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allanamayer · 5 years ago

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Surveying a community on the idea of a digital archive

The last thing I want to share from this Oakville Arts Council project is the survey data we collected near the end of the study. We opened this survey up to the wider community so not every respondent had been fully briefed or consulted about their own individual participation - and while some responses reflect this, the yes/no questions are still very much in favour of the project. I think these kinds of responses are fully replicable in other areas, whether or not you do as much extensive consultation as we did (we met with 50+ individuals representing 20+ community groups) or have other outreach and education components such as the webinars we did.

Here’s the text straight from the study report, and I’ll attach the survey instrument too so you can see what we asked. Here it is in a PDF.

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Of our final dataset, 97.73% were supportive of the project, 100% felt the Oakville Arts Council was organizationally capable of project success, and more than 20 respondents gave us ideas about how they would contribute to the archive or use it once it was built.

97.73% would like to see more documentation of Oakville’s art history.

Responses include:

“I think we have a very vibrant and active artistic community and it definitely should be documented.”

“There is a rich history and also many newcomers to town who may not little of that history.”

“Many people have no idea of the wide variety of arts in which they can learn or participate even when they have lived here for several years. Newcomers of course have even less idea what is available.”

“Oakville has a rich history which will be lost if it is not properly documented.”

“No historical account of a community would be complete without the history of the arts in the community as the arts paint a rich picture of the culture and the soul of a community.”

“It is so important for new generations to connect with the history of their city, and how it relates to their community.”

“It is good to have a reliable site to research arts and artists - knowing more about both gives a better understanding of the work and can be encouraging to other artists to know more about an artist's successes and hardships overcome.”

“History is critical to helping current and future Oakville residents feel a greater connection to, and affiliation with, their own art, with Oakville, and with the community.”

97.73% would like to see an online archive of materials related to Oakville's art history.

Responses indicated an interest in both an online collection and a physical collection:

“It is good to have such an archive in one place - online research is not always easy and if there is a specific Oakville art site, then it makes research or just looking for information, more accessible.”

“Both online and in print should be promoted. Younger people are accustomed to finding about everything online and some older generations prefer finding information in print.”

“Accessible at all hours and to all. However, I also am concerned about the difficulty of keeping it up-to-date as digital technology evolves.”

“Not only should there be an online archive but original materials should be collected and properly stored for future researchers.”

100% think the Oakville Arts Council is the right organization to pursue this project.

Responses include:

“They are a trusted supporter of the arts locally.”

“Who better?”

“It is the one voice for the arts in Oakville.”

“They have the staff and facility to organize and amass the large amount of information which will need to be categorized and presented.”

“Experience and the personnel to complete it.”

“The OAC has access to and a relationship with a variety of artists and therefore is well placed to access the information.”

“I look to them for general information. They already demonstrate skill online and have a recognized presence for the arts.”

“Projects need a leader, but this needs to be a joint effort involving as many stakeholders as necessary to ensure the final product covers all the bases.”

95.45% agree that this project will help more people connect with culture, heritage, and the arts.

Responses include:

“Digital dispersal of information is practical and appealing to most of the population. It is an excellent method of publicizing upcoming arts events and also retaining the history of past performances of all kinds, usually only briefly covered in the local press. It will require great diligence to keep it going properly.”

“During physical distancing, residents can still engage with the arts.”

“If presented in a concise, exciting way I think it would be a wonderful interesting resource.”

“It would be an important reference source for future artistic projects to be aware of what has been done before, and the Oakville people who initiated and sustained artistic endeavours here in Oakville.”

“It will allow those interested in the various arts to find out who have gone before and the heritage of this town and its culture and be a link between the past, present and future.”

97.73% agree that this project will benefit artists and arts organizations; 97.73% agree that it will benefit the community of Oakville.

Responses include:

“It may give newcomers a point of connection not only with the community as a whole but also lead people to the arts organization they might be interested in exploring.”

“Could enhance collaborative efforts.”

“Information is vital for getting new members involved.”

“We learn valuable lessons from those who have a history in the arts.”

“Can provide inspiration and a forum for collaboration.”

“More involvement in community events, potentially more volunteers and donors. Possibility of children getting interested in the history of their particular arts form here in town.”

“It may help those who are thinking of moving to Oakville an insight of what we feel is important to us and the preservation of our cultural history.”

“There is such an influx of new residents, it is important for them to know and recognize the people who have helped to created a vibrant society in the past.”

“It will bring people together socially.”

“Curated materials add to content that can be posted online, used in the classroom, whether online or not, and add to our stories.”

95.45% agree that this project is needed now.

Responses point to the coronavirus pandemic as a specific timely reason:

“As time marches on resources that are hidden away in boxes and basements will disappear forever.”

“The arts are needed more than ever during Covid-19.”

“Pertinent documents may be lost if not gathered soon. I am over 80, and if I can no longer be active, my reference material will be discarded.”

“Much of the past is disappearing and needs to be archived before it is too late.”

“If we do not have something like this already, then why not now? The longer we wait the more gets lost as people of previous generations with valuable input and information may no longer be around.”

“This will take time and the sooner you start the better. There are many who would say we will need all our money and help to rebuild the economy for those who have lost work and businesses and this is true, but we also need to keep in mind those things that enrich our souls, our inner spirits and give us joy - the kind of joy we can get from a fine painting or a beautiful song or performance by someone who has been gifted and nurtured here in our own Town.”

“In terms of self isolation - provides more connection for the community (this would be a very immediate need).”

“This question couldn’t come at a better time - we’re housebound, and having curated materials posted online allow for learning experiences we can’t otherwise have.”

“You don’t want history to fall through the cracks.”

92.86% of eligible respondents would be willing to participate in some way.

Responses include organizations we have already met with, as well as individuals:

“I have much of the above material which needs to be saved.”

“Because I was born here and have been involved with the artists of Oakville for almost a century.”

“Yes, if it moves forward I would think that I/we would participate, as we participate in any opportunity that may give us some visibility, however small.”

“As I continue to make art, teach art and write about art, I hope to contribute what I have been privileged to learn. Being born here 91 years ago and I can still remember, there are stories that I can contribute.”

“I’m not sure how, but I’d love to.”

“I’m always available to help the arts.”

2 responses indicated they felt they were ineligible or had nothing to contribute, but as the project components are still undetermined, there may be broader or more strict eligibility in the future.

We asked people to tell us in their own words how they might be able to contribute:

“I would provide audio and video recordings, and historical documents, about the groups I work with.”

“[Our group] has existed in this town for almost 60 years and we have material that could be digitized covering most of those years.”

“I have items of historical importance for [a group].”

“Photographs, newspaper articles, audio and video recordings”

“I would submit paintings and animation, and reference my writing and books.”

“submit videos, student compositions.”

“I’d happily work/volunteer/promote the collection. I have memories of taking pottery courses in the little building at Coronation Park as a child and have the horrid creations still. The experience meant something to me.”

“I would like to contribute memories and stories. I was part of community theatre for many years.”

We then asked people to tell us in their own words how they would use the archive:

“As a history buff, I would consult it to find out about artists of the past.”

“Referring to it for information on past and present artists and their works and new ideas of what constitutes art.”

“Excellent resource for developing community projects and bonds.”

“To connect with other arts organizations.”

“I could refer new chorus and orchestra members and future concert goers to the material in the archive.”

“Share it with audience members”

“Promotion of Oakville”

“I would refer to it in marketing and correspondence, for artists I am involved with.”

“If allowed, to continue providing updated images.”

“I’d personally love to read others’ stories, use them for research when writing, and to teach.”

“It would be interesting to see the history of such things as the Joshua Creek Art Centre, and the OAC itself.”

“sharing it with new members of our various organizations, providing a link to it on our website and social media.”

“I would refer to it in our literature and on our web sites to draw people's attention to this resource.”

We asked respondents to rank various potential components of the project. In order of preference, 50% or more of respondents were interested in:

Profiles of Oakville-related artists and arts organizations (84.85%)

Virtual exhibits exploring aspects of Oakville's art history (81.82%)

Oral history interviews with Oakville artists and patrons (78.79%)

Video tours of Oakville cultural venues, landmarks, or studios (69.70%)

Success stories about Oakvillians (including students) that made it big (69.70%)

Educational resources for classroom use (60.61%)

Audience-submitted stories or memories in text, audio, or video formats (57.58%)

Audience-submitted materials, such as event or exhibit photographs (54.55%)

Interactive map of Oakville cultural locations over time (51.52%)

Historical magazines, periodicals, and newspaper articles (51.52%)

Finally, we asked people to share their thoughts on any of the topics we’d covered, or the project in general:

“I think this project is an excellent idea and please feel free to call on me at any time to participate.”

“It would be a good idea to emphasize newcomers and diversity - showing us to be a welcoming community.”

“The concept of arts organizations should be interpreted broadly to include educational organizations that deal with digital arts, for example, and not be restricted to graphic art such as painting. The administration of arts organizations should be included.”

“Would like to see profiles of Oakville based artists who are internationally recognized as I am not aware of many.”

“Your project is a great idea. Now, bring it to life.”

“Focus first on gathering the available information together before embarking on expensive or grandiose projects like documentaries and professional editing.”

#archives #digital archives #stuff I do #publications #survey #data-gathering #community archives #consultation

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museumgirlsarah · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on EdTech, Autism, and Pokemon Go

Revised and reposted from elsewhere -- it may look familiar to a few of you.

So this year continues to be tough, and as a way to get active after six months of being sidelined by foot injuries, I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon Go. Which has combined in my brain with a lot of the work I’m doing to try to integrate tech and distance learning into our programming, and as a result, it’s given me a lot to sort through. But one particular cool thing I discovered was the mitigating effect it has on one of the aspects of ADHD that’s cropped up since, well, basically, my sliders shifted.

Backing up a bit...

I’ve long loved this comic about the autism spectrum as a colour wheel, and it helped sort out a lot of personal understanding about my own autism and why it went undiagnosed for so long (this article helped a lot too, and made me cry with how much I identified). But the colour wheel didn’t quite explain why I’d changed so fast from functional to struggling with things, autism and ADHD-related, that I’d never been hindered by before (or at least, not to the point of not being able to function – I had my first auditory sensory overload moment at work this year. That was an experience). And then I was rereading John Scalzi’s blog on how Straight White Male is playing the game of life on the lowest difficulty setting, and figured out a metaphor that actually works for me.

All those pie slices on Rebecca Burgess’ comic are kind of like autistic difficulty sliders on the game of life, and most of my life, they’d all been set at levels that were challenging, but I could still progress through the game, farm for items, read the codex, etc. Then, in the last couple of years, two sliders got pushed within a couple of months of each other up to the highest setting and haven’t gone back down, and combined with everything else, they knocked out my ability to do things that had always been second nature.

Two of the big ones were reading and writing.

It’s not that I can’t. It’s that it’s now SO HARD to maintain that focus that it’s like running a marathon, and I’m so exhausted by trying to act neurotypical at work that I don’t have the energy to maintain it during my free time. Certainly not for fun. As soon as I relax, the ADHD kicks in, and I realize that nothing I’ve read or typed makes sense because my mind has wandered without even realizing it. I have no idea what happened on the last three pages I read, and the stuff I’ve written contains words that have no reason to be there, because my wandering brain just grabbed them and stuck them in.

But here’s where we get back to the interesting thing about Pokemon Go. One of the other things I just kind of gave up on was listening to podcasts. Listening to something has ALWAYS been a challenge for me. Always. From lectures, to author readings, to podcasts, my brain cannot keep focus on the auditory information without dekeing off elsewhere. I wrote entire novels in my head during the lecture portions of English class, and those were lectures about things I was interested in. But when I discovered that doing cross-stitch during author readings at conventions meant that I could not only follow the story for the first time ever, but I was getting sensory information I never had before (I could smell the descriptive passages), I thought hey, there’s something to this fidget tool thing, let’s see what else I can connect.

Which is when I discovered that Pokemon Go is the perfect thing for putting my brain into “listening to podcast” mode. I’ve ripped through all three seasons of the phenomenal @curiosityinfocus podcast while wandering around looking for Pokemon, just started Imaginary Worlds, and am currently looking for other awesome stuff to listen to (I’m open to suggestions!). And oh hell, did it get me thinking about other things, too.

A lot of Curiosity in Focus touches on Daniel’s passion for teaching science (and other things) through D&D. Some of the conversations seemed really familiar, too, overlapping with some of the struggles and challenges I’ve faced while trying to integrate tech into our programming at work. For a lot of different reasons, there’s resistance from many different avenues, but I believe passionately that the work we’re doing is really important because it gives students the ability to engage with materials through the communication tools they’re used to using. And much like the work Daniel is doing with D&D, it’s a way of opening up opportunities for learning and engagement to the learners who typically struggle with the “traditional” learning environment.

Gamification is one way of dealing with these obstacles. We’ve been doing it to an extent with tabletop gaming based on the Blue Whale exhibition, but I’m going to come back to Pokemon Go again.

For all the problems the game has, and I’m not going to deny it has its issues, I’m really fascinated by the game design in Pokemon Go. There’s enough to occupy casual players, but between IV stats, Pokemon types, fighting counters, and evolutions, there’s also a ton to occupy people like me who engage in obsessive collection and categorization as one aspect of our autism. But they’ve built up a system that actually encourages that and turns it into an asset.

The game has individual competition – collect the best Pokemon with the highest IVs and power them up. It has competition between teams to control the neighbourhood. But with the introduction of raid bosses, it now also compels the teams to work together to take them down, preventing the competition from becoming too alienating (most of the people I’ve played with have gotten into the habit of wishing each other luck when the battle begins, regardless of team affiliations). And it encourages cooperation.

A few weeks ago, I ran into a group of people trying to take down a Tyrannitar at a gym. And now I’m in a chat group of people who work together, share ideas, meet up with each other, and help newcomers. With a few exceptions, everyone, no matter what team they’re on, is willing to wait, support, and help others. People freely give tips on how to catch Pokemon and teach you how to succeed. The person more or less in charge of the neighbourhood group I’m part of is really glad that there’s one guy in the group who will explain all the minute details to everyone else, because he knows he scours the internet keeping up with all the recent developments, they’re accurate, and he will patiently walk newbies through it no matter how many times they ask.

And it goes beyond that. While raiding at a gym the other day, a guy walked past, looked at us on our devices, and yelled “TALK TO EACH OTHER.” Then an older woman walked over and asked “what would you people do without those devices? When I was little, we had to entertain ourselves.”

And I explained to her (as the teacher in the group, I’ve gotten pretty good at this and people are starting to expect it), that yes, as a Xennial (I don’t use that word when I’m explaining this, but damn it’s useful), I had to entertain myself, too. Which meant I spent a lot of time growing up isolated, alone, unable to find anyone who shared my interests. I spent most of my time indoors, and that carried into adulthood. And that in the past year playing this game, I’ve discovered parts of my neighbourhood I never knew existed, and talked to more people in the neighbourhood than I have in the ten years of living here prior to that. I now pass by people on the street, here and around the city, who smile and greet me by name. I’ve had strangers I’ve only encountered for a few moments looking out for me and walking me to the subway after dark. People are looking out for one another and establishing a strong sense of community in a city of a million people.

That’s a hell of an accomplishment for a little game about catching cute cartoon animals.

Yes, I’m aware my experience isn’t universal, but it does illustrate something really critical in regards to the work that I do. Like everything else about technology, it’s a tool. It can be used for good or for ill, but for many, it has become a way to facilitate engagement in something that was previously insurmountable. For some people, that insurmountable thing was starting a conversation with a stranger on the street.

This is the kind of power I want to harness with the work that I do with social media, and Google Classroom, and Makerspaces, and Minecraft programs. We’re not using technology to replace traditional learning. We’re using it to build bridges to invite more people to the party who could never reach it before.

#education technology #museum ed

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adventk-blog · 7 years ago

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— ARE YOU WHO YOU WANT TO BE,

introducing BAE SUJI, a MUTANT— and currently a believer of SEPARATION. age ( twenty-three ) and gifted with the ability of VOODOO MASTERY, they are currently working as a RECEPTIONIST.

WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN STORIES,

it is well known that most stories follow a narrative arc and suji’s is no exception.

exposition.

suji is born to a couple, happily in something - not love, perhaps, but there is contentment. this is a cruelty casual in its lack of sentiment, in its utter sense of settling, but at zero days old suji doesn’t know that yet. she knows only bright lights and the warm embrace of her mother.

her early years are simple. trite, even. she is bright eyed and bouncing, all sparkling eyes and wide smiles. she is an eager creature, enthusiastic and calmly observant, fascinated with the world around her.

her later years, she becomes erratic. the casual neglect of her parents leaves her disgruntled and moody. mercurial at best, her teen years are riddled with the casual rebellion of youth. at fourteen her parents find cigarettes in her room, notice she’s skimming the liquor from the cabinet, and they decide to intervene.

rising action.

boarding school sucks, she notes candidly. high school off in the mountains in what she feels might as well be some victorian trope of a finishing school: uniforms that scratch at her skin, not a boy for miles, and only her studies to entertain her. it’s a story of rich girls cooped up together, isolated and overworked, and such things never really end well.

suji finds herself enfolded into the group of queen bees, perhaps because of her general charm, perhaps her looks, perhaps her father’s connections. whatever the reason, suji plays along with their silly games and gossip, smiles pleasantly and remains inoffensive as they test her here and there and then - and then.

they let her in on their secret. they call themselves a coven, little budding witches clustered around candles and sage, etching runes on the polished wood floors and making little dolls of their petty enemies.

it’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt.

none of it really works. the ouija board is without response and the tarot cards reveal no mysteries, only the general little snippets of promise that give just enough to be correct and benign.

except -

the dolls.

she makes one first of an “enemy”, a girl who tries to one up her in class. they think little of it, when she sticks a pin into the abdomen of the doll, as they giggle and chant meaningless, garbled latin. they think nothing of it until the next day, when miyeon is sick in the nurse’s office - stomach pains, acute and sudden. perhaps she needs her appendix out. her parents pull her from school and never send her back.

suji always wonders about her. about what might have happened.

this is the first inkling.

she wonders about her grandmother - estranged from the family. an odd bird, they said to her. an odd creature, a strange woman. crazy, unbalanced. suji starts to think a little more.

and then she experiments.

what happens with a lock of hair? what happens with a drop of blood? what happens if she slides the knife down a slender arm.

there are hits and misses. there are ups and downs.

she rises to the top of their little hierarchy, reveals just enough to suggest that she might be the strongest of them all, that all these girlish fantasies are real, coming true before their very eyes.

climax.

all good things must come to an end.

for suji it happens when she starts on the potions.

she finds a book, a pdf really, translated in her online research. she’s dubbed her magic voodoo by now, and keeps the darkest bits of it - the blood and the bone, the dead animals from the forest, the graveyard dirt - from the others. she shows them only the trances and the dolls, the charms and hexes, little things.

the potions? more difficult.

but they work - isn’t that something? luck, a little crush, a little bit of ill-timed sleepiness.

this is, unfortunately, too much to hide from the administration.

when her parents are called in, the looks on their faces says it all. disgust, horror, dismay.

at least it’s not drugs, her mother says flatly, but it doesn’t really seem like much of a solace.

the falling action.

she returns to seoul, an unwelcoming home.

suji is packed off to school, strictly monitored, closely guarded, harshly chided. the world is her cage and slowly she breaks free, breaks it down. university brings her parent’s silence, as if they are willing to pretend she never dabbled in the arts of her grandmother.

she realizes soon what they were planning.

he shows up for dinner. bland and boring and far too much her senior, as far as suji is concerned. they want her to court him. marry him. its best for everyone.

she knows what they mean - it’s best for them. best if she marries off and gets knocked up before he knows what she is. before he discovers this shameful, critical secret.

overwhelmed, she finds herself inadvertently nicking her finger on the knife with which she cuts her steak, blood welling up from the short cut.

she realizes something new is wrong when that same wound vanishes, only for the boy across from her to stiffen, glancing at his hand in confusion as blood wells from the tip of his finger.

all the blood drains from her mother’s face.

denoument.

the closing arc of suji’s past is this: exile.

she leaves her family home - she is given vast monetary incentive to do so.

they tell their friends she has left to study in america. she moves out of the city.

suji leaves her old life behind, finds a job at a shop that allows her access to medical arts, to understanding of herbs and serves as a closely veiled front to the witches and magic users of the city, those with arts that trend towards the occult - less palatable than speed or strength.

suji exists in a tenuous state of uncertainty, devouring knowledge as fast as she can get her hands on it, manipulating the world and the humans around her to her own advantage.

she finds herself in upscale bars, working careful to sneak scraps of hair or fabric, brewing potions that lend her the ear of powerful men. she picks up part time jobs, one after another: intern at the police precinct, personal assistant to the mayor, receptionist at a major law office.

she gathers the materials she needs, the information she wants, to bring the powerful humans of the city to their knees. scraps of hair, nail clippings, a drop of blood on a handkerchief - little things categorized as trophies that lend her the beginnings of control. if the world won’t revolt to give people like her a chance, she’ll bring on the revolution herself - one step at a time.

THERE IS FLESH AND BLOOD BEHIND THESE TALES,

suji is a strange dichotomy of a girl - half soft and half fierce, as ferocious as she can be kind. the issue at hand is that she is mercurial, wild in her moods and erratic in her temperament. she is a girl of intense focus - almost to the point of obsession, which can be directed to any number of realms: people, concepts, goals. at the moment her dedication is focused entirely on harnessing her abilities to their utmost extent, which means studying a number of different things, often at the expense of sleep. suji isn’t a girl who knows how to do things halfway - she is either wholly committed or largely disinterested. emotional attachment doesn’t come easily to her, having been largely divested of that by virtue of her abilities. she carries in her a bitterness and resentment for her own capabilities and in turn for those who would condemn her for them, with them being largely out of her control, thus leading her to her resentment for the normality other people enjoy, as well as a feeling of distance from “normal” people, and indeed from many other powered individuals who enjoy less stigmatized affectations.

AND EVEN MONSTERS CAN LEARN TO WEEP.

to detail suji’s capabilities as voodoo is perhaps not entirely accurate. voodoo is, after all, quite technically a religious affiliation, a type of spirituality. it is also, generally speaking, something along the lines of the witchcraft of the wiccans - dubious in its efficacy. suji’s voodoo, suji’s magic, is entirely real. it is tangible, it is dirty, it is raw. it is bloody and boney and often quite alarming to the casual observer. due, however, to the rules that her powers seem to obey and the nature of the subset of her abilities, voodoo seems to be the closest accurate representation. voodoo is most known for magic involving effigies (voodoo dolls), necromancy (connection with the dead, or the “loa” who are the spirits with whom practitioners communicate to divine information or possess/allow possession), and bodily magics (empathic masochism, rudimentary or basic manipulations of motor skills, hemomancy, and so on). voodoo, and suji’s abilities, follow two primary laws of sympathetic magic. the first is the law of similarity - like effects like. this is the law that allows for the creation of voodoo dolls that enact torment (most often) upon the target. this can be done for beneficial purposes as well, though it is not so pleasantly direct as when one plunges a needle deep into the effigy of a person. the second law is the law of contact and contagion- thus, things that have once been in contact or close quarters with one another continue to act upon one another when they are separated; things once in contact continue to have bearing upon one another after they are severed by distances. while distance weakens the effects of her capabilities (expanded up on in the weaknesses) it does not negate them. thusly, she is both strengthened by physical proximity to a target, and her magic is similarly grounded in the physical and bodily.

APPLICATIONS :

body magic: what one might imagine to be the traditional “voodoo doll” construction, magic of the body requires a physical connection to that body. this may be done via hair, nails, or even touch. the manipulation of the body is easily channeled, historically, into the conduit of a voodoo doll: a likeness of the target created with the element of the target’s body. then, rudimentary manipulation of motor skills or the bodily state (such as: stabbing needles into the doll to affect physical pain against the target, etc) may be induced. however, these effigies must retain some physical token of the target, which plays into the second law. empathic masochism: which might also be known as psychic voodoo, wherein the wielder becomes, themselves, a voodoo doll of sorts. they are then capable of enacting physical pain upon themselves in order to transfer that to the target, provided they are within the immediate vicinity. eye contact exacerbates the effect, and it is strengthened further by contact, or if suji is able to hold on to some physical link to the other (hair, a vial of blood, etc). hemomancy - blood is her greatest tool in magic - usually her own. similarly her own body is a weapon with which she can project damage: she can both create and become a voodoo doll. her blood enacts the capability of a crucial element of voodoo; hemomancy. with this she is able to do a variety of more “academic” magics, via the use of runes, cards, potions, poultices all in conjunction with her own blood as a conduit. it is also possible to divine information via the use of her blood, in conjunction with a trance state and runes of various types, but she is as yet extremely ill versed at this.

necromancy - this is where suji’s abilities are the very least accurate and useful. it is not the necromancy one might associate with the name. voodoo historically is responsible for the myth of the zombie in many of the forms we know it now, but suji doesn’t wield that kind of skill. her abilities are mainly limited to being tied with her hemomancy, calling upon the dead for the purposes of divination. even this divination itself is limited (see below). while there is a shade of reanimation to her abilities, it consists only of animals for an exceptionally limited time and is also obviously predicated on there being a dead animal in the vicinity, which in the city is uncommon and most frequently perhaps a random pigeon. super useful.

LIMITATIONS :

GENERAL: all magical arts are based in a give and take. one must maintain a balance - in order to do anything, something must be offered up. in many cases, this “something” comes from suji directly; generally a bit of blood, or something similar. while this is all well and good in theory it is not particularly pleasant. it is painful, heavily stigmatized, and over time it is exhausting. should she take from a target, this is similarly unsettling - there is something gravely personal and terrible about the arts of voodoo, in her practice, in that they are so very close to home. there is a violation in being manipulated or mangled based on something that has come from you, that is now made to look like you. lets just say it doesn’t make her a whole lot of friends and is most assuredly not very “public friendly” in nature.

EDUCATION: do you know how many books on traditional voodoo practices have been translated into korean? almost none. fully harnessing the nuances of her abilities, in terms of the potential potions and concoctions she could create, is exceptionally difficult because the resources aren’t there. with a power that seems to strangely draw from an existing, foreign belief system, she’s had to brush up both on her english and french (which were fairly nonexistent prior) in order to piece together information for her studies. from this information she then must further experiment to see what of those concepts she is actually able to apply and harness in reality, and what is either impossible for her or a work of spiritual fiction. while some of her skills are more broadly applicable, they are also the ones that take the greatest toll on her (namely, empathic masochism) and are thus the most unpleasant both to witness and to utilize.

PHYSICAL TOLL: you’ll notice that “regenerative healing factor” and other types of accelerated healing are not present amongst her skillset. you’ll notice also that quite a lot of her ability predicates on the spilling of blood or manipulations of the body. frankly, this combination utterly sucks for suji. her arms and legs are a latticework of thin scarring and wounds, there is near always a pinprick of blood at the tip of at least one of her fingers, and she has huge issues with nutrition- it’s hard to eat enough and correctly to counteract constant low grade levels of blood loss. occasionally, after a huge endeavor that might require a lot of blood from her, she is forced to forgo her abilities for a few days or even weeks in order to allow her body to replenish itself, much like how someone who has donated blood isn’t able to do so again right away.

CONCENTRATION: in any magic, the utmost importance lay with concentration and intent. there are rules to be followed, procedures in place - she can’t just move willy nilly through things or she will instantly and viscerally regret it. this is a hugely taxing thing, as she must (as mentioned) conduct a lot of independent study in order to be able to function with her abilities, lest she run the risk of doing real damage to herself (or others, but more often than not that IS the point so, perhaps that’s fine). with this and the physical tolls combined, it shortens the amount of time she can sustain an act of magic considerably.

INACCURACY: divination in terms of hemomancy is not half so accurate as one might hope. rather it is good for general “feelings” on a situation - it is only as good as the information she is given regarding a particular issue. a vague “will my life be happy” could get any sort of answer, but a specific “ next week at my job interview will i royally fuck up” might recei33ve a more accurate assessment. she’s not able to divine specific and intense visions, and it must be conducted in a ritual that takes a good bit of time. MENTAL & SPIRITUAL TOLL: as one can imagine from a power with such expansive applications in its raw forms, it is physically exhausting. beyond that, however, it has the addition of being mentally exhausting, taking a toll on the girl’s mentality. she’s not quite so stable and healthy mentally as she once was, faltering in terms of her handle on her emotions. she’s bordering towards imbalanced at the moment, an erratic bundle of nerves that vacillates between brutal and callous and relenting, soft and yielding. STIGMA: quite frankly, there are some powers that are more palatable to the general populace and some that just aren’t. slitting your wrists over a stone bowl to speak to the dead, making dolls that allow you to enact physical harm on distant targets? not exactly the kind of thing people take kindly too. super speed, super strength, okay, those make some sense. super heroes have those sorts of powers. voodoo? thats a scary, distant, dark thing. its not making her any friends, but it’s also not much of a secret that she can keep; she wears the scars of it on her body, pours her attention and time into the study of it. the result is a fairly solitary life, as it can be offputting even to other powered individuals.

THREAT LEVEL TWO. 02+ BRWN, 06+ RSLNC, 06+ INTLCT, 05+ WLLPWR, 02+ FGHTNG, 03+ SPD

#avt: follow #bae suji #krp #kpop rp #tw: blood #tw: blood magic #tw: body horror #tw: injury #tw: voodoo

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