very rewarding as well.Don't post just to post. Make sure each post has care and effort. Think of it like a new baby each time. You are shaping and raising your baby to give it the best possible opportunity to succeed. If you have a kid just to have a kid and don't put care into, it's going to turn out like shit. Be diligentDOSConsider paying to boost your posts. Get a couple of posts to perform really well, and consider spending 10 or 15 bucks on each post. This can easily bring you a thousand or more followers, depending on your account and history.Do consider reaching out to influencers, asking for help, or a shoutout. This is a livelihood for a lot of people, and they will want to gain off your following as well. Most of the time, it's win win.Engage engage engage. If you come away with one thing from this, it's that engagement is key in Instagram, and you need to find ways to drive engagement on your page. Experiment, try new things, have multiple accounts and cross promote.That sums up the generals guys, but I know that I missed plenty. Please please don't hesitate to bring up any issue or question you have, through either comments or PM. Im super busy right now, but will try to get to all of them. I've worked with single person accounts in past and helped people grow over 100k followers. Currently, I'm working as CMO at a startup, and have experience in all things marketing and sales. I'm looking to get into coaching/consulting, and would love to use you as a guinea pig.Take care, and best wishes

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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jakecgraphicdesign · 7 years ago

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Simple Folk - Digital Avatar

Today we took part in a short workshop focused upon simple character design in the software Adobe Photoshop. The purpose of this workshop was to show us how simple and easy it is to create characters in digital programs.

Task 1 - Inspiration:

At the beginning of the session we looked at some sources of inspiration, to provide some guidance when creating our own characters in a similar style. We began by looking at a few illustrators who often use a very simplistic and cartoon approach to their character designs. We looked at 4 main creators:

All of these illustrators share common share a common style. They all use simplistic shapes and designs to portray their characters and objects. Their illustrations are always extremely bare, with very little detail meaning there is nothing to distract you from the characters important features. As well as very little detail, these illustrators also tend to use a very limited colour scheme, often preferring to use only one or two main colours, with differing saturation and levels of vibrancy, which ties the entire image together. More tactile and peaceful ways of colouring include the use of water colour and inks, which seem to perfectly match and couple with this watered down, simple style of drawing.

One other key element is the use of bold black lines, like classic comic books which highlight each section of the characters body. Or sometimes, the lack of outline is used, creating a more stylized approach and giving the characters a more realistic yet still cartoon like aesthetic.

An artist who inspired me personally this project, an artist who i have cited before, was Joan Cornella, and his similarly simplistic illustrations. Joan Cornella shares a very similar style to the artists we looked at before hand. He also uses very minimal detail, pastel colours and over exaggerated expressions.

His characters also have that childish, very naive style to them, however, the actual contents of his comics and illustrations certainly isn't child friendly. For my design i wanted to take a similar approach by using the innocent visuals with a character design which perhaps more mature and less naive.

Much like the rules we created after studying Saul Bass’ graphic designs, we came up with a set of rules which we could follow to generate stylised work similar to the artists. Here are some of the rules i came up with:

A use of bold, black outlines - outlining the characters limbs, facial features and every individual aspect of the design.

Alternatively, no use of outlines at all, instead letting the different colours show each section of the design.

A very limited use of colour - only one to two different colours, however, different levels of saturation and darkness can be used too.

A muted use of colour - instead of bright primary colours use pastels and less vibrant shades.

A very limited use of detail - often presenting only the bare basics of a character to show their personality.

Exaggerated features to show the characters personality or behaviour type, including extreme facial expressions, poses and body types.

Task 2 - creating a character:

Now that we had a good understanding of the key elements of characters in this style we were tasked with creating our own batch of simple characters. As the session was about creating a small avatar we focused only on designing the characters head and not the body.

We began by creating simplistic pencil sketches, experimenting with the shape of the characters face, the arrangement of their facial features and what shapes we could use for their facial features in general. For my designs i started with very basic designs, using ovals, circles and other simple shapes for the head, however, i began drawing characters which got continuously more distorted and abstract, i tried using less simple shapes and more abstract arrangement of facial features in the characters. I wanted to see how far and how abstract i could take the designs while still looking childish and naive in aesthetic, and still looking like a human being. Extending from this, i also wanted to over exaggerate the features of the character, in order to better communicate what type of person and what personality this character may have.

Eventually, my face illustration developed into that of a severely overweight man with a receding hair line. This design for my caricature contrast against those drawn by the influences we looked at; While their characters mostly looked happy and pleasant, mine goes against this by having unfavorable traits and somewhat negative connotations. Much like Cornellas work, my design almost deceives the viewer through the pastel colours and soft design - choices often synonymous with childrens illustrations, however, the features of the characters face suggest a more mature audience - creating a strange relationship between these two contrasting themes.

It was fun to quickly and easily generate a range of characters, each of them with slight alterations making them unique, but i always kept to the key rules in order to keep the designs in that simplistic, naive visual style.

As i mentioned, i also took influence from Joan Cornellas illustrations, i tried to capture and recreate the lifeless, slightly creepy gaze his characters posses. I wanted to create an unsettling feeling in the viewer and to create the effect that the longer you stare at him the more disturbed you feel.

Once we had settled on a basic design we were task with simple redrawing the characters face over and over again. This technique helps us to familiarize ourselves with the character, and also helps to ensure us that we are happy with the design. Alternatively, when redrawing the design, the face will inadvertently change ever so slightly each time. it is very difficult to recreate the image perfectly. However, these small alterations build up, eventually creating a page of unique designs - which all came from one initial design. We can then choose our favorite out of these faces in order to recreate digitally.

Task 3 - Digital Development

The third task was to actually begin creating our characters digitally, using the digital program Adobe Illustrator. Firstly, we were given a quick tutorial on how to use Illustrator to actually create our characters, the process was very simple:

The technique was to build up the characters face by using the in built shape tool - with the idea being that each shape would build up to create the overall face.

Every section of the face would be created using a simple shape such as a circle, triangle square etc, but placed on separate layers - meaning we could place each part of the characters facial features above or below each other, for example, the main face shape you be right at the back (the layer would be at the bottom of the chart), while the eyes of the character would be above this back face layer (meaning this layer would be on top of the face layer within the chart) The technique was very simple and easy to get a hang of, its very similar to the way we drew the characters faces before hand - starting with the outline of the head and then filling in the details such as the facial features.

The Shape tool provided us with a range of basic shapes we could use to build up the characters face, however, these pre set shapes were quite limiting, and theres only so much you can do with them as they originally are. To create a larger range of more interesting shapes we manipulated a range of settings. One of the most important, and the effect i predominantly used, was the ability to change the roundness of the shapes edges. The technique allows you to turn the straight corners of a rectangle into much softer curves, this can also be used to fully round the rectangles edges, creating more of an oval shape. This is the main technique i used to create most of the character features, the most clear example of this is the characters main head shape, which was used by setting a rectangles edges to a max roundness.

Another technique we used to alter the shapes was the use of the Direct selection tool, which when used on a shape allows you to alter the edges, so you can transform the shape’s points and roundness;allowing for basically infinite shape possibility.

Through the use of this shape we could create more interesting and human feature. I used this tool extensively when creating my digital face in order to make the more complicated shapes which aren’t instantly available within Illustrator. For example, i bent the end of a curved rectangle into a point, giving me the shape for the characters eyebrows.

Overall, at first i found some of the features tricky to get the hang of, however, i quickly got to grips with these simple techniques and the way which illustrator works. Here is a short gif showing the process which i went through and the techniques i used to create another similar face:

Distorting the norm:

While drawing the original pencil sketches for my characters face i experimented with the idea of creating a more mutated, distorted appearance; by using more liquid, organic shapes such as stretched ovals. This idea of distorting the human form is very prevelant in my project, and is shown through out my research. I’ve been looking at how body horror has been presented and looking at different sources where its been shown such as the illustrated manga Junji Ito and films such as The Thing.

Linking to these research points i thought it would be interesting to try and mutate the character avatar which i created and see how it would look. I thought the easiest tool to do this would be the Liquify technique within photoshop - a tool which allows you to shape and manipulate the form of your photo any way you please. I used this Liquify tool to drag and distort areas of the characters face. I would then copy this frame, distort it slightly more and repeat that process, up until the characters face was unrecognisable and a mess of flesh:

I then assembled each of these frames into a timeline, giving me a frame by frame transformation of the character going from normal to horrifically disfigured. Here’s the animation i produced:

I’m happy with the way the animation turned out, the transformation even unsettles me slightly and greatly reminds me of the transformations from The Thing, which inspired me while making this.

Alternatively, a lot of people said that the animation would look better if only part of the mutation was shown, instead of the complete explosion look. I created this alternative gif of the shortened version, and i must agree i prefer this animation as the face becomes distorted, but not too distorted, meaning it is still recognisable in its mutated form, which i think makes the imagery even more unsettling.

Next steps and developments:

In the future i don’t really have any plans to use these techniques, as i am focusing on more hand drawn illustrations, however, once i have made some a possible development could be to transform the drawings digitally, using this simple illustrator method.

Extending from this, an interesting idea could be use the same Liquify animation technique on my illustrations to create a GIF or short animation of the drawings, bringing them to life and adding another dimension to the horror imagery - which also links to my research of horror films and moving imagery. It is definitely something i am considering for the future.

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lyncnews · 8 years ago

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Ever since I first was introduced to the Smartdock during Microsoft Ignite last year I have been anxious to get my hands on one. Our company has been heavy on collaboration since Live Communications Server 2005, mostly with desktop users using audio and screen sharing. Lately the use of video enabled meeting rooms have been asked for, and for someone that thinks traditional Skype Room Systems are too expensive (at least for company wide implementation) the Logitech solution looks really promising.

This week the Smartdock finally arrived, and here are my initial thoughts on it.

The concept of the Smartdock solution is actually something I have been close to setting up myself – I even have a draft for a “DYI Lync Room System” blog post lying around! A couple of years ago I did set up a Surface Pro 2 as a “team room Lync System” where I would utilize the Lync modern UI app to achieve most of the Skype Meeting Room experience, further customizing the Start Screen so it would only have a tile for joining booked meetings and another for starting a new one yourself. The problem was that users could easily screw things up by messing around with the computer, even viewing the desktop would throw some users off. The idea was reluctantly abandoned.

The Logitech Smartdock takes this concept a few steps further. First of all it locks down the computer so that the only way to end the Skype Room System app is by restarting the computer. Second, it contains an HDMI “capture device” that will let you connect the sharing computer via HDMI cable. Since you will most likely bring your own computer to share meeting content I personally find presenting the content directly (via Skype) to be just as easy. With the Smartdock, however, the advantage is that the presenter does not even need to have Skype for Business installed on his or her computer.

Smartdock unboxed – contents of the package

The Smartdock ships in a compact box along with a power supply, a 10 feet network cable and two 10 feet HDMI cables. At the moment it only supports one external monitor but it is announced that dual monitor support is coming. So for now you have all the cables for both HDMI input as well as output. The Smartdock even ships with a small torx screwdriver needed for the Surface and cable attachment within the dock! For hired consultants setting this up at a customer site it is nice to know that you can actually leave your tool kit at home.

Smartdock unboxed – Surface mounting

Apart from the Smartdock you will need a Surface Pro 4. It has to be a Core i5 CPU version, and sadly you will have to install Windows 10 Enterprise instead of just being able to use the preinstalled Windows 10 Pro that ships with the Surface. The latter can be a pain, because PXE booting a Surface Pro 4 turned out such big a problem I had to go on using USB bootable media instead. Microsoft has a guide for creating a USB media including drivers and the Skype Room System application package. The installation is kind of clever, as it takes you through the whole part of installing the OS and application, sysprepping the computer as well as the following “perks”:

Creates an administrator account and a separate console account named “Skype”

Locks down the “Skype” user account so that all interaction besides what you do with the SRS application is disabled

Installs maintainance task that will automatically update the SRS

Adjusts power settings so that the Surface will never shut down, but it will turn the touch screen dark after some time. Along with the proximity sensor in the docking that “wake up” the screen when you get close to it that is kind of a cool feature. This will even make the HDMI output turn off and on, so if you (like me) are having the meeting room screen/projector automatically turn off and on based on source input it will work fine with the Smartdock!

Sets the Smartdock to automatically sign in with the “Skype” user account as well as start the Skype Room System app automatically.

Make sure that you just leave the sysprep autounattend file as it is instead of changing it into what the Technet article says, that is: instead of making it into “silent.xml” just stick with the default “audit.xml” config file. Otherwise the SRS app and several other settings will not be installed.

Smartdock unboxed – room system account login

After the installation is complete you can “dock the Surface”, power it on, provide the login credentials for your Skype Room System account and enjoy the fun. Of course, I am assuming that you have provided the SRS account in advance, but that is well explained here. In my case I have been reusing an existing Exchange room resource account already used with an Evoko Room panel for meeting room booking – and they both seem to play along nicely.

Remember that if you decide not to domain join your newly born Skype room you will require a root certificate trusting the certificates assigned to the Skype server, or else you will not be able to log in. This is well described in the Technet article along with a tip on how to make it happen during initial setup.

One thing I was anxious about was whether the Skype Room System app would be conforming to the locale used on the Surface. Of course I would prefer that the user interface would be in my (users) local language, for maximum ease-of-use. Luckily this is the case. When I set up a Crestron RL system I seem to recall that it was all in English, but that was years ago and may have changed – or may even be false.

Smartdock unboxed – docking pedestal cable connection panel

Another thing to notice is that the Smartdock, even though it is running a fully functional Surface Pro 4 inside, will require an Ethernet connection for the Skype Room app to work. For some this might sound like a downside, but for me assuring that Skype media will run on the best network available is nothing but the right thing to do. Also, remember that to take full advantage of the HDMI input device you will have to change into the administrator account and adjust audio device settings

The thing I love most about the Smartdock is that you can connect whatever kind of USB audio and video solution you like. I have been testing it with the Logitech GROUP system, a solution we have deployed to several meeting rooms already and one that I really find giving you bang for the buck. So with a Smartdock (MSRP $599), a Surface Pro 4 (about $1,000) and the Logitech GROUP (MSRP $999) you have your Skype Room system going for less than $2,600! That is way off any other Skype Room System out there, at least to my knowledge. If you want to go with other vendors that is possible too, for example; if you have a really large meeting room you could use Vaddio EasyUSB ceiling mounted microphones and the Altia PanaCast 2 panoramic camera for full sonic and visual coverage – That is flexibility to me!

Smartdock unboxed – home screen

The Smartdock is operated the same way as the other Skype Room systems on the market. On the touch screen you have the choices of starting your own ad-hoc meeting or simply presenting an HDMI connected computer screen if the meeting is only for people physically present. There is also the “Invite this room” choice which will simply give you the instrictions on how to invite the room into a conference call. If you have already created a meeting up front which the Skype Meeting Room was invited into then the click-to-join button is readily available.

Smartdock unboxed – in-meeting controls

During a Skype conference call theres is a layout control button. This gives you the choice to view only the content, only the video gallery or content view with a compact sidebar of video gallery attendants. All in all this is everything you would expect from a Skype Room System, and it both looks and runs real smooth. If you enable the Skype Meeting Room account for voice it will let you use it as a phone as well, and with Skype for Business server the voice policy applied will always be that of the Meeting Room instead of the meeting organizer.

Last, but not least, one thing I am awaiting with some anxiety is how the system will handle upcoming Windows updates. Back at Ignite the Logitech representative gave some promises that the Skype Room software would automatically handle this, and – at least how I interpreted it – would make sure that only Logitech “certified” updates (meaning tested and proven) would be applied. As I have already mentioned there is a “maintainance task” that will take care of updates, but I seem to recall that the anniversary update for Windows 10 actually broke some Logitech webcams, and that is something I would rather not experience.

Summing up I have the following pros for Logitech’s Smartdock:

Reasonably priced – a basic solution including camera and microphone is available for under $2,600

Quite easy to set up, you will only need to create the install media once, and from there the installation is straight forward.

Flexibility to use your preferred or needed camera and/or microphone solution, as well as your existing or preferred screen or projector.

The same great and easy user interface of the much more expensive Skype Room systems already on the market.

Uses Ethernet network connection only – which is preferrable.

Now, there are also some points to take into consideration, maybe even considered cons:

The Surface Pro 4 will need to be provisioned via PXE boot or USB media. The first I was unable to get working, the latter can be cumbersome if you plan to deploy many of them.

How will the system handle updates?

All in all I have to say that Logitech are onto something here. I already have their meeting room solutions for audio and video set up in several facilities, and they are delivering good quality at a reasonable cost. The Smartdock looks much like the same story!

Smartdock complete install along with the Logitech GROUP

#Skype4B

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