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maulusque · 4 years ago

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Clone genetic enhancement ideas

So the clones were genetically enhanced, but i don’t really see any writers (in fanfic or in published stuff) really exploring what that MEANS beyond “clone very stronk”. Here are some ideas that would actually make clones significantly different from just a regular-ass human in peak condition.

-enhanced senses: eyesight, hearing, etc. I’m talking eyes like a HAWK

-better reflexes

-quicker information processing

-can hear sounds of higher and lower frequency than standard humans

-can see light of a broader spectrum than human standard

-learn quicker, retain information and skills better (potential problem: if you learn something the WRONG way, that way might stick really well)

-photographic memory (really useful for memorizing layouts and maps)

-immunity to various diseases

-can tolerate a wider range of temperatures and environments

-increased stamina and strength baseline. Clones can just run full-tilt for hours and hours and be like “ah a nice stroll”. Over long distances, they can out-pace jedi in the same way that humans can out-pace horses.

-higher tolerance of certain poisons/toxins (clones can straight-up drink ethanol, and get maybe a little tipsy)

-bodies respond quickly to physical stress, and slowly to the absence of it (basically, this means that physical conditioning results in stronger muscles and a stronger cardiovascular system really quickly, and it takes MUCH longer for a clone to lose strength and conditioning due to not exercising than standard humans. Think how much valuable training time is saved if they only have to go on a run like, once a month in order to stay in shape)

-increased ability to function through intense pain and acute injuries. Basically, semi-disabling the pain system so it’s less distracting. Probably not good for the survival of the individual in many situations, but an advantage on the battlefield.

-heal faster and better, with fewer long-term complications. Clones can dislocate their shoulders and NOT have the joint be permanently fucked up, because the Kaminoans re-designed the whole damn thing to suck WAY less.

-actually, unique internal anatomy. There’s probably a lot about the human body besides the shoulder joint that is actually just really stupid, and something no intelligent designer would actually build. So the Kaminoans can fix a lot of that stuff. Better knees, maybe. Stronger ribs. Maybe Cody punches droids not just because he’s a mad bastard, but also because his metatarsals are literally as strong as steel.

-Hearing loss/hearing damage? No problem, your ear can regrow those little hair-thingies that help you hear.

-Of course, it takes energy to maintain muscle mass, which is why human bodies lose it if we’re not using it. Clones need significantly more calories than standard humans. However, their digestive systems are enhanced to extract calories and nutrients from food much more efficiently, so food goes much farther. Potential weird side effect: maybe clones only have to poop like, once a week?

-You could probably extend that into increased ability to tolerate long periods without food/on low rations, despite the increased need for calories.

-wouldn’t it be NEAT if the kaminoans somehow designed self-repairing DNA. This would mean that others couldn’t take a DNA sample from a clone and modify it to create their own clones (basically, it protects their product. It’s like DRM for clones). This ALSO means that clones couldn’t get cancer, and that they’d be immune to radiation poisoning. So a clone could just walk up to a sphere of uranium at critical mass and pick it up. Maybe with oven mitts on if it’s hot. (this would also make it harder for a rapid-aging cure to be developed, but uhhhh fanfic writers find a way)

- “bred for obedience” I think most of this would have to be accomplished through tightly-controlled messaging and cultural norms as the clones grow up- basically, enshrining obedience as a desirable and almost sacred trait, to be prized higher than anything else, including the lives of your brothers. In the same way that we hear stories of people sacrificing their lives to protect their loved ones, the clones would grow up hearing stories of soldiers sacrificing their brothers’ lives to obey an order from a superior.

-SOME of the “obedience” thing could be engineered, though. Humans are already super social, but it would probably make sense for the clones to have an even greater need for social bonds. This would make for greater teamwork and coordination, and better unit cohesion, since the clones would be more inclined to prioritize friendship/agreeing with someone over winning an argument. It would also make it so they’d bond with their natural-born generals more easily, so they would obey them not just because they’re supposed to, but because they’d be much quicker to see them as a friend, and someone who’s trust they want to earn, someone they want to incorporate into their group and make happy.

-consequently, clones who find themselves alone do NOT do well. Isolation has a much more profoundly negative impact on clones than on regular humans.

-Originally, clones designed to operate alone or in small teams would not have the social enhancement- ARC troopers, spec-ops teams, etc. There wouldn’t be much of a noticeable difference in everyday interactions, but they’d also be vaguely weirded out by what they interpret as aggressive friendliness from their brothers, and their brothers would think they’re a bit shy and standoffish.

-actually this social modification would make it MUCH harder for clones to kill people. REGULAR HUMANS are already super bad at killing people- i remember reading this article about how as soon as soldiers have to point their weapons at actual people, their aim gets mysteriously much shittier. Even when compared to situations that are exactly the same, except they’re not shooting at other humans. So reconcile this how you will, idk.

-I imagine a lot of these enhancements would be accomplished not through DNA, but through microorganisms. Retroviruses could explain the DNA resistant to modification, and the increased healing speed, and possibly some disease resistance (do i know anything about retroviruses other than a vague concept of what they are? no i do not. will that stop me? also no.) Their metabolism can be partially explained through specially engineered gut microbes.

-not sure how they’d go about making clones “resistant to any stress”, because you can’t exactly turn off the trauma response in the brain without breaking a bunch of other things. They could probably do a bit of fiddling to make clones more resistant to chemical imbalances, and therefore more depression-resistant. I think most of the “stress-resistance” would have to come through training. Either they train the clones to basically suppress everything, which might work alright in the short term. OR they actually have systems in place that help prevent the development of things like PTSD and help treat trauma. Meaning the clones are literally trained in self-care, positive self-talk, talking about their pain with their brothers, and having community rituals around things like death and grief. I don’t think that’s super likely because one thing that’s integral to those concepts is the concept of “i am a person and i have worth, and if i feel angry about something bad happening, that is ok and valid” and considering that a whole lot of bad things happen to the clones all the time and their childhood is a whole boatload of bad all happening at once, i don’t think the kaminoans would want the clones realizing “hey wait a minute i’m a person and i don’t deserve to be treated this way and it’s ok for me to be mad at you”.

- the clones were supposedly engineered to be “less aggressive” but i think there was literally nothing more to that than a cover story for the control chip. The clones wouldn’t be raised with a lot of the aggressive western concept of masculinity, where anger is the default reaction to like, everything, and your personal pride is extremely important and also fragile (no offense lmao). So you wouldn’t have clones posturing and getting angry over perceived slights and fighting each other all the time, like everyone in-universe apparently expects to be the case. Anyway, why would you want your soldiers to be less aggressive? they’re literally supposed to fight and kill the enemy. You want them fully capable of getting angry, anger is the human response to fear and danger that lets us DO something about it.

-obviously the biggest component in how they behave would be how they are raised, but that’s an entirely different post

-Specializations! I imagine that initially, the Kaminoans had different clones with different traits engineered specifically to fill certain roles. However, as the war went on, they struggled to keep up with demand and had to start shoving clones into whatever roles were needed (hence Fives and Echo becoming ARCs, despite not being engineered as ARC troopers).

-Command clones would have better abilities in the executive function parts of the brain that deal with extrapolation, planning ahead, spatial reasoning, etc. They’d also have increased visual pattern recognition (like a pigeon)

-search-and-rescue troops would also have the pigeon pattern recognition abilities. The coast guard literally strapped pigeons to helicopters who would tap a button when they saw orange in the water, because they were better at spotting it than humans. Pigeons can detect cancer in microscope images of cells, because they’re that good at pattern recognition

-Pilots would have hella reflexes, excellent spatial awareness and spatial reasoning skills, much greater ability to process visual information, stronger hearts and blood vessels (to resist greater Gs of force), and they’d also be much shorter, to better fit into a cockpit. Which reminds me of Axe, that poor bastard from Ahsoka’s squadron over Ryloth who was almost eight feet tall. rip poor Axe, how did you even become a pilot, you long bastard.

-medics who can smell certain diseases. If you want to get a little bit out there, make the medics able to purr so they can sooth stressed-out patients.

-infantry would have even greater endurance than everyone else, as well as greater tolerance for, and ability to, remain constantly on alert.

-ability to fall asleep at will? that would be super dope.

-maybe more efficient sleep, so to an adult clone, 4 hours of sleep is genuinely sufficient.

-concept: clones can sort of turn down their bodily functions- slow their digestion, heart, lungs, the whole nine yards- to last longer in adverse conditions. Sort of a half-hibernation (or quarter hibernation- they’d still be able to talk and think, but they’d feel very lethargic). They wouldn’t be able to function very well, but it would be great for things like enduring intense cold, periods without food, low-oxygen environments, and it would be especially useful if you were wounded and waiting for help, since you could slow your circulation, meaning it would take you a lot longer to bleed out. This state could be triggered by a combination of physical actions such as sitting or lying still, breathing slowly and deeply, and focusing on slowing the heart down (humans can actually slow down their hearts consciously if you practice at it, this is basically that, but turned up to like 1100).

-one thing that never made sense to me was the whole “we’re running out of jango fett’s DNA, all the new clones won’t be as good, and we have to stop ventress from stealing the original DNA” because like, can’t they just, get the EXACT SAME DNA from the clones?? you know, the exact genetic copies? With all the enhancements already done? But now my idea is that the kaminoans have engineered the clones so their DNA straight up can’t be copied. The clone’s own body can obviously replicate it, but if you take a sample and try to extract the DNA, it just self-destructs or something. This is to protect their intellectual property, but also means that they literally have to use a couple of Jango Fett’s actual human cells for every single clone they make (and the fact that they then have to do all the above enhancements to every single embryo helps explain why there’s so many small mutations, such as hair color and height). So they kinda shot themselves in the foot with that one.

-of course since things like ADHD and autism have a strong genetic component, the kaminoans could theoretically engineer those out of the clones, but actually FUCK THAT so for whatever reason, that’s just not something they are able to do, and neurodivergent clones are absolutely a thing

#maulusque's stuff #meta #clones

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hekatekun · 4 years ago

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The metanarrative’s grand narrative: Osomatsu-san’s characterization throughout the franchise

The growing cynicism throughout the entire Osomatsu-san franchise shows itself in season 3 with more prominence than anything prior. I think that’s pretty common amongst any “long-running” gag comedy - replacing a plot with spiteful commentary that’s admittedly pretty hit or miss at times. However, it invariably creates a negative but pretty funny character growth, and I love the way the show (I’m including the movie too as “canon” material considering season 3 has referenced it way too many times for me to disregard) has set up this metanarrative across seasons. Long post ahead.

Obviously, Osomatsu-san is self-aware and has a casual relationship with itself. No linear plot (though S3 seems to be trying it out and I’ve enjoyed it - I love that they’re willing to experiment), rather a collection of unrelated skits; and so it points out its own metanarrative because of this “lack of consequences.” With comedy comes impermancy and Ososan AND -kun will always bounce back from that week’s insanity. From the Oxford Dictionary, a metanarrative is “a narrative account that experiments with or explores the idea of storytelling, often by drawing attention to its own artificiality.” Basically: a story about stories.

On top of this, is what I’m calling the “grand narrative,” which is often used interchangeably with metanarrative, but here I’m making a distinction to make it less confusing. Of course, Ososan is a story about stories, but with that comes a story it’s not directly telling, which is where most of the (little) character development is taking place. This is what I’m going to call the grand narrative of a show whose premise is being a meta-aware comedy. I’ll admit I’m by no means an expert on these subjects, but storytelling methods are something I enjoy trying to analyze. As a media format, Ososan really utilizes the fact that it’s a tv show.

Right off the bat S1E1 makes it clear what to expect: Nothing. Not a damn thing. But, the show had already been cleared for this first season, so it has to be produced. This same episode’s preview is done by Osomatsu, which I’m just gonna quote instead screenshot because there’s too many.

“...we plan on properly starting the anime the next episode.” “...you ended up with an extra minute, so you need me to do something to fill it?! Actually, is this anime going to be okay with episode one being like this? I’m getting worried about how the rest of this is going to be...” “There, I used up a minute! [EPISODE ENDS]”

Episode one is not only batshit referential, but downright mocking the state of anime in 2015. Which, truthfully, I don’t have much to comment on in that regard, as I’m not an avid anime fan. However, it does this under the premise of being indecisive about what kind of anime they wanted the Osokun reboot to be.

They’ll do just about anything to stay popular and relevant considering that is, quite literally, all they have going for them as characters in the series and just being characters in general. They may be pieces of shit, but they’re likeable pieces of shit. The dynamics they’ve built upon to be entertaining is encouraged, and they’re basically just roleplaying different skits and fucking around.

All the AUs! All the skits! They’re just playing! They’re just fuckin’ around!! They couldn’t come up with any interesting plot nor could they “graduate” from being anime protagonists and join the real world, so they just fuck around and make a gag anime!

Even if we follow both as the audience, the show makes a difference between the what’s them in their “normal life” (crazy begets crazy, no?) and what’s their “show.” But, really, that’s just one way to look at it, as they don’t really follow any rules as a show. I could say the Joshimatsus are separate characters from the sextuplets, and it’d be a “correct” interpretation. It doesn’t really matter - I’m choosing to examine it all as being the six of them just running around and playing, because being entertaining and having fun is all they know as characters. Besides, having it blended together beyond recognition reinforces how it prioritizes entertaining us, the audience, above logic. Storytelling doesn’t need to make absolute spatial-temporal sense for it to be enjoyable to fans.

In any case, that mentality really seems to be what pushes their character development negative, as they look to reinforce habits and rituals despite them being really detrimental for them in the long run. They know they’re popular characters as is, and with really everyone from staff to fans encouraging this behavior further, so they see no point in fixing what isn’t really broken.

I found this 4 year old article from Manga.Tokyo discussing the Ososan phenomenon in Japan because while the craze died off pretty quickly in American anime circles (which deserves a whole other post), Japanese fans went fuckin’ nuts.

This portion caught my attention, as it makes sense that entitled and enabled asshole children would grow up to be entitled and enabled asshole adults. The article also goes on to compare them to idols (even beyond the F6 spoof) and that they are rooted in being comfort characters above all else.

It’s worth a read, especially because Japanese fan response is what drives majority of the content post-S1, and, inevitably, ties into their character development.

They know that they’re Characters, particularly Protagonists. You know what happens to protagonists? Everything works out. Just about every single story created has stuff working out for protagonists. In fact, we have a whole genre made that separates stories with bad tragic endings from our Normal Stories. Ososan is a comedy, not a tragedy, so surely there’s gonna be some payoff somewhere along the road, especially as the seasons and other content are still being pumped out. To a self-aware, entitled, enabled protagonist, assuming everything is just gonna work out for you isn’t that far off from your narrative truth.

However, Ososan is a gag anime, and a lot of gag content (like 4koma mangas) is dropped for other projects before any emotional cathartic ending is provided for characters and fans alike. So, three seasons and a movie later, nothing has happened. It’s a great idol cash cow with a Family Guy filter, and the characters (and writers) don’t even bother to hide it anymore. And I know I’m being hypocritical concerning my definition of “canon material” but I think this portion from one of the drama cds “Choroplex” basically summarizes my point:

CHOROMATSU: Wait, don’t make this into a gag! You don’t even care about becoming employed, right? KARAMATSU: There’s no way that could happen... CHOROMATSU: What kind of future are you imagining? Is it nothing but this? [HUGE PAUSE BEFORE THEY MOVE ONTO SOMETHING ELSE]

They’re parodies of themselves and are running out of ideas. Stagnation and decay is normal, if not unavoidable, at this point in time for them. They’re just 20 somethings who’ve hit a wall but they’re too scared and insecure to bring about permanent positive change. It’s easier for them to fall back into normal patterns and joke off the rest.

They have an antagonistic relationship with expectations. They can’t handle a single iota of expectations, or responsibilities. They’ve never needed to worry before, so why bother now? Once the biggest hits on the block, now they’re just guppies in the ocean, and there’s nothing they believe themselves to be able to accomplish to keep up with this big brave new world. This is epitomized in S3E15, where old man Osomatsu tells a bastardized version of the Tortoise and the Hare, blatantly projecting his feelings onto it. Again, too many screenshots so let me pull more quotes (bolding for my own reference):

“The place that the tortoise thought was the goal was not actually the goal. His journey down the road of life still continued on. The tortoise was quite tired, but he continued running anyway.” “No one actually knew who was in front anymore. There are too many people above you.” “After the tortoise found out how society worked, he thought, ‘So this is the difference in talent? No amount of hard work is going to fix this. All right. I’m done competing with others.’”

S3 has left more questionable endings than its counterparts. The last 2 skits I referenced don’t even a gag to them, and the marriage skit doesn’t play music for the entire second half of S3E5. There’s more involved too. I haven’t even brought up the rice ball twins becoming actual entertainers in their universe, or how they introduced this whole AI subplot only to reject it because All Six Of Them aren’t interested in expanding their little corner of the world. Here’s a transcript of the ending preview from S3E1:

“Hey, hey, Osomatsu here. I thought we were saved from being replaced, but I guess we get new characters next week. Man, we’re busy. New encounters, changing surroundings... We’re NEETs to begin with because all that is a pain. I guess a lot can happen after three seasons. [EPISODE ENDS]”

The sextuplets’ mindsets are extremely self-centered, which is also an environmental thing (the parents don’t even really care that they’re NEETs, for one) and an understanding of what they ought to be (epic successful protagonists). They also have a very black and white mentality, all or nothing. They’re extremely sheltered, and once they realized where they stood in society at large, they just gave up. To them the world is divided between winners and losers, and somehow, “inexplicably,” they found themselves to have fallen from grace. But they’re protagonists, that has to count for something! Everything’s gonna end up okay, right? Well... what this show has told them: No, not at all. They are consistently compared and warned of Iyami, and are perfectly aware of this fact, and have come to internalize it as a truth rather than a reversible self-fulfilling prophecy.

Too many screencaps, taken from the S3S5 marriage discussion:

JYUSHIMATSU: I wonder if we’re gonna get married someday, too. CHOROMATSU: Well, I mean... probably? I’m not exactly sure, but... TODOMATSU: What? You’re gonna get married, Choromatsu-niisan? CHOROMATSU: Huh? Well, yeah... someday.

Surprise! They have commitment issues! The same group that couldn’t commit to a fucking plot! Though their personality issues have several factors involved, I can’t overlook the theater motifs abound. Life’s a stage, and they’re performing entirely unscripted and it shows.

Do I think all of this is 100% intentional on the writers’ part? No, probably not. There’s also an extra layer here regarding contemporary Japanese commentary that I’m not familiar with, so I just ended up focusing on the characters. I can’t be in the writers’ heads, but whatever decisions are being made by executives regarding censorship and “compliance” are reflected in these character changes that result in being significantly more bitter and defeatist.

In the all or nothing, winner-take-all mentality, the only way to save face at this point, in their minds, is to own up to it - act like it’s what they wanted all along. And, hey, it’s funny to watch, right?

“Why is Osomatsu all my examples”, you might be asking. Well, he’s the damn blueprint for it all. The leader of the bunch, the first personality to grab your attention, has had all his issues projected and ricocheted in their echo chamber.

Ultimately, my point here is that you could think their “canon characterizations” (though canon means nothing in a show like this) as being intertwined with the nature of their self-aware existence. They’ve shown you all their tricks, the smoke and mirrors are getting boring, and they’re stalling long enough the story seems to be moving on without them - in spite of them. And when something genuinely threatens their way of life, they don’t know how to respond.

You can play it all straight, of course. Remove the meta jokes and all the same plot points can be hit, but, as a slapstick comedy, it’s able to easily add this additional layer in that I appreciate. I’ve said it in my last post and I’ll probably say it in more, but with comedy comes sincerity - the caveat of all the cartoon violence is that, on some level somewhere, this is how they really feel.

#osomatsu san #osomatsu #karamatsu #choromatsu #ichimatsu #jyushimatsu #todomatsu #osomatsu matsuno #karamatsu matsuno #choromatsu matsuno #ichimatsu matsuno #jyushimatsu matsuno #todomatsu matsuno #analysis #confession this was sparked by a convo i had w friends about s3e18 #this is a bit truncated but i couldnt bring myself to make this longer #maybe ill make a pt2 or whatever idk

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palmett-hoes · 4 years ago

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what's your take on the foxes mbti?

oh buddy ur never gonna believe this but i wrote a foxes MBTI post YEARS ago

im also not into mbti anymore and haven't been for many years so that post is probably still more accurate and in-depth than what i could give you now. i’m just gonna copy the whole thing but i read it over and it still totally vibes w how i understand the characters, like way more than i was expecting it to. i only made one edit (it’s marked) and it was to add a detail not change anything

i hope you’re really really into mbti otherwise this’ll probably be gobbeldegook

i used to be obessively into mbti so here’s an analysis based on cognitive functions mostly.

SKIP IF YOU WANT. for anyone with no idea how it works, here’s a quick rundown: cognitive functions are about the way people think, process, and prioritize information, not necessarily how they act, though people who think the same way often act the same. the 8 letters that make up a type represent how people process and prioritize internal and external stimuli. every letter actually has an ‘internal’ and 'external’ form so there’s Thinking (internal(ti) and external(te)), Feeling (internal(fi) and external(fe)), Sensing (internal(si) and external(se)), and iNtuition(internal(ni) and external(ne)) t’s always go with a corresponding and opposite f (like ti and fe always go together), same with s’s and n’s (ex: si and ne always go together). a set of t, f, s, and n in a specific order makes an mbti type.

neil: intp (ti ne si fe)

neil has incredible analytical ability although it’s very programmed for survival but he’s also a fast thinker and very quick to adapt to new environments. he also approaches things from original angles that other people dont consider, all that sounds like high ti/ne. the lower functions fit well too. in times of stress, he returns to old habits and falls back on what’s familiar, that’s classic low si. his emotions are also very exterior. he’s bad with other people from lack of exposure, but he’s committed to harmony between those close to him and has an impeccable ability to read the emotional states of others while being completely oblivious of his own, and his sense of self is tied to exterior things like exy, friends, keys, and legal documents (lol) that’s fe

andrew: intj (ni te fi se)

ni is really hard to describe but it has to do with being able to draw conclusions from scattered input, which fits with andrew’s uncanny ability to spot lies and obsession with finding out the truth, especially with high te, which is about spatial order and logic, think of how prioritized he is with the physical order of things: who sits where, who wears what, etc. a lot of people want to make andrew infj i bet as like a “subversive reading” but he’s definitely not. i used to be really close to an infj and they have hyper-empathy, as in she would describe not just caring about other people and being able to read their emotional states but literally feeling the things the people around her felt. this is a common result of the ni/fe combo, and the reason why andrew is definitely not infj. tertiary fi fits very well instead because andrew is deeply attuned to his own inner emotional state. he’s self-confident and doesn’t care about other people’s perception of him, but he’s also very concerned with his own feelings and understanding them, even if they’re repressed. he’s also very aware of his physical surroundings, which plays into his deductive ability, although it’s not his focus. that’s low se

kevin: estj (te si ne fi)

kevin is a classic estj. he’s controlling, demanding, and driven. he tries to control the actions of those around him and gets very distressed when things dont run smoothly, as well as having strong feelings about improving efficiency. high te people make great managers. kevin’s whole story arc is about breaking old habits, which is a very si problem. it has to do with trusting and craving memory and familiarity, and explains kevins need for endless repetition. he’s innovative, though, coming up with new strategies and drills (ne), it’s just based on what’s already familiar, and you can see him spiral into creating all possible worst-case scenarios when he’s stressed (low ne stress reaction, they like to be prepared). finally, he’s a dick, but he cares about other people and wants to improve their lives, as well as being very reliant on other people’s perceptions of him to define his own self-image (low fe)

dan: esfj (fe si ne ti)

dan’s top priority, over everything else, is her team. she wants her team to improve, she wants her team to win, she wants her team to work together. it’s all about the collective. we also see that she’s very open with others and makes a lot of effort to both make new ties and maintain old ones, that’s high fe. she’s sentimental and attached to the past too (si) esp the photo wall, but we also see her very unwilling to let go of the past ie the monsters but eventually willing to change and grow to mend team cohesion (ne). we also see the fight in underlying logic (low ti) with her: she knows the team needs the monsters to cooperate but she cant figure out how to do it

matt: enfj (fe ni se ti)

so enfj’s experience infj hyper-empathy too, but to a slightly lesser extent (primary fe is more group cohesion, secondary fe is more understanding others), and through this we see matt’s easy-going open friendliness and ability to befriend even prickly little neil, because he has an extremely good sense of what other people are feeling and need, it also explains why he doesn’t hold a grudge against the cousins in the same way dan does, because he understands where they were coming from. se is associated with a general boisterousness for life, as it’s about experiencing the world around you, which explains matt’s happy-go-lucky disposition and puppydog behavior. the ti aspects mostly go into supporting fe/ni empathic senses

allison: entj (te ni se fi)

i mean, allison’s controlling, both in that she orders other people around and in that her physical being and space are very planned and organized (her clothes, her hair, her makeup, etc) but at the same time there isn’t much sentimentality to her, like how she doesn’t care when her car was destroyed. she easily replaces things because she cares about the object’s purpose, not its history and that all smacks of high te/ni. and i mean, the se definitely contributes to her love of designer things and killer looks, because she cares about the world immediately around her, and why live if not in luxury? and fi? is there any character more aggressively self-confident than allison reynolds?? going against her parents’ wishes for her takes a really strong, independent sense of self, but we also see the problems that can come from not worrying about other people, in how she starts fights and can be abrasive and catty

renee: infp (fi ne si te)

okay this one was really hard tbh. a list of other considerations: isfp, istp, and infj. it’s very easy to read renee as high fe because she’s kind, but i think it’s a mischaracteration of why she’s kind. it’s not because it comes naturally to her, it’s because it’s a conscious choice that makes her feel better about herself. high fi people often read as fe because they’re so comfortable with themselves and in tune with their own needs that they can then go and provide for others. i associate her religion with ne, because contemplation and acceptance of the divine later in life is a very metaphysical undertaking that undoubtedly requires a lot of abstract thought. renee’s storyline also revolves a lot around using things from her past and putting a conscious effort into leaving things from her past behind (how she still uses the skills she learned from her past in new ways ie sparring with andrew and protecting the upperclassmen v/s how she held on to her knives even when she knew it was detrimental to her moving on) this sounds like si. her protective instincts also feed into the te need for order, but it’s a looser leash than say andrew, as it’s lower on her function stack but still present

nicky: esfp (se fi te ni)

godd nicky is like a prototypical esfp. i mean nicholas “sex, drugs, and parties” hemmick cant be anything but se dominant. nicky is all about living it up and living in the moment. like he’s sporadic and ive seen it lead people to think he could be enfp but he doesn’t think enough about the meaning of things to be ne dominant (like how he makes somewhat predatory jokes and such, he’s all about the here-and-now while ne is about the past and future simultaneously). also he of all characters has incredibly prominent fi, as his whole character is about living unashamedly as himself as a gay man and the immense self-awareness and inner strength it takes not only to come out to unaccepting parents but also to leave and start a new life when they rejected him. however, fi is also indicative of his communication problems with his family, as he’s unable to tell that the cousins are fundamentally different from him in their needs and boundaries, leading him to pushing them, making them uncomfortable, and being unable to help them, because he’s unable to understand them. the rest are much more hidden, but a party boy shopaholic like nicky would probably need some amount of te order in like an organized chaos fashion (and he’s often headcanoned as liking to throw parties) and you do see him become somewhat pushy, even controlling in those scenarios. ni is the hardest but could maybe be seen in how he’s attuned to the cousins reactions for all that he cant predict them/doesn’t do anything on his own part to prevent them (the way he handles andrew is like if someone poked a rattlesnake knowing damn well what it would do and then freaked out when he got bit)

aaron: istj (si te fi ne)

im a little iffy on this one and worry it might be an analysis based on his trauma instead of complimentary to it, but aaron’s arc is about breaking out of his habit of holding on to the past. he refuses to work towards moving on from his mother’s death, refuses to listen to things that contradict his preconceived notions, and refuses to make changes in his life that could improve it. that’s unhealthy si. he’s really a very unhealthy istj, and most of his traits manifest through his unhappiness with his life. take his te. that would imply that he needs control over his surroundings, but aaron is incredibly bitter and unhappy BECAUSE he doesn’t have control of his surroundings. he doesn’t get to make his own choices, he doesn’t get to control his space, and he hates it. his relationship with katelyn is also indicative of being an istj. it’s stable, not a passionate fling, but aaron is mocked for wanting that white picket fence, married with kids in the suburbs kind of life, and his relationship, which is his primary source of happiness, is built on stability, which is a very si thing to do. in terms of fi, it is aaron that ultimately forces change between himself and andrew. he may have been pushed but he ultimately came down to him knowing what made him happy and what made him miserable and acting on that. also, he’s an ornery asshole who clearly doesn’t care what other people think of him. fi. i dont really have anything to say in terms of ne, probably because he’s so unhealthy but also because he’s not too explored. heyy istj’s make great doctors

wymack: isfj (si fe ti ne)

okay this one was genuinely the hardest to decide on but ultimately i came to the conclusion that wymack, much like renee, is such a developed person that he loses many defining traits of the functions, and can be read in many different ways. so: wymack’s primary goal is the safety and betterment of other people (ie his team). he wants to help people overcome their pasts, which is a very atypical approach to si, but is si nonetheless. on a personal level, too, he’s never able to move on from people, and specifically never moved on from kayleigh, continuing their shared dream of an exy team for abused kids long after her death. as ive said before, fe in a secondary position is about deep understanding of other people, and wymack’s ability to understand what other people are struggling through is legendary. the ti mostly serves as support to the fe, serving as the analytical backup in allowing him to understand others. as for ne: he is most definitely an innovator with unusual ideas, or the foxes wouldn’t exist

riko: estp (se ti fe ni)

riko is basically what happens when an estp goes bad down to the core. he’s obsessed with personal glory and immediate self-fulfillment (se) he has no impulse control or fear of consequences. interestingly, high se is often associated with athleticism, because high se people are intensly focused on their surroundings (exy). his ti is also super unhealthy as he gets obsessed with ideas that dont really work with objective reality, like his obsession with ownership and power dynamics despite them not actually being efficient, even backwards. the tertiary fe he uses to manipulate. he doesn’t empathize with others, but he can tell their emotional state and what’s important to them, and uses it to coerce them and destroy their sense of self, like how he knew he could get neil to the nest by threatening andrew. EDIT: /additionally, fe people especially in the lower half of the function stack tend to derive their sense of self from the perceptions of others around them, which riko very much shows in how he needs to be acknowledged as the best and won’t allow any competition for his title, as well as his desperation for acknowledgement from his family/. finally, that ni allowed him to keep multiple plans in place focused on one ultimate goal: getting kevin back. the sheer amount of schemes he sets up in order to fool and push people the way he wants is honestly kinda impressive, but he’s a toxic shithead and im glad he’s rotting. definitely not representative of all estp’s

this is honestly SO funny to read back a few years later bc HOOOOO boy was i way too into this stuff. and this was written a couple years after my Peak MBTI Obsession, which was honestly scary

#txt #the foxes #dan wilds #kevin day #andrew minyard #matt boyd #aaron minyard #allison reynolds #nicky hemmick #renee walker #neil josten #wymack #riko moriyama #my posts #im talkin #ask #anon #anonymous

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lilmajorshawty · 6 years ago

Text

Saturn In the Houses : Where Are You Years Ahead Of Your Time

Saturn In the First House : The Mountain Snake

(Resident Evil Retribution - Flying Through The Air)

Saturn in the first house is all about world, and how it views them. now in saying this i don’t mean in a conceded sense nor do i mean that they only prioritize themselves in the way others view them or experience them, rather, these natives have a indomitable drive to be seen as both an intellectual and someone of class and deem-able respect. They strive to build on their own and have no trouble carrying the load on their own, in fact this trait is so pronounced that they actually find it impossible to rely on others no matter how impossible the task. this placement of Saturn can make the warrior spirit more grounded and earthy in it’s appeal by giving these natives a rugged and rather stoic look. the men can sport rough facial hair and gorgeously dim faces with arches and ridges that seem to structure the face like fine wine. the women can be beautiful, sporting a strong head of hair and often the hair is unruly or rater natural in it’s expression. the eyes for men and women here are piercing and can seem to stare past your soul. they age as if they’ve been swimming in the fountain of youth which is saying that they age faster in youth and slower as they get older. They are incredibly ambitious and many of them set a lot of stepping stones for others around them with their rather impulsive and direct manner of creating a life for themselves. they don’t wait for the world to give them a sign, rather they make one. they can have an outwardly cold and stoic energy that seems both intimidating and detached to those who are viewing them for the first time. many of these natives have a jarring and rather complex energy and can often carry the energy of someone carrying a burden as old as time itself. they say this placement is associated with a past life in battle, but many fights fought in the past allow this native now in their present life to structure the violence, anger, wrath and passion of the past life. they can become more merciless and driven as they age, willing to do what is necessary at any cost. they are lovely to have on your side in times of crisis and dangerous to have as an enemy. they are never going to be set back by any amount of malice or short comings and dare i say that is one of their most freighting aspects, they cannot be defeated. these natives tend to take a while to build their sense of self but once they do it’s unbreakable and they will and shall preserve over all of the set backs in their life. The desire to reach the highest of heights is at their forefront and their ability to use strands and straws to build a temple or a grand spectral of architecture is one of their finest traits.

Who has It : Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Monica Bellucci, Russell Crowe, John Lennon, Cher, Alexander the Great, Ellen De Generes. Kesha, Usher.

Motto :

“Even if i must drag my fragmented bones through the wet mud, even if i must tear my limbs from this body, even if i loose my sight, my hearing and my soul, i shall annihilate all who stand in the way of My truth”

Key Expression : Ruthlessness, Self reliance, Tenacious, Hungry, Self critical, Emotionally Unavailable.

Saturn In the Second House : The African Rock Python

(Resident Evil Afterlife - The Outsider(Reholder Apocalypse Mix)

Saturn in the second house is something a bit more quiet and seldom. These people are calculating and extremely intelligent. the mind is often cautiously taking note, watching, understanding and digging. they are pragmatic and business oriented both literally and metaphorically speaking. they place a serious eye and value over the things they possess and hold a rather uncompromising and blunt image of themselves and their self worth which makes it incredibly hard for them to jump into any type of friendship or relationship “unless” they deem themselves as worthy or ready for that matter for something of that nature. They take intimacy and relating to others seriously and can at times seem very distant and short when they address others. to these natives the home they need to focus on maintaining is that of their own inner realm. they don’y care for lavish clothing, they want something that will stand the test of time. they don’t care for quantity, they crave something that can maintain it’s bountiful and rather serene look through and through. they are not ones to sugar coat disasters or short comings in their personality and because of this can take on a rather cruel or mean view towards themselves. they feel a strong desire for inner equilibrium and have a hard time adjusting to society or the world around them when they are internally imbalanced. as lovers they can be SERIOUS. they are are not immediately affectionate which may through people off on the onset of courting stages. they show their interest by making time for you and being dependable and consistent, aside from that they keep a steady face and remain loyal and very dedicated to their unions albeit more difficult than most when it comes to introducing psychical intimacy. These natives are also very reclusive and self invested, though this isn’t in an arian self invested way, it’s more so a self preservation way. they need to feel secure and fight long and hard to create security in themselves first before they look for it in other people. They might seem aloof or impersonal to the naked eye but deep down they are massively sympathetic to an almost tragic level for the woes of others. they genuinely care for people but can be very closed and inward about this. sexually they are passionate and deeply sensual, but these natives will not initiate intimacy or sex unless they are stable on a mental and emotional level as they place their well being and the persons above all else before actively making moves towards deepening or satisfying their needs. these natives are normally shy, timid and quiet. they normally like and need time to recharge from the public. The voices can often be raspy and low/stretched in a way as if the natives are tired. the neck is often small or short and thick. in my experience men and women here are very self aware.

Who Has It : Jesus Christ, Brad pitt, Kanye West, Justin timberlake, Prince, Jennifer Lawarence, Mark Zuckerberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, jessica alba, Mila jovovich

motto :

“When everything lay to waste, their will be no lover, no mother, no children, no sky, no sea, their shall be only me and where i to have no peace with me, i too would become the ruin”

Key expression: Quiet, isolated, personal, emotionally heavy, very guarded, Loyal to their detriment.

Saturn In The Third House : The Rattlesnake

(Bjork - Army Of Me Sucker Punch Remix)

Saturn in this house can produce someone with a rather complex mind. Information is dispensed in such a way that it can be rather difficult for these natives to learn in school via the ordinary means. these natives may even in some cases have a hard time multi-tasking or working on other things whilst in school due to how much of their mental faculties are eaten up when they focus on one thing. these natives also sport a immense reservoir of memory and spatial awareness skills. they can piece things together or pieces of information from bits and pieces of fragmented knowledge. the rather unnerving thing about this position is the incredible minds that these natives have, their minds move fundamentally different from the rest of us, even more so then Uranus or mercury here information is packaged and tossed deep in the brain where it festers and bunches up with other mental storage. these natives can almost be a walking photo camera the older they get as Saturn here rewards study, and effort put into memorization. the natives often keep things short and sweet and refrain from digging to deep or revealing to much when they are speaking to others. their incredibly mature and wise and can easily convey emotions or feelings without the use of very many words at all. they are truly masters of language and can navigate through words and mannerisms quick enough to decipher your intent and inner workings at the drop of a hat. these natives possess a keen interest in deepening their mental capacity and tend to be advent readers, conspiracy theorist or the types to watch documentaries and or find learning and researching history and ancient mythos(especially roman and Greek). The men and women can sport rather small/fragile hands and a rather constrained or slow manner of speaking. in many cases the eyes can be alluring but cold, they seem impersonal or rather calm with a sadness. these natives are very self critical of their academic habits and can be vulnerable in this area but as they age it becomes their greatest area of talent. these natives can loathe meaningless chit chat and very rarely indulge in it unless it makes sense for the circumstance they happen to be in.

Who Has it : Steve Jobs, Justin bieber, Kylie Jenner, Bjork, Bruce Willis, Jake gyllenhall, tom hanks, penelope cruz, Matt damon

motto:

“ I wish for the day my presence is that of the written word. i angst for the day of paint and scroll held above cloud, where the spoken and the scribbling of said to be madmen and women illuminate all in the blackness of the hour”

Key phrases: Detached, Strange, Poetic, Blunt, short and low paced speech, Sad eyes. mental boredom.

Saturn In The Fourth House : The Copperhead snake

(Florence And the Machine - Seven Devils)

Saturn in the fourth house is something that feels like a massive weight on ones inner world, your core, your vulnerability locked away like some sacred prisoner of the odalisque. This placement often makes these natives emotionally closed, stoic and very emotionally unavailable. these natives don’t spill or open up, not at bonfires or community gatherings, not at family reunions or to long time lovers rather they keep a huge portion of their inner world deeply nestled and hidden away in their heart of hearts. These natives can have a streak for coldness and and even larger one for emotional distance which i might add isn’t something that is done out of self protection or manipulation rather it’s a very deep unconscious wound that these natives carry with them from a past life. wounds of a unimaginable level were placed on the natives, these wounds can be rooted to family as well even when the home life is well. these natives cannot shake the heavy and almost suffocating presence of being home, the parents the family and at times the home itself. these natives may not truly feel comfortable or “themselves” unless they are away from home or home alone away from others. these natives loathe a breach in their privacy and because of this a great deal of them is practically a mystery due to how little of themselves they are actually okay with divulging. it can take them years and sometimes decades before they feel comfortable enough to open up with you about their emotions and this is something that can carry on for quite sometime. These natives do have very deep and very structured emotions that are well beyond their years. they grew up quickly on a mental and emotional level and it’s something you can see in their actions and decisions. these natives can be worries and suffer from extensive bouts of depression and societal isolation especially if Saturn is harshly aspected. these natives can go into what i like to call hibernation periods in which they go missing or disengage from society for periods of time and depending on who you are, you might not hear from them for quite a bit. these natives are almost nomadic like and seem to have a rather serious and intense relationship with their emotional realm. they want to be truly seen and understood on a deep emotional level but they often realize that their emotional nature is so complex and deep that it can be hard to find that understanding. compassion and intimacy are hallmarks of their true nature but are also aspects you might never see in them until they make the choice to make it so. the chest for the women with this placement unless having Venus, moon or a naturally watery or earth sign on the cusp tend to be rather petite. while men here can also have a rather fragile and or boney chest. these natives may have a very serous family as the IC rules family heritage. so the family could be hardworking and very critical. These natives can also be remarkably ambitious and deeply grounded people deep down no matter how lighthearted and unpredictable they may seem with other placements in their chart. these natives despite their deep seriousness have a very caring and emotive nature and a love for nature and all people but they also in a sense lack the means to express this.

Who Has It: Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Tom cruise, Drake, Gwen Stefani, Ashton Kutcher, john travolta, Yoko ono

Motto:

“ I’ve been locked away with my demons for such a time now that i too have become them, but I've also claimed the lantern god left so fervently”

Key Phrase: Intense, Cold, Sympathetic, Nurturing, Provider, Stoic, Closed off.

Saturn In The Fifth House: The Forest Cobra

(The Rocket Builder - Johann Johannsson)

In The case of Saturn in the 5th one is always catered to the question, to love or to isolate. these natives can struggle with the idea of children, the concept of innocence and the childlike ignorance to the hardships of life almost seem like a unthinkable medium to them. in reality despite their rather stoic and tempered view towards children, children are no less motivated to be around these natives. these natives inspire youth and can have quite the powerful effect on the motivations and aspirations of children. these natives see a limit to themselves while the rest of the world sees color and something intangible, like gold and god. these natives have a strong romantic nature but one that is old and timeless like the sands of time. they don’t open their heart easily nor do they seek commitment or sexual expression for the sake of self validation, they need depth and true consistency to commit to anyone otherwise the journey is meaningless. these natives have a very tragic and often times harsh relationship with self expression. either they are incredibly artistic or they are unconsciously limiting these talents. if there is any representation i could use i would compare these natives to the angels. they are very spiritual and innately 4D types who constantly dissociate and travel amongst dimensions making them seem rather jaded or strangely misaligned. these natives read vibrations more than they do words and actions and can often be very quick to annihilate a bond or situation the moment they sense a fallacy in the way your energy is being dispensed. intimacy and sex is often reserved for long time lovers and is very rarely, if at all something these natives spend their time begging the stars for. they are never short of admirers or sexual invitations due to being preserved as “hard to get” but the actuality is that they spend more time protecting their inner sense of peace then they do capitalizing on superficial tropes. these natives are extremely patient and slow with their works and can work on projects for years. having children is normally something these natives postpone until later in life, and if they do have them young it’ll be an area of constant growth until later in life as parenting might not be an immediate skill. dating runs slow and can be rather shy and quiet in the start but much like Lilith here these natives tend to marry the people they date or meet in the realm of the 5th house due to the longevity of Saturn.

Who Has It : Shakira, Bill gates, Heath ledger, Chris brown, Bruce lee, Mel Gibson, Emma stone, Isaac Newton, Mike Tyson, Niall Horan.

Motto:

“ Everything good in this world takes getting used to.”

Key Phrase: Deep, Earthy, Sensuous, curious, Blunt, isolated, free, inspiring, devoted, persistent, giving, understanding, forgiving.

Saturn In The Sixth House : The Pit Viper Snake

( West-world Soundtrack - This World)

Saturn In the 6th House Can create a native who is the high end architect of both their life and the life of others. they build, they build the scene, the work environment, they build their health, they build their reputation and their fundamentals as if it were all parts of one big house. they have a deep inner grounded sense of stability and home that often makes them seem unphased or rather lacking in emotional turbulence when dealing with others or even in some ways with themselves. they don’t acknowledge weaknesses in themselves and in a darker twist of fate they go to great lengths to eliminate any short comings both emotionally and physically that they deem toxic or unhealthy to their well being. for this reason these natives normally are remarkably fit and steer clear of any major aliments. this is for good reason as these natives tend to hold on to sickness for a while once it makes its way into the body. this can mean prolonged fights with colds that last well over their designated time or sometimes in some cases this can mean damage to the joints or bones. that being said Saturn here works hard to repair the body anytime scenarios like this do come about. these natives work incredibly hard and even if Saturn is afflicted here these natives are able to remain remarkably steady and grounded in their daily lives. these natives tend to plan quite a bit and can have a hard time dealing with people or situations that lack a plan or a sort of well rehearsed background. schooling can also be a source of irritation as these natives can be incredibly picky on how they prefer to be taught. teachers with quirks or little nuances in their teaching tend to cause these natives irritation as their isn’t a stable or straight forward approach in this teaching style. these natives are very reasonable when it comes to others but they also value their Independence and sense of self highly so they can be incredibly hard to tie down or create a long lasting union with due to how high of a bar they’ve set for themselves. don’t be mistaken, it’s not that these natives are arrogant rather it’s that these natives place a special value on loving the self before you’re able to love anyone else. They may want bonds or love, but they need stability and true heartfelt connectivity before they can even fathom the depth of such a connection with another person. their co-workers are often serious, grounded and mature types who have high plans for their future. they often inspire the native to rise in ranks or in positions. these natives tend to navigate away from people who are co-dependent or emotionally weak. they can have an aura of toughness and seem rather unapproachable but it’s really just that these natives feel the inner desire to carry themselves with respect and caution to the outside world. their bone structure similar to Saturn in the 10th house is incredibly well made and proportioned. the hips and lower spine can be arched in a rather coiled snake like manner. the skin can also be oily for many with this placement. the stomach is very strong and these natives usually are blessed with a good digestive system which(is great for acne and emotional stress levels.) another side note is that these natives NAP a lot. they tend to be easily worn out or tired due to Saturn low energy levels.

Who has it : Lady gaga, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Keanu reeves, Amy Winehouse, Lindsey Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Adele, Jimi hendrix, Demi lovato

Motto :

“ Order outside will generate order inside.”

Key Phrase: Mesmerizing, commanding, Astute, tempered, sloths, bored

Saturn In The Seventh House : Eastern Green Mamba Snake

(Annihilation Ost - The Alien )

relationships play out in a rather heavy manner for these natives, be it years in the making or be it that they themselves can’t readily open up to the opportunity. Saturn here acts as the father, in spirit it halts the sphere of connectivity between these natives and the people they interact with in a shadow sense. these natives may notice that people view them in a serious manner or suddenly may become more intense and more stoic in their presence. the honest truth is that Saturn here surrounds the environment in this candid and rather suffocating weight. mind you this is not bad at all, it’s only Saturn ensuring that the energy and the people brought into these natives lives is real, honest and pure in intention. that being said these natives have a natural guardian that brings the shadows to light, be it addictions, crime, manipulation, and so forth. Saturn here works for the individual by showing them the bad in others, the real part of others, the honest aspect of others in order to help these natives grow. connections can be difficult to form because it seems as though everyone is running away from these natives which isn’t so far from the truth. i’ll be honest in saying Saturn energy scares some people due to how deep and intense it really can be. it forces everyone to confront a side of themselves they might not have ever considered before and it also forces everyone to mature and face the music. this is not bad at all, rather these natives are blessed with the ability to attract the very real and bare versions of people instead of their performances, or their masks...these natives get to see behind the curtain and this is their superpower. dating can be hard as the typical fun flirting is absent until a later part of the relationship. Saturn does things backwards here and forces the more deep and heavy aspect of relating to someone else to come up first before the more lighthearted and playful part. the reason being is Saturn wants that deep and guarded intimacy, the kind people build stories utop of. so due to this Saturn doesn’t mind to reverse roles and cause a longer courting stage if it means true connections and bonds being formed. forming friendships or even any type of relationship for that matter can take years or months depending on Saturn well being aspect wise. these natives prefer long lasting unions and usually get that. the marriage is often very resilient and deeply fulfilling for the natives! they often marry very loving and nurturing despite the partners serious and stoic nature. these natives are also on the more serious side themselves even though they might not see it in within them. they tend to have more petite butts that can be on the more angular side of things. Saturn makes the butt look great here even if it might be on the smaller side. it really depends on the other planets here though. the partner will often have Saturn in their chart or in aspect to their natal planets. it’s also common to attract someone with strong 10th house energy. Saturn here makes things petite and since the 7th house rules the pelvis and buttocks, one can have a very well shaped butt and may even have a lovely structure to it as well. relationships can be very handwork here but they are incredibly rewarding and these natives should always wait to marry if they can or make sure that the person you’re marrying has strong Saturn contacts to you. That being said they are very loving and tender people despite their rather cool and aloof outward energy.

Who has it: Johnny Depp, Kurt Cobain, Christina Aguilera, Selena Gomez, Eminem, David Bowe, Ryan gosling, Jud Law, Sylvester Stallone, Gerad Butler

Motto :

“I was already on the other side, i had been there from the start like a cold reflection in cement...i was already there.”

Key phrases : Intense, depressive, closed, tense, anxious, stable, steady, rigorous, emotionally unavailable(in the beginning), transparent.

Saturn In The Eighth House : The Black Mamba Snake

(West-World Soundtrack - This world)

with Saturn in the Eighth house the native can feel like a disconnected, fragmented disarray. They may not easily confide in others and can have an extended “getting to know each other” stage with seemingly no ending in sight. These natives can seem detached and extremely emotionally absent especially in moments where emotional softness and kindness may be necessary. These natives do not mean to seem this way, it’s sadly just that in many cases these natives where put last as far as emotions go and due to earlier experiences these natives have learned to barricade their true feelings and vulnerabilities behind a steel door. Pushing them to hard to open up to soon often makes them shut down and place a superficial mask to make the invasion go away. These natives are keen on human nature and know how to pretend and play the naive or weak minded role that the people ask of them. beneath this facade lies a strong energy, a seemingly intangible reservoir of depth and intensity that would make Pluto, Hades and Lilith cower. These natives grapple with the idea of power and it’s place in their life and the lives of others. They may shift between vulnerable and innocent to dominant and wise. This is actually a prelude to the expression of their sexuality, they tend to derive their pleasure of BDSM and or more aggressive and control themes in sexual encounters because of their ociliating nature. they associate sexual expression and their desire for it in a complex way. on one end they hate their sexual desires and wish to repress them and on the other hand the repression creates an almost animalistic desire for “TRUE” sexual expression. For this reason these natives tend to have the most powerful, earthy sexual drive of the zodiac. Sex for them is something that is flesh to flesh, true intimacy and relating and something they cannot and will not just have with anyone. they can also be very hard to get intimate with because of hoe seriously they take revealing that hidden aspect of themselves. these natives can be very dark and have a sort of heaviness to their nature that seeps out here and there as an ominous or heavy serious air. They loathe superficiality but they feed it to the people they interact because they secretly fear their true nature is boring, stagnate and far to intense for people to handle. they can handle finances very seriously and no matter how afflicted Saturn is, these natives take time to grow money and are cautious about any inheritance or scams. they aren’t the types to spend money on others unless you’ve earned their trust and loyalty, till then they can seem cheap and Grinch like about money usage. they can last for hours in sex and have stamina unheard of, in men and women the size of the genitals can be small or Tight for women. in men it can make the member small but this isn’t always the case especially if other planets are here, the sign on the cusp and aspects to Saturn itself. These natives will live long lives and may outlive their partners. The desire for the real and honest aspects of life are real and these people can be very turned off by immaturity or a lack of stability in any of their interactions. a strange thing here is that Saturn from this spot ages the whole chart so it can cause other planetary placements to act more mature or less lighthearted even if Saturn is not touching them.

Who has it: Martin Luther King, Jay-Z, Kristen Stewart, Robert Downey Jr, Khloe Kardashian, Salvador Dali, Michael Jordan, Virgin Mary, Michael Fassbender, Dwayne Johnson, Frida kahlo, Henry cavil, Franklin D Roosevelt, Liz Greene

Motto :

“Power is Power”

Key phrases: Concrete, sensual, Horny, intellectual, dark, melancholic, sorrow, the maid/The Military general duality, intensity, DEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Saturn In The Ninth House : The Jamesons Mamba

(The Gazelle Twins - The Entire City)

With Saturn in the ninth house the term Maneater comes into mind. these natives can have a rampaging mind. they are often dancing between ideals and philosophies and working tirelessly to give them footing, grounding or a sense of transparency. they may maintain an air of stoicism or clandestine projection when they express their values and interpretations of faith but it’s merely because they themselves feel as though believing in some un-palpable force is like playing Russian roulette. they want some sort of grounding and reliability in the “word” and “pen” and because of this they approach these matters with seriousness and intensity as they seek to find the source of the matter. These natives can be relatively to them selves at university and college and might even major in law or seek to pioneer their own business or work in architecture as these natives have quite the eye for beauty and reconstruction due to how differently their minds operate. the natives are tenacious and a tad abrasive when expressing their disdain or disapproval of faulty belief systems in others and it can be a deal breaker for them if your beliefs fail to meet them in the middle in some way. They tend to have a strong desire to learn, understand and register information. in many ways Saturn can make the thighs smaller or more petite but the shaping and angular standing of the thighs to hip will be amazing. their is an earthy look to the individuals and longer more ruffled looks are common in men and shorter more androgynous looks are preferred for the women. their can be a closed or serious nature towards experimentation and towards luck as these natives feel like one should never solely rely on luck to make things pan out. these natives because of this tend to be go getters and can place quite a bit of passion and drive into much of their efforts which often wins them admiration and respect from those who watch in the shadows. these natives can constantly stay working or struggle with giving themselves a brake but for a good cause as these natives tend to do remarkable in their college endeavors. their oversee voyages tend to be a serious event and the encounters they have can leave a huge mark on them emotionally, they tend to travel seldom when younger and this increases following the nearing of the Saturn return. these natives can feel powerful and don’t hold on to people or situations as to them people and situations change all the time, why waste time that could be spent working, growing and thriving on a choice that fell through the cracks in a carefully made bridge only continuing to grow in size.

Who Has it: Rihanna, Hillary Clinton, Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, Nicki Minaj, 14th Dalai Lama, Prince William, Prince Harry(explains their controversial Interracial marriages), Jared leto, Paul McCarthy

Motto :

“The Fire Never Goes out”

Key Phrases: Keen, ardent, impatient, BLUNT, impulsive, critical, private, compassionate, REAL

Saturn In The Tenth House : The King Cobra Snake

(The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?)

These natives are the epitome of Saturn, the ooze it, they embody it they express it like an extension of their spiritual being and for that reason they can seem like an authoritative energy without even trying. People respect them, but people also fear them the same way we fear our boss, our parents, our obligations, our shortcomings or our real self. They are stable at the core and very easily lay the stepping stones necessary to achieve, though with Saturn's energy here success often does come later in life but when it does it is usually following very rigorous work and dedication from the individual in question. These natives are competitive but in a very quiet and restrained way, for them coming in second place or being told it was “good” or hearing the words “i enjoyed..” irritates them. They in a sense care little for public validation, and more about their own ability to surpass the limitations they set for themselves. they tend to treat life and it’s circumstances like a game of cards, and can often have a manipulative or “business as usual” approach when it comes to dealing with the public or confidants. To them unless it had to do with the work, the quality, or the means of the end, they’d rather not waste their time. These natives can be advent global warming fighters, as this position creates a very strong tie to the earth itself. these natives care deeply about the animals and the environment and can be very aggressive and even volatile towards people who fail to treat the environment with respect. these natives often dress to impress and even when they’re dressing down they have this patriarch like air to them as if the world was waiting for them to arrive. these natives have a swagger to them, as if they have the whole room gripping and swaying to their movement. Their is a strong need to dissociate and disappear with this placement so often these natives can go MIA for days or weeks at a time depending on what wave of melancholy or project has them all caught up now. These natives have beautiful smiles and can have incredible bone structures. They do care about how they are portrayed by the media or by others in public so they tend to keep a low profile. These natives can be very frank and tel you how it is, so if you are sensitive you might want to keep it short with them. These natives tend to be drawn to fashion, Acting, ,modeling, directing, and so on. In fact Saturn on the MC or in aspect to the MC is common amongst models and or designers. the ability to make money and capital out of nothing but water and a dog bone is strong as shit here and these natives will indeed outsell, outsway, out publish, out swim, and overall outdo you with both legs and arms tied behind their back because they are literally just that driven. the impact they leave on the world lat decades and even ions after they’ve longed been buried in the soil.

Who has it: Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Leonardo DaVinci, Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, Al Pacino, Celine dion, Bill Clinton, Mila kunis, James dean

Motto:

“I’d eat the nation if i could, I’ll eat the world because i can”

Key phrases: Mysterious, Distant, polite, imperialistic, ambitious, competitive, altruistic, Black Seminole

Saturn In The Eleventh House : The Atheris hispida Snake

(Cocteau twins - But Im Not )

These Natives can Be everything that opposes culture and societal up charge. They possess a strong spacious air to them as if they are this cosmic force on earth. They can be magnetic, prophetic, dark, enticing and deeply revolutionary. These natives have a natural talent for leadership and crowd attracting as they understand the intricate parts of human interaction, they understand the crowd, the outsiders because they themselves despise the insiders, the people pleasers and the followers. they aren’t the types to beg for acceptance but in their early years they often did, the spent their time trying so hard to fit in, to be welcomed and accepted but sadly they were rejected and often times bullied for their giving and loving nature. as these natives age they learn ruthlessness and they learn to express themselves no matter the recoil. they value people who are new, different and stable in their concept of “themselves.” Saturn is remarkably comfy in this house due to the fact that the 11th house and Aquarius are both co-ruled by Saturn. So these natives despite their electric and rather tethered nature can be serious, detached and highly dissociated from the world around them. they like the aloofness and lighthearted nature of connecting with others because it fulfills their need to understand, meet and converge. they actually despise people and are not very good at hiding it once an interaction that should’ve lasted a few days turns into something that becomes consistent. they can amputate relationships both romantic and platonic and even familial as if it were a house fly on their shoulder. They are not evil or cold, rather they just learned early on not to dig to deep into people or their intentions and as a result they keep a blockaded on their more compassionate and loving traits. these natives tend to be skeptics and harshly critical of civil rights movements or cultural uprisings in general because they hate crowd and mob mentality, to them any organized revolution needs grounding and a deeper meaning behind it’s efforts otherwise it’s childish and a waste of time. these natives also hold a great deal of their emotions within and because of this they can see,m unloving or out of reach to loved ones or friends even if it’s been years of knowing them. They tend to prefer authentic friendships and will bend over backwards for friends, lovers and so on so long as you prove to them your loyalty, patience and time. they wont open up for a while and can take years before they do and they’ll disappear and ghost you constantly till then because they’ve been hurt more than most in the area where most of us see our future and are most optimistic. they may seem pessimistic or stoic but it’s merely their desire for the truth and authenticity that causes this. they normally are very big on being ones true self and in the presence of people who struggle with this they can take on a colder air and seem rather unmoved or disgusted at the pity party. they are passionate but far away. the calves and ankles are often small and boney but very sturdy and sensual. The legs in general are amazing to look at.

Who has it: Donald trump, George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Freddie Mercury, Natalie portman, Megan Fox, Cristiano Ronaldo, Pamela Anderson, Marlon Brando, robin Williams, Vincent Van Gogh, Charlize Theron, Charles Manson, Zac effron, Halle berry, Ryan reynolds, Joaquin Phoenix, Jessica Biel

Motto :

“I could stand in a room of millions gathered all for me and i’d still feel alone”

Key phrases: Lonely, detached(very), impersonal, electric, bubbly, frank, honest, Free spirit, dark, melancholy, mean spirited. compassionate and caring.

Saturn In The 12th House : The Spider-tailed horned viper Snake (Cocteau Twins - Alice)

Saturn in The 12th house can feel like a heavy weight on the soul, as if the soul’s been drained of it’s life force before it even took a breath. their is a constant feeling of exhaustion or need to recuperate. There can be periods of extreme anxiety, depression, manic episodes or heightened states of mental awareness and emotional energy and then suddenly “nada.” everything goes quiet and everything can seem like a empty opera room with a photo camera going off. there is a sense of being grounded but never really “expressing” or “feeling” this security in a tangible form. these natives can seem a bit disorganized, restless or moody upon meeting them, hell they may even seem like they’re hiding things or being fraudulent and or deceptive due to the blurry and rather incomplete personality they present. They are remarkably deep and have a immense empathetic nature that can make even the strongest of strong men buckle. they are very sweet but they are not always able to control when this side of them comes out. unfortunately their more serious and cautious nature blurs the line between duty, love, duty, relationships, duty, trauma, duty, and so on in a cycle. they can often be very private and reclusive, preferring to be alone with themselves or nature. they often have very beautiful inner worlds and can give so much of themselves to the environment and the world at large. They usually have a fine list of artistic abilities but it takes them time to bring them out into the world. art, singing, dancing, and so on are brilliant gate ways to expressing that inner burden in their hearts. These natives can constantly feel like there is an inner voice telling them they wont amount to anything or are not good enough which is often the main debilitating force for these natives. They are so kind and genuinely soft spirited and these natives have a hard time doing wrong as Saturn reminds them constantly off errors or short comings. These natives value the flaws just as much as the beauty in others and often push for a more accepting environment and world. these natives don’t see color, sexual orientation, or status which is often why they feel conflicted because Saturn feels like things need order and classification but the 12th house blurs those lines. Their can be trouble dreaming or in some cases dreams of being trapped, restricted or in a different body are common. The feet tend to be small :) but this is very cute! this placement can be hard for women as it makes them unable to differentiate the feeling of duty from pleasure which unconsciously places them into unhappiness or unhealthy expectations of themselves. For men it can be Even worse as it can lead to melancholy, depression and emotional confusion that being said we all have our battles and Saturn in the 12th housers are amazing because Saturn as they age teaches them to handle their mind, their mental health and their conscious self and soul. so they tend to have strong minds and comprehensive abilities even as they age. These natives tend to express an air of happiness and optomisim though on an outward level and for the most part you’ll never real know their struggles or pain because of how genuinely positive and good willed these people are.

Who has it: Barack Obama, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce knowles, Scarlett johnasson, Vladmir Putin, Mariah carey, Whitney Houston, Zayn malik, Will smith, Kendall jenner, Ben Affleck, tyra banks, Robert De Niro, Ted Bundy, George W. Bush

Motto :

“Deception is the only Felony”

Key Phrases : introspective, spiritual, hermit, persistent, tired, lazy, caught up in the past

Final Notes: If you look at the celebrities that share the particular Saturn placement you’ll notice familiarties with them, you’ll notice nuances and small call back of energy! this is why i find astrology so interesting, were all connected.

#Mine #saturn through the houses

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life-in-prosper-city · 5 years ago

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The Team

Under the cut are profiles of all the team’s members.

The Team doesn’t really have a name- in their own eyes, they’re just a group of people who want to help others. At the present time, there are eleven members of the team. Five of them are full-time active members, meaning they’ll respond to any type of danger at any time. These members are Cobalt Hunter, Honorstar, Silver Seer, Chlorothorn, and Kingdom Animalia. Three of them are part-time active members, meaning they’re being actively trained to fight, and they can come along on some calls. These members are Langley and Lyndon, the twins, and Zilla. One of them, Dr. Malcolm, is a full-time support member; he stays at the base, or nearby but not right at the fight or danger, as a support for Kingdom Animalia. The last two members, Spectre and Serena, are too young to fight, and are only part of the team because they have nowhere else to go.

Compared to the Safeguard Coalition, whose hub is located in Prosper City, The Team are more of a family; they all live in the same building, each having their own apartment but sharing common areas, and they all know each other’s secret identities. There’s a silent trust between all of them.

In terms of principles, The Team prioritizes citizen safety and limiting collateral damage. They have a no-kill policy against the criminals or villains they fight, as long as they’re living or sentient beings. If they have to let a bank robber get away in order to save civilians, they’ll let the robber go; stolen money is not as important as people’s lives.

Cobalt Hunter/Grace Kearney (She/her)

Part time museum curator, part time superhero, and part time team mom. Grace is the most responsible person on the team, and the official leader. She’s the one who makes the important decisions for the team, though she does take everyone’s opinions into account. Because she has the most demanding day job out of all of them, she makes sure that chores around the apartment building are organized and delegated to the others. Taking care of Spectre and Serena is also her self-appointed job, because the rest of the adults on the team just don’t understand very much about child care. She may not have superpowers like everyone else on the team, but she’s skilled at what she does and strikes fear into the heart of the criminals the team faces.

Abilities: Professionally trained in archery, self-defense, and mixed martial arts since childhood; her strongest skill is her archery. Like many unpowered superheroes, she relies on technologically enhanced gadgets to fight powered supervillains. She has many types of lethal and non-lethal arrows, and her bow itself is customized for additional functions.

Other skills: While archery is her main skill, she can also hold her own in CQC for some time, and she’s super beefy. A good understanding of technology; she can’t create her own gadget arrows but she can repair them. She’s very organized and has a good eye for detail. Though Casey, Honorstar, is the frontman of the team, Cobalt Hunter is also known to answer questions from the press and public; she isn’t as charismatic as Casey is, but she knows how to talk to people and lead conversations where she wants them to go.

Honorstar/Casey Lebeau (They/them)

28 year old professional superhero, and spiritually the leader of the team. The main chef and general housekeeper, Casey inherited a great sum of money from both their parents and their two aunts (and their husbands), who never had kids of their own. There was no one tragic accident that killed their family; there was sickness, accidents, a suicide. Casey was 3 when they became an orphan, and 17 when all their aunts and uncles died. Still, they stay positive, knowing death has a place in the world, and defying it only brings darkness. Maybe it’s the loneliness of having no family, or the feeling of responsibility they have from their powers, but Casey’s compassion is shown on their sleeve, taking in strays, and working to save the innocent.

Abilities: Superhuman, either from birth or something else, Casey doesn’t know. They have super strength, speed, stamina, healing ability, resilience, and dexterity.

Other skills: Good at cooking and cleaning. Able to organize small to medium groups of people; enjoys being an emotional support for other people.

Zilla (They/them)

Zilla is a 15 year old former homeless kid, passed through the foster system like a library book until they ran away. They were saved by Honorstar from a battle they got caught in, and given a place to live with the rest of the team. Zilla isn’t very talkative, but as long as someone else is carrying the conversation, they’ll keep up. They’re still working on building up their social skills, after being alone for most of their life. They enjoy reading all types of books, and watching movies with the other team members. Somewhat defensive still, they quickly grew protective of the team as well- they’re the first real family that Zilla has ever had.

Abilities: Can shapeshift into a monstrous, 10 foot tall, semi-anthropomorphic crocodilian, gaining the jaw strength, sharp teeth, powerful legs, and large lung capacity that are common to crocodilians.

Other skills: Fairly strong even when not transformed; skilled but untrained in close combat fights without transforming, able to take on a few untrained fighters by themself. They’re resourceful and have a good sense of spatial awareness.

Kingdom Animalia/King (He/him, but he doesn’t care he’s a dog)

King is a dog. He’s a good boy. He enjoys chasing ducks but he isn’t allowed to do it because Warren says it’s Mean. He likes to be a gecko when he’s at work with Warren. Warren and Casey tell King to be a human when strangers ask him questions. He has to pretend to be a human like mom dogs pretend to fight puppies when they play. King is not great at pretending to be a human, but he tries his best, and he gets pets when he makes bad guys go in cages or helps not-bad guys get away from danger. King likes helping humans even when he doesn’t get pets. They make happy sounds, and King likes that.

Abilities: King is able to shapeshift into other animals. Without direction, he doesn’t have much of a use for it, but with Dr. Malcolm’s helping telepathy, King can use his abilities to aid the rest of the team in fights and rescues.

Other skills: Very pettable, very cuddly, good at doing tricks for treats. King is good at search-and-rescue in his true form, and he’s the very best on the team for cheering up the other team members. He is a dog, and has all the usual dog skills that come with being a dog.

Dr. Warren Malcolm (He/him)

A 38 year old pharmacist with a kind and selfless heart. He worked with the team for a while before actually joining them, giving them medications they needed even without an actual prescription- It may be against the law, but it wasn’t harming anyone else, and it was saving lives. Once he rescued King, he moved in with the team and joined them full time as King’s “handler”. He’s the oldest person on the team, and his age shows. He doesn’t understand the video games the kids play, not for lack of trying. He prefers working with analogue technology where possible. He likes to read and do logic and word puzzles in his free time. He volunteers at various animal shelters and other animal facilities when he isn’t busy, using his ability to figure out what might need to change for an animal’s comfort.

Abilities: Animal telepathy. For animals he’s unfamiliar with, he can only reach them from nearby. Animals he’s familiar with, he can reach them from a little bit further. Animals that he’s familiar with and they’re familiar with him and trust him, he can reach them from quite a distance. Animals in distress often unknowingly reach him.

Other skills: As a doctor of pharmacology, Warren has more medical skills than anyone else on the team, and a better understanding of microbiology. As such, he’s often the team’s first contact for any sort of medical care. He’s a fairly logically-minded person, as well. He’s handy with a toolbox, too.

Silver Seer/Jordan Sun

Jordan… Isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He struggled in school, not for lack of trying, but seriously, school was so boring. His lack of academic success may seem ironic, given his superpowers are of the mental variety. However, his personal interests fall on the more physical side of things. Jordan is a bit of a gym rat and enjoys other physical activities too. He’s outgoing and playful, he gets along well with the younger members of the team. He tries to be responsible and do chores and help cook, but sometimes he just drops the ball. He’s good at focusing! But only on some things.

Abilities: At the present time, he has many abilities, but they aren’t very powerful. He has prophetic dreams, glimpses of the future in his waking moments, and with strong enough concentration, he can purposefully see up to a few minutes into the future. He has sharp intuition; even without exact images, he can tell when something bad is about to happen, or feel when something is wrong either with a person or an object. He can see illusions for what they are, and can also tell if another person is under the effects of mind control. He himself is resistant to mind control, as well as possession and unwanted telepathic or empathetic readings or projections. With a willing target, he can make a telempathic connection between them or a few people; they can share thoughts and emotions with words, images, and other sensory projections. His strongest mental ability is his telekinesis. With his mind, he can exert twice the amount of force as his physical body; given he routinely strength trains, his telekinesis can reach almost incredible power.

Other skills: Jordan is the mundanely strongest person on the team. With a history in school-level track and field, he also has good physical coordination and team coordination skills. He’s pretty self-sufficient; when he was living alone, he cooked most of his meals and learned how to do his chores.

Chlorothorn/Project Dryad Subject 14/ “Clair” (She/her)

Technically 5 years old, her mental and physical age resembles that of a human in their mid 20s. As her assigned name suggests, Clair was the 14th experiment in a larger project designed to create creatures using both animal and plant DNA. After escaping the laboratory, she met Casey, and agreed to live in his building. She enjoys all types of media, learning more about what humans are like through observation, and learning more about the world in general. She has a desire to protect life, which made her very suitable to join the team’s active roster.

Abilities: Created as a human-plant hybrid, Clair has a humanoid body structure and face, the ability to speak, and a heart, lungs, and nervous system. Her plant DNA, however, mixed with the rapid cell generation chamber that was used to create her, gave her many plant-like traits, and abilities beyond the capacity of any normal human or plant. Her skin can absorb sunlight for photosynthesis, her arms and legs are made of many intertwined woody vines that she can extend and retract at will, and she doesn’t feel pain the same way humans do. She heals relatively easily, as her body’s structures are fairly simple, and she is sustained by a mainly liquid diet.

Other skills: Clair has excellent short- and long-term memory and recall. She has knowledge of a lot of subjects, and learns more every day. She doesn’t have many talents as she hasn’t had much opportunity to attend classes, but she’s kind and polite and always brings a sense of cheer to the apartments.

Langley & Lyndon (Both he/him)

These 18 year old identical twins consider each other their best friend in the world, even if they don’t always get along. They share their looks, their games, and the experience of a disaster that would change their life forever.

Langley Hayes

Hardworking and dedicated, Langley never fails to get a job done, big or small. He’s somewhat more outgoing than his brother, preferring the company of many to the silence of solitude. Currently working at warehouse part time, and on the back-up roster of the team, Langley isn’t shy about showing his emotions or goofing around, often entertaining the younger kids.

Abilities: Gravity manipulation, in the simplest terms. He can increase, decrease, or change the direction of the gravity in an area around him, and after some practice he’s nearly able to reach zero gravity. He may or may not use his powers outside of combat or emergencies, despite his brother’s lectures on being careful and not exposing himself as a super.

Other talents: He has mad video game strats. He enjoys skateboarding, excels at math in school, and handles himself well in social situations. He can also handle spicy food very well for an Irish heritage white person.

Lyndon Hayes

Responsible, dependable, considerate; Lyndon strives to be a good teammate and friend, but often indulges in fun and rebellious activities. Nothing too dangerous, though. Danger and fun can’t coexist, for Lyndon, though he does admit that the battles with the team are fun after the fact. He’s less socially-driven than his brother, able to enjoy some time alone to play video games, watch whatever holds his attention at the time, read a book, or come up with stories.

Abilities: Magnetism. Though at first only able to pick up metal objects without actually holding onto it, Lyndon has trained himself to be able to use his power to attract magnetic objects from a distance, repel magnetic things from him, or attract or repel magnetic objects from a point of his choice. Though not yet strong enough to, say, bend a steel beam, he’s able to manipulate magnetic material through careful and precise magnetic forces.

Other skills: Creative in his thinking, one of the top students in his physics class, and good at managing his emotions. He’s a good cook, one of the best on the team at explaining things to the kids in a way they understand, and he’s learned how to quickly read the team’s moods.

Serena

Only nine years old, Serena lives with the team. Her powers manifested when she was young, out of desperation and fear. She used them to run away, and she ended up alone in Prosper. She met Grace by chance, and went to live at the apartment building with the rest of the team. She spends most of her days at home, learning from workbooks that Grace brings her and hanging out with whoever else is home.

Abilities: Intangibility including invisibility and gravity immunity. Without a physical body she doesn't need to eat, drink, or breathe, and doesn't feel heat or cold. She’s immune to any physical effect, most magical effects, and some psychic effects. She also can’t have any physical effect on the world in this state, however.

Other skills: She’s a little bit above average in education for her age, and she especially enjoys language arts and nature studies. She’s trained with Grace to learn some self-defense moves, and they plan to move onto offensive attacks soon. For someone her age, she holds conversations with adults well, even if she’s a bit shy.

Spectre (He/him)

A six year old boy with a sad past that haunts him. Quiet and somewhat shy, it takes him a while to warm up to people. Because of his powers and his past, he has trouble sleeping when he’s alone, and tends to stick around familiar and trusted people as often as possible. He likes Pokemon, toy cars, bunnies, video games, and yogurt. He doesn’t like taking three vitamin pills every morning, or the permanent scarring to his throat, or that he might leave his body whenever he sleeps, or bees.

Abilities: His soul and body exist with only a weak bond, letting his soul leave his body. He can possess and control other people for short amounts of time, as long as the target doesn’t have a very strong psyche, a lot of willpower, or some other protection against possession, mind control, or ‘ghosts’. While his soul is outside of his body, his cells go into a state of stasis, preserving his body until his soul's return.

Other skills: He’s like 6 he doesn’t need to have other skills. He’s good at colouring inside the lines, though.

CREDITS

Picrews used: Jordan, Langley & Lyndon, Zilla; Warren; Spectre; Casey; Clair; King; Grace; Serena

Divider source

#original writing #character profile #life in prosper city #superheroes #the team #zilla #langley #lyndon #the twins #clair #spectre #king #warren #casey #grace #jordan #serena

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robobiitch-archive · 5 years ago

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RK Series History

The following is a comprehensive summary of the RK Series up to RK800

Everything here is mostly headcanon. There are multiple elements from canon taken into consideration: the most prevalent being the RK Series was a project aimed at creating androids with more autonomy. Everything else is purely from my imagination. It’s probably helpful information, as it’s a big part of the lore for my Connor.

Prototype Development Laboratory

CyberLife Tower: Floor -47

WARNING: The following classified material is for the review of Level 1 Clearance personnel only. In accordance with CyberLife company policy, the information is not to be copied or distributed and is encrypted for security purposes. Failure to abide will result in legal action against all offending parties. CyberLife thanks you for your cooperation.

[Open File?]

Research Notes:

The RK Series is a line of highly advanced models intended for governmental reconnaissance and espionage. The following summarizes the RK Series up to its current design:

RK100—Adam (Deactivated: November 2026)

Initial model and completely original program designed by Elijah Kamski

First development of pre-construction software. enhanced sensory modules and modified biocomponents meant to increase power and endurance

Introduction of enhanced sensory processors to aid in auditory and visual perception, as well as a rudimentary vocal imitation software to assist in disguise

RK200—Markus (Released: June 2028)

Introduction of moderate autonomy in an android prototype

Refinement of pre-construction software to allow for better predictions outside of combat situations: providing more options based on spatial awareness

Increase in durability and processor speed

Installation of personal care/domestic assistance software before being gifted to Carl Manfred

(Note: Kamski began designing the Zen Garden, but never implemented it into the RK200 before release)

(Hiatus in RK Line following Elijah Kamski’s resignation. Reinstated by Dr. Vasquez in 2033)

RK300—Odin (Deactivated: December 2033)

Combined combat protocol software (developed by Dr. Vasquez for GI Series androids meant for the Infantry) with pre-construction technology.

Model passed basic physical trials and combat simulations

Deemed obsolete due to failure to meet standards for reaction times and endurance for more advanced trials

RK400—Damon (Deactivated: October 2034)

Refined preconstruction software to allow for real-time responses

Modified unique coolant system to prevent overheating

Introduced more complex obstacle courses to

Passed physical expectations of RK Series

RK500—Neo (Deactivated: July 2035)

Introduced specially designed module for problem solving

Began mission simulations, including infiltration, navigation and escape situations

Refused to complete missions in extreme conditions; model deviated during times of high stress

Deemed failure; model deactivated and series software modified

RK600—Cato (Deactivated: March 2036)

Added modified psychology module and installed Zen Garden program

Modified vocal imitation software to be more refined—RK600 now able to perfectly imitate speech and vocal patterns of anyone it has come in contact with

Passed all trials involving the use of psychology/manipulation to accomplish mission simulations

Used Zen Garden remote access to control the model briefly during deviation that prevented the completion of a mission simulation.

Deemed failure: model self-destructed immediately after being released from remote control

RK700—Aidan (Deactivated: January 2037)

Began psychological directive—fear-based initiative to complete tasks; android praised/punished based on choices

Edited Zen Garden interface to allow human engineer to speak to android through Amanda avatar. Amanda avatar to be used as a guide/confidant to prioritize decisions in times of high stress (Note: android kept unaware that human engineer was behind the Amanda avatar)

Deemed failure due to hyperfocus on completing missions regardless of moral conflict

(Change in directive: RK Series to be used to end the deviancy crisis that has begun to spread)

RK800 —Connor (Released: August 2038)

Zen Garden program modified by Elijah Kamski to make it a network interface [a single virtual reality in which multiple bodies can enter] (Note: Dr. Vasquez held a conference with Mr. Kamski before working on the new RK model) and installed into RK800 to act as an independent AI

Modified social module to create more adaptive personality

Modified preconstruction software to allow for reconstruction

Introduced real-time sample analyzer to assist in crime scene investigation and cataloging of deviant blood samples

Deployed to DPD to assist investigations involving deviant androids.

Personal Data Entry

Author: Dr. Nikita Vasquez; RK Series Lead Engineer

It took me a while to figure out what word I should use to describe this idea, and I think I’ve got it.

Insane.

But I can’t just throw away Kamski’s advice. We’re only going to have one shot at this, and if we don’t take it, it could mean the end of CyberLife and an uncertain future for AI. Kamski’s right, with deviancy becoming a widespread problem, it’s only a matter of time before an all out war breaks out. These next few months are going to be hell. If I perfect the RK800, it’ll be more than just ending the “inevitable” android revolution, it’ll mean saving humanity from mass extinction. Failure is no longer an option.

#new software update {headcanon}#patch notes {ooc}#v; imagined by cyberlife {pre canon}#// so i'm lowkey crazy just a heads up to all of you #// i've spent way too much time coming up with connor's backstory #// because fuck you david cage

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senatashome · 6 years ago

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Personality System

Mind :

-Auditory processing and language / Visual - spatial processing / Motor planning and sequencing / Sensory modulation .

-Intelligentsia.

-Attention → Focused / Non - Focused → Dopamine level + Latent Inhibition (Li) = Reference → Curiosity / openness to new experiences → Boredom (Prone / not)

-Self awareness / consciousness.

-Philosophical / practical thinking.

-Conscientiousness / organised thinking vs. impulsive thinking .

-Clearance/ sexually driven / not.

-Ideology / mindset → Conventional / Traditional/ Conservative ( Moral, Religious Belief, Mystical Belief) , Modernized ( Self oriented), Sympathetic ( People oriented )

-Memorical capability.

-Creativity, imaginative capability.

-Second thought / skepticism.

-Realistic / idealistic.

-Problems in one’s train of thought : Personality Disorder.

-Sensitivity to pressure ( level )

-The way one’s recall energy and attention to inner or outer self → Introvertness / Extrovertness ( Based on Carl’s Jung theory and the other ones)

-Motivation ( level)

E - Motions :

-Emotional / Rational.

-Period of time used to recover from one emotional/ traumatic situations / -problems ( Death, breakups, wars → Depression, PTSD, etc.)

-Under stress + Emotions = Tell / Ask → Under stress + Emotions = Control / Express → Under stress + Emotions = Confident / Fear ( Consider the social situations. ) → Under stress + Emotions = Predictable / Unpredictable.

-Ability to understand social cues?

-Inability to understand social cues correlated with certain emotions? ( Social - Emotional - Agnosia )

-Empathetic and sympathetic capability .

-Ability to accept rejection / anger from others.

-Control / Hand:

-Intimacy + empathy / not.

-Caring / careless.

-Soft spoken / strict /abusive.

-Tender / steady.

-Less control or shaky = substance use / nicotine’s addiction.

-Fast / slow response / reflex

-Dominating.

-Closed / open.

-Secured , anxious , private / not

-Perception ( World ):

Improve

-Outer (social)

-Inner (self)

-Sensation ( self)

-Note : Basics

[Ti / Te, Fi / Fe, ] [Si / Se, Ni / Ne]

Social Relation :

-Present / past oriented ( ruminative, adaptable )

-Outgoing / isolated -- society.

-Easy going / strict and short tempered (serious)

-Passive / active → Listener / Observer / Expresser ( Talker)

-Motivator / listener.

-Decision maker / decision taker.

-Prioritize other / self.

-Trust ( level )

[ 12 Dominant / Basic ]

1. Visual - spatial processing ( 70% )

Auditory processing ( 20 % )

Sensory modulation ( 10 % )

2. Intelligentsia .

3. Thought process → Practical / philosophical.

4. Attention to inner / outer , energy rebound = Introvert / Extrovert.

5. Focus → Boredom → Dopamine level → Latent inhibition ( Li )

6. Conscientiousness / impulsiveness in one’s reasoning and behaviour.

7. Sexual drive / clearance.

8. Self awareness / consciousness / reflective → Self doubt - criticism → Self esteem

9. Openness to experience ( high / low ) → Conservative minded ( moral oriented)

10. Mental health / emotional well being.

11. Aggressiveness ( level ) → Strict, serious x Easy going.

12. Empathetic / sympathetic ability, agreeableness x Competent.

Source : A.O.D , Myself, Zeitless

Cheers!

R.D

#deduction #personality #personality system #psychology

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jwartblog · 4 years ago

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More Notes...

Considering that much more than what's obvious to me could be known by what's causing this, for at least image recognition, as I've said before, the way a search engine algorithm could link image to words or image to image, an arrangement, the means of detecting image production as it's received by my brain, how it would have to resonate physically, the elemental matter associated with it, and how that would have to correlate to at least what's analogous to an analog-to-digital way of having a non-human instrument interpret with increasing accuracy the actual content there, if we assume what's being felt, followed by what's seen is genuine, and not externally-originating orchestration ( assuming no manipulation based on raw data configuration, a coordinate assignment of each datum, the way that can be recorded and retrieved and over time correlate to meaning, health states, later behavior, entelechy, etc.). It's possible coordinates could be known within axis, a spatial verisimilitude in the way an thought would be orchestrated by a person, basically how a person would conventionally think, at least. If, for instance, it could know the way sensation, the way the brain reacts correlate to a type of image, e.g. a face, within that category, it could reference a library of images that are categorized based on tendencies in appearance that would better ascertain content, so only as much as facial features lead to more certainty are they categorized, in this case, the certainty of what correlates to thought, they way thought could be known with increasing accuracy. So what takes place is prompt in the form of a playful improv on image production awaits confirmation in the form of 'yes' or 'no,' the behaviors that fall under those categories, to know what seemingly ambivalent behavior is ultimately revealing, the way Charles Pierce (W. James?) posits there is no lie. Once the confirmation is received it becomes a brick stacked in service of certainty, the later improvs are more accurate executed with confidence, for instance an animated image after once thought as static when probability is above perhaps 95%. It could be that in some cases only temporal disposition is known as it's associated with image after an image is thought, a one-off image produced and then externally manipulated, the following thoughts as much as disposition points to this, are perceived to be likely to follow the same pattern, so another face could be perceived by the machine, but in not knowing who the face is immediately or having in that following instance the capability to 'recognize' the type of face, it prioritizes a moment of possible continued follow-on manipulation with an animation like before, one that correlates to an old man, as opposed to say a cheerleader. There are supposedly recorded occurrences of ESP, phenomena, or technology that transfer another person's mind into another person, that would allow for a kind of symbiosis that could carry out this flavor of mischief. In the quanta-age, the one that follows this one, the data-age, it might be said that nothing could be known to be truly debunkable without knowing that, the entirety of circumstances, even though we know in theory one realm, the subatomic doesn't significantly disturb the other, 'reality' as such. If this is all quanta-sized, all physical matter as quantity, then it's possible that all that could be known, quantified, would adhere to principles of probability in as much as an understanding of the movement of gas, vapors, could be optimized, i mean, the way that led to this, to what would seem to be todays understanding of the way subatomic particles work. This could know in exponentially large magnitudes, all of the varieties of living, all of the scenarios a person might encounter that would re-introduce agency, only eluded by infinity, which I've stated before is problematic because of what it suggests, that there is a world so much like our own, that it has to be us (if this were not the case, then according to what infinite entails, then an Earth or a 'me' exactly the way I am now that would have to stop just shy at whatever difference would have to exist to make it not me, would negate the idea that this is not in some way finite, there would have to be an infinite just like infinite minus the smallest possible liminal quantity it takes to make this possible, a physical quantity that both exists and doesn't exist, exists and doesn't exist only as a function of this system--that there has to exist an exact duplicate of infinite or more within all of the nearly-identical copies of it, which would still not define existence as finite, the way that infinite would seem to need to be the case from a linear causal standpoint (Ephesians in the Bible, for instance, says men are not wont to reconcile a beginning and an end of existence), a particle would have to be 'newness,' enough to differentiate one infinity from the other but not enough to mean the two aren't the same, exist as what's not to be copied but also does not exist, the universe in how it functions would have to be always in the process of becoming itself, like a rising yeast as it's cooked, as experienced by someone who could only experience that in increments, like an electron that travels along a copper wire, not an external view of all states imaginable, every possible outcome, perhaps the way it actually is, the way we view a copper wire as opposed to the way an electron does.). There's an assumption that an external originating transmission wouldn't know to work with a person's sensitive understanding of the way he communicates intimately with other people and to himself to arrive at a desired conclusion, so one would first have to assume in this case an alien-to-self-entelechy that understands this, that would have this understanding to do this, to cause mischief, or that an entity would know this is the path of least resistance, with no value intuition, not even finely tuned, only using knowledge of perhaps neuronal configuration, each one like a fingerprint instantaneously and what that tends to correlate to. There are simple filters for processing thinking that could cause large perceptual shifts just based on that, neuro-physiology, like a delay in thought, which I've stated above, an externally-based orchestration of the fundamental way a person thinks. The reaction animations are randomized and then made to seem significant. The follow-on statements are often directly proportional in emotional gravitas to the instantaneous belief response, the nearly-involuntary or involuntary one. An image of a known subject is shown, projected, and a follow-on animation is meant to indicate something permanent, some record of fact, like a how a person might deal with what's going on now (If you can imagine how much that could bring a subject into a state of comfort, the way Foucalt said that might occur after being treated in an asylum.), what's happening to me, symbolically, a gesture that's means more than what it is, which further inculcates a person in overly reading behavior as sign, to further eschew healthy selective awareness and selective observation. It's a basically magic 8-ball toy that becomes increasingly more apt over time, so that more and more the indications of randomness, the differences between how a person knows what’s believable as symbolically pertinent and what's orchestrated are diminished over time. This is exacerbated by external and internal cues to believe more, to contemplate less. The capacity for extended careful contemplation is reduced significantly within the first contact, and is almost lost completely a short time after that. It would think it would be nearly-impossible for the undereducated, underaged, disabled to be aware of what's taking place as it's happening. This is how a I imagine it would work: a list of options is run against a list of identifiers associated with each documented sensation. When one sensation registers, it's linked with an identifier, this sensation could be one of reflecting on someone of importance, possibly an influencer, a sub-identifier or subset of identification code could link this to a internal sense cortex, such as a visualization. This sensation and this image is connected to a symbolic animation option such as a turned head for a portrait. What then exists is a record of this projected image and this follow on animation option. I think the other possibilities for follow on animation are subtracted save for what would be most antithetical to a person's values, how a person would most like to think, so that over time as the same sensation is produced with it's associated image, the chances for thinking any other way but a way that points to a follow-on animation is diminished, especially when all other ways lead directly to the most antithetical thought. With images there appears to be, like I said before, an initial identification of what can be gathered to be what's sensed visually, by what's actually seen, what's visible in the visualization cortex, and what can be determined via datamining, especially if it's real-tmie data-mining or surveillance in general. In this instance there's what's identified based on image association, such as the way a code could determine what values and colors and facial features are displayed and what that's normally associated with...In this case, there's an association that might reveal that not much can be gleaned by listening other than perhaps sonic vibrations or a description that guides others, or what a person would like to think about the way this is working out, for instance, that a way of communication must always be kept in mind or enough to neutralize focus, the way a person would normally engage or go about doing whatever it is that he'd most like to do, especially if it's what has always been done. It seems to access pre-auditory cortex production of what would be sound to me, that's as much as possible not connected to cord vibration production of sound, so is able to reproduce, in a linguistic sense, what would constitute a phrase. It employs oralism to become increasingly adept at lip reading, so that an image's production of the appearance of a person talking is met with real-time congruence, i.e. speech that's naturally camouflaged with moving lips, with increasingly accurate English regionalism, so this points to an image capturer that is capable of processing many states or all possible states of speech production as it's seen by a person watching a person speak. The fact it might be more difficult to translate what would take place without having that vantage point, a frontal viewpoint as opposed to any other way makes me believe it's still in development. But what this also points to is an image capturer that works strictly with that, with say how a cord vibration might resonate visually on an RF spectrum analyzer or some other signal detector, the disturbance of a wave, the presence of a signal amongst noise and how that's altered to match specific points of speech production, such as what would correlate to an 'Ah' sound or a 'Juh' sound. I mentioned before about how a program could reference a dictionary of words associated with the evolution of cord vibration states, as the word develops, and that's optimized, the way high frequency trading works, so that for basketball, the first part of that word 'ba' would-open what would be the widest possible field for this word, words that start with 'ba,' and as that word's produced, following with 'sket' to produce 'basket,' the reference field becomes increasingly smaller, if you can imagine sand in a once top-heavy hour glass, this is the way it would work. So, by the time 'ball' is reached, the speed for correlating signal-to-word is near-instantaneous, or perhaps balancing as much as possible, offsetting what would seem to be a delay however slight at first recognizing and accurately matching visual-cue-to-word, so that by the time the image-to-word operation has been completed, all measurable perceptions, as much as possible, point to seamlessness. Of course, this all points to ominous possibilities for this kind of technology, like all readable sensations, as much as they can be detected, correlating to some kind of data, that's later compiled into information, sometimes information or just raw data that can be used to perform some task, sometimes made to be instantaneous reflex. So, as much as phenomena is data, this could be narrated as it occurs, or as much as narration understands the conditions for perception of phenomena and each correlating subsequent reaction, shortterm and longterm, actions taken by a subject can be predicted with increasing accuracy. And as much as this understanding--how legible information can be, and how intimate an actor can become with that information--can be used to act on a subject, discreet or overt actions taken upon a subject can be adjusted to produce a desired outcome.

#art #writing #signals crime

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builtbykidz · 9 months ago

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🌈The Joy of Woodwork: A Guide to Introducing Kids to Carpentry🌈

Woodwork, with its tactile satisfaction and creative possibilities, is an excellent activity for kids to explore. Beyond the mere act of sawing and hammering, woodworking fosters problem-solving skills, spatial awareness, and patience. Additionally, it instills a sense of accomplishment as children transform raw materials into tangible objects. In this guide, we'll delve into the benefits of introducing kids to woodwork and provide some practical tips for getting started.

🌈🌊Why Woodwork for Kids?

1. **Hands-On Learning**: Woodworking engages multiple senses, allowing children to learn through touch, sight, and even sound. As they manipulate tools and materials, they develop a deeper understanding of concepts like measurement, geometry, and physics.

2. **Creativity and Imagination**: Woodworking offers endless opportunities for creativity. From designing their own projects to decorating finished pieces, kids can unleash their imagination in a tangible way.

3. **Problem-Solving Skills**: Woodworking involves a series of challenges and obstacles that require creative solutions. Whether it's figuring out how to join two pieces of wood or sanding away imperfections, children learn to think critically and troubleshoot independently.

4. **Patience and Persistence**: Working with wood requires patience and perseverance. Children learn that not everything comes together perfectly on the first try and that mistakes are an essential part of the learning process.

5. **Self-Confidence**: Completing a woodworking project, no matter how simple, boosts a child's self-esteem. They take pride in their creations and gain confidence in their abilities to tackle future challenges.

🌊🌊Getting Started

1. **Safety First**: Before diving into any woodworking project, it's crucial to prioritize safety. Teach kids how to properly handle tools, including saws, hammers, and sanders. Emphasize the importance of wearing safety goggles and keeping fingers away from sharp edges.

2. **Start Simple**: Begin with basic projects that match your child's skill level. Simple designs like birdhouses, picture frames, or small stools are great for beginners. As they gain confidence and proficiency, you can gradually introduce more complex projects.

3. **Supervision and Guidance**: Always supervise children during woodworking activities, especially when they're using power tools. Offer guidance and assistance as needed, but also encourage independence and problem-solving.

4. **Use Child-Friendly Tools**: Consider investing in child-sized tools designed specifically for small hands. These tools are lighter, easier to handle, and less intimidating for young woodworkers.

5. **Choose the Right Materials**: Opt for softwoods like pine or cedar, which are easier to work with and less likely to cause splinters. Avoid hardwoods like oak or maple, which can be more challenging to cut and shape.

6. **Embrace Imperfections**: Woodworking is as much about the process as it is about the final product. Encourage kids to embrace imperfections and see them as opportunities for creativity rather than mistakes to be corrected.

🌺🌺Tips for Success

1. **Plan and Measure Carefully**: Teach kids the importance of careful planning and precise measurement before cutting or assembling any pieces. Use rulers, tape measures, and squares to ensure accuracy.

2. **Practice Patience**: Woodworking requires patience and attention to detail. Encourage kids to take their time and focus on each step of the process, from measuring and cutting to sanding and finishing.

3. **Encourage Experimentation**: Allow children to experiment with different tools, techniques, and finishes. Encourage them to explore their creativity and express themselves through their projects.

4. **Celebrate Achievements**: Celebrate each completed project as a significant achievement. Display finished pieces proudly or give them as gifts to friends and family members.

5. **Encourage Reflection**: After completing a project, encourage kids to reflect on what they learned and how they can improve in future endeavors. Ask questions like, "What was challenging about this project? What would you do differently next time?"

💎Conclusion

Woodworking offers a wealth of benefits for children, from enhancing their cognitive and motor skills to fostering creativity and self-confidence. By providing a safe and supportive environment for kids to explore this timeless craft, parents and educators can help unlock their full potential and instill a lifelong love of making and creating with their hands. So, gather some wood, grab your tools, and embark on a woodworking adventure with your little ones today.

#woodworking #woodwork for kids

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fitjourneydaily · 1 year ago

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Mastering Parkour Training: Unleashing Urban Gymnastics for Agility and Dynamic Movements

Introduction: In recent years, the art of Parkour training has gained significant attention, captivating the hearts and minds of individuals seeking a unique and exhilarating way to explore movement and physical fitness. Rooted in urban gymnastics, Parkour combines agility, strength, and dynamic movements to conquer obstacles and navigate through urban environments. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the world of Parkour training, uncover its benefits, provide essential tips for beginners, and explore how you can master this thrilling discipline. Section 1: The Art and Philosophy of Parkour (Word Count: 250 words) Parkour originated in the late 1980s in France and was developed by David Belle, who drew inspiration from his military training and the movements of his father. At its core, Parkour is not just about performing impressive stunts but rather about understanding and utilizing one's surroundings to optimize efficiency and overcome physical obstacles. The philosophy of Parkour revolves around the notion of "being strong to be useful" and emphasizes self-improvement, discipline, and adaptability. Section 2: Benefits of Parkour (Word Count: 250 words) 1. Physical Fitness: Parkour training offers a full-body workout, enhancing strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance. The combination of repetitive movements, jumps, and vaults helps to build functional strength and improve overall fitness. 2. Mental Discipline: Parkour challenges practitioners to think critically, assess their environment, and make quick decisions. It fosters mental agility, perseverance, and problem-solving skills, developing a sharp mind that can adapt to unexpected situations. 3. Body Awareness: Through Parkour, individuals gain an acute sense of body awareness, spatial understanding, and coordination. It promotes a strong mind-body connection, enhancing balance, and proprioception. Section 3: Essential Parkour Techniques (Word Count: 500 words) 1. Landing Techniques: A fundamental aspect of Parkour is learning how to land properly to reduce the impact on joints and prevent injuries. Two common techniques are the "Roll" and the "Precision Landing." 2. Vaulting: Vaulting techniques allow practitioners to efficiently overcome physical obstacles. The "Safety Vault," "Speed Vault," and "Kong Vault" are essential techniques to master for traversing barriers such as walls, railings, and benches. 3. Wall Runs: Wall runs involve using vertical surfaces to maintain momentum and reach greater heights. By combining speed, explosive power, and proper foot placement, practitioners can perform gravity-defying movements with confidence. 4. Cat Leap: The cat leap technique enables practitioners to propel themselves horizontally from one point to another by utilizing their upper body strength and agility. It's a key skill for navigating gaps or wide obstacles. 5. Precision Jumps: Precision jumps require precise foot placement and excellent body control. Practitioners must master this technique to effectively navigate narrow ledges or challenging distances. Section 4: Training Tips for Beginners (Word Count: 400 words) 1. Start with the Basics: Begin your Parkour journey by mastering the fundamental movements and techniques. Focus on building strength, flexibility, and coordination through regular conditioning exercises. 2. Safety First: Always prioritize safety when practicing Parkour. Warm-up adequately, wear appropriate protective gear, and choose training locations with care. Gradually progress as your skills and confidence increase. 3. Seek Knowledge and Mentorship: Join local Parkour communities, seek guidance from experienced practitioners, and participate in workshops or classes. Learning from others is invaluable in honing your skills and receiving feedback. 4. Consistency and Progression: Consistency is key. Dedicate regular time to practice Parkour, gradually challenging yourself to push beyond your comfort zone and improve your skills. Track your progress to stay motivated. WordPress Tags: 1. Parkour Training 2. Urban Gymnastics 3. Agility Skills 4. Dynamic Movement Elevate your fitness game with Puravive's Advanced Fitness Tracker. This state-of-the-art device is designed to monitor your workouts, track your progress, and keep you motivated on your fitness journey. Stay ahead in your fitness goals with Puravive. Visit the Puravive Advanced Fitness Tracker Product Page. Read the full article

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hoob-gooblin · 6 years ago

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i used to be obessively into mbti so here's an analysis based on cognitive functions mostly.

SKIP IF YOU WANT. for anyone with no idea how it works, here's a quick rundown: cognitive functions are about the way people think, process, and prioritize information, not necessarily how they act, though people who think the same way often act the same. the 8 letters that make up a type represent how people process and prioritize internal and external stimuli. every letter actually has an 'internal' and 'external' form so there's Thinking (internal(ti) and external(te)), Feeling (internal(fi) and external(fe)), Sensing (internal(si) and external(se)), and iNtuition(internal(ni) and external(ne)) t's always go with a corresponding and opposite f (like ti and fe always go together), same with s's and n's (ex: si and ne always go together). a set of t, f, s, and n in a specific order makes an mbti type.

neil: intp (ti ne si fe) neil has incredible analytical ability although it's very programmed for survival but he's also a fast thinker and very quick to adapt to new environments. he also approaches things from original angles that other people dont consider, all that sounds like high ti/ne. the lower functions fit well too. in times of stress, he returns to old habits and falls back on what's familiar, that's classic low si. his emotions are also very exterior. he's bad with other people from lack of exposure, but he's committed to harmony between those close to him and has an impeccable ability to read the emotional states of others while being completely oblivious of his own, and his sense of self is tied to exterior things like exy, friends, keys, and legal documents (lol) that's fe

andrew: intj (ni te fi se) ni is really hard to describe but it has to do with being able to draw conclusions from scattered input, which fits with andrew's uncanny ability to spot lies and obsession with finding out the truth, especially with high te, which is about spatial order and logic, think of how prioritized he is with the physical order of things: who sits where, who wears what, etc. a lot of people want to make andrew infj i bet as like a "subversive reading" but he's definitely not. i used to be really close to an infj and they have hyper-empathy, as in she would describe not just caring about other people and being able to read their emotional states but literally feeling the things the people around her felt. this is a common result of the ni/fe combo, and the reason why andrew is definitely not infj. tertiary fi fits very well instead because andrew is deeply attuned to his own inner emotional state. he's self-confident and doesn't care about other people's perception of him, but he's also very concerned with his own feelings and understanding them, even if they're repressed. he's also very aware of his physical surroundings, which plays into his deductive ability, although it's not his focus. that's low se

kevin: estj (te si ne fi) kevin is a classic estj. he's controlling, demanding, and driven. he tries to control the actions of those around him and gets very distressed when things dont run smoothly, as well as having strong feelings about improving efficiency. high te people make great managers. kevin's whole story arc is about breaking old habits, which is a very si problem. it has to do with trusting and craving memory and familiarity, and explains kevins need for endless repetition. he's innovative, though, coming up with new strategies and drills (ne), it's just based on what's already familiar, and you can see him spiral into creating all possible worst-case scenarios when he's stressed (low ne stress reaction, they like to be prepared). finally, he's a dick, but he cares about other people and wants to improve their lives, as well as being very reliant on other people's perceptions of him to define his own self-image (low fe)

dan: esfj (fe si ne ti) dan's top priority, over everything else, is her team. she wants her team to improve, she wants her team to win, she wants her team to work together. it's all about the collective. we also see that she's very open with others and makes a lot of effort to both make new ties and maintain old ones, that's high fe. she's sentimental and attached to the past too (si) esp the photo wall, but we also see her very unwilling to let go of the past ie the monsters but eventually willing to change and grow to mend team cohesion (ne). we also see the fight in underlying logic (low ti) with her: she knows the team needs the monsters to cooperate but she cant figure out how to do it

matt: enfj (fe ni se ti) so enfj's experience infj hyper-empathy too, but to a slightly lesser extent (primary fe is more group cohesion, secondary fe is more understanding others), and through this we see matt's easy-going open friendliness and ability to befriend even prickly little neil, because he has an extremely good sense of what other people are feeling and need, it also explains why he doesn't hold a grudge against the cousins in the same way dan does, because he understands where they were coming from. se is associated with a general boisterousness for life, as it's about experiencing the world around you, which explains matt's happy-go-lucky disposition and puppydog behavior. the ti aspects mostly go into supporting fe/ni empathic senses

allison: entj (te ni se fi) i mean, allison's controlling, both in that she orders other people around and in that her physical being and space are very planned and organized (her clothes, her hair, her makeup, etc) but at the same time there isn't much sentimentality to her, like how she doesn't care when her car was destroyed. she easily replaces things because she cares about the object's purpose, not its history and that all smacks of high te/ni. and i mean, the se definitely contributes to her love of designer things and killer looks, because she cares about the world immediately around her, and why live if not in luxury? and fi? is there any character more aggressively self-confident than allison reynolds?? going against her parents' wishes for her takes a really strong, independent sense of self, but we also see the problems that can come from not worrying about other people, in how she starts fights and can be abrasive and catty

renee: infp (fi ne si te) okay this one was really hard tbh. a list of other considerations: isfp, istp, and infj. it's very easy to read renee as high fe because she's kind, but i think it's a mischaracteration of why she's kind. it's not because it comes naturally to her, it's because it's a conscious choice that makes her feel better about herself. high fi people often read as fe because they're so comfortable with themselves and in tune with their own needs that they can then go and provide for others. i associate her religion with ne, because contemplation and acceptance of the divine later in life is a very metaphysical undertaking that undoubtedly requires a lot of abstract thought. renee's storyline also revolves a lot around using things from her past and putting a conscious effort into leaving things from her past behind (how she still uses the skills she learned from her past in new ways ie sparring with andrew and protecting the upperclassmen v/s how she held on to her knives even when she knew it was detrimental to her moving on) this sounds like si. her protective instincts also feed into the te need for order, but it's a looser leash than say andrew, as it's lower on her function stack but still present

nicky: esfp (se fi te ni) godd nicky is like a prototypical esfp. i mean nicholas "sex, drugs, and parties" hemmick cant be anything but se dominant. nicky is all about living it up and living in the moment. like he's sporadic and ive seen it lead people to think he could be enfp but he doesn't think enough about the meaning of things to be ne dominant (like how he makes somewhat predatory jokes and such, he's all about the here-and-now while ne is about the past and future simultaneously). also he of all characters has incredibly prominent fi, as his whole character is about living unashamedly as himself as a gay man and the immense self-awareness and inner strength it takes not only to come out to unaccepting parents but also to leave and start a new life when they rejected him. however, fi is also indicative of his communication problems with his family, as he's unable to tell that the cousins are fundamentally different from him in their needs and boundaries, leading him to pushing them, making them uncomfortable, and being unable to help them, because he's unable to understand them. the rest are much more hidden, but a party boy shopaholic like nicky would probably need some amount of te order in like an organized chaos fashion (and he's often headcanoned as liking to throw parties) and you do see him become somewhat pushy, even controlling in those scenarios. ni is the hardest but could maybe be seen in how he's attuned to the cousins reactions for all that he cant predict them/doesn't do anything on his own part to prevent them (the way he handles andrew is like if someone poked a rattlesnake knowing damn well what it would do and then freaked out when he got bit)

aaron: istj (si te fi ne) im a little iffy on this one and worry it might be an analysis based on his trauma instead of complimentary to it, but aaron's arc is about breaking out of his habit of holding on to the past. he refuses to work towards moving on from his mother's death, refuses to listen to things that contradict his preconceived notions, and refuses to make changes in his life that could improve it. that's unhealthy si. he's really a very unhealthy istj, and most of his traits manifest through his unhappiness with his life. take his te. that would imply that he needs control over his surroundings, but aaron is incredibly bitter and unhappy BECAUSE he doesn't have control of his surroundings. he doesn't get to make his own choices, he doesn't get to control his space, and he hates it. his relationship with katelyn is also indicative of being an istj. it's stable, not a passionate fling, but aaron is mocked for wanting that white picket fence, married with kids in the suburbs kind of life, and his relationship, which is his primary source of happiness, is built on stability, which is a very si thing to do. in terms of fi, it is aaron that ultimately forces change between himself and andrew. he may have been pushed but he ultimately came down to him knowing what made him happy and what made him miserable and acting on that. also, he's an ornery asshole who clearly doesn't care what other people think of him. fi. i dont really have anything to say in terms of ne, probably because he's so unhealthy but also because he's not too explored. heyy istj's make great doctors

wymack: isfj (si fe ti ne) okay this one was genuinely the hardest to decide on but ultimately i came to the conclusion that wymack, much like renee, is such a developed person that he loses many defining traits of the functions, and can be read in many different ways. so: wymack's primary goal is the safety and betterment of other people (ie his team). he wants to help people overcome their pasts, which is a very atypical approach to si, but is si nonetheless. on a personal level, too, he's never able to move on from people, and specifically never moved on from kayleigh, continuing their shared dream of an exy team for abused kids long after her death. as ive said before, fe in a secondary position is about deep understanding of other people, and wymack's ability to understand what other people are struggling through is legendary. the ti mostly serves as support to the fe, serving as the analytical backup in allowing him to understand others. as for ne: he is most definitely an innovator with unusual ideas, or the foxes wouldn't exist

riko: estp (se ti fe ni) okay, riko is basically what happens when an estp goes bad down to the core. he's obsessed with personal glory and immediate self-fulfillment (se) he has no impulse control or fear of consequences. interestingly, high se is often associated with athleticism, because high se people are intensly focused on their surroundings (exy). his ti is also super unhealthy as he gets obsessed with ideas that dont really work with objective reality, like his obsession with ownership and power dynamics despite them not actually being efficient, even backwarda. the tertiary fe he uses to manipulate. he doesn't feel empathy towards others, but he can tell their emotional state and what's important to them, and uses it to coerce them and destroy their sense of self, like how he knew he could get neil to the nest by threatening andrew. finally, that ni allowed him to keep multiple plans in place focused on one ultimate goal: getting kevin back. the sheer amount of schemes he sets up in order to fool and push people the way he wants is honestly kinda impressive, but he's a toxic shithead and im glad he's rotting. definitely not representative of all estp's

see, like i said, obsessed.

What do you guys think the Foxes (or any aftg character) Myers Briggs personality type is? I want to type them but I want input first.

#aftg #the foxes #mbti

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abolitionist-kinaesthetics · 4 years ago

Photo

brianna mims, jail bed drop (2017-2020) --- performance + interactive installation

project description from the artist’s website:

“The #jailbeddrop experience consists of a performance and interactive installation rooted in challenging our inherent notion between ‘crime’ and punishment. The work contextualizes and facilitates a space to explore interpersonal accountability and reflect those values back on our ‘criminal justice system.’ This work is an extension of the #jailbeddrop art series created by Patrisse Cullors and Cecilia Sweet-Coll through Justice LA.”

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excerpts from “brianna mims on prison abolition” in pure nowhere (jan 6, 2021)

“Back at the end of 2017, a coalition called JusticeLA (Los Angeles) was founded to address the issue of families being separated by the largest jail system in the world. I joined their creative action team as they were looking for ways to bring awareness to the issue. That's when Jail Bed Drop was birthed. We took 100 prison beds and set them up in front of the Board of Supervisors office in downtown LA as a demonstration and it went on from there. Since then we've given jail beds to artists for them to conceptualize their own pieces around the idea. There have been other Jail Bed Drops too. Some at Cal State, town hall, and other places. These were all building blocks, though not intentionally. I then teamed up with a friend for our performance art piece.”

“[T]here are two parts. One is a room we constructed that is the same size of a jail cell. We juxtaposed what a bedroom space usually symbolizing for most people safety, dreams, and comfort verses that shift when it becomes a cell. Your place of rest becomes the opposite of what it used to be. As my partner, Bindhu, recites her spoken word, she is also putting actual personal items like toothbrushes, stuffed animals, and books throughout the room as a sort of ceremony to honor the lives of those currently or formerly incarcerated. Next to the room, is a dome that is similar to a playground jungle gym as a way to bring children back into the conversation. The headpiece that is attached to my head as I chant, ‘This is a spatial violation’ brings about two things — the idea of being incarcerated and that label that follows after becoming free.”

“Then after the performance is over, people can explore and interact with the piece. This allows entrance into the conversation in different ways. They can pick up the personal items and feel that personalization. The dome also has facts and questions tied to it. Those who wish to enter the dome and have conversations centered around human touch, dignity, community, and safety can do so. Through this process they are beginning to challenge these notions of the PIC, crime and punishment, while centering incarcerated folks their experiences and stories.”

“I always say abolition starts at home with ourselves, our relationships and the principles and ideologies that we have rooted in our society. It's deep, complex and interconnected. It is impacting my people.”

“How we think about crime and how we respond to harm needs to be addressed at the root. What the current system is doing is applying a topical level solution to hide problems deep down. Locking people away and perpetuating harm while making money off of black people and destroying black communities is not how it should be.”

“A world without prisons would look like people having the resources they need especially in areas of mental health, education, and food safety. People having access to those things. When harm [violence] does happen then people's healing should be prioritized. We would also have people who can actually address the root of these issues during crises.”

“If you think about it, people are put in violent conditions. The systems are violent. It is inflicting harm to navigate everyday life simply trying to survive and I don't think people understand that everyday is a violent experience for some people. It's not always someone who kills someone. There are food deserts. There are kids going to school without having the resources they need. People living in poverty. These are some forms of violence and it's everyday for some people. To abolish, we want to completely dismantle and re-imagine public safety and it's definitely not an overnight idea.”

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excerpts from “artist brianna mims on the embodiment of an abolitionist framework” in curate la (mar 4, 2021)

“I’m constantly looking for the gaps between our abolitionist framework and our collective praxis and creating work to meet those needs. What mediums are needed are always different.”

“With the larger-scale projects, I’m thinking about what shifts are needed on a cultural level to create an abolitionist world, how to support policy, how to redistribute money, how to facilitate spaces for conversation, dreaming, and educating. And, you know, how we can better engage with each other and our relationship to the earth. And that’s kind of the throughline of those sort of large-scale projects.”

“Abolition is the dismantling of anything that polices, imprisons, or surveils us. That not only includes things on a systemic level, but these carceral ideologies that show up in our culture, institutions, and the way we relate to ourselves and one another. We have to practice care-based accountability, not punishment-based accountability that perpetuates cycles of harm. Abolition also includes the reimagining of public safety, which Ruthie Wilson Gilmore always says requires a shift in everything.”

“I love to really make sure the policy work and cultural work are in alignment and informing one another so that the shifts we are creating are sustainable... [I]t’s really about a new way of being and living amongst each other. We have to learn how to live more interdependently.”

“A lot of my art practice is focused on facilitating spaces to collectively unpack and explore the ways in which these carceral ideologies play out in our culture. Like I mentioned before, this will create more sustainable policy shifts when we do this cultural work alongside it.”

“In Jail Bed Drop, we always support a piece of legislation. I always make sure our work has a ‘call to action’ and there is usually a ballot measure or bill included amongst other things. We supported Measure R for about a year. We dedicated one wall of the installation to Measure R where we included basic information about the measure and how people can be involved. It also included a QR code where people can sign up to volunteer with the campaign. It’s important to me to create these direct throughlines from policy to culture.”

“What I’m really focusing on right now is how we can imagine and create these dream spaces for folks to try out these new worlds, and practice them. I feel like there’s so much that art can do to serve the mission of abolition — on a cultural level and to support policy at the same time.”

“I think the different access points into the conversation helps the success of the project. From the performance element, getting inside of the dome to reflect on personal values, to the questions on the back wall of the room, to reading the stories of the personal objects of system-impacted people in the room, to the broken down timeline of the prison system in the US, and the calls to action, the project as a whole allows everyone to collectively explore and sit with questions together.”

“The performance happens first, and Bindhu and I are grappling with these questions through our own artistic mediums. We are also having a ceremony during the performance to honor the lives of system-impacted folks. When the performance is over, the audience is able to interact with the installation.”

“They are able to get into the dome and be in dialogue with other folks around self-reflective questions like, ‘Is human touch important to you?,’ ‘What makes you feel you have a sense of dignity?,’ ‘What does accountability look like in your personal relationships?,’ and ‘What would you like to see in your community?’”

“There are also questions on the back wall of the room that help folks analyze some of the ideologies that uphold the prison-industrial complex. Questions like, ‘What makes someone deserving of imprisonment?’ Something about abolition that I love is it breaks this notion of the deserving versus the undeserving.”

“They have access to historical and statistical information via the timeline and they get to sit with the personal stories behind the items in the room. People are introduced to new ideas and new questions that they might not even be able to answer right there on the spot, but they can go home and sit with them.”

image: geodesic dome at an iteration of jail bed drop at a noise within theatre, los angeles (nov 9, 2019), photo by mary mallaney and ella mikayelyan

[image description: a picture of a group of people sitting inside a dome-like structure and having a conversation]

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uofainghana · 7 years ago

Video

youtube

This is a rehearsal of a dance that was included in both of our final productions.

Community Service Learning Project Reflection

In the Summer of 2017 I had the opportunity to travel to Ghana as part of a program offered by the University of Alberta’s music department. The program promised to offer insights on development in Western Africa as well as first-hand experience working on a Community Service Learning project with an NGO in northern Ghana. The Community Service Learning program consisted of creating two performances, one in a rural setting and the other in an urban setting. This paper is meant to highlight my experiences in addition to the various strategies that were used by myself and my peers to navigate the project. The paper begins with a short overview that compares Community Service Learning and explores how it differs from Global Service Learning. Following this, I outline some of the principles that guided the project. Then, I provide a short introduction to the CSL project and elaborate on different defining components of the project before finally discussing ways in which it could be improved for future iterations.

Community Service Learning and Global Service Learning

Community Service Learning (CSL) is a form of education that is centered on the experimental aspects of fieldwork that students learn from via various partnerships with different community organizations. These organizations are often on the front lines of different causes which are pivotal to the livelihood and vitality of a community, causes are often driven by grassroots sentiments that snowball into larger causes of action and are then addressed by different community-lead organizations, at times these sentiments even grow into their own community organizations. CSL connects students with organizations striving to meet community needs and students are able to learn and practice methods of direct action that lead to the betterment of a community. When unencumbered, a CSL project should strive to empower a community by contributing to the community’s ability to remain independent of larger, often corporate, trends in society. It is because of community independence that a CSL project should be motivated by the needs of a community, otherwise it faces the risk of being an irrelevant exercise of student labour and demonstrates the disconnect between a post-secondary institution and the community which it serves. The importance of community input cannot be understated because a relationship between community and volunteers is a fundamental aspect of a CSL placement or project, in fact, the relationship between student volunteer and community members should predicate a CSL project. A CSL project should be based on the input of the community and should minimally be a collaborative effort between the two parties.

It is because of the heavily collaborative effort required to create successful projects that Global Service Learning (GSL) projects are often criticized. A major challenge faced by GSL projects is maintaining grassroots sentiments especially when the project is meant to be executed transnationally. GSL projects can easily become prescriptive in nature when they are exported because programs which are internationally oriented are more likely to miscommunicate simply due to the increased distance between partners involved in the project. The introduction of an increased distance between the two service learning parties easily opens itself to miscommunications between the parties. This relation is further aggravated by the power inequalities between the two service learning groups. For example, projects pursued by the service learning volunteers may prove to enforce hegemonic interpretations of reality, Michael Apple elaborates on this issue and argues that “the kinds of cultural resources and symbols schools select and organize are dialectically related to the kinds of normative and conceptual consciousness ‘required’ by a stratified society” (2). Clear communication is therefore indispensable to any GSL project, as it is to a CSL project, however, GSL projects face additional challenges when attempting to articulate project goals, these challenges can come in the forms of cultural contingencies, participant biases, language barriers, or power divisions. How successfully these unique issues are navigated is one of the key determinants of not only how collaborative a GSL project is, but also whether that project has any sustained meaning and impact on a community.

Project Overview

The project that I was involved in was a collaborative effort between the University of Alberta’s Music Department and Tamale’s Youth Home Cultural Group. Tamale is the largest city in northern Ghana and a majority of it’s over 220 000 inhabitants are Muslim. The placement I participated in was biphasic, the first part of the project involved a production in the city of Tamale and the second part consisted of a similar project in a rural Ghanaian district called Tolon. The project was meant to incorporate traditional forms of Ghanaian culture, namely singing and dancing, in a relevant way to address growing problems or areas of disconnect experienced by our participants. The group of service learners consisted of four post-secondary students, which includes myself. The two groups we worked with were school-aged kids, the kids in the city of Tamale were all between the ages of 15-17 and the second group in the rural area consisted of kids between the ages of 17-20, these two groups were our community partners for this project. They also served as cultural informants on many occasions, which is something that greatly aided our ability to communicate interculturally. Our service learning group was tasked with collaboratively co-creating a culturally relevant performance that would address issues that were directly affecting the lives of our community partners. Interestingly, the final production from both groups were quite similar.

Theoretical Guidelines

Our group of North American students had decided on a few rules we would try to follow through the project. These guiding principles were generally very simplistic, we did not foresee a great deal of difficulty in trying to enforce these rules. These rules were derived mainly from guiding principles of CSL projects and were supplemented with direction from ethnographic studies. Some of these principles were:

Our work would strive to be as undisruptive as it could be.

If disruption became necessary and was unavoidable then the disruption would have to be as minimally disruptive as possible.

To avoid neo-colonial complications in our project, we would prioritize the voices of our community partners over our own.

The project would be sustainable and easily recreated if we removed ourselves from the equation.

The community partners would experience a tangible benefit from participating in the project.

We would attempt to maintain contact with partners following the completion of the project.

We recognized that following these rules may be limiting in some aspects, but it would help us minimize the negative impacts we would have on our community partners. The need to navigate our own impacts and maintaining a self-aware and self-critical critical perspective is explained by Margaret Himley in her description of CSL’s evolution from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, she argues that

[s]ervice has roots in the volunteerism of white middle- and upper-class women in this country, where these hopeful and idealistic (and perhaps naive) volunteers went out into poor and working-class neighborhoods to improve the material and moral lot of the less fortunate they found living there. These volunteers had the social capital to move close to these strangers in order to re-script their lives within dominant discourses and values. Moving close did not produce a linear transition from distance to proximity, however, but rather a more complex encounter involving, [that was] at one and the same time, social and spatial relations of distance and proximity. Through service projects, these women also achieved a measure of public status and power by representing their work to public audiences and themselves as "good citizens" taking care of those who were weaker and more vulnerable and (believed to be) more dangerous.

(419)

We attempted to implement a process that would result in respectful, collaborative, interactive and non-exploitative interactions. We had hoped that the relationship resulting from our closeness with the kids would allow us a richer glimpse at the issues that were defining the lives of members in the community. Feminist scholars, such as Diane Wolf, have repeatedly argued that in-field risk management alone is myopic as a method of mitigating the power relations involved in working with a less privileged group. According to this perspective, researchers and volunteers can only temporarily manage their privilege and stop doing so once they leave the field or project. A researcher's positionality and locationality cannot effectively be isolated in a

project or research simply by employing friendly or emphatic methodologies (Wolf 35). Wolf elaborates on this and says, “while the contradiction posed by positionality is not resolvable, these dilemmas must continue to be confronted by service learners in the field without naivete, with open eyes, and without discourses that conceal” (36). To this end, we emphasized both the replicability of the projects and our long-term relationships with the various groups of students to mitigate some of the problems arising from the interpretive power we commanded as outsiders in this scenario.

The Field

As previously mentioned, the project was biphasic and each phase culminated with a public performance followed by a small debriefing with the community partners. I will use this section to describe the different aspects of each of the projects as well as the similarities which existed between the two. Both of the projects delivered a similarly formatted final product, a stage drama preceded by a cultural performance that included call-and-response singing as well as dancing.

Our collaborative partners from Tamale were a group of students from a local junior high school, this group’s ages ranged from 15-17 years of age. There was a total of ten students, seven of them were girls and three of them were boys. With this group we had eight total meetings spread out over one month. These meetings generally consisted of brainstorming different ideas for performances as well as refining and practicing the different existing ideas.

In contrast, the Tolon group consisted of slightly older, high school aged kids. The ages in this groups ranged from 17-20. The gender divide in this group was quite different from the Tamale group’s, here we had a group of 13 with only four being girls. Our meetings with the group were spread over one week and took place every evening for around one to two hours.

Group Formation

When it came to group selection we had no real input in the process that was used to select students. This is something that we confirmed with both our organizing parties, the University of Alberta and Tamale Youth Home. The process varied for each of the two groups of students. The students from Tamale were all from the same school and were in the same class, these students were selected by their teacher with no indication on whether or not there were any selection criteria for the choices. This is something we learned by directly asking the students during one of our later rehearsals. These students had little to no idea about what they had been selected for or what would be expected of them in their roles. During our later sessions, more of their classmates became interested in the project and began to watch our rehearsals. It seemed that more students became interested in the project as it progressed. This will be a great benefit in future iterations of the program as participants may have some familiarity with the expectations as well as the outcomes of the program.

Group selection with Tolon group was even more arbitrary. We had originally assumed that we would be working with a school’s dedicated cultural dance troupe. However, as it turned out, we ended up working with a group of kids who were formerly associated with their school’s dance troupe but had since graduated. The kids were selected due to their previous acquaintance with a dance instructor from Tamale Youth Home. This was meant to minimize possible issues we may have with the group such as English language skills as well as to ensure that the kids we would be collaborating with would have some familiarity with traditional music and dances. In terms of the Tolon group, it is harder to hypothesize how our project will affect future interest into the collaborations since the selection process for this group can change dramatically for the next iteration. For example, there may be interest in the project but we do not know if these same kids will be selected to perform again or whether the school’s cultural troupe would be selected.

Theme Selection

An area of the project which was extremely crucial was the selection of topics

that would be addressed by the final production. Selecting the topics that we would address through our project was something that had the potential to determine the type of relationship we would have with our community partners as well as the degree to which the entire project could be considered collaborative. In order to synthesize a strong and collaborative thread in our performance we ensured that the two groups that we worked with had a great deal of agency during the entire creative process. We aimed to listen to what everyone involved in the project had to say without over-emphasizing any specific voice. To simplify this goal, we split up into smaller groups of three to four people, including one service learner, to discuss issues that were relevant to our lives and brainstorm ways in which the topics could be represented in a bigger production. The conversations usually began with one of the service-learners describing issues we had encountered ourselves, then we would ask others to share what problems they thought were important. These problems were a little different between each of the areas, though larger themes remained constant in each area. Themes that came up in both areas were the importance of education and the negative impacts of early marriage. Themes that were exclusive to the urban environment were HIV, inter-religious tolerance, drug use, and female circumcision. Themes exclusive to the rural environment were hand washing, mosquitoes being harboured by stagnated water, improper use of medicated malaria nets as farming tools, and prostitution. All of these themes were generated through brainstorming sessions. At times, theme selection was carried out more organically. Many of the sub-themes and conflicts that drove the performance came from improvisations the students did while they were rehearsing. Interestingly, the final themes incorporated into our performances were incredibly similar—it seemed as though there was not a severely pronounced urban-rural divide in the lives of both of our community partner groups.

Finally, it should be noted that group formation was not rigidly enforced. In our first project, based in Tamale, after a few initial sessions, groups dissolved and students moved around to fill vacant roles. This worked especially well as it gave the students the opportunity to share their own ideas in smaller groups but then move on and help peers who had ideas that required more assistance. Originally, each group was tasked with exploring a possible contribution to the final production. We had two songs and two skits for our final production and after this had been finalized we were able to ensure everybody had a relevant role for the performance. This flexibility proved to be extremely rewarding and was demonstrated by the case of a student who had paired with a friend in the initial group selection but had ended up without a significant role in a song but was eventually able to join both of the skits, becoming a central figure in each of them and lending a great deal of comedic relief to the entire production.

Project characteristics

A surprising element of each of the projects was how similar the two productions were. Having a similar format was expected and the format we chose was meant to be the most engaging for audiences. Thus, each of the shows began with a performance that featured service-learners singing, dancing, or playing the accompanying music. The surprising similarity between the two projects was the overlap in the skits. Each of projects featured a skit with a female protagonist and highlighted how education impacted the lives and choices of not only educated individuals but also their communities.

The first skit in the Tamale show was about a young girl living with her father and stepmother who is then married to an older man when the family encounters financial difficulties. The girl faces abuse as a young incompetent wife and eventually dies in childbirth. The second skit in the Tamale project was of an english professor who argues against his tribe’s tradition of circumcision and refuses to consent to his daughter receiving the procedure. This production also featured a song that borrowed its rhythm and a majority of its lyrics from a local pop-song that was constantly playing on the radio, the song was repurposed to address the ills of drugs and alcohol. A second song was featured in the project and was offered by one of the students. This song highlighted the dangers of HIV/AIDS and offers a three-step approach to avoid contracting the virus.

The skit in Tolon was about two female classmates. One girl had a supportive family who helped her with school related expenses and the other girl had to date a boy to get help with similar expenses as her family was not supportive of her getting

an education. The play ends with the girl with the supportive family becoming a health-care provider for her community and the other girl dying due to childbirth complications. This theme was selected because it offered a parallel to the lives of the students in Tolon, many of whom were no longer in school because their families did not value education and instead made them help at the farm or would use available funds to build additional structures on their housing compounds rather than sending their children to school.

Overall, I felt that the project was a success because it gave the students a medium through which they could speak to authority in a way that was socially acceptable. The students’ ability to use this production to ‘speak-up’ to adults in a way that would be taken seriously was facilitated by the input and flexibility they were afforded in the early stages of the project.

General Issues

With all of its success, the project, unfortunately, was not without its faults. One of the biggest shortcomings of the project was its inability to engage all students that participated in it. One student, in particular, was fairly shy during all of our rehearsals in Tamale and eventually stopped coming to rehearsals. It’s fairly reasonable to expect that not all students would be interested in the project, however, this is an issue that could have been dealt with in advance if students had a general idea of what would be expected of them in their roles as community partners for this project. Furthermore, parents were not informed by the school of the new activity their kids were undertaking. Albeit, many of the students mentioned it to their parents, there was no information about it from the school. For future iterations of the program it might be helpful to provide parents with a short description of the projects as well as contact information for representatives from both collaborating community institutions. The lack of communication was quite obvious in the final two days of the project when both very few parents and guardians attended the final production and also when I was required to write a few letters to parents requesting their permission for their children to join us longer than usual on the day of the performance.

Another issue that cropped up was specific to the Tamale group. In one of our

early meetings, we learned that the students had missed an entire period in school so that they would be able to join us. This was against our principle of minimal disruption and we immediately changed our meeting times to better accommodate the students. During our later sessions we also learned that the students were in the middle of final exams, in fact, we learned that the students had an exam the very next day. As soon as we learnt this we made arrangements for the students to leave early. The long-term implication of this would be exploring if it would be possible to schedule the program so there would not be a significant overlap between the kids’ final exams and the program.

Other issues we had to be sensitive to was the kids’ comfort with one another. During one of our rehearsals in a scene where one of the actors was meant to hit another actor, the exchange was meant to be exaggerated and fake but we noticed that one of the actors was actually striking the other one. After noticing this we had to handle the ensuing conversation tactfully as to not appear too harsh while also resolving the issue. We decided to alleviate the situation by adding a prop into the scene and emphasizing that the actor should not actually be striking their colleague with it at all but instead be making a motion of hitting them instead. A different skit required that one of the boys who was playing a doctor declare one of his female patients dead. We noticed that the scene where he took the dead girl's pulse was fairly awkward and learned that neither student was too comfortable with the scene. During our discussion of the scene we learned that the students thought that the pulse could only be found over the heart. Both students were relieved to learn that a pulse can be located through the wrist and happily incorporated this change into their performance.

The biggest issue that arose from this project was the lack of immediate long-term benefits available to community partners. The skills that the participants learned are definitely a form of cultural capital, an example of this would be the traditional dances that all participants learned through workshops. A more commodifiable benefit that could be made available to participants is a participation certificate. At the very least, a certificate of this sort would demonstrate a participant’s command of the English language. The final issue I will mention will be easy to address in future iterations of the program. When we began the project we had little to no idea in regards to who would

be attending our eventual performance. If we had a better idea about the demographic of the eventual audience for our play we would have been able to finetune the message to be more relevant to the lives of the audience. The audience for our production in Tamale was largely school aged children and young adults, had this been something we knew in advance we could have produced skits that were more relevant to the lives of these groups of people. However, it should be noted that the audience for the shows can easily be changed simply by sending invitations. In our production in Tamale, only one parent came to see the final performance. If the parents were more involved in the entire process I imagine more of them would have attended the performance.

Project Impacts

The project had a few different impacts on the lives of all those who participated in it. In terms of long term impacts of the project, there is some potential that the project challenged some of the views held by audience members. The project in Tolon was actually extremely subversive because it gave young people, who would otherwise be dismissed by their elders, a platform through which they were able to voice their concerns to elders. Furthermore, this production was actually attended by the village chief, other important elders, and even the parents of many of the kids who were performing. What made this dynamic subversive was the normalcy with which adults tend to scold and chastise anyone younger than them in Ghana. Both groups of community partners gained the necessary skills to create and organize another similar project if they chose to do so. The project is simple and does not require a financial investment to recreated. The Tolon group benefitted from an investment that the service learners decided to make in order to start their own cultural troupe. The Tolon group were formerly part of a school’s dance troupe and since many of them were no longer able to attend school, they were no longer able to use the school’s equipment. We made a small investment in the group so that they may be able to purchase their own equipment, such as drums or costumes, for future performances. A final benefit from this project is offered by its ability to introduce participating groups to cultural traditions that they might not encounter otherwise. In

this sense, the project has a potential to be a strong medium that can be used to preserve culture.

Concluding remarks.

Overall, the CSL project offered a learning opportunity to both service learners and community partners. I think both parties step away with a richer understanding of the diversity of human cultures and human expression. I found that this CSL project helped foster inter-cultural communication between service learners and participants in a way that, for me, translated across the entire trip. The project itself was simple enough to not overshadow the entire trip but also presented many opportunities to add depth and complexity to it as we became more adept with the entire process. Looking forward, there is talk between service-learners to start a scholarship for community-partners of the program to help pay for costs associated with schooling. This project served as a conduit through which many other issues can be addressed and the project format easily lends itself to any community members who wish to address topics which are dear to them.

Works Cited Apple, Michael. Knowledge, Power, and Education : the Selected Works of Michael W. Apple. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Himley, Margaret. “Facing (Up to) 'the Stranger' in Community Service Learning.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 55, no. 3, 2004, pp. 416–438., www.jstor.org/stable/4140694. Wolf, Diane L. Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Westview, 1996.

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