#((And the subsequent interactions that result as a form of seeing each other at their worst.)) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

senguptasresearchacademy · 2 years

Text

Survival analysis – Kaplan Meier curves – Hazards ratios

Meaningful statistical analysis can improve the quality of a clinical research paper immensely. Group wise comparisons (e.g., between two drug groups) are almost always performed in most studies and are the simplest form of analytic statistics. Regression analysis are a group of advanced statistical techniques that really help decipher outcomes and make a paper strong. The main reason is regressions help to counter the influence of confounders that could erroneously sway results and cannot be accounted for using simple groupwise comparisons. You can read more about regression analysis in our previous blog. In summary, different kinds of regressions are used based on the outcome variable. The commonest one used is called logistic regressionwhen the outcome is binary (e.g., yes/no, success/failure etc.). Here the outcome is represented as an odds ratio. You can read about interpretation of odds ratios here. There is another group of outcomes which are also binary but where “time to the outcome” is equally important as the outcome itself. For example, survival rates in cancer treatment. If you notice, we always say 5-year survival rates. In ophthalmology, the typical example outside ocular oncology is trabeculectomy (glaucoma surgery) failure rates that increase with time. When time plays such a crucial role, and the outcome is binary, i.e., death vs. survival, or success vs. failure, then we use a different kind of analysis called “survival analysis”. In survival analysis, we calculate a cumulative rate of failure (or success) over time, the key word being “cumulative”. This means that at every subsequent time point, all failures of the previous time point are also considered. Let us understand this with an example. Commonly, you may calculate failure rate (e.g. glaucoma surgery, or any surgery prone to failure {e.g. cardiac stents} where time to outcome is essential) separately at 1, 6 and 12 months (or years) post-surgery and document 25%, 15% and 5% at each of these time points, and conclude that failure rate decreases as time increases. There is a grave error in this conclusion. Let us see how this happened. Remember that the denominator at each time point is different. Let’suse the same example to understand better.

The last thing we need to discuss with survival analysis is how to find factors that can predict failuretaking time into consideration. Risk factors for failure are so critical and alert the treating physician that the surgery may be about to fail, before it has failed, so that corrective measures can be taken (e.g. bleb needling in glaucoma surgery or repeat visit to the Cath Lab in post cardiac stent patients). Risk factor analysis with time as a factor is done using Cox’s proportional hazards analysis and outcomes are presented as hazards ratios with their 95% confidence intervals. Hazards ratios are interpreted as follows:HR of >1 = greater risk of failure, and HR <1 = lower risk of failure, and HR=1 means no increase or decrease risk of failure. A HR=1.50 means 50% increased risk of failure (the number after the decimal), a HR of 1.80 means 80% higher risk of failure. For any HR >2, we interpret is differently. A HR=2.50 means 2.5 times higher risk of failure, HR=3.75 is 3.75 times higher risk of failure. On the other hand, HR=0.65 (i.e.<1) means 35% lower risk of failure (i.e. 1-0.65 = 0.35 or 35% lower), a HR=0.20 means 80% lower risk of failure. I hope you are getting the drift. A univariate Cox’s proportional hazards analysis gives an unadjusted HR where only one variable (e.g. stage of cancer) is predicting death. A multivariable analysis means many variables are interacting and predicting death together, similar to the real world. This means that stage of cancer predicts death after adjusting (i.e. keeping constant) all other factors such age, gender, chemotherapeutic drug regimen etc.

In conclusion, please select survival analysis as the method of choice when your outcome is a binary one, and time to the outcome is an important consideration. Also, don’t forget to provide the total time period that your patient followed up in case you are doing a retrospective study.

0 notes

greysfall · 3 years

Photo

If the Composers stayed to talk for a bit more, what would they talk about? (super long strip)

This strip took me a whole week working full time on it. I had so much fun because I was able to pour all my love into every panel, for Josh and for the game as a whole. It should be part 1 as another strip is part 2. I’m not sure I can do part 2 but I’ll try my best, as each would centers around a different theme.

I had a very simple idea at first, but I figured Josh wouldn’t talk unless Haz somehow pushed his nerd button and he went on to rant a lot, being direct and cryptic at the same time.

While it’s a popular fan interpretation that Joshua had been lonely and sad, I think that he has drifted quite far away from having emotions like that - though he is not entirely unattached. To be honest, the reason why he never saw value in his RG life was probably not only because he could see the UG, but also due to his nature as an individual that strived towards something more thrilling and out of the ordinary. He himself admitted to having “hang-ups”, mostly from his deep understanding and interest in humanity and for one time as we know, in a human companion.

As how I view it, the Composers have an unusual link. It’s not like they’re closer than usual business partners or neighbors but it’s that kind of relationship in which the perfectly handled distance and awareness about each other makes it more interesting. They are equal in power yet they approach their jobs with different attitudes.

Both are high-ranking Angels but it’s very interesting that Josh sometimes evades the label of an Angel, there are hints that he used to be human so in my opinion, he just likes to stay in between planes and is an oddball out everywhere. Meanwhile, Haz seems like he has never been human at all so I guess that’s why he finds interest in Josh’s strange ways of doing things, or in his understanding of the lower planes. I really like the game’s depiction of Angels. They’re pretty close to how I imagine Angels overall: ruthlessly righteous, neutral in everything and ridiculously powerful. You can read the hints in their names even, "Yoshiya” has the words for “ever-increasing justice” while "Mikagi” can be read as “the key to govern”.

Both Composers are associated with the motif of rebirth and prosperity. Josh’s name contains the word for “Paulownia”, which is connected to the Phoenix in Japanese myth and somehow hinting at their role in the plane between life and death and to build, destroy and rebuild all over again.

The rule of the Shibuya and Shinjuku games are different in how the former focuses on individual growth, while the latter seeks power and government. As a result, the Shinjuku Reapers have grown stronger and more organised, but their system might have peaked and subsequently went so deep into corruption that Haz decided to erase Shinjuku via Inversion - which left no trace nor characteristics of the city at all. Note that a normal erasure as Josh planed for Shibuya in the first game, would still leave the base upon which a new UG could be rebuilt with relatively the same core. That might be why Megumi accepted his defeat with grace because even if Shibuya was erased it would carry on to exist in another form, while the Shinjuku Conductor was desperate until the end.

Josh could be pretty direct to Haz, even more than he is to Hanekoma sometimes and the Japanese dialogues indicates that they’ve been on that terms for a long time. It feels very special to catch the chance to see them interact in the same game and even have a casual conversation with each other.

If Haz could someday find a game as good for himself as Josh did and finally found the answers he is looking for, I hope we’ll get a chance to see that too.

#ntwewy #ntwewy spoilers #Neo The World Ends With You #Joshua Kiryu #hazuki mikagi #yoshiya kiryu #neku sakuraba #twewy joshua #twewy neku

607 notes · View notes

cyrenesroom · 3 years

Text

A guide to effectively using flashcards

Flashcards were an important part of my preparation for my IGCSE examinations. I found them extremely useful for retaining a wide range of concepts (especially for subjects like biology and psychology) in a simple yet effective way!

I hope y’all find these tips useful!! :)

PART 1

Do not rely solely on them

It’s important to note that flashcards are not a one-way ticket to that A*. It is a combination of several things that essentially leads you to a successful result (eg: past papers, homework, readings, research, etc).

Furthermore, it also depends on what type of material you’re studying and how far you are into the learning process.

Recognise which subject requires them

Flashcards are generally used for knowledge-intensive subjects that require a lot of factual memorisation over a long period of time. These can include the sciences, history, literature, etc.

Subjects like these contain a multitude of relationships, terms, processes and facts that need to be individually internalised in order to achieve a meaningful level of mastery of the overall subject matter.

I didn’t bother using flashcards for subjects like mathematics or business studies.

PART 2

Avoid information overload

it can feel tempting to make flashcards for every little fact and shred of information so that you don't miss it on the exam. However, this usually results in an overwhelming number of decks.

During the initial exposure to the information, make sure that you have thoroughly read through it to isolate the pertinent facts and turn these into question-and-answer flashcards. To do this, I referred to end of unit tests and homework to get a good idea on which aspects of the topic/chapter are typically assessed.

It’s really important to condense the information since flashcards are typically used for REVIEW and to help consolidate your knowledge. Trying to add in an entire chapter of 12 pages really defeats the purpose of using them.

I was constantly worried that I might cut out information that may end up being vital. I was able to remove this fear of mine by ensuring that I only put down one concept/question per flashcard and then list down the components that made up that particular concept.

For example, these were my notes on medicinal drugs, with a focus on antibiotics. One of the key requirements listed in my specification was:

“To describe the functions of antibiotics for the treatment of bacterial infection”

I used this to understand what pieces of information to isolate.

As you can see above, I only listed down the functions of antibiotics and nothing else. I didn’t mention the fact that they were ineffective against viruses because there is a reason to that and the concept can be better explored in another card. I instead, chose to focus on how antibiotics combat bacterial infections.

This saves a lot of time during the revision process and also ensures that the amount of information you have to know isn’t too overwhelming.

Create Mental Connections

This can be easily achieved by mixing pictures and words or using mnemonic devices. These help increase your brain’s ability to recall what you’re studying. Just be careful to only use these when absolutely necessary.

Organisation of Your Flashcards

It’s highly likely that you may never use your flashcards when they are stacked one over the other until they form a skyscraper. This is where organisation comes into play.

For biology in particular, I organised my decks by chapter and then divided it into decks for the sub-topics within the chapter:

As you can see, I basically divided the chapter of “Biological Molecules” into those sub-topics which made the whole revision process less overwhelming and it also helped me plan what I wanted to study because I would have already had a basic overview of what I’m familiar with and what I needed to review further.

PART 3

The Process of Retrieving the Answer

When going through your decks, it’s important to note down the answer or say it out loud instead of adopting the “oh I know this already, so it’s fine” attitude. You should be able to hold yourself accountable and avoid falling for the false illusion of confidence. Even if you are already familiar with that particular piece of information, there’s no harm in reinforcing it again. Better to be safe than sorry.

Shuffle Your Decks

This is an incredibly effective way of challenging yourself with spacing and interleaving, instead of going through your flashcard deck in the same order again and again. You won’t be able to properly retain those concepts by trying to retrieve information based on the deck and card number!

Spaced Repetition

Spaced Repetition is an evidence-based learning technique boosts learning by spreading revision out over time so learning is not crammed all at once.

You can find a detailed explanation about the effectiveness of this technique here

PART 4

Anki

This app allows you to create online flashcards which you can use to test yourself in practice sessions. It uses an algorithm built around active recall and spaced repetition and hence learns as you progress through your studies and revision.

Anki is available for free on desktop and on all mobile devices except iOS, but I highly recommend it as it’s in-built algorithm and other features (more information about the app including the download link can be found here) were incredibly useful for me!

Quizlet

This is another online learning tool that allows users to create study tools such as interactive flashcards, tests, and study games.

The app makes it simple to start creating cards on the topic of your choice. In addition to text, you can also add images from your computer or Quizlet’s library. It also provides you with a variety of options when studying your cards. For more information on the features that Quizlet employs, visit this link

Quizlet is free but provides the option of a paid premium plan which includes additional features.

Brainscape

This app also implements spaced repetition, which has been shown to increase rate of learning.

Brainscape allows you to rate your confidence in each flashcard, on a scale of 1-5, which subsequently determines how frequently to repeat the flashcard. Lower-confidence items are repeated more frequently until you upgrade your confidence rating.

Like Quizlet, it is a free app but provides a paid pro plan with additional features.

Once again I want to emphasize that to truly succeed with flashcards, you need to learn how to create them correctly. The best app isn’t very useful if you’re not writing effective questions and answers.

That’s all I have for now, I really hope this post was helpful and if you have any additional tips or apps you’d like to suggest, feel free to reblog and add them!!

sending love and wishing you all a wonderful day!

— cyrene :)

408 notes · View notes

tenthgrove · 3 years

Note

Soft Yandere Tizano and squalo

Yandere La Unita

Content Warnings: yandere behaviour, manipulation, abduction, forced dependency, violence, unhealthy relationships, the general existence of Dolcio Cioccolata.

Squalo and Tiziano

It isn't common for Squalo and Tiziano to interact with civilians. Or anyone really, since the pair are largely content with each other's company and nothing more. The sole exception to this is the necessary interactions that result from their frequent shopping trips, from which you, the cashier of their favourite boutique, came into play.

The pair observed you innocuously for many months, slowly learning practically everything that could be known about you simply from overheard conversations with colleagues. You dare say you liked them, even, as they were friendlier than your average customer and a familiar face to look forward too.

One day, Squalo sits Tiziano down and admits his attraction to you. It was meant to be an honourable confession, an honest admittance of wrongdoing to ensure no harm comes to the relationship. To Squalo's shock, Tiziano chuckles and announces he feels the same way. It's time the couple started to pursue you actively.

The defining feature of how Squalo and Tiziano obtain you is that it's calculated and smart. Squalo's happy to just walk up to you and ask for you to be together (or barring that, just abduct you), but it is Tiziano who convinces him otherwise. Not only would conventional methods of wooing you be unlikely to work, but they have practical concerns to worry about as well, being high-ranking members of the mafia. They're going to have to plan something a little more nuanced.

During a visit to your store, Squalo slips a little bit of paper into your pocket. You open it at home that evening to find your own address, along with several belonging to your closest friends and family listed out, above a message instructing you to come to a location of their choice the next day or they'll start paying these people visits. It's an outdoor restaurant in the middle of the city, where there's bound to be a lot of people. They don't want to scare you too much after all.

You arrive at the restaurant the next day on weak knees. Squalo and Tiziano thank you for coming, before introducing themselves in no uncertain terms as mafiosos who have taken an interest in you, and would like to start dating. You read between the lines that you don't have an option to say no.

However, the pair make clear the incentives to accept their offer are just as profound as the threats against refusing it. Are you in education? They're happy to support you in continuing it. Do you work? They have more than enough money to support you in reducing your hours or, if it's something you genuinely enjoy, bribing the right people to advance your career. Ultimately, Squalo and Tiziano know the carrot is just as important as the stick.

Thought you aren't forced to go home with them there and then, it soon becomes clear you're expected to sort your affairs quickly and move in within the next couple of months. From that point on, the couple will treat you as though you've been together for years, expecting you to address them as your partners as well.

Both Squalo and Tiziano are very touchy in their own ways, and while they would never force themselves on you, are more than happy to trail their hands up and down your arms early on. They are also both incredibly teasing, and will pick up on all your reactions.

The good news is that the level of freedom afforded to you is high from the get-go. Even from the beginning, you're allowed to maintain control of your finances and go out by yourself provided you tell them. Just be warned they'll occasionally check in on you by surprise to make sure you're actually where you said you would go. The one thing they do quite heavily police is social visits. The possibility of you revealing to someone they forced you to be with them is very acute, not that you would get very far if you did try to run away. It's not that you can't have friends, you just need to be very honest about who you're meeting and why.

Cioccolata and Secco

If Dolcio Cioccolata has taken an interest in you and his intentions aren't torture or murder, it can only mean one thing- you are someone very dear to him, and have been so for a long time. Chances are, you probably trust him a lot back. Cioccolata's gotten very good at acting normal around his respectable friends, after all.

The two main possibilities are that you know him as a family friend and became close through parties, or you're a chronically ill patient who found yourself in his care, and were lucky enough to avoid his scalpel long enough for a genuine mutual bond to form. It could be both. You could have fallen ill after knowing him for a long time. He could have made you ill.

As for Secco, Cioccolata will only pursue you as a lover with his consent. Cioccolata would never want his darling pet to feel neglected, after all, and for that reason it's only when Secco confesses a fondness for you that Cioccolata decides its time to make you his own. Secco is immediately very excited at the thought of you joining them, and for a while Cioccolata's main concern is actually stopping him from giving their plans away.

As much as Cioccolata would love to pluck you from your home, he knows that would only get him caught. The police are already after a serial killer with surgical knowledge, and taking you like that would just make him a suspect. So he does something more covert, he invites you over. You enjoy a lovely night gorging snacks and watching TV with your two friends, until Cioccolata invites you to the basement. As you go down, he snatches your phone and sends out the first of many messages designed to trick your family into thinking you've run away.

Waiting for you there in the basement, to your horror, is a functional operating theatre, complete with spatter after spatter of blood. You'll probably try to run, but the door is already locked. But don't worry, your blood won't be joining that on the table tonight. As Cioccolata explains to you as you cower in the corner, he treasures your bond very much, the tender feeling of what they call 'romance' that fills his heart whenever you look at him, the obscure sense of care for another human being. He won't be subjecting you to his operations.

That is, until your inevitable first attempt at escape. Although he'll still stop short of outright torturing you (providing a generous dose of general anaesthetic and subsequent painkillers) his 'alterations' to your limbs will lead you unable to walk or carry out fine motor skills. You'll be entirely dependent on his and Secco's care. As he assures you frequently, the changes are entirely reversible and you can have all your old mobility back with another operation and a little physical therapy, but for Cioccolata to give that to you, you're going to have to earn it.

Cioccolata keeps his promise to reverse the damage he did to you, but by the time that happens a lot has changed. He hasn't conditioned you to become like Secco as that would involve removing everything that first endeared him to you, but you're still going to have to become a lot more warmed up to him to trust you with your limbs back. At least you'll be treated like royalty in the meantime, even if you are still a prisoner. Cioccolata will remind you every day you're his darling pet, just like Secco.

Doppio

Doppio was never allowed to have lovers when the Boss was around. He found it a little hypocritical since the boss once told him he had a girlfriend, but he guessed he understood his reasoning and, either way, he would never question his boss. The boss is gone now, and Doppio has nobody to guide him anymore. He's alone and doesn't know what to do; even the old hideouts the new boss never found feel cold and empty, and Doppio can't bring himself to enter them. Then he met you.

You weren't quite sure what you were looking at, seeing a fine-dressed, disoriented boy stumbling around in the rain outside your window. Nonetheless, you knew he was in no state to be alone so you went out and approached him. When it was clear he had nobody to call, you invited him in.

As you leave him alone in the sitting room to make coffee, Doppio's mind is going in cartwheels. You've been so kind to him, and deep down in his heart something tells him the two of you were meant for each other. This could be his new start! Someone to rely on, to depend upon to give him purpose! But wait- if he leaves tonight he might never see you again! As he panics, Doppio decides he can't let that happen. He needs to have you tonight.

The second you return to the sitting room, Doppio pounces on you. As he frantically assures you that everything's going to be okay, you pass out from shock. You wake up in a strange house, tied to an extravagant bed. Your screams bring Doppio to your room. He quickly reassures you he isn't going to hurt you and is doing this so you can be together.

Doppio has some (i.e, a few million quid) money he was able to salvage from before the boss' fall, and he's going to use it however possible to please you. He will buy you anything and everything you desire short of freedom, making his own guesses about what you'd like if you refuse to talk.

His initial plan is to keep you locked up in that room (or at very least the wider house) forever, since it's safest for you and his old boss never went out much, but eventually he relents at your distress. He'll let you out eventually, if that's what it takes to make you smile.

On that note, the best thing about being Doppio's darling is how easy it is to turn the tables on him. Once you've behaved yourself for a while, having learned what keeps Doppio satisfied, it's very easy to become the dominant one in the relationship and make him let you do whatever you want. His sole desire is to serve you, after all.

#la unita #la unita speciale #la unita x reader #squalo and tiziano #squalo and tiziano x reader #cioccolata #cioccolata x reader #secco #secco x reader #vinegar doppio #vinegar doppio x reader #yandere cw #abduction cw #manipulation cw #violence cw

237 notes · View notes

gureishi · 3 years

Note

I'm the same anon who asked!

Could you talk about Saeran? It doesn't need to be detailed or NSFW, I'm good with anything, I just want to know more about your headcanons!

Hello again lovely anon! ♡

Oops aaaand once again (no surprise, I know): it’s long. I just wanna preface this one with a couple things:

1. There are quite a few Certified Saeran Simps on this site who truly know him much better than I do. Take whatever I say with a grain of salt—I’m no expert!

2. I’m also not an expert on DID! Which isn’t the focus of these HCs, but is obviously relevant. I read lots of books! About brains n stuff! But please never hesitate to tell me if I describe something poorly.

3. I wrote for the AS timeline here but if you want me to talk about SE Saeran or Unknown tell me and you know I will <3

Tw: discussion of childhood abuse, neglect, and subsequent trauma symptoms

Saeran’s body headcanons

A child who grows up the way Saeran did—kept indoors, often physically restrained, and sometimes starved—is not going to develop in a healthy way. There’s a reason why, even as an adult, Saeran is a full 2 cm shorter than his identical twin: he never gets the nutrition and exercise that kids need in order to grow.

We know that his mother uses his sickliness as an excuse to keep him indoors: but was he born sickly, or is he sick and weak because he’s been malnourished and kept from running or playing or interacting with other children? He breathes stale, dry air all day; he’s living on mostly white bread, and not always at regular intervals (plus whatever sweets his brother can steal for him from the outside world). He is not well.

Child Saeran never learns any sports or games. He doesn’t learn how to play with other children, or tie his shoes, or make himself a snack. Adult Saeran doesn’t know how to skip—you’ll have to teach him.

If the twins didn’t have each other, neither one of them would have survived.

And as we know, the neglect that Saeran endures worsens tenfold after Saeyoung leaves. Any glimpses he was getting of the outside world—sneaking out when their mother was unconscious, getting whatever snacks and books Saeyoung could gather for him at church—are cut off.

I’m not gonna tell you when the alters appear, because I am by no means an expert on DID. From studies I’ve read, I can say that typically alters become manifest after a “traumatic turning point” (which is not necessarily the “worst” trauma endured, but simply a particularly salient traumatic experience). It’s definitely possible that the alters emerge in late childhood, while he is still in the house with his mother.

When Saeran is taken from his mother’s home by Rika and V, he is (needless to say) not in good shape. He is painfully skinny, extremely malnourished, and very weak. He still has his red hair and golden eyes, but already he is looking less and less like his brother: his cheeks are hollow and his eyes are dull.

There is a brief period of time, before his “cleansing” (Oh god. We’ll get there), where he is reasonably well cared for. For the first time in his life, he is eating meals—and he is getting to bathe regularly, and he is getting his hair cut and combed. He still believes, at this time, that he’ll be reunited with his brother. And he is going outside! He is learning how the grass feels between his toes and how the sky looks through clear eyes.

As we know: this doesn’t last.

The elixir is a truly horrifying combination of hallucinogenic substances. No human could consume this cocktail of drugs repeatedly and feel well: and Saeran is already physically weak, and severely underweight. The fact that he survives as long as he does under these conditions is a miracle.

We know that he is being tortured at this time, too: physically as well as emotionally. Saeran has scars, like his brother; while Saeyoung has lots and lots of tiny scars all over his body, Saeran has larger, more distinct scars: perhaps on his wrists, and his throat, and his ankles.

It is around this time that his eyes and hair change. The means by which this happens is incredibly vague in-game, and everyone’s individual HCs are valid. My personal belief is this: he dyes his own hair—first, in a frenzied, desperate attempt to stop seeing his brother looking back at him from the mirror. He keeps dying it because Rika approves: and he never does a good job, and it’s rough and fried, and that “pink” at the bottom? Just the red showing through his patchy dye job.

As for his eyes: I personally believe they change as a result of the elixir. If they were contacts, I don’t think that GE Saeran would necessarily still wear them—and in every timeline, he has those startling blue-green eyes.

The alters take care of the body in different ways.

Ray does not feed himself. He lives on caffeine pills and sweets (and, of course, the concoction of drugs that he’s being fed in increasingly large amounts). The body becomes even skinner when Ray is fronting. And he bites his nails and fingers—brutally, so they are chapped and cut and scarred. But Ray goes outside, and he works in the garden under the sun: his body is getting some form of exercise: and this is good for his lungs, and invigorates his weak, tired muscles.

Ray also takes care of his appearance—something Saeran never did before. He brushes and styles his hair; he dresses himself carefully in the clothes Rika has picked for him; he covers himself in beautiful scents so that he is more appealing to you.

When Suit is fronting, he wants to strip his body of anything that reminds him of Ray. So he styles his hair differently (but still: he is styling it), and he tries desperately to wash the scent of Ray off his skin. He doesn’t feed himself, either—but, if any of the alters are trying to become physically strong, it is Suit (of course). I’m certain that the Believers have a workout regime they’re supposed to be following; maybe Suit even does it (on his own, of course, in secret). He knows he needs to be able to protect himself—and he needs to feel powerful.

When you meet Ray, you don’t notice right away just how poorly he is doing. Rika has intentionally dressed him in a way that hides just how bony he is—and he wears those little gloves, of course, so you don’t see his ravaged fingers. But it doesn’t take long to catch on: he is so skinny you could almost blow him away, and there are dark shadows under his eyes, and he doesn’t sound like he’s taken a deep breath in years.

By the time you meet Suit, you already know the state their body is in: malnourished and weak. Ray cooked for you, but you wish you could cook for all of them; and even when Suit is starving you (in other words: reenacting the very abuse that was dealt to him in childhood), you wish you could wrap him in a big blanket and feed him a bowl of soup.

The Saeran that escapes Magenta with you—GE Saeran: the fusion of Ray and Suit (or a new alter, depending on what you believe)—has never made a single choice for himself in his whole life, until this moment. He never got to pick his own clothes, or what he would eat (if he ate at all), or how he would speak, or what he would do. Running away with you is the first real choice he has ever made—and no wonder this is pivotal and transformative for him.

The AE doesn’t portray the timeline of healing in a realistic way. After two weeks, we see GE Saeran so much healthier, both physically and mentally. And yes: two weeks of eating real food and sleeping in a bed make a difference: we see him with fuller cheeks and brighter eyes.

But what the game doesn’t address is the withdrawal he likely endures when he stops taking the elixir, which is full of substances that are both dangerous and addictive. It doesn’t address the time it takes to build up muscle mass, and get accustomed to healthy sleeping and eating habits, and to begin to heal from years and years of repeated trauma.

GE Saeran doesn’t heal right away, because healing doesn’t work that way. It’s not linear, or straightforward, or simple, or beautiful. It’s slow, and sometimes it’s painful.

But he does heal.

A Saeran who is in love with you is soft, and patient, and willing to put in the months and years (a lifetime!) of hard work to heal his body and his heart. You’ll get to watch as the dark circles under his eyes disappear, and his cheeks become less hollow, and his body grows stronger as he cooks (with you, and for you) and eats real meals and learns to run in the grass the way he never did before. He’ll make a garden, and you’ll get to see how he looks with sun on his face, his eyes clear as the sky as he gazes up at you—smiling.

You can show him how to moisturize his dry lips and cracked hands; you can help him pick out clothes he likes to wear; and you will learn how to support him when his memories haunt him.

And you can hold him: this beautiful, small, soft man, with his thin shoulders and scarred fingers. He’ll close his eyes and you’ll taste the sun on his skin as you kiss his eyelashes. He smells of earth and sky; he loves you with all the power of the universe.

#mystic messenger #saeran choi #ray #suit saeran #headcanons #asks #anon #body headcanons

214 notes · View notes

slightlyrebelliouswriter23 · 4 years

Note

hey so i'm hoping to get some writing advice about creative burnout? like i seem to write in fits and spurts. some months i can churn out a oneshot or chapter everyday and some months i can do one (1) creative thing only. so i'm wondering how to prevent creative burnout and how to just create more smoothly <3 thank you!

Creative Burnout & How To Ward Against It

First, I’d like to preface this all by saying you’re definitely not alone. You probably already know this, but sometimes it’s nice to be reminded.

I know from personal experience that creative burnout can leave you feeling hopeless, detached from yourself—the kind of identity crisis no one needs in 2020.

So buckle in, folks. It’s a dosy.

I. The Symptoms

Not to be the local WebMD page here, but signs of burnout can include:

Procrastination (more than usual)

Dreading writing and feeling stuck or overly perfectionistic when you try

Physical tiredness and/or irritability

Feeling like everything is monotonous

It’s more than just writer’s block. It’s a physical and emotional exhaustion response to something that goes deeper than a simple lack of inspiration. In my experience, and from a bit of research, I’ve found that what your brain is really looking for is dopamine.

Dopamine is essentially your brain’s chemical reward system for doing something interesting or exciting to you. As someone who is diagnosed with ADHD, I have chronically low levels of dopamine, so this is a constant struggle for me—but it is absolutely made worse by creative burnout.

II. The Problem

Studies have shown that the more we do A Thing the less that thing will give us dopamine (unless a component of the activity changes regularly). This is because eventually our brains desensitise to the stimuli provided by the activity, and subsequently, we become disengaged.

But it’s not necessarily The Thing (i.e. writing) that becomes boring. Actually, more than a few factors could be at play here, and the first step to finding a solution is to identify the problem.

1. ENVIRONMENT LACKS EXCITEMENT/CHANGE—

Sometimes, the monotony of everyday life can feed creative burnout. This becomes especially applicable in quarantine when you’re not leaving your house.

What we don’t realise is that even something as small as the variables of driving to and from work, or interacting with passing coworkers, gives us dopamine. So if you have the same routine every day that does not involve any added variables, your brain will begin staunching that dopamine supply.

2. EITHER TOO EASY OR TOO CHALLENGING—

In 1975, Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, coined the term “flow”, which refers to a heightened state of creativity and concentration on an activity. Csikszentmihalyi posited that if your skill level is equal to the level of challenge in any given activity, you will experience this state of flow.

The chart below is taken from Csikszentmihalyi’s own study on the subject of flow and motivation. It examines “your skill level” on the x axis in relation to the “challenge level” on the y axis.

Essentially:

Too much challenge + not enough skill = anxiety, worry (which might lead to procrastination and perfectionism)

Too much skill + not enough challenge = boredom, apathy (which might lead to monotony, irritability, and other depression-like symptoms)

Skill level = Challenge level = Flow

3. NOT ENOUGH “ACTIVE” STIMULATION—

When it comes to dopamine seeking, there is a distinct difference between active and passive stimulation in the brain.

Active stimulation is any form of activity that you have to actively engage in. For instance; exercising, doing a crossword puzzle, or reading a book. These kinds of activities not only give you dopamine, they also facilitate critical thinking and problem solving thought processes, which act as catalysts for creativity.

Passive stimulation, on the other hand, comes in the form of television, social media, and YouTube. It’s anything you can consume without having to actively engage. Passive stimulation will indeed give your brain dopamine, however, it won’t activate your creativity.

The problem also lies in the speed at which you receive the dopamine from passive activities. Passive stimulation is so easy to access that the more you consume, the harder it becomes to pick up active stimulation. Your brain expects a hit of dopamine just by picking up a phone or turning on the TV—it becomes addicted to the quick fix of a Netflix binge.

III. The Solutions

Based on the problems mentioned above, I am going to list a few solutions. Keeping in mind that not every solution will work for everyone, these can act as both preventative measures and remedies for someone who is currently burned out.

1. CHANGE UP YOUR ENVIRONMENT/ROUTINE—

Aim to do at least one thing per day that will add “variables” to the monotony. This can be as simple as going on a long walk, dressing up in that bold outfit you always wanted to wear to the office but never did, or sitting at a different workspace in your home.

Anything you can do that’s simple, but might provide an extra variable to your day to spice things up. Note: this shouldn’t be the same thing every day.

2. CHALLENGE YOURSELF MORE—

If you find yourself bored by your work, try challenging yourself more. This could mean setting goals for yourself that go a bit beyond what you’ve been doing.

For example, if you’ve been writing 500 words per day, see if you can beat your own word count every day for the next week. If you’ve been writing mainly fluff pieces, switch it up and do an angst piece. See if you can write a book in a month, or start a blog where you don’t write fiction at all!

Anything you can do to add a little kick to your workload. Note: Beware of challenging yourself too much! This can lead straight back into burnout.

3. CHALLENGE YOURSELF LESS—

If you’re on the flip side of that coin, and find that you are anxious, procrastinating, and perfectionistic when it comes to writing, fret not. Just because you’re experiencing any of these things, doesn’t mean you’re incapable of doing the job with your skillset.

It just means your perception of the job needs to be shifted.

Procrastination, at its heart, is a fear of failure, which results in actively avoiding the negative emotions associated with the task that causes this fear. Perfectionism is a type of procrastination that is a combination of a fear of failure and a fear of success (or, more accurately, other’s critiques of your success) all at once.

Neither have anything to do with your actual skillset, but they have everything to do with your perception of your skillset. Obviously, this is a harder thing to fix, as it has to do with deeply ingrained levels of self-esteem.

What I can offer you is a tactic to trick your mind into thinking you’re capable.

If you have a task, big or small, and you are feeling overwhelmed by it (like you might go curl up in bed and scroll Tumblr), immediately break that task up into smaller tasks. Keep breaking up the smaller tasks until you have the smallest possible part of the bigger task without doing nothing.

Then do that smallest possible thing.

If your goal is to write a 2000 word one shot, a small part of that task is writing half of it. An even smaller part of that task is breaking the one shot up into “scenes” and writing one scene. For instance:

Jude wakes up to a sore throat, a runny nose, and a fever.

She tries to go to work, but Cardan, being the mother hen that he is, threatens to never make her another grilled cheese sandwich (her favourite food) ever again if she doesn’t stay home.

Jude agrees begrudgingly, and Cardan sits her down in front of the TV with a bottle of Gatorade. He leaves to go get medicine from the store.

When Cardan comes back, Jude is worse than before. He makes her soup and saltine crackers and spoon feeds her.

She complains the whole time and, in her feverish state, threatens to never buy him another bottle of wine (his favourite food) ever again if he doesn’t let her feed herself.

Each bullet point represents one “scene” of about 200-400 words each. Obviously, there will be more details that you work out as you write. But with these five smaller scenes, your goal is no longer writing the 2000 word one shot. Your goal is writing the first of the five scenes.

If you complete the smallest possible task, you can stop, and you’ll still feel like you’ve accomplished something because you can cross off that task from your list. But chances are, by the time you cross off one task, you may have inspiration enough to keep going.

4. ENGAGE IN ACTIVE STIMULATION—

Since active stimulation has been proven to turn on the creative “tap”, try incorporating more of these activities into your daily routine:

Exercise: As the resident couch potato, I hate to say that exercising is good for creativity, but it is. Even if it’s just going on a short walk, so long as you’re moving.

Reading: Sometimes you have plenty of ideas, but no words to fit those ideas. Fill your well of words by carving out an hour or two each day for reading a good book.

The Creative Process: In the writing world, the creative process is a process of about 20-30 minutes that the writer partakes in every day before they start writing. This process should be creative, but also have nothing to do with writing. You can try colouring in a colouring book, painting, organising a page in your bullet journal. Anything that is creative but does not make you think about everything you have to do that day. Think of it as creative meditation.

Listen to music: Having APD, I personally can’t listen to music while I write. However, studies have shown that if you listen to at least ten songs per day, it will significantly benefit your dopamine levels and overall mood. If you’re like me and prefer to work in silence, maybe stick on a couple songs during your creative process. If you can manage music and writing together, get out those headphones!

5. KEEP A REGULAR SCHEDULE—

I know this is the most cliche point in the book, but it’s valid. This doesn’t mean do the same thing at the same time every day over and over, because ultimately we’re looking to avoid monotony.

But having pillars of structure to bolster the excitement can definitely work to keep you from slipping into burnout. Going to sleep, waking up, and having your meals at relatively the same time every day are good examples of this.

Feel free to change up the things you do between breakfast and lunch, but make sure you have those pillars of consistency so your brain knows that a break is on the horizon and doesn’t get tired.

6. PACE YOURSELF—

This is particularly difficult for those of us who are coming out of a creative burnout, but I urge you to pay special attention to this one. If we are suddenly hit by inspiration and the writing is flowing and flowing and flowing, eventually we will hit the point of highest dopamine capacity for writing.

Not putting a check on the flood of inspiration coming out of a creative burnout, I’d argue, is actually a guarantee that many of us will experience burnout all over again. It becomes this vicious cycle in which we are trapped.

While it feels great to write non-stop and receive immediate validation for that work, try to limit yourself to how much you’re writing and how immediately you post your writing (if you plan on posting it).

Whenever I finish a one shot or a chapter of something, I like to allow at least one day for editing before I post. This timeframe is important, because it acts as a buffer of rest between writing marathons.

You can take however long you need for the editing process, but definitely make sure you have a set amount of time in place. Otherwise, your brain might not have enough time to come down from what is essentially a writing high, and you will always need to reach greater heights in order to achieve that same level of dopamine.

~~~~

Overall, the most important things to take away from all of this are:

Change up your environment

Keep your brain actively stimulated

Have pillars of structure between which you can run about chaotically to your heart’s content

PACE YOURSELF!

Hope this helped. Happy writing!

-Em 🖤🗡

Writing Tip Masterlist

Fic Masterlist

Celebrate 2K with me!

#this one was a spiritual one y'all #thanks for the ask babes!#writing #writing tips #writing advice #writeblr #writing tip masterlist #writer #writer's desk #writer's life #writer's problems #writer's block #ao3 #fanfiction #creative burnout #asked and answered #em answers #danaanruhn #thank you for 2k!! 🥳💜

591 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

The Observatory of Anonymity

"Wanting it badly is not enough" could be the title of a postmortem on the century's tech-policy battles. Think of the crypto wars: yeah, it would be super cool if we had ciphers that worked perfectly except when "bad guys" used them, but that's not ever going to happen.

Another area is anonymization of large data-sets. There are undeniably cool implications for a system that allows us to gather and analyze lots of data on how people interact with each other and their environments without compromising their privacy.

But "cool" isn't the same as "possible" because wanting it badly is not enough. In the mid-2010s, privacy legislation started to gain real momentum, and privacy regulators found themselves called upon to craft compromises to pass important new privacy laws.

Those compromises took the form of "anonymized data" carve-outs, leading to the passage of laws like the GDPR, which strictly regulated processing "personally identifying information" but was a virtual free-for-all for "de-identified" data that had been "anonymized."

There was just one teensy problem with this compromise: de-identifying data is *really* hard, and it only gets harder over time. Say the NHS releases prescribing data: date, doctor, prescription, and a random identifier. That's a super-useful data-set for medical research.

And say the next year, Addison-Lee or another large minicab company suffers a breach (no human language contains the phrase "as secure as minicab IT") that contains many of the patients' journeys that resulted in that prescription-writing.

Merge those two data-sets and you re-identify many of the patients in the data. Subsequent releases and breaches compound the problem, and there's nothing the NHS can do to either predict or prevent a breach by a minicab company.

Even if the NHS is confident in its anonymization, it can never be confident in the sturdiness of that anonymity over time.

Worse: the NHS really *can't* be confident in its anonymization. Time and again, academics have shown that anonymized data from the start.

Re-identification attacks are subtle, varied, and very, very hard to defend against:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/precautionary.pdf

Worse, they're highly automatable:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3

And it's true in practice as well as in theory:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html

When this pointed out to the (admittedly hard-working and torn) privacy regulators, they largely shrugged their shoulders and expressed a groundless faith that somehow this would be fixed in the future. Privacy should not be a faith-based initiative.

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/07/09/big-data-should-not-be-a-faith-based-initiative/

Today, we continue to see the planned releases of large datasets with assurances that they have been anonymized. It's common for terms of service to include your "consent" to have your data shared once it has been de-identified. This is a meaningless proposition.

To show just how easy re-identification can be, researchers at Imperial College and the Université catholique de Louvain have released The Observatory of Anonymity, a web-app that shows you how easily you can be identified in a data-set.

https://cpg.doc.ic.ac.uk/observatory/

Feed the app your country and region, birthdate, gender, employment and education status and it tells you how many people share those characteristics. For example, my identifiers boil down to a 1-in-3 chance of being identified.

(Don't worry: all these calculations are done in your browser and the Observatory doesn't send any of your data to a server)

If anything, The Observatory is generous to anonymization proponents. "Anonymized" data often include identifiers like the first half of a post-code.

You can read more about The Observatory's methods in the accompanying Nature paper, "Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3

#pluralistic

86 notes · View notes

joontier · 3 years

Text

Subliminal in Scrubs | V1; report ix

pairings: dr. jeon jungkook x female reader

chapter rating: NC-17 | genre: doctors! au; humor, romance

warnings: swearing

word count: 1.8k

g/n: ((unedited skfslkdf)) also,,, i will be releasing Parallel Palpitations very soon [which features this Jimin hehehehe stay tuned for that] PLUS, im very excited to release the report x AHHHHHH send me your thoughts pleaseee

[taglist]: @nottodayjjk @ditttiii @zeharilisharaban @btsbunny07 @turquoiseandplaidinautumn @aamxxrii @codeinebelle @btsmakesmehappy

Subliminal in Scrubs (the records) | navi. | m.list

You open your new group chat first thing in the morning, wanting to check on Soomin and Jimin. Just yesterday, the two had informed you of their concerns separately, both worried over the same thing. Soomin’s mother wanted to hold a small congratulatory celebration for her daughter’s KMLE results, and her subsequent acceptance at Woocheon, so there was going to be a party exclusively for all tenants of the building at the restaurant just next to the cafe.

The two hadn’t worked out their budding acquaintance, as you had practically forced them to greet each other the last time you were at the cafe, so you thought this might be a great way to have them start over their tricky relationship.

As you’ve expected, both of them had even tried to convince you to come, in the hopes that a mutual friend could help diminish the awkward air around them. You’ve declined each of them politely, not wanting to intrude on their little get-together. Besides, (just like you hadn’t forgotten to mention to them), this was the perfect opportunity to get rid of this wall hindering their friendship (to which, both of them had also quite strongly disagreed upon).

A mere three hours after their outpour of sentiments, as you’re rewatching episodes of Dr. Romantic with Chohee, the pair drunkenly call you, requesting a video chat. You’re pretty sure not one of them is aware of what’s happening, especially with Jimin refilling his shot glass every thirty seconds; Soomin speaking gibberish, and Chohee literally teasing them through the screen of your laptop and yet none of them seem to mind a damn thing about it.

So, with hopes that each of them arrived home safely last night, you type in your text message.

‘What is this place, really?’ you mutter to yourself, slightly regretting your decision to take the subway instead of a cab. You only ride taxis for places you’re not familiar with (such is the case with today) but you didn’t want to spend twice as much solely for transportation so you took the train to the building.

Now you feel lost. You’ve just gone to the main entrance of the building, but there was scaffolding barring the entrance, and now you’re struggling to look for Entrance B with the singular tarpaulin saying “Please use Entrance B” and a faded arrow below pointing to the left. After a grueling ten minutes of asking people for directions and walking all over the place, you finally find Entrance B and hurry on your way inside.

There’s already a small crowd forming where the directions for the processing of your license is posted, and you can’t seemingly read the directions all the way down with people clearly taller than you blocking the way.

“What’s the matter? Can’t see the directions, smally?”

Your instant recognition of his voice makes you hang your head low. You figure there’s no way you can get rid of this guy anytime soon.

“Hello, Jungkook.”

Why is it that he’s always there wherever you are? He couldn’t be stalking me, could he?

Jungkook almost spits his water on the girl in front of him. Oh, so he heard your thoughts then. “Yeah, you wish, woman. I wouldn’t do that even if you had one million strapped to your neck.” You roll your eyes at him.

“Wasn’t asking for any conditions for you to do that, but thanks for letting me know your thoughts.”

“Awh, you mad, babe?” Shaking your head at him, you try to continue peering over everyone’s shoulder to check the post. “If it makes you feel any better, I would for two million though.”

You were just about to retaliate with a smart comment, but you see a girl walking towards Jungkook while twirling her hair with her newly manicured fingers. “Jungkook-oppa, you’re here!” she says, hooking her arm on his elbow.

Ah yes, it’s the same brat that kept defending Jungkook’s ass during the KMLE exam. “Why don’t you come with us? My mom works here,” her voice gets down to a whisper, but loud enough for you to hear. “If you come with us, you wouldn’t have to fall in line, then maybe we could have lunch together.

Jungkook removes her hand from his, “No thank you, I’ll just wait here.”

“With her?”

The audacity of this bitch.

“Yes, with her.” Jungkook says, not skipping a beat. “She’s...better company.” Oof, that’s gotta hurt.

You try not to show much of your currently soaring pride on your face, but you can’t help but clear your throat as a terrible disguise for a snort. The girl becomes silent after that, with most of her friends trying to control their facial expressions after Jungkook’s reply.

“Fine then, your loss,” she says with a flip of her hair, then makes her exit.

You're unsure what to do now as the girl has already left, and you’re also not sure if you’re entirely happy about being left with Jungkook now. “Why didn’t you go with her? Could’ve saved you a lot of time considering the people here.”

Jungkook clenches his jaw, as if in thought. “I don’t like cheating. I believe that there’s a different value in the reward that comes with something you worked hard for.”

You’re surprised. You really hadn’t expected this kind of quote, coming out of Jungkook out of all people, but you find yourself nodding as he speaks, quite impressed that you share the same principles.

As the crowd starts to disperse, you and Jungkook finally get your turns to take a look at the poster. “Is it often?”

“What is?”

You point a thumb backwards towards where the girl had gone to, “Having girls throw themselves at you all the time?”

“Oh that,” Jungkook chuckles, then gives you a lopsided smirk, “Yeah, that. Hadn’t realized being this hot was so tiring.” Squinting your eyes at him, it then again dawns on you that you shouldn’t even have asked him that sort of question at all.

“You know,” he says, nudging your shoulder with his, “I’m quite jealous of you really,” your brows crease together. This can’t be good. “At least you don’t experience all of that, cause you know…” he says, gesticulating his hands over his face.

He did not just insinuate that you were not...attractive at all. Huh. This bastard can wait for his license alone then.

“Goodbye, Jungkook.”

“Hang on! ________, wait! I was just messing with you,” Jungkook laughs, running after you.

The cashier is already scanning the last items on your grocery list by the time Jimin and Soomin had texted you that they were done with their licenses, and you three had agreed on meeting up by the mall’s concierge. It doesn’t take long before you all decide on having Italian for dinner, after seeing the restaurant nearest to where the concierge was.

“Wait, it took you guys only half an hour?” you exclaim, recalling how you had to endure at least more than an hour with Jungkook as you waited for your licenses to finish. Thankfully though, the latter had other errands to run so you two parted ways as soon as you got your IDs.

Jimin, always the gentleman, offers to get your group the utensils as well as a few condiments and spices you might need with your meals. “Soomin-ssi, do you know anybody else who’s going to Woocheon too?” he says, setting the silverware atop the napkins.

Soomin thanks Jimin for the thoughtful gesture, sending a small smile his way. You squeal inwardly, wanting to know what happened last night for them to interact like this. “Um, also, I’m not so sure about the others who will be attending Woocheon too...I only got a glimpse of the list, sorry.”

“Ah, no worries about that. So, how was the dinner party last night?”

The two glance at each other, seemingly communicating with their eyes. Oookay, what’s going on between these two? What exactly happened last night? If they wanted to be alone, they could’ve just said so…

“It was fun,” Jimin initiates, plastering what seems to be a painfully wide grin on his face. Soomin nods along with him as she adds more, “Honestly, I don’t remember much about last night, but I do recall Jimin calling me ‘sajangnim’ the whole night. And I told him to not call me that, but Jimin here is a stubborn man.”

“Yeah, you complained about that too last night,” you laugh, cutting your garlic bread into pieces. “Wait, what?” Jimin squints his eyes at you, “Were you there last night? How did you....”

“I’m guessing you both don’t remember calling me last night too, didn’t you?”

“We did?!” they say in unison, making your eyes go wide. “Did I do something stupid?” “Please tell me I didn’t say something I shouldn’t have?”

“Hmm, well, it was quite the conversation last night,” you tease them, wanting to see how far this can go, “plus Chohee was there too so I have another key witness.”

“What?” Jimin squeaks, lips pressing into a thin line, “what’s the key witness for?”

“That, my friend, is up to you to remember and figure out.” You give each of them a wink, before turning your attention back to your pasta.

Transferring all your groceries to one hand, you fish your keys from your purse, shaking it lightly to hear its jingle as you blindly course your fingers through your bag. As the elevator doors open, you see your neighbor down the end of the hall, trailing after a man.

Ayoung hears the elevator bell ding and turns to your direction. She excitedly points her thumb to her back, mouthing ‘new tenant’ to you. She keys in her code and lets the guy in first. The moment he’s inside, she leans by the doorframe and whispers how hot the guy actually was and how much of a lucky neighbor you were going to be.

You shake your head at her, leaving Ayoung to entertain her guest. Of course, not forgetting to pray that she manages to score you a hot man next door.

#jungkook x reader #btswritingcafe #bangtanarmynet #btsghostie #jeon jungkook #bts aus #bts fic #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook fluff

68 notes · View notes

pyreo · 3 years

Text

deltarune megapost

I wanted to make a Deltarune post about the lore and the things that aren’t obvious. And once I do that I wanna focus on why Mettaton is incredibly important to this setting

And also why he poses a problem

Why did Toriel and Asgore get divorced?

Without the setting of Undertale, Asgore and Toriel’s marriage still broke up after they had Asriel. There needs to be a reason though. In UT it was Asgore’s ‘worst of both worlds’ decision regarding killing anybody that fell from the human world, including children. We saw how close they were before this happened. Only something deep and serious caused that rift. In Deltarune, what on earth did Asgore do?

What happened to Dess?

Mentioned a handful of times by Noelle, Dess was her older sister and is mentioned In Undertale.... in that Xbox exclusing casino thing. The way Noelle talks about her, the conspicuous way Noelle gets locked out of her big house - it implies Dess is gone or deceased. Berdly recalls a spelling bee when he and Noelle were younger where she, despite being smarter than him, misspelled ‘December’, allowing him to win.

In the two-player spelling puzzle, it also spells out ‘December’ as Noelle recalls the past and her silhouette regresses to a child while she does so. Being distracted by her sister’s disappearance, rather than pure shyness, could account for her misspelling her name on stage, and it clearly left a big psychological mark for her to have this visual regression in the Dark World.

However, there’s a graveyard in Hometown with no Dess. I heard another theory that she has been missing for years, because where each character’s personal room is made by Queen to reflect their tastes via their search results, Noelle has a calendar where every day is December 25th. This could imply that Noelle continually searches the internet for ‘December Holiday’, her sister’s name, to see if there are clues to her disappearance, but of course the only result you would get is the date of Christmas.

Who is the Knight?

It’s now implied to be Kris, who has been forcibly removing the player’s influence to act on their own. By all accounts the Knight is the game’s main antagonist. Spade King and Queen both mention the Knight as someone who influenced their position - they brought Spade King to absolute power, and showed Queen that creation of new worlds was possible.

We’re led to believe that Kris was doing this, because they’ve been acting outside of the player’s control. Eating the entire pie between chapter 1 and 2 might have been a red herring to cover that they also went to the library and used that knife to slash open a dark fountain there.

However. This has issues. How would they even manage to shuffle slowly all the way to the library and get in the computer lab? The Knight is also the one creating the hidden bosses. They talked to Jevil until he realised he was in a game and he lost his mind; they ruined Spamton’s life by elevating him to success and then crushing him. Whatever the Knight is doing seems to be deliberately planned with key players in mind.

Kris opening the fountain at home at the end of ch.2 can be explained in that you just figured out in Cyber World that anyone determined enough can do this, and so, Kris decided to. So a better question might even be...

What does Kris want?

We have no idea. They are capable of removing the SOUL, ‘us’, temporarily, and putting things in motion we cannot influence. But they also keep putting us back in control afterward. This is hinted at right when ch.2 starts, where if you inspect the cage in Kris’s bedroom they threw us into, the description says it’s inescapable. Meaning Kris came back and took us out, willingly.

They allow us to pilot them through the game. Why? Because they cannot live without the SOUL for long for some reason? Because they’re bad at bullet hell? Why did they slash Toriel’s tyres before opening the fountain, making sure nobody could drive away?? Why did they specifically open the door?

You can find out details about Kris through the creepy way you interact with the townsfolk, who think you are Kris. They play the piano at the hospital waiting room - better than you. They used to go to church just to get the special church juice. It’s all normal, relatable things, not like someone who’s trying to plunge the world into darkness. Judging by their search history portrayed in their Queen’s castle room, they really want to see their brother again. However the castle has a room based on Asriel’s search history too, and Kris (not you) closes their eyes and won’t look at it.

What is Ralsei?

His name is an anagram of Asriel. Is he an extension of Asriel? The slightly flirtier dialogue in ch.2 would point to no. Is he an extension of Kris themselves, given the link between Kris’s childhood habit of wearing a headband with red horns on it, to pretend to be a monster like their family?

Ralsei knows exactly where the Dark World in the school is located, and unlike regular Darkners, knows the world is folded up inside the ‘real world’. There’s a certain whiplash to Ralsei telling you to hop out of his reality into yours and go down the hallway to retrieve all the board game items.

How does he jump from one Dark World to another, without assistance? How does he not get petrified like Lancer and Rouxls? Is this a power level thing because he’s a prince or something else? We definitely do not know enough about Ralsei.

He also says this incredibly suspicious thing after you spare Spamton NEO. Susie was also curious but accepts that maybe it ‘didn’t mean anything’, which is a sure tell that these optional bosses do mean something.

Someone is orchestrating what’s happening, opening fountains, manipulating the rulers, and influencing NPCs to become the optional bosses. Why? I suspect Ralsei for both knowing too much, and pretending something doesn’t matter when it clearly does. Until Asriel actually comes home from college I’m going to suspect he’s involved in this too.

How much does Seam know?

Seam on the other hand knows a lot about what’s going on but is openly withholding information while helping you. He’s nihilistic. He says things like:

One day soon... You too, will begin to realize the futility of your actions. Ha ha ha... At that time, feel free to come back here. I'll make you tea... And we can toast... to the end of the world!

Either this ‘end of the world’ is a reference to The Roaring, where opening too many dark fountains dooms the Dark World and the real one... or, I can’t get out of my head the idea that Deltarune takes place in a fake, or weird reconstruction of Undertale where things don’t match up, and eventually it will have to disappear. After all, powers of determination and creating and manipulating universes are Undertale’s basic bread and butter. How can we look at an Alternate Universe containing the characters we already know and not suspect that? Seam also uses Gaster’s key words, ‘darker, yet darker’, seemingly to clue us in that he’s not off track here.

Why haven’t we seen Papyrus?

This is a bright neon flashing ‘something’s not right’ sign. It’s not like Papyrus’s voice actor was too busy or anything. His absence is noticable and for a reason. Nice of Sans to promise we could meet him despite being aware we’re piloting a child’s body around, though, even if he didn’t follow through.

What locations in town could be used for dark fountains in the next 4 chapters?

If the sequence continues, we have chapter 1 in the school games room, chapter 2 in a computer lab, and chapter 3 in front of Kris’s television, where the aesthetic of each setting influences the world, characters, and enemies in the Dark World created there. Future possibilities include the church, the hospital, sans’s grocery store, Noelle’s house, and the closed bunker.

What the hell’s in the closed bunker

This one’s too obvious, honestly. I think it’ll open for no reason in chapter 7 and a little white dog will bounce out and steal one of your key items and nothing else happens.

Why does Asgore have these

Unlike the bunker feeling like a joke teaser, I gotta believe this is foreshadowing something weird. For example, what does opening a dark fountain in here with the seven flowers do? Does it just take you into Undertale?

Each chapter will have a hidden boss with a ‘soul mode’ from Undertale

Chapter 1 let you stay red, but I think each subsequent chapter is going to change your soul mode to one of the seven colours and design the encounter around that. Purple, yellow, green and blue were used in Undertale, leaving the light blue and orange modes yet to be revealed.

How does Spamton emulate Mettaton Neo’s name, body, and incorporate his battle theme, and the ‘Dummy!’ theme, with no actual connection between them ingame?

This is a really fun one that’s explained over in this post here. Swatch is the Dark World creation from the paint program on the library computers, so he’s able to explain that a Lightner made the robot body decaying in the castle basement that way.

Mettaton went to the library and drew his ideal form, Mettaton NEO, in MS Paint, and the Dark World formed that into a puppet body which Spamton was able to hijack temporarily. So by doing that Spamton was able to channel Mettaton’s appearance, attacks, music, and SOUL mode for the fight.

This might mean that the future hidden bosses, each with their own SOUL mode, might be based on the associated character for that mode (Muffet, Undyne, and Sans or Papyrus), and the boss will take on some aspect of them from their world to leech their fight mechanics.

The Problem With Mettaton

We don’t exactly know what Deltarune is about. It’s an alternate universe where the characters from Undertale already live on the surface, have completely normal lives, but diverge from the storyline of Undertale and, crucially, have not lived through the changes Frisk brought to their lives.

Remember how Undertale had a dozen different ending routes depending on who you befriended? The constant reinforcement in Undertale was that your choices mattered. Through Frisk, you chose to bring Alphys closure about her mistakes, you chose to befriend papyrus instead of attacking him, you chose to help Alphys and Undyne realise their feelings for each other and it’s only doing that that leads to the golden ending and escape to the surface.

Deltarune is the opposite, your choices do not matter. The only thing you can do to force the route of the game to change is to force Noelle into a No Mercy run, which is indirect, and also, a total desperation to mess with an otherwise set course. This version of the characters have not been helped by Frisk - Undyne and Alphys are not together, Papyrus has no friends, Asgore cannot get over himself, and they’re clearly the worse for it, but potentially, you COULD still do these things. In fact it’s hinted that you already are.

But there’s Mettaton.

He’s still a ghost and does not leave his house. In Frisk’s world, Gaster deleted himself, promoting Alphys to royal scientist by bluffing with Mettaton, and she then build him his ideal body. In Kris’s world... Alphys is a school teacher. There’s no barrier to break, no reason to experiment on souls, no Flowey mistake, and no body for Mettaton.

It was sad in Ch.1, but now with the Spamton NEO fight in ch.2, it’s unmissable. Mettaton wants that body and he cannot get it. Alphys in this universe is not going to leave her teaching job and suddenly be able to build a robot. Mettaton is just... screwed out of his happy ending and cannot get it.

So what resolution could this have? If it wasn’t for Mettaton I might believe in the vaildity of Deltarune and Hometown. But. How can you doom this character? If Undertale was the only way Mettaton could be befriended, then Undertale is Primary Universe A and Seam is right - the world of Deltarune is doomed as some kind of aberration. It all relies on how this gets explained in the future, but the core mystery of Deltarune is how exactly this universe intersects with Undertale and whether one is an offshoot of the other. How the Dark World links into that is another complication. But even as we get more fun characters and neat stuff in the Dark Worlds, let’s not forget we have absolutely no idea why Undertale’s characters are living here with no mention of underground or why there are no other humans beside Kris.

#undertale #deltarune #welcome to my giant essay post

38 notes · View notes

jonsa101 · 3 years

Text

Yes, There’s Only 14 Episodes in Season 3 But Sharpwin is On Track and Progressing How They’re Supposed To.

There has been so much talk about this season’s writing and the lack of Sharpwin scenes that I thought I would just address everything in this post.

First, the writing this season is NOT BAD! In my honest opinion I actually think this season has some of the best writing in the series. Compared to season two, the writing is head and shoulders above what we got last year. More than ever before we are diving into these characters stories, seeing friendships form, getting a better look into their home life and seeing secondary characters shine! This is a good thing! These were the things that were so desperately needed in season 2 but we didn’t see this play out. I’ve said this before in my infamous season 2 rant and I’ll say it again, a show can’t solely depend on a ship! It has to have great storytelling and good character development for all of it’s main characters. This is what New Amsterdam failed to do in season two and they’re now making it up for it in season 3. The only area I would say the storyline suffered was the Cassian, Helen and Max “love triangle.” There was definitely more intent with that plot before the pandemic. Cassian was not only supposed to be a catalyst for Jealous Max and Sharpwin but he was also supposed to come in and challenge the way Max did things. Cassian’s whole thing was self care first=great patient care which was the complete opposite of Max and the two of them were supposed to clash. Obviously this completely changed due to the pandemic. You can’t have a storyline about a doctor prioritizing himself first for “better patient care”in the midst of thousands of doctors globally throwing themselves on the frontlines and even loosing their lives to COVID-19. It would have been a terrible look to have that storyline so they clearly scrapped it! What we saw was probably them trying to salvage whatever was left from the original plot while they still had Daniel Dae Kim in the limited amount of episodes for season 3.

Apart from that, I think the writers are doing a fantastic job in terms of character development this season. Arguably I would say that Iggy probably has the best storyline so far and that’s incredible for his character. Tyler Labine is acting his ass off and Iggy’s scenes with Lauren, Vijay and Martin were top tier!!! We are finally getting a Max and Reynolds bromance that was teased in season one but literally know where to be found in season two! It’s great seeing them bond on screen and I hope we get more moments with these two. We’re also seeing Reynold’s “life plan” blow up in his face and we finally have some closure with Bloom. They kept us in limbo for so long! We didn’t know if him and Bloom were truly over but now we finally know. Also, it seems like he and Evie are officially done as well and he might have a new love interest on the horizon. For Lauren, she’s clearly seems to be having a coming out story which is something I didn’t see coming at all. I’m really curious how they’re going to play this out for her and can’t wait to see it unfold. Last but not least, for Max and Helen they are both going through massive character development phases which leads me to my second point.

I love a good Max and Helen scene as much as the next person. To me they’re the ultimate ship and I want to see them thrive and flourish but just because we don’t see Max and Helen interact doesn’t mean that the show isn’t properly developing or investing in their relationship!!!!!!!!The relationship between Max and Helen is so nuanced that their relationship doesn’t hang in the balance because they don’t have more witty, flirtatious, or emotional dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, I adore those moments. Those scenes between them make us the passionate sharwpin shippers we are. At the same time though, we have to truly take a look at why the state of their relationship is where its at now and why from a narrative perspective their current interactions make sense. In order to do this, we have to take a look at where Max and Helen left off last year.

At the end of season 2, Max made a move on Helen and almost kissed her in her office. After this moment occurred he never addressed it and at the time he was still dating Alice. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was the catalyst for why Helen started dating Cassian in the first place. She had practically laid her feelings out there and told Max he was the reason she gave up half of her department. After this revelation and the massive, intimate moment he initiated in her office, he didn’t even have the decency to address it. He swept it under the rug and wanted to keep the same relationship that he had with her like nothing ever happened. Even though Helen was aware about Alice, we now know from season 3 that Helen felt a type away that Max never “officially” told Helen that he was dating her. This is IMPORTANT!!! Max and Helen did not end on a high note in season 2. In fact, the very last scenes we see of season 2 is Helen blowing off Max to go on a date with Cassian and Max breaking off things with Alice. I know this wasn’t intentional due to the season being cut short but it definitely contributes to where they are now.

Fast forward a year later, and not only do we still have a massive almost kissed elephant in the room between Max and Helen but also the trauma of being on the frontlines of a pandemic and going through the biggest social justice movement the world has seen. This is something I’ve said many times over but I’m not sure the fandom recognizes how much these events have permanently altered these characters and changed the dynamics of this show. COVID-19 changed everything. The Black Live Matter Movement for the first time grabbed the attention of the world and changed everything too! Max and Helen are in the process of trying to heal and rebuild their lives the best they can as individuals after such a tumultuous year. At the same time, they are acutely aware of the feelings they have for each other and the UST between them and are carrying the weight of that as well. Naturally guys, the combination of all this is going to change most dynamics in a relationship. Things are awkward and distant because Max and Helen are awkward and distant!! They have a lot of shit that they’re going through as individuals and subconsciously as a “couple.” They are clearly not in a healthy place to be as vulnerable as they once were to each other. And how can they be when their feelings have literally been eating at them for over year?! It’s hard to ignore that and try to force yourself to go back to the way things were. Especially when their feelings have “technically” been out in the open since the end of season 2. They both know what it is! They were steps away from unleashing years of built up sexual tension between them and they went on with their lives like it never even happened. Max walking in on her and Cassian kissing in HER OFFICE and subsequently having that convo with Helen was not for shits and giggles. It triggered the BEAST of his feelings that he had fought so hard to suppress. There is no doubt in my mind that when he saw them in her office kissing, he was having some serious dejavu to their almost kissing affair last year. He‘s in love with her and she’s in love with him but this what happens when you continuously try and run away from those feelings and let it fester instead of trying to deal with it head on. The dynamic were seeing between them now is a result of their unresolved issues and it absolutely plays into Sharpwin’s story. It doesn’t take away from it. It makes sense for where they are NOW!

If we look at season three holistically, you’ll realize that a momentum for something significant happening for Sharpwin has been set through the acting and writing. I got to give it to Ryan Eggold. He has that fire and desire, Mr. Darcy type level acting down to a tee so far. It is so satisfying seeing Max so overcome with his feelings that you can tangibly see it in his body language and hear it in his voice. We have seen Max taken aback by Helen before but we have NEVER seen him like this. I keep on saying it but this is different guys. Something has shifted and it seems like Max is on the verge of exploding. His feeling are burning hot right underneath the surface and it’s a beautiful thing to behold. Last night’s episode was ripe with this type of content and Ryan was in his acting bag! It wasn’t an overtly “Sharpwin” episode but the writing and the acting is so clever and methodical, it will have you thinking otherwise. At the beginning of season 3 Max told Helen that he wants to build something better for Luna and something better for her. Was last night not a beautiful reflection of that? One question asking Max if he has ever loved a black woman put him in the shoes of his patient’s husband and had Max advocating for his wife like he would advocate for Helen if it was her! If that’s not fucking romantic I don’t know what it is and if the alarm bells aren’t going off that there is something deeper at play here with a huge payoff around the corner I don’t know what to tell you! Another moment that sticks out to me like a sore thumb is when Helen was telling Cassian that her brother died. I wrote about this in a previous meta of mind but Helen at her most vulnerable telling Cassian that she feels like she’s running out of time is SO SIGNIFICANT guys!!! It’s not only tell us that she fears that she’s missing out on the windows of opportunities for the wants and needs in her life but it literally sets the pacing of how quickly Sharpwin is going to progress. It is the beautiful freudian slip that tells us exactly where things are headed for these two. To me this is equivalent to Max telling Helen “I love my doctor” and “what if I want you?” in season 1. This episode had no interaction between Max and Helen but it was a MASSIVE Sharpwin indicator through and through! These are just a couple of examples but even their respective journeys in parenting is so Sharpwin driven. So in all I’m not mad in the direction the show has taken to showcase their relationship this season because Sharpwin is deeply interwoven in the storyline this year even if it’s not overtly obvious through emotional dialogue/ interactions.

Also, one thing you have to realize is this, season three is wrapping up a lot of loose ends from season 2 and when it comes to Max and Helen these two points will be/ have to be addressed in the next six episodes.

The Almost Kiss

Whether or Not They Want To Be Together

The showrunners know without a shadow of doubt that the resolution for these two points is owed! If Sharpwin is talking about their almost kiss, there is no way that they aren’t talking about what they mean to each other and what their future looks like together. Both solutions literally go hand in hand and I promise you they are not delaying the resolution for that till season 4. It’s not happening fam. We will see this play out within the next six episodes. So in hindsight, more Sharpwin interaction are on the horizon.

When I was making predictions about this season I wasn’t aware that this season would only be 14 episodes. I’m sad that season 3 is so short but that still doesn’t change my mind for where I think the story is going. Call me crazy but I’m sticking to my guns. There is something about how Ryan is portraying Max that is signaling something huge. Also I just trust the context clues that i believe the show is giving. I trust it! Anyway y’all! If you have any sharpwin question just DM here or message me on Twitter! my username is @oyindaodewale.

Love you guys! ❤️

#sharpwin #new amsterdam #max goodwin #helen sharpe #max x helen #sharpwin meta #new amsterdam meta

79 notes · View notes

monellabella · 3 years

Text

Here’s pt.1 1/2 (sort of) of “Fight or Flight”!! You can read pt.1 here . Enjoy!

Fight or Flight

Fred Weasley x Fem!reader

Warnings: cursing, food mention, injury/ injury mentions

Taglist (Just send me an ask to be added or removed) : @krasivayadarling @amourtentiaa @plant-flwrs @pineapplesandpinas @wonderfilworld @fictionalwhores

Something's gotten into you You don't really look at me the way you used to And I'm hoping it ain't true Every single rumor that I've heard of you say

You were off with someone that I don't know Calling other people on your telephone Kinda wish I didn't know

Since first year, Fred was always pulling pranks on y/n, but she refused to retaliate because then she felt like she’d just be a hypocrite, as she was always complaining about how stupid and immature Fred and George’s pranks were.

But by fourth year, after Fred had pulled a prank on y/n that ended with her being thrown into the black lake in the middle of JANUARY, she couldn’t take it anymore, and it was Game. On.

Y/n started out with the classic colored shampoo prank- Fred’s hair was turned a ghastly shade of yellow for over a week.

Fred got her back by transfiguring every one of her quills and pens into worms.

The pranks kept getting more and more outrageous as they kept trying to outdo each other.

While George and y/n’s friends initially helped them out and kept them in check, it got to the point where there was nothing ANYONE could say or do that would stop them- including the teachers.

They couldn’t care less about the myriad of detentions they’d each get whenever they were caught- in fact, they actually started COMPETING to see who could get the most by the end of the week.

This turned into them seeing who could get into the most trouble without getting expelled.

By April, this had led to a prank war between them that got SO bad, Dumbledore himself had to intervene and make them put a stop to it when one of the pranks resulted in a number of student getting injured- I’m talking broken noses, twisted ankles, chipped teeth, a black eye or two, and one poor kid even broke his wrist.

Needless to say, they both felt terrible.

They were brought to Dumbledore’s office and threatened with expulsion if they didn’t sort this out.

So right then and there, they agreed to a truce- promising to stay as far away from each other as possible, lest one of their arguments leads to other people getting injured.

They each received a month’s detention and were made to personally apologize to every person they’d landed in the hospital wing- not that either of them minded.

As promised, they also started ignoring each other entirely.

It was hard at first- y/n still thought he was a complete asshole and she wanted to remind him every chance she got- but she knew she was on incredibly thin ice with Dumbledore and was already threatened with expulsion, so she held her tongue.

For Fred, it was equally difficult. When him and George purposely made their potion explode, causing the entire dungeon to be filled with a thick, violet smoke and subsequently evacuated, he was so used to y/n chewing him he’d already thought of a response that was sure to get her riled up.

But then he was reminded of their truce.

While waiting for Snape to come and take away god-knows how many points from Gryffindor and give him and George detention, he saw her standing by the wall, arms crossed, not even bothering to look his way. She was chatting with Alicia as they waited with the rest of the crowd to be let back into the classroom to collect their things.

They would always complain about each other. Y/n was always more than happy to remind Fred that he was brainless fuck after every stupid comment or irritating remark.

Fred could write a ten-page essay on how much of a nagging cunt y/n could be sometimes.

There was no question- they hated each other. They didn’t “miss” talking to each other. And the fact that they hadn’t spoken in nearly two weeks was NOT the reason they’d both been acting strange:

“Hey, y/n,” said Alicia. Y/n’s head jerked up, “Hm?” “Are you alright?” Alicia asked, “You’ve been picking at your food for the past 20 minutes, you’ve hardly eaten anything.”

“Oh, um,” y/n sat up and cleared her throat, “sorry. I just sort of spaced-out I guess.” she looked back down at her plate and carelessly pushed the food around. Angelina and Alicia shared a look.

“Y/n…” Angelina began, “Are you sure-”

“Ange, I’m fine, okay?” y/n interrupted, “I’m just tired.” Angelina and Alicia looked at each other again. Y/n noticed it and felt a surge of anger start to bubble up in her chest.

Y/n’s jaw clenched, and she forcefully dropped her fork down over her plate. The resulting clatter grabbed the attention of a few students nearby. She pushed herself away from the table and stood up.“I’m going to bed.” She announced.

As she started walking quickly out of the Great Hall, Angelina and Alicia started getting out of their seats, “Y/n, wait!” Angelina called out after her.

But y/n just sped up, “Good-night!” she called out, lifting her arm up and giving a sarcastic little wave before dropping it down and exiting the Great Hall in a huff.

Fred was no better- he seemed angrier and more easily frustrated these days, and the dark circles starting to form under his eyes were a clear indicator of his recent lack of proper sleep. He was more quiet nowadays, which was extremely odd indeed. He’d constantly space out, and sometimes he’d catch himself staring at y/n in class, both of them quickly dropping their gaze any time their eyes met. Most noticeably though, was that all this had started to affect his Quidditch abilities.

“Oi, Fred, s’everything alright, mate?” George asked after practice one day.

“Yeah, everything’s fine, why?” he replied flatly.

“I dunno, mate, you just seem really distracted. You hardly ever miss a bludger but lately…” George trailed off. Fred sighed exasperatedly, “Look, I just have a lot on my mind lately, okay? For fucks’ sake there’s still some sort of bloody monster loose in the castle! a-and all this bollocks about me nearly getting expelled, I just-” he sighed in defeat.

“Well, d’you want to talk about it? Might help.” George suggested.

“It’s fine, mate. I just need some time alone.” Fred answered, lugging his broom over his shoulder and walking past the locker room as he made a bee-line for the castle.

Fred and y/n were enemies- it was a known fact. So then why was this sudden separation taking such a toll on them? The fact that they had an excuse not to interact anymore was a good thing…right?

About a month or so after the incident had passed, and y/n FINALLY had her free time back after serving all her detentions, y/n often found herself on the Quidditch pitch. She was hoping to join the team the coming year, and she wanted to get in as much practice as she could.

Late one afternoon after practicing with Angelina and Alicia, y/n decided to stay on the pitch after they left. She said she wanted to work on some new strategies, but really she just wanted some time alone.

While she was hanging on her broom by her knees, hovering a few feet above the ground, a voice called out “Nice trick.” She was so startled that she slipped off and landed headfirst in the sand.

“Oh shit,” the voice said as they rushed over to her, “Oh my god, I-I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to startle you like that. Are you okay?”

She was ready to start screaming at whoever it was that made her nearly break her neck, but when she came face to face with Cedric Diggory, a look of genuine concern in his eyes, her rage seemed to subside a bit. A bit.

“Um,” she said, sitting up slowly, “Yeah. Yeah, no, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Do you need to go to the hospital wing?”

“No, no it’s okay.” Y/n replied. She turned her neck slightly and winced. “Um, actually, could you bring me an ice pack? There should be some in the locker room.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Er, I’ll be right back.” and with that, Cedric practically sprinted across the field. Y/n smirked, and couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at his fervor- but it was short lived as she felt another pain at the back of her head.

“Ow,” she mumbled. She gingerly placing her hand at the sight, where a small bump was beginning to form.

Luckily, Cedric had just come back with several ice packs.

“Thanks.” She said shyly. “You sure you’re okay?” He asked. “Yeah I’m fine, just a bit of a bruise probably.” Y/n replied, holding the ice pack to the back of her head. “Well, I’ll stay with you just in case.” He said.

“I appreciate it.” Y/n said chuckling slightly. Cedric slowly lowered himself onto the ground and sat next to her.

“So, um, just curious,” Cedric began, “where’d you learn to do that little trick on the broom?” Y/n laughed, and she began to explain where she’d learnt her unusual talent.

Long story short, they ended up talking until it was pitch black out and they were both shivering from the cold night air. Cedric walked her back to her dorm, using the excuse that he just wanted to make sure she didn’t have a concussion, though they both knew she was perfectly fine.

They walked as slowly as humanly possible across the grounds. When they got to y/n’s dorm, their conversation ended, and they both stood there awkwardly as each of them tried to come up with something to say.

Y/n was still holding the ice pack, which had long since melted, and was now slowly dripping onto the floor.

“I should probably get back to my dorm.” Cedric said, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck while attempting to avoid y/n’s gaze.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, of course,” she stammered, “yeah, no, don’t let me keep you.”

Cedric chuckled. He suddenly seemed to remember something and he looked back up at y/n. “Oh! Um, mind if I take a look at your head one more time?” He asked. “Just to be sure there’s nothing there.” He added quickly.

“Oh! uhh...yeah!” she said slowly, “Yeah, sure.” Y/n turned around so her back was facing him.

She then felt him gently pushing her hair to either side, his fingertips brushing over the back of her neck. She felt a shiver run down her spine, and she knew that goosebumps had risen up where his hand had been, though she prayed he didn’t notice.

“Where was it again?” He asked. “Oh, um,” y/n brought her hand up to where the injury had been, “ ‘round here somewhere, I think.”

Cedric placed his hand diagonally over hers, their fingertips at the same spot. “Here?” He asked softly. y/n felt heat rushing to her cheeks.

“uM,” her voice had gone up about five octaves. She coughed and corrected herself, “um, yeah. About there.”

Cedric chuckled lightly, and she felt his breath fan over the back of her neck. She quickly brought her hand back to her side as Cedric inspected the injury. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke up.

“Well,” he paused, “I don’t see a bump or anything- maybe a bit red where you fell, but other than that, I’d say it’s fine.” Cedric took his hand away, then carefully reached over and pulled y/n’s hair back into place.

Y/n gave a sharp inhale and cleared her throat, “Well, um, thanks.” She said. Y/n turned around and looked up at him, “for, um,” she gestured towards the back of her head, “y’know, making sure I was okay and all.”

Cedric cleared his throat and blinked a few times,“Um- yeah! yeah, of course. No problem.” He said, a blush creeping up over his cheeks.

Y/n looked down and smiled to herself. “I’ll see you around then, yeah?” She asked.

“Yeah, definitely.” He replied.

“Okay, yeah, cool.” Y/n said, her brow slightly furrowed. “G’night, then.” She added. Her face relaxed as she glanced back up at him, trying to subdue her grin. “Goodnight.” Cedric replied. He nodded to himself then flashed her a soft smile as he turned on his heel and walked away with his hands in his pockets. Y/n bit her lip and grinned as she watched him walk away.

She felt her heart beating a little faster than normal, but she didn’t mind one bit. Feeling like her head was stuffed with candy floss, she turned to the portrait of the fat lady and gave her the password; still grinning softly as she walked through the portrait hole and into the empty common room.

78 notes · View notes

unpopularwiththepopulace · 3 years

Text

Chicago at Long Beach, LA, 1992: A Story of Bebe Neuwirth, Choreography, Riots, Revivals, and Relevance

Recently and rather excitingly, more footage made its way to YouTube of the 1992 version of Chicago staged at Long Beach in LA, featuring Bebe Neuwirth as Velma and Juliet Prowse as Roxie.

Given its increased accessibility and visibility, this foregrounds the chance to talk about the show, explore some of its details, and look at the part it might have played as a contribution to the main ‘revival’ of Chicago in 1996 – which has given the show one of the most resonant and highly enduring legacies seen within the theatre ever.

This Civic Light Opera production at Long Beach was staged in 1992, four years before the ‘main’ revival made its appearance at Encores! or had its subsequent Broadway transfer, and it marked the first time a major revival of Chicago had been seen since the original 1975 show disappeared nearly 15 years previously.

This event is of particular significance given its position as the first step in the chain of events that make up part of this ‘new Chicago’ narrative and the resultant entire multiple-decade spanning impact of the show hereafter.

But for all of its pivotal status, it’s seldom discussed or remembered anywhere near as much as it should be.

This may be in part because of how little video or photographic record has remained in easily accessible form to date, and also because it only played for around two weeks in the first place. As such, it is a real treat on these occasions to get to see such incredible and unique material that would otherwise have been lost forever after such a brief existence some 30 years ago.

This earlier revival of the show still feels like what we have come to identify “Chicago” as in modern comprehension of the musical, most principally because the choreography was also done by Ann Reinking. As with the 1996 production, this meant dance was done “very much in the master’s style” – or Mr Bob Fosse.

The link below is time-stamped to Bebe and Juliet performing ‘Hot Honey Rag’. As one of the most infamous numbers in Broadway history, it’s undoubtedly a dance that has been watched many times over. But never before have I seen it done quite like this.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=2647

‘Hot Honey Rag’ was in fact formerly called ‘Keep It Hot’, and was devised by Fosse as “a compendium of all the steps he learned as a young man working in vaudeville and burlesque—the Shim Sham, the Black Bottom, the Joe Frisco, ‘snake hips,’ and cooch dancing”, making it into the “ultimate vaudeville dance act” for the ultimate finale number.

Ann would say about her choreographical style in relation to Fosse, “The parts where I really deviate is in adding this fugue quality to the numbers. For better or worse, my style is more complicated.” The ‘complexity’ and distinctness she speaks of is certainly evident in some of the sections of this particular dance. There are seemingly about double the periodicity of taps in Bebe and Juliet’s Susie Q sequence alone. One simply has to watch in marvel not just at the impressive synchronicity and in-tandem forward motion, but now also at the impossibly fast feet. Other portions that notably differ from more familiar versions of the dance and thus catch the eye are the big-to-small motion contrast after the rising ‘snake hips’ section, and all of the successive goofy but impeccably precise snapshot sequence of arm movements and poses.

More focus is required on the differences and similarities of this 1992 production compared against the original or subsequent revival, given its status and importance as a bridging link between the two.

The costumes in 1975 were designed by Patricia Zipprodt (as referenced in my previous post on costume design), notably earning her a Tony Award nomination. In this 1992 production, some costumes were “duplications” of Zipprodt’s originals, and some new designs by Garland Riddle – who added a “saucy/sassy array” in the “typical Fosse dance lingerie” style. It is here we begin to see some of the more dark, slinkiness that has become so synonymous with “Chicago” as a concept in public perception.

The sets from the original were designed by Tony Walton – again, nominated for a Tony – and were reused with completeness here. This is important as it shows some of the original dance concepts in their original contexts, given that portions of the initial choreography were “inextricably linked to the original set designs.” This sentiment is evident in the final portion of ‘Cell Block Tango’, pictured and linked at the following time-stamp below, which employs the use of mobile frame-like, ladder structures as a scaffold for surrounding movements, and also a metaphor for the presence of jail cell bars.

https://youtu.be/4HKkwtRE-II?t=741

Defining exactly how much of the initial choreography was carried across is an ephemeral line. Numbers were deemed “virtually intact” in the main review published during the show’s run from the LA Times – or even further, “clones” of the originals. It is thought that the majority of numbers here exhibit greater similarity to the 1975 production than the 1996 revival, except for ‘Hot Honey Rag’ which is regarded as reasonably re-choreographed. But even so, comparing against remaining visible footage of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera from the original, or indeed alternatively against Bebe and Annie later in the revival, does not present an exact match to either.

This speaks to the adaptability and amorphousness of Fosse-dance within its broader lexicon. Fosse steps are part of a language that can be spoken with subtle variations in dialect. Even the same steps can appear slightly different when being used in differing contexts, by differing performers, in differing time periods.

It also speaks to some of the main conventions of musical theatre itself. Two main principles of the genre include its capacity for fluidity and its ability for the ‘same material’ to change and evolve over time; as well as the fact comparisons and comprehensions of shows across more permanent time spans are restricted by the availability of digital recordings of matter that is primarily intended to be singular and live.

Which versions of the same song do you want to look at when seeking comparisons?

Are you considering ‘Hot Honey Rag’ at a performance on the large stage at Radio City Music Hall at the Tony Awards in 1997? Or on a small stage for TV shows, like the Howard Cosell or Mike Douglas shows in 1975? Or on press reel footage from 1996 on the ‘normal’ stage context in a format that should be as close to a replica as possible of what was performed in person every night?

Bebe often remarks on and marvels at Ann’s capacity to travel across a stage. “If you want to know how to travel, follow Annie,” she says. This exhibits how one feature of a performance can be so salient and notable on its own, and yet so precariously dependent on the external features its constrained to – like scale.

Thus context can have a significant impact on how numbers are ultimately performed for these taped recordings and their subsequent impact on memory. Choreography must adjust accordingly – while still remaining within the same framework of the intention for the primary live performances.

This links to Ann’s own choreographical aptitude, in the amount of times it is referenced how she subtly adapted each new version of Chicago to tailor to individual performers’ specific merits and strengths as dancers.

Ann’s impact in shaping the indefinable definability of how Chicago is viewed, loved and remembered now is not to be understated.

An extensive 1998 profile – entitled “Chicago: Ann Reinking’s musical” – explores in part some of Ann’s approaches to creating and interacting with the material across a long time span more comprehensively. Speaking specifically to how she choreographed this 1992 production in isolation, Ann would say, “I knew that Bob’s point of view had to permeate the show, you couldn’t do it without honoring his style.” In an age without digital history at one’s fingertips, “I couldn’t remember the whole show. So I choreographed off the cuff and did my own thing. So you could say it was my take on his thoughts.” Using the same Fosse vocabulary, then – “it’s different. But it’s not different.”

One further facet that was directly carried across from the initial production were original cast members, like Barney Martin as returning as Amos, and Michael O'Haughey reprising his performance as Mary Sunshine. Kaye Ballard as Mama Morton and Gary Sandy as Billy Flynn joined Bebe and Juliet to make up the six principals in this new iteration of the show.

Bebe, Gary and Juliet can be seen below in a staged photo for the production at the theatre.

The venue responsible for staging this Civic Light Opera production was the Terrace Theatre in Long Beach in Los Angeles. Now defunct, this theatre and group in its 47 years of operation was credited as providing some of “the area’s most high profile classics”. Indeed, in roughly its final 10 years alone, it staged shows such as Hello Dolly!, Carousel, Wonderful Town (with Donna McKechnie), Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, La Cage aux Folles, Follies, 1776, Funny Girl, Bye Bye Birdie, Pal Joey, and Company. The production of Pal Joey saw a return appearance from Elaine Stritch, reprising her earlier performance as Melba Snyder with the memorable song ‘Zip’. This she had done notably some 40 years earlier in the original 1952 Broadway revival, while infamously and simultaneously signed as Ethel Merman’s understudy in Call Me Madam as she documented in Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

Juliet Prowse appeared as Phyllis in Follies in 1990, and Ann Reinking acted alongside Tommy Tune in Bye Bye Birdie in 1991, in successive preceding seasons before this Chicago was staged.

But for all of its commendable history, the theatre went out of business in 1996 just 4 years after this, citing bankruptcy. Competition provided in the local area by Andrew Lloyd Webber and his influx of staging’s of his British musicals was referenced as a contributing factor to the theatre group’s demise. This feat I suspect Bebe would have lamented or expressed remorse for, given some of her comments in previous years on Sir Lloyd Webber and the infiltration of shows from across the pond: “I had lost faith in Broadway because of what I call the scourge of the British musicals. They've dehumanized the stage [and] distanced the audience from the performers. I think 'Cats' is like Patient Zero of this dehumanization.”

That I recently learned that Cats itself can be rationalised in part as simply A Chorus Line with ears and tails I fear would not improve this assessment. In the late ‘70s when Mr Webber noticed an increase of dance ability across the general standard of British theatre performers, after elevated training and competition in response to A Chorus Line transferring to the West End, he wanted to find a way he could use this to an advantage in a format that was reliable to work. Thus another similarly individual, sequential and concept-not-plot driven dance musical was born. Albeit with slightly more drastic lycra leotards and makeup.

But back in America, the Terrace theatre could not be saved by even the higher incidence of stars and bigger Broadway names it was seeing in its final years, with these aforementioned examples such as Bebe, Annie, Tommy, Juliet, Donna, or Elaine. The possibility of these appearances in the first place were in part attributable to the man newly in charge as the company’s producer and artistic director – Barry Brown, Tony award-winning Broadway producer.

Barry is linked to Bebe’s own involvement with this production of Chicago, through his relationship – in her words – as “a friend of mine”.

At the time, Bebe was in LA filming Cheers, when she called Barry from her dressing room. Having been working in TV for a number of years, she would cite her keenness to find a return to the theatre, “[wanting] to be on a stage so badly” again. The theatre is the place she has long felt the most sense of ease in and belonging for, frequently referring to herself jokingly as a “theatre-rat” or remarking that it is by far the stage that is the “medium in which I am most comfortable, most at home, and I think I'm the best at.”

Wanting to be back in that world so intensely, she initially proposed the notion of just coming along to the production to learn the parts and be an understudy. Her desire to simply learn the choreography alone was so strong she would say, “You don’t have to pay me or anything!”

She’d had the impetus to make the call to Barry in the first place only after visiting Chita Rivera at her show in LA with a friend, David Gibson. At the time, the two did not know each other that well. Bebe had by this point not even had the direct interaction of taking over in succession for Chita in Kiss of the Spider Woman in London. This she would do the following year, with Chita guiding her generously through the intricacies of the Shaftesbury Theatre and the small, but invaluable, details known only to Chita that would be essential help in meeting stage cues and playing Aurora.

Bebe had already, however, stepped into Chita’s shoes multiple times, as Anita in West Side Story as part of a European tour in the late ‘70s, or again in a Cleveland Opera Production in 1988; and additionally as Nickie in the 1986 Broadway revival of Sweet Charity – both of which were roles Chita had originated on stage or screen. In total, Velma would bring the tally of roles that Bebe and Chita have shared through the years to four, amongst many years also of shared performance memories and friendship.

They may not have had a long history of personal rather than situational connections yet when Bebe visited her backstage at the end of 1991, but Chita still managed to play a notable part in the start of the first of Bebe’s many engagements with Chicago.

After Bebe hesitantly relayed her idea, Chita told her, “You should call! Just call!”

So call Bebe did. One should listen to Chita Rivera, after all.

Barry Brown rang her back 10 minutes later after suggesting the idea to Ann Reinking, who was otherwise intended to be playing Velma. The response was affirmative. “Oh let her play the part!”, Annie had exclaimed. And so begun Bebe’s, rather long and very important, journey with Chicago.

In 1992, this first step along the road to the ‘new Chicago’ was well received.

Ann Reinking with her choreography was making her first return to the Fosse universe since her turn in the 1986 Sweet Charity revival. Diametrically, Rob Marshall was staring his first association with Fosse material in providing the show’s direction – many years before he would go on to direct the subsequent film adaptation also. Together, they created a “lively, snappy, smarmy” show that garnered more attention than had been seen since the original closed.

“Bob Fosse would love [this production],” it was commended at the time, “Especially the song-and-dance performance of Bebe Neuwirth who knocks everyone’s socks off.” High praise.

Bebe was also singled out for her “unending energy”, but Juliet too received praise in being “sultry and funny”. Together, the pair were called “separate but equal knockouts” and an “excellent combination��.

Juliet was 56 at the time, and sadly died just four years later. Just one year after the production though, Juliet was recorded as saying, “In fact, we’re thinking of doing it next year and taking it out on the road.”

Evidently that plan never materialised. But it is interesting to note the varied and many comments that were made as to the possibility of the show having a further life.

Bebe at the time had no recollection that the show might be taken further, saying “I didn’t know anything about that.” Ann Reinking years later would remark “no one seemed to think that the time was necessarily ripe for a full-blown Broadway revival.” While the aforementioned LA Times review stated in 1992 there were “unfortunately, no current plans” for movement, it also expressed desire and a call to action for such an event. “Someone out there with taste, money and shrewdness should grab it.”

The expression that a show SHOULD move to Broadway is by no means an indication that a show WILL move. But this review clearly was of enough significance for it to be remembered and referenced by name by someone who was there when it came out at the time, Caitlin Carter, nearly 30 years later. Caitlin was one of the six Merry Murderesses, principally playing Mona (or Lipschitz), at each of this run, Encores!, and on Broadway. She recalled, “Within two days, we got this rave review from the LA Times, saying ‘You need to take the show to Broadway now!’” The press and surrounding discussions clearly created an environment in which “there was a lot of good buzz”, enough for her to reason, “I feel like it planted seeds… People started to think ‘Oh we need to revive this show!’”

The seeds might have taken a few years to germinate, but they did indeed produce some very successful and beautiful flowers when they ultimately did.

In contrast with one of the main talking points of the ‘new Chicago’ being its long performance span, one of the first things I mentioned about this 1992 iteration was the rather short length of its run. It is stated that previews started on April 30th, for an opening on May 2nd, with the show disappearing in its final performance on May 17th. Less than a fleeting 3 weeks in total.

Caitlin Carter discussed the 1992 opening on Stars in the House recently. It’s a topic of note given that their opening night was pushed back from the intended date by two days, meaning Ann Reinking and Rob Marshall had already left and never even saw the production. “The night we were supposed to open in Long Beach was the Rodney King riots.”

Local newspapers at the time when covering the show referenced this large and significant event, by noting the additional two performances added in compensation “because of recent interruptions in area social life.”

It sounds rather quaint put like that. In comparison, the horror and violence of what was actually going on can be statistically summated as ultimately leaving 63 people dead, over 2300 injured, and more than 12,000 having been arrested, in light of the aftermath of the treatment faced by Rodney King. Or more explicitly, the use of excessive violence against a black man at police hands with videotaped footage.

A slightly later published review wrote of how this staging was thus “timely” – in reference to an observed state of “the nation’s moral collapse”.

‘Timeliness’ is a matter often referenced when discussing why the 1996 revival too was of such success. The connection is frequently made as to how this time, the revival resonated with public sentiment so strongly – far more than in 1975 when the original appeared – in part because of the “exploding headlines surrounding the OJ Simpson murder case”. The resulting legal and public furore around this trial directly correlates with the backbone and heart of the musical itself.

I'm writing this piece now at the time of the ongoing trial to determine the verdict of George Floyd’s murder, another black man suffering excessive and ultimately fatal violence at police hands with videotaped footage.

I think the point is that this is never untimely. And that the nation is seldom not in some form of ‘moral collapse’, or facing events that have ramifications to do with the legal system and are emotionally incendiary on a highly public level.

Which perhaps is why Chicago worked so well not just in 1996, but also right up to the present day.

Undoubtedly, we live in a climate where the impact of events is determined not just by the events themselves, but also the manner in which they are reported in the media. Events involving some turmoil and public outrage at the state and outcome of the legal system are not getting any fewer or further between. But the emphasis on the media in an increasingly and unceasingly digital age is certainty only growing.

76 notes · View notes

ladeaeveld · 3 years

Text

Notes on Tevinter Nights

I finished reading Tevinter Nights not so long ago, so here is an overview of what is happening in Thedas. There is probably nothing particularly new since I'm a bit late to the party. However, I find such overviews convenient to refresh my memory when needed. Perhaps it will be useful to someone else!

This overview was meant to be short, but there were so many interesting details... now, it is huge.

Also, since I’ve read the translated version, any help with wording clarifications is greatly appreciated!

The post is under a cut due to Tevinter Nights spoilers (and length).

Global events

- There is a war between the Qunari and Tevinter.

- Three branches of the Qun do not agree with each other. The Antaam, the military branch of the Qun, attacked Ventus and continued the invasion without the permission of the other two. It results in faster progress of the invasion as the other two branches were a moderating influence on the Antaam. The Ben-Hassrath holds a neutral position.

- In Tevinter, the Venatori are still a problem.

- Smaller countries like Rivain and Antiva are under serious threat of the Qunari’s invasion.

- The heads of the Antivan Crows, eight Talons, held a meeting to join their forces, protect Antiva, and withstand the Qunari's invasion. The meeting was disrupted, and four out of eight Talons were murdered. New heads of the Crows will be chosen soon.

- The king of Nevarra is on the brink of death. The Mortalitasi, who have always had great power in Nevarra, continue to interfere in politics.

- All the Grey Wardens were summoned to Weisshaupt.

- We were introduced to a considerable amount of characters from the guild of treasure hunters, the Lords of Fortune.

- Regarding the Inquisition, little is known. All external issues of the organization seem to be handled by Varric Tethras. He gives quests, monitors their implementation, hires new people.

- One of the Executors, or ‘those across the sea’, showed up in the flesh. Solas said they are particularly dangerous and cautioned against interacting with them.

- By now, many have heard rumours of the Fen’Harel’s cult.

Minrathous

- A demon or something far worse is imprisoned under Minrathous. With the help of the Venatori, it is now unsealed (will probably be sealed again later). Yet, to awake it, some blood-magic ritual must be performed.

- The creature was sealed with eight blood-bonded enchanted clay disks. They showed a long and thin four-winged dragon rising from the dark waters.

- It is said that ‘demon’ is not the best word to describe this creature. It is something ancient and mighty, unnamed, something that will subject to god only.

- This ‘demon’ was a part of Corypheus’ plan of making Tevinter great again. According to this plan, Minrathous was to become the cradle of the new world. If Minrathous had not surrendered to Corypheus, the ‘demon’ would have left the city no choice.

- Most of the population of Minrathous could have perished as a result of this creature awakening.

- Enchanted predators and monsters resulting from magical experiments seem to be common in Minrathous.

Elven experiments

- In Nevarra, under a mountain with three asymmetric peaks wrapped around each other, there is a dwarven thaig. This thaig is called Hormak, and it was lost to the darkspawn hundreds of years ago.

- In Hormak, Grey Wardens have found elven halls, where experiments on living were conducted. And it is quite lively in these halls now.

- There is a huge pool with a greyish fluid that reeks of brine. It creates hybrids.

- There were different types of hybrids: darkspawn with other darkspawn, animals with other animals, darkspawn with animals, and even a centipede and a Grey Warden hybrid.

- When a hurlock stepped in the greyish fluid, it was enveloped and then transformed into a drake and a hurlock hybrid.

- The transformed Grey Warden said that the fluid affects ‘them’ (sentient races?) differently. To be transformed, it is not enough to touch it. The fluid should get inside the body.

- All over the place were large repetitive bas-reliefs depicting ancient elven. There were three types of them. The first one showed majestic elven kings and queens with reverent supplicants. The second one showed elven mages healing sick. The third showed big aravels, drawn by herds of hallas, going to distant mountains (one of the mountains had three peaks wrapped around each other).

- Later, those bas-reliefs were described differently. On the first one, elven rulers were arrogant and despised their subjects, who seemed to be in great terror. On the second one, mages weren’t healing sick, but on the contrary, they were injecting corruption into bodies. On the third, a halla had a strange rounded body and very long and ridged horns, and an aravel had bars on its windows, which made it look like a cage.

- Somewhere at the entrance of the halls was one more type of repetitive bas-reliefs. It showed three figures: a supplicant, a priestess, and a monster. On each subsequent bas-relief, a supplicant and a monster were different, while the priestess remained the same. It seemed that with each subsequent bas-relief, her grin grew wider.

- The experiments are directed by some will, which is referred to as a female. ‘She’ is not yet there, ‘they’ are waiting for ‘her’.

- Symbols of horns of a halla are present on each column in the halls.

- According to bas-reliefs, there are twelve such places in total.

The Inquisition members and allies

For completeness, this part should have included information from the comic, but I tried to avoid that.

- According to Tevinter Nights, Varric and Charter remained in the ranks of the Inquisition.

- Charter mentions her lover, Tessa.

- Vaea and ser Aaron show up but without a clear relation to the Inquisition.

- There are two mages, Vadis and Irian, who saved a peaceful Qunari settlement called Kont-aar from an agent of Fen'Harel, thus keeping the chance of subtle peace between the Ben-Hassrath and Tevinter. The Ben-Hassrath returned the favour by directing said mages to Kirkwall, to a certain dwarf, where they intend to go after seeing Val Royeaux.

- Sutherland and Company are still loyal to the ideals of the Inquisition.

- Quentin Calla, who was a bearer of the enchanted clay disk for a while, provided the Inquisition with some information.

- Philliam, a Bard!, (formerly) Sister Laudine, and Brother Ferdinand Genitivi, with the help of the Lord of the Fortune, Mateo, accepted and completed the quest from the Inquisition.

Fen’Harel and the red lyrium idol

- The red lyrium idol's adventures ended. It is now in Solas' hands, or at least he says so.

- There are three descriptions of the red lyrium idol's appearance. The first one, made by the dwarf, the Carta assassin: two figures, too thin to be dwarves, caressing each other. The second one, by Mortalitasi: two lovers or a god mourning the sacrifice. The third, by Solas: crowned figure comforting another one. (Note: I remind you these are not exact quotes but a translation of the translation, and nuances might have been lost.)

- Some qualities of the idol: red lyrium weighs more than the usual one; the idol is liquid inside; it reacts to other lyrium.

- The idol created or revealed a ritual blade.

- Solas calls the idol his.

- The Mortalitasi recounted the events in the Fade in which Solas took a form of a giant wolf the size of a high dragon. He had burning eyes like those of a pride demon and wings of fire which later resolved themselves into lesser demons. The Fade is called his natural home, and it is said spirits serve him gladly.

- Solas pays special attention to the actions of the Inquisition.

- Members of Fen'Harel's cult would rather die than be captured.

- The ritual the Dread Wolf performs already affects the Fade.

Random interesting facts

- The Qunari slowly cut down a part of the Arlathan Forest.

- The Ben-Hassrath are said to know the most about Solas’ actions.

- Among four killed Talons was Giuli Arainai, Eighth Talon, and this might be a good time for Zevran to show up somehow.

- There was a lyrium crystal that produced a light with shades of green and yellow in Hormak.

- Dorian no longer has slaves, only hired labourers.

- Josephine sent Dorian some good Antivan wine. :)

- Vaea now possesses a healing artefact, which seems to be able to heal anything except death.

- There is an example of a dwarven metal prosthetic of a leg, which does not seem to restrict movement in any way.

Since I’ve read Tevinter Nights after the last Dragon Age Day... - Evka became a Grey Warden and did rescue the next one!

- The hunger demon that turned a person into a werewolf in the village called Eichweill was not completely defeated.

- It seems those elven artefacts do strengthen the Veil, after all.

- The Randy Dowager is Ferdinand Genitivi. Five scarves fluttered in shock out of five.

⠀

This is all for Tevinter Nights for now. I did not include plenty of curious facts, probably enough for another post. I hope you enjoyed it anyway!

If you have any corrections regarding facts, or grammar, etc., don’t hesitate to DM me! Or you may leave a comment in my ask box if you want to stay anonymous.

Thank you for the attention, and have a nice day!

#I have made little illustrations for this post!#I will post them separately later #this is the longest text in English I have ever posted on social media #I hope the post is ok #dragon age #tevinter nights #spoilers #spoiler #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #dragon age: tevinter nights #dragon age: tevinter nights spoilers #dragon age: tevinter nights spoiler #da #da4 #dragon age 4

60 notes · View notes

avatar-state-kate · 4 years

Text

Mako and Bolin: Parentification and codependency in identity formation

Most character analysis are of, well, one character. Now usually this is a fine way to look at a character, however as characters (and people) often replicate their family dynamics when interacting with others sometimes it makes more sense to study characters together. For example the narcissistic parenting style of Ozai makes any analysis of Zuko in large part also an analysis of Ozai and Azula as their roles as the scape goat, narcissist parent, and golden child respectively influences their personalities within the family unit and outside of it.

All that being said given the nature of Mako and Bolin’s childhood’s I believe that any complete personality analysis of one brother is dependent on the other.

A quick disclaimer, due to the nature of Mako and Bolin’s childhoods a lot of the traits discussed will be maladaptive or at the very least also explored in their most negative expression- that being said I am not blaming any brother for the effects they had on the other. Ultimately these coping mechanisms and bad traits are the result of situations completely out of either brothers control; the death of their parents and living in acute poverty. Also because that’s how they are/ were in early seasons does not mean they can not/do not develop past it. With that out of the way, let’s get into it.

Yin and yang: fulfilling opposing roles

Within family dynamics every member fulfills a role, while Mako and Bolin are brothers their childhood situation resulted in a parentified child/younger sibling dynamic.

Firstly we all know Mako is a provider/caregiver, he took on the responsibility of making sure himself and Bolin were fed, clothed, and sheltered. As a result Mako is a compulsive caregiver, he cannot not be the caregiver within a relationship. While caring for others is a positive trait, compulsive caregiving is maladaptive, for Mako we often see this manifests in his providing unsolicited advice/help. In season 2 Mako’s attempts at helpfulness are a large contributor to the fights he and Korra have. We also see this in Mako’s need for control, as evidenced in the season 4 rescue of Prince Wu, even though he isn’t being helpful at all Mako cannot not try and direct the rescue. Even though he knows Korra and Asami are completely capable, it’s his job to be in charge and fix things- to be the adult.

On the reverse, Bolin as the younger sibling and object of Mako’s compulsive caregiving has a dependent personality type. Here I believe how dangerous providing Bolin with too much autonomy would have been on the streets paired with Mako’s compulsive caregiving/need for control, resulted in Bolin being unable to form a healthy degree of autonomy. As a result Bolin seeks direction and guidance from others. We can see this in his attraction to controlling personalities, from Mako, to Eska and Varrick in season 2, and Kuvira in season 4. As a result of being managed by Mako, Bolin hasn’t developed any decision making skills, as shown in his general indecisiveness. Bolin doesn’t make decisions so much as attach himself to people who will make decisions for him (see above list).

Mako is introduced into the series as having an avoidant attachment style, he is mistrustful of others and believes he can only rely on himself. This is evidenced in season 1 episode 2 with his immediate distrust of Korra and general standoffishness with her which does not end until she proves herself with Bolin’s rescue. It’s clear that Mako formed this attachment style as a direct result of his childhood- he mistrusts others and relies on himself because on the streets he had to. However, I believe Bolin’s anxious attachment style, which he is often seen as having despite his childhood is just as much directly connected to his childhood. Anxious attachment styles are defined by a fear of losing people and being left alone, a legitimate fear given the death of his parents at a young age- if Mako were to leave Bolin would be alone. For Bolin this largely manifests in his clinginess, he hugs or otherwise touches everyone, and in his constant upbeat attitude. Being upbeat itself is not necessarily part of an anxious attachment style, but for Bolin I believe it is indicative of a need to make others like him, as evidenced by Bolin’s friendliness with Ming-Hua and Ghazan when he and Mako are captured by the Red Lotus. As with Mako’s personality development, Bolin’s is also a survivalist method, as being likeable is a good means of attaining help from others, in Republic City Hustle it is largely Bolin’s likability that inspires Toza to take the brothers in. Bolin’s need to maintain a positive attitude also serves another purpose, as it was the only means Bolin had of providing Mako with emotional support. Due to Mako’s caregiving role and attachment style Mako would not burden Bolin with his problems- his and Bolin’s problems are his responsibility, however Bolin could indirectly support his brother by being easy going and fun. This dynamic is especially apparent again in the Republic City Hustle shorts where Mako is depicted as a fairly stressed and serious kid, with Bolin’s attitude providing him brevity. Finally, Mako’s belief that he has to take on everything himself, and his subsequent taking on everything himself enables Bolin to develop an opposing belief that things will work out in the end. This is seen in Mako’s pessimistic outlook of the need to raise 30,000 yuans for the champion pot in season 1, and Bolin’s optimism that they will raise it. Bolin is naive, but it is a naivety Mako enables.

Throughout the series Mako’s caregiver tendencies often manifest in a need to provide materially, as his main interest in pro-bending is as a source of income, and post season 1 Mako has and maintains a steady job. This is the opposite of Bolin, who’s interest in pro-bending is in the sport itself, and who jumps through a series of careers, from athlete, to Asami’s assistant, to actor, to soldier. We see that Mako has a desire for stability, and this makes sense given how unstable his childhood was. It then seems odd that Bolin, being a part of that childhood would not similarly seek such stability out. Bolin appears to have an inability to be stable. While the material aspect of their childhood plays a role I think this difference is rooted in the emotional stability of their early lives.

Mako is looking to his work to provide emotional stability, when Mako is having issues within his personal relationships he turns to work- picking work over Korra in season 2 and sleeping under his desk at the start of season 3. Bolin however, does not have similar issues with his emotions as he had Mako as a child and is as a result much more emotionally open. Since Bolin does not need an outside structure for emotional management I think instead Bolin is stuck recreating the instability of his childhood into his adult life- he does not know how to be stable so he instead maintains an unstable lifestyle. His stability as a child came from his relationship with Mako so as long as they remain on good terms I believe Bolin will feel secure.

Cast in the same mould: the effects of codependency

While a lot of the brothers personalities developed in response to that of the others the codependent nature of their relationship also resulted in some shared traits, namely conflict avoidance and people pleasing tendencies.

For Mako we mostly see these traits in his relationships with Asami and Korra, as he avoids Asami rather then break up with her in season 1, and in season 2 starts giving the advice he thinks Korra wants to hear as a means to avoid conflict, and the whole amnesia debacle. We also see Mako’s people pleasing tendencies in his inability to say no to Bolin, as Bolin is easily able to convince Mako to join the Krew in the search for air benders and have him act as the escaped fire bender.

Rather then directly running from conflict Bolin’s conflict avoidance manifest in his attempting to neutralize the situation either by playing dumb as a means not to answer, as when Asami asks him if there is something between Korra and Mako in season 1, or by trying to steer the conversation back to a more lighthearted tone. We see the tone switching play out throughout the series particularly with potential arguments between Mako and Bolin, when Mako starts getting heated Bolin neutralizes- and then Mako usually lets Bolin get his way. For example in Republic City Hustle with the argument over Pabu, and post Mako’s rescue of Bolin. Bolin’s people pleasing tendencies also make it difficult for him to initiate break ups as he fails to end things with Eska twice.

Ultimately these are both traits of being in codependent relationships and given Mako and Bolin’s childhoods where they literally only had each other, it is hardly surprising that the pair would form such a bond- and the consequences there of.

Conclusion

In conclusion Mako and Bolin have largely shaped each other’s personalities as a consequence of the familial roles either brother filled.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the brothers both experience the greatest growth in season 4, the season they spend apart. This is not to say that the brothers need to cut ties in order to heal, however I do believe that while together it is all too easy for both of them to revert to previously established behaviour’s; to fulfill their roles of parentified brother/younger sibling. This is evidenced in Turf Wars where we see each brother take a step back, as Bolin joins the force to be under Makos wing, and Mako is back to work despite still being in a sling and unable to bend.

Steps backward are normal, and throughout the series either brother starts a journey towards becoming an individually realized person.

I wrote this post as given the codependent nature of Mako and Bolin’s relationship I believed that a meta exploring the two together was necessary, however at the end of this meta as at the end of the series I believe that the brothers leave it as two individuals rather then one single unit.

#long post sorry #i’ve been thinking about this a lot though #bolin #mako #captain crop top #lok analysis #lok meta #lok #legend of korra meta #legend of korra #meta #analysis #not kate

349 notes · View notes

marjanefan · 3 years

Text

Beyond the Bottle Episode- How Inside No.9 uses a single location

Contains discussion of plot points/ spoilers for Twelve Days of Christine, Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room, Diddle Diddle Dumpling, Tom and Gerri, Love’s Great Adventure, Misdirection, Lip Service, The Stakeout , La Couchette, Nana’s party, Last Night of the Proms , To have and to hold

One of the many interesting aspects of Inside No.9 which many commentators has praised the show for is how each episode manages to tell its story within a single location. It could be argued the location is a character in each story in its own right. I cannot possibly do justice to the many ways the show utilises single locations to tell its various narratives but hopefully this essay will give an interesting introduction.

There is a convention on television of setting an episode of an established show in a single location. These are referred to as ‘Bottle episodes’. Many successful television shows (particularly comedies) have a bottle episode, and they can be found across genres with episodes such as Breaking Bad’s ‘Fly’, Mad Men’s ‘The suitcase’ Dr Who’s ‘Midnight’ and a personal favourite Peep Show’s ‘Neither zone’. Bottle episodes are often used to explore the relationships between central characters in more depth and occasionally allow long held secrets to be revealed. These points are all worth bearing in mind when examining how Inside No.9 utilises single locations/spaces.

The show works with several genres (sometimes within the same episode!) such as comedy, horror and psychological thriller. These genres routinely use a single location to help to create a particular atmosphere, explore how characters interact and play with narrative forms- all things Inside no. 9 do wonderfully. Pemberton and Shearsmith have discussed how these genres, particularly horror, have informed their work. Directors such as Hitchcock (who made films such as Lifeboat, Rear Window and The Lady vanishes ) have utilised single locations in their narratives to create suspense and explore character dynamics. The concept of Inside no.9 grew out of the Psychoville episode ‘David and Maureen’ was inspired by the Hitchcock film ‘Rope’ which is set in a single location. Pemberton and Shearsmith have also performed extensively on stage and bring this experience to their ability to set a story within a single location. It has been commented that many episodes would work well on stage.

Pemberton and Shearsmith also build on the traditions in the horror genre of using a single location such as a haunted house to create atmosphere and tell a compelling narrative Indeed the horror episodes of ‘Inside No.9’ such as ‘The Harrowing’, ‘Séance Time’ and ‘ Private view’ acknowledge and pay tribute to these horror conventions.

Spoilers below

In episodes such as ‘Sardines’, ‘Nana’s party’, ‘Last night of the Proms’ , ‘Empty orchestra’ and ‘The referee’s a wxxxer’ the single space represents the claustrophobic and dysfunctional relationships of the characters. It also represents how central characters are trapped by their secrets and the unhappiness of their lives. This can still lead to a considerable amount of comedy through the frequently uncomfortable interactions of the characters and the various misunderstandings that occur. It is no accident that three of the five episodes listed occur at family parties. These episodes explore the tensions and difficult dynamics of families and the impact of a mixture of enforced joviality and too much alcohol of these events can permanently have on family relationships.

In episodes such a ‘La Couchette’, ‘Hurry up and wait’ and ‘Zanzibar’ we see strangers who otherwise would not have met thrown together in a small space, and the comedy and tension that ensues from the interactions that result. It is interesting to compare ‘La Couchette’ to Hitchcock’s ‘The lady vanishes’ – both of which are set on trains and which deal with characters who are thrown together dealing with a moral dilemma.

In episodes such as ‘The Riddle of the Sphinx’, ‘Tom and Gerri’, ‘Cold Comfort’ and ‘Simon says’ the single space becomes representative of the psychological conflict between the main characters, with control of the space itself being one of the areas of conflict. It is worth noting several of these episodes revolve around a character allowing a stranger into their lives by allowing them into a personal space such as their home, and the subsequent upending of their lives.

Some episodes also uses a single location to explore the psychology of its central character.

In Diddle Diddle Dumpling the house reflects David’s emotional state. It is all too neat and ordered, reflecting David’s emotional repression and failure to deal with his grief. The house also is filled with twinned and paired objects (Is this deliberate on David’s part?). It has been noted that ‘Diddle Diddle Dumpling’ is almost Kubrickian in the care and attention of the set design and uncanny atmosphere it creates. This is probably down to director Guillem Morales.

In ‘Tom and Gerri’ the deteriorating state of the flat reflects Tom’s worsening mental state. The growing number of empty alcoholic drink cans and bottles, junk food containers, and general mess reflect Tom’s growing dependence on alcohol, depression and lack of self -care.

Two of the most interesting uses of the single location are ‘The twelve days of Christine’ and ‘Bernie Clifton’s dressing Room’.

‘The Twelve days of Christine’ uses Christine’s flat as the backdrop for memories of significant moments of her life. The meaning of the flat changes as her situation in life changes. It goes from a carefree single pad to family home to a place where she must raise her young son alone. It is worth noting we see the day Adam moves in and apparently moves out (Jack’s first day at school).

‘Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room’ uses the church hall as a space where Tommy and Len discuss and reflect on their different experiences of their career. The church hall is filled with mementos and props from Tommy and Len’s career and becomes the place Tommy tries to make his peace with his past with Len and how their personal and professional relationship ended. It is very probable Tommy set up the room in the particular way to prompt these memories (We see Tommy moving items around in the opening sequence). Just to discuss the specific use of location in a few other episodes.

I have previously written about ‘The Stakeout’. But just want to discuss again how in my opinion one of the central themes of the episode is how men relate and interact with each other. Thompson and Varney’s relationship plays out in the confined space of the police car.

In ‘Love’s great adventure’ the Mowbury’s house (specifically the kitchen) represents the Mowbury family itself and the strength of their commitment to each other. Patrick will always be made welcome into the family home in-spite of his problems and Alex will find support and company to help in his grief there.

In ‘To have and to hold’, the actual house itself conceals a major secret. The whole foundation of Adrian and Harriet’s marriage is quite literally compromised by what is at its foundations.

In ‘Lip Service’ the hotel room with its slightly sleazy and uncomfortable atmosphere of the hotel helps us understand Felix’s unhappiness and lonliness. It also puts the lead character into a space he is not familiar with which in part helps bring about events at the episode’s conclusion.

Sets are frequently full of detail, helping to add information about the characters and the situations they are in. In ‘The Riddle of the Sphinx’ the props reflect Prof. Squire’s long and illustrious career. In ‘Last night of the proms’ the clutter of the house reflects a family which is burdened by difficult debates about national identity and destiny and which is trapped in its past. Stubagful in his review of ‘Misdirection’ makes the point the fact we are given so much to look at in Neville Griffin’s studio it helps distract us from what is actually happening and how this complements how the episode comments on the art of the magician.

Inside No.9 continues to find interesting new locations to set its stories in and continues to show how you can use a single location to tell a compelling story.

#inside no.9 #steve pemberton #reece shearsmith

16 notes · View notes