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curewhimsy · 4 years

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Symphony Saga World info dump

For a friend to read.

In Symphony Saga: Resonate, the main characters are all around the teenage years, and some OCs will show up as UTAU characters. For example, Reisei will be Reisei Kiyone. Rhona Aequor, who already has an UTAU voice, will be a character as well.

Ok so the Haku and Neru part starts out really jarring but I like stories where characters escape an awful life to find happiness. And this part symbolizes escaping turmoil and finding peace.

———

HAKU AND NERU’S STORY

December 1st.

Haku and Neru are two misunderstood, troubled 16-year-old students who meet at lunch. They both have autism and are ostracized for it. Haku shows Neru her stuffed kitten Snowbell, and they bond and talk about nice things.

There was pizza for lunch, but it ran out because the bullies pushed Haku and Neru to the end of the line. Haku and Neru had to eat nasty asparagus coleslaw casserole.

Everyone starts talking about Haku and Neru and teasing them.

Bullies start sticking Neru with needles during her walk to gym class.

In gym class, Neru can’t walk far because the lunch upset her stomach. During the 5-mile marathon outside that the boot camp teacher made the class do, Neru lags behind in the rain.

The rain turns into a thunderstorm while Neru is outside. The entire school loses electricity during this time. Meanwhile, Haku has a breakdown in math class because she thinks about her grandmother’s death, and has to go to the counselor’s office alone in the dark. And the school is big and even scarier in the dark. Haku then trips and falls down the stairs.

Neru ends her school day in the nurse’s office, and getting painful rubbing alcohol being put in where bullies sticked her with needles. The counselor’s office is nearby, and they see each other there.

Haku and Neru meet again after school, and decide to run away. Haku’s mother is always late home from work, and Haku’s dad is nowhere to be found. Haku’s mother is very neglectful and Haku is convinced her mother wouldn’t miss her. Meanwhile, Neru is an orphan and lives with her mean grandmother.

Haku and Neru pack away their important things and run away to the mall where they find a secret room with a magical mirror that transports them to the magical world of Whimsica, in the town of Speckle Town. After stepping through the mirror, Haku’s plush cat Snowbell comes to life.

They are sent out through another mirror that is in Whimsica. This portal is a one-way portal, meaning they cannot go back through the mirror to get back to Earth.

The mirror is located in a wooded area in Speckle Town.

Snowbell, who is now alive, jumps from Haku’s arms and begins to wander off.

Haku and Neru follow after Snowbell and notice a very magical feel about the woods. They eventually make their way out of the forest and into Teto’s bakery.

But I literally cannot think about what happens next.

———

MORE DETAILS

Haku remembers her older half brother Dell from when she was a toddler. Dell would always comfort Haku when she cried, and was warm and kind. Dell would protect Haku when her parents fought. One day, Haku’s parents went through a bitter divorce. Her father took Dell with him and left Haku alone with her mother. Haku was 6 years old, and Dell was 7. Haku never saw Dell again.

Now in Whimsica, 10 years later, 16-year-old Haku finds out that Dell, now 17, is part of the evil organization on planet Monochrome, along with his father. Dell is now cold-hearted, sinister, and malicious. Everyone hates him. Haku is heartbroken at how her brother changed. However, she feels inside that this is not the real Dell. Haku feels that their awful father must’ve pressured Dell to turn to the dark side.

When Haku was 7 years old, she was introduced to her 5-year-old cousin, Miku Hatsune, to heal from the pain of losing her father and Dell. Haku and Miku got along and played together until Haku was 10 and Miku was 8. Then, Miku and her mother mysteriously moved away, vanishing without a trace...

6 years later, the two reunite in Whimsica.

———

THE UTAU CREW’S ADVENTURES

Uta Utane (AKA Defoko,) 14 years old, is an artificial humanoid from a dystopian planet where music is banned and kept a secret by the government. This planet mass-produces androids. This planet is at war with another dystopian planet and they both produce androids for the purpose for fighting the war. Due to a manufacturing error, the one of the “Default female-1” (codenamed “Defoko”) androids ended up significantly more sentient. She hated the war and fighting, so she rebelled. Defoko feels very depressed and empty about her life, and hates being a machine. She uses her advanced aerospace engineering intellect to build a spacecraft that can flee from the planet unnoticed, and arrives at the magical world of Whimsica where things are better on December 3rd. She changes her name to Uta Utane, after some kanji she saw on the sign of a karaoke cafe around her new home.

(*Uta chose to name herself after kanji from the cafe, because the musical sounds coming from the building made her feel something “warm and poignant.” The night when she visited the cafe, Taya and his friend Ritsu were inside, having a session of singing karaoke. Taya was singing a solo in attempt to get over his shyness. The sound Uta fell in love with was actually Taya’s singing voice.)

Uta begins living alone in a small, worn-down apartment. She gets a part-time job repairing computers to make ends meet.

Uta describes herself as being self-aware, but lacking the ability to feel euphoria. (Think of it as a sort of depression.) She wishes she were a “real girl” so she could feel this emotion. Despite this, Uta is a very kind, considerate, wisecracking, and compassionate spirit.

Uta enrolls herself in the local magical high school. It is a very, very strange school.

On her first day at school, Uta‘s first period class is cooking class. She ends up making everything explode. She doesn’t feel like she fits in. On her way to her second-period class, Uta ends up meeting Taya Soune, her shy 15-year-old classmate.

Taya is very late to class because a mean girl named Tei threw his monocle in the big wishing well and ran off, leaving Taya having to change into his wetsuit, dive in the well and find his monocle, and then go back to the dressing room and change back into his suit and tie outfit. Uta meanwhile is wandering the chaotic hallways of the school, completely lost.

Sometimes in Adventure Academy, when class is in session and students are supposed to be in class, there is a small chance of a monster spawning in the hallways. If a student needs to visit the bathroom or walk down the hall for any reason during a class session, a hall pass can protect students from these monsters.

A monster ends up spawning in the hall as Uta and Taya cross paths. It’s six feet tall and looks like a cross between a penguin, bear, and snake. And it has lots of neon spikes. Neither Taya or Uta have a hall pass on them, so it attacks them!

In Whimsica, monsters are creatures with no souls that typically do nothing but cause destruction. They are mostly made of negative emotions.

Taya may have some magic, but isn’t very good at fighting, so Uta uses her epic android powers to defeat the monster.

When monsters in Whimsica are defeated, they sometimes drop various kinds of items. The monster drops game tickets to use in the arcade. Uta doesn’t know what they are.

Taya thanks Uta profusely for defeating the monster. He is in awe of the new student’s powers and asks where she is from. Uta is very shy, which Taya doesn’t expect since she is so good in battle. She has a quiet voice that sounds monotone and a bit artificial. Uta finally spits out that she is an android from space. Taya realizes Uta may be sensitive about this, so he vows to try and keep this secret.

Taya tells Uta his name and begins to get to know her. He guides Uta on her way to her second period class, magic class, which they have together. After school, Taya says he will go to the mall with Uta and show her the arcade, and use the game tickets they acquired from the monster.

Uta’s third period is math class, which Taya isn’t in.

In math class, Uta meets two new friends named Teto and Momo. Taya’s third period class is music class. He has this class with with Ritsu, along with Ritsu’s other good friend, Ruko.

After third period class, is lunch break, and everyone meets up together.

Fourth period, Uta has computer coding with Ritsu. Taya has cooking class with Teto and Momo, and Ruko is alone in language arts.

Fifth period, everyone has gym class together.

Finally, in sixth period, Uta and Taya have Whimsica Geography class together. Everyone else is together in dance class.

Uta starts opening up to Taya when she feels she can trust him. By the end of the school day, they are friends.

“I want to be a real girl.” Uta tells him then. “I want to have a soul. As an android, I cannot truly feel joy.”

However, Taya believes that Uta is already a real girl, and that she has a beautiful soul. He is determined on his quest to help Uta feel true happiness.

After school, Taya takes Uta to the arcade, and Uta hears all kinds of music. Taya has never seen Uta so entranced before. Uta asks Taya why these sounds make her feel so alive. Taya tells Uta that they are more than just sounds, they have feelings and soul, and are called “music.” Uta falls in love with music. When she hears it, she becomes indescribably enthralled.

At the arcade, Taya plays a dance game and gets a pretty high score. Apparently, it’s Taya’s favorite game at the arcade and he has had a lot of practice every chance he could get. Uta is mesmerized as she watches Taya dance to the music. Uta is a bit shy to dance herself, but a spacecraft piloting game catches her attention. Uta plays the game and gets an incredibly high score, and ends up attracting a crowd of people in awe of her skills. Uta ends up getting a huge output of coins to exchange for prizes. When Uta and Taya put their coins together, they have enough to buy a brand-new karaoke machine that even comes with three karaoke albums to sing to!

Music had awoken something deep in Uta’s soul. It’s a feeling of excitement, thrill, and comfort, but also immense yearning. Uta feels she wouldn’t be truly happy unless she would be able to compose music and sing. Taya sees Uta staring longingly at the karaoke machine.

“Oh, would you like the karaoke machine?” Taya asks Uta. “If so, it can be all yours. I already have something like it. I think it would be great for you. You want to sing, don’t you? You’ll get to experience music even more!”

“Thank you.” Uta says. “But... I’m afraid I can’t.”

Uta looks incredibly forlorn.

“Why?” Taya asks softly. “What do you mean?”

Uta explains that she feels she wouldn’t be able to sing or compose music, since one needs a heart to be able to make music. Uta is convinced she doesn’t have one. Also, can a being with an artificial voice really sing?

Taya can tell how much Uta longs to create music. He hugs her gently and tells her that he’ll help her however he can, and that she shouldn’t give up.

Taya ends getting a bit emotional. Uta ends up getting emotional too. They end up holding up the line. Merli, a snobby girl from school, is next in line. She rolls her eyes and says “Oh PLEASE.”

Taya ends up developing feelings for Uta. Her story and dream pulls at his heartstrings. He feels very sincerely for her.

They end up buying the karaoke machine and go back to Uta’s apartment. Taya calls his parents and tell them he is at a friend’s house. Taya supports Uta with her dream and teaches her the first steps to singing. They have their first singing lesson.

Taya is a bit shy with singing, but he is determined to be a good vocal coach to Uta. He looks back to the exercises he did with Ritsu in attempt to get over his shyness. As Taya sings, Uta recognizes his voice as “the sound that awakened her soul” back when she first came to Whimsica, but she keeps quiet about it due to being bashful.

It takes a while, but Uta finally figures out how to match pitch. She is able to vocalize simple tunes, but still has a long ways to go...

Taya soon hears Uta practicing her singing by herself a lot. At first Uta is very upset and discouraged because she just can’t seem to control her voice well. Eventually, Tei Sukone, who bullies Uta and Taya, says Uta should just give up. “She’s just a robot, right?” Tei says. “Robots don’t have souls. They don’t have what it takes to sing.”

Uta feels deeply hurt and discouraged by this comment and considers maybe she wasn’t meant to sing. Afterwards, Ritsu becomes very angry with Tei... but he also has things to say to Uta as well. “Are you really going to give up just like that?” Ritsu criticizes Uta. “Don’t be so weak-willed!” Uta begins crying. Taya comforts Uta and tells Ritsu he was a bit harsh. Uta was already feeling hurt enough.

Uta doesn’t give up, runs off somewhere, and sings all day with bad technique and without any breaks until she passes out alone. Taya searches around town for Uta and finds her unconscious. Everyone is extremely worried. Ritsu gets a chance to apologize to Uta and says he just wanted to see her fulfill her dream and would’ve been as crushed as Uta if she were to have given up. He didn’t mean to be so harsh. Ritsu and the rest of Uta’s friends reassure her and recommend her to take breaks and exercise better technique.

Uta’s friends help her the best they can, and Uta begins practicing singing nearly every chance she gets, but this time with breaks and good technique. Taya can tell that Uta really loves music and is truly determined. Eventually he’s impressed and blown away by how far she gets. Even though Uta was never programmed to be able to sing, she eventually begins to develop a unique singing voice through hours upon hours of practicing painstakingly.

Eventually there is a part where Taya, along with the rest of the group of Uta’s good friends (Teto, Momo, Ritsu, and Ruko) are captured because they were accused of stealing “Defoko” away from the planet that produced her. Uta is taken back there as well, but she uses the combat powers she kept hidden for a long time to bust out.

Uta then fights her own creators with a power that is foreign (and deadly) to them.... The power of song! The power of love, and passion, and heart, and... joy! The evil aliens do not stand a chance against the power of Uta’s magical song and voice.

“Defoko! When the heck did you learn to produce a singing voice? This isn’t what you were programmed to do! Stop this madness, right this instant!” They tell her.

Uta does not give them mercy. They took her precious friends. They continue to manufacture androids that cannot feel joy. This needs to stop right now!

Uta ends up destroying the entire sinister operation, and also starts both of the dystopian planets down their paths to peace.

After this feat, and rescuing her dear friends, Uta fulfills herself and unlocks her magical girl transformation. In Whimsica, magical transformations are unlocked when the user “fulfills” themself, symbolizing that they’ve overcome a difficult hurdle, accomplished a wonderful goal, or opened the door to their true self.

Now that Uta is fulfilled, she unlocked the power herself to be able to experience euphoria. All the other androids that were produced by her shady manufacturer also gained the ability to feel joy as well.

Uta had slain the chains in her heart and will live on happily with Taya and the rest of her friends.

Uta’s three siblings are also androids created by the same planet who admire her and want to be her siblings after she ends up saving them. They are related in a sense since they were created by the same “company.”

But this is not the end of the story with everyone.

Now it’s time for Taya’s story.

Taya hasn’t seen Saya for years... He is beginning to lose hope that she’s still alive...

Taya Soune and Saya Toune were childhood best friends who grew up someplace else. However, one day when they were both 12, Saya became depressed, and it was hard for Taya to watch his friend suffer. Some time afterwards, an earthquake hit the area and everyone had to take only their most important items and evacuate rapidly before a tsunami were to hit. Taya had to move to his current location, and had to leave Saya without saying goodbye. He never saw Saya again.

After this incident, Taya never got a phone call from Saya, or a letter or any hint she might’ve still been alive and out there. It wouldn’t have been unlikely that Saya and her family had died tragically in the earthquake or aftermath tsunami.

Taya is now left with a heavy, broken heart, and an intense fear of earthquakes. He is most torn apart that the fact that Saya had depression and the last few months before her departure to be so sad.

One day in the present, Uta, Taya, and the rest of the friend group are out at the mall. A song comes on that reminds Taya of his memories with Saya. He begins fighting back tears, but eventually starts sobbing and splits from the group, telling everyone he needs a moment alone. Everyone is concerned. Uta approaches Taya gently after he calms down. Taya then tells Uta about Saya, their story, and how much he misses his friend.

Uta is the first person Taya tells about Saya since he had moved. None of his other friends knew about the sadness he hid in his heart.

It had been years since Saya’s disappearance. Taya has pretty much lost all hope at this point.

Uta reassures Taya that he still shouldn’t give up hope. Uta’s words uplift Taya with a new hope that he had never before felt.

One day when Taya is feeling useless, Uta consoles him and tells him something she was too shy to say before.

“Taya, your voice was the sound that awoken my soul. When I first came to Whimsica, I walked past the karaoke cafe, and I heard you sing. It was the first time I had ever heard music. You sang so wonderfully, and I felt so warm. I felt then, that music was a truly amazing thing. It was you who changed my life Taya... So please, don’t feel sad.”

Eventually, it turns out that Saya is actually still alive. One fateful day, Taya and Saya reunite. Saya becomes a part of Uta and Taya’s group of friends.

(To he continued!)

———

EVEN MORE DETAIL and brainstorms

How do they search for Saya?

What about Taya’s musical play? -It is called “Fantasia Saga” -He started writing it out of grief of losing Saya. -Leeds Kasumiga, a girl with an illness, becomes a big fan of Taya and his play and acting.

Miscellaneous emotional stuff:

Funny interactions and things: Taya’s incredibly neat majestic handwriting Ritsu’s cursed illegible chicken scratch handwriting

Fluffy interactions:

Happenings:

Drama: -Ritsu is just sad sometimes -Uta still struggles with feeling inadequate and depressed at times, even after her heroic feat... But her friends are there to cheer her up. -Ritsu’s unrequited feelings for Taya... -Tei has a crush on Teto, and really doesn’t like Momo! Momo becomes Tei’s bullying target... -Ritsu used to bully Gumi as an elementary schooler, but now feels deep remorse and longs to apologize -Taya is very set off by a minor earthquake, due to his traumatic memories dealing with a major one in the past. Taya and Uta’s have a minor disagreement... and both of them become very torn up about it -Momo’s goodbye? But in the end, it turns out she can stay... -Ritsu and Ruko have a big fight... but make up and become even closer -Taya and Saya’s tear-jerking reunion... -Saya doesn’t recognize Taya for a split second, because his appearance had changed, and so did his gender identity. But the moment Saya recognizes his heart and sincerity, she knows it is Taya.

Miscellaneous random details

Magical transformations and fantasy things: Monster of the week?

#my writing #infodump #symphony Saga: resonate #symphony saga #symphony Saga resonate #utau #vocaloid #life of pastell #brainstorm #fic #fanfiction #blue song #yowane haku #oc #ocs

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kokoinupi · 4 years

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Jitterbug (Hashiya Nanashi, feat. Hatsune Miku & MEIKO) analysis, from an autistic point of view

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Disclaimer: This is based on my personal experience growing up with autism, and the experiences of the people around me. This song is also really gay by nature, so if MikuMei isn't your thing, this is your warning. Obviously this is in no way any sort of official analysis, and actually, ironically due to my autism, I may misinterpret some things or have a hard time not taking lines literally, so don't get mad at me if I get something clearly wrong. I'm just very passionate about this interpretation, and this song comes very close to representing a real (canon) autistic experience. No one else seems to comment on it from that point of view though, so naturally I had to write this up! This is also my first full analysis, and I'm not good at being concise, so please bear with me!

[[MORE]]

Overview: The video, for me, is a major factor in how Jitterbug comes across as an autistic narrative. The name itself, while it is still a reference to a 1920s dance (befitting of the electroswing style of the song), doubles as a meaning for someone who can't sit still, and actually on a personal note was an affectionate nickname my family called me as a kid, so that tipped me off right away. All throughout the video, I noticed most of all, the way Meiko moves her hands while she dances is very close to stimmy behavior, not really like how a neurotypical would normally dance (nor is it a part of the jitterbug itself). While Meiko is moving her hands like that, Miku very often has something in her mouth, either a kind of stick, or the laser pointer, definitely suggesting an oral fixation. Of course, both girls obscure their eyes with sunglasses (I think Meiko's aviators look so cool), and while that definitely has some metaphorical meaning as others have pointed out in their analyses of the song, it's really not uncommon for autistic people to wear shaders and/or noise dampeners to combat overstimulation and sensory issues. None of these things on their own prove anything, of course, as the video is often a small part of a song's meaning, so let's dive into the main course!

Lyric analysis:

I can't talk about any wishes, nor my ideals

Giving out the same, invariant answer all the time

For being the first line in this song, this really already punches home the idea that Miku is dissatisfied with herself, and, as is often the case with autistic people, doesn't even know how she's supposed to navigate the world. She either doesn't know her aspirations in life, or doesn't know how to talk about them without being judged.

You don't need a rotten yesterday

Dump it before you get betrayed

Meiko, being the free spirit in contrast to the masking, frustrated Miku, assures her that she can't just hold onto bad things that happened, being judged or not knowing herself, she needs to dump her perfectionist tendencies and learn to live as herself a little before her own precariously-built persona comes crashing down on her.

Just fully utilize it, tame it

Can't give it away nor dye it tomorrow

I'm fully ready

Meiko tells Miku that she has to learn to work with herself the way she is, find her talents and use them fully, rather than constantly trying to change or push her feelings deep down. She can't give away her personality, and she can't truly make herself different inside, no matter how hard she masks on the outside.

Hungry critics that can't even move

are just glancing at you sideways

The people who would judge Miku for who she is are just hungry for something to laugh at, someone to other or exclude, but when it comes down to it, they're no real threat. If she can just get over that initial hurdle, she'll realize her haters are just pathetically lapping at any entertainment they can get, and they're really not that scary at the end of the day.

Who cares! Ignore those idiots

Given this is the first line they sing together, it almost feels like an admission on Miku's part, she wants to believe Meiko and stand up for herself for once, even if it is just among them for now.

Come at nights, grab my hand and dance

The girls are obviously fond of each other (just gals being pals), and in a way, understand one another on a deeper level than other people understand them, having similar neurotypes. Dancing itself is sort of a wild, energetic activity, that can help express a wide variety of pent-up emotions, and the jitterbug itself is a pretty manic dance that fits the image rather well.

Use your eyes only for me and let's light it up,

Your one and only, scorching laser light

This line is honestly just gay. I don't think there's any deeper meaning to the laser light specifically, but it is a cute thing to call your funky spunky girlfriend, isn't it? It actually may be a reference to how Miku really is on the inside, bright and strange, and often blinding and scorching to others. She hides that side of her pretty well normally, but with Meiko it's not only fine to be bright and weird and full of personality, but actually encouraged.

Fitfully ranking things and aligning them vertically

Abandoning my heart, I convert them to numbers out of impulse

Honestly, upon my first translated listen of this song, I didn't think absolutely anything autistic was happening until this line hit me. This is so autistic in nature, I'm surprised that a lot of analyses leave it out. Miku not only sees the world in sets and orders and numbers like many autistics do, but actually feels (most likely from outside influence) that by her brain being wired to see the world like that, she's abandoned her humanity and become a robot.

The magic gradually faded out

Instead, pessimism flowed in and was entrenched

I'm taking a little liberty here, but many autistics with savant syndrome (and/or gifted kid syndrome) are praised in their youth for the amazing things they can do, such as doing complex math quickly or reading at a faster speed than their peers, but later in life, when those skills are either no longer relevant or have averaged out, the things they used to be praised for become seen as annoying, not something to brag about, or a burden. Miku no longer sees the way her brain works as magical and special anymore, it's a curse and proof to her that she's not like the people around her.

Struck speechless by the awful scenery,

Very clearly overstimulation.

I linger in the raining streets, soaked from head to toe

Some wait for the sun, some grumble about the rain

All pointing at me inside their umbrellas

This line could very well be taken literally, but it's most clearly just a way of describing how different Miku is truly. She doesn't see the same things as bad as other people, she doesn't see the same things as good either. She could be the type that embraces darkness in life, both literally and figuratively. People may not actually point, but she can feel eyes on her, and it makes her feel even more alienated. Even when she tries so hard to fit in, there are some parts of her that are too obvious to change, and she knows she draws attention anyway.

Who cares! Ignore them right now

Let's smile, choose my hand and sing

Feel the rhythm with your heart and dance

I'm not sure exactly why, but the line about feeling the rhythm with your heart made me feel really connected to the song. It might just be because of my own personal music stim habits, but either way it's another line about leaving behind your facade, being as true to your nature as possible, and just dancing out your worries to the beat of the song.

On this rainy stage, as bright as the scorching light

This line embraces the idea of Miku preferring the rain. No one else has to like the stage they set for themselves, because when they're together, it's just about them and what they want to do. Miku can soak herself in rain and bright, scorching light, and just exist with no one around to point and stare.

Eyes go dim and words are lost

While this can just be a reference to depression in general, it's worth noting that many autistics have trouble showing expressions, and/or go nonverbal, often in response to stress or unusually upsetting circumstances.

The colors of today have faded out

Still, it couldn't end because of someone

This can be a way of insinuating that Miku is actually suicidal due to how she's seen by others, and Meiko is the one thing keeping her here, or it could just mean that Meiko stopped her days from getting too bad in a moderate sense. Either way, pretty gay, and shows more how much the girls depend on each other in mutual understanding.

Who cares! Ignore those idiots!

Come at nights, dance and grasp your aspirations

Referring back to the first line, Meiko does assure Miku that not everything needs to be worked out for others' sake, but by spending time with your true self and unpacking your feelings, the future you're supposed to have and the things that truly make you happy will become clear.

I shall dedicate my entire life to you

Let's shine on, like the scorching light

Reach your hands out, until the very end

Miku is in lesbians with her. Ending the song on such a gay note is never a bad thing of course, but it is a little anticlimactic for this analysis. Though, the line of reaching your hands out might actually refer to their hand movements in the video, symbolizing to keep being weird and authentic as long as you can, but that may be a bit of a stretch (or a reach, if you will)

Final thoughts: I have seen other analyses (though not as in-depth) about the meaning of the song, and while they definitely do have some meaning and I can see it from that point of view, there are just some obviously autistic cues that I couldn't ignore that just swayed my perception of the song entirely that direction. I'm not sure if I only picked up that meaning because of my own experiences biasing my view, or if I actually am onto something with the original intention of the song. If you guys have any insight to offer on any of the lyrics, or if I missed or misinterpreted something, feel free to let me know! Thanks for reading this far, honestly! 🌸

#vocaloid #vocaloid meta #meta #jitterbug vocaloid #vocaloid analysis #jitterbug analysis #actuallyautistic #hopefully the readmore works #suicide ment #mikumei #edit: the readmore does not indeed fucking work and i cant edit it on desktop so im sorry #long post

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livdede100 · 4 years

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Interviews on Autism

As Educators in the field of special education, general education or other specialized services, we tend to know a few key terms, facts, or ideas about Autism. We may have even had a student with autism or have talked to a colleague who works with children who have autism. I found myself wondering: what does the average person know about autism? I interviewed four different people, they ranged in age and professional and recorded their responses below. Last names are not included for identity purposes.

RoseMary-RoseMary is 76 years old, and she was a general educator teacher 40 years ago. RoseMary likes to spend her time reading about history, reading non-fiction and fiction books or watching Jeopardy.

In a few sentences, tell me what you think autism is.

“I don’t think it is only one thing, I think it is a combination of many problems, ranging from severe to less severe.”

What do you think autism is caused by?

“I don’t think they know yet, possible gene combination.”

Do you think there is a connection between certain vaccines and autism? Why do you think so?

“I don’t think so, just from what I read; they have never proved that there is a connection. Many people thought so, but it has been disproven.”

How many American children do you think have been diagnosed with Autism? (1.5% or 1 in 68 children)

“5%.”

I told RoseMary the statistic.

“I’m glad I didn’t say a higher percentage

Do you know any characteristics of autism?

“I know that some children don’t like to be touched, they show repetitiveness, and sometimes physical motions that repeat, like flapping their arms or rocking back and forth.”

Do you know any movies or TV shows where the main character has autism? Or books?

“Yes, what’s that movie with Dustin Hoffman? Oh it’s rain man. I don’t really remember the movie.”

How would you interact with someone who has autism? Would you treat them the same as you would a person with a non-disability? Or differently?

“I think I would act differently, try to be more patient and more understanding.”

What is one thing you would like to know about autism or have always wondered?

“I would like to know why it happens and what causes it.”

Katie – Katie is 47 years old and she is a Special Education patient psychiatric autistic support classroom support teacher. Katie was a deaf and hard of hearing teacher around 20 years ago, then later in her career switched to working with troubled youth. About 3 years ago her work assigned her to work in a mental health hospital, some but not all students have autism.

In a few sentences, tell me what you think autism is.

“A neurological disorder affecting behavior, executive functioning, social skills and sometimes academic skills. “ What do you think autism is caused by?

“Something genetic, possibly environmental.”

Do you think there is a connection between certain vaccines and autism? Why do you think so?

“No, I read the science and read the re buttle of the only one scientific document that cited that autism is caused by vaccines.”

How many American children do you think have been diagnosed with Autism? (1.5% or 1 in 68 children)

“13.5%”

In responding to my answer of only 1.5%

“Oh, that is lower than I thought.”

Do you know any characteristics of autism?

“Yes, repetitive movement, echolalic, scripting, and social awkwardness.”

Do you know any movies or TV shows where the main character has autism? Or books?

“Atypical (Netflix series), the curious incident of the dog in the night, parenthood (ABC series), Martian child, the movie about temple Grandin. You should really watch Atypical, it’s good, it’s about a family and one of the children just happen to have autism and it’s about their life.”

How would you interact with someone who has autism? Would you treat them the same as you would a person with a non-disability? Or differently?

“The only difference I would probably make is allow for a little more wait time and wait for a reaction to see how they are doing.”

What is one thing you would like to know about autism or have always wondered?

“I want to know why they pick some of the stims like repetitive movements or vocalizations. Why they pick the ones they pick.”

Luke- Luke is 13 years old and likes to solve puzzles, create mazes and play outside. Luke has a younger sister, a twin sister and a cousin with special needs. Luke fore-warned me that he does not know a lot about autism.

In a few sentences, tell me what you think autism is.

“I really don’t know.”

What do you think autism is caused by?

“I think that you are born with it.”

Do you think there is a connection between certain vaccines and autism? Why do you think so?

No I don’t think so. How would that even happen?

How many American children do you think have been diagnosed with Autism? (1.5% or 1 in 68 children)

“ I think maybe 10% or 1 in 30.”

When I let Luke know the statistic, he said he was not surprised.

Do you know any characteristics of autism?

“Yes, they can show violence, and they can be really loud.”

Do you know any movies or TV shows where the main character has autism? Or books?

“El deafo the book, oh wait, I think they may have just been deaf and Rules the book which I read.”

How would you interact with someone who has autism? Would you treat them the same as you would a person with a non-disability? Or differently?

“Yeah, I would act way differently, I would be more patient and nice.”

What is one thing you would like to know about autism or have always wondered?

“I wonder why they are the way they are.”

James - age 25. James is a student at University of Penn studying international relations. James likes to read about current invents, history, and anything that may interest him. James dates someone who is a special education teacher and who is currently enrolled in the Special Education/Autism Endorsement Program at the local university.

In a few sentences, tell me what you think autism is.

“I think that Autism is a neurological disability that leaves those who suffer from it to experience a varied/different experience/perception of the world. I know people who have autism have a high IQ, but it could be a misconception.”

What do you think autism is caused by?

“A number of factors, such as developmental issues within the womb. It could be genetic and possibly be caused by outside chemicals when the child is young, it could be from cleaning supplies or led paint, they banned led paint from everything.”

Do you think there is a connection between certain vaccines and autism? Why do you think so?

“Yes. Anecdotal scenarios that I have heard from people I trust. They said that they brought their children to get their first set of vaccines and they said they “stopped” developing mentally, I am still unsure but kind of leaning towards it a little bit. I don’t think all autism is caused by it, maybe a little?”

How many American children do you think have been diagnosed with Autism? (1.5% or 1 In 68 children)

“Under 1 percent.”

I told James the rate, and he responded- 1 in 68 children is a little higher than he thought.

“I am also curious to see how the autism rate differs in parts of the world with vastly different living situations. Like urban vs rural, or eating habits.”

Do you know any characteristics of autism?

“Anti-social behavior, sort of OCD traits, and high IQ.”

Do you know any movies or TV shows where the main character has autism? Or books? “Rain man movie. I think that was my first time ever seeing anybody with autistic characteristics and I was impressed by him because he had so much attention to detail, but I also felt bad because he was so trapped by routine and his own comfortability.”

How would you interact with someone who has autism? Would you treat them the same as you would a person with a non-disability? Or differently?

“I would be much lighter around them, or gentler. I would monitor how they react. Whichever ways I find them feeling comfortable I would continue to do that.”

What is one thing you would like to know about autism or have always wondered?

“I wonder how autism rates are different in different parts of the world. The definite causes, how does it happen?”

I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing various people about autism. I was pleasantly surprised by all answers, most people seemed to have an understanding of autism. Every interview elicited more conversations about autism. I hope that the people I interviewed may start more conversations and spread the word about autism.

#autism specialeducation interview rainman atypical

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ultravioletproxy · 5 years

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[Sona] Hine Cross (Proxy OC)

I've finally done it. I finally finished an actual sona reference up as well as finally completing a updated digital reference of HINE! I'm so very pleased with this and how my art has progress since his original reference, all those years ago... I actually was able to get up the energy to go fully in depth with his information and soon I'll get to his backstory comic going.

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Personality/ Mental State:

Basic summary; Hine is a VERY complex character. He has many layers to his personality which I'll try my best to explain. He is a quiet person with a lot on his mind, constantly bombarded with various thoughts which makes it hard for him to keep track of all that's going on around him. Hine "Zones/ Spaces Out" occasionally and does not realize that you're talking to him, he might even not respond to you in the middle of a conversation. All of these things may come off as rude; but he really doesn't mean to be. Later on in his timeline/ as he grows up, Hine becomes much more of an unstable person, laughing a little too loudly at things (and volume control in general), walking off in the middle of conversations, and tends to get a bit unhinged...

Hine has several mental disorders that can effect his personality:

⊗-Autism: Doesn't pick up on social cues, and it takes him a while to think of a response when in a conversion, in turn he pauses and stutters. With autism comes anxiety, if in a high strung social environment or decision, Hine may have a break down (Sitting down and grabbing his shoulders tightly), He does not let people see him break down, he will go to a private area to try and cool down before coming out into view and acting perfectly fine. This luckily, doesn't happen often as he's trying to cope with his social anxiety. During a conversation Hine may accidentally say something that he doesn't mean, like a mess up of words(Saying something unintentionally mean as he just didn't think how it would sound when spoken or combining two words together.)

⊗-Compulsive liar: He doesn't ever mean to lie, a lot of the times he feels as though a lie is safer than telling the truth and before he even knows what he's done, the person has accepted the lie as truth and he's too afraid to tell them that his response was false. This stemmed from abuse during his life at the orphanage. He currently is trying hard to pull away from this.

⊗-Minorly a Paranoid Schizophrenic: Sometime this disorder makes him feels like everything and everyone has an ulterior motive, even though the thought is completely irrational. Hine mentally beats himself up for having these kinds of thoughts as he feels like he's betraying his loved ones/ friends. The thoughts themselves tend to be of a violently disgusting nature as they try to convince him that everyone is lying. He rarely witnesses hallucinations, mostly just little shadowy things in his peripheral vision.

⊗-Hypochondriac: Do to being mixed with a Slender, and his fear of dying, he constantly feels like his body will just give out on him, or that any sickness no matter how minor will end up killing him in one way or another, he's very paranoid of random aches and pain, irrationally telling himself to accept the fact that he's just going to die.

⊗-Sociopathic Tendencies: Hine has a hard time grasping that other people are just like him and have emotions, thoughts, and a consciousness. He tries quite hard to convince himself that other people are essentially sentient like him.

⊗-Unintentionally Manipulative: When living in the orphanage Hine was treated poorly due to his lack of social abilities and therefore was mostly ignored by the caretakers and fellow children. He desperately tried to figure out ways in order to be able to get a break from the constant chores and duties that he was given since he would not participate in being social with the others. He(not exactly intentionally) developed ways to read people in order to get what he wanted, again, not in a particularly malicious manner. More of just a way of survival.

Habits/ Quirks, Likes, and Dislikes:

⊗-Quirks/ Habits: Hine has quite a few funny little habits. One being collecting, he just adores collecting various things from silverware, to plushies, to seashells, really anything he finds the least bit intriguing and holding sentimental value. He is a little bit of a pack-rat you could say. He also has a bit of a compulsion to essentially "preen" or "groom" himself. For instance; cleaning under his nails, picking fuzz off a shirt, or even idly pulling hairs. He also has a lot of trouble finishing hot drinks, particularly coffee as he tends to forget about them, they get cold, and then he's too lazy to heat them up. Hine is mostly nocturnal as bright lights make him disorientated. Another not so good habit include Stress Smoking developed from watching a certain Slender and a friend smoke and seeing how it relaxed them. He occasionally delves into cannabis (Once Mr.KittyKitty comes around) due to the many medical benefits it has, such as anxiety relief, being more talkative, painkillers, motivation, or to calm him down.

⊗-Likes: He loves long walks alone in nature, particularly next to streams/ rivers either in silence or with music. He loves listening to the wind through the pines, the birds chirping, the sound of rain hitting the underbrush, and classical music. He loves pickled foods/ the taste of vinegar, as well as eating, and cooking in general. He tends to be rather indecisive about his favorite foods as he likes way too many, although salt and vinegar chips, popcorn, pomegranates, and cherries are a few of his favorites. His favorite drinks are Earl Grey Tea and Shirley Temples. Animals he adores are Bears, Raccoons, Ferrets, Ravens, Barn Owls, Coral Snakes, and Cats. He absolutely loves to draw, he makes his own characters and story lines, he also delves into other artistic feats such as crafting, painting with water colors, and sewing. A good book/ movie in the supernatural or horror genre will keep him content for hours. He loves dark humor, and coming up with ridiculous jokes(Blaming that on L.J.), and has a penchant for spouting the most random of facts. He really loves to talk to others and tries his best to keep up with them even though he has a hard time figuring out a response a lot of the time. Lastly, he has a weird enjoyment for the smell of disinfectant chemicals and has a particularly strange fixation on tornadoes...

⊗-Dislikes: He very much dislikes crowded areas, physical interactions, cities, thunder/ loud noises. He's not too fond of overly cutsie things. He can't stand highly sweetened foods or drinks (Candy, Cakes, Chocolate); once in a while/ a craving is fine, but he'd much rather take a bite of fruit. He doesn't care for baking all that much except for making breads at which he's none too shabby at. He doesn't care for bright colors unless they're mixed with dark ones.

Relationships:

⊗-Significant Other: Is in a delightfully happy relationship with flannelRaptors's Character, Johnny.

⊗-Slenders: When he was young, Hine ran away from the orphanage, he found his way into the forest where lovely Splendorman welcomed him with open arms and tendrils. Soon after, Slenderman himself took interest in Hine and became some sort of a strange father figure to him. The other Slenders joined in with helping take care of Hine. Trender helped his practical artistic side, while Splendor helped him understand his emotions, social cues, and tame his wild mental health state, Slender was his stable rock, and Offender schooled him in street smarts and how to deal with the "real" world.

⊗-Other Creepies: As a quiet person, Hine mostly sticks to himself, however if the opportunity presents itself, he absolutely loves talking to and learning about other people's pasts, Likes, etc.

Basic Background Summary:

⊗-Past: When Hine was young his parents were murdered by a trusted family friend they’d met from the church they attended. This person in turn, kidnapped and tortured Hine for quite some time, until Hine was eventually freed. However, as a mentally scarred young boy, shipping him off to an orphanage didn't really bode too well and he eventually ran away to join the Slenders' care and eventually became a "Proxy" to Slenderman.

Basic Background Summary:

⊗-Appearance: Hine has many abilities as shown above, however there are a lot more details and catches than what's written on the reference sheet. As the acronym may explain, Hine does not have any eyes. In an accident in which Hine almost died, Slenderman gave Hine an essential blood transfusion. The Slender blood, being incredibly aggressive, took over a good chunk of Hine's DNA giving him not only Eyeless vision, but also tendrils, an extra set of blood vessels, and a whole new horrible form.

Slender Affected Abilities:

-Hine can still see, but he now has what is called "Slender Vision" which is a 360-degree sight range, meaning he can see in all directions at once, ultimately maddening when first getting used to it. This is one of the reasons why Hine is constantly distracted. The range of sight and focus can be altered however it is rather difficult to do so as he was not born with the ability. Most of the Slenders can see a good mile or so around them while Hine has a shorter, about 50 ft range. Hine, not used to his new vision, rarely turns his head to look at objects that he is focusing on, due to there not being a focal point of eyes, therefore he tends to come off even more blank and emotionless than he really is.

-Hine's tendrils are hidden beneath his skin in what are called "Ports". Hine has a total of eight "ports", 4 on each side of his back. The tendrils can painfully be pushed through his skin at will, ultimately piercing through his back. He's supposed to constantly leave them out so the holes can seal up around them (much like a piercing would), but to do that he would have to keep out of sight from all other non-slender beings, as him being half slender is a well-guarded secret. The tendrils can lengthen and split apart to form thinner smaller pieces due to their "braided nature". However, in the early stages all of Hine's slenderification, his abilities are all INCREDIBLY clumsy.

-Other attributes Hine’s gained include, but are not limited to: heightened versions of all the senses, Moderately increased strength and speed. A bit of an iron stomach (ex: can eat raw meat), and more advanced healing rates (the less severe the slower it heals).

-With all these benefits came quite a few negatives. For instance, until he gets used to it, Hine's depth perception and hand eye coordination is completely off. His two blood types sometimes mix and therefore cause him to become incredibly ill for short periods of times, his varying blood colors also result in a pale yellowish grey complexion. Hine’s body has an unnatural slimness to it; he experiences continuous, nonstop increase in height in addition to having disproportionately long and lengthened arms and legs.(He has to make his own custom clothing.) Due to these things Hine suffers from minor growing pains as well as occasional cravings for human meat/ flesh. (Inherited from the dietary nature of the Slenders)

I applaud you if you read this all! Here's a TLDR version of this massive piece:

Hine is a mentally and physically scarred orphan who grew up with all the Slenders as his family. He came close to death at some point, but Slenderman saved him by transfusing his own blood into Hine, resulting in a well-hidden secret. Hine got really cool abilities with a few pretty bad side effects and is now an official Slenderman Proxy.

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Artwork, Concepts & Character © to RoneOmbre

⊗-Terms of Service-⊗

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dxmagedrose · 4 years

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GET TO KNOW THE BLOGGER!

Tagged by: my lover @hammurabicomplex I’m tagging: anyone and everyone who wants to pick this one up! share with the class if you feel like it! tag me in it!!

PRESENTING. RANDOM DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO-MUN AT 2AM ;

FIRST NAME Good fucking question… It’s (sort-of) currently Dylann! I was Kieran before that, though; it’s still used as one of my first names and I’m not used to Dylann quite yet bc I’ve just started using it.

Indigo is one of my middle names though, and I’ve used it as an online handle elsewhere forever so I use it here now! [ Fun etymology facts: Dylan(n) is a mythology name generally meaning “born of the wave” (aspiring diver & a water witch at heart). Kieran means “little dark one” bc of my love for horror, && I chose Indigo bc as a kid to be it was neither boy (blue) or purple (girl) and was both and neither as well as my absolute favorite color as this vibrant ass mystical color. ]

STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF hmmmmm…. I’m a horror lover at heart, so as a child (I wanna say 12), I was walking through an antique store (I have a few cool finds, I considered putting my other one as the fact tbh) and I turned the corner and I saw these two dolls staring back at me at the foot of the stairs of this antique building. my blood froze, and i felt my stomach drop. i got actual, physical goosebumps stumbling across these two creepy dolls staring back at me in the corner, and i couldn’t leave the store without them. perhaps the little painted porcelain boy would be somewhat spooky by himself if it wasn’t for the terrifying lidded gaze of the porcelain girl with the hairline fractures and slightly open lips. i cant look at her. i dont really find dolls scary, I like to find the spookier ones ones, and she makes me paranoid as hell. i keep her face covered and her up in my closet except for when i bring her out to show her off proudly as the spookiest thing I have but……. i dont really collect dolls anymore. even thinking about her brings a fearful tear to my eye. i don’t like to think about her for very long, but that’s why I’m so fucking proud to own her. ( YES — I’m THAT white person in the horror film )

TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON hhhhh a beardy jawline, high cheekbones, crooked canine teeth >:3c

A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF b.l.t.’s with avocado. ahhhh. my mouth is watering just thinking about it, oh my god. just a bit of salt and pepper???

A FOOD YOU HATE barbecue anything, i hate the taste of bbq sauce, you keep your nasty black goo to yourselves at the grill. twice in my life i have presented with barbecue pizza and both times i cried literal tears. why would you do such a horrible thing to a person? what kind of a monster are you? how do you sleep at night?!

GUILTY PLEASURE the sims. constantly. always. i’ve sunk thousands of hours into my households. oh also uhhhhhh i run two 80s horror blogs, one being a shitpost blog with occasional art of mine and one gremlin fanfic ship blog for horrible, terrible self indulgent fanfics i’ll get the courage to finish writing & post so i can be cancelled on tumblr for at some point. NO, i won’t link them. as i pretend they’re even all that hard to find, within a day i was found on both by someone i admire here a lot :’) ilu bby thnk u eternally for supporting ur local horrifying dumbass wtf

WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN the same clothes i’ve been wearing all day usually, my sweats & long sleeve raglans or my hoodies. i like being cozy day & and out. and ugh. efoort. just throw me in a blanket in a cool room and im out.

SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS serious relationships with some openness or poly. i wish i could fling! just not exactly easy for demisexual autistics lmao.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE I think I would be adopted by my grandma as a kid. It would save me some trauma but mostly I think it would get my autism diagnosed way earlier and save me angsting all these years of wondering why & thinking it’s my fault I’m struggling so much and so loud and affectionate and different in a world that i didnt fit in the same way.

ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON when i get drunk i text people how much they mean to me in my life. does that answer your question? ahhh. i’m sometimes a cuddle monster with friends, i message people with long texts about how much they mean to me, but I sometimes really don’t like to be touched at all.

A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN FLYPAPER. F L Y P A P E R. FLYPAPER. FLY, and, I can’t stress this enough, fucking PAPER. ( Though also Whole Nine Yards and both Re-Animator & Bride ). I have watched Flypaper already like, 5 times this week and I’m still not done, and the other movies have been on repeat for days in this household within the last year. In the past it has also been Donnie Darko & the new Nightmare on Elm Street. roast me.

FAVORITE BOOK White Fang by Jack London. Have I actually ever finished it? No. Do I still own a copy I’ve had since childhood thru multiple dogs eating it, taking it to and from school, and highlighting and circling all the best parts of chapter one ever since I was a kid and it was too hard of a book for me to read? You bet your ass. If I ever need inspiration I just reread chapter 1. Although one of my other favorites was Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. But White Fang is like, a weirdly personal text. We stan London’s writing in this household.

YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE FENNEC FOX!! I used to daydream about having my own named Shiloh when I was a lil kid. they’re adorable little things and i am obsessed. i mean, gimme any fox and im happy, marble foxes, red foxes… but I was obsessed with fennec foxes. Also tbh ferrets. I want a ferret.

TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL] Rosa & @ninetyscnds‘s Luke, Rosa & @iimpulsivity is already screaming my name, Rosa & Constantine, Jesse & Andrea from Breaking Bad, and the joker and harley of 80s sci-fi Dan & Herbert from Re-Ani. I am but a simple opossum.

PIE OR CAKE Pie! I’ll take both pumpkin & melty apple over cake. also, cheesecake is more pie than cake soooo, pie wins.

FAVORITE SCENT my dogs / my blanket. :’) It’s the most grounding smell in the world.

CELEBRITY CRUSH oliver jackson-cohen, i’m fucking GAY and im angry about it. there i was, minding my own business, and i saw that asshole in a certain SHIRTLESS GIF and it AWOKE SOMETHING IN ME. dont talk to me about it, holy shit im obsessed with beardy men now god fuckkdafjaask i hate him why did he make me this gay i was perfectly fine being into girls but NOOOOOO him and his dumb hairy chest and sweet rugged face and I—— I also am obsessed with the archaeologist & television personality Josh Gates and may or may not be considering making a fan blog for him bc idk if my anthropology docuseries host is Dad or Daddy but i love him lots

IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO I would go on a dive with anthropologists and archaeologists doing fieldwork research in the ancient cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula. My actual dream job, catch me crying & fantasizing about being underwater documenting Mayan skulls given as offerings. Fuckkkk, I love anthropology so much!! take me anywhere in the world to immerse myself into culture & archaeology.

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT Introvert. I have a real life friend I see roughly once a month, and that’s it. Plenty of online relationships, I’m chatty, message me all day every day. but i dont do people well.

DO YOU SCARE EASILY I used to! Really bad. I don’t as much anymore. I do get paranoia a lot still. Having therapists telling you that the FBI could be outside your house watching you through your windows will kind of nervous. ( no google results for: yes hello fbi i am a writer please dont put me on watchlists i just have research i need to do for this idea im working on, would you like to try again? ) I have nightmares nightly but not they never make me afraid, they just make me feel like crap. jumpscares and loud noises and seeing people reaching into their pockets dont set off as many brain alarms anymore tho!! progress haha.

IPHONE OR ANDROID I like my android better bc of capabilities but meh

DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES My mom, her husband & I play COD for family game night, and Silent Hill is my life’s blood. I’ve sunken hours into Sims & Skyrim, and Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain is my #1 fictional character in existence, why do i love the druggie babies

DREAM JOB Oh… You’re asking me to pick? I’d love to be an anthropologist doing work out in the field. Underwater archaeology is peak, but I’m also heavily considering being a body recovery diver or police diver. I’d love to see myself in uniform someday, if possible. Just the thought makes me teary eyed & proud.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS fund my person creative & educational endeavors. get myself a spooky ass abandoned house to make my own home to create in, and travel to the world’s best dive sites. just live a mild life of education, creation & exploration. that’s the dream TM.

FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE dr. hill is a gross and whiny lil bitch this post brought to u by the miskatonic crew, how is everyone here an even worse bad guy than herbert west precious dan excluded talk shit get hit tho john winchester from spn and both walter white & todd from breaking bad are all in my crew of hated characters. i jusT… the reani novel is difficult to read because i have to deal with this old sack of shit.

FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER Supernatural :-)

… AND THIS CONCLUDES A DEEP DIVE WITH INDIGO!! //

#||: && the mundane ( ooc );#( get to know a bitch!! )#( this was... a lot of me rambling about weirdly personal shit at 2 am )

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streetsbound · 5 years

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30 Days of Autism Acceptance - Day 1

I feel that a lot of people who read this may know me, or at least be familiar with me. Others may not, or may only know one part of me, an impression. But I’m James, and I’m Autistic. I know a lot of you might say that I am more than that, that I am a person of great breadth- and yet, in many, many ways it has shaped all manner of aspects about me. It’s shaped my interactions socially, how I grew up and developed with other kids, it shaped which cultures I could access, it shaped how I perceive media. It shapes how I speak, and how I don’t. It’s because of autism that I feel staggering emotions, that I can love so profoundly I can’t contain it. It’s also because of Autism I’ve felt extreme hurt and confusion. There’s little about me which has not been shaped by my autism, and that is okay.

Because you know what? I love so much about the world! I get so happy! I love penguins so much! I relate so much with aliens that they become a wonderful little cartoon for me. I can reach out to experience nature in great and amazing ways. I’ve a great capacity to navigate care and counseling. I’ve studied so much history from so much of the world. I adore theology in depths that let me keep pace with exegetes, philosophers and clerics. There’s a whole city I have never been to, but whose streets I can practically navigate in my mind. I consume so many books, essays and longform articles. I lose myself in worlds of music that often seem to be these great experiences. I constantly cheer on and support all the animals I see in the world.

I’m always writing and developing my own thoughts. I work to be there for my friends and I strive to do a lot of community work and building. I love motorcycles, and I can do more than fiddle with the technical aspects of it- I can take to mechanical work pretty naturally. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, Yerba mate- I’m an encyclopedia of hot beverages it seems. Y’all. There is so much about me, and so much of it is absolutely wonderful. I love languages, how they work, how grammars fit together, the ways language encourages me to think in clever and creative ways. I love languages so much I’ve learnt several- Latin, Greek, Old English, Serbo-Croatian. I have passable Spanish. I’ve studied Sanskrit, Pali, Venetian, Swahili, Mozarabic, middle English, middle scots. I know little bits of Turkish, Welsh, Tibetan- and have words to say on the structures of different alphabets. I wish I could share so much more of myself!

All of this is important because it is April, and April is often touted as Autism Awareness Month. You’ll see plenty of puzzle pieces, ribbons, #lightitup blue- and a lot of general talk about Autism. However, little of this is coming from those who are autistic. Instead, this is a campaign often by those who have not consulted those with autism, who often speak over them, or who promote a lot of issues for those who exist alongside autism. This winds up creating a damaging and rough month, where instead of celebrating or building something for autism, it’s often thrown into our faces- Reminding us we are considered disabled, diseased, or that we need to change.

On the whole, autism awareness month is a damaging thing for a number of reasons. First, there is already a ton of awareness about autism. There’s a lot of media depiction, people use Sheldon cooper or rain main as go-to bywords. People will often interchange the r-word with being autistic, or promote hurtful memes about Autistic Screeching. Trust me, plenty of people are aware. Second, campaigns of awareness are usually associated with maladies or afflictions. Things like Crohn’s or Cystic Fibrosis. This is not a helpful feeling for the many people who need to be told that their existence is associated with that. Finally, autism is an important issue to be sure- but autism awareness month can be very excluding to others with disabilities, developmental disorders, invisible and chronic sicknesses- all things which confer the same social stigmas that those with autism bear as well.

For this reason, we generally want to push autism acceptance month. Acceptance understands that there’s a lot of awareness, and it puts the pressure on society to adapt to offer us what is needed to be accepted. It’s also something pushed for by self-advocates. That’s those, like myself, who have autism and are able to advocate for their own issues and concerns. If you want to show your support for disability communities this April, just remember to use Red or Gold, #redinstead, the neurodiverse symbol, to resist Autism Speaks and to reach out to those you know who are autistic. Elevate the voices of diversity, see what can be done to help us out, use your ability to speak out and contest whenever you see puzzle pieces or autism speaks.

#actuallyautistic #autism #autism acceptance #autism acceptence month #redinstead #neurodivergent #neurodiverse #neurodiversity #its me #30 days of autism acceptance #disability

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tf2humbug · 7 years

Text

After I answered a question yesterday about the possibility of Medic (or any other TF2 character) being a psychopath, I got to thinking about what might actually be the deal with these guys. Obviously, they’re abnormal, but I don’t like writing off weird characters as just being crazy and/or stupid.

I dug into what I understand about the characters—the core mercs as well as the Administrator and Miss Pauling—and came up with this run-down of how I think they might be diagnosed if evaluated by a modern psychiatrist.

A disclaimer! First off, please take all my conjecture with a big ol’ grain of salt. I’m not claiming to be an authority on either psychiatry or neurology, and this is just my personal interpretation of the characters. It’s fine if you don’t agree! Also, I want to be clear that I mean no disrespect to anyone who might have any of the conditions I mention. I hope my tone comes off as respectful and not exploitative.

One last thing. I feel like this should go without saying, but just in case: DON’T USE THIS LIST AS A WAY TO DIAGNOSE YOURSELF. If I mention something that strikes a chord with you, by all means research it, but talk to a professional if you seriously suspect you might have a mental issue. I am NOT a professional!

Now that all that hemming and hawing is out of the way...

Scout

Not to rely on stereotypes, but I think ADHD is likely. His impulsivity, hyperactivity, and need for stimulation are strong indicators. He also has a tendency to self-medicate with massive amounts of caffeine and sugar from all the soda he drinks. Oh, and it’s been pretty heavily suggested that Scout is dyslexic, which I believe to be the case.

Soldier

It’s pretty much directly stated in the comics that he has brain damage, resulting in delusions and cognitive impairment that border on dementia. (Think Gary Busey post-motorcycle accident.) The comics suggest he was brain damaged by lead poisoning in the water, but I’m certain he had preexisting problems from old head trauma. That helmet has an important function!

On top of that, I think Soldier’s a good candidate for Tourette Syndrome, but I don’t mean the coprolalia version you see in TV and movies, where someone involuntarily shouts obscenities. He commonly has sudden verbal outbursts (”MAGGOTS!”) and physical tics (saluting, marching, etc.) that manifest in his drill sergeant persona.

Pyro

Oh, boy. Okay. Pyro is a hell of a puzzle, and I could go on for pages, but I’ll boil it down to what I think is most likely. Of course, they exhibit pyromania, but possibly also synesthesia?

One possibility is an “eccentric” mood disorder that manifests as a loss of contact with reality, among other symptoms. That would be either Schizotypal Personality Disorder or full-blown Schizophrenia. The distorted Pyroland version of the world fits this really well, and it’s possible that it might be a chronic thing, with Pyro constantly filtering the world through their delusions.

The other likely possibility is some sort of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, where seizures in a focal part of the brain yank Pyro out of reality without sending them into the physical convulsions you associate with general epilepsy. This would suggest that Pyro does touch base with reality but gets “transported to Pyroland,” instead of living there all the time.

Demoman

This one is easy. Demo’s a severe alcoholic, to the degree that stopping drinking cold turkey would probably kill him. In the comics, his body even rejects normal food and drink because it’s learned to get energy just from booze, and his body, in times of withdrawal, can make its own alcohol supply, which an actual real thing. It’s called Auto-Brewery Syndrome, where microbes in the gut can convert carbs into ethanol. Demo must just have the most advanced case of it in human history!

Heavy

He seems completely neurotypical to me, aside from the hints of both psychopathy and PTSD that come with being a mercenary. I do think he used to have problems from sleep apnea, but some surgery cleared that up. Now he just snores like a chainsaw. (Yes, I know sleep apnea isn’t a mental condition.)

Engineer

I suspect, but I’m not certain, that he may be in the very high-functioning part of the Autism Spectrum, with savant-like qualities. Maybe he got his 11 PhDs and abilities as a human calculator just from being driven and extremely intelligent, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were wired differently. If it is the case, he’s learned to compensate incredibly well in his interpersonal behavior. That Texan charm is a pretty effective tool for putting people at ease, I bet.

Medic

Like I said before, I don’t like simply labeling characters as “crazy.” Yeah, he’s got the mad scientist thing going on, but I think that stems from Bipolar Disorder. Specifically, I believe Medic has type I, which is what people usually think of when they imagine bipolar behavior: extended periods of elevated mood (or hypomania) punctuated with full manic episodes, which can take on psychotic features. There may or may not be periods of depression. He doesn’t seem to swing that way, but it’s possible.

He’s DEFINITELY a self-medicator. I mean, duh. Huffing Medi-Gun fumes and a bit of drinking probably help to calm him down when he gets too high-strung. I doubt he takes pills for it, e.g. lithium or anti-convulsants, because of the high likelihood of side-effects. I could see him doing some DIY ECT, though. Getting too unstable? A few brain zaps, and he’s right as rain!

Bonus fact! Did you know that a German term to call someone insane is to say that they “have a bird”? It might come from folklore about insane people literally having bird familiars living in their heads, or it might be something like calling someone a “crazy cat lady,” where people who keep birds will talk to them too much and seem a bit off. Just thought that was interesting!

Sniper

I personally believe he probably has some Agoraphobia. Not to a debilitating degree, but he hates being stuck in what feel like insecure places. It’s actually a symptom of Avoidant Personality Disorder, which I think is pretty likely for him. It’s thought to result from feeling abandoned and alienated by other people at a young age. (*cough*orphanedbybirthparentsandraisedinAustralia*cough*) In addition to agoraphobia, signs include self-imposed social isolation, emotional distance, mistrust, and an inferiority complex. If he does have APD, he’s integrated it neatly into his occupation, where distance is a good thing.

Spy

Similar to Heavy, he seems pretty neurotypical to me. It’s possible that he had some similar issues to Scout when he was younger, but if so, he’s learned to compensate. He does exhibit the most psychopathic traits of all the mercs, but like I said before, I don’t believe any of them are actually true psychopaths.

Administrator

Classic megalomaniac! She’s got textbook Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Everything about the way she presents herself screams narcissism: grandiosity, a thirst for power, arrogance, a sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, and extremely manipulative behavior. Maybe she has good reasons for her narcissism, like being an 150-year-old supervillain, but I digress.

Miss Pauling

Poor thing. I’ve mentioned it before, but my pet theory is that the Administrator broke down her original personality and built it back up to make her a useful pawn, capable of appearing very unassuming and responsible while performing cold-blooded acts of violence guilt-free. She’s a perfect tool, with limited freewill and no room in her mind for cognitive dissonance to slip in. To her, I imagine it feels like living with with Depersonalization Disorder, where either the world around her or her own actions take on an unreal quality as a way of shielding her mind from the nasty parts of her job, but on the outside, the effect is seamless.

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gabriel-gabdiel · 4 years

Text

【Draft】Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 1: The Quiet Kid in Class

Here’s the draft of my original piece of fiction. It’s here for backup purposes.

Enjoy.

Darkness without light is an abyss. Light without darkness is blinding. You cannot have a coin with one side.

(Unknown)

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

Here's my first-ever original work I conceptualized from scratch. Hope you all like it. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 1: The Quiet Kid in Class

***

Somewhere inside Our Lady of Fatima School in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila...

Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Azrael. Or was it Uriel?

'Those were the Four Archangels, right?' the young 14-year-old boy by the name of Florante Galang thought, talking to himself in his mind as the rain poured all around him.

What a dreadful month this had been.

Anyway, Michael or Mikhail was the most famous archangel whose name meant "Who Is Like God". He was the greatest of God's angels and the most godlike of the four. With his flaming sword, he was the seraph who ultimately cast the angelic traitor Lucifer out of Heaven and into Hell.

Meanwhile, Raphael, Rafael, or Israfil was the archangel whose name meant "God Heals" or "God, Please Heal". The healing angel who bound the Archdemon Azazel under a desert called Dudael. The Angel of Life and Healing.

Then there was Gabriel or Jibrail. His name meant, "God Is My Strength". The strongest warrior angel of the four. The seraph that was closest to the humans who regularly appeared among prophets and holy persons. He was the Angel of Strength and Righteous Power.

Azrael or Samael, meanwhile, was the archangel whose name meant "Angel of God" but actually had the reputation of being more of the "Angel of Death". He was rumored to be the angel who killed all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians during the time of Moses as part of the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

In Jewish mysticism, he was even considered the embodiment of evil. The most demonic of the archangels who never fell from grace.

Some contend that the fourth angel of the Four Archangels was Uriel instead of Azrael, whose name meant "God Is My Light". The archangel responsible for "changing" the Orb of the Sun as the day wound down from morning to night. The Solar Angel.

Those were the strange thoughts swirling inside Florante Galang's brain for whatever reason as he stared breathless at the strange apparition of a goddess(?) with an hourglass figure, porcelain skin, and growing white wings waltzing across the long hallway of the entrance to Fatima School.

Who was this? What was this? Why was this...?

Actually, he felt like he'd been walking in that same hallway towards the exit forever until that point, with no light at the end of the tunnel. Only a black nothingness that stretched on forever, interrupted by this strange being of light before him.

The only light he could see was from this strange being before him that triggered his flight-or-flight response for merely existing.

She also sported huge dove wings on her back that spread behind her like a long white feathery banner. As though she were a valkyrie or something. Or an angel.

Were her angel wings what made him think of the Four Archangels?

He should've been thinking about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph instead, to be honest.

'Susmaryosep!'

He sometimes wondered if he was seeing the same things through his eyes that the rest of the world was seeing. After all, everyone could see color but couldn't describe them, so there was no way of knowing if the red he sees was the red other people see.

Maybe there was something wrong with his brain. His mother did say she was tempted to have him take an autism test. However, the cause didn't matter. It wouldn't change the effect.

He stood there, transfixed by her gorgon stare and her tall, svelte body. She strode, her form appearing inch by inch with every gliding step.

The feminine silhouette emerged from the shadows, revealing the horror underneath the silken black cloak of darkness.

She said nothing, but he could feel the malice in her every movement.

Her skin gleamed like pearls in the moonlight. A sensation grew inside him inexorably, rising from his stomach to his throat as he felt his soul claw its way out of his body in anticipation and dread.

Was she a "White Lady" or a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave? Was he being haunted on this rainy day (or night)?

His gaze focused right into the shining, mesmerizing eyes of the goddess staring right back at him.

Beguiling. Alluring. Dangerous. It pushed all his buttons, confusing him.

So what the hell was he looking at?

Was it delirium that made him see a strange woman that reminded him of angels instead of the embodiment of death before him?

A Biblical angel. Both awesome and awful.

She... not that gender mattered to angels... said, "Do not fear, child. It will be over soon."

She approached him with every bone and muscle from her swaying body twitching visibly under her skin.

His delirious mind going blank, he asked the apparition her name.

"Who are you?!" he asked, when he should've instead said, "What are you?"

The pitter-patter of the rain grew louder and louder. The wind blew hard, tousling his thin bowl-cut hair.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor. Prepare to die."

Oh no. Is she for real? What did he do to deserve this? How did she know his name? Her voice began to sound familiar though.

Was this the end of the line for him? More importantly, did it matter?

The juxtaposition of beauty and beast almost drove him mad. Like a surreal dream that melted into a formless nightmare. Or perhaps vice-versa.

The haze in his mind then cleared. He recognized who that person was. She was someone familiar. Even in her transformed state he could recognize her face.

She then flew towards him with dove wings and the speed of a man jumping from a skyscraper and falling to his death towards the cold, hard pavement.

Faster than he could even fathom or wonder why she was named after the Angel of Healing instead of the Angel of Death.

His life then flashed before his eyes.

***

Florante Galang's story was a typical one (apparently).

The awkward teenage boy who couldn't make friends. The absent-minded weirdo. The outcast who lived in a world of his own. The nerd who loved anime a bit too much.

'You've heard it once and you might as well have heard it a thousand times before.'

How'd he know he was such a stereotype? From the movies and TV shows he'd watch or the books he'd read. He was the "blank slate" awkward kid in such stories. The default.

Perhaps even the background character. Otherwise, a subject of mockery or wish fulfillment.

They were stories made to appeal to someone like him, after all. Or mock someone like him.

He was not someone people wished to be but what they usually ended up as from the start. An ordinary fellow that sat in contrast against the special ones. The greats.

Most everyone in Fatima High School had their own cliques and social circles, but most who studied there had formed them since grade school.

Because he was a socially inept loser and he transferred there as a freshman, he never had a chance to form bonds with most anyone.

He was, in short, the new kid in school, who then became the quiet kid in school.

'Ugh.'

Even his mother, whom he had a complicated relationship with due to their countless shouting matches and arguments that had her shaming him for being a disrespectful smart aleck (in not so many words), was the one person he was closest to than anyone else on earth.

Yes, even the closest person to him was never on the same page as him.

His mother. The woman who kept admonishing him for misbehaving and putting fear in his heart every time she grabbed a shoe or one of his father's belts (his gentle father himself never laid a hand on him) was also the person he interacted with the most.

Him and his family originally hailed from Makati but moved to Pasig around the EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) Revolution. He could barely remember his time in Makati because he stayed there when he was 3 to 4 years old, and he only started really forming memories at around 4 years old.

He could barely remember anything about his previous residence in Makati except maybe that one time he allegedly fell down the stairs as a toddler.

He'd become acrophobic ever since that happened even though he could barely remember the event.

Every time he walked on an overpass or at the higher floors of the mall, he had to move himself far away from the railings and he never looked down, feeling a tingle from head to toe until he got back down to earth safely.

However, the phobia he had over heights was nothing compared to the dread he felt when going to school.

His family, the Galangs, arrived in Pasig around the time Manggahan Floodway... an artificially constructed waterway in Metro Manila... was first built.

He had spent most of his childhood in Pasig, watching his mother and father invest in half of a bungalow that they then slowly built into a whole house over the years by saving up for it.

His memories were hazy, but he did remember when he was about 6 or 7 years old that every Friday, from 7:00 to 7:30 PM, ABS-CBN Channel 2 would air the show, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles".

TMNT originally aired in the U.S. from 1987 onwards while ABS-CBN went back on air in 1986, right after Ferdinand Marcos was deposed. ABS-CBN got the program later on at a time when local channels imported programs about 2-3 years late.

Nonetheless, he distinctly remembered watching it at that timeslot when he was a kid.

Even before that, he vaguely remembered watching programs of his youth that helped shaped him and his imagination, from Voltes V to Bioman and Maskman as well as Voltron and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs.

He remembered playing with clothespins and putting them together to form his own Voltron toy.

Programs that made him dream of a time he could become a hero himself, his imagination looking like a vague hodgepodge of pop culture references and shows he watched from childhood to his teenage years.

His father was a curious man. The Galangs had ashtrays all over the house but they were never used. He used to be a heavy smoker but he quit around the time Florante was born.

Florante never met the cigarette-smoking version of his dad, who judging from old pictures, was a thin hippie with long 1970s hair and pants to boot.

His Dad also regularly waited for him with their family car, a Mitsubishi Lancer, to take him home during the first few weeks of school. His school service wasn't ready yet and he didn't know how to commute to school as of yet.

To the good people of Pasig, his father was Engineer Galang. To Florante, he was the home tinkerer. He fixed everything in his home from leaky kitchen pipes to Florante's broken toys.

Even if was something as simple as super-gluing the broken arm of his toy Bioman toy... Blue 3, to be more specific... his father would do it.

It felt relaxing and comfortable to drive around with his father back and forth to school, but Florante took it too much for granted in retrospect. The man had office work to attend to as well.

Then again, Florante was a bit of a sheltered spoiled brat who didn't know how to commute to and from his home. He depended on his father or a school service to take him back to his residence.

Regardless, the jeepney service soon came through and his father was free to go straight to work instead of being bothered by driving his son from home to school and back again.

The thing Florante missed the most when being driven by his father was the small, inconsequential talks they had about life, school, and the future.

Small talk about what he wanted to do when he graduated high school, what his career would be, where his passion lay, and if his love of drawing and art could lead anywhere.

They also talked about what sort of games could or couldn't be played on his work laptop (Duke Nukem from Apogee, apparently). Or how Florante should stop sleeping with his work laptop in his room, replaying the Simpsons After Dark Screensaver program.

Or whatever happened to that floppy disk (the really big and floppy ones) he had containing a videogame involving a cat that might've been custom-made by one of his coworkers.

Florante also discussed with his father his dreams of becoming an animator who worked at Disney and the like.

He was even closer to one of his older sisters, the one closest to his age. The middle one. His other sister, the eldest of the three siblings, was the one with the strong, abrasive personality. The aloof eldest sister to her two younger siblings.

The middle sister was the one whom Florante talked to the most.

She was usually as meek and kind as a sheep yet sometimes as stubborn as a ram. She was the one he told his made-up stories about angels and demons. The plot he wanted to turn into his own comic book or manga or anime TV show.

He, like many other teenaged boys his age, wished he could draw or write his own stories. After reading snippets and summaries of Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost, his mind went running wild regarding the prospect of a series about angels.

God's so-called messengers.

This was why he knew so much about the Four Archangels. He researched about them for the sake of writing his own (fan) fiction using "original" characters.

Sure, his middle sister might be patronizing him by listening to his puerile action stories of super-powered beings duking it out that she'd soon forget a day or two later, but he appreciated her effort in listening to him regardless.

Also, as lame as it sounded, making that story in his head into reality as a comic book or TV show (and making money off of it) was his biggest dream for the longest time. Again, it was a typical childhood fantasy from someone who regularly obsessed about cartoons and comics or anime and manga.

Meanwhile, he didn't have anyone to talk to at school at all. He had no friends at school. He was a friendless loser.

He could talk about almost everything to his father and sister. However, he couldn't talk about "that".

He wished he could talk to them about the bullying and shunning he suffered from school but he was too embarrassed to do so. He was already 14 years old. He should be able to handle things on his own by now.

How could he possibly reveal that he got bullied so bad that he had to act as his own snitch to the teacher just to get them to stop?

Had a teacher not seen the bullying firsthand and told his bullies to cut it out, he wouldn't even have the list as his means of mitigating the flow of abuse from what seemed like everyone.

Even then, he had a hard time making friends with any of his classmates regardless. His social life was dead. He could only make friends with his fellow "Dead Kids" and nothing more.

***

Fatima Grade School and High School of Mandaluyong was also right beside a church, since it was a Catholic school that was founded by Franciscan capuchins.

The church sat atop a hill with a steep, sloping road wherein cars can drive through. The parking area was at the foot of this hillside road. Right below the church was the back of the canteen—the kitchen area—and outside of it was a bricked walkway full of tall trees and what little dirt they were allowed to grow on.

The unexpected benefit of enrolling in Fatima School was the nearby shopping malls. They were within walking distance. Florante was no mallrat but he regularly made a beeline to these malls every dismissal time. He went there to kill time while waiting for his school service to take him home.

The actual entrance of the school was a narrow hallway with concrete pillars and seats enclosed within a chain link fence. The security guard's job was to check your I.D. before letting you inside. Right beside the walkway a separate glass door entrance to the Faculty Room and the Principal's Office for Fatima Grade School.

You needed to travel further within the campus, past the quadrangle, open-air basketball courts, tennis court, soccer field, and tree-lined park in order to reach the L-shaped high school building.

It rained that day, so he had to walk on the covered walkways to spare himself from the muddiness of the soccer field and the wetness of various puddles on the concrete ground.

It was a proper, well-funded private school. With the ached looks of his parents at the start of the year where they had to pay the tuition fee, Fatima should give them their money's worth.

Inside the high school building, beyond the muddy floor mat and within the vicinity of the hardworking custodians mopping up the soppy shoe prints of the milling students, everything was nice, warm, and dry.

Or it would've been nice, warm, and dry had the air not been so muggy. This sort of humidity was to be expected from the Philippine tropics.

What wetness he left behind on the floor mats he could feel from under his collar.

He had felt his breath gradually creep towards hyperventilation as he approached the door to his section. He then held his breath while following two of his classmates through the door.

At any rate, here he was. Back to hell he went.

There was mustiness from the hallway that reached all the way to the classrooms.

This gloomy air all around him reminded him of his first day in Fatima High. He remembered it like it was yesterday.

***

During his first day of school at Fatima High...

His enrollment into Fatima High School was a bureaucratic blur.

He had gone through the motions of waiting in line in a small, brightly lit office in order to get his papers containing his schedule before being directed to his classroom.

At the time, he pulled his hood over his face (he wore a hoodie since it was cold) as he walked through the dour campus full of milling, bright-eyed teenagers and kids, thankfully blending in with the rest of the crowd before being "outed" as a transfer student.

He was an introvert though, so he couldn't muster the courage to talk to any one of them as they all formed their little cliques and social circles.

Meanwhile, he ended up in the company of total strangers because he was the new kid in school.

Regardless, he used the map given to him at the faculty room along with instructions on how to get there.

He checked the room number on the paper slip that the office gave him, and then checked the names on the list pinned on the board hanging on the door. Sure enough, he found his name there.

This was the right classroom.

He took a deep breath (perhaps more of a prolonged sigh) before opening the door to his classroom.

The people in front of him were chatting it up, their school bags beside them. They had no lockers to speak of even though they were supposedly a private school.

He glanced at the multiple gatherings of unfamiliar faces, identifying only two of boys as students he'd seen during enrollment.

With a gulp, he held his own bag in his arms and clutched it close to his chest like a pillow. Or a security blanket. This was a move taught to him in order to avoid getting his bag snatched in places like Divisoria in Quiapo.

His eyes traveled further across the room, avoiding the gazes of the students around him and only looking directly at them if they were staring elsewhere. Otherwise, he ended up staring at the floor or his shoes instead while his head was bowed.

Since the first day of school was a time when the seating plan hadn't been planned out yet by their designated advisor, he silently searched for a seat at the back while other students who were a mix of graduates of Fatima Grade School and newbies like him started to mill inside their classroom like herded sheep.

It was there that he met her. A girl with silky long black hair and a shy smile.

The bell rang with such franticness that like in a game of "Trip to Jerusalem", he ended up sitting down on a seat right beside her.

***

Their homeroom teacher, some forgettable 40-year-old guy serving as their class advisor, did a roll call on everyone present.

He waited and raised his hand when his name was called. He then made a mental footnote to wait for the name of the girl beside him to get called.

Philippine private high schools, unlike those from the U.S., had classes held in the same classroom for the same section instead of multiple classrooms with assigned subjects and teachers.

It was the teachers that moved from section to section and room to room instead of the students. The latter setup where students went to Math or Science class was more of a college thing in the Philippine Islands.

In between classes and within the same room they'd been staying in the whole day, Florante attempted to chat up the pretty girl he ended up sitting beside with, first by introducing himself and then calling her by her name as revealed by their homeroom teacher.

Her name was Laura Reyes, by the way.

"So Mandaluyong is a lot different than Antipolo, huh?" he asked her after she mentioned where she was from. My, their school sure was a long way from her home!

"Very different," she said, not quite looking at him.

"The roads there go high up on an incline, right? Since you're near the mountains or something," he added, referring to the highlands where Antipolo was located. "Must be a long, tough commute."

"I guess," she replied vaguely. "Well, not really. It takes about 30 minutes if the traffic is clear. It's not that far away."

"Oh. Okay," he said before both went silent once more.

Uh-oh. He was running of topics to discuss with her. Dammit.

She wasn't quite giving him the cold shoulder, but she wasn't the one keeping the conversation going either.

Also, he couldn't believe Laura of all people didn't know about the tale of "Florante and Laura" by Francisco Baltasar or made the connection between their names when he joked about it earlier.

Or maybe it was for the best that she didn't, since making such references to a stranger you just met was kind of cringe-inducing.

Someone else cleared their throat. 'Her' throat.

"Hey, Laura!" said the bespectacled girl in front of them as she did a sideway glance at the two. "Who's your new friend?"

"Oh. Uh, this is... what's your name again? Flor?"

He sighed then said, "Florante."

He winced whenever people shortened his name like that. "Flor" was a girl's name, for goodness's sake!

"Oh, sorry. Florante it is." Laura smiled at Florante vaguely then turned towards the other girl. The cute one with the glasses.

Laura and the bespectacled girl had an easier time with their small talk, presumably because they attended the same grade school and weren't transfer students like he was.

He also couldn't help but feel like the other girl was giving him a wary side eye. He hoped it was his imagination. The last thing he wanted was to look creepy to the girls on the first day of school.

"...Nah, I'm staying with some relatives in Metro Manila," Laura replied to the nerdy girl asking her the same question Florante did earlier regarding the commute from Antipolo to Mandaluyong.

"Oh really? Cool. I'm from Makati," the nerdy girl replied.

Now wait a second. Why did Laura answer her question but when he asked the same thing, she didn't tell him about staying with relatives in Metro Manila? Ugh, this girl.

Beautiful as Laura was, she was also quite rude!

She didn't need to pretend to be nice to him. If she didn't want to talk to him, she could've just given him the cold shoulder like many of the girls from his old school!

"Hey, Flor!"

"It's Florante," he automatically corrected before noticing it was the girly nerd who beckoned him by name. "Uh, yeah. What is it?"

"Where are you from? What class were you back in Grade 7? Or are you an accelerant from Grade 6?"

"Accelerant?" he repeated. He was familiar with the term.

The girl later explained that when at Grade 6 or 12 years old, a student with good enough grades could skip Grade 7 and go straight to first year high school as an accelerant.

He clarified, "No, no. I'm a transfer student. This is my first day at Fatima."

"Right. Welcome to Fatima High, then!" the girl with the glasses said. "The name's Jenny, by the way. Jenny Tolentino. I'm an accelerant from sixth grade."

He nodded absently. "Florante Galang," he reintroduced himself to this mousy girl with short hair, noticing her baby doll face behind coke-rimmed glasses for the first time.

She looked of East Asian descent, but Florante couldn't for the life of him tell if she was part Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Chinese was a safe bet.

***

The rest of the morning of his first day in school passed in the same fashion as before: With him engaging in awkward small talk with either Jenny or Laura that was interspersed with introductions, note-taking, and discussion of lesson plans galore.

The homeroom teacher had Florante, several other transfer students, and "accelerants" from Fatima Grade School introduce themselves in front of the class full of Grade 7 graduates who already had their own cliques and friends by now.

His social anxiety got him to stammer an introduction to the class, blush tomato-red, and trip over himself on his own two leather shoes as he made his way back to the seat.

He cringed and didn't meet Laura's eyes. He looked so uncool.

They then had their next class with a strict middle-aged woman for a mathematics teacher covering one of the most boring subjects of all time.

Their advisor and home economics teacher was a young woman straight out of college by the looks of it, dealing with her first teaching job and showcasing a strong aura of "substitute" teacher even though she wasn't one.

Her name was Cathy, if he recalled correctly. Or Miss (Cathy) Estrella. She was kind of cute, if a bit goofy and had a tendency to pronounce her Ls as Ws like Barbara Walters or Elmer Fudd.

After three classes had passed, he began recognizing several of the faces in their first-year section.

More and more people ended up talking to Laura even though she herself was an accelerant from the sixth grade amongst mostly seventh graders. She was particularly popular among the boys in the group: No surprises there.

Her beauty hadn't only caught Florante's eyes, apparently. The rest of the class's male population wanted to talk to her. Even the females wished to chat her up as well. She had that aura of friendliness around her.

There were several brave enough to ask her about how much she liked Fatima High so far and why she decided to go there instead of a school closer to Antipolo. Maybe even an all-girls school.

Most of her answers were mostly terse and diplomatic, like with him.

She did reveal to Jenny that she already went to an all-girls school in elementary, which was part of the reason why her parents had her transfer to a co-ed one: To help her become more prepared for a co-ed college life.

This then led him to curiously tell Jenny, "Hey, I thought Laura and you were accelerants with how buddy-buddy you two were acting. But didn't you say you were an accelerant?"

Jenny shrugged. "I am. But I met Laura earlier when our families came over to school and paid the tuition fee on the same day. She's a nice gal." She then whispered to him, "She's cute, isn't she?"

He turned away, his hand holding up his lightly blushing face while his elbow rested on his desk. "She's all right," he mumbled.

He heard Laura giggle at Jenny and say, "Hey, I'm right here! Don't talk behind my back!"

Jenny herself laughed. "No, we weren't! We were talking right in front of you! We don't backtalk! Right, Flor?"

Florante forced a smile at the Chinese-looking girl and nodded.

The Galang boy then got a better look at the nerdy Jenny. Aside from those huge tinted glasses that looked almost like goggles and seemed to belong in the 1970s, she had short, neck-length curly hair.

She wasn't bad looking herself.

She talked to both him and Laura in between subjects and lessons, but mostly to Laura, who at least talked to her in return and wasn't as evasive with her answers as she was to him or the other boys in class.

Jenny acted more like the nice girl she described Laura as, at least.

As for him, he could only smile and nod as she prattled on in between classes and teachers, telling Laura about the Fatima campus. He didn't try to keep up and figured he'd learn more about Fatima on his own.

During lunchtime, Florante ended up sitting at the far end of a full lunch table with Jenny and Laura along with several of their other new "friends", their classmates.

Florante forgot their names as soon as they spoke them, his mind focused more on Laura.

He debated to himself whether she was waving him off the same way she waved off the boys who were probably hitting on her back at their classroom.

One of their classmates, he did remember.

The one who brought up the "Florante and Laura" connection they had that made Florante's eyes light up, only for his shoulders to then slump when he turned and saw Laura tell the guy off, "Gross! Stop fooling around, Gerry! I just met him! C'mon, you're embarrassing Flor!" with a giggle.

'Gross'? Aw, come on, Laura!' Florante thought to himself, his heart sinking while he did a nervous chuckle at the cruel joke. Did he actually gross out Laura after all?

Laura and "Gerry", the jester who brought the "Florante and Laura" connection up, then laughed at the thought, all the while reassuring Galang that they were just kidding.

"No hard feelings, bro," said the tall guy named Geronimo "Gerry" (pronounced "Jerry") Jacinto who made the joke in the first place. Florante did his best to laugh things off, hiding his quivering lower lip with his hand.

Galang took a good look at the smart aleck who brought the subject up.

This person was the size of a tall rock with the mind of a sock. Comfortable to wear but once taken off, easily lost. He was also the kind of man who looked like he'd spent the last decade worrying about his penis size.

No, no, Florante was being needlessly mean to the jokester. He was big, tall, and had a huge head. Not exactly a good-looking guy but a witty and confident one. Also, among the boys there, he seemed to have the most rapport with Laura, if not the most memorable one of the bunch.

Gerry was more of a "Florante" to Laura than Florante was. Although they just met, they were already getting along famously.

On the bright side, he was glad he never made that Florante and Laura joke to break the ice with Laura.

As the chatterbox Jenny talked the ears off of the crowd of boys and girls surrounding Laura, the withdrawn Florante saw them arrive at the cafeteria.

"What are those weirdoes doing anyway?" someone at their table asked.

***

Sitting at the corner of the cafeteria, as far away as possible from where Florante Galang and Laura Reyes's group sat, were these pale-faced, dark, and brooding Fatima High students.

The term "Goth" was more of an American trend than a Philippines one, but that was the best way to describe these people.

'What was their problem?' Florante thought to himself. He wasn't the only one staring holes at those people though.

They weren't gawking at Laura, unlike most other students of the first year class of St. Francis of Assisi and even other classes.

Instead, everyone ended up gawking at them for a change, including Galang and Reyes.

By the way, in Fatima School, all of the sections were named after saints. Florante belonged to First Year St. Francis. As for those other people, he overheard Jenny stage whisper to Laura, "They're from St. Valentine, right?"

One of Gerry's friends confirmed, "Yeah, some of them belong to St. Valentine," referring to First Year St. Valentine of Rome.

There were five of them, four boys and one girl. They weren't talking to each other. They weren't eating either, with each of them holding trays of untouched food.

Apropos of nothing, Galang noticed they were an eclectic and diverse group from multiple high school years.

The shortest male of these Fatima students had spiky hair standing up like a black bush or a shadowy fire. He was also the most boyish one of the group.

Another one, the girl, had hair in a bun with side bangs as long as her back ponytail. She was about the same height as the bush-haired boy and had an almost elfish or pixie-like quality to her smallish face, body, and gait.

Still another, the one with the tanned skin and brusque physique, had shades colored light enough for him to claim they were glasses. Not only did he wear shades indoors—he also sported a jacket indoors too.

The happiest, smiley-faced one of them with the long, thick hair just also happened to be the palest one of the group, even though both the girl and the "midget" boy had alabaster skin themselves. He also looked like a serious weightlifter for someone supposedly so young.

Finally, there was the really tall, lanky young man. Taller than Gerry. Skinny as a rail yet as tall as a basketball player. Maybe 6'9". Maybe even seven feet. He might as well be eight feet high from the looks of him and his lengthy arms and feet.

Look at the height of that human being. If he was a human being.

However, there were in the Philippines with a height average of 5'1" so he was probably just 6'5" or something.

He definitely didn't appear like a high school student for sure. More like their guardian or butler. "He looks old for a freshman," remarked Florante.

Gerry himself corrected, "Tanga (Stupid)! Only the midget and girl are from St. Valentine. The rest are from different years. Celestino is a fourth year student."

Florante frowned but did not dare glare at the bigger Jacinto.

Instead, he repeated the name, "Celestino..." as his words trailed off while he stared the tallest student of the weird bunch.

Now that he got a better look at him, he identified that this Celestino person had half-Caucasian or "mestizo" features.

He might not even be half but full Caucasian by how white he was and how sharp his nose got.

He might even be of Spanish descent, which was a sought-after attribute among Filipinos, whether they wanted narrow noses that were "matangos" as opposed to flat noses or "pango".

It rooted from the colonial days of the Philippines when it was a colony of Spain for 300 years then of the United States of America for almost 50 years. The foreigners intermarried with the natives, and their half-white, half-Spanish, or half-American offspring tended to be treated better than the rest by society.

It came to the point that looking like a mestizo by surgery and skin whitening procedures resulted in better treatment by everyone else at large, which in turn led to such appearances being part of the standards of Philippine beauty.

It was "Colonial Mentality" in action, if you would.

Then again, if Celestino hadn't been born with that (Spanish?) family name of his, Florante would've sworn he picked that name himself because it sounded cool.

Speak of the devil, as Galang said the name, Celestino suddenly met eyes with him.

Celestino initially had shut eyes that opened into narrow slits and seemed to glow underneath his bangs that formed a curtain of hair over his face.

Florante balked at the tall, scary dude with gangly limbs and a weird stringy hairstyle that parted to the side and formed a bobcut with hair moving outwards from his head like antennae, giving his head a diamond shape.

Celestino looked at Jenny for a second before his sharp eyes flickered back to Florante.

Florante looked away first, a flush of crimson embarrassment making him drop his eyes with a shudder.This also had him almost bump into Gerry, who then jibed, "Oooh, does someone have a little crush on him?" with a pat in his back like the asshole that he was.

Jenny herself giggled with an unsure smile, looking at Florante as she asked, "You okay, Flor?"

Galang nodded to Tolentino with a nod. When the ruckus was over and people stopped staring at the strange "circus" troupe, Florante stole glances at all the five strange high school students.

Aside from the shortest kid of their group and the pale-faced girl, the rest of them looked like they could be college students instead of high school ones, or even outright teachers around the same age as Ms. Estrella. Or even older.

Even the shorter people of their group looked a bit too old to be freshmen or high schoolers. Like they were 30-year-old actors playing the role of teenagers in a Hollywood high school movie or something.

Just as they were different they were also the same in a strange way.

They were walking contradictions of themselves in terms of their inhumanly beautiful appearance that verged on the uncanny.

Uncanny because they looked like the airbrushed or manipulated photographs on a fashion magazine. Or walking paintings from the Renaissance. Perhaps even sculptures shaped from marble, silver, or bronze.

Aside from the tanned "moreno" or "kayumanggi" one that served as the black sheep in their white-fleeced herd, they shared chalk-pale alabaster skin that bordered on being albino, dark eyes with shadows underneath them, and gangly limbs that matched them more with each other than their high school uniforms.

They looked like they hadn't slept a wink for weeks or months. In fairness, all five shared perfect, straight, and angular features carved straight from marble.

Who did they remind Florante of?

"They look like The Addams Family," whispered Gerry to his friends, which had them erupt in laughter.

To Galang's chagrin, he agreed with Gerry. Took the words right out of his mouth, even.

He himself might've said, "Children of the Corn", but he doubted that present company would even be familiar with such a reference.

However, their appearances weren't the reason why Florante couldn't look away from them.

He felt something familiar about them. Déjà vu, perhaps?

They group of five then looked away from them. From all those stares.

They looked away from one another and from the other students. Like there was a bird or a plane in the distance that caught their attention had there not been a wall or a ceiling obstructing their view of the sky.

The girl rose from her seat, her tray of untouched food and unopened soda remaining still as she walked away with a stride and sashay of a model before she glided up the steps of the exit, her silhouette across the light permeating from the outside creating ghostly afterimages behind her.

Florante's eyes darted back to the four remaining males, who sat like statues or students posing for a group picture. Unmoving. Like the famous painting of The Last Supper at another angle.

After a couple of more minutes, all four of them left the table altogether in unison. They strode with the grace of dancers or athletes, including the muscular one.

The one named Celestino never looked at Florante's way again. Like he was a bug who was below his notice.

He'd later learn their names. The short guy and girl of the same age were fraternal twins: Kalantiaw and Dalisay Hidalgo.

The bronze-skinned one with the shades was known as Alonzo Estanislao. The extra pale, extra jacked one with the creepy smile and caveman hair was named Jacob "Benjo" Benjamin.

Finally, the tallest, lankiest, and oldest one of them was called Francisco "Kiko" Celestino.

What strange, old-timey names. The nicknames sounded about as goofy, cutesy, and silly as a typical Filipino nickname, but the actual names themselves sounded old. Almost ancient.

From the Year "Nineteen Kopong-Kopong", almost. Or a time before the Philippines went from a Spanish colony to an American colony.

***

Florante Galang remembered how his eyes flickered back and forth from his worn leather shoes to the table where those five weirdoes sat during his first day of school at Fatima High.

He wanted to learn more about those—for lack of a better term—Gothic or Goth kids who wore jackets and trench coats in the tropics unironically.

They didn't have a name for their "gang", but the rest of the school did.

They were called the Dead Kids mostly to make fun of them and their cringy, pretentious lifestyle. Like the way they sat around and didn't really eat during lunchtime.

He wanted to ask more questions about the Dead Kids and their gangly cult leader Celestino, but both Laura and Jenny were themselves newcomers to the school and Gerry intimidated him.

He'd eventually get additional information about them through word of mouth and small talk from the rest of his classmates as the rest of the school year unfolded.

Like info on whether or not they'd always lived in Metro Manila, Mandaluyong City, Cainta City, Quezon City, or Pasig City all this time. Maybe they moved from Makati to Pasig like his family did.

They'd apparently been around since last year. They were transfer students.

Last year, Celestino was immediately moved to his third year in high school, Estanislao and Benjamin entered first and second year respectively, and the fraternal Hidalgo twins joined them only this year as freshmen in high school.

Because the Galangs themselves recently moved to Pasig, Florante was unaware of how recently Celestino himself moved in town.

Rumors had it that they were all foreign exchange students, hence their half-foreign looks. The only one who remotely looked native Filipino was Estanislao.

The rest looked like the typical half-Chinese, half-American, half-Latino, or half-European models Florante would see on television. Come to think of it, the tan Estanislao could be half-Mexican or half-Moroccan for all he knew.

After all, the Philippines was itself a melting pot of cultures, with it being a colony of both Spain and America for years. Even centuries, in the case of Spain.

Regardless, he felt a curious surge of relief and pity for these beautiful people. As pretty as they appeared, they were considered as the outsiders of Fatima High. They were perhaps even ostracized or bullied by the rest of the student body.

Something that Florante could relate to.

The way the people around them reacted to their strange mannerisms reminded Florante of how people back in grade school treated him for being such an asthmatic crybaby.

He was relieved he wasn't the only newcomer in Fatima. And he wasn't the most interesting spectacle among all the newcomers to arrive in the high school either, so everyone's bullying was more "spread out" and such.

Thank goodness.

As the first quarter of the school year neared to a close, Galang started moving predictably further and further away from the Reyes and Jacinto group for various reasons.

He started eating more and more by himself instead of their group.

He could barely talk to any of those quick-witted smart alecks, except maybe Jenny, who probably talked to him out of pity or to help him save face. Or maybe because she was just that talkative.

During one of those numerous lonely lunch breaks, as he gazed as the supposed Dead Kids, he froze as one of them... Kalantiaw this time around... looked up and met his gaze.

At the time, Florante was actually staring at the cute wallflower Dalisay, who did remind him of Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family, only for him to get caught snooping by a set of sharp, angry eyes of a certain midget brother. The Pugsley to Dalisay's Wednesday.

Those eyes shooed him away from staring any further at the cute Goth chick sister.

Dalisay's twin brother didn't appreciate all his staring. If looks could kill, the short boy with bushy hair had flying daggers for eyes.

'Ow, the edge.' What would that midget do to him anyway? Chop him to bits? Burn him to ash? All with a stare? Jeez.

As sarcastic as Florante's thoughts were, he still stood down from the stare down like the little bitch that he was.

Come to think of it, what sort of name was "Kalantiaw" anyway? It was almost as pretentious of a name as Celestino, but at least Celestino was a family name that was passed down for generations.

Kalantiaw's parents didn't have the common sense to pick a better name for their son that wouldn't lead to teasing and bullying.

Ah, but Florante quickly realized that wasn't one to speak about being called names, teasing, or bullying. It wasn't as if he could pick on the shorter kid in real life or anything: Only in his mind.

As his wandering eyes returned to the group, he noticed that Estanislao was also staring at him. his glance holding some sort of unmet expectation.

'Oh no, not this again,' he thought, afraid of a confrontation with the Dead Kids.

He quickly ate the rest of his lunch when he should've eaten the rest of the bitter words swirling inside his head, deciding to wander around the bleachers or the tree park near the children's library where he sometimes hung out (alone) as well.

However, the lithe and agile Estanislao caught up with him.

"AH!" Florante yelped.

"Hey, you know it's rude to stare, right?" Alonzo said to Florante.

Galang gulped, stuttering, "S-Sorry, I won't do it again!" cringing as he said the words.

The taller second year student with sunglasses smiled at the shy kid. "I heard of what happened to you and your classmates. Must have been rough, huh?"

Florante's lower lip trembled, his gaze not meeting Estanislao's, only for him to meet the piercing stare of Kiko Celestino.

The "leader" of the Dead Kids had the strangest expression on his face. A furious, almost hostile one. What did Florante do to deserve such a look?

He noticed that Celestino's eyes were as pitch black as midnight in the deeper parts of the province. In places where urban development had not yet started and electrical posts, much less lamps, were at least 30 minutes away.

Bewildered, Florante looked away again in time to almost stumble face-first into the canteen floor. He caught himself with the assistance of Alonzo grabbing him by his arm.

"Whoops. Careful there, kiddo," the shades-sporting lad said. Strangely enough, Florante could hear the "grin" in his voice. "You don't want to add ammo to all your classmates' teasing of you, do you?"

Unbidden, a flashback of him playing alone in the playground while the basketball varsity team snickered at him miming Rambo putting on his red bandanna flashed in his head, making him shudder and cringe.

A basketball varsity team that included the promising tall freshman, Gerry Jacinto.

He shouldn't have done it anyway. He looked stupid, playing by himself, pretending to be Rambo in the intro of his cartoon series (he never saw the actual R-rated movies).

"SorryIwon'tdoitagain," he mumbled in one breath, apologizing once more just short of doing a Japanese bow and backing away.

"No need to apologize for that," Estanislao reassured, letting go of Galang before lowering his polarized sunglasses and giving him a cheesy wink. "But remember, Flor Contemplacion, I've got dibs on Hidalgo's sister."

"I wasn't...!" Florante said, wondering how he knew his name (kind of) when this was the first time they had talked, but Alonzo cut him off.

"You sure, Flor? Hidalgo caught you staring. Better watch out for him. And me."

As the Dead Kids again left as a unit and barely dug into their lunches, Florante surprised himself by calling out to Estanislao, "My name is not Flor! It's Florante!"

'Flor is a girl's name,' he added to himself.

***

As luck would have it—whether it was bad or good luck was anyone's guess—Florante ended up in the same club as three of the Dead Kids.

He had decided to be part of the Art Club for this school year.

The others elected to go to other clubs like the Computer Club or the Science Club. There was even a Literature Club, which was where Benjo and Kiko ended up in.

Oh sorry. Benjamin and Celestino. Why was he thinking of them in such familiar terms? He barely knew them.

Regardless, the Hidalgo twins and Estanislao ended up in the same club as Galang.

The thing about high school clubs was that anyone could join them regardless of their year. Whether they were freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors (or first to fourth year) of high school, they could mingle in one class as long as they passed the initial exam.

The Art Club had the motherly figure of Mrs. Marisol Mancenido as their advisor. She looked 20 years young even though she was actually forty-something.

Her approach to proctoring the Art Club was encouraging, hands-off, and motivational.

Her "detractors" would probably claim she was too soft on the kids with the way she babied them and let them do anything they wanted in the Art Club for the sake of their "creative freedom", but she had no such detractors at Fatima High.

Everyone in the high school loved Mrs. Mancenido. She was like a Filipina Julie Andrews mixed with a young Gloria Romero.

She was the nicest teacher Florante had ever met. This was probably why he ended up in the Art Club in the first place despite having no talent in art to speak of.

It was his way to get away from First Year St. Francis. Away from the withering, cold looks that Laura gave to him after she rejected his romantic advances.

How embarrassing.

After all the nice things he'd done for her, like help her with errands like getting her photographs developed or hold her lunch tray out for her, she ended up rejecting him.

If she never saw him that way, then why'd she take advantage of him and turn him into her gopher or something? It wasn't fair.

Then again, the only connection he had with Laura was that their first names coincidentally matched the names of the romantic couple in a Filipino literary classic. The Philippine equivalent of Romeo and Juliet.

With that in mind, he found himself longing for the companionship of another female. Perhaps another one who'd also reject his advances, but at least she was much nicer about it than Laura.

Ah yes. Dalisay Hidalgo.

The Goth chick with the surprisingly soft-spoken voice.

He introduced himself to her in the clubroom one day, saying, "Hey, I'm Florante Galang. I'm from Section St. Francis."

She looked at him and nodded with a thin-lipped not-smile, brushing a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. "Hello. I'm Dalisay Hildago. From St. Valentine."

"Oh okay. Hi."

"...."

So he barely knew Dalisay and it was apparent by their awkward silences when together.

Perhaps starting with a more platonic relationship with Dalisay was in order, yes? He should learn from his mistakes with Laura. He was never popular with the pretty girls. They found him either too wimpy or too creepy.

However, an obvious obstacle kept him from getting close to Dalisay.

First, there was her overprotective brother Kalantiaw. Second, there was another guy from their "friend circle" who was also after her.

They should lay off of him, man. He only wanted to be friends with Dalisay, for goodness's sake.

'Susmaryosep,' he thought, remembering the way his mother would say the same thing whenever she was frustrated before he continued with the current Art Club activity they had for that day.

They had to make their own painting using watercolors. He frowned at the way he used too much water, nearly ripping the bond paper he painted on.

Meanwhile, Dalisay's brush strokes were all clean and perfect, like her. The way she instead used black-colored paper and white paint was a stroke of genius on her part.

Nevertheless, he kept concentrating on his work and stopped himself from peeking occasionally from the screen of his hair bangs at the mysterious yet lovely girl next to him.

This was because during the whole class, he could feel the same girl's brother not relax from his stiff position on the edge of his seat, sitting as far away from them as possible yet telescopically staring holes at them like a hawk hovering over his prey.

A tiny hawk but a hawk nonetheless. Or an angry rustling black bush.

He then peeked at Kalantiaw, regretting his decision immediately.

His crimson eyes glared back, making him feel like a newspaper left out in the rain. A messy sopping pulp not even fit for wrapping around dried tinapa (Filipino smoked fish).

As he flinched away from the male Hidalgo, slinking back against his chair's backrest, Mr. Cool Kid with the tan complexion and sunglasses lounged right behind them (since there was no set seating plan).

Alonzo Estanislao was quite... smiley that day for some reason.

What an insufferable bunch. Was it too much to ask for him to make friends with one pretty girl?

The school bell then loudly rung, which made him jump. From there, the trio of Dead Kids was out of their seats. They fluidly rose and turned in their work to Mrs. Mancenido.

He stared blankly at them, with Dalisay giggling at whatever weird remark Alonzo said, only for the taller kid with sunglasses to strangely reel back from the glaring short, petulant kid brother between them.

They barely talked to Florante and yet he felt more comfortable around them than he did most of his classmates in St. Francis of Assisi.

He had his suspicions on his first day of school, but the first-year class he ended up in was a whole class full of bullies and class clowns. Galang was more often than not always the butt of their jokes. Especially when it came to Gerry Jacinto.

Gerry made fun of everything about Florante, from the way he dressed with an unironed uniform to his old undershirt being practically see-through and threadbare that one time they were changing to their P.E. uniforms during gym class.

Jacinto was so mean. It wasn't fair.

Florante felt more at ease at the Art Club than in his own class and with his classmates.

Regardless, he started gathering his things and turn in his own almost finished work.

He suppressed the anger and frustration that filled him inside, fearing that his eyes would tear up and then one or several of his classmates would notice their redness, leading to more bullying and teasing.

Or he tried his best to do so. For whatever reason, his tear ducts were linked to his temper, which made his angry outbursts come off as tantrums.

He had no other outlet for his resentment. Dammit.

***

In fairness, it was kind of his fault why the boys (and it was mostly boys) from his section were bullying him extra hard.

The outcast of First Year Section St. Francis ended up doing something he shouldn't have done to their class idol Laura Reyes earlier that year

He cringed, wishing again that the ground would swallow him up as he remembered the embarrassing thing he did.

One of his bullies dared him to draw Laura from memory, which in and of itself wasn't so bad. However, in his desperation to win over his classmates, he ended up drawing her in the nude.

Well, that wasn't exactly what happened. Perish the thought.

They had dared him to do it and he teased doing it by drawing a rough sketch with blocky shapes for her body that looked nude but was actually just how artists "built" a drawing through sketching.

Like drawing a circle first before drawing the rest of the face. Or drawing a "nude" body first before drawing the clothes.

However, one of them told (snitched to, really) Laura about it and she caught him red-handed with what looked like him drawing her nude.

"Ew. That's gross, Flor. Stop that."

"N-No! You got it all wrong, Laura! It's not what it looks like...!"

No amount of frantic explanation was enough to keep Laura from thinking Florante was a disgusting pervert, and he even had to explain himself at the principle's office afterwards when several teachers got involved in the mess.

Naturally, the many admirers of Laura Reyes dog-piled him for his cringe-inducing antics, even though it was all his bullies' fault for making him draw Laura nude and then telling on him.

Ever since then, his bullying got so bad that he had to list off names of those who bullied him to get some of his teachers to intervene.

His listing of names mitigated the bullying but made making friends in his classroom or outside of the Dead Kids difficult due to his reputation as being a snitch.

He was looked down upon for snitching on bullies he couldn't fight back against.

***

He wished he was dead. To end his suffering.

If only he could die in the place of someone else. Someone he loved. Like family or friends. Even a lover. A girlfriend. At least that would've been something noble. He'd be a hero. Instead of a bully victim.

What if he died for nothing? What worth would his life be then?

If he were to die now, he wished he could die a nobler death.

However, from his experience of having deaths in his family, death was almost always sad or embarrassing. Nothing remotely romantic, gallant, or dignified about it.

Also, a lonely, sheltered teenaged boy like him had no one to love romantically, to be honest. He barely had friends at his new school, even.

He should've never moved from one school to another. If only his old grade school had a high school to graduate to. It just got worse, though.

For most of the first and second quarter of the school year, he opted to sink deeper and deeper into his Art Club activities with his kind-of friends (more like acquaintances) known to the rest of the school campus as the Dead Kids.

The Art Club tasked them to do any sort of major project for the class as their final test, be it a children's book or comics. Florante opted for comics.

He drew the comics on his sketchbook. On the back of his notebook. On any sheets of paper he could get his hands on. He copied characters and backgrounds from published comic books and posters before he felt confident enough to create designs of his own.

He mixed and matched the clothes he copied from his big sisters' fashion magazines unto the characters he made that he based on the shows he watched and the people he interacted with.

He even drew comics made of stapled-together scratch bond paper from used printouts, drawing at the blank parts of the paper with pencil sketches and panels made with rulers and whatnot.

Not just for the Art Club. But for himself. For fun. For the attention it got him every time he drew someone's favorite anime or cartoon character.

He even featured some of his, well, acquaintances, and classmates in the scratchy, sketchy comics he made with sparse backgrounds and honestly questionable anatomy.

It was his only way of connecting with people, since he was such a socially awkward kid.

Because they belonged in a quite religious high school founded and funded by Franciscan Capuchins, the superheroes and protagonists of the comics Florante made were all based on Christian mythology, particularly about angels.

He got the idea of making comics about angels one day after reading "Paradise Lost". Or the condensed CliffNotes study guide version of it since he didn't have a copy of the original book and he found reading passages of the poem to be quite boring.

It was part of the series of CliffNotes available in Fatima High's library, which also included novels like "The Pearl" and "Canterbury Tales".

Inside "Paradise Lost" (or its complete summary, at the very least), he learned about the four most famous angels. Archangels, to be exact.

He fell in love with the idea of angels battling demons through the centuries, from the infancy of man to the present.

He also read about demons since every angel needed a demon to fight, right? Even though demons and angels were two sides of the same coin.

He then incorporated many of his classmates in his comics. He even dreamed of them becoming angels and demons in his so-called works.

Some of the characters were his friends, the Dead Kids. Others were his acquaintances and classmates he knew of but barely interacted with. Many of them were his bullies portrayed as antagonists. As demons.

It served as his way of coping. His only method of venting.

He dreamed of the stories concerning all of them in their angel and demon forms and then put them to paper. Even though some of the girls in his class chided him for drawing girls with huge boobs and questionable anatomy.

His quaint little comics served as his dream journal of sorts. His bullies ended up becoming the demon antagonists of his made-up stories, even though he never revealed their names or drew them too accurately enough for them to notice his use of their likenesses in his works.

His comics was one of the ways he dealt with the constant bullying he got from his classmates or even his so-called friends that treated him more as their mascot or gopher for drinks and odd errands than an actual comrade.

They were treating him no different than Laura did, actually.

***

Back to the relative present...

Tonight, Florante dreamed.

He dreamed of doing things he normally couldn't do. Out of wishful thinking. Dissatisfaction. Despair. Hope.

He did it to vent his real-life frustrations elsewhere.

It was during these dreams that his innermost desires were realized. Embarrassing ones he couldn't verbalize since it involved admitting to himself some shameful things.

Like the fact that he didn't have any friends in his classroom. Or the fact that he felt more like a gopher than a friend to the Dead Kids, who were supposed to be his fellow weirdoes, in his desperate bid to belong.

Or the fact that he was one of the most heavily bullied or perhaps the most heavily bullied kid in their class. A "Dead Kid" in his own right.

Regardless, his dreams served as painkillers or Novocain to his bitter, nerve-wracking reality of loneliness and despair as a friendless outcast in his own school.

He was the new kid on the block who couldn't adjust to his new school, but then again he was also bullied back in his old school as well.

Tonight, he could pretend to be "normal" for once, while his brain had clocked out and his consciousness drifted to slumber, his tears staining his pillows at memories he tried to block out.

Traces of these traumatizing past events remained in his psyche, as evidenced by the things that he dreamed about. This allowed him to connect the dots on why he was dreaming what he dreamed.

For example, the beautiful visage of Dalisay Hidalgo quickly crossed his mind, with her smiling at him and actually talking to him while ignoring her brother and Alonzo.

Like that would ever happen. But it was a harmless dream, so it was okay for him to indulge in his fantasies.

She looked so cute. Like an angel, really. A Gothic Lolita angel with a defiant fashion sense that rebelled against their plain school uniform of plaid skirts and cotton button-down blouses.

She was much nicer than Laura, whom he once unwittingly sang a sarcastic happy birthday to thinking it was her gay best friend's birthday instead. When he found out it was her birthday instead, he wished that the ground would swallow him whole.

He inwardly cringed. She must've thought of him as such a loser.

He also dreamed what any 14-year-old boy would dream about.

He dreamed about girls. He dreamed about romance. He dreamed about naughty things.

However, in between those dreams of passion and desire were dreams about his countless regrets.

He dreamed that his bullies would leave him alone. He dreamed about getting real friends, or at least getting closer to the so-called Dead Kids. Even they seemed ashamed of hanging out with him, and they were the school's designated weirdo group!

He dreamed of never doing that cringy thing with drawing Laura's face and placing it unto a nude body (or a rough sketch of one) like some sort of thirsty stalker.

He dreamed that Laura would forgive him or realize what had happened between them was a simple misunderstanding.

He dreamed of him and her becoming friends instead of her giving him the cold shoulder since that fateful day.

He dreamed that they'd fall in love, get married, have babies, and die old together.

Even if none of those dreams happened, he still wanted to become a normal high school kid that wasn't the butt of everyone's jokes, dammit!

But tonight, his dream was different.

More intense. Stranger. Like it wasn't a dream at all.

But somehow, he was aware it was all a dream. A lucid dream, perhaps?

Regardless, it was in this dreamscape where he acted upon his most violent fantasies. He was in control of himself and the events surrounding him this time around, so he got to boss around his bullies for once.

He did in the dream things he couldn't do in real life or even draw in his comics against the so-called demons of his life.

He punished them. Humiliated them.

He then murdered them. He had the power to do so now. In his dream, he had the same powers as the protagonist of his comics. The power of a lightning storm or one of those raging typhoons that regularly battered the Philippines.

Better he do it within the confines of a dream than in real life, right? He could "vent" better that way. It was a healthy, therapeutic method of venting.

However, when he woke up, his dream became horrible reality.

What he had taught had happened during midnight in his dreams had instead occurred in the early morning while classes were supposed to be going on.

He looked down and saw that his hands were covered in blood. Not his own.

'...Eh? What's going on?'

Right before him were the bodies of people on the floor. Many of them his classmates. Some of them not. Several of them burning to a crisp. Like something out of Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

'Susmaryosep!'

Wait, what had happened here?

No, he hadn't woken up! He was still dreaming, right? This was all a nightmare!

He then saw her.

The angelic winged beauty made of floating water that reminded him of one of the four most famous angels appeared before him.

She was a breathtakingly gorgeous, angelic woman. Or the huge statue of one brought to life. She looked really familiar, though.

Faintly, as if his half-awake mind was still dreaming in shock and in pure disbelief of what had happened, he wondered what the person before him reminded him of.

He was at the mercy of a terribly beautiful sight from the ether, her strands of hair flowing upwards like they were underwater or a bonfire, her fingertips engulfed in dancing tendrils of water.

Looking at her was like dying from a siren's song, but more visually impactful rather than visceral. So like staring straight into the sun. Or Medusa's eyes.

Except this time, Medusa was an attractive young woman instead of a monster with snakes for hair.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor. Prepare to die."

Man, his mind was such a mess. How did he get there? What happened? Who was this beautifully horrifying creature? This biblical angel?

Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Azrael.

Or was it Uriel?

Anyway, those were the Four Archangels, right?

...Right?

***

To Be Continued...

The first chapter is finally done. My first completely original work not based on someone else's idea. I've had this title and this work in my head since the 1990s. I'm glad I now have the opportunity to make it into reality.

Farewell, Abdiel

#angels #gabriel #raphael #demons #philippines #fantasy of evolution #original fiction

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sillyanimegamingroad · 4 years

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How much information can our brain store?

In 2016, Professor José A. Esteban gave the conference “ What are memories made of? And where are they kept? ”At the Achucarro Forum of the Basque Center for Neuroscience. In it, the CSIC biologist and researcher spoke about synaptic plasticity and the development of therapeutic applications for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It has always been a curiosity that how much information can our brain store?

Thinking about the content of the talk, the first thing that came to mind were a couple of recent articles. On the one hand, the tweet from Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com, commenting on the Constellation Research study on the importance of Big Data, Analytics and Data Mining (again) at this moment in history in which 90% of the data in the world was created in the last year.

On the other hand, the creation by scientists from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom of a new data format that, by storing information in crystal nanostructures, has achieved an expected life time of 13.8 billion years of expected survival for said support. You don’t know where to store 360 terabytes of data and you may have to put it at 190º of temperature? No problem! We have the perfect hard drive for you thanks to a scientifically proven 5D storage technique. So I got to thinking, how much information can we remember? Will it be more or less than what can be generated in a lifetime? And what about the one that has been generated throughout history?

The information peta

Information peta of our brain

To estimate how much information could be generated, nothing better to do this than to look for the leaders in information processing. In 2011 Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the company that wants to order the world’s information to make it accessible, said that humanity generated 5 exabytes of unique information every two days on the Internet .

What is that? Bernardo Hernández pointed out in these parts that it is as much information as from the beginning of history until 2003, all together, at the same time, without anesthesia. As there were people who did not quite square the figure, Science magazine decided to recalculate, concluding that we have generated about 600 exabytes up to 2011. And how much is an exabyte? Much.

1000 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Bronobyte 1000 Bronobyte = 1 Geopbyte

So of course, a skill that is becoming essential to survive in this modern environment is a hypertrophied memory, whatever they say. Therefore I needed to have an idea of our maximum capacity to memorize in order to determine if everything we generate fits or not.

Robert Birge , a professor and researcher at the University of Connecticut who analyzed the storage capacity of proteins, estimated it to be between 1 and 10 Terabytes in 1996, assuming that a neuron was a bit. Closer in time, in 2008, he considered in a radio interview that it could actually be something closer to 30 or 40 Terabytes , given that the brain does not store information in the same way as a computer. In any case, it seems insufficient to reach our goal, so a solution must be found. On the one hand, it is hopeful to remember that the brain forgets things, leaving room for new memories. We all have things we want to forget (those over 40 years younger because there are no compromising photos of us on the Internet of when we were young, for no other reason). But it is also true that we could forget what we should not.

No, in these topics we better bet on the Diogenes syndrome of memories, we are not going to forget any important anniversary for our partner, such as his birthday or Valentine’s Day. So we tried to keep asking to find out that depending on who we talk to we can reach the magic Petabyte number. The calculation in this case comes from estimating 100,000 million neurons with 1,000 synaptic connections each, taking each connection instead of each neuron for 1 bit.

The confirmation comes to us by a team of researchers from the Salk Institute led by Terry Sejnowski estimated in a paper published in eLife at the beginning of 2016 that it could be considered to go from tera to peta without problems since the synapses were not all the same, and that the different types could allow estimating up to 4.7 bits of information for each one .

What’s more, in some cases there is even talk of a maximum of 2.5 Petabytes . Paul Reber gives us an idea of the impact of this difference in capacity in an article in Scientific American .

In it, this professor of psychology at Northwestern University explained that this amount would allow 300 million hours of television to be stored . Of course, what he did not say is that it was not in HD, so I do not think that with that quality we can survive our challenge: 1 petabyte in HD quality is barely 13.3 years of video , very little if we are looking for true love and for all life.

An image and thousands of words

Digital Brain

I admit, this first approach is discouraging. It was urgent to find solutions. So my next step was to try to determine the maximum potential of our memory . If it was greater than the information generated we would still have a chance. We have already left behind the mistaken idea that we only use 10% of our brain, but it is still clear that we cannot use everything at once and that we have it quite underused. How do you get to use it in such a way that it is possible to memorize everything you can memorize? The next one seemed obvious: we had to find the great memorizers of history , see what they were capable of and compare it with the limits.

Unfortunately, it seems that many of the best known cases of “infinite” memories were the result of trauma or unwanted situations and, what is worse, not easy to repeat without putting our integrity at risk to achieve it. An example of the risk we talked about was the old case of Cenn Fáelad mac Aillila , an Irish scholar who died in 679. Although what is called a scholar was actually scholar, it was not very scholarly. Come on, his thing was weapons and fighting. Precisely in one of them he got a good wound on his head, which resulted in a wound that caused him pain all his life on the one hand, and an elephant memory on the other. What’s more, it is said that he did not manage to forget anything else during the rest of his existence. To understand the harsh implication of acquiring this superpower we must know that Cenn, after obtaining his new condition, completely changed his life to devote himself to poetry and learning Latin, instead of enjoying with friends from the “third time” after the battles .

Recent literature has also treated the subject with interest. Forges wrote about ” Funes the memorable ” telling in his collection of “Fictions”, back in 1944, the story of a man who suffers from hypermnesia after a common accident: a fall, in this case from a horse.

Curiously, his new gift is also associated with another headache, this time that of not being able to sleep (a big mistake, as we will see later). The absence of sleep and the premise that this process is a “memory eraser” means that the protagonist has, during his short life, a memory full of details but a total inability to think and make use of them. I was on the right track … well, you understand.

Closer in time was the case of Kim Peek , who inspired the character of Raymond Babbit in the movie “Rain Man.” Kim did not have any accidents during his life as his ability apparently originated before his birth. After Kim was born, the doctors told his parents that the child was not normal and that he would have mental retardation all his life, so they even recommended admitting him.

They refused to discover as he got older certain abilities that contrasted with the evident delay that he actually showed, as they had been diagnosed. Little Kim had been reading since he was 18 months old. Well, the reality is that he memorized the books his father read to him and he didn’t need to read them ever again to remember them. At the age of three he went to the dictionary, which he also memorized, to finish with what is estimated to have been around 9,000 books in his life.

As in the case described by Borges, his great memory and other abilities did not help him in his day-to-day life (coordination problems) or in analyzing or drawing conclusions. Apparently the reason for his ability would be related to the absence of a corpus callosum in his brain, causing his neurons to form a compact mass of connections that amplified his capacity, combined all this with an evident case of macrocephaly.

Kim’s father met Barry Morrow, the scriptwriter for the film “Rain Man,” at a conference in the State of Texas in 1984. The film introduced the “Sage Syndrome” or Savant into our lives, studied by Darold. Treffert. A “Savant”, or virtuoso of the arts in French, is a person who despite some physical, mental or other disability, possesses other skills that are normally developed at a much higher level.

It is associated with autism although it is estimated that less than 10% of autistics have abilities of this type . It is also estimated that half of the Savants are autistic, which does not help us much in our search (safe and without risk to our integrity) for an infinite memory. In a century of study, a maximum of one hundred people with this capacity are calculated. Treffet himself considers that less than 50 exist right now in the whole world with it. Other researchers, such as Snyder or Mottron and Dawson, tried to find the ability to induce skills, but without much success. Looking for alternatives, I went to ” The Big Bang Theory” , which allowed me to remember that there is what is known as Hypertrophic Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory. Yes, those people who remember everything, like Sheldon Cooper or Will Hunting. If they only remember things related to their own existence, we speak of a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), of which it is estimated that 20 such people have been studied around the world (all in the USA). They are the “Google Humans” who suffer from hyperthymesia or excess memories. Unfortunately it is a quality that, coming as standard, can be lost if it is not diagnosed and worked on.

It appears suddenly and from that moment those who suffer from it begin to remember a large number of details of their day to day. In this case, Jill Price , who published a book about her case in 2008, can remember all the days of her life since she turned 14. Remember that at the age of 8, in 1974, you were beginning to be aware that something was not normal in your memory.

Unfortunately these people do not always have the ability to memorize anything, usually their memories are focused on aspects of their own life. They also do not use techniques or mnemonic rules that can be learned or replicated by others, or managed or improved. There are several recorded cases besides Jill Price (the long time patient AJ), all of them very similar.

For example Brad Williams, Rick Baron or Marilu Henner, star of a TV series in the US, which is the place of origin in most cases. The study of these patients by a team from the University of California at Irvine, led by Dr. Parker, has helped to better understand where and how data is stored in the brain.

It has not helped so much to the bearers of this gift, since as Jill herself has the negative part of spending much of her life in the past, of not being able to identify what each key is for , of suffering problems with recognition facial of people and also showing obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Become a Foer

At this point on the road it seems that the alternatives to have a memory “in keeping with the times” were having an accident waiting for luck to smile on us, inducing a genetic or birth anomaly and little else. Is there no other way to get an elephant memory? A journalist in the United States dedicated a year of his life to finding the solution to this problem. Our great man is Joshua Foer , who decided to leave everything to better know the people who were professionally dedicated to developing their memory, even training himself for the memory championships in the USA.

Without any prior knowledge of the subject, or special ability, or natural genetics, he won the championship in 2006. He ended up writing his experience in a book, ” The challenges of memory ” can be found in Spanish, “Moonwalking with Einstein : the art and science of remembering everything ”in English. Joshua also gives TED talks explaining how “normal people” can expand their retention capacity.

One of his first discoveries was the millenary mnemonic techniques , such as the palaces of memory. Aristotle spoke already in his time of places where we were able to store content to be remembered. The thing did not remain in the past: the ars memorativa was discussed and studied in classical sources or medieval studies. Saint Augustine wrote profusely about memory in his “Confessions”, in fact the term appears about 100 times, and also refers to a place where we can access and where memories are kept.

Frances Yates in her book “The Art of Memory” (1969) confirmed how the ancient Greeks and Romans used a technique based on prior memorization of the arrangement of everything in a room or building. Joshua Foer includes in his the story of the Greek Simonides of Ceos, who was enjoying a banquet with friends in the 5th century BC when everything collapsed around him, most of those present perishing. A survivor of the catastrophe, he suddenly became a history of memory when, abstracting from what happened and taking as a reference the columns, tables and general arrangement of the room, he managed to lead the relatives of the deceased by the hand to tell them where they were at the moment that everything changed in their lives. Joshua and the legend say that at that moment, with this practical demonstration of the Simónides technique, the study of memory began its official journey.

This is how the idea of using a physical “place” as a reference is the basis of this mnemonic technique known as the Loci Method (plural of the Latin term “locus” or location, location). We first memorize a “container”, a reference, for example using a building or a house, ultimately a place we know; we can even create one from scratch. Once it is developed, we design routes through it, to also have an order, a sequence that we will follow to move through it and that will act as a common thread, turning a complex task into a pleasant walk.

Information stored in Brain

In this way we solve two important problems: remembering things that the brain has trouble remembering naturally, and remembering them in context even when they do not have them per se. The idea, later copied by communications engineers, of using a “carrier” of the message, which facilitates its transport and storage, is as old as our culture. Greeks and Romans in their ancient rhetorical treatises, such as the ” Rhetorica ad Herennium “, the oldest surviving book of rhetoric in Latin to this day (originating from the year 90 BC), already spoke of the places to store things in our memory.

Problem solved … for now

At this point part of the problem seemed solved. We could not confirm if the brain could remember all the information that is generated, but we did know that there were people who remembered everything , and that following Foer’s instructions, anyone could learn to memorize a large amount of important information, such as the dates essential to survive in a modern couple relationship. And after all, if Foer, a journalist, had been able to do it, anyone should be able to be.

The post How much information can our brain store? appeared first on Technoeager- tech blogs and articles.

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thetumblingdyspraxic-blog · 7 years

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3/Let’s Fill Tumblr With DysprAwesomeness Today (Reblog and Share Your Positive Dyspraxia Stories!)

POSITIVE THING #3: COMPASSION AND EMPATHY

As a child, it was acknowledged that I could be sweet and kind. Unfortunately, this was overshadowed by other sentences like You Never Listen, You Don’t Care About Anyone Around You, You’re Inconsiderate, If Only They Knew What You Were Like At Home... and the dreaded You Have No Empathy.

People with an Autism Spectrum Disorder will no doubt be rolling their eyes at this one. I still don’t know whether or not I’m autistic but that’s not the point! If you have a learning difficulty like dyspraxia or autism, social awareness may not come naturally to you. But that doesn’t tell you anything about whether or not you’re a good person.

When I was about three years old and my friend was two, she scratched my face and drew blood. I started crying. She was told off and also started crying. At this point, according to two eyewitnesses, I stopped crying, gave her a hug, and said “It’s all right, it didn’t hurt.” Even at this young age, I recognised that she hadn’t meant to hurt me and that she was still my friend.

As I got older, my mother taught me to distrust people in difficulty because I spent a lot of my time and energy counselling people on instant messenger or facebook, or in my lunch hour at school. “They’re probably attention seeking”, she said. It was true that a lot of my “friends” took me for a ride, used up my kindness and threw me away when they realised I was a bit too weird to be seen in public with. But since I left her house, and started listening to my dad (see previous post) I realised that my deepest instinct is to help people who are suffering, even if others think it would be inappropriate to do so.

A classic example is when I worked in outdoor catering. On a few occasions, I saw people wet through from the rain, looking faint, sad, pale, and shaky. I did not wait to find out how my boss felt about what I was doing. I just got someone to cover front of house while I took the affected person round the back of the tent, gave them a free meal and a cup of tea, and talked to them about what was wrong. The result of this was that I helped a young autistic woman suffering a panic attack to calm down and feel better, and find her father in a field of 3,000 people by getting security to radio round and look for him. I also managed to convince a member of staff that it didn’t matter if she was leaving her colleagues short of workers, she was too ill to work, and I managed to convince her boss the same thing. I expected to be told off, but I wasn’t. I trusted my instincts, despite what I had been taught, and in the end I had done the right thing.

A few months ago, I met a young woman who was about to become homeless. I knew she had been brought up among violence, gang culture, thieving, drug dealing, and all manner of illegal stuff. My mother would have said not to trust her or get involved with such a person. She would have said my friend was lying about the extreme situations she has been involved in and the abuse she described to me. I ignored all of those “learned” instincts, and stripped my perception back to basics: SHE NEEDED HELP.

And within days she was living with me, sharing my food and blankets and utilities. Not only did she have what she needed, I learned so much about the world, and had such a laugh while being her friend. I found that I needed her as much as she needed me. She has a flat of her own now and my partner and I have our camper van, but she’s still one of my best friends. She even said to me that I’ve shown her a better way in life and she feels like she’s become a better person. Part of me is cringeing while writing this because I don’t really want to blow my own trumpet but in this instance it is necessary to help you guys recognise that your social difficulties DO NOT MAKE YOU BAD PEOPLE. (And to help me remember that too).

Maybe it is because I have a real problem with eye contact. Maybe it’s because I have little spacial awareness so I get in people’s way a lot. Maybe it’s because I put sauces and spices back in the cupboard and forget to ask anyone else if they want them. Maybe it’s because British people have such a preoccupation with manners, sarcasm, euphemistic language, and an all-out dislike of not saying what they mean that it’s literally impossible for me to pick apart what is actually being said. And all of this is perceived as a lack of compassion and empathy. I CALL BULL ON THIS ONE!!! I would rather make people slightly uncomfortable in my day to day life and spend my energy doing the right thing, than spend all my energy making myself acceptable to others while neglecting actual human suffering that I have the capacity to resolve.

Have you been told you have no empathy but disagree? Are you a person with a learning difficulty who is more concerned with kindness than anything else? How have your experiences helped you to be kind? Has someone with a learning difficulty helped you to be more kind? REBLOG, COMMENT, AND SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES!!!

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lulusoblue · 7 years

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Headcanon: Casey Jones being on the Autistic Spectrum

I see plenty of neurodivergent headcanons for the turtles galore, but never for any of the human characters. In all honestly, saying one of the turtles is on the autistic spectrum is iffy and uncomfortable to me at least because it’s sorta implying that said autism would be the result of a mutation caused by an external element. Because it’s not like we’ve had shit over some dickhead portraying autism as a side effect of vaccination rather than it being a mental disorder that’s as embedded in our genes and beings as internal organs and a massive part of who we are as people. also fuck you wakefield

And so thinking about it more, it just clicked that Casey could fit an autistic headcanon. So here’s a list of things about his character I believe fit such a headcanon based on personal experience and from other autistic people I’ve known:

• Apparently the writers put him at around 17 years old, a year older than April, with some intent that he might have been held back during his education (probably to tie into him seeking April for tutoring). I don’t have any knowledge of American education beyond secondhand information I may see on the internet or pop up on my dash, so my only knowledge of being autistic in a learning system built around neurotypical students is from brief personal experience. Neurotypical education sucks when there isn’t enough awareness of learning difficulties or the teachers don’t have enough training to know how to handle it. Casey might have trouble with his education because he may have difficulties trying to pay attention and absorb information without the tools or support to help him focus. This can get you labelled as just bad behaviour or being dumb/stupid. I sure as hell wasn’t able to follow lessons in school until I finally had someone who listened to why I didn’t like lessons and found them hard to understand. We don’t have any clue as to when Casey was held back if this concept still applies in canon, but being held back might not mean he just didn’t care to study or doesn’t have the smarts to pass. Granted it gets harder to care about learning when you have trouble understanding and your educators don’t bother to help you so much as call you lazy. Which brings me to my next point.

• Casey’s interests and knowledge in gadgets, vehicles, and metalwork. The boy knows his stuff when it comes to Mad Max-looking makeshift weaponry and devices, which is clear from his decked out bike and the crude taser that he’s managed to strap to his arm without frying himself. He worked with Donnie to rig up a supercar as a hobby and helped pimp up the Party Wagon. And he’s still flunking trig. (so’s April but shhhhh that was just a Season 1 thing) Casey seems like a very visual learner in this case: he picks up on things through observation and is self-taught on what interests him. For all we know he figured out cars while being cooped up on a farm with nothing better to do while one of his terrapin friends was in a coma. I’ve ended up doing that with some programs I use or with life stuff in general. Manuals are boring and slow and easy to lose focus on. Maybe look up a couple of video tutorials for something but most of building skills and interests is self-teaching and trial-and-error. (my experience of video editing and art programs is “what’s this do and can i figure out what makes it tick without looking it up”, which is an approach to new interests I think also fits Casey). Likely not something specific or common in autistic people, but figuring things out in such a way has been a thing that popped up for me and a couple of old friends. What I’m saying is Casey made that new mask after half-watching a couple of cosplay tutorials and winging it with some scrap.

• Casey wears those gloves and that headband all the damn time. Even when he’s eating pizza, he’s eating it wearing gloves that have probably been worn working on his bike, wielding a hockey stick/baseball bat that’s likely bashed sweaty heads in rain two weeks ago without being washed, and just the day-to-day things that would get those gloves sweaty or grimey or icky. He wears that headband at all times, even when he’s wearing a mask thank would probably fit better if he took that band of material off of his head. What do his headband and gloves also have in common? They’re articles of clothing that usually have elastic to stay in place. Sure canonically they’re just there to fit his grungy look (get to that hoodie in a second), but digging myself deeper into this headcanon i got to thinking they might also serve sensory/stimming purposes. If there’s something that I think is one thing autistic people have in common or a feeling they share, it’s fiddling/fidgeting and certain sensory things to some level: e.g. I usually wear loose tops because i like fiddling with the hems and corners of my clothing. Some people wear tight or loose clothing based on how they process the sensation of skin against different type of clothing. Casey never taking off his damn gloves or headband could be seen as him liking the sensation of the elastic in them around his wrists and forehead. He probably pings the elastic as well because that’s fun too when you’re bored and need to fiddle.

I refuse to believe that he has never washed that hoodie. I mean yeah the turtles have smelt worse living in a sewer but Casey is a Human who has spent most of his life around Humans and his Human father would probably have burnt his clothes by now if Casey never washed the stink out of them. That and Casey is a hockey player, and I imagine stinking clothes is an annoyance that comes from most sports. Those paint stains on his hoodie I think he’s leaving there on purpose, like he’ll wash his clothes but no dad his clothes get washed separate because he can’t wash his clothes with your clothes because you use stuff that lifts stains and that’ll get rid of the paint splats that he likes on his clothes and why does he want paint splats because he does and they look nice and he probably won’t get the same splatter pattern again if he tried and shush dad this hoodie stays the same because it has to because shut up. We don’t really see Casey tagging anything regularly so unless it’s because they don’t change the texture on animated models because what’s the point it’s not a cgi blockbuster we’re making here Casey probably keeps his paint splattered hoodie like that because it looks nice and it’ll stay nice dad. It’s a Thing.

• Casey constantly refers to a love of heavy metal music. Too much sound for an autistic person can end up in sensory overload and that fucking sucks. And in general just the world around you can suck and you wanna shut it out because ugh. You know what helps? Headphones and really loud music. What genre has really loud music? Yup.

Casey having a social battery. He just pops in and out of the show all the time because the writers dunno what do with him shrug so yeah. Autism likes to play up the variance of a person’s social needs and wants and limits. You want to be friends but you just can’t be asked to be with people right now. You get this surge of wanting to hang out with friends and be loud for a bit, and then you have this mood where you just want to not exist or just not do things. Basically like this:

“raph great to see you i love your face” “whatever weirdo”

[dude where are you] [home] [you’ve been at home for three days] [i’m waiting until i stop hating faces to talk in person again]

If anyone has any other things to add to this headcanon, please do share/add onto this post. Now if you’ll excuse me i’m gonna dig myself further into this headcanon.

EDIT: I forgot another point I wanted to put in and also @a-specforest added some cool addon tags so broski if you don’t mind imma put them here too

• #okay so one symptom of autism is speaking in ’pre learned phrases’ #and casey has a ton of catchphrases • #sometimes speaking in a tone that doesn’t match the conversation? #casey does that a lot too • #he seems to have a few hyperfixations #in season 2 he’s practicing hockey late by himself #and the working on cars that you mentioned

1) how else would he come up with Goongala of COURSE!!! That and pre-learned phrases are great to have when spontaneous speech is a bitch and you trip over words and stammer. not that i would know anything about that nooo We’ve already heard him muddle up words in the moment (I think he said jumbled up “racism” later in S4)

2) Tone control is something I’ve dealt with, too. Apparently I have resting bitch voice so I’ll say something and get asked if i’m in a bad mood or snapped at for “being rude”. Also knew other autistic people who would have ranges of tones in certain convos too, e.g. one always sounded happy and chipper and laughed a lot even when something wasn’t particularly funny, one person’s tone of voice went everywhere it was hard to tell what their feelings were even with the context of conversation. Casey’s attitude and tone in conversation, even serious ones, might be an indication of that, I agree.

3) Oh yeah, he definitely fits hyperfixation. There’s his hobbies, and also there’s how he sees his future. When he and April are in the park for their first study session, he’s got two clear ideas for what to do with his life; Hockey Star or Bounty Hunter. With him immediately trying to play hero when confronted with a walking talking tank of organs his bounty hunter fantasy may have something to do with it. He’s reckless and headstrong, but it also lends to his fixation on one of his dream careers; if fighting a monster that he’s confronted with something he sees as a step to bounty hunting, he’ll likely put up his dukes and get melted because ACID HANDS I have definitely known people who were determined on doing something because it was what they wanted. It might’ve come across as stubbornness or rigidness depending on what it (even something as simple as just doing something like a chore a certain way), but in context of ambitions and their future they were pumped as hell to take the steps they needed to take to do what they liked and what they wanted for themselves. They didn’t care about what people thought of them even if they didn’t pass as neurotypical and would get stares on the street. Not sure how they would react if say culinary career path involved fighting mutated food, but considering the show itself is an action-adventure cartoon with mutant turtles I think we can give Casey a pass on that lack of realism there. we begrudgingly give the writers passes all the time so why stop now

Aaaand the point i forgot to put in my original post:

• Casey’s less-than appropo reactions or attitudes in situations possibly links to difficulty reading people, being empathetic or understanding social cues/priorities. Reading and understanding facial expressions and body language can be a bitch if you’re autistic. There’s even a learning software program a couple of students from my school would use in one-to-one sessions that specifically addresses this for those who find it THAT hard to tell what another person is expressing. It’s especially troublesome because empathy can be a confusing thing too, because it can go from you not really having any empathy to you having so much that you think you’re hurting the feelings of a pair of shoes because you chose to wear something else that day which totally isn’t the extreme i experience at all hahaha help i’m mentally apologising to a boot Casey doesn’t appear to take things seriously in dangerous circumstances the majority of the time, nor does he appear considerate of others at other times. It’s a lot of confidence and certainty that things will turn out OK (with a heaping spoonful of “self preservation instinct what self preservation instinct”). It’s not always an appropriate attitude to make jokes and quips and tease and make jabs at people, but he HAS taken things seriously and shown worry/sadness at appropriate times. He’s really quiet and almost numb when the subject of his family’s fate comes up in Invasion, and he was surprisingly the only one to be most affected after watching someone get mOLECULARLY RIPPED APART. From experience, both personal and through observation, figuring out how to react and respond to things when you don’t really know how to is a pain in the ass and often distressing because you feel bad for not knowing. Sometimes you resort to humour to lighten things and try to ease tensions, sometimes you have an internal screaming match with yourself and panic and go through an archive of potential reactions because what the fuck would apply here, or sometimes you just shut down or just don’t react like it’s not really a big deal or even happening. Or you end up going through verbal barfing and dig yourself deeper into a hole of instant regret because you’re making yourself look like an ass when you don’t want to why is this so hARD. I think Casey would fall into the “address things with confidence and cockiness” kind of reaction pool, because it’s an attitude he’s comfortable with and how he better deals and processes things. It’s not to say he doesn’t have some empathy or disregard for other people’s feelings (hello Buried Secrets), it could be that it’s not comfortable territory for him even when he wants to be serious/emotionally supportive. did any of that come out right fffffffffU

• Casey’s small social circle and it possibly being by choice. His best friends are the girl who he met through tutoring in a subject she was failing before and four giant turtles who are trained in ninjutsu. He only mentions having one friend before, a friend with whom he had a falling out, and he didn’t seem to like Irma all that much (you can say it’s because “she’s a third wheel on dates” but even outside of that he didn’t seem to get along with her much). With things like hyperfixation and the like making a vast group of friends is tricky. Being autistic might mean the friends you choose to make have lots of interest in common with you rather than just being someone you get along with. Not to say being autistic means you are limited to a few friends. I’m no expert on autistic social lives, I can only draw from firsthand experience. I found trying to maintain a number of friendships difficult and often overwhelming so at some point in school I stopped trying to make friends, with the exception of a couple of people I liked and had common interests with. I chose to keep my social circle small because the thought of making lots of friends and keeping in touch with them all and remembering who likes who and what overwhelmed me and made me nervous as a child. Still kinda leaks into adulthood because I don't have many friends outside of the company I keep on tumblr. In this autistic headcanon, Casey’s very small social circle could be by choice. He doesn’t mention having any other friends besides one previously, fixates on April (and yes I am knocking the romantic aspect out the window for this) after approaching her for tutoring because he found her cool and likes hanging out with her (and probably saw kicking a mutant’s ass as common ground/bonding too), hung out with her even when a person he wasn’t keen on (Irma) was also there, and even when he’s introduced to the turtles and befriends them he still appears to be platonically closest to April arguably, depends on how the writers want to write him that week. Considering how the love triangle bullhockey has been given little to no reference as of late, his concern for April in Tokka vs the World and his annoyance at Leo’s teamup picks in Tale of Tiger Claw might be more because he can’t be with his favourite person. (and yes that can be a Thing too) He might also fixate on having April’s company because she isn’t much of a social butterfly herself outside of the friendly neighbourhood mutants living in the sewer. Compare how many times we see him hanging out with the turtles minus April versus when April is present.

#tmnt 2012 #casey jones (2012)#autistic casey headcanon #yes good #bonus his sister is also autistic #their interactions are just 'ugh' 'what' 'people' 'same'

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