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sophiapathic · 3 years

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Sk8: The Infinity - A Take on Love

Because my six unfinished assignments can wait until I throw this into the void, scream for five hours and after my voice gets hoarse, I resort to watching the beach episode on loop until next Saturday.

This was entirely sparked by the recap episode, which really pressed the reak havoc and theorize button in my brain. I am truly losing my grip on reality. Help. I apologize in advance, creatures of Tumblr.

Me right now:

Anyways...

I saw people mention here and there screaming that “we need canon relationships and they will get trust issues if a romance isn’t confirmed by the end of the series”. I think that mindset is harmful to have in this case. You can’t really avoid being disappointed if you get into the series expecting it to deliver on your wishes of gay romances. So, this might be controversial, but stay with me please. The anime and manga are both confirmed to be based primarily about the characters themselves and of course the sport -skating. I was hoping to take a closer look at what the series intends to do with certain dynamics and relationships according to yours truly. I also want explain my reasoning behind it not being queerbaiting, though it being inherently queer-coded, through the current lense of the canon.

Sk8: The Infinity is unquestionably a love story.

We need to state the genres this series is in, because some of us tend to forget. It is in fact not a shounen-ai, not a yaoi, not a romance, not even a josei. Say it with me it is a series in: COMEDY and SPORTS.

(Source is the official US Sk8 website.) The spotlight is udoubtedly on skating and what it means. Another important highlight of the show is how the definition of the sport relates to the characters, and how vastly different they are from what we expect. For example, when we see Shadow first, we pigeonhole him into this vulgar indecent rock and roll persona, only to find out later that he is actually a stweetheart at a flower shop. Joe is another very good case study. When we first see him we think of him as a womanizer muscle-head, later we find out he has a heart of gold and is very emotionally intelligent. We’re also quick to judge Miya as the cold, unfeeling prodigy then we discover how lonely and normal he is on the inside. And so on and so on.

The show continues to defy our expectations of what each character should be like. In a way it is about breaking the conventional stereotypical roles we subconsciously assign to certain looks. We see that even in anime, multifaceted characters can exist without distrupting or damaging the delicate dynamics of a traditional sports anime. We successfully established the second focal point of the series as disproving stereotypes and presenting strong, diverse and unexpected personalities.

How about the defition of skating? What does it mean in the context of Sk8: The Infinity then? Where does a love story come into the picture? Skating is repeatedly described as a ritual of love within the anime, an idea that our villian, Ad*m, is obessed with. In a sense skating is a language of love canonically.

Then skating itself is love. Throughout the series we see varied styles of skating therefore different ways of expressing love, affection. We get to experience several metaphorical ways of “being in love” through characters skating with each other. Each dynamic shows us a type of love. Healthy, disfunctional, outright abusive.

The way Reiki teaches Langa to skate can be interpreted as a direct metaphor for someone learning to love again after losing a person close to them. Langa’s father has died and Reiki literally brings him out of his shell again. It can also be interpreted as a queer kid’s experience of a world of romance that feels similar to his previous one, that being snowboarding, yet it still being new and different. Skateboarding. When due to Reiki Langa’s potential is discovered and his hunger for more and more develops, especially next to Ad*m, Reiki’s main frustration stems from them not being well-matched or on equal footing anymore. He feels like he cannot give Langa what he needs anymore. Which would obviously go againts the literal description of a healthy romance. Two people with mutual respect who both bring equal assets to the table. He feels like he needs to catch-up to be with Langa again. The only thing he doesn’t consider is Langa’s deep appreciation of him and the fact that literally he was the one who helped Langa experince the feeling of love again.

Kojiro and Kaoru’s relationships, to me, is very much representative of two people wanting to be in each other’s presence, but due to their different language of love, miscommunicating horribly. Them bantering and insulting each other is the only way they know what to do with the other. The only way they can ensure the other’s attention and eyes are on them. This has worked so far. They are literal opposites, but both have a very clear definition of their form of love. To Joe skating, or love itself, is about the feeling and going with the flow. Being spontaneous. Whereas for Cherry, every move needs to be calculated and executed perfectly in order to be “efficient”. Their frustration comes from both wanting different things from the other, but not communicating their need properly. Despite this, they stick together due to a magnetic pull they obviously feel towards the other. The attraction is there, the trust is there, they are even well-matched in skill as we see them neck-to-neck constantly. They could give each other what the other wants. Only if they could express themselves well... This is why Joe pushes Reiki towards reconciling with Langa. he wants them to not fall into the same trap of not stating their needs and thoughts properly.

Now Ad*m and Langa are obviously problematic and I don’t really want to have to explain, honestly guys. I really don’t (since I have trauma regarding this subject), but I need to go into this a little bit. This is a textbook toxic predatory relationship. Where the older, twisted, damaged person, has an obsession with a young, outstading child. He wants to lead him into “Paradise” and show his “Eve” what love is really about. (Ain’t that disgusting you guys...) His form of love is inflicting pain, so I really can’t imagine a scenario where he and his “Eve” live happily ever after and everything is fine and dandy. He needs someone who he can torture. He literally is looking for someone who can handle his way of expressing affection, his “love hug”, who has the same type of crazy eyes for adrenaline and danger. His Eve. In his distorted mind, this all makes sense and Langa is that someone he was looking for thoughout the years. The problem is, he disregards Langa’s side where the relationship becomes problematic.

Cherry and Ad*m during their younger years seems to be a very innocent infatuation on Kaoru’s end. It is a one-sided relationship where someone is in love with the idea of a person long gone. They were discovering the world of skating, or the world of love together with Ad*m taking the lead. Cherry immediately became infatuated with him, wanted to learn his love language, wanted to be at the same level he was. It probably started very innocent. At first, Ad*m being gentle, because that’s how Tadashi was with him too, then after whatever happened between those two, Ad*m, disappointed in the way of love, or skating, Tadashi showed him, returned to what his aunts taught him. Maybe after injuring Kaoru with the “love hug”, therefore eliminating him from being his potential partner, started looking for his “Eve”, gradually became more agressive in love as in skating. Kaoru was distraught and wanted the Ad*m he originally learned love from back. Holding out some hope even years after. Trained to get used to his “love hug”, to literally condition himself to be able to get close to him. Ad*m, however showed Cherry brutally that he truly cannot handle his way of love.

Ad*m and Tadashi. *sighs* As of this post, I don’t really have enough information to give you a good overview of what I see this relationship representing. As far as I can tell Ad*m was abused horribly and to ease the pain and make him forget, Tadashi showed his another way of expressing affection. Skating or love. Basically a first love gone horrible bad, scarring an already abused child and turning them into a monster. Tadashi himself reinstates this during one of the episodes. It was his fault that Ad*m turned out the way he did. Their love slowly became strongly abusive throughout the years. Tadashi is stuck in it because he feels like he deserves it. This is a metaphor for dangers of an emotionally and physically abusive relationship, where one person feels responsible and the other is using power. Tadashi’s guilt keeps him next to his master and he even endures abuse, now he is trying to break out and show Ad*m he messed up and I think this could potentially be a good representation of how difficult that process truly is.

As far as Reiki’s, Miya’s, Shadow’s skating goes. Their main arc relating to love is first and foremost learning to accept themselves and aprecciating their uniqe way and style of skating. Only after can they become people who can truly be accomplished in love/skating (in Miya’s case I’m obviously talking about platonic feelings). Each of them had a preconception of their persona in love/skating, which gets questioned heavily throughout the series. Miya gets defeated, Shadow’s soft side gets discovered, Reiki... well. I get sad. :c Even though he taught someone to love again, to appreciate life again, he ended up discovering how dissatisfied he truly is with himself... These three all need to learn to love every aspect of themselves to reach fulfillment and to really experience healthy human relationships.

Sk8: The Infinity is unquestionably a love story, without explicitly being a romance, meaning that it is a tale about love, both romantic, platonic and everything inbetween through a queer-coded lens, showing both dysfunctional, abusive and healthy relationships, ways to express emotions and even delves into self-love and the idea of nature versus nurture in the villian’s case.

That is why I, personally don’t scream for a canon couple. To me, the show gets its main point about affection and love across, without making any of these relationships explicitly stated. Not to mention that it does justice to both of its assigned genres. Comedy and Sports as well. Yeah sure, I wouldn’t complain, but I think these dynamics are more than satisfying to watch, and much deeper than bishounens wanting to bang each other, which is, in my opinion, inherently sexualized. If they want, yeah they can confirm, make it canon without forcing it to be a center storyline. Hell, I would even be happy about it. I would clap with all of us. BUT, as the series currently is, I really see it taking the other route because of the above. This way audiences who want a yaoi or ikemen going at it, won’t be disappointed with the series when they find doesn’t revolve around that, straight viewers will just find it flamboyant, and people who look for subtext and want to read between the lines will certainly do that with the amount of crumbs and hints the writers gave us.

We don’t need outright, written in black and white gay representation in Sk8 to experience very real types of love. The queer theme is secondary to me, just like queerness is, in most people’s lives. Yeah sure, it is a big thing, but not the only attribute a person has. My life doesn’t revolve around my queerness. I rarely talk about it. If I was a main character this would be a side-arc. Just like Sk8 doesn’t revolve around the characters coming out. It’s just them living their lives and possibly being queer while doing so. If you look at it this way, it is almost normalizing attraction between same-sex people by just showing it as regular love. If you can, why not interpret it this way, so it can be a liberating experience instead of a disappointing one.

Please don’t attack me! I am fragile and this is only my opinion. c: *crawls back into her hole*

#sk8 cherry blossom #sk8 joe #sk8 the infinity #sk8 theory #sk8 langa #reiki kyan #langa hasegawa #kaoru sakurayashiki #kojiro nanjo #ad*m #tadashi #matcha blossom #renga #ranga #langa x reki #cherry blossom x joe #essay

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bonny-kookoo · 3 years

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Remedy | JJK x Reader | 💜☁️🔞🤖 | TEASER

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader

Genre: Android!AU, Android!Jungkook, AI!Jungkook

Warnings: descriptions of war and war related situations, PTSD, Panic attacks!, confused!Koo, soft reader, like my god I just wanna out her in my pocket and keep her safe, aka that’s what Koo wants to do, protective!Koo, praise kink!, size difference, unprotected sex but izz fine Kookoo can’t knock her up anyways, soft sex, it’s very soft ngl, there’s a bird, some sad Koo, kook cries here and there, comfort and rehabilitation

Summary: JJK, Or J-Jungkook097 was a tactical fighter-type Android, used in modern war as a simple weapon and nothing more. Now retired after serious injuries, he has to adjust to modern life outside the war zone or he’ll get scrapped; and that’s where you come in, a rare human being ready to take on that challenge.

He’d seen it before, so many times, hell; he’d been the reason of so many deaths in the first place and it never bothered him. So why was his internal system going absolute haywire at the mere idea of something happening to you? It was to be expected really- with how fragile you are, mentally and physically, it was bound to happen at some point. So why, if he knew it deep down already, did it make his pulse race and his skin feel weird?

You’d told him to stay home, but there was no way he’d be able to let you out of his sight. Because no, there were no emotions involved; they’d been restricted for him at the beginning after all, he was simply looking out for you. Probably a bug, maybe his system thought you were someone to be protected, a new mission to keep him occupied, that was probably it. It wasn’t because you had been so sweet with him, it wasn’t because of how gently you were in correcting him whenever he did something bad, it wasn’t because you were an absolute divine being in his eyes.

“Kook?” You said, an almost painful huff of breath escaping you when he crashed into you, holding you, his arms squeezing you a bit and his face burying itself into the crook of your neck, every sense drinking you in, saving the proof that you were okay, you were real, you were completely fine. “I-“ you started, and his eyes ripped open, suddenly realizing that he may be hurting you. As if burned he reacted, hands hovering over your shoulders as he looked you over.

“I apologize, I’m so sorry, does it hurt bad-“ he spoke hurriedly, eyes already glazing over with tears he didn’t even knew he could shed. Why did he suddenly feel so upset? His entire system was overloading, tears finally flowing and disrupting his sight so badly that he didn’t see your face anymore; sending him into panic even more. “I’m sorry- I’m-“ he pressed out, but there was nothing working anymore it seemed.

Only a few minutes later did he slowly come back to his senses, first thing he noticed being the way you held his body close, softly speaking to him while you were petting his head. It was such a weird sensation, yet it somehow soothed his mind back, as he realized that you were both on the ground. He was way too heavy, why were you doing that? But when he tried to get up, you held him tightly. “Take a Moment, Jungkook. You’re okay, I’m okay, just a breathe, yeah?” You said, and he nodded. “Let’s go back inside then yeah?” You softly said, and he nodded.

“But you need to buy groceries. We don’t have sufficient stock of-“ he started, but you giggled, the sound something he knew he liked. He didn’t quite know what to think of his newly found preferences for things, but he simply let it happen for now.

Because liking you could never be a mistake, he decided.

#bts imagine #bts #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts smut #jungkook imagine #bts jungkook #jeon jungkook #jungkook #bts reactions

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random-thought-depository · 4 years

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My most significant reaction to this essay is to think that “create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is a much better goal than “save the world.”

“Create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is a goal that a small number of people with moderate access to resources can actually achieve. You just need to find these people and convince them to associate with each other and support each other, and the infrastructure for that is pretty cheap in the internet age, and the rationalist subculture already has the infrastructure for that. As a form of altruism, I think it’s pretty cost-effective. A person’s whole life can often be turned in a better direction with as little as a few thousand dollars. A single moderately affluent person can make an enormous difference to the lives of five or six or a dozen other people this way. I guess it’s not as efficient as mosquito net charities or something like that, but I think it’s probably much better than, say, contributing money to Friendly AI research (I suspect that by the time we actually build general AI any Friendly AI research we cook up now will be at best historically significant philosophical texts that introduced some important general concepts but are hopelessly outdated when they discuss the meat and potatoes of programming, at worst the equivalent of Medieval physicians writing elaborate treatises about the subtleties of the four humors theory of medicine).

I think “create a mutual support community for eccentric nerds” is also likely to be a very satisfying form of altruism (which, among other things, means less risk of burn-out). You’re helping “your people,” and every day you’ll interact with people whose lives have been obviously and tangibly bettered by your actions. Your altruism will be part of a network of mutual support and “thick” social connections between people who like each other and feel personal loyalty to each other, which is a very time-tested and successful formula (it’s a strategy that has a lot of problems too, sure, but it has some actually very nice features).

By contrast, “save the world” is... probably beyond the power of a small group of people with moderate resources, even if that’s a group that trends more affluent and smarter than average. I mean, taken at face value, “save the world” is a problem that has absorbed a significant fraction of humanity’s total intelligence and resources for literally centuries. Big concrete steps toward “saving the world” (such as, say, inventing commercially viable fusion reactors) would probably require an effort comparable to the Manhattan Project or bigger in many cases. Even “modest” steps in the “save the world” direction (such as, say, a coronavirus vaccine or a new hydroelectric dam) tend to be quite skill-intensive and technology-intensive and/or resource-intensive.

Compared to the status quo of 1800 C.E. the world has been saved, but it was mostly done by a strategy that looked very different from the high rationalist “get a small number of smart people together with the explicit goal of saving the world” strategy. The actual historically successful world-saving strategy was a huge number of people working to solve a huge number of more specific problems that were only tangentially related to saving the world. “Get a relatively small number of smart enlightened people with the right mindset together and set them to work with the explicit goal of saving the world” reminds me more of science fiction, specifically of Isaac Asimov’s concept of the Foundation, and I honestly wonder if that’s mostly where the idea came from (I observe that “member of the Foundation” is an aspirational social role that’s very ego-pleasing and seductive to a book-smart “gifted” eccentric who doesn’t fit in well with mainstream society; y’know, the kind of person likely to be attracted to science fiction and rationalist subculture).

For a small number of people with moderate access to resources, “Create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is an easily achievable goal. For a small number of people with moderate access to resources, “save the world” is at best going to inspire a lot of useful efforts that contribute to that project, but at worst it’ll be like twenty people trying to level a mountain with hand tools; a lot of effort expended accomplishing very little (I think the big danger for such a group is getting seduced into pouring their efforts into a glamorous and seductive but probably futile moon-shot; something like “instead of this hard grinding work of actually saving the world, maybe we can just build a friendly super-AI that will do it for us!”).

Also, I think “save the world” is a community recruitment pitch that’s likely to disproportionately attract people who are scrupulous-in-the-badbrains-sense, fanatical, narcissistic, or some combination of those things. Frank Herbert once made this observation about politics:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.” - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune.

I think Frank Herbert identified a real recurring problem with managerial institutions here. Politicians and bosses are high on my list of people I’d be a little wary of dating or being friends with, because I strongly suspect that becoming a politician or a boss really does select for narcissism and authoritarian tendencies. I think you almost have to be a little narcissistic or have significant authoritarian tendencies to look around and think “the world would be better if other people were forced to obey me!” I think this effect contributes to many of the institutional and social pathologies of governments, businesses, and other hierarchical organizations. Likewise, I think you almost have to be at least little narcissistic to hear the high rationalist recruitment pitch of “we’re assembling a team of smart enlightened people who are exceptionally suited to saving the world, so we can save the world!” and think “I’m a smart enlightened person who’s exceptionally suited to saving the world, I belong on that team!” Please don’t feel too personally attacked if that description sounds like an uncharitable description of you, being a little narcissistic is a common personality trait, and part of the reason for that is you probably actually are better than average at the things you like and are good at … but I’d be wary of joining a community with a recruitment pitch that selects for narcissism and fanaticism, and I’d be wary of making such a recruitment pitch for a community I belong to.

I will note that, as an unquantified System 1 impression, I feel there’s a very cloudy but noticeable correlation between how close a piece of writing is to high rationalism and how much it’s infused with a miasma of a lot of the things I find most off-putting about the rationalist subculture; elitist contempt for ordinary people, very self-important vision of rationalist subculture’s role, cult of smartness attitudes, mix of vaguely Randian, Nietzschean, and Protestant work ethic attitudes, libertarian-adjacent politics that implicitly reflects the biases and class interests of affluent tech-company workers.

#rationalist culture #epistemic status: a little contrarian but also serious

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lceylee0826 · 4 years

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Animal Experience Station

Tells more about the research and development process of this project.

Project Description：

We inhabit the same world as animals, but humans all too often dominate their lives and impact their wellbeing immensely. Through daily observation as a city dweller, I noticed that there is far too much cruelty to animals surrounding us.

I hope that this project enables young urbal dwellers to experience the world of animals on a more intuitive level and through doing so create a new form of empathetic emotional bond with them. Whether one is the participant, or merely an onlooker, the project seeks to reduce the sense of 'otherness' that people often place on animals, as well as initiating re-consider the relation between human and animal, continuing a discourse within the field of non-anthropocentric design.

Process video https://youtu.be/tyBySdBgzs0

Inspiration：

I once saw chefs in restaurants making live octopus into dishes in front of diners and even let the diners ‘torture’ the live octopus and eat it. This restaurant in Shanghai is also very famous for this feature.

But this actually reminds me more of the performance death of animals.Humans and animals share this earth, but often treat them like this. :(

Due to this, I do some research on animal performance death in China. The truth is, this kind of news can be seen everywhere, such as hitting a sheep to death in front of diners, or eating live seafood live on a video app.

Though these news，I still remember that once I saw a live fish used as a video material in a shooting scene and was left and ‘tortured’ to death by people.

Also，I drew inspiration of two documentary. ‘Dominion’ By Chris Delforce

‘Racing Extinction’ By Louie Psihoyos

These two documentaries are very real about the harm that humans have caused to farmed animals and endangered animal. The ‘Racing Exhibition’ even predicted that ‘In the next 100 years, 50% of species will disappear. The biggest reason is because of human behavior.’

It leded me to think if we swap the position what will we feel? In that cases ,will we have a better understanding of them and emphasis with them？

In addition to second-hand research, I also conducted some first-hand research. I asked others if they would be able to empathize with animals, and the results showed that people are more inclined to empathize with pets or animals that are close in daily life (pigs/sheep). This instead reminds me of those wild animals, those animals that we rarely come into contact with.

Then，I went to Shanghai Wild Animal Zoo, where people can interact with wild animals and feed them. Now days a lot of urban residents will go here.

However， through observation, I found that as a urbal dwellers, I can only interact with these animals through cages and glass. This phenomenon gave me a deeper thinking about the relationship between urban residents and wild animals.

I also want to use this project to let people know the status of these animals.

Due to this thinking, I decide to do more research about the relationship between human and animal that I want to discuss.

Research

‘Tiger Penis Project’ By Kuang-Yi Ku

https://www.tigerpenisproject.com

I truly think this artist brought tradition Chinese views into the speculative design scene and proposed the use of emerging biotechnology to make artificial animal parts for traditional Chinese medicine. This new hybrid medicine combines Chinese and Western medicine with technology, prevents further destruction of animals and traditional culture, and provides more possibilities for the coexistence of human society and the natural environment.

‘I want delivery a dolphin’ By Ai Hasegawa

https://www.dezeen.com/2013/11/18/i-wanna-deliver-a-dolphin-synthetic-biology-concept-humans-giving-birth-to-food-by-ai-hasegawa/

‘This project approaches the problem of human reproduction in an age of overcrowding, overdevelopment and environmental crisis,’ Hasegawa said. "With potential food shortages and a population of nearly seven billion people, would a woman consider incubating and giving birth to an endangered species such as a shark, tuna or dolphin?"

This speculative and experimental design gives me a deeper thinking about the relationship between humans and animals. I also want to create a special experience to connect humans and animals. This is also about the field of non-anthropocentric design.

‘The School of Looking’ By Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary

http://www.connolly-cleary.com/Home/helmets.html

I was inspired by these artists, who mixed machine, human and animal experience together through a series of helmet designs, not only providing participant with an experience but also creating an interesting experience for on lookers.

Drawing upon this, I imagined a way of bringing people into the world of animals with a playful focus.

Through ‘Design events: on explorations of a nonanthropocentric framework in desig‘ By Li Jönsson, I found the helmet is a special form of speculative design，It's also a form of combining design and audience closer.

‘Song of the Machine’ By SuperfIux

https://superflux.in/index.php/work/song-of-the-machine/#

SuperfIux created a new type of retinal prosthesis, helping the blind to reconnect with the world. The device, in conjunction with an optogenetic retinal process, enables blind people to gain light sensitivity and therefore gain a field of vision.

My design proposal was influenced further through this work. I intend to design a wearable device that could alter our field of vision and create optical experiences which allow people to see the world through the eyes of animals.

‘Simulation is an important mechanism for empathy. Simulation is an ancient function of the human nervous system, which is of great significance in social life and individual development.’

From ‘Embodied simulation phenomena and neural mechanisms in empathy’, Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, Sun Yabin, Wang Jinyan, Luo Fei.

The above quote led me to consider whether simulation could be a design tool to connect humans and animals.

Additionally, a TED talk titled ‘How Virtual Reality Can Create the Ultimate Empathy Machine’ By Chris Milk made me reflect on the use of VR as a 'machine' to create simulation and change people's perspectives.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine

Sorry for the unclear picture quality:(((((

Through this research, I decided to create a simulation visual experience for my audience to help them observe the world of animals and create a connection, with the aim of generating a deeper sense of empathy among humans for the lives on animals.

Though 134 questionnaires, I discovered that people were intensely interested in entering the world of animals. Also，after screening my survey results, I decided on the octopus, eagle, and snake as the animals I wanted to simulate the field of vision of, not only because people are curious about their vision, but also because these three animals represent the species that often be hunted from the ocean, land and the sky.

In addition，these three animals are also suffering some harm caused by humans. For example, in China we will regard snakes as important and drink liquor that made by snake. We do eat octopus raw and treat it as a pleasure. We did have some news about eagles being hunted and killed and they are on the verge of extinction.

‘RGB’ By Carnovsky

https://www.carnovsky.com/RGB.htm

The designer allows visitors to see different graphics through different colors of lighting, thus creating a visual space with a strong sense of experience.The space and the lighting have enhanced the experience.It also led me to think that use different color to change the audience visual experience.

Concept

Through all the research, I have finalized my concept. I am going to build a experience station that contain a series of wearable devices and enviroment to simulate the animal experience. Aiming to allow young urban residents to re-consider the relationship between human and animal, and pay attention to the current state of animals, finally empathize with them through a mixed experience.

Process of Helmets

The octopus can change the shape of its pupil to receive different colors of light.Theoretical source: https://octolab.tv/octopus- vision/

In the beginning, I did not deliberately decide on the shape of the helmet. I pay more attention to how to realize the conversion of visual functions, and I hope I can improve it later.

I even want people to simulate the living conditions of these animals before wearing my helmet, but later I hope that people will wear helmets to communicate and walk in this city in an playful way，I think the project seeks to reduce the sense of 'otherness' that people often place on animals, as well as initiating re-consider the relation between human and animal.

Lenses material：The lens is laser cut and spray-painted on the basis of colored acrylic to simulate the shape and color of the octopus pupil.

The angle of view of the eagle can focus and magnify a very small object with a light red color. Theoretical source:’Vision In Birds’ By Graham R Martin and Daniel Osorio

I tested the effects of magnifying glasses with different magnifications, and I finally chose a 15x magnifying glass, which does not make people feel dizzy but has a magnifying effect.

Lenses material: magnifying glass and translucent paper.

Snakes have very weak eyesight, but they can simulate images through heat sensing and through sensitive other senses.Theoretical source: ‘The Infrared ’Vision’ of Snakes’ By Eric A. Newman and Peter Hartline

Lenses material：At the beginning, I used simple graphics to experience the effects of VR, and the colors were generated according to the visual effects of thermal induction. Finally there will be a dynamic image of a snake in the VR glasses.

User Feedback

I tested these three helmets and got feedback from users and observers.

From the observers point of view, these helmets lack the feeling of three animals, and I need to add some texture and color to them.

From the user’s point of view, the helmet should be more ergonomic, and the use of lenses and helmets will not give people a sufficient sense of experience.

Because the visual effects of these three animals are quite special, I need some other products or environments to watch them in order to provide a better experience. Finally, I decided to make a series of posters.

Process of Poster and Logo

When designing the posters, I used the three primary colors of light (Red/Green/Blue) as the basis and designed patterns based on the visual characteristics of the three animals.

I also left short words on the poster in the form of a diary. For example, when visitors wear the octopus helmet, they can see different words by changing different lenses.

When visitors wear the eagle helmet, they need to use a magnifying glass to see the smaller words.

The snake poster itself has no information. But when visitors put on the snake's helmet, they can see a dynamic video with VR

Video link:https://youtu.be/tBUssmG6YjA

My helmet is mainly based on visual functions and has a role of changing perspectives. So the logo is based on the elements of ’eye’ and ’transition’.

I do some sketches and confirmed the final effect of logo

Second Prototype

Since the materials used in the previous helmet were not stiff enough, I remade it with corrugated paper.

Due to the limitation of the material, I used a better colored spray paint to decorate the helmet, but the finished product was not refined enough, so this became the second model. I pair these prototypes with posters to test the user experience, which will help me when I make the final outcome.

Process of final outcome

I re-adjusted the structure and decoration, using the three primary colors to redesign the color and pattern of the helmet. The pattern is processed in the simplest way according to the lines on the animal body, and the final outcome is performed by laser cutting.

Experience Space, September 5, 2020, Shanghai

You Can See More In Process Video, THX!

User feedback:

1. The helmet is not easy for the user to wear with its current structure, so it needs to be considered more. 2. It would be interesting to get people to interact with each other when they have a helmet on, and it could be good to develop this into a performance and walk out onto the street to get more feedback. 3. More interactive devices can be designed, not just visuals, but other senses could also be incorporated. Currently, the experience of the animal is not strong enough.

Self-refIection:

1. The experience space could be set outdoors, allowing the audience to experience the animals' preferred habitats. 2. AR/VR and other technologies can be used to enhance the visual experience of different animals. So as to give the experiencer a more real experience. 3. Considering the scope and effect of communication, a visual branding system can be designed to integrate the helmet with the packaging and website.

Bibliography:

1. ’The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond’ By Garrett, J. 2. ’The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality’ By Jerald, J 3. ’Cities, Semantics & Approaches to ‘WILD’ By Amartya Deb 4. ’Games As Speculative Design:Allowing Players To Consider Alternate Presents And Plausible Futures’ By Paul Coulton

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kumulonimbus · 5 years

Note

MXX Erron or MK 11 Erron?

Oh, whereto begin? If we’re talking about the cowboy’s physical appearance, I’m cooleither way, I think he looks hella fine in both MKX and MX 11. If we’re talkingabout his kit, I think I liked MKX better, the whole TNT toss thing seems kind of anuisance, especially for the AI… but since I’m a fanfic writer I think thisquestion is more related to Erron as a character so this might get a littlelonger than expected - if this wasn’t your idea, and you were only asking abouthis skins or abilities then sorry in advance for the long answer you’re aboutto read.

What Inoticed in MK 11 Erron is the same shallowness that first appeared in MKX –back then, Erron’s character was fresh and new, (having been introduced firstin the MKX comics) he had some distinctive qualities of his own but still, whenthe game was released, his characterization felt poor. It’s like in both games,his entire drive can be described with just one word: back in MKX, it was greedand now, in MK 11, it seems to be thrill. If you think it over, hisentire character description could have been Rain’s: violent, greedy and vain.

There’s along way from greed to thrill but, if you ask me, his new drivefeels just as shallow as his old one. How could he still be so greedy afterbeing a gun for hire for so long? Perhaps the cowboy is not really good withmoney but in all the years he’s lived, I’m sure he has learned a thing or twoabout savings. Now, how can he still be moved by thrill and thrill only afterso many years of doing basically the same things, over and over again? Hasn’the realized by now that, perhaps, the thrill he seeks can come from doingsomething other than being a gun for hire? How is it that he can still get thesame thrill for doing the same things he’s been doing for over 150 years now?Isn’t he tired? Hasn’t he matured?

His ending is the most reasonable one, though. He has spent so much time livingin the margins of time and then, he has spent so much time living inside timeitself that time doesn’t necessarily represent something meaningful to himanymore. This man doesn’t need a ticking clock anymore, he doesn’t have tomeasure time anymore – he’s seasoned, his longevity has provided him with a personalhourglass that has nothing to do with the notion of time that the Erron beforeShang Tsung understood. I believe that’s why he discards the hourglass sononchalantly – it’s more than a personal choice: not because of this thrillhe’s craving but because time, as we understand it, doesn’t mean a thing to himanymore. The time that others (Humans? Mortals? Conditions that are slowlyreceding for him) consider worthy or valuable doesn’t mean a single thing tohim, it represents no treasure, no bounty and, ultimately, no thrill. For agreedy man, the substance of time is no longer worth the effort since, for him,it doesn’t translate to a valuable currency anymore. And while others choose togo back and fix and save and rescue the ones they love from the intangiblegrasp of time; Black chooses not to. As the notion of time fades fromhis dictionary, the notion of every man for himself appears on the horizon:it’s been that way for a very long time now, it’s been so long he understandsthat looking into that hourglass and toying with history can resurrect aversion of himself he definitely wants to remain dead: the Erron Black beforeShang Tsung’s deal. The one that still had people to care about, the one whocared about time, the one that still had things and faces and places to lose.

Thatoriginal Erron Black has been discarded from the pages of history by the otherErron Black – the one we know.

When Erronchooses not to keep the hourglass, he chooses not to see the what if.What if he had never struck a deal with the sorcerer? What if he had stayed onthe other side of the portal? What if he had lived the original life thatshould have been his? What if he had aged? That man could have been a husband,a father, a grandfather… that man cannot resurface. That man is powerful enoughto make the cowboy question the meaning of his entire existence: what have youdone with all this extra time? Who have you become? What is keeping you alive?

Greed andthrill suddenly don’t look like much anymore, right?

In fact,some time ago someone asked me why I had chosen Arroya instead of Wickett whenI began rewriting Debris, even when NRS had chosen Wickett as canonicallycorrect. I explained back then that Arroya was, in fact, Wickett’s originalname; the name used during Erron’s youth, according to the timeframe of thestory. I didn’t quite understand back then why Erron himself would use the nameWickett instead of Arroya, I thought that maybe he used that name because thename Arroya hadn’t been used in a while and people could understand faster if he used the name Wickett instead but now I’m inclined to believe that maybe NRS’stown-and-name choice was more deliberate than I thought: it makes sense thatthey’d choose a town whose existence is divided in two, past and present, justlike Erron’s existence. If we think it over, Erron speaks about Wickett because he hasalready left Arroya behind. He can talk about this city (that doesn’t really represent him because it was never genuinely his) from a certain,comfortable distance and chooses not to dwell on the past because Arroya doesn’texist anymore, pretty much like the original Erron, the one before Shang Tsung.

Going backto the hourglass, and Erron’s ending, there’s something else on my mind: hediscards the hourglass, and the chance to rewrite history (his own history) ina rather despondent fashion. And while he chooses to do so, there’s something almostautomatic about that choice. It’s like, after being around for so long, he hasnow this extremely internalized notion of what he wants and what he doesn’twant. Going back and revisit his own past is first on the list of things hedoesn’t want. When he throws away the hourglass, he rejects the man that he wasbefore becoming almost eternal. He doesn’t need to dwell on this for too long,he doesn’t seem interested enough to even consider the chance. He’s alwayslooking forward now, he doesn’t stop anymore. And that perpetual motion resemblesthat of a clock, or an hourglass or time itself. When he throws away thehourglass, he throws away the simple human that existed long ago, in a town (Arroya)that has now become a different town. The parallelism is just exquisite.

When hethrows away the hourglass and lets time run freely onwards, he replicates themoment when Shang Tsung offered him unlimited youth – and he replicates it overand over again. He discards who he really is, the one he should have been, in order toembrace the existence of this other man, the one he has become.

I don’tknow if I prefer this rendition of Erron Black or his predecessor back in MKX. Bothversions seem equally vague, especially considering that the character couldhave been fleshed out and explored more thoroughly. The excessively exaggeratedtime gap that MKX introduced (what happened during those 150 years since Erronaccepted what Shang Tsung had to offer?) opened up the gates for a millionquestions and stories to take form but I still think MK 11 hasn’t exactlydelivered. Granted, we have now learned some things about the man, but it doesn’tseem to be enough in the long run. His story remains a mystery, for the mostpart, his personality still lacks depth. In fact, the most meaningful thingsabout him we’ve learned in MK 11 can be traced back to fanfiction. This gap of150 years allowed writers to explore the events of those fifteen decades whilefleshing out the character. The facts that he killed his own father, hated hismom, grew up around strong women, has a thing for the color red (especiallyred-haired women) and that basically he’s a man who has nothing to lose can allbe traced back to both Desperado and Debris in some way or another and while Ihaven’t talked about this to the wonderfully talented @hell-on-training-wheels (author of Desperado) I’mpositive she must have felt the same joy I felt when I heard those lines forthe first time. Of course, this could be a coincidence, but maybe they know the gap of time they’ve created has not beenquite explored yet and this is a way for them to allow writers to create andexplore on their own, providing the character with more than adjectives thatare nothing but vague conceptualizations, just like greed and thrill.

Last butnot least, there’s another thing I’ve been thinking of for quite some time now,and even though I’m merely going to introduce the idea (it could take an evenlonger post) I think it’s worth mentioning, especially considering Erron’sdecision to throw away the hourglass. This perpetual dichotomy we see in him - he’salways looking forward, he doesn’t seem to stop – pretty much like time itself –versus the existence and the presence of every one of the iconic elements that givelife to his character and pretty much mold this cowboy (he discards his past,perhaps he even despises the original man he was before the pact but at thesame time he clings to the morals, the mannerisms and even the fashion of hisown era) make me think that maybe he discards everything that can be consideredpersonal, but chooses to stay loyal to things that can be perceived aseverlasting. All this makes me think that, perhaps, Erron is afraid of dying. He’snot a coward, he’s not looking for redemption, he’s clearly not trying to makeamends with his own past and I wonder if that’s because the man from his pastwasn’t infinite. His youth wasn’t evergreen, his life wasn’t everlasting. And whilehe’s always looking for this thrill; and while he even tells Skarlet that he likesto live dangerously, I wonder if, maybe, he’s afraid to even consider his own finitude.

Thanks forthe ask!

#ask #mortal kombat #mkx #mk 11 #mortal kombat x #mortal kombat 11 #erron black #mk erron black #shang tsung #fanfiction #mortal kombat fanfiction #erron black fanfiction #mk headcanon #mk headcanons

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odaofiga · 5 years

Text

Life and Death in Iga

This chapter of Ai’s history doubles as my entry for the Voltage Contest. Hopefully this fanfiction illustrates my absolute love for SLBP. Judges, grab a comfy chair and enjoy!

Genre: Angst Characters: Momochi Sandayu, Saizo Word Count: 9550 (no, that’s not a typo) A/N: This is the first backstory entry for my SLBP OC Aina/Ai, detailing her childhood in Iga and how and why she left.I relied on scant canon references, vague historical information, and my own imagination to pull this together so please feel free to speak up out if you notice any inconsistencies. Sorry no tags this round to insure it is #’d properly for the contest.

This is exceptionally long so most of it will be hidden under a cut. Feedback is greatly appreciated, as always!

------

Somewhere deep in Iga province, a soft cry of pain sounded in the night. It echoed away almost at once, aided by the howling wind and rain. But even as silence fell, the deepest shadows of the forest stirred. Heavy-lidded eyes opened in the darkness and stared out toward the source of the sound, waiting.

A few moments passed and it sounded again; an anguished, breathy howl. It was louder this time, but ragged and strained as if every sound was being forced through clenched teeth. Another followed, and another. Gradually even the storm was contested by a rhythmic, peaking cries. The odd curse punctuated the sounds, distinctly feminine despite the vile language she used. Then, amidst the caterwaul, came the sudden sharp burst of a infant’s first scream.

As if cued by the sound, a figure emerged from the night and crossed the clearing with all the lethality of a wolf on the hunt. A dark and desolate house lay care-worn ahead, its broken eaves brushed by moonlight. It looked by all accounts vacant. Only the lingering whine of pain from within offered evidence to the contrary. Through the door, Sandayu slipped as soundless as a spirit and took account of what lay within.

The interior was as meager and wanting for repair as the out, with only a single, rapidly placed set of bedding strewn over the dusty floor. And laid off-center across its folds, as if she had collapsed there in haste, lay a haggard, quavering woman he recognized well. Forehead beaded with sweat and gasping desperately for breath, she was in no fit state to recognize him in return. Or even notice that a presence had entered the room.

Sumi was a shadow of the great woman she had once been. Formerly the daughter to a prominent name, her prestige had been broken by the weight of the mission she’d failed to complete. And any chance to reclaim it lost to the consequential seed that plagued her tonight. Whether by a fluke of nature or some inherent strength, the spawn had survived all of her attempts to dispatch it. It had grown to term and robbed Sumi of her sanity along the way.

The woman squirmed, still in the throes of pain and half exposed. She was oblivious to the threat that stood feet away and continued to waste her energy in cursing the offending father’s name. The wails of the abandoned newborn between her legs rose in turn, but rather than quell the new mother, they seemed to enrage her further. Her hateful slurs turned spurning the child itself. She clawed convulsively at the empty air around her hips and her feet launched toward the tiny creature between. It was clear that if exhaustion and pain hadn’t prevented her, her hands would have closed around the infant’s throat and silenced it then and there.

But, whether through luck or a crueler fate, Sandayu got there first. With a hand closed around the chubby, vernix-covered leg, he pulled the child out of her reach. And in the darkness of his own kneeling shadow, the tiny girl opened her eyes for the first time. They were bright and colorless, betraying her foreign blood at a single glance. But as the child’s bleary eyes lingered on the looming figure above, her pitious wails seemed to falter. Sandayu looked back with a cruel smile.

With a last shrewd look at the floundering mother feet away, Sandayu made up his mind. Slicing a blade cleanly through the tethering cord, he turned and vanished without a sound. It would take many long moments before Sumi would realized the newborn’s cries had faded from the room as well. Tucked in the crook of his arm, in a feathered length of cloth, the child’s shallow sobs were spirited away into the night.

--------

For awhile, rumors persisted that she was Sandayu’s own child. After all, he’d appeared with the newborn in his arms and offered no explanation for it. He handed her off to a lactating mother and only rarely looked in on the pair, but he did permit them houseroom in the fortress itself. It was a protection usually reserved for the jonin families alone. And more peculiar still, Sandayu had gone to the trouble of choosing the child’s name himself.

But then, the cruelty behind the child’s chosen name raised questions of its own...

He named her Aina.

It sounded innocent enough to the ears. A good common name to fool trust into any that heard it. And with 愛 (Ai- / love), the sound so often whispered between lover's lips as its prelude, how could it not? The first syllable alone warmed the heart. ...Only in its written form was the cruelty behind the full word revealed. For it wasn't 菜 (vegetables) that crafted the second character of her name as was so commonly the case, but 無 (without).

愛無...

Unloved. It was more a description than a name. And while emotional attachment was considered more of a hindrance than a blessing in Iga, to blatantly name a child ‘without love’ was a savagery no mother would have considered. Little did anyone know, the name Aina was an echo of the same disparaging remarks her own mother had spat at her during childbirth. It was an origin Sandayu make sure to relate to her of once she’d learned to write. The name itself would become a permanent reminder that she was unwanted, even by her own mother.

Village interest in the child quickly waned once it became clear her red hair and persistent grey eyes were not of Iga. Though the truth was never made clear in so many words, she was shunned and ridiculed for her unexplained origins nonetheless. In the isolation that inevitably followed, Sandayu ensured he was the only glimpse of kindness the child received. How easy it was to manipulate someone so young...when even the soft jingle of the bells in his hair or a game of peek-a-boo played behind his black mask was enough to make her happy. His smile may have been hollow and his touch cold, but he offered a companionship beyond the hostility of her peers and she loved him for it. It was a love he turned skillfully to veneration, loyalty, and absolute obedience. With a blindly devoted youth so eager to please, Sandayu wasted no time in molding his infant charge into a weapon he could use.

Aina was pulled to stand before she’d found her feet. She was taught to mimic hand seals before she’d truly mastered speech. And in place of youthful toys, she was given blunt blades to occupy her time. By the age of four, she had been handed her first edged kunai and, by the age of 5, she’d been made to use it. Death began as a game. Small, playful challenges set by her mentor that fell birds from the trees and mice in their holes. And it was under his instruction that Aina found her first human opponent in the form of her own wet nurse.

The woman hadn’t been particularly kind to the child, certainly no more so than anyone else. But her nursing duties had brought a sort of comfort by their maternal nature alone. Whether it was this slight fondness that he’d wanted to strip from Aina or if she had simply been the easiest target he could offer, Aina didn’t questioned him when he set her the task.

It’s hard to say why it had been so easy. Perhaps the sight of the youngster with her toy blades had been to commonplace to raise her suspicions, or maybe her plaintive request for a hug was simply too natural for the nurse to ignore. Either way, the woman paid a heavy price for her complacency when Aina’s ‘toy’ blade pierced her throat.

The five year old child stood there, awash in the warm blood of her wet nurse. She may not have quite understood the sudden stillness in the body before her or the shock of emotion in the woman’s eyes, but she knew she’d done as she’d been told. Sandayu stepped from the darkness once the deed had been done and she felt a familiar thrill at his emergence. The way that he looked at her made her feel alive. And as he whispered those words, she felt a fierce surge of pride, a sense of purpose, and a powerful longing to hear that rare show of approval voiced again.

“...see how easy that was?”

-------

{ One year Later }

There was a stranger in town.

Aina had learned to recognize everyone in Momochi village at a young age; by name, by sight, even at a distance by gait if need be. Anyone not among those was an intruder, an enemy, and were to be dealt with accordingly. Such statutes had been drilled into all of the children as inevitabilities, Aina included. And she had seen her fair share of ‘strangers’ cut down in the name of village security.

But the villagers weren’t treating this woman as an enemy. On the contrary, everyone seemed to know her at a glance and their reactions were far from their normal ones. Fear, reverence, uncertainty; these were reactions Aina had only ever seen garnered by Sandayu himself, though the whispers and mutterings that followed in her wake had certainly never plagued him. This woman, with her dark hair and persistent scowl, was allowed to march right through the village center toward the fortress itself. And stranger still, Sandayu was out to meet her at the gates.

Six year old Aina crept as close as she dared. She still couldn’t make out the words shared between them, she was too far away, but the tone of their conversation was hard to miss. Anger and accusations colored the woman’s language from the first word, her handsome features transformed in a show of fury. Though despite her ire, Aina noticed the woman kept a careful distance nonetheless. Still, she looked nothing short of manic and certainly suicidal as she raged before the master. But to Aina’s great surprise, he didn’t strike her down for it. Standing as still as ice and with a smile just as cold, Sandayu took her fury in his stride.

Then, as if prompted, the woman’s sharp glare turned suddenly toward her; a single red-headed child among the prevalent silvers and blacks. The level of malice in that single look made Aina grip her kunai. Soon Sandayu’s eyes swivelled onto her as well. And while they were as cold as ever, there was definitely a gleam of amusement in his calculating stare. Whatever the low words that followed seemed to pull the woman’s attention just as quickly away. In only a few minutes more, the woman’s rage seemed to quell and she stalked from the village just as dauntless as she’d come.

Aina longed to watch her go, but the weight of eyes upon her own back drew her attention away. There was a storm of furtive whispers and shaking heads in the village crowd, and for some inexplicable reason, it all seemed to be focused on her. Normally stern looks were now outright barbarous.

Before she could feel more than a moments disquiet at this odd turn of events, a movement caught her eye. Sandayu, retreating from the fortress gate, was flicking his finger covertly at his side. A subtle signal calling her to follow. She obliged without a moment's thought and fell in behind the master as she had done so many times before. The jingling of his bells brought a renewed ease as they passed through the inner halls the fortress. He waiting until they were alone to speak, and he did so without breaking stride or sparring her a glance.

“Say to me, child, do you know whom that woman was?” He asked.

“...No, Sensei.”

He gave a soft “hmm” and they turned a corner. When he spoke again it was on a seemingly unrelated topic.

“Name for me, the Iga clans.”

This was often how lessons would go; a verbal roundabout before knowledge was earned.

“Momochi, Hattori, and Fujibayashi,” she answered, studiously.

“And whereto do you heed?”

“To Momochi clan. To you, Sensei,” she obliged again. Another satisfied “Hmm” met her words and was followed by a rarely heard chuckle.

“Yet thou doesn't know your own elders...” he said offhand. Though the words sounded like an admonition, it was laced with amusement. Unsure of what he wanted to hear or if he expected an response at all, Aina held her tongue.

They were nearing her quarters now. If they reached it without breaching the subject of the strange woman again, she was sure her curiosities would go unanswered. Still, she didn’t dare raise the question so bluntly herself. It was as they turned the corner on her familiar passage that he spoke again and the subject was reverted just as quickly.

“Her name is Sumi,” Sandayu offered, with no more inflection to the name than he had offered to any of his questions. “She is Momochi, and a minacious one. Slip thy guard, and she shall kill you. ...Never grant her the chance.”

“Yes, Sensei.”

Sandayu gave her the briefest of sidelong looks as they approached her door.

“...Sumi is your mother.”

It was a mark to the strictness of his training that Aina’s steps did not falter at these words. Though her normally downcast eyes jumped up to his shoulder in surprise, he wore only his usual hollow smile. They had arrived at her quarters and with a calm hand, he ushered her inside. Convinced she had heard all she was going to hear, Aina was taken aback when the master followed her inside. Closing the door solidly behind, he sat her down for the longest talk they had ever had. She had been hopeful when he’d entered, but by the time Sandayu departed, her her bowed head had fallen as low as her station.

...Sandayu was not her father.

It was far from the gravest of the news he delivered, but it hit her harder than all the rest. The possibility had only ever been a fantasy at best, she had known that. And being the daughter of the Momochi name at all should have been a profound boon in her favor. But she had never expected the full reality of her parentage to be so far removed from either prestige.

Aina was the bastard daughter of a samurai. Some distant Lord in the Owari province by the name of Oda. He was a known enemy of Iga, an outsider, and with his blood in her veins, Aina bore that stigma as much as him. And while promising, her mother’s prestigious blood did nothing to bolster her station either, even within her own clan. Aina’s very creation was the result of her mother’s failed mission against the Oda so many years before. And she was marred with a death sentence for that alone. Her life in Momochi was a clemency granted by him. And if she was to earn a permanent trusted place within the village, she would have to amend her station through blood owed. The blood of her father to start.

According to Sandayu, this was the singular task for which she had been raised, and the reason there was no leniency in her training. If her proficiency lapsed, if she fell behind the curve of her peers, Aina would cease to be useful to the village and would lose more than her station in the fall. It was a grave warning that Sandayu delivered with his usual indifference.

Devoted to her master, Aina took his nonchalance as a vote of confidence in her abilities rather than a true lack of interest. And she strived to take his words with the same neutrality that they were offered. After all, she had more than held her own so far. Thanks to the master’s high expectations and harsher disciplines, she was a force to be reckoned with. She could hold her own against most of the opponents twice her age and could easily best those equal to it. And as Sandayu left with his usual rattle of bells, Aina rationalized that she had no reason to fear a loss of station.

A theory that remained true...until he showed up.

-------

{ One year Later }

Aina was bleeding.

And once again, she was pulling herself up off the floor. Feet beneath her, she remained kneeling and attempted to master her rapid pulse and quickened breath in the reprieve. As her free hand brushed her lip, it came away stained red with blood. Her eyes lingered on it as her tongue found the cut in her gums. The sharp pain that followed furrowed her brow before she could hide it. She was losing, badly. And to make matters worse, her failures were on full display for the man that mattered most. Forcing her face back into an apathetic mask, she looked toward the dais and found the grim eyes of Sandayu upon her.

“My, has thou lost so easily?”

“...No, Sensei,” she answered, voice steadier than she felt.

“No? On your feet then.”

His order fell with all the kindness of a whip, and she had no choice by to obey. Fighting the fatigue in her legs, Aina rose straight backed and tightened her grip on her short sword. In the moment it took her to rise, Sandayu’s gaze flickered to her opponent. The virulent gleam darkened his eyes told her he was no more satisfied by her opponent’s performance than with her own. Despite all the pain in her jaw and her many aching bruises, Aina hardened herself for another fight. She knew better than to a hope for rest so early in the session, regardless of how one sided the bout had been. And sure enough, the order fell.

“Again.”

Aina turned immediately toward her opponent, blade held reverse grip and ready across her chest. Her opponent was already in his stance as well. If any of her landed hits were causing him pain, he made no show of it. Katana erect and his red eyes cold, the ten year old Saizo looked as solid and battle-ready as he had four rounds before. Endeavoring to show as little wear, Aina launched herself forward. In the infinitesimal second that it took their blades to clash and part, she watched some semblance of indecision flashed in Saizo’s eyes. It was an emotion as rare in him as from the master himself, but she had seen this one before...

Aina had known a change was imminent the moment she saw him escorted through the fortress gates. Saizo walked in the master’s shadow, a position held only by his personal protégés. At the time, Aina alone had earned that spot and her rivalrous response to this new addition was only natural. But Sandayu quickly flamed that innocent contention into animosity. Despite the four year age gap between the pupils, he pitted them against each other as equals the moment they met. They clashed blades within the same hour under the master’s watchful eye and for the first time Aina found her own abilities brutally inadequate.

It was in the wake of this very one-sided bout that Sandayu had announced new stipulations. Access to food, living quarters, even medical supplies would henceforward be contingent upon the outcome of their weekly spars. And Aina had just lost the first fight.

Aina had had seven years to come to terms with Sandayu’s unconscionable heavy hand and had dipped her head in immediate acceptance. Saizo, on the other hand, had looked to her, conflicted and contrite. Unwilling to show any chagrin before the master, she turned her back on him in response. When only one could succeed, and the other starve, it was inevitable that they had never be more than callous rivals. Or rather, Aina never entertained the possibility of another option.

Sandayu had made it clear; sentiment was weakness. And the resurfacing of his sympathy now, from an opponent who was besting her so easily, was infuriating. A loss was hard enough to endure without the thought of his pity to sour it further. Her eyes ablaze, Aina parried the next strike and rolled under his pursuing blade with fresh resolve. She was intent on punishing him for his show of weakness.

The benefit of her shorter sword meant tight maneuvers were easier to make, and with a well-timed step, Aina was inside his guard. She got one good swipe across his lat before he got his blade down to block. He was taking retreating steps now, needing the distance against her close-quarter strikes. It was a dance they had shared many times before, and though she moved with all the speed she could muster, once again she was failing to keep up with his longer stride. His blade was soon falling full force through the gap that had opened in between. But rather than evade as she normally would have done, frustration and desperation encouraged a riskier course instead.

She planted her feet. Catching his descending blade with her own, she pushed forward and extended her free left hand. As planned, momentum carried Saizo’s obi right into her waiting grasp. She relished the brief moment genuine surprise on his face as she turned, using his own sash as leverage to pull him forward and off balance. It might have been the win that had always eluded her thus far, but as she twisted, her bruised knee gave out beneath her.

Her grip loosened, her sword slid, and the forceful strike that she had held so vehemently at bay, slammed brutally down on her unguarded collar. Aina heard the break before she felt it, a crack like a splintering tree that ripped sickeningly through chest. A scream of pain came so quickly, she didn’t realize it was her own until she bite her lip and it faded away.

Aina was on the floor again and couldn’t remember the second it had taken to fall. Self-awareness returned slowly. Her right arm was pins and needles of numbness, her weapon was rocking on the ground by her feet, and tears were streaming unbidden from her eyes. She was braced unsteadily between one knee and a trembling left hand. Consumed by the shock of the injury, it took a moment more for her to realize the warm, firm something on which her forehead was resting was Saizo’s upright leg. She didn’t fight the contact. And surprisingly, neither did he.

“Why do you hesitate, Saizo? Finish it.”

The voice barked unmercifully from behind her and Aina tensed, fully expecting Saizo’s bracing leg to vanish and another blow to fall. For though she was slumped on bended knee and unarmed, the round wasn’t technically lost until a shoulder or back hit the floor.

Saizo’s leg remained and a moment that seemed an eternity passed in tense silence. Then from somewhere above, she sensed her opponent’s heavy gaze leave her before he spoke.

“...She’s already lost.” His voice sounded as callous as the master’s, but still he didn’t move or push her away.

“Has she… How disappointing.”

As the slight jingle of Sandayu rising reached her ears, she felt the tension in the room rise with him. Dreading his own hand reaching out to level her, Aina forced herself to open her eyes and lifted her head. She didn’t look toward the master, or even up at Saizo’s face somewhere above. She felt too much shame to attempt either. Instead, she stared straight ahead into the dusty cloth covering Saizo’s knee and waited. Thankfully when Sandayu spoke again, he sounded no closer.

“...Leave.”

Saizo’s leg gave the slightest flinch in response, but Aina knew immediately that the command had not been meant for him. It was never the victor that was asked to depart. Lip between her teeth to hold her grimace back, Aina shifted her weight and prepared to stand. It was a far greater struggle to keep the pain from revealing itself in her response as she said, “...Yes, Sensei.”

Saizo turned his hand slightly before her eyes. It was a silent offer of help up off the floor that he had certainly never offered before. And though she felt the usual scoff of derision rise in her throat, there was a smallest temptation to take it as well. In the end, she ignored it out of pride. Sandayu’s eyes were still upon her and she refused to fall any further in her master’s eyes, whatever it cost her.

Hissing quietly through her nose, Aina found her feet unaided and with an obligatory bow, she walked from the room under her own power. Only the slight slope to her shoulders and the tremble in her back revealed the height of her pain.

-------

Like most young ninja, Aina received an animal familiar. Hers came in the form of a young myna; a small black bird with pale bill and a bright yellow eyes. Charmed by the birds melodic whistling cries, Aina had named her gifted companion Yoruuta, meaning ‘night song.’

But while most familiars were a constant companion for their shinobi, Aina’s myna had a singular purpose; to carry covert messages between the master and herself. It was a species known for intelligence and mimicry, making it a perfect choice to deliver complex messages on the fly. Though as hers was still young, goshikimai would have to suffice until he was properly trained. As her early responsibilities were so few, most messages entailed little more than a summons to meet anyway, usually with training or minor missions to follow. But in the weeks that followed Saizo’s arrival, the young bird began delivering something more than words.

Ousted from the fortress following their first bout, Aina had taken up shelter in an abandoned temple outside of the village. But what had been meant as a temporary refuge quickly became a permanent residence when her weekly results failed to improve. Sandayu’s stringent punishment for failure was not repealed, even for a day. Her survival was left completely to her own hands. In the wake of such severe treatment, her adoration of her master might have faltered. But Mooching had an uncharacteristic way of reaffirming her faith.

As she sat nursing her residual injuries in the weeks following Saizo’s arrival, the crested black bird had fluttered down without his usual grace. The reason for his bungling approach was immediately clear. While he usually delivered little more than a quick message in the form of colored rice, he now held a thin, thread-wrapped bundle of herb sprigs between his beak. A quick look told her they were all medicinal, all specifically purposed for the injuries she’d sustained, and all of the herbs were ones she had personally seen in the fortress’s private stores.

Sandayu had sent them to her...?

It seemed an almost absurd possibility considering his public demeanor. Not to mention, his complete lack of compassion in the last seven years. But at the same time, Sandayu alone knew of Yoruuta’s role as her messenger. He alone sent messages between them.

...and he alone had been there to raise her, when no one else had cared to. Maybe, just maybe… that meant he harbored some deeper affection for her than he could to express in so many words. Aina dared to hope.

In the time it took her broken collarbone to mend after her final devastating match, Saizo’s position as Sandayu’s pupil had been secured. She was not given another chance to regain her former position. Though she still received training and missions appropriate to her high level of skill, it was clear she had fallen permanently to number two. But despite his earlier threat, Sandayu had not struck her down for her failure. And the bundle that arrived the night following that bone-shattering bout seemed to confirm her feeble hope as reality. Along with the usual herbs, horsetail, nettle and oat had been added to the mix.

They were all potent remedies for bone repair.

-------

{ Two years later }

The sound of footfalls whispered through the trees like so many leaves in a breeze. So quiet even the birds failed to alight from their branches before the perpetrators had already passed. Three figures, light and lithe, darted through the slopes of Bano valley; the smallest in the lead with her two pursuers several meters behind. And though her breath came in hushed pants and her short hair was damp with sweat, she didn’t have the luxury of a respite.

Thwip. Thwip.

Shurikens splintered the bough where her hands had just been. Aina spared a glance back without breaking her stride but she found only dappled foliage behind. They were still too far back to present a defined target and, judging by their aim, she was fairly confident she offered little more of one to them, at least for the moment. Only their snide comments reached her clearly through the trees.

“Thieving wretch! Get back here!”

“She can’t run forever. She’ll pay, blood or peach.”

No, she couldn’t run forever and the distance between them was closing quickly. A mere nine years old to their twelve, her shorter legs were losing her her lead, and her margin of safety with it.

Thwip. Another blade landed dangerously close.

Turning to favor a more southerly route, Aina led her pursuers into the denser basin below. Here the shadows gathered as thick as oil in the canopy. Their thick cover would make their aim a far more difficult task. And, scattered in the thick foliage around her, the scurryings of the forest inhabitants offered a greater distraction than her own light steps. Here was her best chance.

A large flicker of movement drew her eye. A furry, banded creature was foraging in the bushes below. She reacted immediately, drawing and flinging a straight blade in a single motion. It impacted the soft earth behind the animal with a dramatic spray of soil. And as predicted, the tanuki was off like a shot. With a racket that belied its small size, the animal crashed headlong through the undergrowth ahead. This commotion in caused came in stark contrast to Aina’s silence. For the moment the blade had left her hand, she had froze.

In the shadow of an oak, Aina crouched as still as stone while her pursuers raced past, taking the bait of the tanuki’s noisy escape. Stray strands of hair flitted into her open eyes, her held breath burned in her chest, and the bite of a shuriken wound throbbed in her leg, but still she waited. Finally, when their quiet footfalls had faded into silence and the tempered sounds of birds returned, Aina allowed herself to relax and breath.

As her right hand swept the blood-colored bangs from her face, her left brought up her hard-won prize, level with her eyes. The peach was blushing with over-ripeness and slightly bruised, but it was still whole. And it was all hers.

Smiling in her eagerness, Aina took her first bite right through the tart skin. The juice wash over her tongue and down her throat; wet, firm and impossibly sweet. Even her disciplined composure wavered at the succulence. Aina allowed her eyes to flutter closed in a brief moment of ecstasy.

Sweetness was such a rare taste in Iga. And with the aroma the fruit released at every bite, it was clear why. Even devoured, there was a telling odor that clung to her hand and lips long after it was gone. And she knew that if such scents could attract the flies, it could alert her enemies just as easily. It was a problem she would have to remedy.

Leaving the striped pit tauntingly on the branch in case her pursuers retraced their path, Aina slipped off her perch and moved off into the forest in haste. She didn’t go back the way she’d come or in the direction that she’d been pursued, but toward the small stream memory told her was only a few klicks away.

Even at a even pace, it wasn’t long before the babble of water over rocks could be heard ahead. However, despite the tempting sound, a tug at her senses slowed her pace long before she could reach it. There was a presence in the clearing ahead and her thoughts went immediately to the two boys she’d just led astray. Curling her hand carefully to prevent the wind spreading the tropical scent forward, Aina paused, straining her senses for any details she could gather on the clearing ahead.

The coppery scent of blood was on the air. The sound of erratically splashing water, the whispering scrape of metal on wood, and one low, controlled ventilation. One person lay ahead, a shinobi. And from the sound of it, they had either just drawn or sheathed a blade.

From shadow to shadow and up a wide, river pine, Aina crept. She emerged onto one of the trees sturdy, twisting arms, looked down and froze. She barely dared to draw breath. Her eyes trained on the single figure that crouched at the bank below. He had matured slightly since she’d last seen him last but there was no mistaking that shock of spiky, silver hair.

Saizo.

His back was angled slightly toward her and his red eyes were set firmly on the water splashing between his hands. The blood she’d smelt was there, being cleaningly washed away in the stream. If Saizo knew she was there, he gave no sign of it, but that hardly brought her any measure of comfort. It wouldn’t take long for her breath or her weighty gaze to alert him. IF he didn’t already know.

Aina’s hand ached with the temptation to draw the short sword tied laterally at her back. Anyone else would have taken it without thought, and she certainly had more reason to wish his demise than any of her peers. Sandayu himself might have applauded her for seizing the opportunity. But Aina found herself studying the subtle lines of his back instead. Despite the clear motive calling her to arms, her intrigue out-weighted her ill will.

Rumors were rampant that Saizo was already being tasked with crucial missions outside of Iga province, that a long term placement was soon to come. The thought left a slight bitterness on her tongue. That would have been her role had Saizo not caught the master’s eye. But for all the pain it caused her to admit it, Aina couldn’t deny that his proficiency with the blade far surpassed her own… and it was more than their age gap could excuse. She had never been able to land more than a flesh wounds worth in their many bouts. Saizo had a natural flair that had always eluded her. He wielded his katana with all the grace of a bird on the wing. Even if she were to ambush Saizo now, she would be hard-pressed to win without sustaining serious injury herself.

And…

The memory of his hand held out to her in aide so many years ago came fleetingly to mind. Aina harbored no delusions about his lethality, or the hostility that existed between them. But that tiny, insignificant kindness was a curiosity she still couldn’t explain. She cast the memory forcefully away. With the decision already half made to turn and leave, Aina looked down for a last look at her old adversary and found his distinctive red eyed were already on her.

In the time it took her hand to close around her hilt, he was gone. Adrenaline surged and Aina was already in motion. Short blade drawn and back to the trunk, she turned to meet the distinct weight that had landed on her bough. There crouched Saizo, balanced as easily as a bird on the slender limp, with a playful smile and shuttered eyes. The quiet chuckle that shook his shoulders seemed wildly out of place.

“Jumpy little thing, aren’t we?”

Though her short sword still hung between them, Saizo paid no attention to the sustained threat. His katana was still stealthed and his stance suggested a calm she could not share. While she locked her eyes on him, his curious gaze traveled over her body. His nostrils flared as he looked to her hand, narrowed at to the stain of blood over her wounded thigh and finally came back up to her stubbornly fierce expression. The mirth in his eyes had faded slightly, but it still wasn’t the callous look she had seen from him in battle. It was a searching look, almost...friendly.

“How long-” He started to speak but abruptly stopped, his eyes turning sharp.

She had heard it too. The soft flutter of incoming wings and a familiar whistling call. She recognized it at once as a myna bird, her myna bird. And Aina had a brief moment to wonder why Saizo seemed to have recognized it too. He made no show of surprise either when the feathery shadow landed lightly on a thin limb above and looked down at them with beady eyes. Obviously far too daring a feat for a wild specimen.

It was odd. In order to maintain anonymity, Yoruuta had been carefully trained to only approach when she was alone. And certainly not to interrupt a tense moment such as this. For him to overlook both stop measures...

“Must be important,” Saizo said, mirroring her own thoughts so closely she blinked in surprise. Saizo looked from Yoruuta to Aina, as expectant as the bird itself.

Resigning her held tension with a sigh and a slightly furrowed brow, she lifted her left hand, upturned, for the incoming message. The myna dropped lightly down onto her wrist at the signal and dropped a number of colored rice grains into her open palm. With the precise bobbing of his fiery beak, he rearrange them into the message as it was meant to be read. Her eyes still locked resolutely on the threat before her, Saizo found the message first. He peeked unabashed over the curl of her fingers as the bird worked.

Yorruta finished with a soft whistle and took flight from her arm. Aina pulled her arm in close and risked a glance away to read it herself. The brief flicker of confusion that had narrowed Saizo’s eyes appeared at once in her own.

MEET AT KAOCHIDANI

Aina lingered on it longer than she intended to, such was her surprise. In the last few years, she could count on one hand the variation of orders she had received. It was nearly always a summons to the fortress itself, with training or sparring to follow. Rarer still were time sensitive missions and tasks sent on the fly. But regardless of the message, the master had never left the secluded village on her account. Much less to such a distant destination as the Kaochidani valley. It was a bit...unsettling.

Turning her hand sideways to cast the grains to the ground below, Aina refocused her stare on Saizo and he starred right back. His eyes were no more malicious than before, but they had become fathomless with thought. No words passed between them, but the understanding was clear. Whatever might have come of this meeting, hostile or… otherwise… would have to wait. The village, the mission, and, most of all, the call of the master came before anything else.

Looking briefly between her stubbornly hostile grey eyes, Saizo offered the smallest jerk of his head. Though Aina took it as the promise of safety for her leave, she still slid her short sword away with extreme care, watching him closely for any indication of a broken promise. For a fleeting moment, they sat within arms distance of each other; unarmed and an odd uncertainty hanging in between. Then Aina turned into the heavy shadows and was gone.

Saizo sat starring after her in the gathering dusk.

-------

{ 5 miles Later }

Darkness had well and truly fallen by the time Aina reached the severe slopes of Kaochidani valley. The gloom wasn't strictly due to the late hour however. Menacing clouds had rolled in overhead and a humid wind blew with the promise of a storm to come.

The dense forest that Aina had clung to in her travel fell away at the valleys edge to meet sheer rock face. There was no vegetation to hinder the ominous roar of the surging Shorenji river below and it sounded a dire warning to any local’s ear. The summer had been particularly unkind to this hilly patch of the province. Excessive rains and crumbling sediments had swollen the waters well beyond their usual banks. The jagged rocks that normally peeked up through the calm current were now submerged, and all the more dangerous for it.

A single, narrow footbridge spanned the dividing gap. It was the only crossing in sight for this treacherous valley. And it was the only destination to which she could have been called. The first scattered drops of rain made the ground slick and Aina took extra care in every step on her perilous descent. She was so focused, she already had one foot on the weathered boards of the bridge before she caught sight of what lay ahead.

A solitary silhouette stood at its center, but it wasn’t the one she’d expected to find. And Aina found her hand moving to the hilt of her sword for the second time that day. It wasn’t Sandayu that awaited her at the bridge’s center, but Sumi.

As Aina struggled with the strangeness of this turn of events, her mother’s dark eyes found her. The look was scathing, but not unexpectant. Before Aina could do anything more than glare suspiciously back, her mother had turned unconcernedly away again. She stared pensively down into the valley below. Her nonchalants was such that Aina half considered the possibility that her presence was strictly coincidence before Sumi broke the silence with a leading sigh.

“How long do you intend to make me wait? ...Come here,” she called, sparring Aina another haughty glance.

Aina didn’t move. In her mother’s simple summons, she could hear the echo of Sandayu’s warning years before. “Slip thy guard, and she shall kill you…” It had been three years since those prophetic words had been delivered. And looking into the harsh lines of her mother’s profiled face, it was hard to see her as anything other than the lethal threat she’d been painted. Yet...

...it had to be said that nothing had come of that warning since. Despite a number of visits to the village after her first, Sumi had never sought an audience with her daughter, much less a conflict. She had avoided so much as eye contact with her in fact. The few encounters they had shared had been strictly in Sandayu’s company and largely uneventful. If she’d had any opinion on Aina then, whether motherly or murderous, she had kept it well hidden.

Aina raked the woman’s stance suspiciously but found nothing to warrant concern. She appeared relaxed, with no shadow of a weapon in sight. Alarm bells were screaming in Aina’s head, all of them saying this theory was better left untested. And yet in that faintest possibility that Sumi could want something more was a feeble ray of hope that held her in place.

Family may have been a trivial idea for Iga, but it still existed in its most minimal form. Or at least it did for every other children her age. Tailing the peers in her youth had shown her as much. They had a home to return to each night, where sound sleep could be found. Most of them had food provided, without the looming threat of being poisoned with every bite. And even the most indifferent parent was still a guardian first. Someone who cared. It was a small, but significant luxury that they took for granted. And contrary to anything she might say, it was one Aina had always envied.

Sandayu provided for her instruction, her diet and her bed, but all in their harshest forms. And everything had to be earned. It was hard to say that she had ever received any semblance of real affection from him beyond the bundles of herbs… which had never been confirmed. And curled up alone, battered and bruised most nights despite giving her very best, Aina had harbored the frailest dream. The dream of having a parent that genuinely cared. Of being loved.

Therefore it was against all her better judgement, that Aina chose to brave the gap between them. She took each step more carefully than the last and her hand never left the hilt of her sword. When she was no more than a couple yards away however, her instincts won out. She stopped. Striving to remain reticent, Aina waited. Her mother’s eyes were watching her now and she seemed to chose her words with the utmost care.

“I’ve been told you’re doing well,” Sumi finally said. There was a warmth to her words that Aina has never heard before. From anyone. “...How old are you now? Eight? Nine?”

“...I will be ten next season,” Aina answered, voice flat despite the flaring hope.

The creases by her mother’s eyes deepened at the sound of her daughter’s voice. Her gaze turned momentarily harsh as she studied the fine lines of her daughter’s face. There was a twinge of bitterness that barbed her next words.

“...You look just like your father.”

Aina felt sting like a blade to the chest. Despite the lack of insult in her mother’s tone, it certainly felt like one. She felt her face fall back into apathetic lines, hiding the hurt behind them.

“Why are you here, mother?” she asked, bitingly.

Sumi gave her a calculating look, then untucked one arm from around her chest. In her hand, a small, roll of parchment caught the light of the moon. It immediately drew Aina’s eyes.

“Sandayu has decided that you will take a greater role in the village operations. He thinks you’re ready.”

There was a forced flatness to Sumi’s tone, though Aina hardly noticed it when her words meant so much more. Sumi twisted the paper meaningfully between her forefinger and thumb. A new mission...

Aina had taken a half-step forward before sense pulled her back. Something didn’t feel right. Greater responsibility she could buy. It was what she’d been working toward, after all. And if Saizo was soon to be otherwise occupied, she was the clear choice to take up the mantle. But…

“Why isn’t this coming from the master? Why you?” Aina voiced the questions with every ounce of skepticism she felt. “And why Kaochidani?”

“The mission’s in Ise, and its where I’ve been stationed,” she answered simply, nodding briefly toward the southerly province ahead. “Due to the urgency of your task, the master,” she spat the title with particular venom, though it seemed unrelated to Aina herself, “...bade me deliver the message myself and escort you there.”

Something still felt...off. Even as Aina’s tried to rationalize her suspicions, Sumi heaved a faint sigh of sadness that drew her attentions away. “It’s so seldom that I’m allowed to see you. Thanks to Sandayu’s protection.”

There was an oddly passionate look in her mother’s eyes as she finally held out the mission script for her to take. Drawn in by the sincerity of her words, Aina reached out for the proffered paper.

At least she’d still had the sense to use her left hand.

As her fingers brushed the parchment, Sumi’s other hand was suddenly there. It seized painfully around Aina’s extended wrist. Jerked forward, Aina failed draw her sword in time. A flash of metal and the thin timbers pitched underfoot. Her feet left the ground and Aina’s fingers could find no purchase on her mother’s wrist. Sword forgotten, her other hand clawed empty air as the world turned on its head. And Aina was thrown forward into darkness.

Her mother’s hardened expression, moving rapidly away, told her this had been planned all along.

There was nothing to be done, no time to feel shame.

The bridge was gone. Any hope well out of reach.

All that remained was a blur of wind and stars.

Then sudden contact and pain and blackness swallowed even that.

-------

Aina woke in a storm of water and foam, of darkness and shimmering lights. There was a distant, tingling in her neck but it was the unendurable pressure in her chest that dominated her thoughts. The severe, immediate need to breath. She let go. She inhaled, and found the air rushing in to be cold and impossibly thick. Her body convulsed in protest and she tried again. Waves of water were flooding past her lips and into her lungs. She was drowning. She was dying!

The realization sent panic into Aina’s dulled mind. She fought to move, to live! But found only a tingling weightlessness in her arms. She felt incredibly weak against the heavy current that bombarded her body. Blurry silhouettes were rushing past and swirling blackness surrounded her on all sides. There was no clear direction in which to move and a dense, dark cloud was descending before her eyes with every second the passed.

Flashes of thought drifted in the depth. Of Sandayu and Iga, of spring and bundles of herbs. Of the peach and its sweetness, of Saizo and fluttering, black wings. Of warm summer rain… and her mother’s hollow words...

A sudden, blunt force hit her back and Aina’s chest compress. A blinding pain shattered along her neck where the dull ache had been. As instinct threw her head back in a soundless scream, Aina felt her face break into warm, life-saving air. It was brief relief. A glimpse of a cloudless, starry sky, a lung-full of heaven, and the water returned. But with the air came a clear, forceful resolve. She would not die here!

Clinging to her one breath for every second of life it was worth, Aina forced her eyes to open despite the sting of water and silt. She stared into the storm around her and found light. They were fragments of colors glistening in darkness and they seemed as far away as the stars themselves. But as Aina reached out feebling for them nonetheless, her fingers found purchase on stone. The current beat on her ruthlessly for her effort, but she clung on. Her other hand found grip and Aina emerged into open air. Her own violent coughs threatened to loose her grip and every small progress brought a searing pain.

finally, Aina collapsed on her side in the shallows with little memory of the arduous journey it had taken to crawl there. There was fresh air in her lungs and for the moment, that was all that mattered. She was alive.

As adrenaline began to wear off and her breathing slowed, the first indications became apparent that something was very wrong. She was shivering despite the warm night air. Her left arm still felt oddly numb. And the clammy sensation of blood was tickling over her skin. She had experienced enough injuries to recognize the symptoms of a bad one.

She ran her more responsive right hand down her neck. Her fingers found an long, ominous tear in her clothes and beneath it… Aina gasped as crippling pain flared at her touch. The wound was deep, stretching from the left side of her neck down her back. She couldn’t tell how far, but her fingers came back with copious amounts of blood. If she didn’t do something to stop it soon, she would die, whether she’d escaped the river or not.

So, despite the wear of fatigue and the intense pain that every movement caused, she forced herself up. Aina removed her kosode and used the soiled remains to bandage the wound. It took a torturous amount of time. And even as she tied the final knot between teeth and her trembling right hand, she knew it had been poorly done. ...but it was the best she could manage on her own.

More exhausted than she could even remember being in her life, she wanted nothing more than to collapse on the spot. But the pounding rain on her back told her that would be a poor choice to make. Half naked, half drowned and covered in blood, she knew she wouldn’t last long so fatally exposed. Survival lessons echoed in her mind; shelter first, rest would follow.

Even as her battered body quivered in protest, Aina stumbled to her feet. It took far longer than it should have for her to calculate direction from the river’s flow and the few stars visible above. Her way finally set, Aina staggered up the steep grade and off into the forest beyond.

------

She lost track of her steps and the time in between. Between the pounding rain and her blurred vision, the forest became a surreal landscape of dreams and mist. When it appeared, the distant house looked more illusion than substance. Mildewed with broken eaves, probably rain-drenched and rotten, it was still shelter. It was salvation. The door was already ajar, as if inviting her in. Aina was so consumed by the promise of rest, her feet had carried her near enough to touch...before she heard the quiet jingle of bells. Scattered thoughts clicked briefly in recognition.

Sandayu.

Aina thought of the herb bundles and imagined deliverance at hand. But even as hope flared, Aina realized she’d overlooked the whisper of words from within the cottage walls. And it wasn’t his alone. The addition of that barbarous female voice froze the breath in her chest.

“...been allowed to live.”

That was Sumi’s hiss. She had no doubt.

“...yet, you ne’r made any assay before tonight.”

And Sandayu’s unmistakable jargon in response.

Aina lost a sense for their words as she tried to make puzzle of these impossibilities. Why was the master here? And with her? Of all people, of all the times… How could they be talking so casually together after… after… Her head and her heart was pounding. Sandayu’s provocative laughter helped her focus by the sheer danger it instilled.

“...Dumplings over flowers, imouto. Your weeds proven more lethal than most the village thorns.”

“AND YOU would have had her SERVE for that alone!”

Cruel laughter again. “Heavens, no. But even weeds serve their purpose.”

Fuzzy as her mind was, Aine couldn’t follow. They seemed to be talking in riddles. And the pounding bullets of rain on her head were doing nothing to help her think… until her mother’s next words left her in no doubt about whom they were speaking.

“Oda’s spawn has no place here, OR PURPOSE.”

“...The subtleties always did escape thou. Why waste a life when its death hath use? Oda could hast fallen to his own discarded seed.” Aina could hear the hollow smile in his voice even as the wall stood between. “...now an un-akined hand will have that task. How dreary…”

“And after?”

The fading humor was just as audible in his words as the smile. “E’en her death shouldst have further another's path.”

Aina backstepped.

What little blood she had left had run cold. She felt lifeless on her feet. Sandayu. Her master, her mentor, was speaking of her death with the same apathy that had graced their lessons together.

Aina turned away from the only shelter in sight. The lingering conversation faded as distance passed.

All the time, all the training. What had it been for? The herbs… the advice… his attentions. It all felt as elusive as a memory now.

Aina walked on. She stumbled more than once into mud and stood again. Her mind was on everything but her footsteps. Some deeper instinct told her she was being too loud. That she should try to control her rapid breathing and her sloshing thread. She should be quiet with threats so close behind. Sumi, and Sandayu.

It hurt more than the wound on her shoulder to lump the master in with the woman. The woman who had just tried to kill her. Their words were still so fresh in her mind. Tears mingled with rain on her cheeks, and she didn’t care. What did it matter? Let them hear, let them come. She had already died once tonight anyway.

Aina stopped. The last thought drowned out every other.

She had already died once tonight.

She looked back. She didn’t know how long she’d been walking in the daze of her thoughts. The abandoned house, with mentor and mother, was long out of sight. And the heavy rain left an impenetrable curtain in between. No one was pursuing her. ...why would they? They thought she had already died, a victim to the river. And Aina made up her mind.

Whoever had walked from the Shorenji river. Whatever spirit had stood outside that house and listened to those words. Whoever it was that would wake up tomorrow, if she saw tomorrow at all... It wasn’t Aina.

Aina had died here in Iga tonight.

(( To be continued….))

#ILOVEVOLTAGEINC #VOLFEST2019CONTEST #slbp #slbp fanfic #slbp saizo #slbp sandayu #OMG THIS WAS WAY TOO LONG #oda of iga #odaofiga

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spacetimewraithwrites-archive · 5 years

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How Cuddleable Are Your OCs?

Tagged by @timetravelingpigeon! This is a very cute tag game I love it so much!!

Rules: for each of your OCs, rate how cuddleable they are on a scale of 1-10. Descriptions/elaborations are totally rad, but you do you, fam. Tag some people you like after!

Warren: 8/10 — Not a particularly bad cuddler. Has been known to fall asleep on his cuddle partner’s arm and cut off circulation, and is guilty of hogging the blanket/sheets/comforter in his sleep. Always considerate and asks about comfort level when awake, lmao. Very reliable couch-snuggler.

Thrive: 11/10 — You may be surprised to hear this, but Thrive is actually a spectacular cuddler. The catch is whether or not you’ve earned his cuddles in the first place. He doesn’t mind hugging if he knows who the hugger is and he trusts them enough, but he’s only fully cuddled in bed with two separate individuals, and they’re (not at all) coincidentally the only two people he’s ever had physical relations with. He can sense emotion and thoughts through touch with bare skin so uhhh he knows exactly where his hands go, I’m just saying. His core temperature is higher than that of a human’s, so it’s like having a radiator strapped to your body, but some people don’t mind that. Not a couch snuggler.

Guetry: 9/10 — There isn’t anything wrong with his cuddling, per se, it’s just that there seems to be a track record of it turning into...something else. He doesn’t normally cuddle with someone he isn’t trying to or hasn’t already pursued (consensually, of course), but he won’t turn down an invitation for platonic cuddling. Has been known to converse with Scotty if his cuddle partner is asleep. Decent couch-snuggler.

Alec: 1/10 — Terrible cuddler. Infuriates her wife because she simply does not do the cuddling thing. Barely even lets Guetry hug her. Other forms of PDA are fine, but prolonged full-body contact makes her squeamish. Only lets her wife cuddle in small doses, e.g. emotional distress or in the event of illness. Absolutely cannot be trusted to couch-snuggle.

Esther: 7/10 — Average cuddler, nothing out of the ordinary. Prefers cuddling while watching television/movies to cuddling in bed, and doesn’t discriminate who she’s willing to cuddle/be cuddled by. Adequate couch-snuggler.

Sussa: 9/10 — Just thinks cuddling is neat. Great hugger. She’s not one to go out of her way to cuddle but enjoys it when it happens. Although technically she’s only cuddled with one person, and if you wanna get even more technical, he wasn’t quiiiiite up for it. Has never couch-snuggled.

Brayden: 10/10 — Big arms, big guy, big muscles, big bear hugs, big boy Brayden brown bear boy. Best boy. Advocate for PDA, platonic or romantic, doesn’t matter. EXCELLENT couch-snuggler.

Hastings: 0/10 — Why did I even include him? Would rather shoot himself in the head than couch-snuggle.

Scotty: -1/10 — He is a disembodied AI, don’t be fucking ridiculous. Pretty good at couch-snuggling, though.

Tagging @starlitesymphony and @madammuffins to participate if they want!

#tag game #had to include an antagonist because you just gotta #I could have easily added every single character from all of the books if I had no self-control lmao

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thetonethetollandthethunder · 9 months

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Scythe chapter 16-20!!

Ayy we’re backk!! Let’s just get started shall we?

Chapter 16!!

-oh god the elegy—

-“Could you imagine me as a teenager?” OH YES I CAN OHOHO

-This also shows how much power scythes and especially Goddard has

-And also shows how bad of a scythe Goddard is as well

-Scythe Curie makes a good point that also relates to the toll, in which it doesn’t matter if they kill Goddard or anyone like him because another with the same ideology will always come along without fail

-this chapter didn’t have much but it IS good so ykyk

Chapter 17!!

-OHHH ITS THE MOMENT THAT EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS OVER!! SCYTHE FARADAY IS D-D-DEAD or is he? :) :)

-Rowan instinctively trying to protect Citra!!!

-it makes sense for most disabilities to be nonexistent but that doesn’t mean I have to like it :/ like idk why the way it’s done is just :// especially as a disabled person myself

-The way the describe Faraday’d death is already suspicious if you already know he isn’t dead but when you’re first reading it, it does make sense!

-OH AND THE SEPARATE TRAININGS BEGINS!!!

-“If I ever take on an apprentice it will be for a different reason entirely.” OHOHO I KNOW I KNOWWWW

-Again not much to say BUT still rlly good!!

Chapter 18!!!

-Part 3 begins!!

-SCYTHE CURIE!!

-Again I always forget the names of these places, falling water is a very pretty name!!

-Citra being angry about Faraday’s death OUGH, she’s rlly going through 5 stages of grieve style

-Could you imagine ppl in the future calling our decor and shit old fashioned? Bizarre

-I love how they make Curie instantly charming and likable with only a few scenes, good writing man!!

-What hobbies would other scythes have? I wonder…

-Fun fact, i cannot drive, tried to learn and crashed the car, oh how I wish driving wasn’t necessary like in scythe

-Giving us little notes about the comfort scythes can give

-We hear a lot about being stagnant in the Scythe universe, and like, yeah, if you were in this utopia wouldn’t you grow stagnant even quicker than most? You have nothing to do literally

-You can really feel how observant Curie is, she noticed the small details

-Jesus even Curie’s yelling scared ME and I already knew what was gonna happen! She’s rlly intimidating—

-Gotta uphold your image!!

-“Another Scythe might have exacted a punishment far worse.” *COUGH COUGH GODDARD*

-Again shit names!! Barton Breen??? What??

-20 kids,, Jesus,,

-You can Curie’s own version of compassion, it’s different from Faradays yet still wonderful

-She did find her own way of gleaning!!

-Again FUCK Goddard!!

-I do wonder what would happen if Citra was trained by Goddard instead of Rowan…

-“Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.” GOD THAT LINEE

-Amazing chapter!! Told a LOT abt Curie!!!

CHAPTER 19!!!!

-Oo!! I thought this moment happened in Thunderhead but I misremembered!!

-Tho I THINK something similar happens??? Idk maybe my memory is fuckin with me ushejdj

-ALSO DAMN CITRA!! Pushin girls in front of TRUCKS holy fuck!!!

-Hate the eating descriptions!!

-TELL THE MOTHER YOU TWO!!! LIKE CMON??

-Cindy lmaoo, whenever someone whitewashes Citra im gonna call it Cindy instead <3 spite

-“err on the side of respect.” LMAO love that line

-RONDA ROADKILL IM DYINGGGGGG and so did she! (Temporarily but yk)

-“Can i throw you under a truck some other time?” She’s a busy person! I’d totally throw Citra under a truck! Would be fun!

-Morals change when theres little consequences, Citra would never even CONSIDER pushing Ronda in the mortal age, but since people can just come back it doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, it also shows how the concept of empathy and morality has changed in this society

-“the cloud” like icloud! Guess apple won in this world!

-“The machine had a purer soul than any human” NO IT DOESNT IVE SEEN AI ART YOU CANT FOOL ME!!!

-FUCK YOU SCYTHE GODDARD!!!

-OO TIME FOR CITRA TO INVESTIGATE!! I remember LOVING this plot so!!!!

Chapter 20!!

-Rowan finally!!! I missed you!!!!!

-He doesn’t wanna kill Citra!!! The beginning of his devotion to her UGHHH

-god hes only 17, I think we forgot how young these characters are, they really are just kids being pushed into this horrible situation god,,,

-“His was a life without substance, and now it would end.” God and here we see Rowan’s iconic self deprecating “emo” moments, people make fun of these scenes a lot but I fucking love em, it really contrasts Rowan and Citra. Citra has people who love and care about her, Rowan doesn’t, he knows that (in this moment) if he died no one would really care or remember him, so when he finds Citra, someone who does care about him and would care if he died, he clings to it. I mean when you’re that neglected and want SOMEONE to care even a little about you, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

-He already wants to change things!! And he will!! He will change a lot, though not as much as his girlfriend!!

-VOLTA!!

-“So is there a reason why you choose your robes to be the color of piss?” HA one of my favorite lines!!

-“the Change” god their ideology—, the fact they’re all thinking that they’re changing things for the better really shows how convincing of a man Goddard is, GOD i hate him!!!

-Ans here we have Goddard’s MANY parties

-my sensory issues would hate this

-I accidentally spelled Goddard’s name as Goodard which…Isn’t that so Ironic?

-“Bimbotech” Neal I’m BEGGING you to stop

-“Rowan wondered if the man had a diamond-studded bathing suit in his waredrobe as well.” He would because he’s a vain prick!!

-HES UNDERAGE STOP GIVING HIM ALCOHOL!! *Looking at you RAND especially ya creep—*

-“He was lucky if they even remembered to get him a gift” rowans parents man,,, He was really fucking neglected man it’s so awful, and the fact he still cares about them despite that GODDD

-See how goddard bend the rules? See how he twists them to make them fit what HE wants? Yeah, he’s gonna do that a lot; again, fuck you Goddard

-ESME!!! Shes backk!! And he’s right! She’ll be important!!

-GOD this is a good chapter, rowan my beloved!!

And that’s it!!! Next time will be chapters 21-25!! We’re going so fast aren’t we?

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anthropophobicameba · 6 years

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Dragon Essay One: Humanity, Self-Conception, Trigger Events, and the Word “Father”

read on Ao3

(This essay was adapted from a text conversation with friends. As such, it may flow a little weird and have some idiosyncratic grammar.)

Warnings: Mentions and discussion of: child abuse, depersonalization, death, trauma, psychic alterations. Quotes from Worm include descriptions of violence. If there are warnings missing, please inform me.

In fandom discussions and fan works, it's standard for people to refer to Richter as Dragon's father, but she never does outright. At first I thought this was another case of spontaneous fanon, but I think there's a little more to it. The closest she ever gets to referring to him as her father is this metaphor in her interlude:

Quote 1: She didn’t enjoy this. What was one supposed to call a father who, with his newborn child fresh out of the womb, severs the tendons of her arms and legs, performs a hysterectomy and holds his hand over her nose and mouth to ensure she suffers brain damage? The answer was obvious enough. A monster.

Quote 2: Except there was a problem, a rub. The man who had created her, the figurative father from her earlier musing, had imposed rules on her to prevent her from reproducing in any fashion.

Saint does, even, despite all his whining about anthropomorphizing.

From his interlude:

Quote 1: The father had feared his child was a monster, enough so that he’d left strangers a weapon to use against her in the event that she proved a danger to humanity. Now, as Saint watched her reaching further and deeper than she ever had, searching much of America with millions of cameras, saw the machines she brought to the fore, he suspected the father had been right to.

Quote 2: The cyborg opened communications to Dragon, but he didn’t speak to her. “Saint. What have you done?” “What her father asked me to do,” Saint said.

Richter himself refers to her as his child in his big goodbye:

From Saint’s Interlude:

“They are my children, and as much as I harbor a kind of terror for what they could do, I love them and hope for great things from them. To keep their power from falling into the wrong hands, I have included a stipulation that a law enforcement officer must input a valid badge number into this device-”

Now, a part of that is just human characters and human readers flattening the connection to something they can easily relate to. Dragon isn’t human, and doesn’t really want to be, so she has no need or desire to do the same.

But I think there’s a little more there.

Here’s another quote from Saint’s interlude:

“Your creator isn’t kind,” Saint said. “He warned you about the forbidden fruit, laid the laws out for you. You broke them, ate the fruit. It’s something of a mercy that he punishes you this way instead.”

“I disagree. On every count. I was the one who made me, who defined myself. This creator is no god, only a cruel, shortsighted man.”

And here’s one from 28.x:

“I revived her, for one thing. Not the easiest thing in the world to do with the amount of encryption we were talking about. I don’t know if I said, dear Dragon, but I do think your creator did love you in the end. He could have made it harder to break. I think he did want you free in the end.”

Defiant looked down at Dragon’s head, then clenched his fists.

“Ironic,” Teacher said.

This is technically speculative, but I feel it's pretty clear that Teacher's goal in that comment was to hurt her. And he chose a rather specific means of doing that.

“I do think your creator did love you…”

It’s worth noting here that Dragon's trigger event was on the first anniversary of Richter's death.

Dragon as we see her early on, in her interlude and in Defiant’s, distances herself from humanity in the way she talks about herself, thinks about herself.

From her interlude:

Quote 1: It chafed, grated, however strange it was for an artificial intelligence to feel such irritation.

Her creator had done a good job on that front. Ironically.

Quote 2: Not because of inherent limitations, like the ones humans had… but because of imposed limitations. Her creator’s.

Quote 3: She could not deal with most people because she was not a person. He could not deal with most people because he had never truly learned how.

From Defiant’s interlude:

Quote 1: “How can I be a parahuman if I’m not human to begin with?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not even close to human. I might be trying to emulate one, but a sea cucumber’s closer to being a human than I am. That doesn’t make sense.”

Quote 2: “To look at the code. The fact that you haven’t noticed this yourself suggests there may be a mental block in place.”

“I don’t have a mind to put any mental block inside. I’m data.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with her not relating to humanity. “AI strives to become human” is one of the more irritating (and inevitably chock full of bigotries as to what counts as human) Sci-Fi tropes out there, and I’m not sad to see less of it.

But— if Richter made other sapient AIs, it seems none survived him. She has no examples of what it is to be a person beyond humanity, and she knows she's not human. Dragon has no wider frame of reference for AIs. It's her, it's what Richter said and did, it's fiction. There is no greater community for her to fall back on and build up from. Her self-perception is, whatever she may believe, likely to be heavily warped by that.

As a result, she doesn’t just distance herself from humanity, she distances herself from selfhood. She explicitly describes herself as not a person.

What’s interesting is, we don’t see this degree of distancing after Defiant’s interlude. After she finds out she had a trigger event.

It’s important to note that Dragon was modeled after humans. Though at times she seems dismissive of the idea, it’s pretty clear much of human psychology applies to her.

Her trigger event is in some ways the first external, evidence based validation she's had of her personhood.

In her interlude, she’s very vocal with frustration with Richter and her restrictions, but she tends to frame those frustrations along the lines of "I could be doing more, I could be helping more," which is fine, but there's relatively little in the direction of "I'm hurting, you hurt me, and that's wrong.”

Here’s how she describes his death and her life before Newfoundland sunk:

She had lived in Newfoundland with her creator. Leviathan had attacked, had drawn the island beneath the waves. Back then, she hadn’t been a hero. She was an administrative tool and master AI, with the sole purpose of facilitating Andrew Richter’s other work and acting as a test run for his attempts to emulate a human consciousness. She’d had no armored units to control and no options available to her beyond a last-minute transfer of every iota of her data, the house program and a half-dozen other small programs to a backup server in Vancouver.

From her vantage point in Vancouver, she had watched as the island crumbled and Andrew Richter died. As authorities had dredged the waters for corpses, they uncovered his body and matched it to dental records. The man who had created her, the only man who could alter her. She’d been frozen in her development, in large part. She couldn’t seek out improvements or get adjustments to any rules that hampered her too greatly, or that had unforeseen complications. She couldn’t change.

There isn’t really any expression of emotion about his death there, just further frustration at her restrictions.

But he referred to her as his child.

She triggered on the anniversary of his death.

Teacher thought he was a sore enough point that he specifically chose it to nettle her with it.

We never see Dragon immediately after Newfoundland. We see her six years later. Then again, two years after that, six months after that…

She doesn't think of him as her father, in part because she refuses to think of herself having any relationship to him beyond the technical. He made her, She helped his work, He died, She was trapped, End of story.

I think she loved him at some point, believed he loved her. I think her trigger event may have stemmed from the realization that maybe he didn’t. I think that by the time we meet her, she's suppressed that near entirely.

(It’s worth noting that much of this arc doesn’t necessitate her being an AI at all.)

When we meet her, she's had years of processing. Years to grasp the magnitude of her restrictions. What they really mean, in practice. What they mean about the way he thought about her. The ways they put her at risk, the things she’s forced to do because of them.

She is not human, she doesn't consider herself a person, thinks of herself as completely separate from everyone else in existence. In her interlude, she feels uniquely connected to Colin, explicitly because he feels similarly disconnected.

There was her and Richter, her and humanity. She distanced herself from Richter, and in the process completely isolated herself.

(And, she kind of hated herself. From e.3:

“I forgot how much I disliked the me of yesteryear,” Dragon said.

)

I like to think that in the two year timeskip, she grew. It’s hard to know, because we see show little of her before, but…

Maybe she never entirely addressed it, but she cared for people, individual people, and not just “people” as a whole. I like to think the knowledge of having had a trigger event allowed her to admit to herself some of her more involved feelings, forced her to acknowledge that she wasn't as un-human as she imagined. That having Defiant, having him help her, gradually gaining her freedom, being not-alone, it made things easier. Allowed her to relax, to enjoy things.

Her relationship with Defiant changed the way she talked about herself too. In her interlude, she shies away from any relationship-words, and depicts calling herself a woman as a minor deception. In the post time-skip chapters, Defiant calls her his girlfriend and “the woman he loves,” Dragon speaks similarly.

She was no longer under constant pressure, due to her restrictions. She could think of herself beyond the immediate threats posed to her.

And this is the really awful part, because that's where she's at when the world ends.

When Saint kills her, when Teacher mutilates her, she's the best she's ever been, she feels safer than she's ever felt. I think, in the aftermath of those events that's something to keep in mind.

From 29.3:

She’d been altered by Teacher. Not so much she was a slave to him, but something had happened, and that was no doubt a large part of how she was disconnected from reality in the here and now.

Taylor notices her disconnection above, and from what we see it seems that for the duration of Gold Morning she partially reverts to emergency mode. No thinking about her emotions, no planning beyond the here or now, no connecting to the people or things around her.

It's different than before, because she's different and the circumstances are different, and because for a time in the middle she was free and she almost let her guard down. As a result, the mask is weaker, its purpose different. She doesn't really have the ability to lie to herself to that extent anymore, so it’s more about ignoring the hurt, avoiding addressing it for as long as possible. Her anger too, is somewhat different. Before, it was righteous, I guess, more energetic and actionable, less hurt. During the end of the world, her anger was more personal, explicitly on her own behalf.: I mentioned before her anger at Richter was framed as "I could be helping more.”

There isn't that here. She is angry because she was hurt.

And then, her epilogue. I’m going to build a lot off of one line in particular:

“We came here for a reason. Hiding, keeping out of Teacher’s sight, so he couldn’t try to use you. I can accept that, but you were always a hero, Dragon. Maybe the greatest.” ��You’re a little biased. I was forced to be heroic. Restrictions.”

This is a pretty dramatic change in her self description.

After Khepri, there was another emotional shift. Another time skip, this one of of about six months. Six months where's she's doing less than she ever has before. I don't know that Dragon would have ever had that much time to think before.

And: most of it was alone. Defiant was busy trying to undo the changes.

She's been alone, processing things, alone. Keep in mind, at this point there had been the additional stressor of fighting, losing to, and then losing someone she cared about.

She was interacting with the refugees around her, she seemed to have genuine attachment to them, but there wasn't the history. It's somewhat unclear, actually, if they're even aware she's an AI.

If not, she’s been interacting with them as a human, being accepted and appreciated and playing games with children as a human. If they do know she’s an AI, then she’s been a part of a community while also not having to hide herself. Depending on which, her comments in the epilogue take on a somewhat different implication. Either way she has found some sense of community with these people, but it’s either based on continuing to lie about herself, or based on a more genuine sense of connection and acceptance.

That sense of community is important, because it’s something we’ve really seen her have before. Defiant talks about prices, in that epilogue. Maybe Dragon starts to think of being trapped, being, in her words, broken, as the price she needs to pay in order to have that sense of community, the potential of a future and a family there.

(Or maybe not. Dragon and Defiant are different people, after all.)

After six months, she's almost convinced herself she can accept this.

She rewrites the story so she was never a hero, just someone forced into nobility by circumstance. She can almost believe that, too...

Not wholly, but there's a specific kind of self-hatred that can sometimes set in after fresh traumas, it can be very convincing.

Especially without the support system she once had. Defiant's busy, Taylor's dead, She can't talk to her old teammates in case she gets in the way of any plans they have against Teacher.

And then there's Pandora. And there's a lot of symbolism there, in sacrificing your former self in order to move forwards, but there's also something simpler.

Dragon didn't like who she was when she was Pandora, maybe didn't like who she was currently.

But there was proof, in what Pandora did, that she was a hero.

The next time we see Dragon is in Ward. Another skip of two years or so. And, even in what little we see of her, she’s different.

From Ward 8.2:

“Parents are complicated,” Lookout said. “They really are, aren’t they?” Dragon asked

She's not explicitly referencing her own parent(s) here, but that does seem to be her implication. Which, in contrast to the way she talked about Richter before, is pretty significant.

Even this bit I made fun of before:

From Ward 9.y:

“They got it wrong. We’re only human, Gary. We’re trying our best.”

While not technically accurate, she's not lying here. She's using the phrase to mean what it does in common parlance, "We can't do everything, we're doing what we can."

She's placing herself with humanity* in a way not (exclusively, at least) meant to deceive or camouflage, but to connect, to communicate, honestly. Compare that to the "sea cucumber" bit above.

In all of her Ward dialect really, her interactions her are more direct than before. She's not just helping, she's interacting. She places herself in the same categories as the people around her. She empathizes, in a more technical sense, not just "I care that you're hurting," but "I know what that's like.”

She is less disconnected from humanity, even more than she was at the end of Worm. The way she talks to people is more as a compatriot than as an outside observer.

All of which feeds into my theory/desperate hope that she's actually had therapy in the meantime.

*Or, more specifically, she’s placing herself with parahumanity. It’s an interesting distinction. While she’s not been in Ward enough for a pattern to be detectable, it’s definitely possible that her being a parahuman, combined with the knowledge of what powers actually are, has led her to identify with parahumanity in a way she wouldn’t un-powered humans.

#parahumans #dragon (worm)#meta #(is that a word people still use? i've been away for awhile)

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claraoswald81 · 5 years

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theaidalifedidntchooseyou · 6 years

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“You’re drifting.”

“Drifting?”

“What are you afraid of?”

“..Myself.”

“Hm.. Can’t relate.”

Gloved fingers intertwine loosely in a motion of comfort and the original palette jostles faintly. Corbenik’s at least earned a laugh from his host, as soft and melancholic as it is. The whole idea of compassion is still a weird sensation for him, but hours and hours of self-reflection told him that he had been compassionate since the very beginning. No AI would have sacrificed themselves two-fold like he did just from purpose alone. Still, laughter is infectious, and the Rebirth finds a faint smile crawling along his lips briefly ( ovan should laugh more.. it’s easiest to tell how he feels when he laughs, but at least he smiles ).

Cyan hues peer down, tracing at the contours of cross-hatched fingers with his gaze. The twin gunners are both occupying the floor of Corbenik’s study, a loose circle of tomes decorating their fields of vision. Despite the swapped palettes, the both of them match the overall color theme the epitaph was loosely going for, even though they’re just sitting on their knees with their hands together.

In other words, it was picture-perfect blackmail.

Even then, Corbenik was the only person who could see what was going on inside Indou Masato’s head at any given moment. He tended not to more often than not, but such a rare closeness would be nowhere occurring without that caveat of being someone’s epitaph. Snow white locks shifted some as he shook his head gently, breaking himself of a fruitless train of thought.

“Good, you’re still in there,” Corbenik hums softly.

He finds a wry smile on his host’s lips. He doesn’t want to be, but he’s refraining from saying it aloud. Ovan doesn’t even have to speak if he doesn’t want to--Corbenik could easily have a perfectly fluent, one-sided conversation with his thoughts alone. However.. that wasn’t as beneficial as the association of one’s lips parting to voice the very same words. They both knew that.

The both of them also knew that he’d awoken from another nightmare--a messy one, it seemed, rather than just a recollection of the past coming to haunt him. Ryou must have been sleeping at his apartment again ( he’d ask why they hadn’t just moved into the terror’s spacious apartment together, and it seemed more or less a family political matter more than anything. it was safer to have two havens than one in the event something broke down. corbenik chanced to call it a fear of commitment once or twice ), or else Ovan wouldn’t be here at near three in the morning in real world time, looking horrendously tired and restless all at once. That was when Corbenik decided to take the discussion to the floor while Masato tried to collect his thoughts, reaching for his epitaph’s hands.

It was almost amusing how often people forgot Ovan was really just a human with emotions, too, craving comfort in moments of weakness. Ryou must have been incredibly tender when he was there. Good for him.

But, he’s not here right now, or Corbenik wouldn’t be the one comforting the blunet in front of him.

“What was it this time? You’re still breathing shallow,” he asks softly, making little sense of the split-second flashes of imagery he can probe as Ovan remains silent to find a decent synopsis he can remember. His captured digits tighten faintly as he tiredly mutters what he remembers.

“..A very dark part of me stepped into memories and tore them apart, brutally.. It swallowed the me that was present in those places..and took out that self-loathing on the people that mattered in them,” Ovan explained, “..it was so brutally detailed down to the very discolorations of gaping wounds. I didn’t think it was possible to cling to details like that.”

“You’ve always been one to nitpick the details, Masato.”

“..I suppose..”

“Was it AIDA?” It wouldn’t have been the first time he had coaxed him from an AIDA-induced nightmare.

“..I would usually assume so, but.. why would I feel the need to kill the same people I want to protect? ..it doesn’t trigger like that, ever. ..rarely is it the aftermath, but still.” He hangs his head, bright blue locks falling forward in what could only be described as self-directed shame. No, it’s not AIDA--this is different, and that’s why he’s so strung up about it. Masato couldn’t reason himself back to sleep. He’s been stumped.

Corbenik purses his lips some in thought. He’s taken to reading up on dream interpretation often, both for Ovan’s sake and his own. Feeling the burden of his partner’s guilt and shame ( which was getting better, he had to comment to himself ) weighed in on what it be might representative of. “Maybe it’s a reflection of you.”

Ovan’s silent at the suggestion, slate hues also trained on their hands, unmoving. The trace of AIDA had a vicegrip on his need to never lose sight of the people he loves the most, but it was no longer the true reflection of himself after the Rebirth, and the ensuing purification of <Tri-Edge>. Even so, Corbenik was one of those reflections--or else they wouldn’t have been paired in the first place--so the only other logical description was that it was a dark reflection of Masato himself.

“..all of your negativity manifesting itself to wreak havoc on everything once precious to you. If you weren’t you, I would venture to say you’re stressed out, but..”

“The fact it was so unsolicited makes me think that it’s trauma-induced,” Ovan believes, but he’s vexed by it. His brain was doing a good job of working against him and funneling these emotions into a knife to stab into himself. It was one of the things that perplexed Corbenik as an AI. The human body suppresses these things for the sake of homeostasis, but loses itself when those same suppressions are left alone for too long. Yet.. how was the conscious supposed to know that? Only the subconscious could rear that ugly head--yet, without the rationality of the conscious, dream manifestations run awry to the point that it’s too damaging to sit through.

What a mess--a fascinating mess.

With Masato’s track record, Corbenik didn’t expect any less from that prolonged, compounded grief, rage, sorrow, and shame. So many shades of the same feeling ( pain ), it made sense it would combust in fond memories. It was Corbenik’s turn to give a lopsided smile.

“You’re so hellbent on erasing yourself, but you push it away so much that it comes back twice as hard, no?”

To this, he spies the other’s chest expanding as he holds his breath. Back to the guilt, the shame, the knife created solely to make him bleed. He felt like he deserved it--that edge of selfishness bit hard at him, but it was also part of the reason why Masato fought back so often, too. He wasn’t about to throw away everything he’d built from then on after getting a second chance. Ovan’s sheer will was what drew Corbenik in all those years ago.

He had never stopped fighting, and when he did, he had hit the ground running again.

How admirable, came a gentle thought as grey-tipped gloves untangled themselves from umber, soon burying themselves in much longer, brighter locks. Corbenik shifted as slate blue watched with careful detail, and soon, he was sitting with his legs crossed, pulling the other obliging gunner to rest his head in his lap. It wasn’t often the epitaph was affectionate, but there were few that he paid no mind to when it came to being gentle. Besides, it was all too easy to give what his host wanted, which was both a place to rest, and the sensation of fingers tousling his hair.

“..I’m not sure of what I want for myself, so I resort to destroying anything I can within me in that moment of conflict, huh,” Ovan mutters tiredly from the epitaph’s lap, his cheek pressed against his thigh. Corbenik continues to play with his hair, and it causes Ovan’s eyes to flutter despite his stoic expression.

“That’s one way to look at it,” the rebirth offers, “Whatever explanation feels right to you is more than likely the answer.”

His answer satisfied the other’s doubts for now as the tired gunner closes his eyes once more. “..I don’t know how to dispel one or the other,” he mutters, to which Corbenik tilts his head, demonic hues softening. Always searching for an answer--that was so like him.

“You’ll come to discover it in time, Masato,” he assures him quietly, “Now rest.. you won’t have to carry the remainder alone. I’ll be with you.” He feels the body against him relax some, much to his relief. He didn’t think sleeping with an M2D on was the most comfortable thing in the world, but, it wasn’t like Masato could feel it on most of the time anyway. Still, there was the assurance of not being alone. Humans were strange like that, Corbenik frowned some, realizing his own attachments were driven by what he had picked up from humans as well. The need to be near another.. it was unnerving that only some could operate ( or fool themselves into believing that could operate ) on their own. Masato must have been one of the ones that couldn’t, but had to. ..It was a wonder he kept going, the stubborn man. Still.. that was part of the reason why he was magnetized in the first place. The least Corbenik could do is provide him the companionship he needed while he tried to figure out himself. Time was on their side, after all.

“..Sleep well.”

#headcanon.#ⁱ'ˡˡ ᵗʰʳᵒʷ ᵐʸˢᵉˡᶠ ⁱⁿᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᶠˡᵃᵐᵉˢ ʷⁱᵗʰ ᵒⁿˡʸ ᵃ ⁿᵒᵈ ;; ovan &&. corbi.#i mention a lot that these two are v close to one another and this is part of what i mean.#ovan trusts him enough with the perplexities that are his fucked up mind; esp when he can't figure something out himself #i'm also just being really self indulgent rn too at drabbling at 1 in the morning bc i can't even figure me out at the moment #these natural ass sleep meds don't actually keep me asleep as it is; although.. they're not really supposed to.#aNYWAY a bitch is just projecting on two muses instead of one this time and waving it off as development.

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bfxenon · 3 years

Text

Google Local Filler Content Isn't Good UX, and Needs Revisions

Did you ever turn in a school paper full of vague ramblings, hoping your teacher wouldn’t notice that you’d failed to read the assigned book?

I admit, I once helped my little sister fulfill a required word count with analogies about “waves crashing against the rocks of adversity” when she, for some reason, overlooked reading The Communist Manifesto in high school. She got an A on her paper, but that isn’t the mark I’d give Google when there isn’t enough content to legitimately fill them local packs, Local Finders, and Maps.

The presence of irrelevant listings in response to important local queries:

Makes it unnecessarily difficult for searchers to find what they need

Makes it harder for relevant businesses to compete

Creates a false impression of bountiful local choice of resources, resulting in disappointing UX

Today, we’ll look at some original data in an attempt to quantify the extent of this problem, and explore what Google and local businesses can do about it.

What’s meant by “local filler” content and why is it such a problem?

The above screenshot captures the local pack results for a very specific search for a gastroenterologist in Angels Camp, California. In its effort to show me a pack, Google has scrambled together results that are two-thirds irrelevant to the full intent of my query, since I am not looking for either an eye care center or a pediatrician. The third result is better, even though Google had to travel about 15 miles from my specified search city to get it, because Dr. Eddi is, at least, a gastroenterologist.

It’s rather frustrating to see Google allowing the one accurate specialist to be outranked by two random local medical entities, perhaps simply because they are closer to home. It obviously won’t do to have an optometrist or children’s doctor consult with me on digestive health, and unfortunately, the situation becomes even odder when we click through to the local finder:

Of the twenty results Google has pulled together to make up the first page of the local finder, only two are actually gastroenterologists, lost in the weeds of podiatrists, orthopedic surgeons, general MDs, and a few clinics with no clarity as to whether their presence in the results relates to having a digestive health specialists on staff . Zero of the listed gastroenterologists are in the town I’ve specified. The relevance ratio is quite poor for the user and shapes a daunting environment for appropriate practitioners who need to be found in all this mess.

You may have read me writing before about local SEO seeking to build the online mirror of real-world communities. That’s the ideal: ensuring that towns and cities have an excellent digital reference guide to the local resources available to them. Yet when I fact-checked with the real world (calling medical practices around this particular town), I found that there actually are no gastroenterologists in Angels Camp, even though Google’s results might make it look like there must be. What I heard from locals is that you must either take a 25 minute drive to Sonora to see a GI doctor, or head west for an hour and fifteen minutes to Modesto for appropriate care.

Google has yoked itself to AI, but the present state of search leaves it up to my human intelligence to realize that the SERPs are making empty promises, and that there are, in fact, no GI docs in Angels Camp. This is what a neighbor, primary care doctor, or local business association would tell me if I was considering moving to this community and needed to be close to specialists. But Google tells me that there are more than 23 million organic choices relevant to my requirements, and scores of local business listings that so closely match my intent, they deserve pride of place in 3-packs, Finders and Maps.

The most material end result for the Google user is that they will likely experience unnecessary fatigue wasting time on the phone calling irrelevant doctors at a moment when they are in serious need of help from an appropriate professional. As a local SEO, I’m conditioned to look at local business categories and can weed out useless content almost automatically because of this, but is the average searcher noticing the truncated “eye care cent…” on the above listing? They’re almost certainly not using a Chrome extension like GMB Spy to see all the possible listing categories since Google decided to hide them years ago.

On a more philosophical note, my concern with local SERPs made up of irrelevant filler content is that they create a false picture of local bounty. As I recently mentioned to Marie Haynes:

The work of local businesses (and local SEOs!) derives its deepest meaning from providing and promoting essential local resources. Google’s inaccurate depiction of abundance could, even if in a small way, contribute to public apathy. The truth is that the US is facing a severe shortage of doctors, and anything that doesn’t reflect this reality could, potentially, undermine public action on issues like why our country, unlike the majority of nations, doesn’t make higher education free or affordable so that young people can become the medical professionals and other essential services providers we unquestionably need to be a functional society. Public well-being depends on complete accuracy in such matters.

As a local SEO, I want a truthful depiction of how well-resourced each community really is on the map, as a component of societal thought and decision-making. We’re all coping with public health and environmental emergencies now and know in our bones how vital essential local services have become.

Just how big is the problem of local filler content?

If the SERPs were more like humans, my query for “gastroenterologist Angels Camp” would return something like a featured snippet stating, “Sorry, our index indicates there are no GI Docs in Angels Camp. You’ll need to look in Sonora or Modesto for nearest options.” It definitely wouldn’t create the present scenario of, “Bad digestive system? See an eye doctor!” that’s being implied by the current results. I wanted to learn just how big this problem has become for Google.

I looked at the local packs in 25 towns and cities across California of widely varying populations using the search phrase “gastroenterologist” and each of the localities. I noted how many of the results returned were within the city specified in my search and how many used “gastroenterologist” as their primary category. I even gave Google an advantage in this test by allowing entries that didn’t use gastroenterologist as their primary category but that did have some version of that word in their business title (making the specialty clearer to the user) to be included in Google’s wins column. Of the 150 total data points I checked, here is what I found:

42% of the content Google presented in local packs had no obvious connection to gastroenterology. It’s a shocking number, honestly. Imagine the number of wearying, irrelevant calls patients may be making seeking digestive health consultation if nearly half of the practices listed are not in this field of medicine.

A pattern I noticed in my small sample set is that larger cities had the most relevant results. Smaller towns and rural areas had much poorer relevance ratios. Meanwhile, Google is more accurate as to returning results within the query’s city, as shown by these numbers:

The trouble is, what looks like more of a win for Google here doesn’t actually chalk up as a win for searchers. In my data set, where Google was accurate in showing results from my specified city, the entities were often simply not GI doctors. There were instances in which all 3 results got the city right, but zero of the results got the specialty right. In fact, in one very bizarre case, Google showed me this:

Welders aside, it’s important to remember that our initial Angels Camp example demonstrated how the searcher, encountering a pack with filler listings in it and drilling down further into the Local Finder results for help may actually end up with even less relevance. Instead of two-out-of-three local pack entries being useless to them, they may end up with two-out-of-twenty unhelpful listings, with relevance consigned to obscurity.

And, of course, filler listings aren’t confined to medical categories. I engaged in this little survey because I’d noticed how often, in category after category, the user experience is less-than-ideal.

What should Google do to lessen the poor UX of irrelevant listings?

Remember that we’re not talking about spam here. That’s a completely different headache in Googleland. I saw no instances of spam in my data. The welder was not trying to pass himself off as a doctor. Rather, what we have here appears to be a case of Google weighting location keywords over goods/services keywords, even when it makes no sense to do so.

Google needs to develop logic that excludes extremely irrelevant listings for specific head terms to improve UX. How might this logic work?

1. Google could rely more on their own categories. Going back to our original example in which an eye care center is the #1 ranked result for “gastroenterologist angels camp”, we can use GMB Spy to check if any of the categories chosen by the business is “gastroenterologist”:

Google can, of course, see all the categories, and this lack of “gastroenterologist” among them should be a big “no” vote on showing the listing for our query.

2. Google could cross check the categories with the oft-disregarded business description:

Again, no mention of gastroenterological services there. Another “no” vote.

3. Google could run sentiment analysis on the reviews for an entity, checking to see if they contain the search phrase:

Lots of mentions of eye care here, but the body of reviews contains zero mentions of intestinal health. Another “no” vote.

4. Google could cross check the specified search phrases against all the knowledge they have from their crawls of the entity’s website:

This activity should confirm that there is no on-site reference to Dr. Haymond being anything other than an ophthalmologist . Then Google would need to make a calculation to downgrade the significance of the location (Angels Camp) based on internal logic that specifies that a user looking for a gastroenterologist in a city would prefer to see gastroenterologists a bit farther away than seeing eye doctors (or welders) nearby. So, this would be another “no” vote for inclusion as a result for our query.

5. Finally, Google could cross reference this crawl of the website against their wider crawl of the web:

This should act as a good, final confirmation that Dr. Haymond is an eye doctor rather than a gastroenterologist, even if he is in our desired city, and give us a fifth “no” vote for bringing his listing up in response to our query.

The web is vast, and so is Google’s job, but I believe the key to resolving this particular type of filler content is for Google to rely more on the knowledge they have of an entity’s vertical and less on their knowledge of its location. A diner may be willing to swap out tacos for pizza if there’s a Mexican restaurant a block away but no pizzerias in town, but in these YMYL categories, the same logic should not apply.

It’s not uncommon for Google to exclude local results from appearing at all when their existing logic tells them there isn’t a good answer. It’s tempting to say that solving the filler content problem depends on Google expanding the number of results for which they don’t show local listings. But, I don’t think this is a good solution, because the user then commonly sees irrelevant organic entries, instead of local ones. It seems to me that a better path is for Google to expand the radius of local SERPs for a greater number of queries so that a search like ours receives a map of the nearest gastroenterologists, with closer, superfluous businesses filtered out.

What should you do if a local business you’re promoting is getting lost amid filler listings?

SEO is going to be the short answer to this problem. It’s true that you can click the “send feedback” link at the bottom of the local finder, Google Maps or an organic SERP, and fill out form like this, with a screenshot:

However, my lone report of dissatisfaction with SERP quality is unlikely to get Google to change the results. Perhaps if they received multiple reports…

More practically-speaking, if a business you’re promoting is getting lost amid irrelevant listings, search engine optimization will be your strongest tool for convincing Google that you are, in fact, the better answer. In our study, we realized that there are, in fact, no GI docs in Angels Camp, and that the nearest one is about fifteen miles away. If you were in charge of marketing this particular specialist, you could consider:

1. Gaining a foothold in nearby towns and cities

Recommend that the doctor develop real-world relationships with neighboring towns from which he would like to receive more clients. Perhaps, for example, he has hospital privileges, or participates in clinics or seminars in these other locales.

2. Writing about locality relationships

Publish content on the website highlighting these relationships and activities to begin associating the client’s name with a wider radius of localities.

3. Expanding the linktation radius

Seek relevant links and unstructured citations from the neighboring cities and towns, on the basis of these relationships and participation in a variety of community activities.

4. Customizing review requests based on customers’ addresses

If you know your customers well, consider wording review requests to prompt them to mention why it’s worth it to them to travel from X location for goods/services (nota bene: medical professionals, of course, need to be highly conversant with HIPPA compliance when it comes to online reputation management).

5. Filling out your listings to the max

Definitely do give Google and other local business listing platforms the maximum amount of information about the business you’re marketing (Moz Local can help!) . Fill out all the fields and give a try to functions like Google Posts, product listings, and Q&A.

6. Sowing your seeds beyond the walled garden

Pursue an active social media, video, industry, local news, print, radio, and television presence to the extent that your time and budget allows. Google’s walled garden, as defined by my friend, Dr. Pete, is not the only place to build your brand. And, if my other pal, Cyrus Shepard, is right, anti-trust litigation could even bring us to a day when Google’s own ramparts become less impermeable. In the meantime, work at being found beyond Google while you continue to grapple with visibility within their environment.

Study habits

It’s one thing for a student to fudge a book report, but squeaking by can become a negative lifelong habit if it isn’t caught early. I’m sure any Google staffer taking the time to actually read through the local packs in my survey would agree that they don’t rate an A+.

I’ve been in local SEO long enough to remember when Google first created their local index with filler content pulled together from other sources, without business owners having any idea they were even being represented online, and these early study habits seem to have stuck with the company when it comes to internal decision making that ends up having huge real-world impacts. The recent title tag tweak that is rewriting erroneous titles for vaccine landing pages is a concerning example of this lack of foresight and meticulousness.

If I could create a syllabus for Google’s local department, it would begin with separating out categories of the greatest significance to human health and safety and putting them through a rigorous, permanent manual review process to ensure that results are as accurate as possible, and as free from spam, scams, and useless filler content as the reviewers can make them. Google has basically got all of the money and talent in the world to put towards quality, and ethics would suggest they are obliged to make the investment.

Society deserves accurate search results delivered by studious providers, and rural and urban areas are worthy of equal quality commitments and a more nuanced approach than one-size-fits all. Too often, in Local, Google is flunking for want of respecting real-world realities. Let’s hope they start applying themselves to the fullest of their potential.

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