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the-irken-pony · 3 years

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You said to remind you about that Henry and the CCC thing...I can’t find it...

YES YOU'RE RIGHT

A lot has happened so I haven't been able to get to it for a while but THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME

So first of all, I want to emphasize the CCC's relative importance in the Henry Stickmin series.

Part 1: The CCC vs the other factions

All of the other major factions in THSC appeared in Infiltrating the Airship or later, not counting Winston Davis and Gene Fredrickson, two members of the Toppat Clan who were introduced before the Toppat Clan was formally introduced. The Government and the Toppat Clan were formally introduced in Infiltrating the Airship, and The Wall was formally introduced in Fleeing the Complex.

The Center for Chaos Containment, meanwhile, made an appearance as early as Stealing the Diamond, back when Henry was a simple thief with some bizarre abilities (which I will touch on in a bit). Since their initial introduction, the CCC has made brief yet consistent appearances in every following game, introducing at least one member who has not been seen prior (often more).

So, if they're so important, why are they so much less prominent than other factions? Simple: their job is to contain chaos from behind the scenes to try to normalize the world around them. Unless something major is going down that requires intervention, there's no reason to publicly show their face.

And honestly? It might actually be better for everyone that they don't. After all, the CCC has demonstrated power beyond what the Government or the Toppats could even dream of. Sure, the Toppats might also have giant space lasers, but they were only able to get them after major funding and numerous months--probably years--of preparation. Likewise, the Government may have access to nuclear (emphasis on "may" because this is unconfirmed), but the CCC is able to whip these out without a second thought.

Yet the CCC's power goes further. Also at the CCC's disposal are gargantuan robots (one of which is G.A.B.E.G.G., which forces the Govt to abort the Toppat raid), a calculator that can instantly vaporize the world by dividing by 0, the ability to stop time itself, and a "Dark Energy Blaster" (capable of instantly wiping out all life within a certain radius).

Sure, the Government may have Charles' helicopter which is capable of some wacky things, and the Toppat Clan and the Wall may have superpowered members, but none of it even comes close to just how far the CCC's power extends. And yet! No one! Talks about it!!

Okay, so I've talked on and on about just how strong the CCC is. How is this at all related to Henry?

Part 2: Henry Stickmin, a thief in need of cash

Before I can get into how Henry and the CCC are connected, I need to touch on who Henry Stickmin actually is, or at least how he started.

Early on in the series, before he was captured by the Govt, Henry's sole motive was getting money in order to pay for rent (and presumably other bills).

Over the course of the first two games, Breaking the Bank and Escaping the Prison, Henry learns two new things about himself:

1. Not only does he die in numerous alternate timelines, but he remembers these timelines in which he dies (or is otherwise inconvenienced) as though they were his own.

2. Some mysterious force which he had never before known (the player) has begun to provide him with various tools to help him achieve various degrees of success (or lack thereof).

The evidence for both of these are provided by one particular recurring object in the series: the Teleporter. Not only does Henry make direct eye contact to glare at the player in ItA, but the series has him show increasing reluctance to use the teleporter whenever it's provided (eventually becoming outright refusal in Completing the Mission). Additionally, the teleporter's use in Fleeing the Complex is mutually exclusive to its use in both ItA and CtM due to the teleporter appearing in an incompatible route, suggesting he's even aware of the routes that he does not take.

However, there's one more thing which points to this being the case, which is also were we can start to see a connection between Henry and the CCC.

Off to the right, we can see that Henry was brainstorming potential jobs around the start of Stealing the Diamond.

Janitor

Prison Guard

Test subject

All but one of these options have been crossed out: “test subject”, suggesting that this is the job that he’s decided to settle on. What’s especially interesting here is that the same game we see this is the same game that introduces the Center for Chaos Containment. The connections don’t end there, though.

Part 3: Henry and the CCC

As you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m making the claim that, by the beginning of Stealing the Diamond, Henry has started working for the CCC as a test subject. I mean, someone who regularly causes accidental chaos working for a faction whose job it is to contain chaos makes sense on its own, but add to that the fact that any major repercussions caused by the CCC’s reckless decisions are immediately undone with no lasting consequences? You could say it’s too good of a fit.

Plus, it would explain how they consistently appear in the same general area as Henry (even if Kyle Baxter doesn’t actually act in FtC). There are more connections between Henry and the CCC, though.

1) The CCC’s various tools directly interact with Henry at multiple points in the series, and Henry seems much less surprised by the CCC’s actions.

Meanwhile, others seem much less aware of the CCC’s influence.

2) Even with all of the major chaos incidents that Henry directly causes, Henry himself never catches the CCC’s attention.

The CCC repeatedly mentions “chaos readings” whenever chaos incidents happen in a particular area, yet either Henry himself doesn’t give off chaos readings or the CCC actively ignores him. The first option seems unlikely due to Henry’s, well... everything. Yet, if Henry gave off chaos readings and was unaffiliated with the CCC, then why wouldn’t they put more focus on containing Henry directly? Sure, they wouldn’t succeed due to Henry being able to undo their more harmful actions, but the fact that they aren’t even antagonists is... intriguing.

3) Adding on to 2, when the CCC doesn’t accidentally hurt Henry, they directly help him somehow.

While this is rarely their immediate goal, the CCC’s attempts to contain chaos often help Henry in some way or another. In Stealing the Diamond, the Tunisian diamond happens to get thrown right next to him after he escapes from the museum; in Infiltrating the Airship, Henry takes one member’s flying suit in order to make his escape with the Romanian Ruby; and in Completing the Mission, the CCC’s intervention leads the Govt to aborting the Toppat raid.

All of these are minor coincidences, but what really ties this together is the secret ending of CtM, the Multiverse Correction.

In this secret ending, the multiverse is “defragmented” and an anomaly is corrected. The way this anomaly is corrected is actually by spawning in the package seen in Escaping the Prison.

Up to now, I’ve mentioned multiple minor details that tangentially connect Henry to the CCC, but I’ve only mentioned in passing what is probably the most important part of this whole post: you, the player.

Part 4: The Player (You) and the CCC

As the various teleporter uses demonstrate, you (the player) are a separate being from Henry, and you provide Henry with different tools or make various decisions from him. However, there are very few times (if any) in which you exert full control over Henry. A major demonstration of this is with the hammer.

All identical looking options, yet depending on which of the three you select, Henry does something different with the hammer. Aside from subtle sound cues, you don’t get any clue what each option will do. All the decision making is done by Henry.

However, there are characters which you DO exert direct control over: Clyde Jenkins, Wilson Stone, and Ellias Bahtchin. All of them are members of the Center for Chaos Containment.

Every time you take control of these characters, you have a first person view of their options and, in the case of Clyde, your mouse becomes his hand.

At no other point do you control a character like this, not even with Henry. This is a trait exclusive to these three characters. And, quite frankly, it’s incredibly fascinating from a gameplay standpoint.

Is it possible that based on this, you (the player) also work for the CCC? Maybe, but it’s entirely likely that the CCC (excluding Henry) are unaware of your presence.

Conclusion:

The fact that Henry considered applying as a test subject in Stealing the Diamond as a direct result of his chaos and just so happened to keep bumping into the Center for Chaos Containment in every game since then feels like more than just coincidence.

#henry stickmin #the henry stickmin collection #thsc #center for chaos containment #theory #analysis #long post #ask #anonymous #mine

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creative-poptart · 5 years

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Long Rant Incoming

If you don’t want to read this, that’s fine, just keep on scrolling and your life will remain as it is in the moment. What I have to say caters to very few people, but if you’d also like some insight on a personal topic of mine, keep reading. I can’t promise it’ll be fantastic, great, or even exciting, but it is informative.

That being said, if you’re still interested, let me tell you a little something about theater.

This is inspired by a neighbor of mine, one I’ve known since my childhood. He’s pretty nice, used to babysit me for my parents, and overall a great dude. He’s a lot older now, and his wife is no longer with us, may she rest in peace, but that’s just a little backstory. The real reason I write this is not only because of him but because of so many people doing the exact same thing he did.

I happened to come across him walking through the neighborhood, and he stopped to talk to my dad, so I thought I’d say hi. We chatted for a bit about the usual stuff, how’s life, what are you doing for work right now, do you have a boyfriend, etc. etc. Then he asked me if I’m still in school (I am), and then asked where I’m going to school. I tell him the name, and he asks what I’m studying, so I tell him: theater.

He gives me the look.

You all know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that, the one face that someone makes when they don’t want to say anything, but they do. The look that practically screams, “I’m too polite to outright diss you, but I’m very clearly questioning your choices in life.”

I don’t like to be questioned a lot, because it makes me challenge myself, and I am trying to stay out of a mindset where I don’t know things about myself. This face got me thinking, and I am pissed.

On to the actual meat of the topic, then, the theater. When most people hear the word theater, they automatically think “actor” as the next word. That’s about the extent of their thought process, and I don’t blame them for that, I used to be the exact same way. All theater is, is just a bunch of people on stage, singing or talking their way through a show while wearing fancy clothes and prancing around under hot lights with a set-piece or two behind them, right?

Wrong.

I mentioned in that last sentence three jobs that have nothing to do with the actors themselves. Clothes, lights, and set-pieces. Those three things are all jobs that have nothing and everything to do with the people on the stage. Let’s take a closer look.

First off, clothes, more specifically costumes. That seems simple enough, right? The purpose of the costume is to clothe the actor/actress in a way that they aren’t just naked on the stage. Another use of costumes that people often forget is that it’s supposed to put you in the world on the stage. A shoddy, two-dollar outfit from the party store down the street is going to look terrible under the lights of the stage, and people will automatically be able to tell that it’s cheap. So when you don’t want that to happen, what do you do?

You make them. Sewing’s super easy right? Not for the theater.

Like any average amount of sewing, you have to know how to piece together fabrics and work a sewing machine or needle and thread. There’s more to that though when it comes to theater. The colors have to give the intended effects to the audience that the director wants to portray. Is the character supposed to pop when they make it on the stage, standing out? Are they more of the invisible type, blending in better with the crowd? Are they clean and rich or broke and dirty? All of those and more have to be factored into the costume design.

When the costume is put together, you also have to make sure that actors can move in it as needed. A stiff suit in a physical fight scene may need to be modified so that the actor can actually move around accordingly. The costumes also have to be sensitive to what era/time the show is taking place. Are we in the 1930′s or the modern-day? What sort of thematics are we going for, sci-fi or hyper-realism? There are several other categories of course, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to theater.

What about the lighting on the stage? Is it soft, harsh, blinding even? Are we going for a pattern on the floor? What color is it? How many colors are there? Is it dim and low for dramatic effect, or are we going full brights to illuminate the stage? Is there a spotlight highlighting a certain actor? That has to be designed and crafted for the stage to look its very best and set the mood for a scene. When the lighting is off, it can throw the entire thing into utter chaos and make the stage and the actors terrible. No matter how good your acting is, if your audience thinks you’re looking awfully yellow and sick when you’re not supposed to, they won’t focus on what you’re doing.

Lighting technicians are a huge part of the theater, and wouldn’t you know it, but there’s actually other jobs that require lighting. The best example to go for: concerts. Think about it, if you can’t see your favorite band on the stage, what’s the point of listening to all the music? Part of the experience at a concert is getting to see the musicians working live, in action. If the lights suck, then you have an issue right from the get-go.

Another thing, while I’m on the topic of concerts, is sound designing. Sure, your musicians are playing the music, but they have to set up microphones, speakers, wires, the whole shebang. Theater also requires a lot of sound design. Do you have a door slamming sound effect for an off-stage door? What about a musical interlude between scenes? Is a television playing cartoon sounds? What about a radio with a cue to cut off at a particular time? All of that has to be carefully cued up and ready to go before a show starts. Who else uses sound design? Music studios. This is not a singular skill just made for the theater.

Now the third job that I mentioned way back in the wall of text above set pieces. Someone has to make those, and sure, while there are people who just buy certain things in, most of the theater stuff is made nearby in a scene shop. Any stairs, platforms, windows, seats, walls, etc. that are made for a show can be made in the scene shop. The funny thing about the building of stuff in a scene shop, though is that all the tools, equipment, and materials that are used in there are things that you can find at any hardware store. The same techniques that you use to build a platform in a scene shop, or a wall, are the same kinds that are used in construction work for building houses. The dimensions, purposes, and durability of these things are far different, but they are all made the same way. Wouldn’t you know it, but there’s also a whole lot of options in construction, and that’s a “real job” in the world.

But sure, I get it. Some of these things aren’t that great to think about, and they don’t make a whole lot of difference. Let’s take a step back from the actual theater though, and take a breather. What about using the acting side of it somewhere else? Is there anywhere else?

I’m glad you asked.

The courtroom.

What? There’s no way that acting can be done in a courtroom, right?

Think about this: what’s the job of a lawyer in the courtroom? They have to present their cases to the jury and the judge, give the evidence, and hopefully, they’ll win the jury over to thinking that they’re right and give the verdict in their favor. That’s the bare basics of it, but also consider this.

Is a lawyer genuinely effective in their job if they don’t convince the jury that they’re telling the right side of the story?

A lawyer has to learn how to capture the attention of the room to make sure that everything they give is compelling evidence. They have to make use of their bodies, their facial expressions, their tonality when they speak, all to get the answer that they want to see in the courtroom come to pass. Do you think law school teaches them how to do that? Not really, they’re focused more on giving them the appropriate laws and regulations they have to follow.

Theater does that.

When they act on a stage, a good actor/actress will captivate you. Every single word that comes from their mouth will compel you to want to know a little more. That’s how it should be. A lawyer’s job is much the same, but instead of having an audience of a few hundred, they have an audience of twelve to convince. One of my friends is gearing up to be a lawyer, and he told me that a theater degree in law school is more desirable than a criminal justice degree. Theater also teaches improvisation, which is handy to have when your opponent brings up a point in their case that you didn’t prepare for.

If none of that has convinced you that theater degrees are not totally worthless, then I just have one last piece for you to chew on mentally. Actors and actresses have one of the hardest entertainment jobs that we know of. They have to be able to remember what to say, where and when to say it, where they stand, how they move, where they’re moving to, what’s coming up next, and they do it for hours on a single night, not including all the prep work in rehearsal. On top of that, there’s no do-overs if something goes awry.

If one actor forgets their line and they can’t get back on track, the other actors have to improvise, or basically make something up on the spot, to try and get themselves and the other actor back on track. If something physically goes wrong, like an actor getting hurt or a set-piece breaking mid-show, they can’t stop everything and start again. The show must go on, and they all have to do it with a smile on their face and keep everything running as smoothly as possible.

Additionally, actors have to believably portray emotions and feelings to an audience all night long. This is done, mind you, before a live audience who watches their every move, analyzing whether that actor feels the emotion. It can be exhausting to do, and many actors train for so long just to be emotionally open enough to get one or two feelings on the stage.

To summarize: theater contains so much more than just people standing on a stage and acting. My school makes me experience all the backstage stuff, working in the scene shop, helping to build costumes, learning about the lighting, and set designs. All of that says nothing about props, actual furniture pieces, who’s actually running the freaking show mid-performance. Theater is more extensive and more diverse than people really think.

To all of you who say that theater isn’t a real job, or that I’ll never get anywhere with this degree, read this first. Read this, do some digging, talk to people who work in the backstage areas of actual productions.

Then come talk to me. My degree is not useless, but until you at least take a look at some of the other facets of theater, I really don’t care what you have to say about my degree.

#long rant #im sorry for the wall of text #this isnt aimed at anyone here #im just upset about this #people keep telling me this degree sucks #and i know it doesnt #there's a lot more here #poptart speaks #tarts speaks #tarts rants #theater

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skinfeeler · 5 years

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meandering diary post, or the melancholic tale of my 24-hour completely onesided romance in the context of the human condition

[[MORE]]

i've been a member of a student organisation for queer people for about half a year now. this means that i hadn't attended an introductory period yet — once an academic year, at the start of it — but that i knew basically everyone who organised it.

after a few days of miscellaneous activities that were mostly 'okay' (minus a drunk fall of my bike at some point) i knew a couple more people. still, it was nothing like the summer camp at the end of it.

the first 90% of the journey was by train. i shared four seats facing each other with three other people, including a girl who was slightly taller and a bit older than me. she had brought a wine bottle and so it happened that the four of us already started drinking at about 15, not even at the camp yet.

we got along though— especially this girl and i. we talked a bunch about the kinds of exercise/sports we like. she was my second round that day in explaining the rules of roller derby, i can do it in about 20 seconds now with the help of the images from the 'basics' section of this article: http://mtlrollerderby.com/the-rules-of-roller-derby/?lang=en w

e also talked about gender a bit. it went all right. we had a later conversation in our bunk that day where we really bonded, about trauma too and all that stuff.

"we have a bond, i think."

that was later though, for now i was still on my way. at some point i turned inwards as i sometimes do and during one of the transfers while outside she pulled me away and asked me if i was all right. i explained that i just have a few issues and that sometimes they played up. she gave me the big scarf she was wearing and told me to put it over my head and narrow my field of vision that way, just kind of hide in it. that that's what she does when she's not well. that was nice of her.

we missed the train-bus connection because we went to the supermarket of the small remote village to buy more wine, but we got picked up by a second bus a bit later.

once at the place i changed into a sexier outfit and instantly felt more confident. this was immediately crushed once people started making (completely benign) jokes about std tests. i started thinking about my own test and the rape that happened before it and just went sit somewhere with a beer bottle to be sad. one of the people who i knew was an organiser but didn't personally know asked me if i was all right and i stood up and tried to ask if we could go outside for a bit, but didn't manage to speak because i was already crying. fortunately he understood the cue. i told him about that i got triggered and he made sure to make it clear to me that the committee would do its best to look after me if i allowed him to tell that sometimes i get like this, with them not having to know what exactly. i took him up on the offer, and it helped that subsequently an organiser would occasionally come to me when i lost my vibe, which was quite often.

but in that moment just knowing people actually take it seriously was enough, and i told him that the best thing now would probably just be to rejoin the party and chug my beer, and so we returned inside and so i did.

a while later i lost a good portion of my energy again. in a fateful moment, i decided to go back to my room which i shared with others. my new friend was talking about speed with another girl, who ended up giving it to us.

"i'm done with this crap. you can have it if you want to."

i don't have the required associations to procure anything like this myself, so i thought i'd not pass up on the opportunity.

the four of us went back downstairs.

first i was cold, tired, and dull. now i possessed immense warmth, energy, and clarity, almost immediately.

i asked my friend if this is about what i should be feeling. she told me it was, but also immediately switched to her more caring tone and that i should be careful.

"if you ever want to try something, you can always do it at my place."

sounds like a fucked up bid to get me in a vulnerable situation, but given the context and her general conduct i am certain she really was just caring about me in a slightly dark way.

there were drinking games that we played in teams, in most of them chugging alcohol fast combined with skills of physical dexterity was determinant. in my current state, i was absurdly good at both on top of my usual degree of mastery and won us the tournament. it was nice to get cheered on lots— it was cool to be in a parallel dimension where suddenly the skills i had were brought up a number of times in the days after.

i had a great night. i hadn't been (that) happy in months. every moment my body was bursting with energy. i love dancing, and i especially love dancing when weird fellow mental cases who have taken it upon themselves for reasons i don't understand grasp both my hands, pull me in, and keep me very close to them. later we sat on a couch and i leaned against her and it was very nice. every time i asked her if she was uncomfortable she pet my head for a bit, so obviously i was instantly in love.

alcohol disables your mental safeguards and this can backfire. cigarettes just make you slow. speed simply solved every problem instantly.

we danced until 0400. after that we were offered a joint by someone and we passed that around in a circle so we could sleep better. it worked very well, but by the time we went to bed, it was simply almost time to get up, and they don't fuck around with schedule at student camps.

i woke up in agony because the day before i went on camp i had a really intense derby training, and when i dance, i really love to bring my hips into it. everything between my waist and knees was searing, burning, i had to stretch and massage until i took the edge off enough that i could convince myself that i wasn't injured. the night before i hadn't felt anything at all. obviously i was also more hungover than ever before, but like, whatever. because i value a varied diet and a rigorous exercise routine, i decided to take it easy from thereon, only start drinking in the evening, et cetera. i was already going to skip sunday training for this, and additionally there are a few resistance training goals that i want to meet in the near future.

these three felt otherwise. they would go on to drink all day. it was very difficult to talk to any of them, although they seemed to be having fun though. i was kind of bothered that i couldn't talk to this girl meaningfully at all anymore at some point, so during that day and the last day of camp i kind of stopped feeling something for her entirely, which was very odd, completely unlike how it usually goes for me.

we played some games, including a quiz. my team won the quiz, but not the other game.

that night most of my acquaintances were absent for the first part. the sweet autistic metalhead i met earlier had gone to her one-person bedroom to decompress, the three from the start were apparently on a walk that i couldn't safely participate in, the others were fuck knows where. i was in a really, really bad mood. i knew that speed would solve all my problems, allow me to join the dance party going on. instead i wasted away on a couch for a while.

then there was dinner, and then an awards show. two games won (the beer game counted) meant i was called in front twice and won a shot of hard liquor as a price, thus twice in a row. very convenient for my fealty to fitness, but at least nice.

afterwards, a number of friends were periodically back on the dance floor in shifts, and the shots were doing their job. the nice thing about shots is that they mean you don't constantly have to piss as with beer, so they made a nice base for the rest of my consumption that night.

i found my new favorite pop song dancing with the girl who i have a particular unbreakable fealty to— that resultant from me breaking down in her arms about a girl not liking me back earlier that year lol

that girl would eventually do some things to me that would present one of the main causes of me at times completely turning inwards and become unable to talk to people, simply looking on and knowing my humanity has been taken away from me by many people.

but right there, dancing, knowing i was surrounded by people who care about me even if i am nothing like then, i was doing just fine, despite having quietly had a mental breakdown on that couch where everything at once played up.

eventually the music selection turned to shit and i decided to do the smart thing and have six hours of sleep instead of two. some sweet angels made sure to coax me into drinking lots of water.

"you'll be grateful in the morning."

a decent night, minus the transmisogynist components of some sketch one of the members of the previous committee did. i'll talk to her about it soon and i'm confident she'll understand how it was hurtful— i had a drunk conversation with two other girls in the restroom about it and they were fully behind me and encouraged me to do this.

the next morning almost everyone was still drinking, despite the fact that most of the day we would just spend in a bus bringing us back from the middle of nowhere.

at some point i sat down on a couch and for the first time in days, took out my ear buds and listened to some music i like.

it was cathartic and i had a particular kind of realisation.

i had spent an entire alcohol getting fucked up to music i could only tolerate there and then, under bright lights and with accompanying alcohol. drinking the kind of alcohol i don't like drinking because it's what was available, hanging out mostly with people with whom i have very little in common. in general, kind of losing myself.

i knew what i needed to do, what i can do soon. all i need to do is get out of this house to a better place, get my painting station set up, keep being involved in the roller derby, and maybe somewhere along the lines i would figure stuff out for myself.

of course, there are certain social circumstances that need to happen to me too, but i certainly can't do that while inert.

i had skipped the derby's general member's meeting on friday. it was the only one of the year, and i really wanted to attend. they were discussing attendance policies, and i feel i could've really learned a lot about the members of the league from that. debates about derby as its own reward and assuming the inherent joy of cooperation versus a dedication to structured sustained development and competitivity, or any of the ways one could frame that.

i had missed a training, when i had immediate short-term goals that i could have fulfilled that training.

the other rookies like me, and so does the trainer. not because of my ability to chug alcohol really fast — although i intend to impress them at the party we apparently have soon — but because of my dedictation, fervor, and general attitude.

maybe there is a common source to the fact that i can dance better than i can talk and that i feel i'm more meaningfully together with people when i'm on wheels than when i'm not, generally speaking at least.

it feels like there's a rift between me and the rest of humanity, but a little less on the track than most other places.

but then speed also helps.

it helps everything. it makes me feel happy.

but i know i can't actually take this as often as i would need without fucking myself up. still, on our way back, alienated and exhausted, i was constantly craving it.

when we got out of the bus and a people hugged me goodbye, i did meditate for a bit on the fact that i did create many new bonds. maybe i'll get more out of them than i felt by the last day, but it's complicated.

and now i'm at friends who fed me and gave me weed to finally fucking calm down. it's all right.

i miss my friends in london who i feel separated from only by distance.

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devillainsarchive · 5 years

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🐾 meta;

Carlos and his mental state and disabilities (this is the best way i could think to phrase it). These are present in all my verses unless stated otherwise (like my mr robot verse where he has dissociative identity disorder).

I want to be very clear, this post will only graze the surface of deeper issues. I am also putting a majority of this post under a read more due to the some of the more sensitive topics, and I don’t desire to trigger anyone.

I want to also say, making this post has made me extremely nervous. As I don’t want to portray things incorrectly, or wrong. I am always learning, and striving to reduce the stigma and glorification of these things.

Additionally, this things are not plot points for Carlos. I will never use them to make his story more sad or more upsetting. I am not here to have them be a shock value. With writing about these things most of my nerves regarding this post that I have put off for months is the backlash I will get. If you want to talk to me about anything I say in this post, I ask you do it off anon.

Finally this post is not going to be addressing Carlos intelligence (ie his IQ score and how he is a prodigy where schooling is concerned). Certainly some of these things can feed into that. But his intelligence is something that deserves its own post.

Short list: things Carlos has (diagnosed and diagnosed)

Asperger’s

PTSD and C-PTSD

Anxiety

Depression

Schizophrenia

OCD

Insomnia

This is the longer list, essentially I go a bit into detail about each thing on the short list, explain my reasoning behind him having each thing, where I pull from canon to get the reasoning, a bit about the manifestations of each thing for Carlos. There will be cross over, so I may repeat myself on occasion.

Asperger’s (Asperger Syndrome)

Carlos’ Asperger’s is evident when you know the signs. Carlos struggles to pick on basic social cues. He certainly gets better and learns more when he is older. But as a young child, and especially all his time on the Isle, and when he first lives in Auradon. One of the most evident signs of this is that he will talk about things he likes typically mechanics and wires and machines without stopping to care about what his listener thinks about it. In Auradon he learns to stop himself from getting to far, and he always feels bad about it after. He cherishes people that let him talk.

Carlos is not loud, but he certainly has a wide vocabulary. While this is not incredibly evident, his annoyance with Reza’s vocabulary could lead to he knows what all those words mean. Carlos just knows how to use them in natural conversation. He does not understand normal jokes or humor, and it takes him a few moments to get a joke. In Auradon he gets better with those social queues, and learns how and when people are trying to be funny. Carlos may laugh but that does not mean he gets the joke. He also may not understand when he is telling a joke. This does not mean that Carlos can’t laugh or doesn’t know when to laugh, he laughs easily with Jay, and probably for a very long time Jay is the only one who can get a genuine laugh out of him.

Carlos’ is very aware of his surroundings. He notices small changes in things, and often changes in thins will bug him, and make him upset. He hyper-fixates this primarily on his desk in Auradon, and his desk in the hideout on the Isle, and the treehouse in the backyard of Hell Hall on the Isle. He knows immediately when things are wrong with it. This applies also to people around him, sudden movements, but for the most part Carlos associates that with always having to be on alert for his mother. His own interactions with people may seem odd, he may ignore them or seem rude, but he doesn’t mean it. This is where part of that callous demeanor comes from, but he is much better at turning that off and on than people realize.

Carlos also has his hobbies that he talks forever about, that he will ignore people for. This hobby is science and mechanics, and computers. He also enjoys binary code, and Morse code. One prime example of this is when he first ignores Evie when she meets him officially for the first time. He is focusing on building the machine that pierces a hole in the barrier. He essentially ignores Evie, until she makes a comment about the machine to help him make it work. Another example of this is from D1 where he is playing the video game. One other example is the fact that he has the period table of elements memorized this comes up as a way to calm himself down, when he is aware enough to calm himself down.

Last but not least Carlos has a serious aversion to touch. This plays into so many other things about him, and many things you will see on the list. Carlos does not like being touched. And touching him when its uninvited could lead to a various range of results.

PTSD

Carlos PTSD mainly manifests itself in the forms of flashbacks, and nightmares, and panic attacks. His PTSD is caused by his mother’s treatment of his as a child. His mother’s treatment of him, wont be discussed in great detail here, but it is traumatic for him. In short he was not loved or cared for. He had to do so much on his own, on top of his mother ordering him about. She burned him with butts of cigarettes, threw things at him, and treated him like a dog to the point of Evie thinking he was a dog because she could hear it. Dog jokes on the isle about him run rampant.

His triggers on the Isle, he doesn’t really care about. He still is in the situation constantly, so he doesn’t really pay attention. In general, and one he has control of, is the various dog nick names. He will get a bit volatile about being called dog names. Other triggers mainly include heals clacking, smoke, dogs (all dogs, and then just big dogs as he gets to know Dude), and touch particularly touch of his hair. These are his biggest triggers, and they are not his only ones. They also don’t always set him off. He has it all much more under control than he thinks he does. He is good at self regulating his panic attacks and knows when they come on. Flashbacks are his rarest form of manifestation. They are not always full on vivid images of things, but he often gets an overwhelming smell of his mother, and Hell Hall. Nightmares are his most common manifestation. He struggles to sleep, but when he does 6 nights out of 7 he will have a nightmare. He does his best to thoroughly exhaust himself before he sleeps in order to not have nightmares (and to not disturb people, namely Jay). They mainly manifest in Auradon.

His PTSD can get very bad, especially when he has a full flashback. His full flashbacks are generally brought about when he thinks he is being threatened. They come mostly from fear of being touched, mainly if he thinks someone is going to strike him, or if someone is yelling at him. He has full flashbacks very very rarely, but he has had them. One of the most prominent times he has had one is on Parents day when Audrey’s grandmother, and Chad yelled at Mal, Evie, and Jay.

Carlos has both PTSD and C-PTSD. There are certain events from Carlos’ childhood that cause PTSD, but the ongoing abuse he suffered is what gives him C-PTSD. PTSD includes reliving the trauma through nightmares ( referenced vividly in book 4 ) and flashbacks both of which Carlos experiences. He avoids situations, and when he can’t he either disassociates or runs such as with Parent’s Day when Queen Leah’s yelling makes him dissociate. His fear of dogs stems from his PTSD, as well as his hyper awareness of the world around him (though this hyper awareness is also brought on for other reasons). Some of his triggers cause somatic symptoms, as shown above.

Carlos’ C-PTSD is evident in both the books and the movies. From lack of emotional regulation (him yelling at his mom in D1), to dissociation his response to Jane in D3 where he forgets seemingly that his mother abused him. Carlos shows many signs for C-PTSD. He has the most control over his emotions almost to the point where he can come of as emotionless ( “they say I’m callous” ). Carlos has a negative view of himself, but don’t expect him to say that. His mother’s comments towards him made it such so that he feels different, not to mention how utterly embarrassed he is of his handwriting because he taught himself how to write. Carlos’ inability to form good relationships with people, especially outside of the Core4 is not only a symptom of C-PTSD but also something that is part of asperger’s. However its a fine line because the type of people he is typically attracted to, tend to have power over him. Its a delicate line that both parties have to walk.

Carlos’ perception of his mother is his biggest sign that he has C-PTSD. He loves her. He loves her to the point that he will defend her. He knows she doesn’t love him, this is his plot of book 1 essentially. But that does not change his feelings towards her. He has a desire to make her proud, even at the cost of his own morals. Carlos loves Cruella unconditionally even though he shouldn’t, and its unhealthy. He also fears her, but that doesn’t mean he can’t love her. His fear of her causes physical reactions in him from shaking, as seen in book one, to nearly becoming a different person, a main reason he doesn’t want Dude on the Isle in D2.

Carlos doesn’t really exhibit loss of systems, mainly because his only real connection with religion is that his dad is Jewish. However, in my writing, he does often think about how stupid it is to have hope, so that would fit in well there.

Overall Carlos has both. There are specific child hood events that give him PTSD, but the abuse over the years is what gives him C-PTSD, and yes one can have both.

This is not diagnosed.

Anxiety

Carlos’ has anxiety, mainly severe social anxiety. Carlos does not do well in big crowds, or social situations. He has the constant thought that he is annoying people or bugging them. He may want to approach someone, but actually doing it is incredibly taxing on him, and he panics.

Social situations in general make his heart rate go up. Carlos has panic attacks from this. These are the ones that he can barely control, if at all. They come on fast, and often Carlos gets no real warning for them mainly because he doesn’t always know what triggers them.

This is also not diagnosed, but it does stem from Cruella’s treatment. He is always on edge around her, and worried and nervous about how she feels about him. This extends to every person he knows and meets. This extends to his friends. He is always worried about them, and how they view him. He is waiting often for their guidance to tell him what to do, even if he knows what he needs to do. He likes orders.

Additionally his mind is constantly going a million miles a minute. He often has different things processing and going on at the same time. But worries are most of those. These worries keep him up at night, and actually add to his insomnia.

His anxiety is potentially the least worrying thing for Carlos though. It has been ingrained in him so long to be on edge, that that is all he views it as.

Depression

Carlos’ depression is the must fuzzy of all the things he is diagnosed with. It is definitely the hardest to pin down. And it is one of the things that Carlos does his best to ignore. He has other things going on his mind, if he wants to lay in bed, he has things going on telling him he can’t. Something needs to be cleaned, something needs to be done, his mother is telling him to get up.

Something that links into his depression is his view of his body. Carlos is incredibly self conscious. He has multiple scars that are from cigarettes, or chemical burns. He has cuts, and scrapes that have scared over. He also has his freckles which are a love hate relationship with. His mother found it the one good thing about him since he was born with spots unlike puppies, but for a while it made him resent them. However due to his unique relationship with his mom, he likes his freckles because he knows that since he has them his mom has the chance to love him.

Carlos’ view of his own body being malnourished, and that his growth is stunted, among other things is skewed. He doesn’t like people seeing his body. Sometimes seeing his body makes him uncomfortable with himself, or he just loses all motivation he had. It can be incredibly debilitating. It is often the thing that gets him down the most, and makes his days the hardest to get through.

Schizophrenia

Carlos’ schizophrenia began to manifest itself when he was around the age of 10. He has no idea what it is. It is gentic, and he did get it from Cruella (this is based primarily on Descendants Cruella, and Disney’s live action and animated Cruella).

Carlos’ main symptoms for this are hallucinations, delusions, unusual ways of thinking, agitated body movements, reduced expression of emotion, reduced speaking, and poor executive function. He may exhibit more, but these are the most common. On the daily he typically experiences auditory or visual hallucinations that are vivid and often seem real to him. It his strongest symptom. He explains as he does in D2 where he hears Cruella’s voice in his head. She often talks to him telling him that he is worthless and useless, or she will give him orders. Disobeying the orders is hard, and sometimes he feels that he has no control over his body as he obeys whatever order his mother told him.

Carlos also often known to have delusions, and when he is having an episode he likely wont make sense. He will behave opposite to how he is commonly known (so how Auradonians view him), but he will also be opposite to how the Core 4, and friends who actually know him are. One way to confirm that he is potentially relapsing is that he will respond to the vivid hallucinations.

Often the best way to get him to come back to reality, and get him past the episode is to initiate contact with him, because that is the best way to ground him. Its not an easy feat since he doesn’t like being touched. And he will likely lash out when people try to touch him.

Aside from hearing his mother’s voice, he may feel her arms around him and she could be stroking his hair. His protection of her is often what makes him lash out at people who come near when this happens. Carlos seems almost relaxed when this happens, in a way he never is, his eyes close and it looks like he is experiencing something euphoric, he has this look in D1 when his mother is petting his hair in Maleficent’s home before they head to Auradon.

However, his most common system is the auditory hallucinations, and he rarely talks about them even with his friends. This is also not diagnosed because of his refusal to admit that he is crazy like his mom. He does not want to be like her, and he knows that having it could potentially get him sent back to the Isle. He doesn’t necessarily like when people say he isn’t like his mother, because he knows its a load of bull.

OCD

Carlos has OCD, it goes beyond his need for things to be perfect and meticulous something that was ingrained into him by his mother. Carlos has a few very small ticks. He does things in 10s, or in 101s. For example Carlos will wash his hands for 101 seconds, or will brush his teeth for 101 seconds. He will eat food in ten bites, not a whole meal but each seperate piece of food he eats will be done in 10 bites. This leads to him being a bit of a messy eater, but don’t worry he has 10 napkins for that issue exactly. If he used a clickable pen he would have to click the pen 10 times before he will use it. Often when panicking he counts to 10 to help him breathe. 101s are meant for longer tasks, his brain automatically sorts things like that. His worst infraction of this is going up stairs, if a stair case does not have 101 steps, which most of them don’t, he will calculate what he needs to get to those steps. If a staircase has more than that, he will start the 101 over, and calculate how to get to that number like he would with a regular stair case. It is the hardest tick to hide, in his opinion.

This is not diagnosed.

Insomnia

Carlos has severe insomnia, it is added to by a few things, such as his anxiety and PTSD. It is not dependent on those things. Carlos’ mind just does not shut off. In order to get a good night’s sleep he has to be pretty much exhausted. It became much more apparent in Auradon than on the Isle. It did exist on the Isle. Often being coaxed into sleep helps too, and that typically includes friends helping him sleep, this can be seen more so in my own writing. However I do pull him having insomnia from the scene in D1 where he is shifting on his bed awake, granted all the kids are awake, but his just feels different to me.

As with everything else on the list this is not diagnosed, but it is one of the few things Carlos is fairly comfortable self diagnosing himself with.

In general, the numerous things he deals with that affect his life day to day, when he is diagnosed and does talk about them, are the reason he is eligible for a service dog, and why he gets a service dog. Granted he has to over come his fear of dogs first, but its the baby steps. Medicine is not exactly an option for Carlos because he is so scared of the side affects of many of them Not to mention he kind of refuses to take it. Agreeing to having a service dog is a good compromise for now. But doctors ideally want him on medication to further improve his life. He does not get a service dog til he is essentially an adult in most of my verses.

#headcanon: he got her brain too #meta: found it in a book #tw: panic attacks #tw: mental health #tw: ptsd #tw: anxiety #tw: depression #tw: schizophrenia

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fairyroses · 5 years

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please share the thoughts!

(For those not in the know, this is referring to my Thoughts about the way Nura’s name was dropped in the most recent SG episode.)

Okay, so I wrote out a ridiculously long and kinda confusing explanation the first time I tried to answer this, so I’m gonna try to Condense it this time. (Edit from future me, who just finished writing this whole long-ass meta: Sooo, condensing it Didn’t Really Work, and it’s obnoxiously long anyway. Oops. Oh well. At least it’s more coherent this time.)

(general warning for people reading this post who aren’t rachel: uhhh, maybe don’t look below the cut if you’re a big Brainy/Nia shipper? there’s no Hate, but there is a lot of theorizing about why I don’t think the ship’s actually gonna sail the way most ppl are thinking it will, sooo if you don’t want to feel bummed out, then maybe don’t read this. cool? cool.)

(also I fully acknowledge that all of this is Pure Speculation, aided by some ridiculously intense scrutiny of a tv show, and thus not an exact science, and completely likely to be wrong. but��man, would I love to be right.)

So first, I’m just gonna talk about the existence of the namedrop in general. So, before that moment, we had no idea how important Nura would actually be to Nia’s story. The writers could’ve chosen to not even name her at all, and could’ve just left the reveal as something more general, like “Brainy knows something about Nia in the 31st century, but can’t say what because of Space-Time Continuum stuff.” But they didn’t - instead, they created a Very Specific secret that Brainy is now keeping from everyone.

This is absolutely a deliberate choice made by the writers. They already have Nia as a Nura-like character. They didn’t have to namedrop the actual Nura if they didn’t want to. They didn’t have to create that specific problem (the problem being that Brainy apparently knows Nia’s descendent really well). But they did anyway.

Additionally, the fact that they didn’t have a follow-up scene later in the episode where Brainy explains who Nura is means that all of this WILL come back up eventually. They won’t just leave that thread hanging. So, an important question to ask now is: What Big Thing is gonna happen between Brainy and Nia that forces Brainy to finally spill the beans about who Nura is?

My personal guess? Nia gets the wrong idea about their relationship, and either kisses Brainy or tries to kiss him, and he panics and blurts out that they can’t do that because he knows her descendent, so being with Nia either feels weird to him, or he’s worried about screwing up the timeline and potentially Marty McFly-ing Nura out of existence. Of course, in telling this to Nia, he’d have to explain who Nura is to both her and the audience.

(Wishful thinking? Maybe. Kind of a cruel bait-and-switch for the writers to pull on shippers? Yeah, I’d say so. But it’s not that different from what they did with Kara and Mon-El last season, and I actually think it’s a VERY plausible ending for Brainy/Nia, sooo…)

The Reveal™ could happen any number of ways, though, and I realize that. This one just seems like the most CW-style one lmao.

Okay, now I’m gonna analyze the Actual Namedrop Scene, because I can’t stop myself from theorizing and Tinfoil-Hatting™ about Brainy and Nura’s potential relationship in the 31st century.

First, I wanna talk about how intimately familiar Brainy is with Nia’s powers, and how they work.

He obviously knows these things because of how often he’s worked with Nura in the past - tbh, he and Nura probably discovered these techniques while working together to help her figure her powers out. So, Brainy doesn’t have to do any kind of trial-and-error process with Nia here, because he’s already gone through all that with Nura. This is his second go-around with all of this.

The concept of Brainy and Nura as a Dream Interpreting Duo is further solidified by this line:

Without Nia even really asking him to, Brainy automatically assigns himself the role of her Personal Dream Interpreter, which again tells me that this is probably the exact kind of relationship that he has/had with Nura. He’s recreating his interactions with Nura without really realizing it (yet).

Note his body language throughout this scene. It’s not clinical or distant, which would imply that his dynamic with Nura was an impersonal one driven by duty or scientific curiosity - rather, it’s very personal, and intimate, and even Soft in a way that we’ve never really seen Brainy behave with anyone before.

(Brainy/Nia shippers are, of course, going to interpret this behavior as evidence for their own ship, but IMO it’s actually much stronger evidence towards a (former) Brainy/Nura romance, more than anything else.)

Whether or not there’s a romantic angle, though, Brainy and Nura are still clearly very close. I’d say that’s pretty undeniable at this point.

This is Brainy’s face right as he calls Nia by Nura’s name, btw:

(So frickin’ cute, oh my gooood. This is one of the biggest things that makes me question if his relationship with Nura might’ve been romantic at some point, because LOOK at this! Look at his FACE!)

Aaaand this is his face once he realizes that he Fucked Up™:

It isn’t even an ‘oh shit!’ reaction. He doesn’t blink or look startled. He just immediately and completely walls himself off. Because that Softness that he accidentally showed here? That smile, the Sparkly Eyes? Those were his feelings about Nura, getting tangled up in his conversation with Nia. Those words that he said to Nia? Are ones that he’s undoubtably said to Nura before.

That’s why the slip-up happened in the first place. He was talking to Nia, but due to the familiarity and intimacy of the moment, he was thinking about Nura.

Now I’m gonna talk about Tropes. Because I LOVE tropes. And as soon as the namedrop happened the way it did - in the middle of an emotionally vulnerable moment - my mind instantly went to the Wrong Name Outburst trope:

(these screenshots are courtesy of TVTropes, obvs. highlights are courtesy of me.)

So like, Brainy saying Nura’s name when he did isn’t as bad as, say, him blurting it out in the middle of sex (lmao can you imagine), but it’s still not a good sign for Brainy/Nia, as far as I’m concerned. It’s never a good sign when a dude calls his supposed Love Interest by the wrong name after knowing her for a while. It just isn’t.

(It’s different if the Wrong Name Outburst had been a mistake from the first time they met - that’s a different version of the trope. Like, if Brainy had called Nia “Nura” outside of the pizzeria, then that’s an understandable case of Mistaken Identity. But to call her that when he already knows full-well who she is? Yikes lol, that’s a BIG romance no-no.)

Anyway, speaking of the pizzeria, if you click on the “You Remind Me of X” trope link, you can then scroll down to find this section:

The Flashback Echo mentioned here definitely applies to the pizzeria scene, right down to Brainy’s “Do I know you?” moment of startled recognition. If we’re following the logic of the trope, then it’s not a far stretch to assume that Brainy’s connection to Nura might’ve been romantic, most likely a “failed romance” (since I doubt Nura is dead).

Of course, Nura could also just be a really good friend, and maybe that would be enough to trigger the same reaction from Brainy…but there’s no way of knowing for sure until he lets the audience in on his secret. I’m really, really curious about what explanation they’ll go with, though. Personally, I hope it’s romance. But maybe that’s just me.

And now, finally, an add-on (because I can’t figure out where else to put it). Why do I think that Nura would specifically be a former love interest for Brainy, if she’s going to be one at all? Well, for two reasons:

1) They already pulled a Surprise Wife/Girlfriend trope with Mon-El and Imra last season, and IMO that’s a unique enough story beat that they wouldn’t want to use it again with Brainy and Nura, lest they risk the show becoming weirdly repetitive.

2) Revealing that Nura is Brainy’s Amicable Ex (meaning: they’re still good friends even though they’re not Together anymore) would be a good way to pay homage to the Brainy/Dream Girl relationship from the comics and give a definitive reason why Brainy/Nia can’t happen, while still leaving the door open for the writers to potentially explore…uhh, certain other ships next season. *COUGH* You know…potentially.

Thus my assumption that, on the off chance that they DO make Brainy/Nura romantic, it’ll be something in the past, that’s now over and done with.

(NOTE: The Brainy/Nura romance angle is really just a Pet Theory that I’ve grown particularly fond of over the past few days. Like…if I’m being Realistic, I think it’s much more likely that Brainy’s never been in a romantic relationship before in canon, given how little he seems to know about relationships and social cues in general. So, Nura will probably just be a close friend. But I think most of the stuff I talked about can still totally apply even with them just being close friends.)

Aaand…that’s it. That’s all I’ve got.

P.S. Like I said at the beginning of this post, this is all just Pure Speculation and Tinfoil-Hatting and I’m aware of that. I mean really, who tf knows what’s actually going to happen on this show? Def not me lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So please don’t come for me if you have a different opinion lakjsdfkjd

#however long you're expecting this to be I assure you: IT'S LONGER #anyway that's ALL my thoughts on the matter so don't expect any more thoughts from me for like. idk the next month or so lmao #alskdjfklsdj I SWEAR I'm not a meta writer #....I say while posting an insanely long meta #also disclaimer that I don't read comics so I don't know anything about nura beyond that she has nia's powers and is one of brainy's LIs #so all of this is just based on the show itself #cyclone rachel #asks #supergirl #brainiac 5 #my meta #????#long post #god I hope the brainy/nia shippers don't find this and crucify me #I swear I don't hate your ship I just don't think it's gonna happen

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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If You Can’t Stand People Fidgeting, You May Have Misokinesia

In 2014, Todd Handy was having dinner with a new girlfriend when she interrupted the meal with a confession. "I don't want you to feel attacked," he remembered her saying.

She explained that Handy had a fidgeting habit, and she found it very stressful to watch and be around. "Of course, I was concerned as a partner,” said Handy, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. “But as a visual neuroscientist and somebody who studies visual attention, it really piqued my interest. I thought, 'Hey, what's going on here? This is a very interesting phenomenon.'”

It sounded to Handy like a visual version of misophonia—the “hatred of sound,” or "sound rage," a condition in which people have intense emotional and physical reactions to trigger noises, often chewing or lip smacking. When he consulted misophonia research, he found that a paper from 2013 had called a reaction to visual triggers misokinesia, or a "hatred of movement." He casually started to ask his lecture classes if anyone was bothered by seeing another person fidget.

“And literally a third of the class would raise their hands and you could just see this look on their faces they were like, ‘Oh, my gosh. He’s talking about something I'm suffering from.’”

Last week, Handy and his colleagues published the first study to focus solely on misokinesia in Nature Scientific Reports, with first author PhD student Sumeet Jaswal. The paper is mostly focused on determining how common misokinesia might be—and their findings remarkably resemble the impromptu surveys Handy did on his classes. In a total of over 4,000 people, one-third said they were sensitive to watching others fidget, and that it caused negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and frustration to arise.

Arjan Schröder, a postdoctoral researcher at Amsterdam UMC and the first author on the 2013 paper that coined misokinesia, said this prevalence matched what he has seen in his misophonia patient samples. Yet, as Handy's work shows, misokinesia might also be quite common in general populations too.

Handy and his colleagues first asked a group of students whether they ever had “strong negative feelings, thoughts, or physical reactions when seeing or viewing other peoples’ fidgeting or repetitive movements," like someone’s foot shaking, fingers tapping, or gum chewing. 38% of the students responded yes, and 31% reported having both misokinesia (visual) and misophonia (audio) sensitivity.

Then they asked an older, more demographically diverse sample (not students) and found a similar prevalence: 36% of participants reported they had misokinesia sensitivity and 25.5% reported having both misokinesia and misophonia.

It's an intriguing finding that misokinesia and misophonia seem to exist both together and in isolation. On the subreddit for misophonia, one person shared that noises didn’t bother them severely but fidgeting did.

“If someone starts shaking [their] foot or tapping their hand, even if they make no sound whatsoever, I get very irrational and I have to block my view, usually with my hand,” they wrote. “EVERYONE shakes their foot. I can't live with this anymore. Everyday I encounter MULTIPLE PEOPLE AT ONCE shaking their feet and I only have two hands.'' Another remembered losing their temper as a child as a man in an elevator tapped his foot, so much so that they stomped on his foot on their way out.

Watch more from VICE:

Sometimes people can have both triggers, but one is more upsetting than the other. “My visual triggers are just as hard to handle as my audial triggers,” one person shared on Misophonia Education. “Sometimes they are worse. I find it nearly impossible to escape a sight in the room. Even when I close my eyes, and even hours or days later, the memory is still there. I want to cry as I think of these triggers. Legs shaking, people swaying, fingers and toes tapping.”

Having both audio and visual triggers can make interacting with the world all the more challenging. And whereas people with misophonia can wear headphones to block out noise, “I can’t wear earplugs for my eyes,” another shared on Misophonia Education. “I suppose I could wear a blindfold, but this has impractical applications. I am also more likely to remember visual triggers and never want to go back to the place. If I have been visually triggered somewhere in the past, I will not want to go back.”

Handy thinks the next big questions their study poses are how exactly misokinesia is related to misophonia, whether it can help better explain the mechanisms of misophonia, and whether it can potentially lead to coping strategies and treatments.

Schröder believes there are likely similar mechanisms at play since both misokinesia and misophonia involve an irritability triggered by human cues: movements and sounds. “Both have a repetitive nature and some form of unpredictability: When will it stop, when will it start again?” He said. “Additionally, I think, there’s some moral assessment at play. The person who is experiencing the emotion thinks something of the trigger: Why is the source of the sound/fidgeting doing it? It seems useless! Why do you continue?”

Elsewhere, there have been several attempts to understand the biology of misophonia. One study showed through fMRI imaging that there was an increased activation in a part of the brain called the anterior insular cortex in people with misophonia. This area of the brain is important for, among other things, sensing one’s own body and processing emotions.

Recent work from Mercede Erfanian, a neuroscientist at University College London, found that misophonic's brains function differently in the premotor cortex: the premotor cortex and auditory cortex were hyper-connected and they were communicating more than is considered typical. "This means when sufferers listen to sounds, the premotor cortex also activates, and this does not happen in the brain of non-misophonic people,” Erfanian said. A similar pattern was found between the premotor cortex and visual cortex.

Erfanian thinks this could be a neurological basis for these reactions, and that it may implicate the involvement of mirror neurons, neurons that activate when we see others move, as well as when we move ourselves. It could help explain why some people with misophonia say that they mimic the sounds as a coping strategy, to cover up hearing the trigger noises with their own sounds, she said.

The neuroscientist and author V.S. Ramachandran and his colleagues theorized that there might be similarities to synesthesia, when sensory stimuli trigger other sensations and emotions. Typically with synesthesia, letters evoke sounds, or sounds evoke colors, but in certain subtypes it can be more varied. In a case of tactile-emotion synesthesia, the feeling of sandpaper evoked a feeling of jealousy, and denim provoked the feeling of disgust and depression.

Handy, as a scientist focused on attention, still has questions about whether misophonia or misokinesia triggers affect our attention in an outsized way—if they're somehow telling the brain that those triggers are important, and need to be attended to. So far, Handy said, they haven't found any definite links to attention. Misokinesia sensitivity wasn’t related to being better able to ignore distractions in the peripheral vision, nor to paying attention to sudden events in their periphery.

While all of this is fodder for future research, Handy hopes that the immediate impact of their paper is that it helps people with misokinesia to feel validated if they're struggling and gives them a word to describe their reactions and tools to ask for accommodations or develop coping strategies. While there's currently no evidence for what treatment might work best for misokinesia, avoidance doesn’t work in the long term, Schröder said. Treatments that help misophonia, like cognitive behavioral therapy, could also be useful for misokinesia, but it will have to be tested in the future.

Schröder said that when he first started misophonia research in 2009, people with misophonia were relieved to finally have someone to listen to them and take their symptoms seriously. The same could be true for misokinesia.

It's tempting to hear about misophonia and misokinesia and think, "Isn't everyone annoyed by fidgeting and lounds chewing?" And while there is certainly a spectrum of how bothered people can be, on the extreme end of the spectrum, people can experience huge disruptions in their lives. The people Schröder works with can’t often eat with family members, or can’t work in offices with their colleagues.

“Being annoyed by other people’s behavior is a common thing,” Schröder said. “We can all experience that. However, in misophonia (and possibly misokinesia too) it’s more than that.”

On Allergic to Sound, a website that shares misophonia personal stories, one person wrote how misokinesia could interrupt something as basic as going to a movie with a friend—when said friend took a ring off his finger and began to play with it.

“He then raised it to his mouth and spent the rest of the film popping it in and out of his mouth. He did this silently and didn’t make any dramatic or disruptive movements, but to me it felt like my whole world was on red alert. All I could focus on was that irritating movement out of the corner of my eye. It was so bad that I can’t remember a single thing that happened in the film – I don’t even remember what the film was called. What I do remember, in painstaking detail, is every single minute little movement he made with his hands.”

Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

If You Can’t Stand People Fidgeting, You May Have Misokinesia syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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lacquerware · 6 years

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Hellblade's Language Problem

::WARNING: MANY HELLBLADE SPOILERS WITHIN::

I think I went into Hellblade with particularly well-balanced expectations. On the one hand, I had a vested interest in Ninja Theory’s success, having devoted several (rather grueling) years of my life to promoting their controversial last two titles, DmC Devil May Cry and its rerelease, DmC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition as a community manager at Capcom. In my view, Ninja Theory greatly exceeded Capcom's and my own expectations for DmC, but they walked away from the experience dripping with rotten tomatoes from irate fans who wouldn't have been happy with any reboot of their beloved series, no matter what it did. With Hellblade, I'd wanted to see Ninja Theory get the credit I knew they'd long deserved.

On the other hand, I was also quite disappointed when NT revealed Hellblade to be a more narrative-driven piece, and I was downright worried when they still hadn’t highlighted the combat system after three or four PR beats. They were selling this game on its fancy performance capture technology and its treatment of mental psychosis, not its Smokin’ Slick Style and Just Guard mechanics. I’m fine with narrative-driven games, but there are tons of them nowadays, and NT is essentially the only Western developer to have sipped from Capcom's forbidden font of combat wisdom. NT walked away from DmC with a world-class mastery of combat design, honed under the direct tutelage of Capcom’s own Hideaki Itsuno (DMC series director and veteran fighting game dev) and his team of designers. It seemed a shame to let that mastery go underutilized.

I eventually concluded that Hellblade probably wouldn’t be the DmC-without-the-baggage follow-up I’d dreamed of, but it’d probably still excel on its own merits. In other words, I went in expecting a good game, but not expecting it to top DmC.

It pains me, then, to conclude that my experience with Hellblade was mostly just bad.

Early on in my time with Hellblade, I asked myself, “So is it ‘SEH-noo-ah’ or ‘SEN-yoo-ah’?” referring to the protagonist's name. Then one of the voices in Senua’s head called her “SEH-noo-ah.” A little later, one of the other characters calls her “SEN-yoo-ah.” Later still, Senua says her own name, pronouncing it "SEH-noo-ah." Much later, Senua’s own mother calls her “SEN-yoo-ah.” Is this inconsistent pronunciation a symptom of Senua's psychosis, or merely an oversight in the game’s voice direction? I don’t know, but I see it as symbolic of the overarching issue with Hellblade: it has a language problem.

When I say language, I’m talking about the visual, auditory, and tactile language that the game uses to guide its player. Ninja Theory took on a lofty challenge with Hellblade: to convey the experience of mental psychosis, using a video game. To be clear, psychosis is a severe mental disorder which presents the mind with vivid delusions—false sensory inputs. Video games, by definition, use sensory feedback—namely, graphics and sound—to communicate a consistent, predictable set of rules and parameters to a player. How do you simulate psychosis and make a functional game at the same time? How do you present meaningful feedback to the player while also inundating them with erroneous imagery and sound?

Ninja Theory actually found a variety of ways to do this. As they explain in the documentary included with the game, many sufferers of mental psychosis display a tendency to draw patterns and connections where none are apparent (to normoids). So essentially, they're ascribing their own rules and logic to the world. Arguably, this is what all game designers do anyway, so in that regard this premise might be surprisingly fertile ground. Indeed, we mostly see Senua’s hallucinations take recurring, systematic forms: glyphs which she must overlay with seemingly arbitrary sights in the environment; “portals” which, once passed through, reveal new avenues; and horrible humanoid demons, with whom Senua must do battle. Theoretically, these elements successfully convey Senua’s mental condition while still offering the player a “game” rather than just a series of crazy, unpredictable occurrences.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is a simple matter of execution; the game is technically flawed. Tutorial-less and HUD-less, it relies solely on subtle, in-world feedback to communicate its rules of engagement to the player, but then breaks those rules either through technical failure or conscious design choices. In a different game, I might have picked up on each bug or design issue much quicker, but because of the psychosis premise and the subtlety of the issues I faced, I found it abnormally difficult to distinguish between intended weirdness and simple video game flaws. In other words, the game isn’t just about being crazy—it is crazy.

Here are some examples:

-Early on, the game establishes that you can use the R2 button to “Focus” on certain objects in the environment to activate puzzles or audio logs. A little later, the game introduces a new type of "Focusable" object--an icon of a flame--but for some reason these objects don't respond to your Focus until you're much closer. The game betrays its established rule for how Focus works, without clearly reestablishing the new rule. I probably passed by that first flame icon five times, attempting to Focus each time but receiving no feedback. By the time I realized it was a distance issue, I’d wasted maybe thirty minutes searching for a way to progress.

-Focusing on each flame icon activates a sequence in which the environment is engulfed in an inferno, leaving you with mere seconds to run away before dying horribly. When I activated the first one, I instinctively started running in one direction, only to have the voices in Senua’s head started frantically crying, “No, not that way!” So I stopped and frantically searched for another path. Before I could find one, I died horribly. It seemed so unavoidable that for a moment I thought the death was scripted. When I realized it wasn’t and I respawned, I examined the surrounding area at my leisure and determined that, actually, there was no other path and I was running the right way. Was this a bug? Or was I now to understand that sometimes the voices in Senua’s head actively try to get her killed? I’ve since cleared the game and still don’t know….

-I encountered a bug which prevented one of the first puzzle-locked doors in the game from opening. It wasn’t totally clear that solving the puzzle was supposed to unlock that specific door, so I found myself wandering back and forth across the vast section of the map available to me at the time. Additionally, there were music cues which played upbeat, intense music within a specific radius (which didn’t even contain the door in question), and cut off abruptly the instant I stepped outside that radius. I scoured every inch again and again. After close to an hour of wandering and scouring, I googled it in exasperation and discovered it was simply a door bug. The music was just completely arbitrary. Unforgivable in a game that demands you take unexplainable sights and sounds at face value.

-One section of the game introduces a light/darkness mechanic. You must stand in the light at all times—either by carrying a torch or standing in designated illuminated areas—or you will die horribly within seconds. In one such instance, a fight sequence breaks out while you're carrying a torch. Senua subtly drops the torch on the ground as the fight begins, and a grueling battle ensues. When it ends, darkness floods your surroundings, and if you don’t think to retrieve the dropped torch, you die horribly within seconds. But what was illuminating us during the fight sequence, and why did it stop after I won? When the darkness came, my instinct was to run, which of course got me killed. I had to repeat the entire fight.

-The boss which follows the darkness segments has the ability to spew darkness (shoutout to DmC’s Hunter). Visually, this darkness looks just like the darkness which causes you to die horribly within seconds elsewhere, so the natural assumption is that you must scramble to find the light. This proved not to be true; rather, the darkness simply makes it dark, which sucks because it’s hard to see. Lol.

-The glyph puzzles, which I felt the game leaned on way too much, were extremely finicky. I often found myself desperately trying to line up the overlay with its apparent environmental counterpart, only to be denied feedback. “Guess I’m barking up the wrong tree,” I’d say, and search elsewhere. Eventually I’d circle back and retry for lack of any better ideas, and finally I would land upon the precise footing that triggered the game’s acknowledgement of my solution. Because of this finicky detection, it frequently took me upwards of thirty minutes to execute a solution I’d figured out in five. These moments deeply hurt the game’s immersion—it’s hard to believe someone tormented by voices and haunted by hellspawn would spend this long lining up glyphs with such surgical precision. I felt neither crazy nor like a warrior; I felt like a child with a defective issue of Highlights Magazine.

Weirdly, in other cases the game would give me credit just for glancing in the general direction of a solution I hadn’t actually noticed yet.

By the time the credits rolled, I’d experienced so many baffling inconsistencies in the game’s communication that the whole thing just felt like a misfire.

Now look--I’ve been known to both overthink things and not be very smart, so I don’t imagine everyone will have the experience I had. In fact, I googled “hellblade frustrating” just to see, and was shocked to find that all of the results were about how frustrating the combat was. I actually found the combat to be Hellblade’s saving grace—satisfying, consistent, and almost perfectly balanced thanks to a God Hand-style difficulty auto-balancing feature. The camera worked against me in a few situations, but most fights left me feeling like I’d beaten dire odds, and certainly made me sympathize more with Senua’s plight than the mundane action of lining up Viking runes with wooden scaffolding.

The moral of Hellblade’s tale seems to be that Senua won’t “cure” her psychosis, but that she can heal by learning to accept it as a part of who she is and coexisting with it. After finishing the game, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly have a better time with Hellblade on a second playthrough. Those bugs and flaws would still be there, but I’d know about them and be able to anticipate them. There’s an obvious parallel here. I don’t think it’s intentional (though the idea of “bad design by design” does intrigue me), but I think there’s some poetry in the notion that we can apply Hellblade’s lessons to itself.

All that aside, I appreciate what Ninja Theory has done to advance the conversation on mental health and develop a template for their "AAA indie" model. Hats off.

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devillain · 5 years

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Short list: things Carlos has (diagnosed and diagnosed)

Asperger’s

PTSD and C-PTSD

Anxiety

Depression

Schizophrenia

OCD

Insomnia

Asperger’s (Asperger Syndrome)

PTSD

Overall Carlos has both. There are specific child hood events that give him PTSD, but the abuse over the years is what gives him C-PTSD, and yes one can have both.

This is not diagnosed.

Anxiety

His anxiety is potentially the least worrying thing for Carlos though. It has been ingrained in him so long to be on edge, that that is all he views it as.

Depression

Schizophrenia

OCD

This is not diagnosed.

Insomnia

As with everything else on the list this is not diagnosed, but it is one of the few things Carlos is fairly comfortable self diagnosing himself with.

#headcanon: a smart little boy #tw: ptsd #tw: abuse #tw: child abuse #tw: schizophrenia #tw: depression #tw: anxiety

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erikbpoststhings · 7 years

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The Legend of Zelda: Oh Yeah, There Are Horses In This Game

(My long-winded thoughts about the masterful Breath of the Wild)

So I'm just now coming off Breath of the Wild after buying the game about...4 weeks ago? I beat the core game (all Divine Beasts, and Hyrule Castle) in a week. I continued spending the vast majority of my free time on the game to tackle the immense amount of remaining content it had to offer.

And now, somewhere in the area of 90-ish hours of playtime later, having found and completed all 120 Shrines, found all of Link's memories, I'm finally ready to put the game aside (screw the Korok seeds, by the way). But I do want to talk about it and about the experience it's been. There will be spoilers ahead.

I must also note that, before acquiring Breath of the Wild, I replayed The Wind Waker and Skyward Sword; attempting a 3-heart and 6-heart run through them respectively*. As such, I had a lot of thoughts of how Breath of the Wild compares with those games (and other Zelda titles), how it differs, how it pays tribute, and how it completely turns conventions on their head.

*3-heart run through Wind Waker was a piece of cake. 6-heart run through Skyward Sword (note that you start with 6, so you can't do a 3-heart run) was significantly more challenging, and when I accidentally completed a heart container, I just continued playing. So it became a 7-heart run.

So to be blunt, Breath of the Wild is a great game. Few people will argue that. It's been highly revered since it's still-recent release. But then, so was Skyward Sword for which the general consensus seemed to quickly 180 on. I don't expect that to happen with Breath of the Wild. The game's reception is very well-justified and its positive qualities I think will prove to be timeless. I don't really intend this to be a review, but I will take a quick aside here to nitpick what I don't like about the game. Probably the most controversial mechanic is the weapon durability. This is something I don't feel strongly about but I do understand where others are coming from. During your time spent on the Great Plateau, all your available arsenal is so fragile that it does become a bit tedious to have to constantly scour around for a new weapon. However, this problem basically vanishes once you finish the starting area and have access to the meat of the game. After leaving the Plateau, weapon durability so rarely matters. Far more often than weapons breaking, I was dropping weapons willingly to make room for others, even after several inventory upgrades. Additionally, all the weapons you find in the overworld respawn. I don't think any weapon you find is permanently gone once it breaks. Chests in the Shrines, for instance, remain empty, but the Shrines never give you unique weapons. And the unique weapons you get after completing each of the Divine Beasts can all be remade by one of the respective locals. Anyway, my condensed thoughts on the weapon durability system is that it is very temporarily a very minor annoyance. I don't think the game needed it, but I don't think it's a serious hindrance either.

I'm not super thrilled with how the game handles its soundtrack. I get that it was a conscious choice to go with minimal music in order to emphasize the “atmospheric” feel, but I did find myself often wishing for some more robust tracks to accompany my quest.

Da naaa nana naaa da naa nana na naaaa

The controls took a lot of adjusting to. Not only are they not mapped like any previous Zelda game, they also aren't mapped like any of the similar-genre games that Breath of the Wild takes many cues from (e.g. Dark Souls). But I think my biggest challenge here was a purely personal one: In my earliest hours, I frequently tried to use R to open the paraglider because I was so accustomed to having the Deku Leaf set to R in Wind Waker HD. Oh, which reminds me, I do not own a Switch. I was playing the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild.

Speaking of hardware, this might be the only Zelda game which is clearly more than the systems it was built for can really handle. While the updates have improved performance, there are still several obvious framerate drops. Kakariko Village has been the worst offender in my experience. Others have cited the game near-freezing when fighting Moblins and I only recently experienced this for the first time strangely enough, despite having fought Moblins countless times before.

A mechanic I find odd is how the stables work. OK, so you have to tame wild horses, and then you can register them at a stable. And OK, you can whistle to your horse to call it over, but only up to a certain distance. And alright, you can board a horse at the stable, and then take it out at another stable. Wait, what? This is just so...strange. It seems like the intention was to set up a system to encourage you to tame as many horses as you can in all of the different locations so you always have the convenience of taking one out but...then you can just warp horses from any stable to any other stable. So as soon as you have 2 horses, you can just rotate them however you see fit and the whole system is trivialized. After my first 2 horses, the only other horse I ever registered was the Giant Horse; and just because having it tamed was the result of a sidequest. I tried to register the Lord of the Mountain, but the guy at the stable said something about curses, so I'm guessing you can't do that.

A sad day for glowy, 4-eyed horse-bunny-things everywhere.

To be clear, this didn't negatively affect my enjoyment of the game, it just seemed so weird that the stable system was designed that way. If you can freely warp your horse across the map at the stable...why not just let your horse come running to you no matter how far away you are? The game imposes logic on one front, only to turn around and break that very same logic on the other. All that having been said, horses...kind of don't matter. I spent very little of my time riding horses in this game. Yeah, riding a horse is faster than running on foot, but you know what's waaaay faster than both? Gliding.

One of the few mandatory items in the game is the paraglider. You have to get it before you can leave the Great Plateau (and even speedrunners trying their best to find a sequence break seem to have confirmed that the game is coded to ensure the paraglider is a must). The paraglider gives you the ability to glide from high places, covering long distances. And, since you're in the air, rough terrain is a non-issue, while it provides constant barriers to horseback travel. It also gives you the opportunity to look at the environment from a high viewpoint. And you can go into Matrix-bullet-time mode and shoot arrows while you're in the sky (you can do this after jumping off your horse too, but I digress). You can also shield surf off a ledge, pull out your paraglider with your shield still strapped to your feet and continue shield surfing when you find a place to land. Basically, the paraglider is objectively superior to horses in every way. Especially after you finish Vah Medoh and gain the ability to create updrafts where you stand. Or, hell, just when you learn that you can create updrafts by setting grass on fire.

Oh yeah, shield-surfing. God damn, that's cool. When I first learned to do it, I immediately tried to using the bow, and you can! I'm Legolas, bitches!

And that small moment I had nicely sums up one of Breath of the Wild's greatest strengths: Not only how much it encourages experimentation, but how rewarding it is. Nearly every time you have the thought “I wonder if I can do this,” the answer is “Yes.” The game tells you about shield-surfing, but it doesn't tell you you can use weapons, jump and paraglide mid-surf. But you totally can. And it's awesome.

I've seen people cite this as why Breath of the Wild is the perfect game for somebody who doesn't play video games, and I totally agree. Those of us who grew up with video games are accustomed to so many limitations existing because “that's just how video games work”. We're used to unnaturally shaped “natural” environments dictating the difference between playable area and background decoration. We're used to there being a one-and-only path through the story and awkward prevention from us going to certain areas before the game tells us we can; no matter how much we would already like to go there. We're used to friendly NPCs having no reaction to us drawing our weapon and swinging it around like a madman and setting the landscape on fire. A person with none of these presuppositions will be more likely to try things that a seasoned gamer might instinctively not bother to try under the assumption that nothing will come out of it because of those ingrained conventions. But Breath of the Wild so readily and so casually tosses those conventions out the window that just about anything and everything is on the table. Almost* none of the terrain is insurmountable. If you can touch a mountainside, you can climb it. There are paths carved throughout the land, but you needn't follow them. Hell, my first time in Goron City, I came in backwards from the way the game is set up to guide you into it. Incidentally, the Goron at the clothing shop has a really funny reaction to you wearing non-fireproof gear. Breath of the Wild is very light and very modular with its story, in a way that never impedes the player's curiosity or desires. There is no one-and-only order and if you unwittingly stumble into some of the plot on your way to a point of interest, nothing's stopping you from leaving that plot until you feel like coming back to it. I started working through the Zora's Domain section of the main story only to drop it entirely midway through for several hours while I attempted to make it to every tower on the map. As I put it to my roommate, who kept commenting on my total inability to focus on one goal, “this game is distraction porn.” And NPC's will, in fact, react with serious concern to your careless disregard with their well-being. One NPC will even show concern for your well-being should he see you standing on the edge of the bridge he patrols.

Though I should be fair and note that, while this is new to Zelda, it's not exactly new to video games. Skyrim's villagers will happily slaughter you with battle axes if you so much as graze one of their oh-so-precious chickens. *There is a visible mountain that wraps around the north side and northwest corner of the game map. Unfortunately, there is an invisible wall that prevents you from reaching it. The game's world is enormous, but it definitely isn't endless.

The aforementioned light and modular story may be the best thing about Breath of the Wild, especially when compared with the likes of Skyward Sword. Now, I like Skyward Sword. I don't love it, and I have a lot of problems with it, but I don't hate it. I do, however, hate the way Skyward Sword handles story. Skyward Sword has probably the most detailed plot of any Zelda game and, while that statement alone sounds like a compliment, it's totally to the detriment of the player experience. You have no freedom in Skyward Sword. Everything has to happen this way in this order. We're telling this story, not your way of approaching it.

At that point, can you even call it an adventure game? This is one reason I really don't care much about story in video games. The most inventive, wonderful story ever crafted by a human mind can be included in a video game, but if the game isn't fun...it's a terrible game. And the particularity of Skyward Sword's story directly, negatively impacts how much fun the game has to offer.* *While replaying the opening couple hours of Skyward Sword which are 90% dialogue, I turned to my roommate and assured him, “Don't worry, I swear there's a game in here somewhere.” Breath of the Wild is completely the opposite. The game really has very little story, and what story there is isn't especially deep. And it's a huge benefit to the player experience. The story isn't fixed for you ahead of time, and you aren't shoved along the only path Nintendo wants you to see. The story is almost entirely up to you. You're going on an adventure.

As I played the game and considered this, I realized this is the first Zelda game since the first Zelda game to really do that. A Link to the Past is fairly open in the sense that you can explore quite a bit of the world right away (after the intro section) but even it had a laid out, self-dictated path of progression. And each consecutive game seemed to keep guiding the player just a little more; Link's Awakening had recurring messages dropping mind-numbingly obvious hints. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask introduced the dreaded player-companion concept. The Oracle games (which I adore, by the way) have the Maku Trees simply telling you where to go next every time you finish a dungeon, etc. Some of the games handled these obnoxious concepts well, such as Twilight Princess disguising the handholding player-companion with a genuinely interesting and endearing character, while others...didn't (...Fi...). But they continued to employ these concepts, eventually cementing them as unfortunate staples of the series; staples that seem counterintuitive to the original game's concept of being lost in a vast world that you're free to explore and learn about entirely of your own volition.

I have several gripes with the core control mechanics of the original Zelda, a story for another day, but the game is solid conceptually. Breath of the Wild feels like the full realization of that original concept.

Playing through the game while my roommate watched intently, a number of times I would turn to him and say, “that's very Zelda 1.” A big part of that comes down to the sort of post-apocalyptic world the game takes place in. So much of the area is barren, but with a lot of dilapidated and curious structures that imply a larger civilization in the century past. And that's...“very Zelda 1.” You need a certain number of hearts before you can successfully pull the Master Sword from its pedestal. This is also “very Zelda 1”. The White Sword and Magical Sword in the original game both had similar prerequisites.

The one moment I had that I think best exemplifies the “Zelda 1-ness” of the game is my first visit to Gerudo Desert. On my way to Gerudo Town (scaling the mountains because the ground-level path is for chumps), I happened to spy a circle of enormous statues off to the side. True to form, I ditched the forward path to investigate these statues. Upon observing them, I realized there was a puzzle here and one I could solve. So I did and was rewarded with one of the Shrines. The game didn't lead me there. None of the NPC's told me about those statues (though somebody I would meet later in Gerudo Town does mention them, giving you a sidequest, which in my case was immediately marked as “Complete”). These statues aren't part of the main story at all. I saw something interesting, and I decided to investigate. My choice as a result of my curiosity was the sole driving force behind my actions, and that sums up how the original Zelda worked. The player's curiosity pushed them, and by extension the game, forward. Breath of the Wild works the same way.

It was in this moment that it really sunk into me how different Breath of the Wild is from what the Zelda series had largely become, but how it also does the best job of capturing the spirit of the series' original title.

Any other Zelda in recent memory would treat a huge landmark like these statues with so much less player-freedom. You might not even see them until the game decides it's time for you to interact with them. It wouldn't be a matter of “hey, there's something interesting over there. I'm gonna go check it out because I can and nothing's going to stop me,” it'd be “here these are now, because you played our story until you got to them, these are the next part of the plot, and no more game will happen until you're done with them.”

But the original Legend of Zelda wouldn't do that, and neither does Breath of the Wild.

Not only is your curiosity a driving force for the game, and one that the game incites and encourages, it's always rewarding. Pretty much every slightly interesting piece of terrain has something to offer you, even if it's just a Korok seed. Every new nook and cranny you explore, you'll be rewarded for doing so.

Every nook and cranny.

Anyway, now that the gush-fest is more or less out of the way, let's come back to some things I don't really like. First, let's talk about the Shrines. The Shrines themselves are actually a great concept. Over a hundred mini-dungeons that can give you whatever puzzles the developers can think up, unhindered by any thematic obligation that the more traditional Zelda formula would force upon them.

If only that could be said for all of the Shrines. I find the “Blessing” Shrines to be pretty lame; these Shrines have no puzzle or challenge to present to you. Most of the time, you find these Shrines after solving a puzzle or facing some challenge on the overworld. But a lot of those challenges aren't very satisfying, so it's a letdown to see that the Shrine won't titillate you where it's prerequisite failed to. But hey, at least those ones are trying.

Far worse are the “Test of Strength” Shrines. This is a concept I would've been fine with if maybe 1-3 of the Shrines, at most, were done in this manner. This is not the case. There are around 20 Shrines in which your only goal is to beat up a single robot before the whole affair is done with. Meh. I was always very excited when I entered a Shrine and saw that it was neither of these. Now, let's talk about the final boss. So the Calamity Ganon fight is pretty cool. It feels a lot like a Dark Souls boss in many ways. Ganon's quite large, has a significant array of moves, uses the arena to his advantage, and has a second phase in which your timing starts to matter a lot more. Good stuff.

Unfortunately, after Calamity Ganon is done with, he transforms into the much larger Dark Beast Ganon; the “Hatred and Malice Incarnate,” as the game calls him; and we find ourselves facing him out in Hyrule field. I was cautiously optimistic when I first saw this. A giant monster battle out in the overworld? OK, this might be super cool. But...then I was given the Light Bow out of nowhere and Zelda’s disembodied voice told me to “shoot the glowing points” and at that instant, I knew the battle was going to be lame. It's presented cool, but it's just not very challenging, interesting, or fun. For all the guff I gave Skyward Sword earlier, this is one area I give that story-plagued game the edge. I really like the final fight with Demise in Skyward Sword. It's also not especially challenging, but at least I get to catch and throw lightning with my sword! It's also a fight that feels like a natural extension of the games most prominent mechanics up until then, with the motion-controlled swordplay being the focus.

Breath of the Wild instead shoves you on horseback (“oh yeah, there are horses in this game”) and gives you a new tool last-second, awkwardly disconnecting the final confrontation from the entire game up until that point.

So the game isn't perfect. But it's so, so, so close. Even minor things about the game absolutely enthralled me. The temperature system, for instance, is really thorough. Like, yeah, equip the right clothes for the right weather conditions. But what about when even that doesn't help? Well, you can follow the advice of the NPC's and use elixirs, or you can equip elemental weapons. This is another very cool mechanic the game doesn't tell you. If you're in the hottest areas of Gerudo Desert, where the Gerudo clothing doesn't cut it, you can equip a frostblade, and that will also affect your tolerance for the heat. It's so impressive how even the tiniest details like this weren't overlooked.

Not to mention the very Minecraft-esque mechanic that killing wildlife with fire weapons will yield cooked meat. Breath of the Wild takes that one step further than it's inspiration, giving you “icy” meat if you kill them with ice weapons.

The game also has countless references to other Zelda titles, so if you're a longtime fan of the franchise, those are a lot of fun to see. Areas ripped straight from Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time all appear; albeit very ravaged by time and war. There are locations named after some of the most obscure characters in the franchise. Even the music, what little there is, has some nostalgic melodies you wouldn't necessarily expect.

Anyway, this ended up about five times as long as I expected, but there was just so much I wanted to say. I really do think this game, in addition to being so well-received, will ultimately prove to be an important title to video games as a whole. Like Ocarina of Time before it, and the original Legend of Zelda before that, Breath of the Wild may have significantly altered the playing field forever.

#zelda #legend of zelda #the legend of zelda #breath of the wild #the legend of zelda breath of the wild #nintendo #video games

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nerdarchy-blog · 4 years

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Salutations, nerds! I’m going to take a break here to talk to you about January’s Patreon reward content, aptly named Treasures of the Tundra. The idea this time around was to pull together content all about the players for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, and I feel like we’ve done a pretty excellent job of this if I do say so myself. Within you will find 17 new magic items, two beast mounts I affectionately refer to as the Big Woolly and the Small Woolly. Additionally, you’ll find 10 new poisons specifically geared to cold climate play, and a new playable race, the yaska (or, so the more irreverent folks might say, miniature yeti). You’ll also find four new playable subclasses for 5E D&D play.

Concept art for the lanacap, or big woolly, a gentle bipedal creature with wool so thick a grown human can sink their arm into the elbow before hitting flesh. [Art by Nelson Vieira]

Arctic themes for players and Dungeon Masters

Each of the four new subclasses are tundra or arctic themed for 5E D&D. Suitable for any environment, these subclasses take their cues from the harsh cold and biting winds. Adding these new subclasses to your game can be a worldbuilding tool or adventure hook for characters. Introducing new content to a campaign, whether it’s from the DM or players who discover something cool like these subclasses, there’s an opportunity to collaborate on exploring new areas of the setting or creating engaging new stories together at the gaming table.

The College of Rime Bard College centers around manipulation of movement and owning the darkness of the long night around you. When you are ice, you are everywhere.

“Even in a cold and unforgiving place news must travel, and the best way to make it memorable is in verse. As a messenger it is always important to get the news around in a timely fashion, through rain or sleet or snow, and you have studied how to best do this to an extent most never master. You know how to move in the cold and dark, and they can no more stop you than they can stop the weather itself.”

The Way of the Northern Wind Monastic Tradition is all about learning to adapt to the dark and the cold and the fear of winter. When you are the North Wind, there is nothing for you to fear from your glacial surroundings.

“You have trained in the highest peaks of the mountains and learned to bite without teeth and whisper without a voice. The monastery where you received your training is a difficult place to reach, and in order to arrive there unscathed you had to prove you have the tenacity of the wind, and upon arrival you were welcomed — provided you cause no trouble for the monks there. Your training at the Temple of the Northern Wind often involves fighting on unstable ground or sparring with blindfolds on. You were taught to adapt to adverse conditions.”

The Froststrider Ranger is a trophy collector who can use the life force still lingering in the horns and fangs and talons they accumulate to augment their performance and aid allies in the frozen tundra.

“Trained in the harsh climates of the far north where resources are few, you have learned to harness the power of the large beasts you hunt for further use. By taking trophies from the bodies of the fallen you know how to save some of the life force of your kill and put it to work for you to make yourself a more lethal hunter.”

Finally, the Iceborne Sorcerer is an elemental savant who controls the area around them, turning any locale they happen to be standing in to the middle of winter with a mere thought.

“Spirits of the tundra are fickle beasts. Sometimes they will grace the newly born with fair weather, and sometimes with storms. And sometimes, once in a rare while, a child will be hailed into the world with a blizzard so fierce it leaves rime thick on windows and the unlucky and exposed freeze to death. It is said a child born under these conditions is almost certain to be cold-hearted, as the killing frost leaves a hard sliver of ice within them that can never be melted. Although that much cannot be proven, one thing is certain; you were born under these conditions and emerged with certain powers, as if marked by the blizzard itself.”

Magic item sets

For another teaser, here is the cloak of black ice and robe of woven snow, just two of the 17 new magic items created in Treasures of the Tundra. In the collection, both these items are part of attunement pairs. If you are attuned to the both items in a set, the pair of items only counts as one item for attunement. The cloak is paired with armor of black ice and the robe with boots of woven snow.

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If you’ve been holding off because you’ve been wanting playable content you don’t have to be the Dungeon Master to make use of, this is going to be a good month to sign on, and if you already are, the Iceborne Sorcerer pairs well with some of the winter spells from December’s Winter Court Soiree set. We share every monthly reward as a post on the Patreon page, so new supporters have access to all previous monthly rewards. You’ll have to do some scrolling down to get them all but they’re there! In addition to these rewards featuring full color art and new content you can drop right into your games, our Patreon supporters are automatically entered into our monthly giveaways, become eligible for monthly fan games, receive special access to our Discord server and our weekly live chats. Check out our Patreon here.

As always, I hope you all have as much fun playing with it as I did writing it!

Ready for your #DnD campaign to have big woolly style? Mount up on a lanacap and go hunting for magical trophies as a Frostrider ranger Salutations, nerds! I’m going to take a break here to talk to you about January’s Patreon reward content, aptly named…

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ssteezyy · 5 years

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Ask the Cat Behaviorist with Dr. Marci Koski: How to Handle “Love Bites,” Cat Obsessed with Wand Toy

This post contains affiliate links*

Dr. Marci Koski is a certified Feline Behavior and Training Professional who received specialized and advanced certificates in Feline Training and Behavior from the Animal Behavior Institute. While Marci has been passionate about all animals and their welfare, cats have always had a special place in her heart. In fact, Marci can’t remember a time when she’s been without at least one cat in her life. She currently relies on her five-member support staff to maintain the feline duties of her household.

Marci’s own company, Feline Behavior Solutions, focuses on keeping cats in homes, and from being abandoned to streets or shelters as the result of treatable behavior issues. Marci believes that the number of cats who are abandoned and/or euthanized in shelters can be greatly reduced if guardians better understand what drives their cats to certain behaviors, and learn how to work with their cats to encourage appropriate behaviors instead of unwanted ones.

Do you have a question for Marci? Leave it in a comment, and she’ll answer it next month!

How to handle “love bites?”

I adopted a 4 year old kitty who had one previous owner (who sadly passed away). She is settling in well and is an only kitty, but she bites! They are “love bites”, but my previous cat did not do this and while I am watching her cues, it’s tough to know when she will chomp. Any advice on how to handle this? – – Christiane Grando

Hi Christiane – aww, I’m so happy that you have been able to give this kitty a new home under sad circumstances. It sounds like she’s settling in, but that you probably have a lot to learn about each other! In time, you’ll get to know those subtle cues that she gives that indicate that she’s about to give you a love bite, or little nip. She’s not breaking the skin, right? Does it happen while you’re cuddling or stroking her? The best thing to do is pay close attention to her body language. Sometimes kitties who are about to give love bites will raise their heads and their mouth will hover closer to your hand or arm, or sometimes they will start to lick you before giving you a nip. I have a feeling that you’ll soon learn those subtle cues that your kitty is giving you before she gives you a love bite. When she does, don’t yank away or make sudden moves or noises; this can scare the cat and cause her to actually bite hard, or develop a fear of you. Treat her like a momma cat would – when kitty bites too hard (or bites at all), get up and walk away without giving her any attention; the nips should soon disappear.

There’s an important distinction to be made between love bites (which don’t break the skin) and actual bites given in response to being over-stimulated by petting. A cat who is being over-stimulated by petting may exhibit subtle shifts in body language including the ears twisting back, body weight shifting, the end of the tail starting to twitch, and cessation of purring. Cats who get over-stimulated and bite as a result usually appear to be more irritated and less “blissed out” like cats who give love nips appear to be. If your cat is getting over-stimulated, when you notice those subtle body language changes, stop what you’re doing and either sit still without touching her to let her relax, or get up and walk away. It’s ok to do that – you’ll keep yourself and your kitty from getting more than either of you wanted.

Cat is obsessed with wand toy

I have a cat obsessed with his mouse wand toy. He’s begun to make me feel like his playtime servant. He used to greet me when I came home, but now he’ll just run to his toy and start meowing. If I stand up, he’ll start meowing to play. Nag, nag, nag. I try putting it away but he’ll just go to where we normally use it and meow. I play with him once in the morning and once in the evening. How can I get him to stop being so fixated on it? Thanks. – Karen

Hi Karen – I’m really glad that you have a cat who is interested in playing, since play is such an important part of being a feline. Cats are predators, and play allows them to express predatory instincts, relieve stress, exercise their minds and bodies, and just have fun! It’s awesome that you make time to play with him twice a day, and I wish everyone did this with their own kitties. But I completely understand you feeling like a “playtime servant” – after all, what are we but servants to our cute feline overlords? We live to please, right?

All kidding aside, I think it will help you if you start changing up your playtime routine a bit. Please do continue to have morning and evening play sessions, but perhaps you can play with him in different locations and switch up the lures on your wand toy. I understand that he really likes the mouse, but try feathers, fuzzy worms, bugs, and other lures that you can interchange on your wand toy (Da Bird and Dezi & Roo have long wands that you can put various lures on). Move the lures as that type of prey item would move, too. You can also completely change up the routine – start with a laser pointer to wear him out and then end with a toy that your cat can physically grab and chomp (either a wand toy with a lure, or a catnip kicker toy). Or toss paper balls (or other small toys) for him to play with, like a goalie practicing with soccer balls.

Additionally, there are a number of battery-operated toys out there that cats do enjoy; mine like the Mystery Motion (it’s a circle of cloth with a wand that moves randomly underneath it) and Hexbug toys, but there are others as well. The important thing with battery-operated toys is to put them away when not in use; only bring them out during play time and put them away so that your cat doesn’t get bored with them. And that goes for the rest of your cats’ toys as well! Rotate them every few days so that they are novel when you bring them back out again.

Make sure that your play sessions are long enough and that he’s worn out, not just wound up! Cats will often go back to the first step in the prey sequence – staring (followed by stalking/chasing, pouncing/grabbing, then performing a kill bite) – several times while playing, so don’t get faked out if he stops. Take a 30-second break or change the toy and keep going. Younger, active cats can play for a long time, so make sure he gets his needs met. It may also help to feed him a meal or snack after his play session to initiate the hunt, eat, groom, sleep cycle.

Changing the location of your play sessions (and keeping the wand toys in different locations safely out of reach), changing the toys he uses, adding some variation to his play routine, and playing long enough will likely bump him out of his habit of being so fixated on one toy. I hope this helps and that you continue to play with your kitty – he’s lucky to have such a devoted servant, lol! 😊

*The Conscious Cat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This means that if you decide to purchase through any of our links, we get a small commission. The Conscious Cat is a member of Etsy’s affiliate program. We only spread the word about products and services we’ve either used or would use ourselves.

The post Ask the Cat Behaviorist with Dr. Marci Koski: How to Handle “Love Bites,” Cat Obsessed with Wand Toy appeared first on The Conscious Cat.

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phoebenevarez9-blog · 6 years

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North Carolina Cooperative Extension

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