#structural integrity failure

[eponymous-rose]

Sometimes when Clara is loafing I'll give her a leeeeeetle push. Usually she ignores it, but sometimes she just goes with it and tips over and flops.

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[weepingchoir]

When high school acquaintances tell you to invest in crypto, you absolutely must disinvest. Similarly, I hope the glut of narratives about mental illness, particularly those in which mental illness is vincible, signal a downturn in the Americultural cache of trauma as fetish object. This seems unlikely, so long as yoga remains profitable, but real change starts small.

Smile was, categorically, about mental illness. Fortunately it was about how mental illness ruins you, kills you, and hurts others besides. A sizable chunk of the audience thought this constituted some sort of moral failure. Me personally, I go to the arms of my loved ones to feel healed, and horror movies, to feel scared.

Smile 2 thinks this point has not been made firmly enough, which is why it opens on a catastrophic attempt from a crazed gunman to kill just the right number of people. After this, things turn violent. If the original was a sometimes hamfisted take on suicidal depression, the sequel understands that psychosis demands a heavy hand.

The unnamed Smile Curse worms into the victim's life, masquerading as leering strangers and loved ones. It isolates and torments the victim until they kill themselves or someone else, passing the curse on to witnesses. As metaphors go, the reason behind the smiling on the first entry is obvious. When you're that depressed, you think everyone's laughing at you. The sequel's trick is that, when you're that manic, everyone is laughing at you.

The internet has made meltdowns more visible than ever, but they were never private. Public humiliation is an integral part of losing your mind. The brain anticipates this: it's voices in your head, a warped social environ driving destructive behavior.

A blindspot in the popular discourse surrounding mental health is the fact that mental illnesses, in particular those bizarre states of mind recognizable as verifiably insane, can turn you heinous. Mania makes you curse out your loved ones, and trash roomfuls of shit you don't own, cheat on your spouse and take out loans in their name. We lack the social structure to responsibly provide affected parties with emotional comfort and material safety.

What's to be done? I don't know! There is a direct correlation between effective horror and insoluble problems. To wit: the next time someone acts crazy, will we laugh at them, or just smile and nod?

[2stepadmiral]

Under things the EU did better than Disney for $300, we have portrayal of the Empire.

In Disney Star Wars, the Empire is simply an exaggerated portrayal of the Third Reich. Most everyone in the Empire is shown to be fanatically loyal to the regime, and even when their motives are based in relatable reasons, like preserving order or stability following the turbulence of the Clone Wars, are usually portrayed in a fanatical light that seems excessive. Plus, the utter incompetence of most every trooper and officer in Rebels makes the Empire feel bloated and often like a parody.

In the EU, there was much more nuance to the Empire. Obviously, Palpatine, Tarkin, Isard, and other higher ups who are decidedly evil, and there are sadistic troops and officers spread throughout the ranks, but there are honorable individuals as well, and after the death of Palpatine and his immediate successors, the more noble members of the Imperial military become prominent.

Beginning especially during Thrawn’s campaign, when merit and creativity were rewarded, respectful decorum towards opponents was the order of the day, and incompetence, violent excesses, or conduct unbecoming of an officer were never tolerated, the Gilad Pellaeons of the military had a chance to shine and become the rule rather than the exception. Sure, Pellaeon himself took some more time after Thrawn to fully shake off some of the more violent tendencies of Imperial Officers and the anti-alien bias, but by the time he was supreme commander of the Empire, he had decidedly evolved into a truly good man and leader, the exact one that the Empire needed to lead it from being the absolute image of totalitarian tyranny to a well integrated society that embraced the same diversity of the New Republic and was just a bit more structured.

And don’t even get me started on the competence. It was clearly established that Stormtroopers were elite soldiers, and that their failures in the OT were due to direct orders not to kill (Death Star and Bespin) or due to being surprised and overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers (Endor). There was one novel by Timothy Zahn, Survivor’s Quest, where two 501st stormtroopers, worn down by the hundreds of adversaries they had killed, were reinforced by the arrival of two of fresh troops, and the two unharmed and non-weary troops completely finished the remaining few hundred.

Summed up, the Empire had a more complex portrayal in the EU than simply getting beaten and reformed as the even more radical second Empire, and that made the story more interesting. It’s a shame that we aren’t getting that now.

[gold-rhine]

Inazuma Rewrite part one

This is bullet points rewrite for Inazuma general plot structure, bc I think it had so much potential, but was horrifically scuffed in game. If I keep something from canon unchanged, I’ll just say so without retelling the entire thing to keep the length down, bc it’s gonna be A LOT already.

Some disclaimers: I’m not trying to fix every single problem, just what I see as major structural failures. I will reference my problems, but you can read my explanations on them more in depth in my “inazuma ranting” tag.

This is also not envisioned as free for all fanfic where I can write whatever I want, but aimed to be actually feasible to see in game, bc it’d be unfair and I want to show that Inazuma could be improved in the same constraints that hoyo writers had. So please don’t ask why I didn’t do wildly inconsistent thing that would be cool, but genshin would never actually do.

I’m aiming to retain all relevant lore and achieve basically same worldstate in the end, including character arcs, for the most part, because I presume them to be integral to the larger strategic plotline of the game. Which means I can’t drastically change characterization and major plot beats like the decrees, rebellion, Raiden has to be a sympathetic ally in the end, etc. I’m also trying to keep genshin’s general tone and modus operandi, bc like, target audience includes 13 yolds and I can’t just “make Inazuma good” by turning it into like, a gruesome and complex power struggle of political factions like Fallout New Vegas.

List of main issues I want to address: pacing in general, rebellion pacing especially, lack of impact and continuity of effects of vision loss on people, lack of setup for the stasis vs transience aka ei vs makoto conflict, character arcs: raiden, ayaka, kazuha, kokomi, yoimiya, kujou sara. And more! 

Initially I wanted to make a single post, but it’s already 3k and I’m only up to Raiden’s first duel and I plan to cover post-archon quest content too, like Raiden and Yoi story quests, so I decided to split it up instead of posting like 20k monstrosity. So remember, this is for now mostly a setup.

EDIT: Part 2

Raiden’s motivations\Reasons for vision hunt

Ok, so one of the biggest principal changes is that vision hunt and sakoku decree are active Raiden’s decisions, instead of Fatui’s plot that she’s just passively allowing to happen. Raiden closed the country, but she’s ok with Fatui starting a civil war and selling delusions, bc it doesn’t “affect eternity”, like??? I honestly think that the current plot of her people dying in a civil war meant nothing to her is much worse than her starting vision hunt decree out of misguided plan to ultimately do better for people.

I mean ok, we have to have closed borders to reference Japan’s history, sure, but like, the whole point of isolationist policies like this is to prevent the outsiders’ influence on the country. So she should not be ok with Fatui schemes at any point.  

I mean, if it was fallout new vegas AU, I’d keep it to show that dictator doesn’t not care about foreign powers exploiting it’s people as long as it profits the empire and helps to keep people subjugated, but like. Then raiden can’t be uwu waifu. So we gonna give her good intentions and integrity, but misunderstanding of humanity due to closing herself off instead.

Now to why would she close the country and institute sakoku decree. I want to tie this in with another plotline that is just. Kinda floating at sidelines at the moment, but I think could work nicely in tandem. The Scaramouche destroying Raiden Gokaden, the five schools of weapon smithing, which were canonically highly valued by Raiden.

I’m not gonna recount Scara’s entire plotline, but basically he went on a misguided crusade against Raiden Gokaden and managed to cause fall of 4 out of 5 weapon-smith schools.

Game says that he like, tampered with the schools and covertly led to their ruin, which like?? They never found anyone guilty, like the most prized weapon art smiths of your country fall apart and you’re like oh well, I guess Yashiro commission is just bad at it’s job?

There is a plot point in this story where Isshin weapon smiths, unable to replicate a faulty design that was Raiden’s commission tampered by Scara, were scared of Raiden’s wrath and decided to flee to Snezhnaya. I want to change it to be that there is an event, where ALL weapon schools receive same commission at the same time, and Scara tampers with it.

Just as in canon, scared smiths, but now from 4 schools, not one, are manipulated by Fatui to flee to Snezhnaya, But we add a new NPC, the most talented blade smith who had a vision. Fatui frame him as the ring leader, as if they were running not to save their lives because of the tampered design, impossible to fulfil, but that this was a betrayal because of his ambitions.

After this, Raiden has legitimate cause to feel like her eternity is threatened. She sees weapon art schools, one of the most prized country’s traditions being ruined in a moment because of what she thinks is ambitious hubris of one vision holder, who colluded with outsiders. So she closes Inazuma and declares a vision hunt, to prevent this from ever happening again.

But ironically, in truth it was the fault of not just Fatui, but specifically a puppet without a vision that she herself created and failed to supervise. This brings the main idea of the plotline from “Fatui evil, Raiden passive” to “Solipsist goddess who doesn’t understand humanity tries to protect her people by locking them in stasis and taking their ambitions, but the real case of tragedy was her negligence and lack of empathy all along, and this is what needs to be changed.”

Interlude and plot setup

We start with similar plotline. Traveler tries to go to Inazuma, learns that it’s closed, talks to Inazuman NPC to learn more. Here we’re introduced to the general idea that Inazuma was closed off due to one traitor blade smith with a vision who sold off Raiden Gokaden to Fatui.

We go to Beidou’s tournament, which goes basically the same, we meet Kazuha and watch a beautiful cutscene about his dead friend who challenged Raiden to a duel, and now Kazuha tries to find someone who can reignite his vision. I will actually add changes to Kazuha’s storyline, but it be will later.

then we arrive to Inazuma, go through the same bureaucracy loops with Thoma on Ritou, to show the barriers to outsiders and also to illustrate how Thoma is the best fixer when he manages to drop a fee from 1 mil to like 10 gold by promising to have a dinner with government official.

But we’re cutting the second part of Ritou, with the boring plot about like merchant from Mond scamming people with the local police and then Traveler delivering love letter or whatever. I mean, we can keep this as an optional side quest, if like hoyo thinks the lore about love letter is essential for the Ayato’s quest or smth, but not as an Archon quest.

Instead, we put a part of Yoimiya’s quest there. I think Yoi’s quest is relevant enough to stay in the Archon quest, unlike Ayaka’s, but it’s slapped into a place where it ruins pacing. So instead, we’re cutting it up in parts and inserting it into main storyline.

On Ritou, while doing bureaucracy bullshit, we meet Yoimiya, and play the part of her quest about her helping a guy with a vision to escape from his former best friend, who is now a guard hunting him. It helps to show the rift that vision hunt brings not only with the outsiders, but with inside of the country as well.

Ghost of Makoto\Transience setup

another key point that I think is integral to fixing Inazuma is planting seeds for Makoto’s reveal from the start. I really like the Stasis vs Transience conflict from raiden’s second story quest, where raiden believed in eternity as lack of change, a perfect state maintained until the rest of time, while her twin Makoto believed in eternity as never-ending change, where people’s dreams constantly evolve, nature of them chasing these dreams never changes.

but it feels like it came out of nowhere and raiden just speedruns character development in like an hour, so a lot of people ended up feeling like it was just about Raiden mourning her sister, instead of raiden coming to understand makoto’s belief system and through that unlocking makoto’s final connection and then being able to let go.

so we need to first of all, introduce makoto’s ideas of transience from the start, and also empathize the conflict of them with raiden’s stasis.

and it doesn’t mean we’ll spoil the reveal about the second raiden shogun! we don’t have to ever use makoto’s name, just her title as a raiden and sprinkle her ideas throughout the land. We know hoyo area designers can do that stuff really well (guizhong’s relics being scattered all over liyue, rukkhadevata’s shadow in the aranara quest).

like, it’s strange that Makoto primarily ruled and shaped country by herself while Ei was just a warrior, yet we do not have Makoto’s influence visible. We need to add ideas of transience into fundamentals of Inazuma,

“Transience is the dream of the nation of thunder. We find the greatest joys in mortal life in fleeting dreams, for is life itself not like the shadow of the thunder? Pursue your dreams into the clouds if you wish, and enjoy the unexpected silence of the dim lamp-lit nights.” - Guide to Transience talent book.

add these ideas all over the place, esp near sakura. And let’s draw player’s attention a couple of times specifically to the internal contradiction of these ideas of transience being integral to inazuma and raiden’s current hatred of change.

like, we need even 13 yolds and twitch streamers to remember this, so lets make paimon say like

“Huh, this shrine to raiden shogun says that eternity is the pursuit of fleeting dreams, but doesn’t raiden shogun fucking hates dreams?? I wonder, what made her change her mind about them to the total opposite!“

this and more subtle puzzles\locations with focus on transience for people who pay more attention will add the much needed setup for makoto’s reveal

Kamisato siblings

ok, first things first, Ayato being absent without any explanation while his little sister is plotting treason and his malewife Thoma is about to be executed on the streets is unacceptable.

like I know it’s marketing or whatever and he’s not being released but we need his model, hoyo. If we 200% CAN’T have his model, we need to come up with solid excuse why he’s not here. Like idk, he’s helping the war refugees or smth

And we need hints at his presence\influence throughout the story. Like oh, here’s group of refugees who were helped by Yashiro commissioner, they are relocating to new homes, I guess Ayato is really busy. Oh, here is Fatui’s camp where everyone is slaughtered and boba tea cups are littered around, I wonder what is up with that.

and also, Ayaka is organizing resistance behind his back, and we never meet him bc Ayaka actively tries to hide traveler from him.

bc like, Ayaka doesn’t have a development arc in archon quest. She’s just kind of there, being perfect. Like in her story quest that hoyo makes you do at gun point, you like, go on a date, learn that she’s lonely and has trouble connecting with people due to the pressure of having to project an image of perfection and societal distance, do an investigation to uncover her late mother’s fox fursona roleplay diary which she used to cope her with own societal pressure. Which like. Ok, sure, but but this wet socks quest is not an archon quest material. It should be just a normal story quest.

no, Ayaka’s real conflict is wanting to prove herself to her brother, bring real difference to the world. This is her ambition, she literally gained her vision while fighting Ayato in a training, she wanted to show him that she’s strong enough to handle responsibility, he named her Shirasagi Himegimi after she won that fight

but during a civil war, watching people suffer, her role as a cultural figurehead is not enough. She wants to help, but she’s afraid to act, because this will undermine Yashiro Commission and her brother worked so hard to build it back up after Raiden Gokaden fall. so she organizes resistance behind her brother’s back in secret, to help, but without compromising Kamisato name

this basically tracks with what happens in game, but we spell it out and expand on this later.

Getting Traveler to help

next, let’s throw out the weird edging introduction where traveler is not allowed to see Ayaka the first time. like??? bro, we’re friends with 2 archons and heads of their governments, you’re not that important. and it can’t be to protect her identity, bc like. You go to Kamisato estate! You’re told who she is! If you wanted to betray her, that would be enough already.

another awkward thing is that Traveler, who agrees to do every stupid quest they meet, suddenly refuses to help the resistance.

I think we should reframe their convo a little, like Traveler says hey I’d love to help, but my primary goal is to get info about my sibling from an Archon, so I don’t want to go against her.

To which Ayaka says oh, I totally get you, you see, I am myself a culture figurehead and a nominal princess and I can’t speak up against the decree, bc that will hurt Yashiro Commission. But I’m not asking you to fight Raiden Shogun in a duel or smth, I’m just asking you to help people with the resistance, which we do totally in secret. No one will know! Also, how are you going to see Raiden? She’s locked up and doesn’t appear in public. But my big brother is a head of the Commission, if anyone can get you an audience, it’s him. So help me help people and I will ask him to help you see Shogun!

she secretly believes that after traveler sees ppl suffering, they will change their mind and help willingly, same as in canon, but she’s more subtle about it

Rebellion connection

my other problem with vision hunt is that the 3 quests they force you to do about meeting people who lost their visions are like. not good. The concept is interesting, but they are just kinda boring and meandering. They lack dramatic impact. They could do better. So we’re not doing these 3 quests rn, but don’t worry about it, we will get to the effects of vision loss

Instead, ayaka sends us to help Yoimiya and we do the same quest we do in archon quest - help her to free someone from prison dungeon. It goes the same, we get to the dude being mistreated by cops, Kujou Sara steps up and lets us go

But then it’s like, we need to get this dude out of Inazuma city. Cops know he escaped! They will just come for him again! There is only one place that will take him and it’s the watatsumi rebels.

Common complaint about Inazuma is that other countries feel like found families and Inazuma doesn’t, bc characters from resistance and rebellion basically don’t interact, and it’s true. And like, we can get them together! Thoma knows Kazuha, Kazuha knows Gorou, Gorou in canon went to recoinsanse missions to Narukami island.

So, Gorou visits the tea house to pick up the Vision Dude, and the gang has the hotpot meet up. Everyone is there (except Kokomi bc ok hoyo, we’re saving up for dramatic battle reveal, and i think her reveal would fuck up banner schedule). Ayaka, Thoma, Yoimiya, Kazuha, Gorou. and Teppei! Who is here bc he was recruited by Gorou. He’s actually from Narukami island, not Watatsumi, and he had nothing to do with visions, but he’s an idealist, he believes in freedom, so he joined rebellion. fun times are had, Ayaka tries to play srs bsns lady host, but breaks into giggling at The Shenanigans, Gorou is overly polite but adorable and apologizes to Ayaka about The Shenanigans in which everyone but him participates, Yoi is a life of party and the Shenanigans and later has to be bodily stopped by Kazuha from organizing fireworks right here, right now, Thoma and Teppei both get sick from eating Ayaka’s nasty cakes that she threw into soup, bc Thoma is just into oral stuff and Teppei is so earnest and eager to prove himself and impress ppl, haha comic relief, look how sweet and funny this guy is and all characters get along so great with him

bc like, I think Teppei has a problem of a) not having enough screen time b)not having any interesting characterization moments to make him stand out 3)not having other playable and already likeable characters interact with him

so this scene can serve not only to bring that “unlikely bunch of people becoming friends and working together” connection to life, but also to endear Teppei to the players

Vision Loss Effects\ Yoimiya and Thoma

ok, next Ayaka asks Traveler to do that one quest about martial arts master losing their vision. I think it’s the one quest from 3 about vision loss with most drama, but the real reason is that it introduces Yae Miko and we need to do this before leaving for the rebellion. Like, in theory, it could be switched to another, better quest that lets us meet Yae Miko, but honestly, this is not one of Inazuma archon quest problems so I can’t be arsed. Feel free to imagine a cooler intro instead.

when we go back to tea house, we learn that Yoimya’s vision has been taken away. She has been recognized in that last prison raid and the guards came for her later, and she didn’t fight bc there were kids and her old father around.

She’s completely changed. Her innate optimism, her belief in people and their dreams has been drained from her like a sunshine from a dark cellar. But she’s still Yoimiya!! She came here to warn you bc she still cares even if she had her own joy taken from her. She tries to smile and reassure you that it’s ok, she’s fine, but her smile is visibly strained, she’s never had to fake it before so she doesn’t know how. She wears a vision, but it’s a fake one, because her pops said that maybe having it here would help and she agreed, tried to pretend for him that it does help, bu. It very obviously doesn’t.

Ayaka is horrified. She apologizes to Yoimiya, tries to think of ways to help her, but Yoi just laughs humorlessly. “It won’t ever touch you, princess.”

She’s immediately disgusted at herself and apologizes, tries to take it back, this isn’t her, she would never say this, and not to her friend! But also, it’s so hard to care now and she can’t remember why it’s so important to care at all.

Ayaka is shaken. Bc it’s true! She is a privileged noble, vision hunt will not come for her! She is playing at the resistance from the safety of anonymity, while people like Yoimiya actually risk themselves and pay the price!

And this is when the news that Thoma was arrested and about to be 100th vision taken at the feet of the statue comes. Tenryou commission truly strikes back.

Ayaka is in uproar. She’s ready to go herself and fight for Thoma, especially after Yoi’s words. She’s sick and tired of being a perfect princess, she can’t allow any more of her friends, her family come to harm because they don’t have her protection. Clearly Thoma being a theatrical execution is a blow specifically against Yashiro commission and Kamisato family in particular, and if Shogun has beef with her, well, she can settle it with HER instead of going after her friends!

Traveler stops her. This is what they want. If Ayaka openly moves against the Shogun, the entire Yashiro commission falls. Even if Ayaka is in the right! No, it’s the Traveler who will go to save Thoma

But traveler needs raiden’s good will for the info, they can’t confront raiden openly, it was the deal from the start!

But at this point traveler has seen too much, the divide in the country, the change and suffering of their own friends, and they can’t allow all of Yashiro commission take the fall.

This is when the Traveler decides to take a stand.

ACT 2

[opencommunion]

"The dogged determination to keep up at any cost a military adventure doomed to failure can actually be explained by the prevalence of what Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor refers to as 'military thought,' following in the footsteps of pompous fools in the history of colonial warfare, from the French Massu to the American Westmoreland: 'Give me two weeks more, and I’ll crush them this time.' ... Yet this factor, however important it might be, has to be viewed as complementing another, political in nature: the structural integration of Israeli strategy into Washington’s 'unlimited global war,' and the role U.S. leaders have assigned to Israel in this framework.

... The wars Israel is waging nowadays can be seen as part and parcel of the permanent, preventive global war planned by the neoconservatives and launched by the White House after 9/11, with the increasingly generalized backing of the European Union. Of course, the state of Israel has always been in the military service of one or another Western power—the United States since the late 1960s—in exchange for economic, military, and diplomatic support. But these alliances have been based, overall, on a conjunction of interests: Israel was a bridgehead for the defense of the interests of the 'free world' in the Middle East against the Soviet Union and Arab nationalism. In exchange, Western powers supported the state of Israel and its colonial project.

'Unlimited global war' is a strategy that was conceived and prepared, in the 1980s, by U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives who were rethinking the post–Soviet-era world. The new strategy was a class war on a planetary scale, the aim of which was recolonization of the world and the imposition of a new imperial system governed by neoliberalism. Unilateralism was to replace the multilateral order laid out after World War II. Recolonization and imposition of U.S. hegemony were to put an end to peoples’ self-determination, and unlimited war would replace the commitment to a political solution to crises as a means of achieving global security."

Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski, The 33-Day War: Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences (2007)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference archived on our website

Abstract Patients recovering from COVID-19 commonly exhibit cognitive and brain alterations, yet the specific neuropathological mechanisms and risk factors underlying these alterations remain elusive. Given the significant global incidence of COVID-19, identifying factors that can distinguish individuals at risk of developing brain alterations is crucial for prioritizing follow-up care. Here, we report findings from a sample of patients consisting of 73 adults with a mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection without signs of respiratory failure and 27 with infections attributed to other agents and no history of COVID-19. The participants underwent cognitive screening, a decision-making task, and MRI evaluations. We assessed for the presence of anosmia and the requirement for hospitalization. Groups did not differ in age or cognitive performance. Patients who presented with anosmia exhibited more impulsive alternative changes after a shift in probabilities (r =  − 0.26, p = 0.001), while patients who required hospitalization showed more perseverative choices (r = 0.25, p = 0.003). Anosmia correlated with brain measures, including decreased functional activity during the decision-making task, thinning of cortical thickness in parietal regions, and loss of white matter integrity. Hence, anosmia could be a factor to be considered when identifying at-risk populations for follow-up.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

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As a legislative policy fellow and anthropologist who studies women’s well-being in coastal communities of Chile and Indigenous salmon management in Alaska and Canada, I’ve witnessed how genocidal attempts to eradicate Indigenous peoples and their cultures have also damaged the environment. We see it in current management’s low returns in fish, high levels of runoff and nutrient input into ocean systems, and generally unsustainable levels of resource extraction.

I’ve also seen the opposite: I interviewed managers and biologists in Vancouver, Canada, who described the substantial improvements of Indigenous-led, bottom-up approaches to conservation. They see fish return and people fulfilling their well-being and nutrition needs. They see political and economic reform and a revitalization of social and cultural practices.

Unfortunately this is still not the norm, as we saw in a recent international agreement between the United States and Canada that placed a seven-year fishing moratorium on Chinook salmon to encourage fish populations to rebound. Most people would agree that this is a worthy goal for the conservation of both the species and the people who depend on Chinook. However, the new agreement fails to factor in Indigenous access to resources for ceremonial and subsistence harvest, which is mandated by law, nor did legislators acknowledge public comment that supported that access.

The marginalization of Indigenous peoples today, as seen in this agreement’s failures, can be traced back to colonialism.

The history of colonialism is steeped in human-rights violations such as the outlawing of Indigenous salmon-management practices that settlers later appropriated for their own economic gain. Settler wealth was achieved only through the exploitation of resources and forced relocation of Indigenous peoples out of economically advantageous spaces and acculturation into oppressive colonial ones.

“Settler governments [are] primarily concerned with economic gain,” a British Columbia-based project manager focused on salmon restoration told me during an interview. “Their mandate is to work commercial fisheries or recreational ones that generate economic value for their states, provinces, or countries…That’s the starting point; when human well-being is the starting point — like it is with Indigenous people — then it leads to a very different kind of management.”

[makoredeyes]

What do you think the Siddharta Golem was back in the Golden Age? Must have been different enough to Rasputin to be considered his son but we really don't know anything about him.

It’s wild! Because even Rasputin becomes fairly verbose about Felwinter, but not what or who he was before he was risen. (Props to dad for not deadnaming his kid I guess??!?* except I still have this funny impression that Felwinter never liked his risen name much SOOOO )

But Siddhartha. His namesake is telling of course- gone out to wander the world and see it for all its goods and bads first hand, to grossly over simplify things.

Rasputin himself tags the activation record with the quote, "Experience is the teacher of all things." Which sure compounds the intent there.

But looking at that same log, yano Rasputin’s code is always cryptic and full of prose but this one has to be absolute THICKEST of them all:

>>AMYGDALA VOTIVE GRASP>>

V149GAQ145CB120

AI-COM/RSPN: ASSETS//GOLEM//INTERROGATIVE

IMMEDIATE ACTION ORDER

This is a SUBTLE ASSETS IMPERATIVE (NO HUMAN REVIEW) (NO AI-COM REVIEW) (secure/AUTARCH).

Initiate SIDDHARTHA GOLEM upload at DSC-342 to assess integrity of moral structures.

Stand by for CRITERIA:

Under PASSAGE (obsolesce/SIDEREAL):

If NANOBE SONDER is IVORY

If HAMMURABI is ACTIVE and passes human review under context TURING

If DURYODHANA is in FAILURE and passes AI-COM review under context IDES

Set spectrum certification to SMARAGDINE

Else, stand by for CONTINGENT ACTION ORDER:

Set spectrum certification to AMARANTHINE

Initiate human review unless tactical morality is built at MIDNIGHT

"Experience is the teacher of all things."

STOP STOP STOP V149GAQ145CB121

——

I had started to unpack this at one point and got a little lost because Big Red is going WAY the fuck out there with some of his prose in this one. We see the term Sidereal a few times in Destiny lore it’s a fun one they like to use but is a weird term to drop here for example, and as best I can conclude might infer something like “long shot” but like. That’s not really what it means either. So there’s some stuff here that doesn’t really translate and then the fucker uses SMARAGDINE which is a shade of green. GREEN. He means green. Like go.

So like. Even without unpacking everything Tldr the old man is feeling extra poetic he’s having some feels about this and he’s also doing this totally on his own without review from humans or other AI-COMs, specifically in secret. So safe to assume we can confirm yeah Siddhartha was pretty important to Rasputin from the very start.

**I will add that the juxtaposition of NANOBE, which is a form of microbe, a tiny life if you will, and SONDER together really does give me the impression of like. A child. A sort of parental wonder at a tiny individual. But that is a WHOLE LOT of inference.

[worldruins]

It's bib time baybee

Blessings In Bloodshed (a self-given name, though not far from the original) is a reserved but stubborn iterator. They've made easing the pains and ailments of their own kind their life's work- or rather, the work of their second.. and third.. chances at life.

Built right around the time of the Great Equalizer, she was originally made to preserve and elevate an old pilgrimage site that would have been lost to the floods and changing landscape. It's a similar situation to the True Anointed Citadel, but BIB's monks were considerably more welcoming to them, and much of the original construction as well as many sacred artifacts were successfully disassembled and relocated to a new home atop the superstructure. Blessings was regularly in contact with the mortal sick and dying, and took on the role of endorsing a freshly-deceased individual's safe and fortunate passage to the next cycle. Even when he no longer does that sort of work, Blessings remains personally spiritual. He believes in the void as a conscious force acting upon the world, a benevolent but mercurial actor in the great forces of the universe.

BIB shares a group with True Accord, Uncast Shadows, Six Stunned Silences and (unofficially) Twelve Bound Hands. They consider all their groupmates siblings; TA and US are older than them, SSS and TBH are younger. The five of them have grown closer over time, connected by circumstance, need and the desire for family. That was not the case back when the creators of the iterators left their creations behind, and Blessings found herself profoundly alone. They were distraught, and felt that they had failed in their duties to their people. They tried to focus on their work, on the Big Problem they had been created for, but found themself unable to cope with the frustration and failures that felt more humiliating every time. Their chosen path forward was bioengineering, and they did grow skilled at working with biological materials, though they hardly felt accomplished.

Blessings In Bloodshed did not tell his groupmates when he decided to turn some of his resources towards figuring out how to destroy himself. She did not think she'd be able to ascend, or even to reverse their creators' very thorough work ensuring true death would not come for iterators like her. They just had to get close enough. They made a few attempts, none of them successful, all of them leaving a different sort of damage (physical or otherwise) behind. He might have been desperate, but when the rot came as a result of their final attempt at self-elimination, it was not welcomed. The despondent BIB finally reopened communications with the group to warn them of her condition. The disease was highly aggressive, and he predicted he only had some tens of thousands of days left before her structural integrity would fail.

With help from her group, Blessings survived the illness, though not before it had claimed more than half her structure- half her body, half her mind. He was surprised by the concern he received alongside the frustration that she hadn't reached out earlier. Their siblings- the iterators they would come to consider siblings- had been concerned and were now shocked by the state of their mild-mannered neighbor. They were a reason for Blessings to keep fighting. In the end, it was her own work that proved fruitful in treating and finally curing their own case of rot. That didn't mean reversing the damage, though- only that the cysts were dead and wouldn't spread or pose an active risk. It left him covered in scars, pockmarked metal and components rendered useless. Repairing themself involved creating organisms and constructs to carve them back into their original shape and break the dead rot back down into the materials they need.

Blessings had always been interested in medicine. It was not what her creators and residents asked of her, so her attention had never been devoted to it as a younger iterator. At most, they idly considered examining and treating mortals ("mortals" being the respectful name for the people who built iterators as a whole, in comparison to their towering creations), allowing the daydream some space in the back of their mind. He considered it something of a bitter irony when he wound up caring for himself in his own severe illness. Once the rot was under control and BIB had some space to breathe, though, they couldn't help wondering how effectively an iterator could act as a physician to other iterators. With their preexisting knowledge and everything they learned trying to save their own life, they were the best equipped to address their own group's ailments, from True Accord's widespread rust to Twelve Bound Hands, an illicit construction, literally falling apart. As their skills and confidence grew, they started looking outside their local group. They know the fate of their kind is inevitable, but their hope is to minimize suffering and stop other iterators from becoming insensate or nonfunctional before they're ready to be. It's a difficult, sometimes insurmountable task and their scope is very limited. That's not stopping them from trying.

BIB would never be the same as they were before their illness, and they're not really trying to be. He's forgetful, and easily baited. They were always something of a bleeding heart- pun intended-even more so after the rot. Their chosen "job" comes as a surprise with how sensitive they can be, but their friends know them as The Doc all the same.

The cracks all across Blessings' puppet aren't from the rot and they aren't self-inflicted- not really. But that's a whole other story. Thank you for reading about my bibby <3

[usafphantom2]

To help reduce the radar cross-section the pie shaped and rectangular shapes were used around the outer edges of the SR 71. This is one of many reasons why they did not allow photographs. The SR -71 was made of 93% aged titanium and 7% composites. The fins and triangle wedges that framed the outer edge of the aircraft were composite constructionsmade from a mixture of asbestos and epoxy. They provided high-temperature radar absorbent characteristics to reduce the aircraft radar cross-section. They found that to attach thin, titanium skin to heavier wing structures, simple standoff clips were developed. These gave structural integrity while providing a heat shield between components with different expansion rates.

According to Wisconsin Metal Tech, the engineers of the SR-71 were among the first people in history to make real use of the material. In that process, they ended up throwing away a lot of material, some through necessity, some through error. At times the engineers were perplexed as to what was causing problems, but thankfully they documented and cataloged everything, which helped find trends in their failures. They discovered that spot welded parts made in the summer were failing very early in their life, but those welded in winter were fine. They eventually tracked the problem to the fact that the Burbank water treatment facility was adding chlorine to the water they used to clean the parts to prevent algae blooms in summer, but took it out in winter. Chlorine reacts with titanium, so they began using distilled water from this point on.

They discovered that their cadmium plated tools were leaving trace amounts of cadmium on bolts, which would cause galvanic corrosion and cause the bolts to fail. This discovery led to all cadmium tools to be removed from the workshop.

Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[antimisinfo]

This is more of a question rather than something regarding misinfo, but is there a specific term for what the, like, ORIGINAL is called? We use the term "core" since that's what we found once, but we've also heard people refer to them as the "host" or the "body" and we wanted to know if there was a correct term or if "core" is something we shouldn't use since we've never heard anyone else use the term "core", although we don't meet new people, especially systems, very often which may be apart of it.

So sorry if this is worded wrong or weirdly!!!!

techincally the term for the "original" is core, but the term core is very debated,, it has been used by people but whether a "core" exists or not is argued over " There is currently a debate over the existence of cores because it does not easily fit with the theory of structural dissociation. Not all systems have a part that could be identified as a core. "

the idea of a core doesn't completely fit with the theory of how DID forms, since if we go off the theory of structural dissociation there would be no "original" or "first" alter (as before alters are formed it'd just be fragments / parts of an identity, not a integrated identity,, if that makes sense?)

it kind of depends how you refer to it / how you use the term core. i would say that overall, the term is disliked since it goes against the theory of structural dissociation,, though did-research.org says that a core could be fit into it as; "one has to examine the theory as it exists on a spectrum to conceptualize how an early failure of integration could still allow one part to integrate before others." which i guess could make sense in a way? it depends.

really its more of a personal thing i think,, most systems don't like the term but if you like it i can't stop you from using it. there's not much else to say. ((also calling them the original is also widely disliked too, but its pretty much the same thing))

apologies if this doesn't really answer your question, i'm unsure what to say

[writerbuddha]

When “Death to the Author!” poses as “Death of the Author”

The literary theory called "Death of the Author" was developed by French philosopher Roland Barthes in his essay “The Death of the Author” in 1967. The theory declares that the author's intention and biography are not relevant to the interpretation of the text, rather, its meaning is determined by the interpretation of the given reader. This is understood as meaning that an author’s view about their own work is no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader.

However, most often than doesn't, what some calls "Death of the Author" is, in truth, “Death to the Author!” which we shall define as a given reader or viewer's, a fan's desire to legitimately re-imagine and retell the story told by the author. The “Death to the Author!” theory argues that the author has no more or less say in what is part of their story than readers or viewers, that the elements they invented and inserted into the story are must be treated just as integral parts of it as the work of the author. What message and lesson, philosophy and set of values the author intended to communicate through their work of fiction is treated as relevant only to the author, since these things are changing depending on which story element is replaced, altered or "completed" by any given reader or viewer, based on their own ideas, beliefs, views, opinions and values. In its most extreme, the events, characters, arcs and fictional universe of the story are all treated as a reality existing independently from the author, and it's asserted that the author's narrative is only one take on that reality.

"Death to the Author!" is rarely articulated and in most cases, it's not even conscious, but it's relatively easy to spot it in a fan's toolkit. The most prominent sign of “Death to the Author!” is the fan asserting information about characters’ background, motivations, wants, likes and dislikes, mental and emotional processes, organizations’ history and activity and so on that are simply cannot be derived from, in its most extreme, outright in conflict with the source material itself. And sometimes, when the fact that these alleged informations cannot be located in the source material is revealed, the fan might try to assert that fans have a moral, ethical responsibility to “complete” and to "correct" the work of fiction with said fan-invented content, so it will be authentic, since its absence from the story is simply the result of the author’s moral and ethical failure and ignorance.

Proponents of “Death to the Author!” often seek to legitimize their theory by claiming, it's deconstructionism. Deconstructionism was created by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. As a literary theory, deconstruction is the close, detailed analysis of texts, so one can find underlying presuppositions that structures of meaning rely on, trying to find clues that give away alternate or contradictory meanings. For example, if a reader or viewer can see how a literary text or a movie intentionally correlates light with "goodness" and darkness with "evil", a reader might begin to question the truth of these correlations. If darkness represents evil in Star Wars, how come that the storm troopers are all white, just like Princess Leia? How come that Luke Skywalker wears black? A deconstructionist recognizes how the text or movie plays with the assumptions readers and viewers make based on connotations of the words and the images they create, enhancing the tension in the story, and undermining the possibility of the text or movie creating only one meaning. Fan "deconstruction" is related to deconstruction, but it's different: it means, fans are looking at tropes and asking, "how this trope would play out in the real life?" However, proponents of “Death to the Author!” are not deconstructionists, they only use the word as a cop-out.

For them, “deconstruction” is to take parts of the story out of context, filling them up with any meaning that the given reader or viewer wishes them to mean, based on their beliefs, ideas, views and opinions, e.g. "X is a politician. I am convinced that politicians are corrupt. Therefore, X is corrupt, even though the story doesn't explicitly shows it," then putting the modified elements back into the story and referring to them as evidence that would support the “deconstructionist’s” claim, "X is a corrupt character who should be in jail." The “deconstructionist” would argue, all they did was asking the question, “how this story element would play out in the real life” or they were just "reading between the lines" or "found the subtext." It shouldn’t be hard to see that this wasn’t what happened. The only thing that "deconstructionists" and deconstructionists may have in common is the conviction that it's not possible for a movie or a text to create only one meaning with the set of semantic signs they operate with, however, “Death to the Author!” tries to use this notion to escape the burden of proof: if there is no one absolute meaning of a text or a movie, then one can assign to them any meaning they want. This is, however, not what deconstruction means, and those who say “Death to the Author!” are eventually starting to talk about their right to believe and say what they wish to believe and say and can end up decrying the author's position as "privileged" or "elitist" "oppressive" and so on and call for the "democratization" of the fandom or the work of fiction itself - this, however, a call to erase the work of fiction and to metaphorically kill - and rob - the author.

Although "Death of the Author" wishes to make authors' intentions and biography irrelevant when it comes to interpretations of their works, there is nothing in "Death of the Author" that would prevent the respectful preservation of informations about authors' intentions and biography and acknowledgment of the meaning they hoped to convey to their readers or audiences. This is the preservation of the knowledge and history of the past, communicated through arts, and it's necessary for the normal functioning of any culture and society. By contrast, "Death to the Author!" is an assault on the author and an assault on their works. In truth, it's the unwillingness to engage in the exchange of views, opinions and ideas, and to allow our own views, opinions and ideas to be challenged by others. This makes "Death to the Author!" a symptom of a dangerous attitude becoming more and more common in communities and this makes it a version of book burning: it's an attempt to erase artistic content that is not in line with a given fan’s system of likes and dislikes, ideology, views, opinions, beliefs, values, and it's the demand for the freedom to first spread and eventually to impose an "interpretation" of the content that does. This time, the erasure is not physical, since the loathed works are still there, physically, but they are robbed from their voice, and it's no longer able to reach its audience.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Hi there, your Europe without trade, a worldbuilding exercise was a fascinating and educational read, kudos for all the insights!

One section has left me with dual questions however, namely:

The other rule is that the Gulf Stream still exists, so you can have that unusual European climate which is a fluke. (This also ticked off people? But seriously, to get the gradient of Europe that far north, you need to Gulf of Mexico otherwise the latitude range would look more like the US than Europe, more south, and larger, much larger. And most people don't make a continent that large. Why people get ticked off at true facts is a whole thing.)

I am rather curious about how these factors interplay with one another, IE, how the Gulf of Mexico creates an unusual climate in Europe, what about the climate is unusual and most integrally, what would the climate look like without it?

Sorry if this is a Wikipedia question, weather science is not my forte and I've love to see your take specifically on it, but not pressure.

I learned this in geography class and covered this in my worldbuilding posts, so short cutted it.

See that red arrow going to Europe from Florida-ish. That's the gulf of Mexico Stream. Hot, wet air travels from Mexico to Europe, giving you climates like the Mediterranean, the rain that Brits complain about, but also things like the South of France, Spainish warm agriculture weather.

If you want to build it super racist and cut off all PoC influence, which some people were cursing me about mentioning the Gulf of Mexico and how dare I at the time I made the original post (which was years back)

Then as my Geography professor succinctly put it, you get Siberia. Siberia, has high continentality, is extremely cold in the winter and extremely hot in the summer. You'd be able to grow NOTHING. No Europe for you. Most of the Siberian people or this reason, without the world food supply were Pastoral Nomadic people who lived in chiefdoms and tribes and survived mostly on grasslands.

The majority of maps, including Tolkien's does not include a Gulf of Mexico structure, which means high continentality and miserable weather. You're looking at only Evenk-type of people in Europe year round with probably diminishing trees, and BTW, shamanism is most likely. (or Totemism, if you follow the whole worldbuilding series I did)

If you do want an Agricultural state without The Gulf, you're more looking at China or the United States in terms of latitude, but you'd have to study China closely. This means larger latitude range with a gradual shift towards Mediterranean. But also more extreme weather, such as more deserts, more swamps, etc. And absolutely, you'd need cooperation.

There's environmental politics about China too,but you'll have to research that on your own.

This, BTW, is why I say as the first thing you probably should do is draw a map, the entire world, map the currents, and then you can figure it out. But notice Europe is really far North and the South of Spain, which is typically Warm is about equal to Newfoundland in Canada which is really cold.

And that's what you're going to get if you melt those ice caps. The summer is going to get worse. The winter is going to get even more miserable. You'll get less warm hot rain for England, etc, but crop failure rate is going to skyrocket. Unfortunately, you need those polar ice caps back ASAP because if it desalinates too much, the Earth will do everything to try to rebalance itself. And do you want that?

Read the geography worldbuilding post I put up. I got up through government loosely.

To get monsoons, you do need high continentality, which is why India, China, etc gets monsoon weather. So if you want that weather feature, understand you need more land mass, but there is the trade off of some place being like Siberia.

BTW, it's climate, not weather. Only saying it because my geography prof would be on my case if I didn't differentiate. You're looking for climate differences which are dictated by latitude, physical features and currents. Another way to screw over Europe is to Destroy the land bridge on the tip of Mexico, thus changing all of the currents and flood it.

[granulesofsand]

Connotation

I don’t like the language of the Theory of Structural Dissociation. It makes the assumption that the result will always be disordered, and therefore is always something wrong. Not brokenness, but failure to integrate.

Of course people come away thinking that’s all there is, fit together or remain a fraction of what everybody else has. Even if the system/person with the Complex Dissociative Structure could apply that description to their mechanisms, it’s a rude phrasing.

We did not fail integration, we succeeded in separation. An adaptive means of coping with trauma, in many cases. Sometimes adaptions are unsuited to a new situation, but there are options in how to deal with arising problems.

When someone is fragmented, they can elaborate. When there are communication barriers, we can reshape them. When too many people want to be active at once, we can expand our processing power. I’ve never seen a clinician recommend anything but lessening dissociation, which is vital to our way of life.

Our system doesn’t believe there’s a limit to the amount of self we can obtain, because we believe self is contained experience plus introspection. Singlets can’t understand that from their own perspective, not unless they quit being singlets. We also believe that containment can be achieved through healthy dissociation, and that there is variety in how that dissociation feels.

I know that the ToSD is evidenced, but I don’t think it’s complete — much the same as how the modern theory was built off 19th century theories (and earlier). There’s not enough room in this version for the presentations like our system, or any other manifestation of CDSs.

[saints-who-never-existed]

Hickey is a surpassingly lonely man certainly, but often overlooked - or at the very least something I'd like to talk about more - is the fact that he is absolutely not the only one, despite what he may think.

The Terror is a show, after all, that is as much about abject, crushing isolation as it is about love and intimacy and brotherhood in the face of tragedy. About the extent to which each man is affected by loneliness and the ways in which he does or doesn't deal with it. About whether he even understands the nature of it in the first place and by extension, whether he understands himself.

Franklin is a surpassingly lonely man too.

Think of him in the novel being deeply uncomfortable in the world and in the company of other men to the point where he resorts to bribery, however unconsciously, in order to ingratiate himself with them.

Think of him in the show gazing from the outside in at Fitzjames and the Lieutenants laughing away together at the admiralty shindig, an in-crowd Franklin has missed out on ever truly being a part of.

Think how that drives him to poorer and ever riskier decisions. Failure of the expedition is not an option for him because it will also mean a failure to improve his social standing and gain entry to that crowd.

Crozier is a surpassingly lonely man too.

Think of how the outside world has made him so, certainly - how his nationality and class and overall station in life have seen him excluded from professional advancement and romantic fulfilment.

But think also how he doesn't help himself all that much. Think on how insular and uncommunicative he stays even after he 'gets better', how right Franklin was when he said Crozier makes himself miserable, distant, and hard to love, and that he blames the world for it.

Think of how that vindictive streak and that unwillingness to communicate foments mutiny and continues to cut him off even from those who are his allies.

Fitzjames is a surpassingly lonely man too.

Think of how he holds others at an arms length with all the artifice surrounding the great gilded life he's built for himself.

Think of how desperate he is to be seen but also of the great lengths he goes to for much of the story to never allow himself to be fully perceived.

Think of the unusual, secretive nature of his birth and early life that keep him even from being able to properly perceive and understand himself until it's too late.

Think how all that insecurity fueled his ridiculous heroics and think how the reopening of old wounds from those heroics helped to doom him.

Little is a surpassingly lonely man too.

Think of how he's ignored and denigrated and absolutely hung out to dry by his Captain.

Think of how hard he works, how diligently he does what's asked of him and what's needed, and how cruelly he's forced to confront the fact that it's never going to be enough.

Think of how profoundly, incandescently angry he is about the injustices he endures and how he has absolutely no one he can truly confide in about it.

Hodgson and Irving are surpassingly lonely men too.

Think of Hodgson forever being just slightly out of step with the rest of the crew, officers and men alike. Of how he surprises even himself with how harshly and suddenly his unhappiness and insecurity turns not just into mutinous designs but into pure self-loathing.

Think of Irving being isolated and brought down by his own inherent inflexibility. Of how the rigidity of his faith and his world view in general prevents him from any great examination or understanding of his own desires or the desires of others.

Tozer is a surpassingly lonely man too.

Think of the isolation inherent even just in being a Marine, separate from but at the mercy of the officers above, and never truly integrated with the regular seamen below either.

Think of him becoming increasingly insular and distrustful as the story progresses and he loses all faith in command. All he wants is to protect everyone but the structure through which he's always done that falls down around him and leaves him lost.

That all-permeating atmosphere of isolation, that fateful lack of understanding has just as much, if not even more influence on the story as the shining mercurial little moments of love and connection do and I desperately need to parse some more coherent thoughts about that as soon as possible