The Happiness Thread

Woo! Doing some worldbuilding in my fantasy story! It’s not grand or verbose, but it is helping me understand a major thing that’s a part of Mishu (i.e., her ‘Soul Sight’ deal-y.)

 

I thought Mishu was blind.

 

Ooh, I just saw that Andy Weir's released a new book. It'll probably take my brother buying it, reading it, and lending it to me before I can actually get my hands on it, but I'm still excited I knew I kept those goodreads emails coming for a reason.

 

I've decided to dispense with my life insurance policy, given some problems I've had with how they handle it. However, the payment will be a nice shot in the arm for my savings, so I won't go into 2018 wiped out by Christmas.

 

She is, her Soul Sight just enables her to see the ‘auras’ of living entities with a central nervous system. They appear as basically amble inverted shadows.

 

Ah! So she's like Daredevil with his radar sense. She's blind, except when it's inconvenient for you.

Just let her be blind, and don't give her this Soul Sight. Make her blindness a real handicap - that would actually be cool!

 

Varying levels of blindness can allow people to see shapes, but not specifics like depth. I knew a girl who said she saw everyone as varying layers of shadows in black fog.

 

Interestingly enough there's some research to indicate that some people that are completely blind can retain certain aspects of vision, like motion, colour perception and shapes. When researchers exposed clinically blind subjects to certain visual stimuli and asked them about it, the subjects were obviously unable to describe it. However, when pressed into guessing or telling the researchers about their feelings towards what they were shown, the test subjects were able to describe the stimuli with an accuracy statistically greater than that of chance suggesting that when some people go blind they can still perceive the visual world around them, but are unable to actively interact with or comprehend what they're seeing.

 

Very cool! I hope she doesn’t mind it if I borrowed it for Mishu’s normal vision. :3

 

Finally beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link after all these years. The key was a large amount of early attack stat grinding. It lets you level everything else faster by killing in one or two blows. And each dungeon gives you a free stat boost at the end, so it took off from there.

 

Oh damn you in all the best ways from bringing back nostalgic memories of Nintendo games past. Zelda and Zelda II rank up there as two of my all-time favorite games (the original Final Fantasy and Maniac Manson rank high as well) I have even watched youtube videos from time to time to relive those moments and listen to the opening music. hmmmm think I will be changing my ringtone today.... anyways good on you...

 

One of my characters, April, is blind. She appeared unexpectedly, standing in line behind my MC at the corner store. Early on she was taught that blindisms are forbidden, so she looks at people when talking to them. She wears clear glasses rather than sunglasses, often confusing the MC, fourteen-year-old, into thinking she is sighted. April, who is twenty-four, is turning int0 my favourite character and has become the MC's ally.

 

Normally I smoke a pack a day and go through 2 liters of caffeine.

It's about 1745, and I've had 2 cigarettes and almost 1/2 a liter of caffeine.

I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'll chalk that up as progress.

 

I had one of the best days of my life on Tuesday. I got to meet Brandon Fucking Sanderson! At a book signing in London as part of his Oathbringer tour. He signed my copies and I got to take a picture with him and ask him a question. Thr whole thing was so amazing and surreal and I kinda got star-struck, that in addition to my usual shyness and anxiety prevented me from telling him everything I wanted to, particualrly that how awesoms he is and what an inspiration he's been to me. But still it was pretty fucking cool. I'll just...it's gonna be etched in my mind forever

 

Man, I know what you meant, but my first image was of you hitting something like this:



Allegedly pure liquid caffeine...

 

I was never that addicted. Why someone would drink straight caffeine unless they wanted to die horribly is beyond me.

 

It actually is a lot. One 250 ml cup of coffee has about 100 mg of caffeine in it and current daily recommended intake for caffeine is only 400 mg. Addiction potential aside, too much caffeine on a regular basis can cause all kinds of nastiness.

 

Holy crap! I just re-discovered Susan Spann’s historical mystery series set in Ancient Japan... AND IT IS STILL CONTINUING!!

<immediately buys all the books possible from Kindle Store>

 

I'm moving out next weekend!

 

Your argument is that I shouldn't say I'm addicted to caffeine because my dependency on it is "not comparable with alcohol/drug/gambling etc addiction." You also stated a "serious addict" is taking far more than 800mg per day."

Essentially you've said I'm not addicted because other people with other problems have worse addictions. That's like saying "your foot isn't really broken because other people have had their feet amputated." You're attempting to quantify addiction by the amount of the substance, not the effect of the substance.

A person is considered an addict when their compulsion for a substance or activity interferes with their ability to function in daily life. My addiction to caffeine fits the bill. Going without caffeine is physically and mentally taxing, and giving in to my compulsion for caffeine causes disruptions to my life in ways I don't need to divulge.

It's not about the amount or the frequency, it's about whether the involvement with the substance or activity is disruptive. I am addicted to caffeine. By challenging whether I'm a "serious addict" or not, you're demeaning those who live with addiction but still manage to function. An addict is an addict, and addiction is not a pissing contest to see who is "serious" or not.

I'll continue to celebrate my victories over my addiction. If it upsets you when I refer to addiction as addiction, feel free to ignore me. I won't be engaging this particular disagreement further, because I don't want it to end up as a long-winded debate.

 

I believe the caffeine argument doesn't belong to the Happiness Thread to begin with.