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autisticlancemcclain · 10 months

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“Indeed,” Coran says, cutting a glance back at the rest of the gathered team. He meets eyes with Keith, then glances at the stubborn way Lance distances himself from the rest of them, and purses his lips. “We have some matters of our own to settle, I believe.”

———

The walk back to the Castle is silent, and endlessly, endlessly tense.

Lance expected it to be. Well, kind of. He didn’t expect it to be easy. He’s grateful, at least, that he was allowed to say goodbye to Corduroy, to bite back his tears and hold the great beast tightly. He’s grateful at least that the team gave him that kindness, before this strainedness, the discomfort, the side-eyes and significant looks.

Coran isn’t mad at him, which is better than nothing. Coran slung his arm around Lance’s shoulder the second they left to the castle, the way Lance does to Hunk when he’s anxious, and walks next to him merrily humming to himself.

“You did the right thing, child,” he whispers as they climb the steps, lagging behind everyone else. “Were there things you could have done more gracefully? Yes. But you made the best choice and worked with what you had. I’m proud of you.” He presses a kiss to Lance’s hair and squeezes his shoulders gently, allowing Lance a moment to shudder an exhale and compose himself, before letting go and walking off, knowing Lance can handle himself.

Lance straightens his spine. He can handle this.

Everyone stops just inside massive front hallway of the castle entrance. Lance considers just marching forward to whatever room he likes and making them follow him, but he doesn’t quite have that much confidence. As unlikely as it may be, some part of him hopes that no one is even going to bring up this whole…thing. He hopes Shiro is going to clap his hands and say ‘great job, team’, and they’re going to split off to unwind as they always do after missions.

But of course not.

“So are gonna head to the briefing room, or…?” Hunk asks, wringing his hands.

For whatever reason, the idea of locking himself in the briefing room to sit at a table and discuss the matter as they usually do makes him want to throw up. The idea of going anywhere, or waiting even one half second longer to talk about the situation makes him feel like he’s going to explode.

“You promised that we were a team,” Lance blurts. He’s not sure who he’s addressing, and he’s not facing anyone, eyes trained to a random spot on the wall, but the words bubble out of him, as warbled and hurt as he feels. “But you left me.”

Lance can feel his eyes begin to burn, and the humiliation of it makes him hunch, makes the surety of Coran’s earlier words fade to the back of his mind. He can feel the lump in his throat grow larger and larger, feel the unsteady pound of his heart, but he can’t bring himself to move, to look around the room, to meet eyes with his teammates. He forces them open and keeps his gaze locked on the wall, unblinking, terrified to let the water he feels building start to drop, because he can’t afford to look weaker than he already does.

“I try—” He can’t quite manage to choke down the tears, and his voice comes out weak from the failure of it, not quite raspy but reedy, almost. “I try so hard. I know that’s not enough, but —”

“It is.”

Lance looks over, startled at the same choked quality the words have to his own, and finds Hunk in a similar state, cheeks wet and eyes blurry. The rest of the team, upon further inspection, do not look angry with him but distraught, and it shocks Lance, truly, because he knows that they love him, obviously they do, but then why was he less important? Why was his position the wrong one to have? Why was he not consulted with the same seriousness as a random dignitary from a not-yet-allied planet, if not moreso?

“You guys don’t trust me enough to make real team decisions,” he whispers. “I’m not — I’m not smart enough for you.”

Every face looks stricken. Coran, even, looks at Lance wide eyes.

But it is Keith who makes a strangled noise, a sound caught in his throat, and says “No, Lance, that’s not —”

— and something in Lance, that has been bent since yesterday, cracks in two.

“I trusted you the most,” he chokes out. He doesn’t say the words so much as flings them in Keith’s direction, barbed and pointed. “You’re my — you said I was your right hand. You said you couldn’t lead without me. You said there’s no one else you trust more to have your back.” His face twists. His next words are near silent, but nonetheless ring through the hall. “You lied.”

Keith’s hand, extended halfway between them, remains frozen, unmoving, as still as he is. The only part of him that moves is his chest, rapidly swelling and flattening with his quick breaths. Lance’s breathing is just as quick, heartbeat only racketing with every inhale, but none of it is actually managing to carry any oxygen to his lungs, and his vision begins to blur, limbs start to feel heavy.

“I just want to be your equal,” he manages, before his legs begin to give out from under him and he stumbles to the floor, barely managing to catch himself in a sitting position. He sees Shiro twitch out of the corner of his eye, either a startled jump or a reflex to catch Lance does not know, but ultimately he doesn’t move; none of them do, frozen in their spots.

For a while Lance sits there. At one point he puts his head between his bent knees, breathing heavily, blinking the spots out of his eyes. It takes his lungs a long time to start working properly, for every inhale to actually bring in air, but even then it’s shuddering. All the strength and stubbornness, and maybe even adrenaline, that has kept him up through this mission has leaked out of him. He is too weak even to stand.

He feels when someone sits down heavily in front of him. The floor vibrates slightly with the force of it, tingling at his palms flat on the floor.

“You make me nervous,” Keith says quietly. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“That’s a stupid cliche.”

“You’re a stupid cliche.”

Lance’s head is still between his knees, but he can almost feel the intensity of Keith’s wince, the force at which he cringes in on himself. It unfortunately makes him smile.

“…Sorry. Reflex.”

It’s not okay, really. But he’s getting there.

“It’s okay. You’re still learning how to express your big boy feelings.”

Keith kicks him gently on the ankle, and this time Lance looks up, meeting his wry smile.

“I really am,” he says softly. He holds Lance’s gaze for a moment, then his expression shifts to something more troubled, eyebrows creased and mouth turned down, although his indigo eyes hold the same softness.

“You do things…I’ve never seen anyone do what you do. No one can come close. No one else can coo at a fear demon spider, no one else can befriend man-eating vines, no one else can scoop up a scorpion. No one else can tame a grizzly bear the size of a house. That’s all you, Bug Boy.”

Lance’s breath hitches. Keith’s use of the nickname is deliberate, evident in the slow and careful way he said it, and it is a risk. He knows the history behind the name, and Lance’s history in general. Further still he recognizes the precocity of the situation they’re in.

But for the first time since Lance learnt what that nickname really meant, since he learnt how most of his peers felt about him, the name doesn’t sting. In fact, something like pride blooms in his chest, if cautious and surrounded by doubt.

“Then why didn’t you let me try my way? Why were you — why was everybody — so dismissive?”

Keith shrugs. “Honestly? I was floundering. I was completely out of my element and I was stressed out and I just chose the easiest option.”

“The option that was the least fair to you,” Allura summarizes, taking a seat next to them. “And I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Hunk says. Pidge and Shiro quickly follow suit, earnest nods and leaky eyes, all coming to join Lance on the floor. On even footing. Coran’s hand comes to rest gently on his head.

“We will do better next time,” Shiro promises. “You have very distinctive strengths, Lance. I’ll be remiss to forget then again.”

“Ditto!” Pidge says, solemnly holding her hand up.

Lance considers making them squirm and really beg for it, but tears are actively streaming down his face, and also his mouth keeps trying to smile without his permission, so he decides to let it slide.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he threatens.

Keith grins at him. “Good, you Snow White-ass heart attack inducer.”

———

full fic

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meirimerens · 2 years

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I'm sorry if this is a weird question and its totally ok if you dont want to answer it but, if you dont mind, how did you enjoy your experience in art college? Do you have any tips or things to say to those who want to or are considering following the same path? I'm finishing high school in some months and i really dream of persuing art in the Academic's Way but everyday i fear not being able to "get a proper job" or "be a 'productive' functioning member of society" if that's what i decide to do (or even worse: Getting a job, or just getting into college, but starting to dread (making) art. I think this is what messes with me the most. I know how capitalism can make you hate your job and i dont know if i'm ready to. Idk. Go through that when it comes to art-making). I really love drawing and making art and studying and observing art and there's nothing in the world I wish to learn more about than it, but suddenly I feel so much doubt & fear & etc... again sorry if this is too personal, you definitely dont need to answer if you dont feel like it !!! hope you have a good night/morning anyway

Hello my darling i can try to answer that

long to follow:

let me start with a few things/disclaimers of sorts which weighted Quite A Lot in my ability to enjoy college and that might be wildly different where you live:

i went to an art college in France (because. i live here) and through post-highschool education without having to worry once about being in debt in my early twenties. i have no loans to pay back. i could go back to the school and get a master without needing to take one, i could decide to go to a different uni without having to worry about debt. i don't have on my back the Weight you might have, if you're American, to know you might have to reimburse thousands or tens of thousands of bucks in student loans.

another thing: i did not, and do not have still, parental pressure to Get A Job. my parents always have been insanely supportive of my desire to go to art college, and even as i now, today, am overcome with doubts and "damn i should do other studies to have a chance in the job market", they've never been like ":/ you're not gonna go very far in life with that art degree…". they want me to get a job i will Like bc they've accumulated Sucky Jobs their whole lives but they've never mocked me for my art studies path, for my desire to work in the arts/literature. they're not people who value Being A Good Capitalism Pawn And Doing A Sucky 9-5 Until You Die, which i am very thankful for, but it might not be the case for your family, your friends, your culture.

ok now that The Lore is out of the way let me keep going

our art college experiences WILL be fundamentally different unless you go to the Specific one i went in france. the functioning of that school is apparently even very different than its own neighbors within the country, so everything i say will be vastly different for you, period.

art college To Me mostly brought me four things: new ways to see, speak of, decipher, understand, and make art (so valuable); new frameworks to talk about and understand my own art and others (SO VALUABLE!); new skills (namely engraving and photography); and fantastic people to meet. if you do go to art school i Pray you meet people who are so interesting so different from you and do art in such specific ways that you will have your world rocked. to me, just these 4 things fundamentally Changed Me (for the best), and even if i get no money from it i consider that experience so anchored in me.

this is likely a Culture thing, but most of us in art school knew Damn Well we had a lot of chances to not make money with our art LOL. like the recurring joke was "étudiant en art aujourd'hui, chômeur demain" ["art student today, unemployed tomorrow"]. and it wasn't a… big deal? like it wasn't a Hustling Culture at all. number of my classmates were fucking hippies (AFFECTIONATE) LOL.

that's a lot of rambling to say that i wasn't 1) brought up in a Money-Centric family who will push me out of the house so i can go #grind and are perfectly comfortable with me taking time to build a portfolio bc covid kinda prevented me from doing that teehee 2) studying in a Money-Centric school. even if, today as i did then, i'm very much aware i might not have the Best Perspectives For A Bountiful Coin-Getting Future, i still have the ability to Go Back To School if i want without it being a sure way to get myself in thousands of bucks in debt.

our experiences Will be insanely different, so LET ME GIVE YOU A FEW TIPS THAT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT WORK FOR YOU

connect with people. YES it's hard and harder if you're shy you're gonna have to do it.

go to any lectures or whatnot that interest you so you can 1) connect with people 2) Meet New Interesting Faces

if your school brings artists from Outside for workshops/lectures/whatnot, ask them question… look at their work… etc… some schools have Working Artists as professors so if there's one whose work you love TALK TO THEM ABOUT IT.

if something your professor says Interests you, asks them for more reading on it, more references, etc… even if you don't read em! it will 1) show them you care 2) give you more stuff to come back to if you ever DO want to read em lol.

if your school has photography/engraving/design/whatnot classes that interest you, jump on the occasion. it might Unlock something in you, and that's a skill you can market anyways.

if some students in your school decide to make a little.. school newspaper, or artists' group, or this or that, JUMP ON THE OCCASION. again, that might be a marketable skill later. you can even try to make one yourself!

in case of another covid lockdown: CHECK WHICH OF YOUR CLASSES HAVE POSSIBILITIES TO BE HAD ONLINE! a lot of art history classes can be online, but most classes where you learn a new skill With Your Hands will get fucked over if covid hit. my school relied A Lot on you Coming To It and being on your own in huge rooms and working on your own and then meet professors about it, so then covid hit, a Huge Part of the actual work you did in school got fucked over, which made my 2nd and 3rd years Not The Best. if you can, try to have a good balance of classes you can have online and classes you have in-school so you don't get Too fucked over if another plague hits.

if your school organizes like… exhibitions, or has artist calls for projects… keep an eye on em. participate if you can. i didn't participate in a lot during my own years and i'm sad about it :( don't do like me!!! actually bite life as it comes baby.

damn that's long. ok. tldr: we Will have vastly different experiences. that's unavoidable. here ^ were some tips.

from me to you + something i might abide by: if you Love art hugely, but feel like Making It for money so you can eat will make you feel like shit… well i can understand. i can empathize. at the end of my cursus, most students are kinda expected to become self-employed artists, but as you can guess… rough life. SO! if you love art but Making It For Profit fills you with dread, here are a few ideas from me:

study art history! even if you're not interested in being a professor of that (which is also A Good Thing To Be + my 1st year art history professor easily one of my favorites i've had), museums or galleries or institutions sometimes look for people who've studied that for mediation jobs (when you welcome a public and Tell Em about what they're looking at). you can study art history Broadly or focus on little things. for ex. i might decide at some point to go back to uni for a art history focus and maaaybe even prehistoric art focus.

what else. if you an artist Now try to participate in zines, or make your own even if they suck so you can put that on a resume (and again, IF you go to art school and your classmates/YOU start a little school newspaper… that shit goes in the resume!!!)

if you have any time and/or motivation, get yourself some online classes about like. adobe suite (you can pirate it honestly) or generally softwares that Art People Love. again -> marketable skill babey!!!!

i'm not sure if Any of that is valuable to you. i wish you all the best in this Bitch of a world.

#ring ring (answers)#anonymous

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coldasz · 4 years

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French songs

Hey people! So, the other day I was browsing on Tumblr and I stumbled on post of someone asking for French songs to learn French. And since my taste in music were given to me by my parents, I was quite unsatisfied with the answers. So I decided to make my own list of songs that could be great to listen to if you're learning French because they tell us complete stories. I will really detail my personal favourites and then give you a few names that you could look up.

The styles are really different from each other so if you don't like one, just go for the next.

1) Bénabar.

Albums really worth a shot: Reprise des négotiations, Les risques du métier, infréquentable.

He basically started his career when I was born and, since my parents liked him a lot, he’s a big part of my childhood. But I stopped listening at some point because I had heard it too much and it's only when I rediscovered it two years ago that I really realised what a genius he was. The songs from the first album are always talking about things everybody lives but everybody thinks they're the only one living it. It's great for French learners because he's nearly talking sometimes, and the vocabulary is really good (it's normal vocabulary but words you wouldn't find everywhere).

(A few of my) favourite songs: Les Épices du souk du Caire, Quatre murs et un toit, Bruxelles, l'effet papillon, le méchant de James Bond, le dîner, la Berceuse.

2) Camélia Jordana.

Album: Camélia Jordana (there's a whole joke about that title because no one knows if the album is called "Camélia Jordana" or "Éponyme").

This album is really good. Some songs you better not even try because I still don't understand what she's saying. But mainly the lyrics are nice and her voice is great.

Songs (these are the best ones and those that you can understand) : Calamity Jane, Je pars, J'étais une fille, Ou pas, Non non non.

3) Felipecha.

Album: De fil en aiguille.

They only made one album but it was a good album, mainly because they really knew how to make their voices work together. Their lyrics often don't mean anything but they are complete sentences, grammarly correct and the vocabulary is interesting. Just don't expect it to actually make sense.

Songs: De fil en aiguille, Le plancher des cieux, Intra-muros, matin du café, Quelque part, J'aime dormir, Qu'en restera-t-il ?.

4) Hubert Félix Thiéfaine.

Albums: Just go for the best-of aka the concerts albums. I think "40 ans de chansons sur scène" would be a good place to start (that's what I did, expect I actually went to the concert).

HFT isn't young and he grew up in a time when school was really hard and you learnt a lot of things. Plus,I think he was really curious and he read a lot. So he's pretty cultivated and he makes sooo many references that I will never understand! But he uses very beautiful vocabulary (he likes complicated words) and his songs are very graphics. Some are more easy to like than others, so you might want to try more than one.

Personal favourites: La fille du coupleur de joint, Lorelei sebasto cha, les dingues et les paumés, septembre rose, sweet amanite phalloïde queen (they're all in French although there migh be a few English words).

5) Carla Bruni.

Album: Quelqu'un m'a dit.

Carla has not the greatest reputation in France but her first album was quite nice. It's nothing complicated except she sometimes plays in the songs which means that "La dernière minute" just lasts one minute (so she sings a little fast) and in "Raphaël" she plays a lot on words and sounds which may make it harder to understand.

A few favourites: Quelqu'un m'a dit, Raphaël, Chanson triste, le plus beau du quartier, la dernière minute.

6) Joe Dassin.

Albums: Les Champs-Élysées, La fleur au dent, Joe, Joe Dassin, Les deux mondes de Joe Dassin.

If it sounds like old music it's because it is, OK? No need to be judgemental... Joe Dassin is also my childhood so not very objective here, it's Madeleine de Proust everytime I here his songs. But they're understandable and usually funny and/or cute, so why not give it a try?

Favourite songs: Siffler sur la colline, les Champs-Élysées, les petits pains au chocolat, la Fleur au dent, l'Amérique, Les Daltons, Salut les amoureux, et si tu n'existais pas.

7) Daniel Balavoine.

Albums: Un autre monde, Starmania, Le chanteur, Sauver l'amour.

These songs are not recent either but they are a big part of the Variété Française. Everyone in France knows "Mon fils, ma bataille" (at least, anyone I've ever met which doesn't mean much, I guess...).

Favourite songs: Le chanteur, l'Aziza, Tous les cris les SOS, La vie ne m'apprend rien, quand on arrive en ville.

8) Renan Luce.

Albums: Le clan des Miros, Repenti.

Like basically every artist on this list (except HFT for obvious reasons, you'll know if you listen to the lyrics), this is my childhood. A new album was released recently if I'm not mistaken but I haven't listened to it so I can't say anything about it. But it's nice, especially those ⬇️.

Favourite songs: Repenti, la lettre, les voisines, la fille de la bande, on n'est pas à une bêtise près.

9) Francis Cabrel.

These are classics according to me although I’ve had my fair share of him and try to avoid him a little.

Songs: Gare au gorille (Brassens's version is better), petite marie, je l'aime à mourir, la corrida, les murs de poussière, il faudra leur dire, l’encre de tes yeux, encore et encore.

10) Jean-Jacque Goldman.

Goldman is not the best artist but he got a lot of his fanbase thanks to his lyrics, so his songs should teach you a few things.

songs: Pas toi, tournent les violons, comme toi, il changeait la vie, né en 17 à Leidenstadt, je te donne, envole-moi, à nos actes manqués, la vie pas procuration.

Since I have so many people and songs left, I'll shorten each artist to a few songs.

11) Patrick Bruel.

Casser la voix, Alors regarde, je sais bien que j'l’ai trop dit, place des grands hommes, qui a le droit, mon amant de saint-Jean, au café des délices, marre de cette nana-là.

12) Renaud.

BIIIIG WARNING about Renault, he purposely f*cks up the grammar and vocabulary! So, it's a great training if you want to learn to spot mistakes! He also uses quite the amount of Verlan and words that I only know because of his songs.

Songs: en cloque, laisse béton, miss Maggie, dès que le vent soufflera, mistral gagnant, ma gonzesse, marche à l'ombre.

13) The list: here will be songs I didn't want to put the artist of on the post.

Battez-vous (Brigitte)

Africa (Rose Laurens)

Dis-moi (BB Brunes)

L'Aigle noir (Barbara)

L'assasymphonie (Mozart l'opera rock)

Belle (Notre-Dame de Paris)

Ma préférence (Julien Clerc)

Un homme debout (Claudio Capéo)

Merci (Grégoire)

Cœur de loup (Philippe Lafontaine)

Comme un boomerang (Étienne Daho)

Double Je (Christophe Willem)

Beau malheur (Emanuel Moire)

La Bohême (Charles Aznabour)

Il jouait du piano debout (France Gall)

Écris l'histoire (Grégory Lemarchal)

Ton invitation (Louise attaque)

Je suis un homme (Zazie)

La fée (Zaz)

Hanoï (La Grande Sophie)

Roméo kiffe Juliette (Grand Corps Malade)

La liste (Rose)

Mon mec à moi (Patricia Kaas)

Sans contrefaçon (Mylène Farmer)

On va s'aimer (Gilbert Montagné)

Le blues du businessman (Starmania)

Toi et moi (Guillaume Grand)

Demain sera parfait (Jean-Louis Aubert)

Le sud (Nino Ferrer)

La chanson de Prévert (Serge Gainsbourg)

San Francisco (Maxime Leforestier)

L'homme de cromagnon (Les quatre barbus)

Je m'en vais (Vianney)

J'ai demandé à la Lune (Indochine)

New York avec toi (Téléphone)

Est-ce que tu aimes ? (M feat. Arthur H)

I'll stop here because that's already a lot.

I hope it’s going to be useful to some!

Enjoy!

#chansons francaise #chanson #songs #french learning #french #francais #learn #french songs #french song

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phoenotopia · 5 years

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2019 October Update

Woops, I slipped by my stated blog date since I thought September had 31 days for some reason. So here's the end of September update, 1 day late.

--------------------------

Writing... And more writing.

That captures the majority of what transpired the last 2 months. The biggest cutscenes have been scripted as well as most towns, so we're really close... I estimate that the writing will conclude within the next 3 *weeks* and we will actually have a game that can be played from start to finish... Don't get too excited though, because then begins the game's vigorous playtesting phase and more polish. And since I've never launched a commercial game before, the next steps (PR, marketing, lot checking, ESRP rating application, trailers recutting, release date finding, etc) are uncharted territory. The only experience I have is launching a flash game 5 years ago, and that was a lot quicker and a lot less complicated... And so, I can't gauge how long it'd take nor give an accurate release date yet. However, as soon as I do know, it'll be sure to post it here first!

--- COMPUTER BROKE DOWN ---

Among the events that transpired in the last 2 months, my computer actually broke down. It would manifest as the computer shutting off about 10 minutes after turn on. And this was really worrisome because if my computer croaked, it would be a huge blow to the game's development. The time it would take to restore the specific dev environment I had set up would be considerable...

Luckily, it was repaired after 4 days of intense troubleshooting. I'll spare you the long list of events that transpired, but eventually my brother and I were able to narrow the problem down to non-spinning fans on the graphics card. I was able to zippo-tie two chassis fans together, and insert them below the Gfx Card's heat sink. Much cheaper than replacing the whole graphics card!

(please hold until the game's done)

--- MORE PLAYTESTING CHANGES ---

I'll discuss here some additional fixes/changes to the game based on my brother's previous playthrough (still going through that list, heh...)

F. Remember you can climb roots

I remember from a public demo I attempted (3 years ago?), that a lot of people got stuck at these roots, not realizing they could be climbed. Since then, we did a few things to ensure that the first encountered roots would be climbed. The roots' colors were brightened so they would stand out. A character, Ernest, comments that others have climbed the roots. And finally, standing in front of the roots will cause the "Press UP" tutorial prompt to appear.

So how did my brother fare when I did the playtest 2 months ago? He climbed the roots, thankfully. He climbed the next few sets as well. However, later on, in a dungeon, he forgot that climbable roots were a thing. Back to square one. So there's a lesson here... Even if you teach a player something, there's no guarantee that it'll stick.

So in the picture above, you can see my next attempt at an invisible hand to remind the player. In the red circle, notice there are 4 blue dots. These blue dots pulsate wherever there are climbable roots (They're a lot more visible in motion). The idea is to tie an unusual image to an action. I anticipate when the player sees 4 pulsating dots, they'll react by attempting a variety of actions, before eventually concluding that you can only climb them. And that this experience will be more memorable for it - to be conjured up whenever the player sees 4 blue dots. I look forward to observing what happens with the next blind playtester. (Btw, in reading this blog, you have disqualified yourself from playtesting :P)

G. Instant Food Eating

As stated in a previous blog post, the player can't eat from the menu. Food must be eaten in real-time. It's up to the player to find a safe spot to eat, away from interruptions. Some foods can be eaten more quickly, proving more valuable in a fight.

However, what about on the world map?

You can't use tools or items on the world map, which means no healing at all! I saw my brother opening the menu and tinkering around, confident that it could be done. Because why couldn't you?

Indeed... he didn't say anything, but I wrote it down as a feature to be added. And after adding it, found that eating from the menu was fun! After years of using the new system, to have the old flash system's implementation of healing again was refreshing.

And so I decided to add it as a possible new characteristic of food. There's now a special class of food, "candy", that actually can be used from the menu (world map or no). Rest assured, candy items will be balanced - costing more than regular food, and their healing effects will tend to be less than other more timely items.

(the “eat” subcommand appears for "candy" class items. The candy icon on the bottom-right denotes a candy class item)

H. Fishing Hud finally updated

This wasn't something discovered through playtesting, more of an unfinished task that sat around for far too long.

(Old fishing hud on left. New fishing hud on the right)

In the old fishing hud (perhaps an example of minimalism taken too far), the fish's health is represented by 10 white dots. In the new fishing hud, the fish's health lines up and mirrors the player's own stamina. Whoever outlasts the other wins!

I had actually been sitting on the finalized graphics for over a year. For some reason, the last 10% implementation of a feature tends to be the most boring. In game development, I find myself jumping around often, working on whatever can catch my interest. That's good for ensuring that the game's development is always moving forward in *some* capacity. But now at the tail end of development, only the most boring tasks are left...

--- WRITING ---

So I mentioned writing. One of the things written in the last 2 months was the entirety of the "monster" village's NPCs. This time I also roped in Pirate (formerly artist, now also writer), since she's quite familiar with their lore having drawn them and their town.

When I wrote trolls, I wanted to give them a unique speech, not unlike the Mr. Saturns from Earthbound. My idea was to capitalize all words and then strip away as many unnecessary words as I could, while keeping the meaning identical.

Pirate then took the result and improved upon it, establishing rules their language could follow to be consistent:

Simplified negatives (no instead of not/don’t/can’t/etc);

Object pronouns replace subject, possessive and reflexive pronouns (me/name instead of I/my/mine/myself).

No ‘be’ verb or it’s conjugations (am, is, are).

No verb conjugation.

No articles.

(A sample of troll language. Harpy language is similar, but no caps, and a few other variations.)

Another neat thing that happened naturally over the past two months was a construction of a "timeline". The timeline takes the form of a 2D chart, with the major players lined up on the left, and the years up top. There are new characters this time around, and having the timeline as a reference, helps to make sure the lore is on point.

(the timeline, blurred. An internal tool to aid writing)

--- FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY ---

Speaking of which, it was the game's 5 year anniversary this past August 20th. Thank you to Firana for reminding me!

Five years... Five Years... T_T (I thought I'd be done by now)

It'd be neat to do a longer in-depth retrospective on this game's long development, but I'll wait for the game to be properly finished first.

--- FAN ART ---

We have 3 lovely fan arts that came in the past 2 months.

(Art by Amaury Lorin)

I like how this picture selectively colors the night sky, comet, and fire. Very artistic! Amaury also submitted a poem (in French). Here it is!

Parmi cette clarté que la nuit seule émet, Au-dessus des radis géants qui s'épanouissent, Nonobstant sans souci les herbes qui frémissent, Sous un ciel calme et sombre, un village dormait.

Éprise de liberté, une puki part Là-bas, quelque part où des prés plus verts la tenant. "Oh, s'écrie un enfant, une étoile filante!" Veille, enfant : pour tes grands yeux curieux seuls, ce soir,

Indifférente au sol précipité sur elle, L'étoile tombe... Écoute, enfant, elle t'appelle; L'étoile : "Suis-je un ange, un messager du ciel?

Avec mes feux, suis-je augure, ou suis-je étincelle? Gloire d'un monde haut, d'une nuit éternelle... Et j'arrive!" --Dors, enfant, tes yeux ont sommeil...

...mais demain...

(Art by LittleLys Owo)

Gale smiling and flashing the peace sign. Nice! I like the skillful use of vectors to draw the lineart.

(Art by Shafiyahh)

Shafiyahh, who also drew fanarts in the last update, returns with this cool picture of Gale sporting the katana, a hidden weapon that... JK. I Love the composition of characters, and the flashy background - very anime-esque!

That's all for now. Next update will come at the end of November!

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bangtanprose · 7 years

Text

A theory post, or a reflection, whatever you want to call it--

I’m prefacing everything with how hard BTS have worked, and how much they deserve to get the recognition and attention they are receiving for their blood sweat and tears; their art; their music. BTS have truly inspired many of us, and I think, even though many people think their story is based on who’s-dead-and-when, I do not think that. I think they are showing us their stages of maturing; the most beautiful moments in life.

I’m also going to note that when I am talking about the members, I am not talking about them as actual living breathing human beings, but the characters they are portraying. BTS are showing us a story and, while metaphorically it may be relevant to how they are feeling, there are many physical aspects which are purely fiction and products of their and Bighit’s imaginations, all coming together to make one clusterfuck of an amazing story, so to remain respectful to them as artists, I speak of them (Jin, Yoongi, Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook) as their characters in music videos, not them with personal lives which I wish to respect. This is also why I am not going to touch on lyrics, as music is a personal art which, they have said many times, is written for themselves and their listeners, and that is why I am isolating the usage of their lyrics from this theory/reflection/whatever. Music is them, BTS, the boys we love in their live shows and interviews, cinematography and directed videos are their characters, the story of their imagination they wish to share with us.

I’ll also be referencing to many other MVs/short films that BTS have, not just Spring Day. I’ll be adding more when Not Today comes out, because I believe there will be more in there.

The ones who walk away from Omelas (have a pdf, if you have not read it yet) and Demian are stories which BTS have highlighted this era, and by no coincidence, they both lie on the shoulders of maturity, and growing up without the world being as crystal pristine as our innocent and naive youth believes. Omelas does not specifically link the realisation to one’s eyes cleared of youth, but this is why Demian is included. Demian isn’t the main character of Demian, but he is the best friend of him, Sinclair: the boy who suddenly sees the world is not a realm of peace and there are many, many, evils, but Demian is the older boy he meets, mature and understanding, and holding Sinclair through his time of uncertainty. Omelas sees the suffering of one child and although the city is great and bearing fruits of celebrations, one child suffers, and through adolescence, children learn about this kid wasting away in its own excrement for their happiness. Sometimes they cry and wail and shout “how is this fair!” but some go quiet. Some cease to speak, and one day, they walk out of Omelas, the city of perfectness and comfort balanced on the shoulders of a child that is death ridden, sores covering its thighs.

Do we see the moments of realisation Jin was having in Run? He did not run with the rest of them; he drove their cars and held their petals. But he never walked away; he wants to treasure the moments (taking polaroids, filming them) he is living with his friends. He sees the child of Omelas suffering, but he stays, because, after all, Omelas is the perfect city, and no one knows anywhere else.

But we do not know who the child is, nor Demian nor Sinclair, nor dearest Eva, a character so minor in the book that we could also bring other characters like Kromer and Beck and Pistorius into the equation.

Fast-forwards to Wings, and Demian is brought in. The short films demonstrate each different parts of the different characters. Jungkook’s short film is a dream sequence, much like many of those about Demain that Sinclair has. If one was to jump to conclusions, it could be easy to assume Jungkook is Sinclair, as we also saw maturity blossoming in him in the Run era – he stares blankly at the camera while his friends party, until they disappear. But I am not here to give a direct answer. I am here to open an idea so people can contribute and add to this, with whatever they think. He is also crying, crying as a portrait bleeds and he is pleading for his hyung; the video is heavily linked with that of Yoongi’s, with the burning piano and the car crashing. It was heavily debated around the time of its release who the main portrait was of (which, if anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear, as I'm also intrigued by the idea that it could be them all), but we also need to think about all our senses. We hear water and fire – associations? Jimin, to water with his suicide attempt back in I Need U. Yoongi, setting a room on fire, or Namjoon, dropping a cigarette on the gas station. And the wings which distract him? Taehyung, the fallen angel of the Blood Sweat and Tears era. There is something to be recognised between the sound of wings and Taehyung being illustrated as someone who has, or, more likely, had wings. So is Jungkook looking back upon these moments, or is he dreaming before they happen? Remember, in Demian, Sinclair dreams a lot of Demian before he even meets him and draws his face when he is conscious. Nothing happens for no reason if we’re thinking analytically. Perhaps, if we want to assume Jungkook is meant to represent Sinclair, then Taehyung is the idea or friend that is stopping this process of fulling maturing like Demian. Taking it back to Omelas, Jungkook is seeing too much happiness in his friends (Run), so there is something he must not be seeing (the child, suffering at the weight of a city’s happiness), which he soon sees in his argument with Yoongi. Jungkook is maturing and gaps are forming in his mind, before he has seen the whole picture. Then, he sees the true suffering of his friends, and takes the first baby steps out of Omelas.

But if we believe Jungkook is Sinclair, then who is Demian? Many believe Jin – for most of the HYYH, he is the one who is separated from the rest of them heavily. He films what they do. But are we sure Jin is meant to be Demian? Is he not clinging onto the youth and treasuring its moments while it lasts? In Awake, Jin’s short film, he is not paired like any of the others. Jin is well and truly alone. He is also unwell, shaking and hallucinating as he sees the members in polaroids. He is locked in a room that he wants to escape and claws at the walls and he is burning the petals, assumably symbolising the same petals we saw in I Need U. Now, there’s a thing about the lilies which could shift theories either way – lilies symbolise that the soul of the departed has received restored innocence after death (source). HYYH shows us the youth of BTS. If I Need U is a song about happiness within sadness, then Run is about sadness within happiness, as Jungkook has said (source). There has always been their innocence, yes, but each member is well aware of unhappiness. I’m not saying that the happiness we see in these videos means they’re dead, but it is something that should be kept in mind. As I’ve said before, I, personally, do not think this story is about death, but growing up and maturing. If we’re going to amp up the meaning of Omelas, it could read a little more like: the lilies symbolise that the soul of those mature, can still be happy once they have walked away from Omelas (the utopian city BTS have built themselves in their friendship, and innocence). Jin in Spring Day is seen picturing with his fingers at the bottom of an encasing staircase as the other members run up the stairs, occasionally checking on their hyung at the bottom. He is frowning, however, like he does in Awake. He’s taking a picture of what is leaving him, like the candles extinguishing as soon as the flash hits them.

Maybe Jin is the one stuck in innocence. Drowning, falling, all while he is awake. But he leaves the room when the sound of a train passes, and he walks down the corridor, around the corner. I think this is the acceptance. Acceptance that he cannot grow old and mature while his lifeline lays in what once was. Jin boards the train. Away from Omelas. Where he can grow old, with those he loves most and has separated himself from long enough to get sick because they have matured without him, but left the door open for him. Jin boards the train away from Omelas where he can grow old with his best friends; he burns the lilies and destroys the idea that they will still be innocent on the other side of their youth.

Another thing which I have seen people speculating is that Taehyung is the child suffering for the weight of Omelas’ happiness. It’s easy to assume this, from the scenes of him being caged in Stigma, but I don’t think so. They are all suffering in some way. Taehyung placing his head on the lines of a railway track does not have to mean it is his suicide, like him jumping off things in the prologue and BST does not mean so either. He is self-destructive. We see him walking along the lines later on in the video, and in the train with the rest of them at the end. Perhaps, like Jin, Taehyung is slow to mature. He is still living recklessly, like we see him in Stigma. But there is a point where he becomes locked in this type of living, unable to escape but his friends (the dog, the snow, white, dog) are able to. I’ve seen screenshots from the Spring Day on other theories, and Taehyung, at first in the scene where Jungkook goes through the last door, is not there at the beginning of the shot, but appears in the shot of them running from behind. Is this to do with the angle of the shot, or is Taehyung the last one to mature? Was it to do with the phone call he made in the prologue?

This leads me to the pairings, and how I think they are interpreted into this idea.

To start with, I’ll talk about Taehyung and Namjoon. We assume (according to the prologue), after Taehyung kills his abusive alcoholic father (OR just has bloodied hands), he calls someone unnamed, but referred to as ‘hyung’. He asks to see him again. If we aren’t going to straight away assume that the bloodied hands come from his father, then we can rule out it being the murders of most members since none of them particularly have a bloody ‘death’/attempt in I Need U as we do not know if the car actually hit Jungkook and killed him, despite references to it in First Love and Begin, and it could have very easily been non-fatal. The blood on his hands might not have been his father's. Jungkook is definitely a possibility, and this is just something I have realised as I am writing this, because in Reflection we hear and see a lot of shattering glass, and in Stigma we see one shot of the same glass shattering. But that’s for Jungkook – back to Taehyung and Namjoon. In Run, they are partners in crime, running from the police and causing havoc and getting arrested together. But in their short films, the next step on, they are very much separate. Taehyung is getting arrested on his own for petty crimes, the graffiti of Abraxas is something which should not be ignored, either, as Abraxas is the god who is both good and bad. The Devil and God in one being. Perhaps this shows Taehyung as understanding the concept that all is not good for him, as we see him caged and his last hope runs away. Did something happen to Namjoon that meant Taehyung can no longer see him, or be with him? My vague, very vague, idea of this timeline would be that Namjoon matured and left behind the petty crimes of adolescence and his point of realisation could have been the murder of Taehyung’s dad. In Reflection he hears the phone ringing but the phone box is locked and written over it is ‘LIAR’, in red paint. However, this could also be a second phone call, or not even from Taehyung. In the Japanese Run MV, Namjoon is holding the phone in a phonebox, but then he drops the phone from some kind of emotion. Was that the phone call in the prologue? Perhaps the chains around the phone box in Reflection are the barrier between maturity and immaturity that Namjoon cannot break, even though he wants to help Taehyung out of this complex. He wants to answer the phone call which is Taehyung's plead for help; he wants another chance to help Taehyung. If we want to go the other way, the reflective metaphorical and emotional way, is Namjoon calling himself a liar because he holds a hatred only for himself, because he lied to himself for many years of his youth that this is all okay, because we are still in Omelas, and he left before he could help anyone else. Nonetheless, Namjoon left Taehyung behind even if he never intended to, and Taehyung continues his petty crimes alone. Until he boards the train, with his best friends.

Now, Hoseok and Jimin. I haven’t really mentioned them much, have I? In Run they are together, but in what looks like hospital beds. In Lie and Mama, this is taken a step further with Hoseok emitted to a psychiatric ward, with an illness noted as Munchausen syndrome, and I must note I do not take psychology, but from quick research (source, the NHS is the british health service, so the most reliable source I could find) it is a disorder where the person suffering from it is not ‘ill’ so to speak, as in nothing is physically or, only sometimes, mentally wrong with them, but they feign being ill and purposefully try to catch illnesses. This could be because they have problems establishing their own identities, or forming meaningful relationships, and, as a result of feigning illnesses, they can adopt an identity that means they will have unconditional support and acceptance and have their own place in a hospital if they are emitted, allowing them into a social network. So this alone tells us a lot about Hoseok, as well as raising a lot more questions. Hoseok is given pills and they are for a placebo (they do nothing) effect, but he hallucinates and illustrates his erratic behaviour as the effect “kicks in”. Now I’m sure there’s a relevance to this, perhaps showing us that Hoseok has acquired a dependance on substances to stay sane, but we can obviously see that he is not. After his trip – his bright, blinding, infuriating for him, trip – he wakes up and can walk out the room. He sees the image of the trees Jimin pointed the camera towards (some kind of subliminal messaging between the two? Like Sinclair and Demain?), and takes a bite of his snickers, and walks away as the image transitions to a mother cradling her son. To go back to our set of stories, in Demian, Eva (the mother of Demian) gave Sinclair chocolate bars when he was upset. What I’m thinking is that something was taken away from Hoseok, some love, to the point where a simple reminder of it can make him feel better than any pill. Pills are a bad time for him, love is a good one, like the parallels of sadness and happiness we see in I Need U and Run. Of course you can see where I’m getting at – Jimin. Jimin was taken anyway from Hoseok, or the other way round, but nonetheless they are separated. Jimin’s short film denotes a similar atmosphere to Hoseok’s, in that they are both in isolation, somewhere away from other people and they are being watched. Jimin is shown a number of cards, shrugs at the first one (which is the same as Begin, and in the context of Not Today, Jimin has no hard feelings towards Jungkook, even perhaps he understands Jungkook has moved on and feels similar) before looking down at his lap, then falls backwards into a different sequence when shown the second. The second is also the one which we see concluding his short film, so my assumption is that this is meant to represent himself. So he falls back into his usual fate--his true self beyond the impersonal questions anyone can ask him; then he is shown a card inscribed with Eva all over – Hoseok? He reaches to the bed next to him, an empty, empty bed, and we see pills retracting from the glass like in Mama. He is then taken into a new sequence with his song, and we hear a gunshot at some point; in Demian, Sinclair was shot when he fought in the war, and found Demian in the bed next to him. Is, then, Hoseok feigning his illness so he can see Jimin again? I understand that is quite a…farfetched idea, like a lot of mine are, but I don’t think it should be ignored. Coming back to edit this after the Not Today MV, this signifies quite a bit. I’m still confused after Not Today came out as I am overthinking quite a lot of it, but I will explain my thoughts on that later on. Back to Hoseok and Jimin, they have both been taken away from each other in medical facilities, losing their sense of love as they are left cold, and, in the case of Jimin, out in the open.

So, last pairing, Yoongi and Jungkook. I’ve already spoken quite a bit about Jungkook’s short film, so I’ll now go into depth on Yoongi’s. The narrative is a little more obvious here, but there’s still a lot left unsaid. Yoongi is so in love with the piano that he will break in to play one, yet when he plays he loses interest, but then is drawn out of the shop by a whistle – the same one we heard in Begin – into the road. Now, the next bit is obviously the climax of the piece because a car speeds towards Yoongi, and he dodges at the last minute. We hear no sound immediately which indicates impact with another being, but after the vehicle collides with the shop, there are streaks of blood coating the floor. Another thing to note: there is a hand sticking out the window and holding the top of the frame as it goes past Yoongi. My thoughts are immediately back to the blood on Taehyung’s hands. Could this be it? He then runs back to the shop, back to his piano, back to his first love, but the piano is burning. I think, this could be interpreted as the idea that Yoongi is so desperately searching for comfort, but when he finds it, it does not stay for long. I believe Jungkook was the first one to find maturity, despite his age, so this shows that Yoongi is looking for Jungkook, so desperately, but he’s gone. Matured. There is also their sequence in Run too, where Yoongi is intoxicated and Jungkook is hugging him, wanting him to just stop. But he doesn’t and Jungkook punches him. Now, coming back to write this just after the Not Today MV has been released, I can already see that many people are going to believe that the drawing with blood on it in begin is Yoongi ‘shot’, but I don’t think that’s the assumption to come to. Jungkook punches Yoongi and there is blood on the stairs – I think that is what the blood splatter is supposed to show. Not a gun shot. I also believe that, yes, perhaps Jungkook was hit by the car, although it was not fatal. Like the piano burning, as Yoongi walks away from his first love, his first best friend, he loses Jungkook. Jungkook is hit by a car and he matures from then on. Yoongi is left behind. But there is also a sense of regret, especially in Begin. He wakes up from a nightmare about the incident, only to fall back into another one, plagued by imagery of Yoongi. I think he is saddened and feels like he has betrayed Yoongi by moving onto maturity, he sees that Yoongi has fallen into self destructive habits by setting a room on fire with gasoline, all while he is inside. Jungkook doesn’t want to accept this. He shakes his head while calling for his hyung, calling for him to stop, and then the wings distract him. As I’ve already mentioned these present the image of Taehyung, Jungkook sees more of his friends suffering. The drawing, before of Yoongi, turns into a bird, much like the kind of bird used to present the imagery of Sinclair maturing in Demian.

And for Spring Day, Jungkook thinks he is riding this train away from Omelas on his own. He sits in the carriage on his own, until the end, where he stirs from his rest and his hyungs are all with him at their destination. It’s not their final destination, as the shoes Jimin’s been holding all through the MVs are tied to the tree. I feel like this video explains the idea of the shoes better than I could ever of had, and I’ve seen a lot about the Sewol ferry disaster and spring day being a tribute that while the high school students may have never peaked to maturity and adulthood, they will not be forgotten. I know BTS like to delve into social issues, but I don’t think that they have intentionally isolated this incident. They might have intended to show this through their message of this youth will end and all will be okay concept, but there is still more to talk about, in terms of BTS’ concept and not including the Sewol ferry disaster, as, alike the creator of the video I linked, I am also hesitant to jump to the conclusion that this is exactly what they are trying to show. We know in the BST teaser pictures, Jin wasn’t wearing any shoes, and at the end of the Spring Day MV, there are only six people standing there instead of seven. Was Jin, somehow, left behind? Never there to begin with? The one who died (I know I have said I don’t think this is a matter of death in theories, but I’m not going to completely ignore it), and his spirit is living with them and, like the lilies the white shoes are symbolising that the soul of the departed has received restored innocence after death? Where he was sick in Awake, has he finally reached peace through death? Or has he moved on from them. Mature still, but left them behind as friends to find a new beginning. Like spring, Jin moving on does not have to be the definite end and then a beginning, but rather an awakening. He has lived through youth in every other season, but in spring, he is surrounded by something different: something, or somewhere, he was meant to be.

I also feel like I need to address Blood Sweat and Tears a little more for complete clarity – the line which sees the music video to a halt “he too, was a tempter. He too, was a link to the second: the evil world with which I no longer wanted anything to do,” along with everyone but Taehyung and Jin staying behind as the rest run out of the museum, the museum with which the painting “the fall of the rebel angels” is held in. My idea of this is that leaving the museum (Omelas) is them maturing, them avoiding the fate of falling as the angels of youth and rebellion – Icarus is also heavily hinted (if you do not know the story of Icarus, it is one of a boy who flew too close to the sun, on wings of wax, when he was too exhilarated by the thought of flying to remember his father’s warning, and plummeted into the sea), perhaps showing that if they continue to challenge maturity until they cannot go any further, they will fall. The wings they are given with the chance to fly out of from immaturity will melt. Taehyung, in this instance, is the tempter. He does not follow the rest, but stays with Jin and pulls him further into the idea that only youth is where he can be happy, hence, in Jin’s short film, there is “a bird fighting its way out the egg” and “who would be born must first destroy a world”, the egg, or world, is the one that Jin has been drawn into by Taehyung. If we want to take the religious incantations of Abraxas, too, we could say Taehyung doesn’t have to be a fallen angel. If Abraxas is the god of the Devil and God we know, then Abraxas recognizes both good and bad. There are no angels like other gods have, angels without free will. Taehyung could very easily be an angel of Abraxas. So, why did he lose his wings then? Because he started to only see bad when his friends left him. If the other members were his ‘wings’, the good side of life, when they have matured he is left in the immaturity where, for the lack of a better phrase, everything is shit. In his eyes, it is not fair, but isn’t Abraxas meant to be the god who is fairer? So he rebels. Rebels against the god of fairness because his situation is, by far, unfair. And he flew too close to the sun. He knows what he is bringing Jin into is bad, but when even his own God cannot be fair to him, there is a blur in his perception of moralities. He is the one who gives Jin the statue to kiss. By Jin kissing the statue, he is sympathising with Taehyung and staying with him, because Taehyung has tempted him into the idea that only all can be good when the rest of them were there at the time of youth. That is the world Jin must destroy before he can be with the rest of them. And I’ve already mentioned the wings representing Taehyung in begin, but yet again, Taehyung is the tempter.

This also relates to the many apples placed in the Wings era – like Adam and Eve, the apple, or, the forbidden fruit, is something the snake tempts them to take a bite of. In awake, the apple is on Jin’s plate but he does not eat it. He does not want to accept that there is a difference between good and bad: he heavily considers it, but in the end, he drops it on the floor. Jimin, in Lie, takes a bite out of his apple, freeing himself from the ‘lie’ he has caught himself in. The ideal life of youth untainted. In BST, we also see Yoongi and Jimin sat opposite to each other in a room, Jimin is holding an apple and Yoongi is holding a blindfold. Does Jimin realise the dangers of youth first, and help Yoongi? They are paired together in the short films, after all.

Talking of the pairings in the Wings transitions – Hoseok and Taehyung. Now, unlike Jimin and Yoongi, and Namjoon and Jungkook, Hoseok is not in a room with anyone else. In fact, the only interaction he has is the beginning with Taehyung, and later on alluded that the arrow he shoots splatters paint against Taehyung’s profile. In Mama, Hoseok pulls feathers out of the walls and becomes almost terrified at the sight of them – I know this could be overanalyzing again, but it could also be meant as a double meaning as well as Jimin. I think Hoseok knows what Taehyung is doing. He doesn’t want his friend to fall too far into this hole the murder of his father has launched him into. But Hoseok cannot help him because he is elsewhere (matured? In his own hell? In Mama? I’m not too sure) and he is living with the guilt that he can tear the feathers from Taehyung’s wings, but cannot bring him up. Icarus flew too close to the sun and his father could not save him, after all.

Another thing I question is if the order of which they exit the museum, is the order of which they mature. Jungkook and Namjoon, Hoseok, Jimin and Yoongi, and then Taehyung and Jin. According to everything else I’ve taken into account, it seems reasonable, yet as to why Hoseok seems secluded from the others in context of Spring Day too, I am unsure.

I guess I have to bring Not Today into this now, too. I don’t think anyone was shot. I think it was what it could have been, since Jungkook’s eye in the shot of him seeing him standing while the others have fallen is not his eye in that moment. What happened is “not today”. It’s what would have happened if BTS didn’t leave Omelas and stayed there until youth came as the death of them. Reality would have caught up with them. As for the formation of their running, I think it makes a lot of sense for it to be like it is. Jungkook leads, and Jin and Taehyung are just behind him because, in a way, those two are the ones closest to peaking maturity before they fall into the ideologies that youth is home and happiness. One thing I have noticed, however, is that it doesn’t appear Namjoon was “shot”. Whether this is a case of he should have been when filming the MV, I don’t think Bighit would have made that mistake, so I believe that the time from which that could have been is on the timeline where Namjoon and Jungkook were the only ones who had made it out of Omelas and on the train we see them on at the beginning of Spring Day.

One thing I am very sure of, however, is that BTS will take this concept further. I hope they do. I hope I can continue to question every detail because honestly, I find it fun. It’s something different. I’m a literature enthusiast who nerds out over essays, so obviously this is something I would enjoy. BTS have shown us the ways they can take this concept further and the potential it has, and I really hope they do. If anyone wants to talk about this theory/stream of consciousness, then please do. And If anyone wants me to go into depth about certain characters/pairings/concepts, then I would more than happily do so. This is such a wonderful idea, and I am unbelievably proud.

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Mathematicians tried to prove how hard The Witness is

“Each clue type ended up offering a whole interesting problem to study.”

The Witness is a curious, persnickety game. On one hand, it is heralded as a champion of pretentiousness. On the other, it is widely lauded for its mathematical complexity. The Witness’ rules are mapped by symbols on its chessboard grids, and although they look quite simple, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye – so much so that some study what exactly makes The Witness’ problems difficult at a doctoral level.

Erik Demaine, a professor in computer science at MIT, primarily focuses on research and teaching, and often combines the two by tasking students with solving open problems in groups. To do this, Demaine uses a highly collaborative style of research called supercollaboration.

According to Demaine’s site – linked above – supercollaboration is an innovative research method where researchers solve complex problems without concern over authorship or ego. It is, quite literally, supercollaborative, in that positive and effective teamwork takes precedence over individual input. If you’re especially interested, I’ve embedded a video of a class taught using a supercollaborative model below.

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Demaine was one of the main authors of a 2018 paper called Who witnesses The Witness?, which provides an exemplary case of supercollaborative research while simultaneously extrapolating what makes The Witness a game worth studying for doctoral mathematicians and computer scientists: primarily, its difficulty.

For those unacquainted with the term “witness” in a maths context, it’s a specific value subbed into an existential statement – basically, it is an entity used to differentiate between something existing, something existing in at least one case, and something existing given certain conditions. In the case of The Witness, the lower-case witness has to do with the ways in which puzzles are actually solved – it’s about which strategy is successful, and what path(s) through a grid represents that.

So, who witnesses The Witness? As it turns out, it is remarkably difficult to tell – and that’s why it’s so academically enticing.

Demaine’s team often studies games in order to search for efficient algorithms, and to analyse computationally-intractable problems as a means of tracing innovative solutions that are often derived out of left-field.

“In general, we wanted to try to delineate the boundary between computationally easy and computationally hard aspects of The Witness’ puzzles,” Demaine says. “Some puzzles use one clue type, while others use a mixture of clue types. We wanted to understand which mixtures make puzzles that are hard for computers to solve, and thus probably [also] difficult for humans, and which are actually easy for computers to solve – though that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily easy for humans.”

“The latter is rare in general when analysing puzzles in this way, so the monominoes case was pretty exciting,” he adds.

Hardness proofing is one of the key aims of Demaine’s research and teaching. The art of proving hardness is difficult: it involves finding a proof for why a problem is difficult by transforming or reducing it into a separate problematic form. Along the way, interesting algorithms that can be applied elsewhere are discovered – grappling with the computationally difficult begets solutions for simplication, which means arriving at something that is ultimately easier to use by further complicating what’s under the hood.

Adam Hesterberg is another researcher credited on Who witnesses The Witness? Although he was a PhD student in maths at MIT when he started working with Demaine, he now studies computer science at the post-doctoral level. To him, The Witness looked “computationally interesting”.

“I hadn’t played The Witness until we decided to work on its computational complexity, although I do do similar logic puzzles,” he tells me. “I like board games, either German-style economic resource management games like Gaia Project or anything by Vlaada Chvátil, after whom I named my apartment. Our research group occasionally writes papers on other games.”

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Demaine’s group started work on Who witnesses The Witness? in 2016, two years before it was published as a FUN (from the International Conference of Fun with Algorithms) paper in 2018. It would eventually culminate in a full journal paper co-authored by 10 academics from across three departments at MIT, and one university in Germany.

They’re not solely focused on The Witness, though: Demaine’s group grapples with computational systems in a variety of other games, too, usually applying the same hardness proofs in order to prove difficulty and discover alternative algorithms.

“The computational complexity of games and puzzles is a topic dear to my heart which I’ve been studying since around 2000,” Demaine explains. “My first paper was about Clickomania, which we recently revisited.”

Demaine points to his papers on Tetris being NP-complete – meaning it can be solved by a restrictive class of brute force search algorithms – and Super Mario Bros. being PSPACE-complete, which is a lot more complex – as some of his most popular achievements in the field to date. But what makes The Witness stand out? “When The Witness came out, it seemed like a natural game to tackle, offering a variety of different puzzle/clue types within it,” Demaine explains. “Because part of playing the game is figuring out what the clues actually mean, we first warned the group we were going to study The Witness, and encouraged those who wanted to avoid spoilers to play the game and figure things out for themselves.

“A couple of weeks later, we jumped into analysis, and each clue type ended up offering a whole interesting problem to study.”

Jeffrey Bosboom, who has been a PhD student at MIT since 2011 and co-authored Who witnesses The Witness?, first encountered The Witness when it was brought up during one of the team’s weekly supercollaboration sessions. “That means I was spoiled about most of the puzzle types,” he tells me. “But I don’t feel being spoiled reduced my enjoyment when I played it; the intro puzzles in each area are didactic anyway, and it was still fun to feel the transition from explicit knowledge (being able to tell someone the meaning of a symbol) to implicit knowledge (looking at a puzzle and immediately recognising what the solution must be).”

One of the most unusual things about The Witness’ puzzles is some are Sigma_2-complete, Demaine notes. For those who are a bit unsure what that means – which I certainly was! – Sigma_2-completeness refers to a point in the polynomial hierarchy, which features a variety of different levels of problem-solving complexities.

NP-completeness involves solving problems using brute force; Sigma_2-completeness is a step up from that; and PSPACE-completeness is more complex yet again, having to do with polynomial time (the amount of time it takes for a computer to solve a problem) and time complexity (the computational complexity of the amount of time it takes a computer to run a specific algorithm).

It’s a little difficult to parse, but according to Demaine The Witness’ puzzles – at least the ones featuring “antibodies,” which I’ll get to in a minute – are planted firmly in the middle of the three, existing as “a level up from the usual NP-completeness, while being far below PSPACE-completeness common to puzzles that require exponentially many moves – like sliding blocks or Rush Hour”.

Rush Hour is the classic traffic jam logic game.

The clues labelled as “antibodies” in the paper, which are the logic rules that cancel the effect of other clues in the same region of a given puzzle, have an inherent “necessity” qualifier that requires a slightly more hypothetical approach to problem-solving. This increases the computational complexity and provides an interesting array of problems that can be transformed into one another in order to come up with new, efficient algorithms (transforming one problem into another form is also a quality of Sigma_2-completeness).

“Another unusually interesting case was The Witness with just monomino clues,” Demaine adds. A monomino is a single square of a polyomino, which is a shape formed by stitching equally-sized squares together. The Witness features grids in both forms.

“[It] reduces to hexagons on the boundary of a puzzle, which both turn out to be solvable by an efficient algorithm,” Demaine adds. Reduction is the transformation of a problem into another, more complex variant of itself, and is often used in the study of hardness, whereas “hexagons” refers to edges or vertices that must be visited to satisfy a solution. As Demaine notes, this is an important stage of discovering and defining algorithms.

“In such puzzles, the goal is effectively to find a path visiting specified vertices and/or edges on the boundary of a planar graph, which is a kind of subset Hamiltonian path problem,” he says. “Our algorithm to solve this problem is of interest beyond just puzzles.”

“Subset Hamiltonian path fits into the broader field of graph algorithms (not puzzle analysis), so it contributes to that broader field,” Demaine adds. “We were originally just trying to solve a fun puzzle – monominoes in The Witness – and we encountered a graph problem of broad interest, and then solved it because we wanted to solve the puzzle.

“But the contribution ends up being much broader than ‘we solved a puzzle’ – we also came up with a graph algorithm that might help solve other problems.”

“My favourite puzzle in The Witness is the audio-less audio puzzle in the anechoic chamber room in the town,” says Bosboom. “It’s an easy puzzle, just checking you understand the correspondence between the two different types of audio puzzle panels, but it’s the puzzle that gave me the most pronounced feeling of thinking along with the puzzle designers.

“In terms of my academic career, The Witness is a very rich source of interesting problems in computational complexity, that is also popular and interesting to many other people,” he adds. “It’s a very good – [but] not perfect – game. There’s nothing mystical about it.”

In Demaine’s eyes, most games are sufficiently interesting to hazard study from the perspective of computational complexity. “Even games with minor amounts of puzzling can be pretty interesting,” he explains. “For example, two of our co-authors on The Witness wrote another FUN 2018 paper about how cooperation in games like Team Fortress 2 or Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart makes these games computationally very, very difficult.”

“It’s hard to formalise what it means for a game to be ‘fun,’ ” he adds. “But I think one reason people like playing games is because they’re challenging, and this research formalises what it means for a game to be challenging, so we get at some fundamental aspect of fun in games.”

According to Demaine, there are researchers who complain that studying games is recreational, with the implication that the field is a waste of time.

“But I think recreational computer science research is an important avenue of study,” he says. “In particular, it gets students excited about doing research, and it makes the research especially fun to do.”

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/mathematicians-tried-to-prove-how-hard-the-witness-is/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mathematicians-tried-to-prove-how-hard-the-witness-is

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