#there's like... more of a sensory feedback when I draw a line I guess?

[ayakashibackstreet]

Btw I discovered I can actually manage with digital art, I just have to glue a piece of paper on top of my tablet so that the texture is similar

Which is incredibly stupid but if it's stupid and it works then it's not actually stupid, soo

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 5, Number 9

Tropical Fuck Storm

Just like that, summer’s over and we face a growing pile of late 2019 records. But before that, before we drag ourselves like kids to school into the second half, a moment to appreciate what’s accumulated.  This month’s Dust touches on groovy jazz tuba, punishing hardcore, a bracing industrial reissue, altered percussion and an OG Tuareg guitarist.  Contributors this time around include Isaac Olson, Ian Mathers, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer and Andrew Forell.  

Joseph Allred — O Meadowlark (Feeding Tube) 

O, Meadowlark by Joseph Allred

 Plenty of people get the tag American Primitive Guitarist stuck on their rump these days. It’s not always appropriate and it’s not always welcome, but it adheres to Joseph Allred with the fastness of the truth.  Allred, a Tennessean who currently pursues higher learning at Boston College, understands that whether you use mountain music or raga-derived form as your framework (and he uses a bit of both, alternating between skeletal banjo figures and rushing guitar fantasias), the music has to project something beyond the notes. O Meadowlark not only evokes a cascade of emotions, some explicit and others allowed and bent until they’re beyond name, but he exerts an opposite pull. Like Robbie Basho or Steffen Basho Junghans, he draws the listener through the sound hole and into the tones and overtones that carom about the insides of his guitar.  Climb inside; like a Tardis, it has room for all.

Bill Meyer 

Caterina Barbieri — Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego)

Ecstatic Computation by Caterina Barbieri

The title of Caterina Barbieri’s third LP suggests a congress of emotional states and cognitive processes; total neural action, you might say. The sound of the thing suggests another, maybe more personal integration. She favors massive, echo-haloed electronic sounds, the sort that would set off all manner of madness in the disco if only she’d subordinate them to a sufficiently clubby beat. But instead she juxtaposes them with wordless female vocals (not her own) and switched-on harpsichord sounds which lock together with a structural logic that probably comes natural to a person who grew up studying classical guitar. And while the sounds promise abandon, the way they lock together requires submission to a Bach-like allegiance to order. Promise delivered.

Bill Meyer

Theon Cross — Fyah (Gearbox Records)

Fyah by Theon Cross

Tuba player Theon Cross was the secret weapon of last year’s excellent Your Queen is a Reptile, by The Sons of Kemet. Fyah is Cross’s debut as a band leader, and  if the melodies occasionally sag, Cross and company generate more than enough energy to keep you, if not intently listening, grooving. Like many in the London jazz scene, Cross has no qualms about pulling in sounds from everywhere, and while not every experiment works (the synths and trap beats on “Panda Village” don’t add much), it keeps Fyah feeling fleet and admirably populist. Cross’s commitment to bring the tuba back to our attention and good graces is admirable, and he’s certainly the right guy for the job, but for better or for worse, he suffers the fate of all lower register players: disappearing when played back at anything less than high volume. As such, the real MVP on Fyah is tenor saxophonist and fellow London hotshot, Nubya Garcia. Fyah is a good record. It gets better the louder you play it.

Isaac Olson

 Drugs of Faith — Decay (Selfmadegod Records)

Drugs of Faith have been making records like Decay, their new EP, for quite a while now. The record is full of crossover hardcore that pushes on the pressure points of crust and sludge. It’s grimy, gritty, sweaty stuff and it’s really good. The focused truculence of a song like “Anonymity” sharpens rather than overwhelms the tune’s tendencies toward melody, and what a frigging breakdown. The whole 7” — all ten minutes of it — is terrifically punishing. Or maybe it’s punishingly terrific. Whatever it is, it goes by quick. But that’s cool, you’ll just flip it and play it again. And like a live hardcore set, music this intense is best enjoyed in small, gut-thumping doses. Toward the end of the excellent track “Nihilists,” singer Richard Johnson (who also plays guitar) growls, “If I go down, I’m taking you all with me.” Sure sounds like he means it.

Jonathan Shaw

Help — Help (Self Released)

Help by Help

One advantage to keeping songs short and lyrics anthemic is that you can throw a whole lot of sludge into the works and still end up with tunes that folks will remember the next day. Portland noise-punk band does this six times on their quite good debut EP, Help. No surprises here, just grimy, coruscating punk that sounds amazing when you’re reading the latest update on our slide into oligarchy/kleptocracy/kakistocracy/planet death/what have you. Best of all is their theme song, which softens up a traditionally macho genre with some very welcome, very 2019 vulnerability (Complete lyrics: “Help!/I fucking need it!/You know I’ve battled but it’s all I can take!”) and the closer, “Class War Now” which is about… well, you know.

Isaac Olson

 HTRK – Nostalgia (Fire Records)

Nostalgia is the self-released 2004 debut EP by Australian experimental trio HTRK (Hate Rock Trio). Nigel Yang (guitar, programming, electronics), Jonnine Standish (voice, percussion, samples) and Sean Stewart (bass, programming, samples) produce seven tracks of heavy, noise intensive electronica with echoes of Throbbing Gristle, Pan Sonic and Suicide. Physically and psychically crushing, the tracks move at a funereal pace with waves of static and feedback crashing against bottom end bass, percussion and drum machines as Standish’s voice intones from a cave, a cross between Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega. Instrumental opener “Hate Rock Trio” begins quietly with the ticking of a clock, a time bomb with crashes of distorted percussion. Thereafter the song titles tell the story of the EP. Run together they form both a record of, and a demand to acknowledge, damage inflicted: “Look What’s Been Done/Look Down the Line/Look At That Girl/Look At Her/You Injured Me/I’m All Broke Up.” The intensity builds with each track as feedback and samples scratch atop thickening layers of black sludge. Re-released by Fire Records, Nostalgia is a bracing experience with a palpable sense of menace.

Andrew Forell

 Max Jaffe — Giant Beat (Ramp Local)

Giant Beat by Max Jaffe

If a curious listener was told Max Jaffe only used one instrument to make Giant Beat, they’d be forgiven for guessing something like a modular synth. Instead, it’s drums, but in a way that makes the question maybe a little bit of a cheat; Jaffe, drummer for JOBS, Elder Ones and others, was also a beta tester for something called Sensory Percussion that allows percussionists to use their instruments to trigger sounds and samples in a way that feels analogous to the chromatic, sometimes abrasive playing Ian Crause and Disco Inferno did with sampling. Of course, with a drum kit and that kind of setup, Jaffe can generate a whole album just by himself in a different way than you might get with, say, a singer and an acoustic guitar. Giant Beat dips its toes into various experimental waters, jazz here, electronics there, noise and musique concrete there, but always with the steady pulse of Jaffe’s one-take percussive playing behind it. The result feels like anything but a product demo; if anything, it feels like a new type of voice articulating itself.  

Ian Mathers  

Ocean Fanfare — First Nature (Barefoot)

First Nature by Ocean Fanfare

Whether you take the words First Nature as a prescription of priorities or a stern reminder of who is best equipped to play the long game in the battle between humankind and its environment, this is a record with a message. But since that message is being relayed via horns, bass, and drums, which play melodies that wind and ascend, one must exercise one’s emotional antennae to decode the vibe. Both trumpeter Tomsz Dabrowski and alto saxophonist Sven Dam Meinild are equally facile with post-bop tunes and extended technique explorations, and the shuttles between these poles gives the music a questing quality. They’re methodically seeking, not giving up hope, and the inventive ways they maintain balance on the fly suggests that they’re conscious of what tools will come in handy if people are going to survive.

Bill Meyer

 Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou — Anou Malane (Sahel Sounds)

Anou Malane by Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou

One of the original Tuareg guitar heroes, Abdallah Oumbadougou recorded these dreaming, droning, melancholic-with-a-swagger tunes in Benin in 1995 with the West African producer Nel Oliver. It was a step up for Oumbadougou, who had previously recorded mostly on boom boxes in encampments during breaks in the Tuareg rebellion, but the songs, even embellished with electronics and studio effects, have a raw, lonely power to them.  “Thingalene” drifts towards funky pop in its syncopated drum machines and squealing synths, but Oumbadougou’s voice carries over time and distance with a bracing authenticity. Other tracks, like “Tenere” splice the echoing snap of gate-reverbed drums to a beat that sways like camel caravans; the guitar work here is particularly fine. On its original release, Anou Malane introduced the world to the Tuareg’s keening, ambling desert blues; now it reminds us that artists like Tinariwen and Terekaft and Mdou Moctar are interpreting and extending — not inventing — a vibrant art form.

Jennifer Kelly

Savage Republic  —Gods  & Guns (Mobilization)

Savage Republic doesn’t pack the band schedule very tightly nowadays. The band, currently a quartet (Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, Alan Waddington, Kerry Dowling), took the whole of the 1990s off and has made just two albums in this century. But when they do make a record, it hits hard. In days gone by they sounded like Rhys Chatham fronting the Ventures on an album of Aegean surfer themes, but now they sound just a bit like Michael Gira fronting Echo & the Bunnymen in some Bladerunner-like hell of a dark hole. “God & Guns,” sung in dire and reverb-swaddled tones by Fuhrmann, articulates understandable dismay at the twin lumps of stinky meat that are being held in front of the vast heard of fascism-embracing Americans. The instrumental on the flip is named “Tranquilo,” but you won’t rest while they’re charging you, driven by chain-gang shouts, oil drum lashes, and epically massive bass. Heavy shit for heavy times.

Bill Meyer

Sleeping Ancient — There Is No Truth But Death (Viridian Flame)

There Is No Truth But Death by Sleeping Ancient

In any number of ways, black metal and the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft are a good match. The overweening interest in darkness and unnamably horrific, indecipherably complex forms; the highly abstruse mysticism; the tinge of troubling racism and anti-Semitism — it’s sort of uncanny. Sleeping Ancient aren’t the first black metal band to express a deep appreciation for Lovecraft’s weird fictions. Heck, they probably aren’t even the tenth or the fiftieth. But if they’re not breaking any new ground, thematically or musically, at least they’re making good songs. Check out the grand dirge of “Akeru,” or the slow but assured drift, from frigidly delicate melody to batshit intensity, that forms “Taphephobic Hallucinations” (taphephobia, by the way, is crippling fear of the grave—not death so much as the gravesite itself). The songs are typical of Sleeping Ancient’s mannered but powerful playing, which the band sustains across the whole of There Is No Truth But Death. It’s a good record to play as we wait for Cthulu. Judging by current conditions, we won’t have long to wait.

Jonathan Shaw

 Sore Points — Not Alright (Slovenly)

SORE POINTS "Not Alright" EP by Sore Points

If you miss the Marked Men, how ‘bout some hard, fast punk rock from Vancouver? This four-song 7 inch, following a 2018 self-titled on Deranged, snarls and stomps with feverish fury, making the most of its double drummed, guitar stabbed, bass whomped basics. You’d infer a few battered Ramones records in the rec room, but also punks both harder core and more melodic—Black Flag on one end and the Buzzcocks on the other. “Not Alright” rampages at blur speed. The drummer, whoever he is (Sore Points are not big on self-promotion), gets a monster workout here, but really everybody is pushing about as hard as it goes. “Not Coming Back,” is likewise accelerated, but in an anthemic, memorable way. As a non-professional, you’d kill yourself trying to keep up playing these songs, but you can sing along, no problem, after just one or two spins.

Jennifer Kelly

 Tropical Fuck Storm — Braindrops (Joyful Noise)

Braindrops by Tropical Fuck Storm

“Braindrops,” the title track from this second Tropical Fuck Storm album, slinks and rattles and backpedals, its rhythm complicated and syncopated, its stream-of-consciousness lyrics about dreams and waking (“But you gotta get up because time is nagging like a dog humping your leg”) as tangled as the polyrhythmic beat. There’s a slant of ska in the bass, a dissolute hint of post-punk in the cracked vocals and a baroque inclination to stuff things to the gills in the overload of just about everything. Tropical Fuck Storm tilts recognizable forms so far over that they always seem to be careening into chaos. A hip friendly bump of bass and drums is just a landing pad for guitar noises that crash, still burning, to the ground. Even the ballads (“Paradise” both “Marias”) teem with noise and dissonance. Braindrops is never an easy listen. It verges, fairly often, on the unpleasant. But in a world where everything spins down to a grey Spotified entropy, it’s a prickly, fascinating, mess of bright colored wires; go ahead cut one and see if it explodes.

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Greys (Anachronisme)

Greys by Field Guides

In this day and age, if one even wanted to put together a new “We Are the World,” where would one start? Leverage Models’ return to music last year with the phenomenal Whites was partly so that previously-shelved record could raise money for the Southern Poverty Law Center, and here the band and Anachronisme Records are at it again. Raising money for the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees this time, instead of trying to rope everyone they know into one big aesthetically-dubious singalong, they’ve put together with any number of friends a smorgasbord of 21 tracks all somehow ‘in conversation’ with the music on Whites. There are plenty of intriguing covers, remixes, and other deconstructions, from Field Guides’ glowing, pastoral version of “If I Let You Stay” to the menacing buzz of DOV’s remix of “Dark Pools,” to Concierge Records and The Working Elite’s “transatlantic meditation” on the feeling of the first song on Whites with “Day Two,” as well as two unreleased tracks from Leverage Models. Then there are the contributions that just engage with the emotions and stories of the original album, like Courtship Ritual’s haunting “Uncle Incision” and William Tyler’s gorgeous “She Swims in Hidden Water.” There’s a lot here to absorb, but even if you’re not familiar with the source material it all stands on its own, even as it’s still one of the most intriguing expansions of an album in recent memory. Not to mention hopefully a more effective way to help a good cause.

Ian Mathers

 avery r. young—Tubman (FPE)

tubman. by avery r. young

avery r. young brings the sizzle in this paean to African-American musical traditions from skanky funk to body-moving R&B to soul-on-fire gospel, complete with a full choir. The multi-talented Chicagoan took inspiration from his own book—Neckbone: Visual Verses—from Nina Simone and from the singer Jamila Woods, whose superlative pipes provide the uplift of many of these cuts. “Maasai” slouches so far into a smouldery blacksploitation groove as to be nearly horizontal, all evil wah-wah’d twitch and rumbling bass and slashing lightning bolts of disco strings, while “go'head mary & weep” takes things to the church with a massive harmonized swell. young himself has a fine, fluttery, emotionally nimble tenor, shades of the Reverend Al Green in his supple phrasing, but his songs take flight when they’re sung by a crowd, as on the spiritually stirring “lead in da wattah” and especially, the monster highlight “get to know a nina simone song” which rolls on like a doo-wopping, gospel-quarteting freight train right on to Mississippi. God damn, indeed.  

[flannelplanet]

Summary:  Touch. It’s a fundamental human need. Bucky Barnes, however, was starved of it; never had a kind hand laid on him during his time with Hydra. His therapist had some work done by a very well-known tattoo artist in Brooklyn, and suggested that he try it out. That’s where you come in. You’re very well known for tattooing people with sensory problems. It’s your niche. You’re very understanding. You have quick reflexes and a soft touch. When Bucky walks through your office door, you just know you have to help him.

Warnings: Yo! Angst ahead! Also, happy Bucky, smitten Bucky, adorable Bucky. All the Bucky. The reader has a hard time keeping her shit together because BUCKY.. 

A/N: This definitely ends in a cliffhanger. No worries, the next chapter will be up soon! Feedback is appreciated. I hope you like it :)

taglist is open  summer skin masterlist [X] previous chapter [X]

Summer Skin

Chapter 2: I CAN DO ANYTHING, ANYTHING, ANYTHING I WANT

The following session with Bucky’s therapist was short, sweet, and to the point. The doctor asked how the tattooing went, what feelings and memories the contact evoked as well as the machine, and what he thought of the entire process. He walked her through the time the two of you spent together and let her know that he would be going back, and that he was looking forward to it.

“Thank you,” he told her. “I didn’t think it would help as much as it has, and I’ve only gone once. This could really be something for me, Doc.”

She smiled warmly at him. “Sergeant, I’m glad. Just be careful and if you feel yourself slipping during a session with her, call it off and go back another day. One sitting won’t be a cure-all for you. It’s much the same as it is when you’re with me. Some days are great, some aren’t, and it’s up to you to be able to tell the difference.”

Bucky took the therapist’s words to heart, understanding the implication there. He might be reformed, but he was still frightening when his mind wasn’t right. He made a mental note to pay closer attention before leaving her office.

-

Clothes were everywhere. Tac pants and jeans were strewn along the floor, various tees and shirts were all across the bed. It was absolute chaos in Bucky’s room. For a skilled assassin, he sure did have a lot of clothing and he was really kicking himself for it now.

A knock sounded on his door and he sent a wordless prayer of thanks to whichever god was listening. He opened it, gesturing for Natasha to enter. “Gee Buck, what’s got your panties in a twist? Hot date tonight?”

He rolled his eyes impossibly hard. “No. Please don’t make this more awkward than it needs to be. I have my next tattoo sitting today and I can’t ask Steve what to wear because he’s being Steve about the whole situation.”

Natasha nodded. “So Steve wants to be the best man in your wedding, you mean?”

“YES.”

“He’s exhausting. Okay, so what are we working with then?” She strode her way over to the mess Bucky had created, looking at him and then turning to the options he had laid out. “Wear the grey vintage tee with the leather jacket. It will bring out your eyes. Go for the medium wash jeans, the tighter ones make your ass look amazing. Oh and wear your hair in a knot. Girls love that, especially on you, Barnes.” She paused once again, looking him over one last time. “You know what, shave your face too, but not all the way. Leave a little dusting of stubble.” And with that, she left him to it.

-

“No, Steve. You’re not coming this time. End. Of. Story.” As much as Bucky loved his best friend, he sure could be an exasperating son of a bitch.

“But Buck!” Steve whined.

“I said no.”

-

Bucky strode into The Skin Canvas with purpose. He was determined to have another successful session and if he were being honest with himself, he was excited to see you again. He couldn’t explain it, but there was something warm about you and a man who has spent so many years of his life literally frozen could really get used to the feeling.

As he approached the counter, Adam waved. “Hey Bucky! I’ll see if she’s ready for you.” The super soldier nodded, swaying on his feet as he awaited Adam’s return from the back.

Bucky took a moment to reassess the lobby of the tattoo shop. The walls were a welcoming shade of yellow but they weren’t overpowering. The accents were all black and there were splashes of color everywhere; blue and red and green and purple. The shop had a mellow vibe to it, laid back. Bucky decided he really, really liked it there.

Adam returned to his spot behind the counter and gestured to your office as he said, “You can head on back, man.” Bucky thanked him and did just that.

-

Thank god you weren’t mid-bite when Bucky entered your workspace because you would have choked on your chocolate. He looked different somehow, yet still the same. You had to be staring, you knew it, but you couldn’t tear your eyes away.

Bucky noticed your eyes glued on him (how could he not), and he began looking himself over. “What, do I have food on my clothes or something?”

Busted! “Oh, no Sarge. Nothing like that. You look pretty incredible today is all,” you told him, figuring if you were busted anyway there was no use in lying about why.

Plus, the flush that covered his skin was worth the blunt honesty. “Really? I mean, thank you.” Then he smiled at you. Really smiled. And you had no idea how you were going to manage to get through the day because that smile—totally genuine and breathtaking—nearly brought you to your knees.

You shook yourself. This was not your typical behavior. Usually, you were professional and well mannered, and you were worried, especially with Bucky’s past, about coming off too flirty. You made a mental note to reign it in a little bit.

“So how does it feel right now?” You asked, intrigued to see how the serum helped the healing process.

“It actually feels great! I kept ointment on it and it was pretty much completely healed the day after our first session. I’m ready for a second round for sure,” he told you, lifting his shirt up at the hem and tugging it up over his head.

KEEP. YOUR. SHIT. TOGETHER. You let your eyes rake over his chiseled body on their way down to the tattoo and even though it was just line work, it already looked amazing. You were proud of your work so far and couldn’t wait to bring the rest of the tattoo to life.

“Looks great! When you’re ready, go ahead and get situated. I grabbed the pillows already,” you told him pointing to the corner of your little tattoo room.

He contemplated for a minute before shrugging and sitting down without them. “Eh, I'm feeling adventurous today. Let’s try without pillows and see how it goes.”

You watched as he took a seat on the leather bench then lowered himself down onto his back. Once you were relatively sure he was okay, you began pulling your colored inks out of their designated spots on the shelf and grabbed some cups. “Did you want the colors to match what Steve had on the drawing?” You asked. An idea was shaping in your mind, and it did not match the star-spangled monstrosity Steve had filling the design.

Bucky surprised you though, saying, “I’m not married to the idea. I’ve seen your work and I respect it. If you’re thinking something else, by all means help yourself, doll.”

Smiling, you turned away from him and began pulling ink tops off and filling cups with it. “You respect my work?”

Bucky felt himself flushing again, embarrassed by his forwardness. “Yeah. Definitely.”

Feeling the shift in his temperment, you turned back to him. “I heard stories, you know. The infamous James Buchanan Barnes, ladies’ man extraordinaire. How come you’re getting all bashful with me?”

Your bluntness startled a laugh from him, and goddammit you’d do anything to hear that low, throaty sound again. “Well, you know. Circumstances change. I see the value in a good woman more now than I ever did before. Makes me nervous that I’ll fuck it up and say something stupid.”

It’s your turn to laugh at that. “Bucky, people say stupid shit all the time. They still get laid.”

“Ha! I guess you’re right. Steve is my best friend! You’d think I would know that by now!” There it was again; that laugh.

“Well, how about we make a deal,” you began, turning to face him now that your equipment was set up and your gloves were on. “Why don’t we just forget about saying stupid shit and have ourselves some genuine conversation while we continue this masterpiece, huh?”

His eyes softened and his smile widened, the laughter had gone but the happiness still evident. “You got it, doll.”

“Excellent! Do you want to sanitize today or would you like me to try?” You were eager to see what the experience would be like for him today. He made amazing progress in just one sitting, but people tended to regress slightly before moving forward again.

You could see the struggle taking place in his mind as it was written all over his features. “Listen, you don’t have to push through everything today. You’ll be back in another couple days and we can try again th-” You stopped your own rant when you felt Bucky’s rough fingers gripping your own.

“Uh, Sarge? What are you doing?” You asked, not sure where he was going with his actions.

“Relax, doll. I’m trying something. Is this okay?” You nodded, urging him to continue. “I think, maybe, if I can hold on to your hands while you do it, at least until I get used to your hands on my skin again, it’ll be better.” That was actually a genius idea. You told him as much, too.

He let your hands go so that you could grab the sanitizer and a paper towel. After you poured a bit of the sanitizer on the towel, he grabbed your hand and brought it to his skin. An audible breath left his lungs. “You’re ok, Bucky. You are in control,” you said, making sure your voice was soft and steady.

He pulled your hand towards himself and winced slightly at the initial contact. He relaxed immediately, though, and looked up at you. His face was illuminated with pride and his smile made your heart flutter. “You’re doing great!”

“I’m gonna let go of your hands now. Can you, um, would you mind keeping them there? Just for a few more seconds?”

Bucky slowly let go of his grip on your hands and let his own fall to his sides, marveling at the way your hands moved gently over his skin. “This feels… different. Good.”

“Awesome, Sarge! The sanitizing is done so I’m going to remove my hands now, okay?” He nodded, watching as your gloved fingers pulled away from his abdomen. He found himself wishing that you didn’t have to pull away at all.

You had grabbed your tattoo machine and with it in hand turned back toward Bucky once more. “I’m going to use a little more contact during this session due to the colors and the amount of space needing filled. If you get cagey and need to stop me just say the word. I’ll stop the machine to check on you every once in a while, too.”

“You're very understanding,” he told you with a thoughtful smirk.

“It’s what I pride myself on,” you said with a wink. “I’m going to put my hand on your skin now, okay?”

Bucky nodded, bracing himself for the contact. When the needles touched his skin, he couldn’t help but jump. Taking a deep breath, he asked, “Will I ever get used to that?”

You thought about it while you filled in a section, then as you paused to wipe the ink and blood away you shrugged. “Honestly? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone not have that reaction at first contact with the machine.”

Bucky nodded. He had begun to relax, sinking into the chair as you moved. Your hands hadn’t left his skin completely since the machine turned on and he was practically giddy with pride at how well he had been handling it. Actually, when he really focused on the area you were touching, he could admit that the feel of your hands on his skin felt kind of nice.

“You doin’ okay up there, Sarge?” You asked, feeling him slip into his own mind and pulling him back to the present.

“Yeah. Just reflecting, I guess. Having your hands on me is a good feeling. I’m starting to get used to it.”

“That’s amazing to hear! I still want you to tell me if you need a break though, okay?” He nodded, eyelids drifting closed as he sank into the rhythm of the tattoo machine and the sound of your voice. “Why don’t you tell me about Steve?” you asked, hoping for some conversation. It would be easier to see how his mental state was if he were talking.

“Where do you want me to start?” He asked. It seemed as though most of the world knew everything there was to know about their friendship. “Have you been to the Captain America exhibit?”

You laughed. “Of course I have. I know the basics, but I want you to tell me stories. Something no one else would know.”

Bucky smiled softly as he searched through cloudy memories of his best friend. “Well, when we were kids, I was always getting us into trouble. I mean, loads of trouble. This one time, we were out with these two girls and I remember sneaking up into my date’s room. Both girls went through the front door of her house, but Steve and me couldn’t very well walk in behind them. I started climbing the gutter on the side of her house and her dad must’ve heard because this scary looking giant of a man came storming out ready to murder me I swear.”

You began laughing, clearly picturing the story playing out in front of you. “Oh my god, really?” you asked as you wiped his skin. “Did he have a shotgun or something?”

A shit-eating grin practically split Bucky’s face in half. “No, no. He was just a huge wall of muscle. But Steve, he had no regard for self-preservation. And he was a nice guy. He actually went and chatted the guy up, telling him he was just making sure his daughter got home and up to her room alright before taking off, giving me the chance to climb all the way up without the guy even noticing!”

“You’re kidding, right?” You were totally invested in his words.

He shook his head and placed his metal hand over his heart. “It’s the god’s honest truth!”

“So, what happened after? Did Steve sneak up too?” A furiously red blush began spreading across Bucky’s face and neck, creeping down his torso. “You’re a sly little shit, Bucky Barnes. Tell me you did not.”

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t, doll.” He was staring at you as he said the words with a smoldering look in his eyes and good lord if this was what a flirty Bucky was like you were in for it.

“Well I’ll be damned. You really are a ladies’ man.”

You heard a soft sigh spill out of Bucky’s mouth before he said, “Correction, I was a ladies’ man.”

You couldn’t help but scoff at that. “Are. Present tense. Have you looked in the mirror recently? Have you seen your face?” And with that the blush covering his skin was back with a vengeance.

-

The two of you continued through the session telling stories and laughing, while you periodically checked in with him. Things were going so well you didn’t even take breaks and before you knew it you were finished for the day. His skin was red and angry, but it was looking beautiful.

Bucky had been quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought you presumed. You finished wiping his skin, maintaining contact as much as possible. You were so proud of the progress he had made. “Alright, Sarge. You’re finished,” you told him, removing your hands from his warm skin.

It was then that you noticed it; the smallest of whimpers followed by a hoarsely whispered “no.”

Shit, shit, shit. He laid flat on his back, as tense as could be. His hands were formed into fists, clenched tightly at his sides and sweat covered him from head to toe. Once the situation registered in your mind, you moved as quickly as you could.

You tore the gloves from your hands and began speaking to him softly. “Bucky, it’s okay. You’re safe.” You moved closer to him and placed your hands on either side of his jaw, rubbing his scruffy cheeks. “Bucky,” you repeated, “it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re in the tattoo shop.”

Another strangled whimper left him and your heart began pounding into overdrive. “Bucky!” Your voice had gotten louder and you began carding your fingers through his hair as you spoke. “Bucky, you’re okay. You’re safe. Please. Open your eyes for me.”

You continued carding your fingers through his hair and talking to him, reassuring him, and finally after a few minutes he began to come out of it. His breathing slowed, the tension left his limbs, and his eyes opened to look at you. “Doll?”

“Bucky! Holy shit you’re back. Thank god.” Your hands were still in his hair and you made no effort to move. “What happened?”

“Can I… Uh… Can I grab some water?” He asked, ignoring your question.

You looked at him carefully before saying, “Yes, I’ll get it for you. I’m going to move my hands away from you now but I’ll be right back, okay?” He nodded and you walked out of the little room, giving him space to process what the fuck just happened.

-

He had been joking and laughing and telling stories, and before he knew it he was remembering bits of his time as The Soldier. Missions. Being treated like an object. Hydra. It was horrible. Blood was everywhere. It was so cold, always so fucking cold. The only thing keeping him grounded was your hands on him, ironically enough. Until they weren’t on him anymore.

He could hear you talking to him. He heard his name, he felt your touch, but he couldn’t move. For a fleeting moment he even feared it was Hydra coming for him. He knew better, though.

After a few moments, he fought his way out of the memories. He was okay, he was safe. He was with you.

-

After getting him a small glass of water, you instructed him to get off the bench and check out the work you had done on his tattoo during that session. He was a little shaky still, but after giving his approval he let you bandage him up.

“Listen, Sarge. I noticed how you conveniently dodged my question about what happened, but we need to talk about that. We need an open line of communication and trust between us, okay? I’m going to take you out for some coffee and make sure you get back to the tower safely.”

He didn’t even have the energy to fight you on it.

-

The two of you approached and entered your favorite place to eat in all of Brooklyn: Frankie’s Donuts. It was an absolute dive, but you hadn’t found better coffee anywhere ever in your entire life and their food was amazing, too. You found a small booth in the back of the restaurant away from prying eyes and ears. After placing your coffee orders, you turned to face him.

“Now that we’re here… Wanna tell me what happened back there?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Do I have to?” The look on your face told him your answer. “Alright. I guess with all the storytelling I just started kind of falling into old memories. Hydra memories. I was okay though, I think your hands on me kept me grounded. When you pulled away I guess I just… Panicked.”

“Is there something I could have done to prevent that from happening?” You wondered if you should have stopped to check on him more when things got quiet. Maybe you should have stopped for a break even if he hadn’t asked for one.

“No, doll. This was all on me. I should have spoken up.”

He moved so that his forearms rested on the tabletop and his hands were clenched in front of him. You covered his hands with your own as you spoke. “Bucky, I know those memories must not have been nice ones. Do you want to talk about them?”

“I… uh… I don’t remember everything. I just get snippets of memories every so often, so there’s not much to talk about. But a lot of it is just the same thing over and over again, just different scenarios.”

You thanked the waitress, who had stopped to drop off your coffees, before looking to Bucky. “I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. You don’t deserve it. You didn’t deserve any of it.”

He’s heard those same words from just about everyone he’s encountered in the time he’s been back yet none of them meant anything compared to yours.

-

The mood subtly shifted as the two of you sipped your coffees and made small conversation. He asked questions about you, where you grew up, your favorite color, your family, your friends, and he even stuttered through asking if you were single. You told him how you began painting, what drew you to tattooing, and why you find it so enjoyable.

Conversation between the two of you came easy, and before either of you realized, hours had passed. “Hey, we’re closing,” the waitress said as she brought you the bill. “I hope your date was lovely,” she added thoughtfully.

Bucky turned the darkest shade of red and you snorted a small laugh out. “Thanks, Marge. You’re sweet!”

“Why didn’t you tell her we weren’t on a date?” Bucky asked when his wits returned.

“Because she’s a sweet old lady. And besides, I wouldn’t hate it if this were a date, you know,” you told him with a wink.

His answering smirk sent the butterflies in your stomach into a tizzy. “In that case, doll, I do believe I’ll be paying,” he said, snatching the bill from your hands. You stood there with your jaw hanging open as he paid. “C’mon, doll. Steve will start to worry if I don’t get back soon.”

You snapped your jaw shut and followed after him as he walked out of the diner and onto the streets of Brooklyn. Instead of letting you walk him to the tower, he walked you back to the shop where your car waited.

-

“Thanks for the coffee, Sarge,” you told him as you walked toward the shop. “I can’t remember the last time something like that happened.”

The two of you approached your car and he lightly grasped your arm. “No, doll. Thank you. For everything you did today.” He pulled you in towards him allowing you to wrap your arms around his waist. He hugged you back and as he pulled away, placed the smallest kiss on your cheek.

-

It was on that journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan that Bucky realized he had gone on a date for the first time in over 70 years. With you. Fuck him if the thought of seeing you again didn’t feel like the most amazing thing.

-

“Stark?” Bucky yelled as he walked into his lab. “You in here?”

“Over here,” Tony called from behind a table looking at the mechanism of something Bucky couldn’t even begin to even want to comprehend.

“I have an idea. Oh and a favor to ask of you…”

taglist: @jaamesbbarnes​, @wintersthor​, @i-imagineandpretend​, @thefutureofdaxam, @seasidespecter, @kris-lair (tag not working), @impalatobakerstreet, @angelklementieffs, @trenchcoatdevilsworld, @giveusbackourbucky, @miniaturekingdomjellyfish, @pizzarollpatrol, @puppy-barnes, @i-am-a-fandom-slut, @buckysothiccbarnes

[sparklyjojos]

--[Disco Wednesdayyy 23/?] In which Disco encounters a time wall, the physics lecture intensifies, and we arrive at the World’s End. [tw: csa]--

Last time, we learned about the oncoming Ragnarok, and witnessed ‘Disco’ and ‘Mercury C’ arriving from the future. The present Disco is pretty shocked, while Mercury C seems to be having fun like always (”ohoho, it seems I’m even more handsome in reality than in the mirror!”).

To Hakkyoku’s question about when he came from, ‘Disco’ says that he’s from the same space-time as them, that is from before 11:26 PM. (Right now it’s around 4 AM, the sun is starting to rise). The detectives ask him what to do and show him the article about their disappearance, but ‘Disco’ just smiles and throws the paper away, letting it vanish.

“You possess ‘wisdom’ and ‘emotions’, so you will surely disappear from here,” he says.

Suddenly, Hakkyoku’s phone rings. It’s Dezuumi again. “Is this a good time to talk, Mr. Hakkyoku?”

“I guess there won’t be a better time...” Hakkyoku and Disco look at each other and without words agree not to tell Dezuumi that they’re doomed.

“Runbaba’s... that is Mitamura’s surgery just ended, and it turns out it wasn’t appendicitis at all. He had a cyst or something, looked like a small empty bag.”

[Uh oh. Considering Mitamura’s the one who wrote Tsukumojuku, I am now very afraid about what this ‘bag’ might have contained.]

Before Disco can hear anything else, ‘Mercury C’ comes up to him and says that mysteries can wait, but his life can’t, then grabs him and together with the other Mercury C they jump in time.

---

They arrive in the bedroom in the hotel in Chofu, at the time when Hoshino and the Black Bird Man assaulted Disco and Kozue [the scene from the very end of the second book. Note that while we saw this event before, this is actually happening in the future relatively to the Pine House, in the morning of 15th July]. The past ‘Disco’ is lying on the ground, and the Black Bird Man is pressing crying Kozue to the bed, currently in the act of putting those four cut-off fingers where they definitely shouldn’t be [NOPE NOPE NOPE].

After a moment of shock Disco runs at the two in rage, but something invisible is in the way. It’s not quite like a wall: it doesn’t actually give any sensory feedback when you press against it, so it doesn’t feel like you’re even touching anything. It’s more like an overall ‘resistance’ that strangely enough can be stretched a bit like elastic if you go slowly against it. Is it what the pressure between two ‘spaces’ is like? Maybe the image he’s seeing is not what’s actually happening inside, but a projection...

Either way, Disco continues trying to brute force his way through the wall while both Mercurys ask him to calm down and think. Even trying to warp space doesn’t work. Nobody on the other side of the ‘wall’ seems to hear or see them, which Disco should have expected, seeing as when he was in this horrible situation, he didn’t see another himself.

(“Isn’t it weird?” ‘Mercury C’ says. “Why were we able to move in the twisted space of the Pine House without noticing anything, but can’t enter the other side of the bedroom?”)

Disco finally starts thinking. Alright, he has to calm down. The event they’re observing is done, it’s already happened and ended. This assault would cause Kozue to shift the traumatic memory onto a newly created ‘split personality’ that would exist in the past -- that is ‘Kikyou’ born 14 years ago -- while Kozue herself forgot it. ‘Kikyou’ didn’t exist anymore, so it must mean Kozue’s emotional scars healed. So what he’s seeing is more like a recording that he can’t change (he thinks right before he bangs his head against the ‘wall’ again, because Kozue is still crying and it’s hard to stay put while she’s being hurt.)

This ‘wall’ was probably made by the Black Bird Man. What power does he have that surpasses Disco’s abilities? Over “space-time”, there should be “wisdom”. Maybe gaining more “wisdom” will let Disco break this ‘wall’, then? Maybe if this is a leftover recording of the past, it’ll disappear if Disco can’t hear or see it, since his consciousness is what keeps it going? Let’s try figuring the situation out.

Disco tries warping the space that he and the Mercurys are in into a circle, so that it’s wrapped around the ‘wall’. Then he removes all the air from between the warped space and the ‘wall’ to create vacuum, which serves as a soundproof barrier. He can no longer hear the crying. Alright, this works, but Kozue is still there. He still has to get inside somehow, or get in touch with ‘himself’ on the other side.

(At this point ‘Mercury C’ goes “eh, whatever, bringing you here really had no sense” and disappears.)

If the other ‘him’ couldn’t see or hear them, then there had to be something else (other than Disco’s vacuum) blocking the way of sound and light. But would something be able to block it one-way, like a magic mirror but made out of space-time? Could he figure out how to transmit light and sound from A to B (from here to there)? Of course, assuming that B wasn’t just something like a TV screen that was just showing projections and didn’t actually have tiny actors behind the screen... Okay, let’s reverse engineer it. What did the Black Bird Man do to block sound or light from reaching the other side?

Disco draws a few pictures to think it over better (noting that oh damn, it seems the great detectives’ way of doing things really rubbed off on him.)

As you can tell from the equation v=s/t, speed is proportional to the distance traveled and inversely proportional to the time it took to travel the distance. Light and sound move incredibly fast, but they still take time to travel a non-zero distance. That’s why what you see is never something happening right now, but something from a minuscule amount of time in the past. It would take time for the image from the other side of the wall to reach Disco and Mercury C. And if there was even just a tiny amount of time to work with, the Black Bird Man could probably manipulate it -- maybe even compress the entire time of the assault into a split second. Or maybe it was the distance between the two sides that was stretched so far it’d take light way more time to traverse it?

Mercury C arrived at the scene first, right before Disco and ‘Mercury C’, so he should be first to be seen. He was standing just about 5 meters away from Hoshino and past ‘Disco’, so why didn’t they see him arrive?

Option 1: Time was stretched, ‘magnified’. The entire assault took place inside tiny fractions of seconds, in less time than it’d take the photons to reach the other side of the ‘wall’.

Option 2: Distance was stretched. Those 5 meters were ‘magnified’ to be unimaginably long, and photons would need more time to reach the other side. This option should make the other side look tiny because of the distance, so the projected image would have to be magnified too. This could be probably done by warping space. [pics: “Magnified space” chart 1 and 2]

If either of these theories -- magnified time or distance -- was correct, it’d mean that while they are observing the attack now, it really has been long over.

Mercury C notices a disrepancy here: light and sound move at different speeds, and that difference would be magnified in both cases. Just like you see a lightning before hearing it, they should first see the attack without sound and only later hear it, but the image and sound were synchronized.

Disco has no idea how to further explain it, so Mercury C just shakes his head in exasperation, reaches behind the couch and retrieves a small stereo speaker, then finds another. The sound was coming through the stereo.

Just like one of those mystery novel tricks. Everyone’s thinking in terms of space-time bending, but all this time, it’s really been this simple.

But wait, if the sound was coming through the speakers, then how on earth did Disco made it stop by making the vacuum? ...did his will to stop it alone do it?...

“Open the curtains, detective,” Mercury C says. Open the curtains...? Ah, just like ‘opening’ the Pine House by finding a rift and pulling the two ends of Natsukawa Cottage apart. He has to find a place in which there’s a ‘rift’... “Open this wall and let’s kick their asses.”

“Oh? And why won’t mister macho open the wall himself?” comes the voice from the speakers. The Black Bird Man. It seems he can hear them through the device.

Trying to ignore the voice, Disco returns the rounded space to normal while Mercury C eliminates the vacuum. The projection and sound still show the assault in progress, although ‘Disco’ isn’t there anymore (did he vanish to the Pineapple Home?). Disco tries to finally break the wall, but can’t. There must be something he doesn’t understand yet... he yells at Hoshino and the Black Bird Man to stop, and the latter answers that, hey, come on, he already heard this line once, “And then you just ran away leaving Kozue behind. Weakness really is a sin...”

Suddenly, the door on the other side of the ‘wall’ flies open. ‘Mercury C’ barges in and with one strike decapitates Hoshino. [So this is what must have happened after Disco lost consciousness.] While this is happening, angry Black Bird Man throws Kozue towards Disco so that her bare behind is seen, says “Look, it’s Disco-chan’s beloved ass!” and gives him a hateful middle finger. [And I’m yelling because holy shit, is the book actually addressing how creepy that ‘Shakuko’ situation is?! Will this plot end with Disco having to acknowledge the creep factor and do something about it to defeat his Guilt? My waning hope is returning!]

Mercury C sees that Disco can’t think clearly out of anger and is probably about to do something really stupid, so he grabs Disco and jumps...

--

...and they arrive outside the small bedroom a little earlier, at the time just before the assault. They can see past ‘Disco’ entering the bedroom, then there’s a loud gunshot-like sound, but no screams that should follow. When Disco and Mercury C enter the bedroom, they realize the attack is already over; Kozue is alone, passed out and covered in blood. So the ‘gunshot’ they heard was made out of all the sounds of the assault crammed into a tiny amount of time.

After a moment of silence, Mercury C asks Disco a few questions -- how tall is Kozue? (107 cm) What’s her favorite color? (Green) What’s her favorite food? (Chocolate) -- and before Disco can blink, he jumps and returns with a few shopping bags, containing new child-size green pajamas and a box of chocolates. ...so he was the one who bought it for Kozue. [Okay, fuck, I love Mercury C.]

Disco leaves Mercury C to look after little Kozue and goes to the other bedroom to calm down Kozue’s Feelings, who woke up because of the ‘gunshot’. They talk a little, and Kozue’s Feelings wants to have a new name that’s more fitting for ‘Disco’s accomplice’. Disco proposes the name Morinaga Koeda, which is a pun: ‘Kozue’ (梢) means ‘a tip of a branch’, so bigger Kozue is ‘a small branch’, ‘Koeda’ (小枝). She’s like, why Morinaga and not ‘Koeda Wednesdayyy’? [Um, I hope she means this in a ‘daughter and father’ way, not in the. Other way.] But in the end decides that ‘Suiyoubi Koeda’ would sound too weird. So we now have a girl called Koeda who has Shakuko’s body, Norma’s face, and is actually Kozue’s Feelings. Great.

Disco returns to the small bedroom. He says that he’s going to repay Mercury C for everything later (the receipt has quite a big sum total), but Mercury C just waves his hand and calls him an idiot for caring about money. [Yeah, definitely starting to love this guy.]

Mercury C shows Disco another shopping bag, but this one has a bunch of knives and other sharp weapons inside. Now they have something to fight with. Guns would be useless, since the Black Bird Man could just stretch time to slow down the bullets and run away. They won’t have problems taking so many knives with them, since they can hide them in compressed space. “I already have some with me,” Mercury C adds, and Disco realizes that a hidden knife must be what was used to decapitate Hoshino.

“If we try to casually find the Black Bird Man again, he’ll probably just pull off another fast one on us,” Mercury C says. “So let’s hit right into the heart of the matter instead.”

“What do you mean?”

“The letter ‘c’ in ‘Mercury C’ is the symbol for the speed of light. Let’s go and surpass the light itself.”

--

It’d be hard to jump right into that stretched fraction of second of the assault, but there must be a way. ‘Mercury C’ did this, after all. Maybe the barrier in the bedroom was caused by two ‘times’ crashing rather than two ‘spaces’ pressing on each other. They’d have to find some sort of ‘boundary’ between two times to open it. But how on earth do you find a rift in time?

When Disco jumps from A to B, he isn’t just instantly teleported. There’s an in-between state. The process of a jump is something like this: first, imagine the B space in your mind. Find a similar amount of space-time in B that you’re currently taking in A. Without severing this mental connection, ‘pull’ space B towards yourself. At this point, aside from ‘the you that certainly exists in A’, there’s also ‘the you that potentially exists in B’. In the next step, when the former ‘you’ disappears, there’s already ‘the you that certainly exists in B’. If the travel of light isn’t instantenous, then maybe this change from ‘potentially in B’ to ‘certainly in B’ isn’t either.

Similarly, when he first became aware of the warped space in the Pine House, he didn’t just teleport into the ‘right’ place, but stumbled and bonked his head on the doorway. Fukushima and Kimura got flung to the side. So the change of consciousness took some time, though this transition felt smooth. In fact, when he remembered entering the bedroom that horrible morning, he realized that he didn’t notice anything weird until after he looked around and saw that 0202 note. This probably proved the ‘magnified time’ theory: the moment of his consciousness catching up to what was happening became stretched as well.

But why did this transition between two states feel continuous? In fact, let’s talk about ‘continuous’ and ‘discontinous’. If the speed of time could change depending on people’s consciousness, but people couldn’t easily pass from one time to a different time (like Disco who met the wall’ in the way), then... how could people easily move around at all? Everyone’s consciousness and therefore time was different, right? So why did the boundaries between them felt like a smooth transition?

Because people looked at watches, and made sure they were synchronized with each other. But if no clocks were around, people could still move freely, maybe thanks to the consciousness of others influencing them and vice versa. And so, their respective space-times met in a smooth transition. Maybe the will of the Black Bird Man was so strong it destroyed this smoothness, causing a discontinuity between him and Disco?

Disco couldn’t break that ‘wall’ for the same reason he couldn’t jump inside someone’s mind. Each person has an individual time flow inside them that depends on their consciousness. Even space-warpers like Disco can’t just enter the consciousness of someone else, since the difference in time flows between the space-warper and the target person makes this impossible. The skin may be the boundary of the individual consciousness, as it surrounds what we consider ‘our space’... maybe that’s why ‘Mercury C’ attacked Hoshino with a bladed weapon: to break the continuity of skin...?

Let’s say the times between you and someone else were synchronized. Could you enter someone else’s body? Did this happen to Kozue? She was temporarily pushed out by ‘Kikyou’ and her future Feelings. But her other ‘personalities’ and Feelings were still herself. Could you actually enter other people? Probably not. A person’s consciousness constantly changes, so their inner ‘time’ must be wildly fluctuating, and syncing up with it would be next to impossible.

The ‘jumping into people’ talk aside... It seems that not only you can’t enter another space-time, but also properly enter a flow of time running in the opposite direction to yours. Like the one after Ragnarok. If human consciousness creates the world, would Ragnarok be the limit of human consciousness? Is there another ‘wall’ somewhere that denotes where this world ends? A place where this and another time meet?

“Sure there is,” Mercury C says. “Up there above the clouds.”

Disco decides to check it out, so he goes outside and jumps higher and higher, trying to find a ‘wall’. A kilometer... 10 km... 30 km... finally he can’t withstand the physical conditions and returns to the hotel. “Okay, Mercury C, tell me where this wall actually is.”

Mercury C is a little surprised that Disco didn’t manage to reach it, and says he’ll tell him about the wall, but that the end of the world for Disco may not necessarily be the end of the world for Mercury C.

Consciousness creates the world, right? The Earth and the Universe are set because people have similar worldviews and beliefs. But, you see... Mercury C doesn’t really believe in people. When you think about it, it’s pretty much the same as being the only person in the world, isn’t it? He can’t know for sure if other people actually exist or have feelings; the only one he believes in is himself. The one who doesn’t believe in the shape of the world can change it freely... The point is, Mercury C doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see, touch or feel, and that’s why his ‘end of the world’ (end of consciousness) is maybe 400 meters up in the sky. But Disco? Disco still isn’t able to doubt the world, and is still synchronized with others.

“So you don’t believe in anything?” Disco repeats. “But when I told you I went to the stratosphere just now, you believed me.”

“Of course. You’re the entire point of this case. ...You still don’t know how to get to the wall? Y’know, if you can’t do it from one side, why not try from the other?”

Of course.

It’s 7:28 AM on 15th July. The corresponding time on the other side of Ragnarok would be 3:24 PM on 16th July. Disco jumps to the future.

---

In the future, the hotel room looks very similar, but it’s cleaned up, and there’s no one else around. Remembering Hakkyoku’s experiments, Disco makes his own: opens the door and puts his attention somewhere else. When he looks back at the door, it’s already back to being closed. So he really can’t affect the future.

Disco jumps to the roof, covers himself with a protective layer of space-time so he can stand the harsh conditions, and flies up into space. This time, he really finds something.

The World’s End is white. Not a glaring light hurting his eyes, but a gentle, deep sort of white. It has a smell, something like paper-mache mixed with blueberry... though it’s probably just his senses making up input in the nothingness. If he focuses enough, he can hear something like a quiet voice, or a child crying.

There isn’t anyone but him here, so events should go as he wishes, right? Maybe as long as he doesn’t believe he needs air, he won’t have to breathe... but maybe it’s better not to check that.

After a short while in this complete isolation Disco starts experiencing what he describes as Gestaltzerfall -- slowly forgetting what shape he was, and having a feeling like his hands turn into a set of disconnected parts before his eyes. [Gestaltzerfall is a phenomenon in which staring at a complex shape long enough will cause you to eventually treat it like a sum of parts rather than a whole. Eg. if you contemplate a word long enough, you’ll start seeing it as a meaningless set of letters or an assembly of lines rather than an actual word.]

In a perfectly lonely place like the World’s End, Disco can do anything. He’s omnipotent. But if he stays here, all alone, his entire being is going to slowly break down into pieces and disappear.

As long as he is with other people, then even if he starts to break, the others will hold his shape inside their consciousness and help him stay whole.

[This is such a nice fragment and a great metaphore, I love it.]

Disco returns to the hotel roof, and realizes that the nothingness of the World’s End confused him so much he accidentally jumped further into the future, to 31st October 2019. Kozue should be around 19 now. Disco starts thinking about whether or not he should pay her a visit, but then something else catches his attention: a skyscraper that wasn’t there 13 years ago, with the name of the company written in giant letters:

STYRON JAPAN

[lacquerware]

Hellblade's Language Problem

::WARNING: MANY HELLBLADE SPOILERS WITHIN::

I think I went into Hellblade with particularly well-balanced expectations. On the one hand, I had a vested interest in Ninja Theory’s success, having devoted several (rather grueling) years of my life to promoting their controversial last two titles, DmC Devil May Cry and its rerelease, DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition as a community manager at Capcom. In my view, Ninja Theory greatly exceeded Capcom's and my own expectations for DmC, but they walked away from the experience dripping with rotten tomatoes from irate fans who wouldn't have been happy with any reboot of their beloved series, no matter what it did. With Hellblade, I'd wanted to see Ninja Theory get the credit I knew they'd long deserved.

On the other hand, I was also quite disappointed when NT revealed Hellblade to be a more narrative-driven piece, and I was downright worried when they still hadn’t highlighted the combat system after three or four PR beats. They were selling this game on its fancy performance capture technology and its treatment of mental psychosis, not its Smokin’ Slick Style and Just Guard mechanics. I’m fine with narrative-driven games, but there are tons of them nowadays, and NT is essentially the only Western developer to have sipped from Capcom's forbidden font of combat wisdom. NT walked away from DmC with a world-class mastery of combat design, honed under the direct tutelage of Capcom’s own Hideaki Itsuno (DMC series director and veteran fighting game dev) and his team of designers. It seemed a shame to let that mastery go underutilized.  

I eventually concluded that Hellblade probably wouldn’t be the DmC-without-the-baggage follow-up I’d dreamed of, but it’d probably still excel on its own merits. In other words, I went in expecting a good game, but not expecting it to top DmC.

It pains me, then, to conclude that my experience with Hellblade was mostly just bad.

Early on in my time with Hellblade, I asked myself, “So is it ‘SEH-noo-ah’ or ‘SEN-yoo-ah’?” referring to the protagonist's name. Then one of the voices in Senua’s head called her “SEH-noo-ah.” A little later, one of the other characters calls her “SEN-yoo-ah.” Later still, Senua says her own name, pronouncing it "SEH-noo-ah." Much later, Senua’s own mother calls her “SEN-yoo-ah.” Is this inconsistent pronunciation a symptom of Senua's psychosis, or merely an oversight in the game’s voice direction? I don’t know, but I see it as symbolic of the overarching issue with Hellblade: it has a language problem.

When I say language, I’m talking about the visual, auditory, and tactile language that the game uses to guide its player. Ninja Theory took on a lofty challenge with Hellblade: to convey the experience of mental psychosis, using a video game. To be clear, psychosis is a severe mental disorder which presents the mind with vivid delusions—false sensory inputs. Video games, by definition, use sensory feedback—namely, graphics and sound—to communicate a consistent, predictable set of rules and parameters to a player. How do you simulate psychosis and make a functional game at the same time? How do you present meaningful feedback to the player while also inundating them with erroneous imagery and sound?

Ninja Theory actually found a variety of ways to do this. As they explain in the documentary included with the game, many sufferers of mental psychosis display a tendency to draw patterns and connections where none are apparent (to normoids). So essentially, they're ascribing their own rules and logic to the world. Arguably, this is what all game designers do anyway, so in that regard this premise might be surprisingly fertile ground. Indeed, we mostly see Senua’s hallucinations take recurring, systematic forms: glyphs which she must overlay with seemingly arbitrary sights in the environment; “portals” which, once passed through, reveal new avenues; and horrible humanoid demons, with whom Senua must do battle. Theoretically, these elements successfully convey Senua’s mental condition while still offering the player a “game” rather than just a series of crazy, unpredictable occurrences.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is a simple matter of execution; the game is technically flawed. Tutorial-less and HUD-less, it relies solely on subtle, in-world feedback to communicate its rules of engagement to the player, but then breaks those rules either through technical failure or conscious design choices. In a different game, I might have picked up on each bug or design issue much quicker, but because of the psychosis premise and the subtlety of the issues I faced, I found it abnormally difficult to distinguish between intended weirdness and simple video game flaws. In other words, the game isn’t just about being crazy—it is crazy.

Here are some examples:

-Early on, the game establishes that you can use the R2 button to “Focus” on certain objects in the environment to activate puzzles or audio logs. A little later, the game introduces a new type of "Focusable" object--an icon of a flame--but for some reason these objects don't respond to your Focus until you're much closer. The game betrays its established rule for how Focus works, without clearly reestablishing the new rule. I probably passed by that first flame icon five times, attempting to Focus each time but receiving no feedback. By the time I realized it was a distance issue, I’d wasted maybe thirty minutes searching for a way to progress.

-Focusing on each flame icon activates a sequence in which the environment is engulfed in an inferno, leaving you with mere seconds to run away before dying horribly. When I activated the first one, I instinctively started running in one direction, only to have the voices in Senua’s head started frantically crying, “No, not that way!” So I stopped and frantically searched for another path. Before I could find one, I died horribly. It seemed so unavoidable that for a moment I thought the death was scripted. When I realized it wasn’t and I respawned, I examined the surrounding area at my leisure and determined that, actually, there was no other path and I was running the right way. Was this a bug? Or was I now to understand that sometimes the voices in Senua’s head actively try to get her killed? I’ve since cleared the game and still don’t know….

-I encountered a bug which prevented one of the first puzzle-locked doors in the game from opening. It wasn’t totally clear that solving the puzzle was supposed to unlock that specific door, so I found myself wandering back and forth across the vast section of the map available to me at the time. Additionally, there were music cues which played upbeat, intense music within a specific radius (which didn’t even contain the door in question), and cut off abruptly the instant I stepped outside that radius. I scoured every inch again and again. After close to an hour of wandering and scouring, I googled it in exasperation and discovered it was simply a door bug. The music was just completely arbitrary. Unforgivable in a game that demands you take unexplainable sights and sounds at face value.

-One section of the game introduces a light/darkness mechanic. You must stand in the light at all times—either by carrying a torch or standing in designated illuminated areas—or you will die horribly within seconds. In one such instance, a fight sequence breaks out while you're carrying a torch. Senua subtly drops the torch on the ground as the fight begins, and a grueling battle ensues. When it ends, darkness floods your surroundings, and if you don’t think to retrieve the dropped torch, you die horribly within seconds. But what was illuminating us during the fight sequence, and why did it stop after I won? When the darkness came, my instinct was to run, which of course got me killed. I had to repeat the entire fight.

-The boss which follows the darkness segments has the ability to spew darkness (shoutout to DmC’s Hunter). Visually, this darkness looks just like the darkness which causes you to die horribly within seconds elsewhere, so the natural assumption is that you must scramble to find the light. This proved not to be true; rather, the darkness simply makes it dark, which sucks because it’s hard to see. Lol. 

-The glyph puzzles, which I felt the game leaned on way too much, were extremely finicky. I often found myself desperately trying to line up the overlay with its apparent environmental counterpart, only to be denied feedback. “Guess I’m barking up the wrong tree,” I’d say, and search elsewhere. Eventually I’d circle back and retry for lack of any better ideas, and finally I would land upon the precise footing that triggered the game’s acknowledgement of my solution. Because of this finicky detection, it frequently took me upwards of thirty minutes to execute a solution I’d figured out in five. These moments deeply hurt the game’s immersion—it’s hard to believe someone tormented by voices and haunted by hellspawn would spend this long lining up glyphs with such surgical precision. I felt neither crazy nor like a warrior; I felt like a child with a defective issue of Highlights Magazine. 

Weirdly, in other cases the game would give me credit just for glancing in the general direction of a solution I hadn’t actually noticed yet.

By the time the credits rolled, I’d experienced so many baffling inconsistencies in the game’s communication that the whole thing just felt like a misfire.

Now look--I’ve been known to both overthink things and not be very smart, so I don’t imagine everyone will have the experience I had. In fact, I googled “hellblade frustrating” just to see, and was shocked to find that all of the results were about how frustrating the combat was. I actually found the combat to be Hellblade’s saving grace—satisfying, consistent, and almost perfectly balanced thanks to a God Hand-style difficulty auto-balancing feature. The camera worked against me in a few situations, but most fights left me feeling like I’d beaten dire odds, and certainly made me sympathize more with Senua’s plight than the mundane action of lining up Viking runes with wooden scaffolding.

The moral of Hellblade’s tale seems to be that Senua won’t “cure” her psychosis, but that she can heal by learning to accept it as a part of who she is and coexisting with it. After finishing the game, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly have a  better time with Hellblade on a second playthrough. Those bugs and flaws would still be there, but I’d know about them and be able to anticipate them. There’s an obvious parallel here. I don’t think it’s intentional (though the idea of “bad design by design” does intrigue me), but I think there’s some poetry in the notion that we can apply Hellblade’s lessons to itself.

All that aside, I appreciate what Ninja Theory has done to advance the conversation on mental health and develop a template for their "AAA indie" model. Hats off.  

[usviraltrends-blog]

New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/does-autism-arise-because-the-brain-is-continually-surprised-science/

Does autism arise because the brain is continually surprised? | Science

By George Musser, SpectrumMar. 9, 2018 , 9:00 AM

Originally published on Spectrum

Satsuki Ayaya remembers finding it hard to play with other children when she was young, as if a screen separated her from them. Sometimes she felt numb, sometimes too sensitive; sometimes sounds were muted, sometimes too sharp. As a teenager, desperate to understand herself, she began keeping a journal. “I started to write my ideas in my notebooks, like: What’s happened to me? Or: What’s wrong with me? Or: Who am I?” she says, “I wrote, wrote, wrote. I filled maybe 40 notebooks.”

Today, at 43, Ayaya has a better sense of who she is: She was diagnosed with autism when she was in her early 30s. As a Ph.D. student in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Tokyo, she is using the narratives from her teen years and after to generate hypotheses and suggest experiments about autism — a form of self-analysis called Tojisha-Kenkyu, introduced nearly 20 years ago by the disability-rights movement in Japan.

In Ayaya’s telling, her autism involves a host of perceptual disconnects. For example, she feels in exquisite detail all the sensations that typical people readily identify as hunger, but she can’t piece them together. “It’s very hard for me to conclude I’m hungry,” she says. “I feel irritated, or I feel sad, or I feel something [is] wrong. This information is separated, not connected.” It takes her so long to realize she is hungry that she often feels faint and gets something to eat only after someone suggests it to her.

She has also come to attribute some of her speech difficulties to a mismatch between how her voice sounds to her and how she expects it to sound. “Just after she speaks, her own voice feeds back to her ears, and she tends to notice the difference,” says her collaborator Shin-ichiro Kumagaya, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Tokyo who studies autism using Tojisha-Kenkyu. The effect is like the awkward echo on a phone line that makes it difficult to carry on a conversation — except that for Ayaya, it’s like that almost all the time.

Ayaya’s detailed accounts of her experiences have helped build the case for an emerging idea about autism that relates it to one of the deepest challenges of perception: How does the brain decide what it should pay attention to? Novelty captures attention, but to decide what is novel, the brain needs to have in place a prior expectation that is violated. It must also assign some level of confidence to that expectation, because in a noisy world, not all violations are equal: Sometimes things happen for a reason, and sometimes they just happen.

The best guess scientists have for how the brain does this is that it goes through a process of meta-learning — of figuring out what to learn and what not to. According to this theory, biases in the meta-learning process explain the core features of autism. The theory essentially reframes autism as a perceptual condition, not a primarily social one; it casts autism’s hallmark traits, from social problems to a fondness for routine, as the result of differences in how the mind processes sensory input.

All experience is controlled hallucination. You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.

Andy Clark

Consider what happens when we are new to a situation or a subject. Every detail — every bump on a graph, every change in a person’s tone of voice — seems meaningful. As we gain experience, though, we start to learn what the rule is and what the exception. The minutiae become less salient; the brain shifts its focus to the big picture. In this way, the brain masters one challenge and moves to the next, keeping itself at the cusp between boredom and frustration. Autism might represent a different learning curve — one that favors detail at the price of missing broader patterns.

Unlike other ‘unified theories’ of autism — those that purport to explain all aspects of the condition — this one builds on a broad account of brain function known as predictive coding. The premise is that all perception is an exercise of model-building and testing — of making predictions and seeing whether they come true. In predictive-coding terms, the brain of someone with autism puts more weight on discrepancies between expectations and sensory data. Whereas the typical brain might chalk up a stray car horn to chance variation in a city soundscape and tune it out, every beep draws conscious attention from the autism brain. “It provides a very parsimonious explanation for the cardinal features of autism,” says Karl Friston, a neuroscientist at University College London who helped develop the mathematical foundations of predictive-coding theory as it applies to the brain.

For now, the model is vague on some crucial details. “There’s many loose pieces,” says Katarzyna Chawarska, an autism researcher at Yale University. And some question whether a single model could ever account for a condition as heterogeneous as autism. Yet proponents say this very diversity argues for a unified theory. Understanding a fundamental cause might yield treatments that are equally broad in their reach. “If prediction truly is an underlying core impairment [in autism], then an intervention that targets that skill is likely to have beneficial impacts on many different other skills,” says computational neuroscientist Pawan Sinha of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Predictive coding 101:

The basic premise of predictive coding goes back to the mid-19th century German physicist and psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz, and arguably to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, both of whom maintained that our subjective experience is not a direct reflection of external reality, but rather a construct. “All experience is controlled hallucination,” says Andy Clark, a cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. “You experience, in some sense, the world that you expect to experience.”

One reason we rely so much on expectation is that our perceptions lag behind reality. Much of what we do, from playing sixteenth notes on the guitar to adjusting our stance on a jerking subway train, happens faster than the 80 milliseconds or longer it takes our conscious minds to register input, let alone act upon it. And so the brain must always be anticipating what comes next. It generates a model of the world, makes decisions on that basis, and updates the model based on sensory feedback. In the language of probability theory, the brain is a Bayesian inference engine, merging prior expectations with current conditions to assess the probability of future outcomes.

Predicting and updating needn’t be — and usually aren’t — conscious acts; the brain builds its models on multiple subconscious levels. Nearly 20 years ago, researchers showed how the visual cortex works in a hierarchical and predictive fashion. The primary visual cortex generates a prediction for small-scale image patterns such as edges. It refines its prediction to match the incoming signals from the retina, but if this localized fine-tuning is not enough, it passes the buck to the secondary cortex, which revamps its expectations of what larger-scale geometric patterns must be out there. And so it goes up the hierarchy, evoking ever more sweeping changes, until the buck stops at the highest level: consciousness. (Neuroscientists adopted the term ‘predictive coding’ from communications engineering, which in the 1950s developed the idea of transmitting discrepancies rather than raw data, to minimize the amount of information a network needs to carry.)

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

When the brain perceives a discrepancy, it can respond by either updating its model or deeming the discrepancy to be a chance deviation, in which case it never swims up into conscious awareness. “You want to attenuate fake news,” Friston says. Or there is a third alternative: Faced with a discrepancy between model and world, the brain might also update the world — say, by moving an arm or flexing a hand to make the prediction come true. “One can reduce prediction errors not only by updating the model but by performing actions,” says Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. In this way, predictive coding can be not just a system for perception, but also for motor control.

But which of these three responses should the brain take? In the predictive-coding model, the brain decides among them by assigning its predictions a precision — the statistical variability it expects from the input. Precision is the brain’s version of an error bar: High precision (low variance) plays up discrepancies: “This is important. Pay attention!” Low precision (high variance) downplays them: “Just a fluke, never mind.”

Suppose the brain consistently set the precision higher than conditions called for. It would be as if Google Maps understated its uncertainty about a person’s location and drew that approximate blue circle around them too small. Random variations in the signal that cause the estimated location to jump around would look like real motion. One might well watch it and wonder what could possibly be causing that person to hop around like that: Where others saw noise, you’d see signal.

That same sort of miscalculation may occur in people with autism. “Maybe autism spectrum disorder involves a kind of failure to get that Bayesian balance right, if you like, or at least to do it in the neurotypical way,” Clark says.

Extreme precision:

Although the ideas underlying predictive coding date back at least 150 years, it came of age as a theory in neuroscience only in the 1990s, just as machine learning was transforming computer science — and that’s no coincidence. The two fields have cross-fertilized each other.

Many machine-learning systems have a parameter called the ‘learning rate’ that plays the role of predictive precision, Friston says. An artificial neural network learns by trial and error; if it classifies a puppy as a kitten, it tweaks its internal connections to do better next time, and the learning rate dictates the amount of tweaking. The system can adjust the learning rate to optimize its training and avoid problems such as overfitting the data — recognizing every kitten and puppy it has already encountered, but failing to grasp the general features that distinguish these pets. The learning rate is often high at first but decreases over time. In the predictive-coding model, the typical brain, too, starts with a high precision and gradually dials it down, possibly by adjusting the concentrations of chemical messengers such as norepinephrine and acetylcholine. “The belief is that precision is usually encoded by neuromodulators in the brain — chemicals that change the gain on cortical responses,” says Rebecca Lawson of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. When it’s time to initiate another round of learning, the brain cranks up the precision again.

In people with autism, however, the precision may have a tendency to jump to a high level or get stuck there — for whatever reason, the brain tends to overfit. This general idea was first put forward in 2010 by Columbia University neuroscientists Ning Qian and Richard Lipkin. Inspired by machine learning, they suggested that the autism brain is biased toward rote memorization, and away from finding regularities or patterns. “We can think about the difficulties of training people with [autism] as a mismatch between the learning style and the tasks,” Qian says.

The following year, another team put forth the first Bayesian model of the condition, proposing that in individuals with autism, the brain gives too little credence to its own predictions and therefore too much to sensory input. In response, two groups — one including Friston and Lawson — suggested that predictive coding could provide the mechanism for the imbalance between predictions and sensations. And in 2014, Sinha and his colleagues proposed that in autism, the brain’s predictions aren’t underweighted but simply inaccurate, which becomes especially apparent in cases where prediction is intrinsically difficult. For example, when one event follows another only slightly more often than expected to by chance, a person with autism might not notice any connection at all. A world that seems at least somewhat predictable to typical people can strike those with autism as capricious — or, as Sinha puts it, “magical.”

In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything.

Rebecca Lawson

Although these groups focused on different parts of the predictive process, they described much the same principle: For a person with autism, the world never stops being surprising. “That is a very common narrative in individuals with [autism],” Kumagaya says. “They tend to be surprised more frequently than neurotypicals.” In a way, this view of the world facilitates some kinds of learning. For instance, studies show that people with autism do well at tasks that involve sustained attention to detail, such as spotting the odd man out in an image and identifying musical pitches. Also, they are less likely to see visual and multisensory illusions that presume strong expectations within the perceptual system.

But hyperawareness is exhausting. “You’re forever enslaved by sensations,” Friston says. Giving too much attention to the mundane would explain the sensory overload that people with autism commonly report. Some people with autism say they remain acutely conscious of buzzing lamps and rumbling air conditioners, and studies confirm they are slow to habituate to repeated stimuli.

Also in support of the predictive-coding model, people with autism can have trouble with tasks that are predictive by nature, such as catching a ball or tracking a moving dot on a screen. The problem is amplified when dealing with the most unpredictable things of all: human beings. To predict what someone will do in a given context, you may need to make a guess based on what they or someone like them did under different circumstances. That is hard for anyone, but more so for people with autism. “It’s very common, for example, for [people with autism] to get into social interactions and have difficulty taking what they’ve learned from situation A and bringing it to situation B,” Lipkin says. A lack of predictability can lead to acute anxiety, a common problem in people on the spectrum. Many features of autism, such as a preference for routine, can be understood as coping mechanisms. “When you see most of the repetitive movements, they are actively retreating to shield complexity in the natural world,” says Sander van de Cruys of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

In addition to offering explanations for a range of autism traits, predictive coding might also make sense of the confusing links between autism and schizophrenia. The theory accounts for schizophrenia as, in some ways, autism’s mirror image. In autism, sensory data overrides the brain’s mental model; in schizophrenia, the model trumps data.

Consider schizophrenia’s distinguishing feature: having auditory verbal hallucinations (hearing voices). Last year, Philip Corlett of Yale University and his colleagues studied the origin of these hallucinations by inducing mild versions in 30 people who reported hearing voices on a daily basis (half of whom had been diagnosed with psychosis) and 29 who didn’t. To do so, the researchers borrowed a trick from Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. They showed the participants checkerboard images while playing a tone, so that the participants came to expect the two together. Then the researchers stopped playing the tone. The participants who hadn’t reported hearing voices quickly caught on, but those who were hallucination-prone were more likely to report that they still heard the tone. The team interpreted this difference in terms of predictive coding. “People with auditory verbal hallucinations have very, very precise expectations about the relationships between visual and auditory stimuli in our task, so much so that those beliefs sculpt new percepts from whole cloth,” Corlett says. “They make you hear things that weren’t actually presented to you.”

Autism resembles schizophrenia in some ways, Corlett says. Although hearing voices is not common, people on the spectrum have elevated rates of delusions — fixed beliefs they hold in the face of all evidence to the contrary, such as being manipulated by aliens or paranormal forces. Corlett suggests that these delusions occur when sensory data are given too much weight and install a new set of beliefs, which then become lodged in place.

Looking ahead:

There is still much about autism that predictive coding doesn’t explain, such as what exactly accounts for the autism brain’s hesitancy to dial back predictive precision as the brain gains experience. Researchers are still investigating which is askew: the prediction, the sensory input, the comparison of the two or the use of a discrepancy to force a model update. And what types of predictions are involved — all kinds, or just some? Our brains make predictions on many levels and timescales. People with autism do just fine with many of them.

Some researchers are skeptical that problems of prediction are the root cause of autism. Psychologist James McPartland, also at Yale, says he is partial to explanations that give primacy to the condition’s social traits. If one thing characterizes autism, he says, it’s social difficulties, suggesting that researchers should focus on the mental machinery we need to interact with other people, such as face recognition. He says he finds a social explanation no less biologically plausible than a perceptual one. “We have a really clear idea where in the brain faces are processed,” he says. He also wonders about the direction of causation: Instead of predictive problems explaining social difficulties, the relationship might work in reverse, because so much of the brain’s predictive capacities are developed through social interactions. “Is social information a critical kind of information for the normative development of predictive coding?” he says.

Predictive-coding researchers themselves acknowledge that they are just beginning to test the theory in autism. “Those initial papers, they’re sort of just-so stories, in that they are post hoc — explaining data that was already collected,” Lawson says. But she and others have been conducting experiments that probe the predictive mechanisms more specifically. Many involve associative-learning tasks, in which people have to figure out the rule that governs some series of images or other stimuli. Every so often, the experimenters change the rule in a way that’s not immediately obvious and see how quickly their participants catch on.

Last year, for example, Lawson and her colleagues brought two dozen people with autism and 25 controls into the lab. They played a high or low beep, showed a picture of a face or house, and asked participants to press a button for ‘face’ or ‘house.’ At first, a high tone presaged a house 84 percent of the time, then a low tone did, then tones had only a 50-50 relation to image type, and so on. The controls slowed down whenever a run of violated expectations convinced them that the rule must have changed, but the participants with autism responded at a more consistent rate, which was slightly slower overall. The researchers concluded that the participants with autism responded as if each deviation — a house when the tone augured a face, say — signaled a change of rule, whereas typical people were inclined to write off the first few deviations as probabilistic happenstance.

Alexander Glandien, for Spectrum

For about half the participants, the researchers also measured pupil size, because pupils dilate in response to norepinephrine, one of the chemicals thought to encode predictive precision. Interpreting these results was tricky because each person followed a slightly different learning curve and formed different expectations. To determine whether a given event would seem surprising, the researchers had to model each person’s pattern of responses individually. The upshot was that the pupils of participants with autism seemed to be on a hair trigger. “In autism, rather than being adaptively surprised when you ought to have been surprised, it’s as if there’s mild surprise to everything — so, it’s sort of saying, well, that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising, and that was mildly surprising,” Lawson says.

One intriguing approach is to build the predictive-coding theory into computer models, even robots. Artificial neural networks that embody theories of brain function could serve as digital lab rats. Researchers could tweak the model parameters to see whether they reproduce the traits of autism, schizophrenia or other conditions. In 2012, computational scientist Jun Tani and a colleague programmed a robot to simulate schizophrenia. By adding noise to the robot controller’s calculations, they led it to miscalculate the discrepancy between its expectation and its sensory data. The spurious error — a robotic hallucination, if you will — propagated up the robot’s cognitive hierarchy and destabilized its operation. “The robot shows disorganized behaviors,” says Tani, professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He and others are beginning to apply predictive coding to autism in this way.

If predictive coding holds up as a model for autism, it might also suggest new directions for therapies. “Different kids with autism may show impairments in somewhat different parts of that predictive chain,” Chawarska says, which might call for a range of clinical approaches. When she meets with parents, she uses the idea of prediction to help them understand their child’s experience of the world, telling them: “Your child really has tremendous difficulties understanding what’s going to happen next,” she says. “It’s something that really comes through, particularly with these very, very young kids. Their anguish and difficulty in relating to events is that they simply don’t know where they fit.”

If nothing else, predictive coding might offer the insight some young people crave — as Ayaya did when she was a teenager. “I noticed the differences between me and other kids, and I was thinking, why was this going on?” she recalls. As an adult, she says, her anxiety has abated, not just because of the self-knowledge she has achieved, but also because of the awareness shown by her peers and friends. Often, the typical people she spends time with know about her condition, she says. “They know me. [So] I feel more free to ask, ‘I got surprised, but didn’t you?’”

This article was reprinted with permission from Spectrum, the home of autism research news and analysis.