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hikingmysteries · 3 years

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The (”Mostly Harmless”) Nameless Hiker

Arguably the biggest hiking story of 2020, the tale actually starts a few years ago. Though we love researching and writing our own pieces for Hiking Mysteries, it is tough to top Nicholas Thompson’s article from Wired magazine. So, here it is, along with images.

A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack

The man on the trail went by “Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was.

IN APRIL 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything. He didn’t bring a phone; he didn’t bring a credit card. He didn’t even really bring a name. Or at least he didn’t tell anyone he met what it was.

He did bring a giant backpack, which his fellow hikers considered far too heavy for his journey. And he brought a notebook, in which he would scribble notes about Screeps, an online programming game. The Appalachian Trail runs through the area, and he started walking south, moving slowly but steadily down through Pennsylvania and Maryland. He told people he met along the way that he had worked in the tech industry and he wanted to detox from digital life. Hikers sometimes acquire trail names, pseudonyms they use while deep in the woods. He was “Denim” at first, because he had started his trek in jeans. Later, it became “Mostly Harmless,” which is how he described himself one night at a campfire. Maybe, too, it was a reference to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Early in the series, a character discovers that Earth is defined by a single word in the guide: harmless. Another character puts in 15 years of research and then adds the adverb. Earth is now “mostly harmless.”

By summer, the hiker was in Virginia, where he walked about a hundred miles with a 66-year-old woman who went by the trail name Obsidian. She taught him how to make a fire, and he told her he was eager to see a bear. On December 1, Mostly Harmless had made it to northern Georgia, where he stopped in a store called Mountain Crossings. A veteran hiker named Matt Mason was working that day, and the two men started talking. Mostly Harmless said that he wanted to figure out a path down to the Florida Keys. Mason told him about a route and a map he could download to his phone. “I don’t have a phone,” Mostly Harmless replied. Describing the moment, Mason remembers thinking, “Oh, this guy’s awesome.” Everyone who goes into the woods is trying to get away from something. But few people have the commitment to cut their digital lifelines as they put on their boots.

Mason printed the 60 pages of the map and sold it to Mostly Harmless for $5 cash, which the hiker pulled from a wad of bills that Mason remembers being an inch thick. Mason loves hikers who are a little bit different, a little bit strange. He asked Mostly Harmless if he could take a picture. Mostly Harmless hesitated but then agreed. He then left the shop and went on his way. Two weeks later, Mason heard from a friend in Alabama who had seen Mostly Harmless hiking through a snowstorm. “He was out there with a smile on his face, walking south,” Mason recalls.

By the last week of January, he was in northern Florida, walking on the side of Highway 90, when a woman named Kelly Fairbanks pulled over to say hello. Fairbanks is what is known as a “trail angel,” someone who helps out through-hikers who pass near her, giving them food and access to a shower if they want. She was out looking for a different hiker when she saw Mostly Harmless. She pulled over, and they started to chat. He said that he had started in New York and was heading down to Key West. She asked if he was using the Florida Trail App, and he responded that he didn’t have a phone.

Fairbanks took notice of his gear—which was a mix of high-end and generic, including his black-and-copper trekking poles. And she was struck by his rugged, lonely look. “He had very kind eyes. I saw the huge beard first and thought, ‘It’s an older guy.’ But his eyes were so young, and he didn’t have crow's feet. I realized he was a lot younger.” She was concerned though, the way she used to be concerned about her two younger brothers. The trail could be confusing, and it wouldn’t be long before everything started getting intolerably hot and muggy. “I remembered him because I was worried,” she added.

Six months later and 600 miles south, on July 23, 2018, two hikers headed out into the Big Cypress National Preserve. The humidity was oppressive, but they trudged forward, crossing swamps, tending aching feet, and dodging the alligators and snakes. About 10 miles into their journey, they stopped to rest their feet at a place called Nobles Camp. There they saw a yellow tent and a pair of boots outside. Something smelled bad, and something seemed off. They called out, then peered through the tent’s windscreen. An emaciated, lifeless body was looking up at them. They called 911.

“Uh, we just found a dead body.”

IT’S USUALLY EASY to put a name to a corpse. There’s an ID or a credit card. There’s been a missing persons report in the area. There’s a DNA match. But the investigators in Collier County couldn’t find a thing. Mostly Harmless’ fingerprints didn’t show up in any law enforcement database. He hadn’t served in the military, and his fingerprints didn’t match those of anyone else on file. His DNA didn’t match any in the Department of Justice’s missing person database or in CODIS, the national DNA database run by the FBI. A picture of his face didn’t turn up anything in a facial recognition database. The body had no distinguishing tattoos.

Nor could investigators understand how or why he died. There were no indications of foul play, and he had more than $3,500 cash in the tent. He had food nearby, but he was hollowed out, weighing just 83 pounds on a 5'8" frame. Investigators put his age in the vague range between 35 and 50, and they couldn’t point to any abnormalities. The only substances he tested positive for were ibuprofen and an antihistamine. His cause of death, according to the autopsy report, was “undetermined.” He had, in some sense, just wasted away. But why hadn’t he tried to find help? Almost immediately, people compared Mostly Harmless to Chris McCandless, whose story was the subject of Into the Wild. McCandless, though, had been stranded in the Alaska bush, trapped by a raging river as he ran out of food. He died on a school bus, starving, desperate for help, 22 miles of wilderness separating him from a road. Mostly Harmless was just 5 miles from a major highway. He left no note, and there was no evidence that he had spent his last days calling out for help.

The investigators were stumped. To find out what had happened, they needed to learn who he was. So the Florida Department of Law Enforcement drew up an image of Mostly Harmless, and the Collier County investigators shared it with the public. In the sketch, his mouth is open wide, and his eyes too. He has a gray and black beard, with a bare patch of skin right below the mouth. His teeth, as noted in the autopsy, are perfect, suggesting he had good dental care as a child. He looks startled but also oddly pleased, as if he’s just seen a clown jump out from behind a curtain. The image started to circulate online along with other pictures from his campsite, including his tent and his hiking poles.

Kelly Fairbanks works at the Army and Air Force exchange store on a Florida military base. She normally monitors the CCTV cameras for shoplifters, but if there’s no one in the store she might sneak a look at Facebook. It was a quiet moment, and suddenly the picture popped into her feed. There he was: eyes wide open and looking up. She recognized the eyes and the beard. “I started freaking out,” she says. It was the kind man she’d seen on Highway 90. The sheriff’s office had also posted a photo of the hiker’s poles, and Fairbanks knew she had an image of the same man holding the same gear.

She clicked right over to the Collier County Sheriff’s Facebook page and sent in two photographs she had taken of Mostly Harmless. She got a message back immediately asking for her phone number. Soon a detective was on the line asking, “What can you tell me?”

She told him everything she knew. And she shared the original post, and her photo, all over Facebook. Soon there were dozens of people jumping in. They had seen the hiker too. They had journeyed with him for a few hours or a few days. They had sat at a campfire with him. There was a GoPro video in which he appeared. People remembered him talking about a sister in either Sarasota or Saratoga. They thought he had said he was from near Baton Rouge. One person remembered that he ate a lot of sticky buns; another said that he loved ketchup. But no one knew his name. When the body of Chris McCandless was found in the wilds of Alaska in the summer of 1992 without any identification, it took authorities only two weeks to figure out his identity. A friend in South Dakota, who’d known McCandless as “Alex,” heard a discussion of the story on AM radio and called the authorities. Clues followed quickly, and McCandless’ family was soon found.

Now it’s 2020, and we have the internet. Facebook knows you’re pregnant almost before you do. Amazon knows your light bulb is going to go out right before it does. Put details on Twitter about a stolen laptop and people will track down the thief in a Manhattan bar. The internet can decode family mysteries, identify long-forgotten songs, solve murders, and, as this magazine showed a decade ago, track down almost anyone who tries to shed their digital skin. This case seemed easy.

An avid Facebook group committed to figuring out his identity soon formed. Reddit threads popped up to analyze the notes he had taken for Screeps. Amateur detectives tracked down leads and tried to match photographs in missing persons databases. A massive timeline was constructed on Websleuths.com. Was it possible, one Dr. Oz viewer asked, that Mostly Harmless was a boy featured on the show who went missing in 1982? Was it possible that Mostly Harmless was a suspect in Arkansas who had murdered his girlfriend in 2017? None of the photos matched.

The story pulled people in. Everyone, at some point, has wanted to put their phone in a garbage can and head off with a fake name and a wad of cash. Here was someone who had done it and who seemed to have so much going for him: He was kind, charming, educated. He knew how to code. And yet he had died alone in a yellow tent. Maybe he had been chased by demons and had sought an ending like this. Or maybe he had just been outmatched by the wilderness and the Florida heat.

It just wasn’t a normal story in any way. And, as Fairbanks said, “he was a good-looking dude,” which, she notes, might explain why so many of the searchers are women. In mid-October, one woman in the Facebook group posted a slideshow comparing his photos to those of Brad Pitt. “Actually I think MH looks better. 😉,” one commenter wrote.

The dude, though, seemed to have followed, to near perfection, the hiker credo of “Leave no trace.” None of the clues panned out. Nothing actually got people close to solving the mystery. An industrious writer named Jason Nark spent more than a year obsessively tracking down leads and then wrote an elegy to the hiker that began, “Sometimes I imagine him falling through space, drifting like dust from dead stars in the vast nowhere above us.”

Natasha Teasley manages a canoe and kayak company in North Carolina. As business slowed when the coronavirus hit, she started to spend more time online, and she started to fill the gap in her life with the hunt for Mostly Harmless. She sent flyers to the Chambers of Commerce in every city where people thought he might have come from, including Sarasota, Florida, and Saratoga Springs, New York. She tracked down details about every car that was towed out of Harriman State Park, where he likely started his journey. She scoured missing persons databases. I asked her what motivated her to spend so much time looking for a man she’d never met. She responded achingly, “He’s got to be missed. Someone must miss this guy.”

WHEN WE THINK of DNA tests, we normally think of their miraculous ability to give us a yes or a no. The unique thread of base pairs that make us who we are exists in every cell. So we take the genetic information found at a crime scene, or in the saliva on a coffee cup, or on the hand of a deceased hiker. Then we look closely at roughly 20 chunks, or what geneticists call markers, and we search in a database of collected samples to see whether the markers match. Imagine if a book, 1 million pages long but without a cover, washed up on the shore. And then imagine you could scan one page and search all the books in a giant database to see if that exact page appeared. That’s conventional DNA testing.

But DNA also can tell the story of human history. By running a different kind of test, you get beyond yes or no and into a million variations of maybe. The genetic markers in your body are closer to those of your first cousin than your third. And they’re closer to those of your third cousin than your sixth. There’s a little bit of each generation in each of us, from our parents to our great grandparents to the early apes of the forests of Africa. So now imagine that book, and imagine that instead of comparing one page, you could compare everything in the book with everything in all other books, to find similar words, syntax, and themes. You would need complicated math and pattern tracing, but, eventually, you might figure out the author. And so, early in the summer of 2020, the organizers of the Facebook group searching for Mostly Harmless’ identity sent news about the case to a Houston company called Othram. It had been started two years earlier and pitches itself as a one-stop shop for solving cold cases.

Othram’s founder, David Mittelman, is a geneticist who had worked on the original human genome project, and he was drawn to this odd case. The company asks the public for suggestions for mysteries to solve, and that’s one of the best parts of the job. “I like doing the cases from the tip line,” Mittelman told me. “Lab work for the sake of lab work is kind of boring.” If he could crack the hiker’s identity, he’d get attention for his technology. But there was something else, too, drawing him in, a riddle he wanted to answer. The hiker seemed to have found an internet family but had no connection to his real one.

Othram called up the Collier County Sheriff’s Office and offered to help. DNA analysis is expensive, though, and the company estimated that the whole project—from evidence to answers—would cost $5,000. The sheriff's office couldn't spend that much money on a case that involved no crime. But it would love Othram’s help if there were another way to pay for the work. And so three of the great trends of modern technology—crowdfunding, amateur sleuthing, and cutting-edge genomics—combined. Within eight days, the Facebook group had raised the money to run the analysis. Soon a small piece of bone from the hiker was on its way west from Collier County to the Othram labs.

The first step for Othram’s team was to extract DNA from the bone fragment and to then analyze it to make sure they had enough to proceed. They did, and so they soon put small samples of DNA onto glass slides, which they inserted into a sequencer, a machine that costs roughly a million dollars and looks like a giant washing machine made by Apple.

Unfortunately, it’s a washing machine that has a long run cycle. And it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the pages of the book you find are ripped or blurry. Sometimes the process is iterative and you have to tape fragments back together. So, as the sequencer spun, the Facebook hunters fretted that, once again, nothing would come of a promising lead. But by mid-August, Othram had a clean read on the DNA: They knew exactly what combination of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts had combined to create the mysterious hiker. A company spokesperson appeared live on the Facebook group’s page to detail the progress; posters responded with gratitude and euphoria.

Science sometimes gets harder with every step, though, and having the sequence was just the beginning. In order to identify Mostly Harmless, the team at Othram would have to compare his genetic information with other people’s. And they would start with a service called GEDMatch, a database of DNA samples that people have submitted, voluntarily, to answer their own hopes and questions—they want to find a lost half-sister or a clue about their grandpa. That collection of DNA has become a cornucopia for law enforcement. Each new sample submitted provides one more book for the library that can be searched and scoured. It was through this technique that investigators in Contra Costa County, California, found the Golden State Killer in the spring of 2018, connecting a DNA sample of the killer to GEDMatch samples of relatives. Just this past week, Othram helped law enforcement identify the murderer of a 5-year-old in Missoula, Montana, a case that had gone unsolved for 46 years.

It’s been over a month since Othram started looking through the GEDmatch database. It won’t say anything about what it has found, and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office is keeping quiet as well. But one source outside of the company who is familiar with its progress says that, while Othram doesn’t know Mostly Harmless’ name, it has found enough matching patterns to identify the region of the country from which his ancestors hail.

That isn’t sufficient though. Knowing for sure, for example, that his relatives came from Baton Rouge doesn’t mean Mostly Harmless came from Baton Rouge. His parents could have been born there and moved to Montreal. He could have been born in Louisiana and dropped on a doorstep in Maine. But, right now, the data scientists at Othram are combing through all the DNA samples in GEDMatch, looking for patterns and trying to circle closer to his identity. They’re most likely building out a family tree. Let’s say they found someone in GEDMatch whose DNA seems like a fourth cousin of Mostly Harmless, and then perhaps someone who seems like a third cousin. How do those two people connect? Through this sort of slow, painstaking analysis, they can get closer to an answer. Soon they might find his extended family, and then perhaps his parents’ names. And then law enforcement will be able to solve a case that has stumped them for more than two years.

They might get there, and they might not. A source familiar with the work suggests that the earliest we’ll get an answer is December. Unless between now and then, perhaps, someone reading this article or browsing a Facebook group recognizes his face. Or puts together clues that have eluded everyone else. Finally, he won’t be “Mostly Harmless”; he’ll have a real name.

And then, with that mystery solved, a new one will open up. Why did Mostly Harmless walk into the woods? And why, when things started to go wrong, didn’t he walk out?

#mostly harmless #hikingmysteries #mystery #lost #hiking #hikers #trekker

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years

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April 15: Limetown S2

Finished listening to Limetown today. Then I read a lot of reddit posts about it. Now I have a lot of thoughts but also I desire to go to sleep because it was supremely hard to get up this morning and I’d like to finish work at a reasonable time tomorrow.

I liked S2 more than a lot of other people seemed to, but I think that’s pretty understandable. I mean first off anyone participating in a subreddit about Limetown is, or was at one time, a huge Limetown fan and huge fans of anything are going to be more critical of what they love because they’re more invested. This is especially true when talking about new installments of anything, because the new has to live up to whatever original installment created that intense love in the first place. I’ve gotten increasingly critical of everything I’ve ever been A Fan of, so I get it. With Limetown, I’m much more of a casual listener, but I needed to hear others’ opinions and interpretations, so I went to the Internet.

Plus, the frankly ridiculous wait between seasons means that S2 could never have lived up to S1. S1 becomes legendary by the mere passage of time. S2 would have been a letdown even if it hadn’t been farmed out to new people to write and produce and even if it hadn’t been surrounded by drama and controversy.

And, finally, that finale was bonkers, and I think it’s hard not to finish and not immediately think....okay, and? What am I supposed to think of THAT? And that can eclipse what came before and make it harder to judge the season as a whole.

All that said, I did like it as a whole. I thought the first four episodes were solid and episode five had certain things that were very good, even if I’m unsure how to feel about other parts.

A few specific thoughts (may or may not be coherent):

I was a bit surprised by how much lone-wolf activity there was--I really thought from the end of S1 that Lia was taken by some kind of Organization, not just One Guy. Similarly, for some reason I thought Charley was being held by some Group of some sort, not just, again, One Guy. (I’m not 100% convinced that the first bit of confusion isn’t a plot hole though.)

I liked the back story of the Bridge and I didn’t find it a let down at all. Halifax and the Bridge were probably my favorite eps of the season. But I also think perhaps I’m more into the whole ‘ramification of the tech’ angle than others?

Speaking of ranking eps and comparing seasons, I wouldn’t put anything in S2 above Scarecrow, but I think Halifax and the Bridge and probably Bordeaux were better than Winona.

I did ship Daniel and Emil. And I’m not convinced I wasn’t supposed to.

It’s canonically true that Emil is Lia’s father, right? Like I find it weird that people continue to refer to them as niece and uncle when it was confirmed they are not. I kind of called that, only in that I didn’t understand how an estranged niece would be so important to him. Also... there’s always a surprise father lol. Always.

I’m on the fence about how much of a plot hole it was that Emil didn’t know that Cleo was fake based on his own knowledge of Limetown. I see the argument... but even in small communities, not every one actually knows everyone else? I don’t know. More importantly than the simple logistics, though, I think obsessing about what he would or wouldn’t have known misses the point. (See below.)

I felt a little bit cheated by the twist with Charley playing Emil, only because I felt like it was so late in the game for that, and I’d put too much into her story, all of a sudden, to have it just as suddenly taken away. It seemed a little too much like ‘psych, it’s all fake though!’ Which I think is what other people got from it too, especially when coupled with her last speech and then what I’ll refer to as the Lia Coda.

But. Having only listened to it once. I do get, I think, what they were trying to do.

First, and most importantly, I think they were really getting at Emil’s hubris, a hubris that’s been created by his ability. Which is why I think it might be missing the point to say that ‘well he would have known he didn’t know a Cleo.’ Yeah, if he had to think critically. But he doesn’t because he assumes that he can just read the truth in someone’s brain, because that’s how it’s always been.

So what I’m saying is that if you think of the theme or point of the series as ‘what would having this ability, mindreading, do to people?’ and all of the different eps and character backstories and story lines as being variations on that theme--what would it do to a community, what would it do to a marriage, what would it do to children--well here is another one: it’s created a blind spot in Emil, an exploitable weakness out of what he thought was his strength.

I guess what I’m saying is I do think that’s interesting. I felt like I had other thoughts on it but... can’t remember.

Um, I think it helped me see what kind of person Charley is. Maybe this is me and my desire to empathize with literally every character but, just having her be the POV character for so long, I was giving her a lot of benefits of the doubt. And then, you know, I felt bad for the lamp, so to speak. So obviously I felt played but, having been played, I felt I’d learned something. I’m not convinced that ‘playing the audience’ wasn’t a purposeful part of that twist, is what I mean.

I definitely could have done without Charley’s little speech at the end, both in terms of form and substance.

It becomes slightly more tenable to me when paired with the Lia Coda BUT... it’s way too late for me to get into that lol. In short I will say I think it’s easy to conflate the character who speaks last with the author and the last opinion given as the Right Opinion, the Message, the Lesson. But it’s not necessarily so. Maybe Charley was supposed to be fucking annoying. And part of the purpose or perhaps even the central purpose of the Coda was to point this out to the listener.

I also have not read the book and know only what’s on the four corners of the podcast, so to speak, so I didn’t know what Lia’s power was supposed to be. I thought she and her mom were, like Sylvia, immune to the mindreading. So that might also have affected the way I read the Coda. But again, not going into it rn. Especially because I have a half-formed Wild Theory about it that I’m not even sure if I like myself.

#the year 2020 #2020: fandom thoughts

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mc-slowwalker · 3 years

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delta’s kicking our asses down in australia too. plus our vaccine rollout is just terrible. like I don’t think imma be travelling anywhere till like next year at the earliest and certainly not anytime soon. I 100% would overthink any reaction so much it’s be easier to just like not. idk I have a weird thing about meeting ccs

noooo not the year book. we had like a grad ceremony I guess you could call it like out on a field and everyone dressed up like it was formal and we were all sat socially distanced seats and the parents were all in cars behind us and there was a stage where people got up and said stuff and they gave us all plants at the end of it. my dog destroyed mine on like the second day 😔✌️

I got so much worse as a student because of corona. minimal studying went down to zero. like I already got distracted and bored too easily in school staying at home and doing school was an absolute nightmare. I finished tho and did well enough to get into the course and uni I wanted so we vibing now.

but most importantly mcc!!! mcc was so fucking good oh my god. it was soo fun !!! red rabbits were such a great team to watch too their dynamics were wonderful. they were all so encouraging too it was great !!quackitys song was so funny lmao. imma be going back and watching pink and yellows vods but ahhh red!! and the way the brought it back in survival games holy shit that was insane and fucking sapnap oh my god did so goddamn well. and dream and sapnap duo was so good !!! absolutely perfect. the game order was so weird too but like wow it was very entertaining. dream’s sands of time stressed me the fuck out though like damn. I’m still not over survival games!! AND SAPNPA HOLE IN THE WALL AND FIRST OVERALL FINALLY S TIER AND FUCK REDDIT!! AND QUACKITYS FIRST WIN!!! and even pink parrots did so well and ranboos first mcc !!! plus the captains curse is broken!! (technically it was broken by green guardians lmaoooo) I’m still not over survival games and the way they brought it back. sapnap and dream in survival games like damn. like there’s so much to say. they popped off tho that’s the main thing. this was a great mcc very enjoyable 10/10 will watch all the vods. I have more to say but I can’t remember cause I woke up early for mcc (curse time zones) and I’m so tired now

lmao it’s funny how we’ve moved like practically completely away from dream smo character analysis

L to your vaccine rollout. America has a pretty good vaccine rollout but uh….. people aren’t taking them. There’s so many vaccines going to waste because people just aren’t showing up really pisses me off. I really hate it here!!! I would feel the same about traveling but I learned that if I am not on campus for school I actually cannot do work so I’m headed back down there in the fall. I’m anxious because despite delta everyone is basically “over it” so restrictions are going wayyy down. I’ll also have a roommate so catch me wearing my mask even in my own room

You say you got plants I say they gave your dog a salad /j but that sounds sweet! My friend got something similar to that. I would have gone to my grad but they were like “yeah afterwords we’re going yo get a group photo (there are like 500 of us how in the socially distance world-) and then a cook out with parents” and I kinda went yeah no I’m good. But I’m really happy a large amount of people got to have a safe graduation!

Ashkdh same with the uni stuff except I have not been vibing and have been crying it’s been hard for sure didn’t have the easiest first year but I’m going to make the most of it from this point on

Mcc was sooo good! I’ll also be watching the pink parrots and yellow yaks back but I’ll probably watch the cyan creepers too. The game order was so weird!!!! When I saw parkour tag and sky battle first I kinda accepted that red rabbits weren’t going to win but hell they pulled it off! Really enjoyed sapnap putting dream on a child leash because that was wild. Can I get a thank you michael mcchill because man stuck to dream so good despite dream being in a “watch this” mood. Dream’s sands of time was stressful because man was so afraid of being put in baby jail again. I was loving in the end when dream was jumping around and unconsciously picking up tomatoes only throw them all at tommy when he remembered he had them. Listen I’m biased but if you’re in manhunts you’re automatically s tier in my book. It’s really interesting though because the hunters have a step up on dream teamwork wise. Dream isn’t really used to working in group while the hunters have team work almost down pat. I also enjoyed how scuffed it was! It’s always a good mcc if someone has to sub in ahdkfjkd. Have they gone a single event without having to pause? Either way huge enjoyer and I hope they never fix that. Connor’s audio shit? Dream starting his stream 2 minutes late? Amazing. What more could I ask for

Lisetn we decided that c!tommy should do taxes and c!skeppy is a dentist I think that is top tier analysis

#ask #anon #long post

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cumbersomelift · 3 years

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Spiritual First Aid (Resources Pt. 1)

When I was deconverting at university, I spent months poring over sacred texts, spiritual commentary, and works of philosophy to try to find what’s true. I thought what I needed was a theological rehab – to detox from harmful ideas and to replace them with healthier ones. But what I really needed was more like spiritual first aid – something to immediately address the frustration and guilt I was experiencing right then and there. I mourned the death of God even as I rejected him, and I felt tangled up in this ambiguous sense of loss.

Apart from a few close friends, I deconstructed privately. I thought the more open I was about my questions the less social support would be available from my community. (This was only half true.) I had also internalized the idea that I was responsible for the spiritual well-being of those around me, so I should keep these potentially destabilizing questions to myself because to do otherwise would be morally irresponsible. I would have said that it’s like throwing the biblically inexperienced into the theological deep end (which is patronizing and ridiculous). So, I often felt alone. Years of immersion in evangelical culture made me blind to the shame-loops that fed that sense of isolation and deaf to the language I needed to describe my own experience.

Even years later I’m still figuring that out. But I’ve found the trick to unlocking that language is just tuning in to the right conversation. These days, they are happening all around us in podcasts, books, and other media. Some of the best advice to those deconstructing—and in general— is simply to keep reading.

So here are some of the resources that I had (or wish I had) when I was deconstructing, and a map to show how they meet different needs. After all, someone reshaping their faith (deconstructing) needs something different than a someone dropping it entirely (deconverting). Those of us who are hurting need something different than those who are rebuilding. So, here’s the chart I’ve used to help catalog the books I’ve found most useful.

The reverent/irreverent x-axis describes whether the author sees religion as sacred and useful or delusional and hurtful. So, on the reverent side, you have secular pluralists who see religion as a force for good and Christians boldly asking the hard questions in an authentic attempt to deepen their faith. On the irreverent side, you have secular thinkers who say organized religion is mostly just harmful, but it’s normalized in ways that make this hard to see. If you’re deconstructing as a Christian – because you think the earth maybe wasn’t created in 7 days or because the Bible is hard to make sense of – then I’d point you to the reverent side of this map. For those deconverted or deconverting, you might find the irreverent items more relatable.

The processing/structuring y-axis captures whether the writer is exploring the personal experience or writing about the structure of beliefs that follow. Writers who are “processing” are often those who have abandoned a formerly cherished belief and are working through that change out loud with friends. “Structuring” writers are a few steps removed from the tension but can help answer the question "What am I supposed to believe now?" These writers can help us replace bad theology with a healthier, coherent alternative.

For brevity, this post is focused solely on the processing quadrants – I’ll pick up the structuring quadrants another time. These are a handful of resources that I’d describe as being Spiritual First Aid because they help make sense of pain and can even provide community for those struggling. I have a few books listed, but many of these are literal conversations in the form of podcasts. As you’re reading these consider adding them to your Facebook feed, Spotify rotation, or Amazon wishlist.

Oh. And one last thing: the point of this series is to encapsulate for the church what it’s like to deconstruct and how that impacts relationships. If you’re a person of faith reading this, I encourage you to listen in on some of these podcasts yourself – not because I think they’ll deconvert you but because they’re a primer for bigger conversations. They can be immensely helpful if you want to know reasons people leave the faith, why they might harbor resentment toward the church, and whether your church is participating in these harmful practices (I know that I was). So, even if the quadrant is “for you” it can offer a sense of what experiences others are up against.

Irreverent and Processing

These are conversations where people explore personal experiences of religious trauma syndrome, process the emotional damage of belief, and reject their spiritual upbringing with varying degrees of force. These can be useful for knowing you are not alone when you feel betrayed or hurt by religion in ways that are hard to express. They may even supply language to better articulate those experiences. Everything I listed here is produced by deconverted Christians who have firsthand experiences deconstructing their faith and fishing out the toxic ideas they once accepted.

The Life After (Podcast)

Here, two deconverted pastors interview courageous people about their journey of faith deconstruction, unraveling religious indoctrination, spiritual abuse experiences, religious trauma, mourning the death of God, and what it's like rebuilding a community after leaving Christian fundamentalism. Their trauma-informed approach and irreverent humor add levity to a series of heavy topics. (If this paragraph is the first time you've ever heard of spiritual abuse or religious trauma then you can read a short blurb about religious trauma syndrome (RTS) from one of the lead researchers on the topic, here.)

I found two episodes on purity culture and RTS with sex therapist Jamie Lee Finch to be especially illuminating. These are the episodes "Unbuckling the Bible Belt" and then “You Are Your Own.” The best introduction to this podcast might be the episode called “Born Again Again” with Katie and Joe Bauer who talk about deconstructing as a couple and what it’s like for spiritual leaders to leave the faith.

The Life After also has a Facebook group that began as a trauma-informed home base for listeners to relate their deconversion experiences, but now it hosts book clubs, a mentor network, and a stream of blasphemous insights from those who have deconstructed into non-Christian spirituality or secular humanism. They even have affinity groups focused on specific challenges like how to be body-positive after living in purity culture or deconverting in a marriage where one partner stays a believer.

Born Again Again (Podcast)

Two former worship leaders talk through their own deconstruction experiences and how they make sense of their spiritual upbringing as secular adults. They have some fascinating stories about their experiences with Campus Crusade for Christ and the Hillsong movement. In fact, in "This Is Your Brain on Worship" the hosts share how they had a formula to help congregants speak in tongues based on hypnosis. Wild!

Another is "A Personal (or Abusive) Relationships with Jesus?" where the hosts show the dark side of trading religion for a "relationship with Jesus.” They start with the descriptions provided by Campus Crusade for Christ, John Piper, and Billy Graham to define what a relationship with Jesus means, then they break down how these definitions in any other context are textbook cases of abuse that are just normalized through false consensus. They also talk about what it did to them to buy into this relational framework themselves, and how Cru’s organizational structure can pressure young college students to do the same.

r/exvangelical, r/exChristian, e/TrueAtheism (Reddit Boards)

r/exvangelical and r/exchristian are moderated communities of post-fundamentalist Redditors. This might be of use for those who describe themselves as something like "culturally Christian but theologically agnostic.” It’s a moderated group of individuals that works like the Life After Facebook group. People share their experiences, seek advice, and connect on the process of deconversion. It’s a very welcoming, affirming community where pretty much every trepidatious Redditor is met with a chorus of supportive replies.

r/TrueAtheism is similar but not specifically made up of post fundamentalists. It was recommended from the Born Again Again hosts. This particular thread of “honest questions from an atheist” is an incredibly exhaustive list of troubling bible verses and hard-ball questions about the faith that many of us may find relatable or articulate a dissonance we’ve experienced before.

Reverent and Processing

These may be good resources for people who grew up Christian and have an active personal faith but aren't sure where they fit anymore. After all, the church has changed a lot in the last ten years. Maybe you describe yourself as a Christian mystic, agnostic, or just a believer trying to find your place. If the phrase "spiritual nomadism" resonates with you, you might feel at most at home exploring questions of faith with these spiritual thinkers.

The Liturgists Podcast (Podcast)

Michael Gungor and Co. are believers in the in-between talking about faith issues and modern events in this podcast. Sometimes we conflate deconstruction with deconversion and overlook the ocean of gray area between Christian fundamentalism and secular humanism. This podcast is hosted by a community of believers that live in that space.

In "Is Deconstruction Bad?" they talk about the emotions felt in deconstruction, the social cost (especially for spiritual leaders), and how to embrace a healthy outlook in the midst of it. It's a serious look into what is lost when we challenge our assumptions about faith and why it becomes hard to stop. A similar episode is called "Does Being Good Mean My Beliefs Shouldn't Change?"

Among my favorites, though, is "Swapping Fundamentalisms.” Sometimes we move from one restrictive, dogmatic set of beliefs to another because we've internalized fundamentalism so thoroughly that we take it with us wherever we go next.

Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious (Book)

Chris Stedman was raised in a staunchly homophobic faith community when he began to realize he was gay. His memoir is a story about his unconventional deconversion experience. Stedman would say that the hostility expressed by his church toward the LGBTQ community is hard to too similar to what new atheists express toward the church today. Stedman rejects militant atheism for a more pluralistic approach to interfaith relationships. He believes that mutually incompatible religions can exist in harmony and not just competition.

He's an atheist committed to interfaith organizing and believes that rallying faith groups on the common ground of our humanist ethics can help us create a better world together. If you think the new atheists are too harsh on religion or overlook the good that religion has does for the world, then you might be sympathetic to his approach.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything (Book)

David Dark a Christian writer who thinks that if you read the Bible and don't have any questions then you weren't reading very closely. "The God of the Bible not only encourages questions; the God of the Bible demands them." In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, Dark talks through why interrogating our belief is a spiritual discipline and what believers fall prey to once they stop.

Importantly, Dark shows how deconstruction isn't just for the deconverting. Instead, it's an act of theological hygiene. If the God we believe can’t accept protest, interrogation, or dissent, then we’re in trouble. In fact, without the right questions, our conception of God can exist strictly to keep us in line and keep our heads down so we don't get burned. Dark is a Christian who wants to disabuse Christians of that narrow conception of God and show why questions are essential for spiritual growth.

Conclusion

So there’s my spiritual first aid kit. Hopefully at least one or two of these resources will resonate with you. I can say that at different points in my life, each of these things provided an insight that made deconstruction less shameful and more clear. If you have other books, podcasts, or communities that have helped you process in deconstruction, then don’t hesitate to add them in the comments.

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bjkwhite · 4 years

Text

Dangerous Dangerous Dinosaurs DeDeDeDe Destruction

RePlay Productions

presents

Dangerous Dangerous Dinosaurs DeDeDeDe Destruction

This is a 'replay' of a gaming session. It does not reflect what happened at the table with 100% accuracy, and has been edited and condensed to provide a more readable, interesting, entertaining and educational experience. Hours of nonsense and off-topic conversations have been excluded for the sake of brevity and my own sanity. No dice rolls were altered, no consequences were changed. Names have been changed to protect both guilty and innocent alike.

The system being used is Escape From Dino Island, by Sam Tung and Sam Roberts, available at https://samnite.itch.io/escapefromdinoisland.

This replay is also available here, in PDF or epub format: https://bjkwhite.itch.io/replay

Please enjoy the circular escapades of these three good girls.

session one: is that really the name

Truth: Welcome ... to Dino Island.

Chaos: Well I'm not playing unless we immediately come up with a more interesting name than that.

Hope: Dangerous Dinosaur Island.

Order: It was called that even before the dinosaurs showed up. It's an amazing coincidence.

Truth: Before we get too sidetracked, has anyone looked at the rules?

Chaos: I mean I looked at them in the sense that I can see them there on the table.

Hope: I looked at the characters, I want to be The Engineer!

Order: I read through them, except for the DM parts because I thought you'd probably want to keep them a surprise. This is a Powered by the Apocalypse game? I couldn't find the stats we use, though, they're not on the character sheets?

Note: We weren't using the proper character sheets because I am a big dummy who didn't realise you have to download the demo files even though that's specifically mentioned on the game page as an Important Note. Thank you, carry on.

Truth: Oh, they're at the start of the character creation thing. Um, just a second ... Fit, Clever, and Steady. You pick +2, +1 and -1 for them, or for Hard Mode it's +2, 0, and -1. Just write them anywhere on your sheets once you've picked which character you want.

Chaos: Do we want to play on Hard Mode? How hard is Hard Mode? Or do we pick individually? I'm going to play on Hard Mode, and I will be, hmm ... The Soldier seems a bit too macho man for me, same with The Hunter ... oh, maybe The Survivor? Like a wild girl or something? Cave girl!

Hope: If you do that then I am expressly forbidding you from making references to that movie I haven't seen.

Chaos: You're really gonna have to narrow that down for me.

Hope: You know, the one you two always go on about, 'chickpea, chickpea', that one.

Chaos: Tay inna win, chickabee! Tay inna win! But now that you've put it in my head I am DESPERATE to play a Nell character.

Truth: Just to pour a little oil on these potentially troubled waters, might I also suggest the possibility of a Newt character?

Chaos: Gasp! They mostly come out at night ... mostly...

Hope: I'm okay with that one, even though it's another reference I don't get.

Chaos: Hope, she doesn't have bad dreams because she's a doll.

Hope: I might already be regretting this.

Order: There's not really a tanky character, is there? Maybe The Soldier. I feel like you people might need some protection.

Truth: Okay, so everyone's picked? Done your stats? Picked names and such?

Hope: I'm The Engineer, Clara "Widget" Wadjet, tiny and cute with huge glasses and messy hair.

Order: In a ponytail?

Hope: Twintails! But just little ones, because her hair is actually quite short. She wears overalls with colourful badges on them, and normally a flat cap but she lost it. Oh, and my stats are Fit -1, Clever +2, Steady +1.

Chaos: Well, I'm The Survivor, Tui Moon, an awkward baby, could be anything from a big ten to a small fifteen I guess, big dark eyes, huge mass of unbrushed unwashed hair. My stats are Fit +2, Clever +0, Steady -1. I spook easy.

Order: I'm The Soldier, Mackenzie Blue, but I prefer Max. I'm solidly built, with a calm and serious personality. I think I'm probably ex-military, working as a private bodyguard or something now, or maybe I just have that background. We'll see. My stats are Fit +1, Clever -1, Steady +2.

Truth: Okay, so let's get this thing set up. We've got a "Here's The Situation" sheet right here, and we can either roll or just choose from each thing.

Chaos: Hmm ... how about rolling first and then we'll see how we react to what we get?

Truth: Okay, a three ... you're here to explore or research.

Chaos: Just checking, but there's dinosaurs running around all crazy and stuff, right? Is it literally Jurassic Park or can it be, like, I don't know, completely different?

Truth: It can be completely different to Jurassic Park. I think the only constant is, like you said, there are going to be dinosaurs running around all crazy and stuff.

Chaos: One more thing, when does it actually start, like is it with these two arriving on the island, are they with a group, when do they meet the little wild girl Tui, is that the first scene, why am I asking so many questions all in a row without giving you a chance to answer any, when will I stop, am I even able to stop, why hasn't anyone interrupted me yet, why are you just letting me keep going?

Hope: I think we were seeing how far you could take it. Um, I think this is sort of a thing where we get dropped into the middle of the first crisis? Like in Frontier Kingdoms, you don't do the planning or see the slow start of a thing, you just roll and then deal with the first obstacle.

Truth: It's pretty similar to that—is everyone okay with you two being explorers?

Hope: Well, I was sort of thinking that maybe I got called in as an expert in repairs? And Max got assigned as a bodyguard or something? Oh, maybe she was already on the island? Actually this is quite hard if we don't know the situation.

Truth: The story pattern here is, you arrive on the island, you see your first dinosaur, something goes wrong, then it puts you somewhere with dinosaurs going crazy, and you have to get off the island and also maybe solve a mystery.

Chaos: Ooh, I like the mystery part. Maybe Widget and Max are a team already, like whatever reason they're here they got called in together? Because of my character's whole deal I think whatever went wrong had to have gone wrong like at least a few weeks earlier. So either they don't know about that, like they got contracted and never got told that things have gone crazy on the island, or maybe they're being called in to deal with one specific thing?

Order: It could be that we have nothing to do with the operations on the island. Someone is paying us to retrieve something here. Maybe we specialise in this sort of thing. Only nobody told us there were dinosaurs here.

Hope: I'm okay with that. It makes sense, right? We got paid to do this but they didn't tell us all the specifics. They left a lot of very important information out!

Truth: Okay, so it's Widget and Max being sent in to retrieve, let's see ... actually you don't know, you were just given some coordinates and like a tracking app on your tablet there, Widget. It was all very vague and mysterious, but the amount of money being offered made it hard to refuse.

Order: That's good. That works for me. Max has some debts she needs to pay. People she needs to look after.

Hope: Widget just has a lot of personal projects she needs funding for. She's building a teleporter! So far she's at the "explodes instantly" stage, but she's optimistic that with time and money she can get past that.

Chaos: I'm just the kid of someone on the island, I guess, not sure yet, let's see how things go. Tui might change significantly depending on events.

Truth: Okay, so each of you get a rumour at this point. Something you heard about the island. Widget, where did you hear that someone's engineering new species of plants and animals on the island?

Hope: There was like a Reddit thread about it, it was pretty much the only result when I searched the island's name—

Order: Dangerous Dinosaur Island.

Hope: That's the one! Anyway, someone did an AMA, like about how they got hired to work here but then got let go pretty quickly. Mostly the thread got treated as a joke, it didn't get many upvotes, not many people asked serious questions, but it did mention some genetic engineering stuff, it's not really Widget's area so she was just like "Boring!" and didn't pay much attention to it.

Truth: Okay, nice. Max, this maybe relates to how you got the job, but somehow you learned that getting work here normally requires a two-year contract and even the cleaners were getting paid seven figure salaries.

Order: It was from one of my military friends, passing on information about potential jobs. They didn't take it too seriously. Just sort of like, you might want to look into this if you need work.

Truth: You're still not sure if it's true, because whoever hired you two for this doesn't seem to be part of whatever's going down on Dangerous Dinosaur Island.

Chaos: Is that seriously the name.

Truth: If you have a better suggestion I'm sure we'd all be open to hear it. Anyway, Tui, I think this one's a solid fact for you. Compasses don't work right on the island.

Chaos: Yep, that one's true. Just spin around crazily. Makes navigating a hassle, I tell you.

Truth: So, for Widget and Max, how do you get to the island? Helicopter, boat?

Order: Can there be NPCs too? The pilot or whatever?

Truth: Of course, you can even have more people on your team if you want to.

Hope: Maybe we're part of a bigger group, but then something happens to split us up.

Truth: Let's keep that loose for now, see how things play out. So for the transport, probably a helicopter is easiest? Okay, so you get flown in, the weather is hot and humid, the island craggy and covered in lush greenery. Widget, as you're flying over the island towards the landing pad there's a clear area below you, and you see a herd of animals running across the plains towards the trees.

Hope: Oh, animals! Do I recognise them? I remember that Reddit thread so I actually get pretty interested, like are these something weird and new?

Truth: At first you think they're ostriches or something, some kind of large flightless bird, but then you realise, wait, those aren't birds. Those are dinosaurs! They're chasing something, but you only notice it as it vanishes into the trees, so you don't get a good look at it. The dinosaurs, though, what's Widget's dino-knowledge like?

Hope: Should I roll something?

Truth: Why not, roll your Clever and see what comes up.

Hope: 2d6 plus two then, this is kind of nostalgic almost, it's been ages since we did PbtA—oh, double fives, plus two is twelve! Widget is a complete nerd for dinosaurs!

Truth: Okay, here's a question for the group. What's cooler, classic scaly dinosaurs or feathered birdlike dinosaurs?

Chaos: Birdosaurs for sure.

Order: I agree, I like colourful feathered dinosaurs.

Hope: I like both!

Truth: Okay, so Widget identifies this pack of five brightly coloured, red and orange-feathered dinosaurs as Utahraptors, smart predators that hunt in coordinated packs. As you watch they disappear into the trees in pursuit of their prey, leaving no trace behind.

Hope: "Ah! Max! Dinosaurs! I saw dinosaurs!"

Order: "Of course you did, Widget."

Hope: "No really! It's not like that other time! These were Utahraptors I think! They had feathers! They were pretty."

Order: "Dinosaurs don't have feathers, Widget."

Hope: "No they do! They really do! Why would there be dinosaurs here? Do you think this is a Jurassic Park island?"

Order: "That was just a movie, Widget."

Hope: "It was a book too! Is that why we're getting paid so much? Nobody said about dinosaurs though, did they?"

Order: "Nobody really said much about anything. We get to the coordinates, we find the thing, we put it in this case." I hold up a sturdy case. "Then we go home and get paid. Let's not complicate it with dinosaurs, even imaginary ones."

Hope: "But I really did see them ... I think?"

Truth: Okay, fantastic. I'm already enjoying the Max-Widget dynamic. So, soon after Widget spots those dinos—or did she?—something goes wrong. I think you land safely at least, is Max flying the helicopter?

Order: Yes, why not. Just us two feels right.

Truth: So since I want to quickly involve Tui in this, I think things go wrong after you enter the facility. There's no one around, is the thing. One of the few things you were told is that this is an active research base, with dozens of permanent workers. You were given fake IDs and documents to get you inside, you're both outfitted like maintenance workers, but there's no need for any subterfuge because as I mentioned, nobody's around. So Max, what's your first hint that something's off?

Order: Aside from the place being deserted? The power's down. All the doors are stuck open, because they're the magnetic type. There doesn't look like there's damage to the facilities, but it's a mess.

Truth: I think at that point you run into Tui. What's your introduction scene like, Tui?

Chaos: They probably notice someone—or something—is watching them, following them, then there's a voice from behind them, like, "You guys are new." And you see this mass of hair and big dark eyes.

Truth: Okay, so, before Widget and Max can really react to that, there's an echoing screech from somewhere within the facility. Tui recognises it as trouble.

Chaos: Yep, she's like, "Great. Here we go again. Come on, new guys."

Truth: So Widget, in this situation who do you turn to? Do you trust this wild girl or do you wait for Max to make a decision?

Hope: Hmm. Hmmmm. I've gotten into trouble before on missions, when I decided things for myself, and Max is usually a better judge of people than me, so I turn to Max.

Truth: Max, what's your personal worst case scenario here?

Order: Aliens, probably.

Truth: So Max is thinking that aliens have taken over the island?

Order: Not specifically, she's just thinking, this better not be aliens. I think Tui goes ahead a bit and maybe stops and looks back? Max is still standing there, with Widget looking at her for her reaction, so she sort of sighs and nods and they follow after this strange wild girl, but at a distance.

Truth: Okay, Tui again, what makes you realise you're in serious trouble?

Chaos: Serious trouble, okay, probably different to what I usually have to deal with ... maybe I stop suddenly, hold up my hand, then there's that screeching again, actually quieter this time? But that's not great, because that first screech was a hunting screech, and this second screech is a let's-get-out-of-here screech, and I'm pretty sure the screechers aren't scared of us, so that means something way worse is around.

Truth: Yep, I think Tui could be right. The facility is, let's see, I was thinking mostly prefab buildings, efficient and boring designs, but what do you guys think?

Hope: It's all sort of boxy and metal, but quite wide, and there are lots of planters and things around. Flowers and ferns and flax plants, all kinds of greenery even inside.

Chaos: There are some more permanent buildings further along, but they're not safe. The dinos mostly avoid the prefab areas for some reason, maybe they don't like all the metal or plastic or the echoey corridors.

Order: There aren't any glass windows. There are grids of metal or hard plastic instead.

Truth: Right, in the long corridors especially, at the sides there are long gridded windows. This is a fairly flat, clear part of the island, but surrounded by jungle. The facility has been built up against a very steep hill, pretty much a cliff, but the window here looks out across a clear field, mostly bare earth, with a few vehicles and things, some fences, and then the jungle, and from the jungle hundreds of birds are just bursting into the air.

Hope: Oh dear. Is my dino-knowledge helpful here? Can I guess what's coming?

Truth: You can guess and then Tui can confirm or disagree.

Hope: I don't think she gets specific. Just maybe, "Oh, is something big heading this way?"

Chaos: "T-REX! RUN!"

Truth: Okay, so at this point I think we should go over the last three "Here's The Situation" points. First, you know one way off the island. Do you want to choose or roll?

Order: Well, the helicopter we came in on seems obvious, unless that t-rex destroys it.

Hope: Let's do it like before, we roll and then decide if we want to ignore it.

Truth: Okay ... one, call for rescue at a radio station.

Order: Maybe that's a potential option, but I think the helicopter is our clearest exit.

Truth: Okay, so now, why can't you just leave? I'll roll, three, you've got to wait out a storm.

Order: Well, maybe there's a storm rolling in, but more realistically I think there are two things stopping us. One, there's a t-rex right near the helicopter. We have to lure it away or deal with it. Second, the helicopter needs refuelling or it's not going to make it back to the mainland.

Truth: Those are some good obstacles. Okay, I'm going to say that the refuelling station is right there, but yep, with the t-rex around actually getting the fuel into the helicopter is a major issue. The other thing is, you've still got your job to do. Without whatever it is you're supposed to retrieve, neither of you get paid. Oh, and finally, there's a mystery that needs solving. This is kind of appropriate, I rolled a five which is, 'Why are your compasses malfunctioning, and which way is north?'

Chaos: See? It wasn't just rumour. I knew it wasn't just my compass that's screwy.

Truth: There are also a few other things to keep in mind. One, there are dinosaurs here, and that's super weird. Two, what's the purpose of this facility? And three, clearly something bad happened here. Tui might have some of the answers, but she definitely doesn't know everything. Anyway, right here and now you've got a t-rex bursting out of the trees, letting out an ear-splitting roar, then pausing and sniffing the air. You've got a really great view of it through that gridded window, inside this prefab metal and plastic corridor that suddenly feels a whole lot flimsier than it did a minute ago. What do you do?

Chaos: Do I know this area pretty well? I'm trying to think where I've been hiding for most of the time. You said there was a cliff nearby, like the thing's built up against it? I'm thinking that dinosaurs aren't great at climbing. I think I've got a little cave nest up there, with a rope ladder to climb up and down. I saw the helicopter and came to check out the new guys, then all this happened.

Truth: That's all good, and as for your question about knowing the area, I think you've got a move for that.

Chaos: Oh yeah ... huh ... okay, I sort of have a move, Been Around The Block, I can roll if a place gets mentioned, but it's mostly to see if I know how to get there. What is this place anyway, where we are now, what rooms are off these corridors?

Truth: Mostly storage and workshops near the helicopter pads. It also leads into the more permanent part of the base, although Tui, you mentioned earlier that it's much more dangerous in there.

Chaos: I did, yeah, me and my big fat mouth.

Hope: By the way, even if compasses don't work properly, do we still know where our mission target is?

Truth: It's in the more permanent part of the base. Is Max or Widget the navigator?

Hope: Oh, good question. Um. We could both roll plus Clever, and whoever gets the highest normally does the navigating?

Order: I got a four.

Hope: Twelve, Widget has a map on her tablet, I think. Not just the tracking device thing, or whatever it is that detects the retrieval item, but maybe there's a map of this island and the facility?

Truth: Hmm. Hmmmm. Is there though. Did they have that information, and if so did they provide you with it. Oh, I know the situation. You have a topographical map of the island, with the location of the facility. You also have the coordinates of the item you need to retrieve, and that tracking app to actually locate it once you get close. You have been told that if you can access the base's computer system you might be able to download a map. However, the power's off.

Chaos: But maybe not in the permanent parts? Maybe just in this area?

Truth: There's no power in any part of the research base, because the backup generators were not switched on.

Order: I knew there were going to be backup generators. There are always backup generators.

Truth: By the way, this is all fine because we're still setting things up and getting context, but you guys have to do something about the whole t-rex situation you're in. Maybe this is a good time to review the basic moves? They're very descriptive. You can Run!, you can Look Over There!, which is the distraction move, you can Hide!, you can Take My Hand! which is to help someone who's in trouble, you can Just Do It! which is when you're doing something under pressure, you can Fight!, and you can Hold On To Your Butt! which is the general action movie move. By the way, if it's a group action, like if it's all of you choosing to Run!, then the person with the lowest stat rolls.

Hope: I'm guessing that might be me, with -1 Fit.

Truth: Yep, it would be. However, even if you fail, the other two get away safely, unless they choose not to.

Hope: Oh, that's sort of interesting.

Chaos: Don't gotta outrun the t-rex, just gotta outrun the little nerd.

Order: It makes sense, I like that rule. Should we run, then? I think that's what Tui yelled at us to do, and seeing a t-rex and hearing it roar, it seems like a sensible option.

Hope: I guess I'm rolling then? Okay, here goes ... ten! Terror gives me wings!

Truth: Is that with your minus one?

Hope: Oh. No, it's not. Terror gave me ... water wings?

Truth: Partial success, so either you're still being chased, or you run into something else bad.

Hope: Something else bad is more interesting.

Truth: Okay, so the three of you just run for it from this enormous terrifying t-rex, through corridors and past storage rooms and workshops and what look like some kind of testing stations, kind of medical? You're not sure. Max has kept up her exercise regime and Tui's had a couple of weeks of hard cardio training but Widget isn't used to this type of nonsense, she does her best but it's just a bit much for her. I think Max notices her doing that breathless miming I gotta stop thing and pulls all three of you into the nearest room—you're a pretty good distance away from the t-rex at this point, and maybe it didn't even see you, maybe it wasn't even chasing you, none of you were really looking back. Anyway, you're in some kind of medical room, first aid station sort of thing, there are a couple of stretcher beds, plus cupboards with supplies, stainless steel countertops, and through a couple of open doorways you can see what look like a storage space with shelves, and maybe a test lab or something with lots of counters and equipment. It's pretty dark in here. The only light comes from one of those gridded windows.

Chaos: What time is it?

Truth: Late afternoon, the sun is just starting to set.

Chaos: Yep, great, fantastic.

Truth: The place is a complete mess, by the way. The floor is covered in medical supplies and scattered pills and sticky goopy patches where bottles have smashed. It's quiet, though. You've got a chance to catch your breath.

Hope: I get out my inhaler and take a long puff, I'm still panting but to Max I'm like, "I ... TOLD ... you! Dinosaurs!"

Order: "You did. I should have listened. Dinosaurs. Wonderful." While I talk I'm opening that case, the one I'm supposed to put the item in once we retrieve it. Inside is this gear I have on my sheet, except instead of an assault rifle it's a compact SMG. I get it out and load it and attach the flashlight, and also check my handgun, make sure it's loaded and ready.

Hope: Oh yes, we have gear! Oh, I have a headlamp! And a toolkit, and my tablet. My toolkit is in a backpack, it's a really fancy one with compartments and like little trays that pop out, I made it myself and it's the most precious thing in the world to me, aside from Max.

Chaos: Aww. I've got a spear, apparently, and a 'terrible stench'. Sorry guys, showers have not been a priority lately. I think instead of the spear maybe I have something smaller? Could it be a machete?

Truth: Where did you get that from?

Chaos: Hmm, maybe I just had one? Maybe I'm just a machete kid? No, okay, it was my dad's. My parents were working here, my mother was a scientist type, and my dad ... actually yeah, he was a scientist too, but he was like an insect guy, hacking through jungles to get to them, and my mum was more like, technical stuff, quantum physics or something, I don't know, I never understood what the heck she was talking about.

Truth: Okay, you've got your dad's machete. Could you all roll plus Clever for me, real quick.

Order: Four.

Chaos: Four.

Hope: Nine?

Truth: Okay. What's Tui's reaction to Max pulling out a bunch of weapons?

Chaos: Intense interest. Just starts babbling away like, "Is that a gun, what type of gun is that? I've got a machete, see, it was my, um, well, it's mine now, it's pretty cool, right? Who are you guys? Why are you even here?"

Order: Max ignoring her, mostly keeping an eye on Widget.

Truth: Widget, you sat on one of the stretchers or something, to catch your breath?

Hope: I didn't even get that far, just a counter. Oh, no, I tried to hop up but I was too short, but there's a little stool there, so I sat on that.

Truth: While Tui jabbers away at Max, and Max checks her weapons, you notice something weird about this room.

Hope: Oh no. What is it?

Truth: You're not sure. There's just something weird about it. Something out of place, or something missing, you can't quite put your finger on it. So, what do you do?

Order: Is this a quiet spot? Can we use safety moves here?

Truth: Ah, I didn't talk about those—and no, remember you didn't roll a full success on your Run! move, so even though it might seem like you're safe, when you open the menu it's like "You can't rest with enemies nearby."

Chaos: That was a weird place to take it but I understand what you're saying perfectly.

Truth: Anyway, once you do get out of trouble properly, there are some moves you can do. Scavenge, to get stuff, Lay Of The Land, to figure out where you are and what's around, and Instruct, which is when you're guiding someone through a tricky task. Anyway, for now the focus is on Widget, who's getting a weird feeling, like something's wrong.

Hope: "Um, guys? Can you both just be really quiet for a second?"

Order: Max stops noisy gun-checking instantly, then shoves her hand over Tui's mouth.

Chaos: Tui goes to protest but then sees the serious look on Max's face and decides to be quiet.

Truth: Without Max's clattering and Tui's chatter, you can all hear it. From nearby—one of the other rooms, either the storage area or the lab, you can't tell for sure—there's a sort of, chirrup, chirrup.

Order: Like a bird?

Truth: Not any bird you've ever heard. It's otherworldly, deeper and with an alien resonance. It's disturbing on a primal level.

Order: Alien birds. I knew it. That's just in Max's head. She's still not 100% convinced this is a dinosaur situation. Maybe the aliens have time travel technology. That's why aliens are so dangerous. You never know what they could be up to.

Chaos: Do I recognise it at all?

Truth: Do you recognise it. Roll fortune, 1d6.

Chaos: Three?

Truth: It's probably a dinosaur.

Chaos: Amazingly useful, thanks so much. Tui definitely says that though. Hisses it in a loud whisper. "Guys! That's a dinosaur! Probably!"

Order: I holster my pistol, check that my knife is loose in its ankle sheath, then get the SMG's strap over my shoulder and hold it at the ready. From here, can I see into the other rooms?

Truth: It's dark, but basically you can. The storage room has tall shelves, and it's even more of a mess than this room. It seems to go back quite a way. The other room has a lot of counters with equipment on them. It looks bigger than this room.

Order: "Stay here. Watch that door." Indicating the door we came in by. The other rooms, I'm picturing the entrances as being quite close to each other? The storage room at the far end of this room, then the lab room to the left or right.

Truth: Yes, that's how it's laid out. The lab room to the right.

Order: I approach cautiously, my SMG at the ready. Flashlight off, for now.

Truth: That chirruping is infrequent, a gap of between around six and twelve seconds between each. It gets louder as you approach the two rooms. Roll, let's see, I think Clever is probably the most fitting.

Order: To figure out where the sound is coming from? That makes sense to me. Four, I can't do it.

Truth: No, you can. It's definitely coming from the storage room.

Chaos: Haha, oh no.

Order: I glance back at the others, just checking them, then switch on my flashlight as I step into the storage room, sweeping around to cover the corners.

Truth: There's a crashing noise, but you don't see anything. Tui, Widget, what are you doing?

Chaos: Freaking out! I get that this big tough woman with the guns is like, soldiering or whatever but you don't go looking for dinosaurs! You get away from them!

Truth: So are you running?

Chaos: I really want to but I'm staying put for now, but I am on edge, man. On. Edge.

Hope: I want to help but I know this is Max's area, and I know she wouldn't bug me when I'm doing my thing, so I'm doing my best to just keep quiet and let her do her job.

Truth: Okay, so both of you jump a bit at that crashing but neither of you do anything. Max makes her way deeper into the storage room, disappearing around the corner of a shelf, carefully sweeping her light around, making sure not to miss anything. So when the dinosaur comes crashing out of the other room, she's not in a position to do much about it.

Order: Rats, but fair, but rats.

Truth: Question, out of Tui and Widget who's the shortest?

Hope: Let's roll for it! Five!

Chaos: Four, I'm just a tiny bit teeny-weenier.

Truth: This dinosaur is almost exactly the same height as Tui. It has a rounded bony head with spiky horns and a short beak and even in this dull light its blue and green feathers are magnificent. Widget, you recognise it as a Stygimoloch, a herbivore, but extremely territorial and very keen on establishing dominance.

Hope: "Headbuttasaurus! HEADBUTTASAURUS!"

Truth: Widget freaks out and yells, Tui?

Chaos: "HEADBUTTASAURUS!"

Truth: Tui follows Widget's lead. The dinosaur chirrups and looks around but, oddly, doesn't seem to even notice you. Instead it charges at the wall opposite the lab entrance, crashing hard into it and making a noticeable dent. Now that you're looking, you notice a bunch of other similar dents in the wall.

Hope: I knew something was weird! Um, um, Max is still in the storage room, the dinosaur is between us and her?

Truth: Yep, and now that it's finished with that wall it's looking towards the, let me just roll ... the storage room entrance.

Hope: Oh no! Max! I, um—oh, this one, Look Over Here! I want to do that!

Truth: PbtA remember, you trigger a move by doing something, so what are you doing?

Hope: Jumping up and waving my arms and yelling, like, "Over here! OVER HERE! MAX THERE'S A HEADBUTTASAURUS HERE! WAAAAAH!"

Truth: That'll do it. Roll plus Clever, as ironic as that might seem.

Hope: Eight, plus two is ten!

Truth: Okay, so let's see. Hmm. Okay, full success, what happens is that Widget jumps up and gets the dinosaur's attention, and it charges at her instead of into the storage room, but fortunately Widget has the quickness of wit and presence of mind to leap aside, and the dinosaur goes rushing out the entrance of this little medical room and crashes into the far wall of the corridor outside.

Order: I rush out of the storage room, I see the dinosaur?

Truth: Yep, out there in the corridor, the light's a little better out there. You come out of the storage room just as the dinosaur crashes into the wall.

Order: I'll run forward, shove Widget further away, check Tui's position, then shoulder the SMG and shoot the dinosaur. This is my Soldier special move, Kill Or Be Killed. Rolling plus Steady, seven plus two is nine. I kill it but use up the whole magazine doing it. Better safe than sorry.

Truth: Yep, you empty an entire magazine's worth of bullets into the dinosaur, and it slumps to the ground, beautiful feathers matted with blood, croaking out a final chirrup before dying.

Order: I have an extra clip here, I'll reload.

Truth: Tui, Widget, your reactions?

Chaos: Just kind of in awe, like I have never killed a dinosaur, I've hacked at a couple while they were trying to get me but never actually managed to down one. That was insane, her shooting a dinosaur to death. I'm speechless.

Hope: I think I'm maybe used to Max doing this sort of thing? Or maybe not, maybe I've never seen her in actual combat before. Just probably beating people up or disarming people, never actually shooting anything. So I'm a bit shaken.

Order: After reloading my gun I turn to Tui. "Does noise attract them?"

Chaos: "Uh. Maybe?"

Order: Narrowed eyes, writing off Tui as useless for intel from this point forward. I check on Widget. "Are you okay?"

Hope: "I think so ... that was a dinosaur, Max. You just killed a dinosaur."

Order: No real response to that. There was nothing in the storage room? I go and check the lab area, where the dinosaur came from, sweeping quickly.

Truth: No other dinosaurs in there, it's clear. What are you two doing while Max does that?

Chaos: Going out to the dinosaur. I've never seen one like this. Not up close, not when it wasn't trying to eat me or whatever. I reach out to hesitantly touch it, my hand shaking. "Oh. They're soft. The feathers are soft."

Hope: I'm hovering in the entrance, my attention split between Tui out by that dinosaur and Max checking the other room. Half of me is expecting something to jump on Max in that room, and half of me is expecting the dinosaur to come back to life and jump on Tui.

Truth: Neither of those things happen. It's eerily quiet.

Order: Can we Scavenge? I call to Widget, "See if you can find anything useful. Medical supplies, drugs, anything."

Truth: Okay, so this is you and Widget? Do you involve Tui?

Order: I tell Tui to stay out there, and to yell if she sees anything moving.

Chaos: "O-Okay, boss!"

Truth: So, for a safety action it's the person with the highest stat who rolls, so it's Widget again. Roll plus Clever to see what you find.

Hope: Eight plus two is ten, I find something good I guess!

Truth: Oh, and it's time for our first Tell A Story segment! Who wants to tell a story?

Order: I have something in mind. It's 'Why You Enlisted' except it's actually about why I partnered up with Widget. This is while she's sorting through boxes and jars and bottles, and I'm helping by shining my light and holding things. Also processing recent events. So I start with, "I was recommended against partnering with you."

Hope: Not really listening properly, focused on finding useful stuff. "Huh? Recommendations, what? Wait, what? By who?"

Order: "Your old boss. She loved you, don't misunderstand. She just said you were ... well, she didn't think you were suited to field work."

Hope: "I mean I get where she was coming from, this stuff is terrifying."

Order: "I thought she was right, at first. That's why I chose you. More than any of those others, I thought you were someone who needed protecting."

Hope: "Well, again, I'm not disagreeing."

Order: "But just now, when that dinosaur came charging out, and I was in the storage room. You didn't run, or freeze up."

Hope: "I guess not ... oh, this might be useful, put it in the maybe pile ... but, I mean, I was freaking out. I wasn't really thinking. I just sort of ... reacted."

Order: "You're always thinking. Even when you're freaking out. You did exactly the right thing to get the threat away from us. From both you and me. I'm glad you're my partner, Clara."

Hope: I stop sorting, and smile up at Max. "I'm glad you're my partner too, Mackenzie! Okay, I think this is stuff we can use." DM, what stuff can we use?

Truth: For a full success, you find some sedatives, which can either be administered orally or via injection, some pretty powerful stimulants in pill form, and enough supplies to make a basic first aid kit.

Chaos: Oh, can I carry that? I have an 'old backpack'.

Hope: Sure! Widget was just sort of frowning about how to jam it in with all her stuff, so she's happy to hand all the medical stuff over to Tui. "By the way, this is weird but ... what's your name? Why are you here?"

Chaos: "Oh. I'm Tui. Tui Moon. I came here with my parents. They're like. Scientists. Uh. How about you?"

Hope: "Call me Widget, and that's my partner Max, we're with—"

Order: Max very smoothly cutting Widget off. "We should move. Widget, is your thing picking anything up yet?"

Hope: "Oh right, I should probably check that." Is it picking anything up?

Truth: I'll roll fortune, since it's pretty much chance as to whether you're close or not. Oh wow, a six! Yes, you're getting a strong ping. It's coming from deeper in the facility, the permanent parts. You have a definite direction.

Hope: "The ping says that-a-way!" I start marching off straight towards the ping zone.

Order: I'll let Widget lead the way, but I'm concerned about my lack of ammo. As we walk I'm mentally reviewing the last dinosaur encounter, going through each step of it, what I did wrong, what I did right. This while also keeping good situational awareness.

Chaos: I'm keeping quiet and just following along behind. I'm sort of thinking, like, I don't get what's up with these two, but they definitely seem to have more of a clue than I do, so maybe I'll just follow along for now. Plus they came on that helicopter so they'll probably leave on that helicopter and probably they could squeeze me in, right? I'm little!

Truth: You're not concerned about heading into the danger zone?

Chaos: Not so much! I mean you saw what Max did to that dinosaur, she's a dino-killer! I feel pretty safe with her around, I don't mind telling you. Plus I've been curious about some of the stuff in there. I only got to see parts of it, and mostly while it was getting built.

Truth: So, let's see, just thinking about one particular aspect of this ... okay, well anyway, the prefab part of the base ends, in another door-that-should-be-shut, but right now it opens on to like a flashy corporate foyer. There's something of a nature theme, lots of plants around, subdued lighting—whoops, no, there WOULD be subdued lighting if the power was on. Without it the atmosphere is a bit gloomy. It's not exactly open, it's crowded with hanging plants and such. Go ahead and roll me Clever real quick.

Hope: Seven plus two is nine!

Chaos: Three, Monique thinks I'm dumb.

Order: Eleven, with double sixes.

Truth: Okay, wow, if only this game had crits. It's not a big thing anyway, but both Max and Widget notice that there's absolutely nothing dinosaur-themed here. In fact most of the decorations, pictures on the walls, and even the name above the big curving reception desk—STRANGE CHARM DYNAMICS—all seem to be more of the quantum physics variety.

Chaos: Oh snap, they've opened a time rift! AU portal! ...I definitely don't say, since I noticed none of this and wouldn't understand it even if I did.

Hope: "What ... is this place?"

Order: "It doesn't matter. We get the item, we get back to the helicopter, we leave."

Chaos: "What's the item? Guys? What's the item?"

Hope: "Just a thing that's important to someone." I think Widget catches herself then, Max is probably busy frowning at something, so Widget shuts herself up and changes the subject. "Oh, anyway, Tui, you said your parents are scientists, what fields?"

Chaos: "Just like bugs. And weird stuff. I don't know." Tui gets a bit, like, don't-want-to-talk-about-it when her parents are mentioned. I am deliberately leaving their fate in a state of quantum flux, to go with the themes we've got here.

Order: Schrödinger’s Absent Parents.

Chaos: You got it! Oh, anyway, maybe there's a map here, like a guide to get to the other areas?

Truth: Yep, it's not detailed but very clear. Cross-referencing Widget's direction-finder and the map, it definitely looks like the thing you're after is in the main laboratory, which is right this way!

Chaos: I feel a huge 'but' approaching.

Truth: It's completely collapsed. That part of the facility is underground, or at least lower than this part. There are stairs leading down but the entire roof has fallen in. You might be able to squeeze through, with time and effort, but it looks pretty unsafe.

Order: Is it just this part that collapsed?

Truth: Looks like it. Everywhere else is weirdly fine.

Order: Does it look like the work of dinosaurs?

Truth: No, it pretty obviously isn't. It's too precise for that. This whole foyer area, there are a few knocked-over pot plants and things like that, but it's not all messed up. Not like that medical room. The blocked-off stairway looks deliberate, like planted explosives deliberate.

Order: "Somebody really didn't want anyone getting down there."

Chaos: "Or, like. Anything getting out."

Hope: "Tui, how long have the dinosaurs been here? Were they here when you arrived?"

Truth: They're a pretty recent arrival. Maybe three or four weeks. It's been hard to keep track of time for Tui.

Chaos: What the DM just said, except in Tui's voice.

Truth: Feel free to embellish, I'll correct you if you're really wrong. Or maybe I won't. Teehee.

Chaos: Your mask is slipping, DM, we can see the evil beneath. "Well, um, it all happened pretty suddenly. Like, there were some general warnings? But those happened all the time so everyone was just like, pffft. But then, yeah. Dinos everywhere." Tui kind of trails off there. Remembering some stuff she's been trying not to think about.

Hope: "Well, um, oh, maybe we could try to find those backup generators? Get some lights on at least?" I just had another thought, don't we need power to operate the fuel pump? For the helicopter?

Truth: That is such a good question. I think you do need power. I think that's your big obstacle, getting the power back online.

Hope: The path to that area isn't blocked, right?

Truth: Probably not. The generators aren't marked on the foyer map. They're more of a background thing, why would visitors or general staff need a map to them?

Hope: I guess that's a pretty good point. Where would generators be—what IS marked on the map?

Truth: Let's see ... landing pad and maintenance, that's where you came in. The prefab part. Aside from that you've got the offices, the lab, IT, living area, and the control room.

Order: Is it literally labelled 'The Control Room'?

Truth: No, this is mostly Max's interpretations of the corpspeak labels.

Hope: Can I roll to guess which would be the most likely to have the generators nearby?

Truth: You don't have to roll, your guess is that they're near the IT section. However, it's possible that they could be activated remotely, maybe from the control room.

Chaos: Oh, I can use my move here! Since places got mentioned! I want to roll for the control room. Oh man, double 1s! Nobody was stupid enough to let me anywhere NEAR the control room! I got no clue!

Truth: Is there anything special on a miss for that?

Chaos: The DM will tell you the reason you swore you'd never go back.

Truth: Hmm. The control room is dinosaur central. It's by far the most dangerous part of the entire complex, at least that you've seen. You are terrified of it. There is nothing that could make you go there.

Chaos: I say nothing but fervently hope nobody mentions going to the control room.

Hope: "Maybe we could try the control room?"

Chaos: "Nope! Nope nope nope, you do not want to go there, trust me, BELIEVE me, that is the exact opposite of a place you want to go. Seriously. For real reals."

Order: Max is instantly suspicious. "What are you hiding."

Chaos: "I'm not hiding anything! It's all out in the open! I'm telling you, the control room? Is dinosaur GROUND ZERO. They're having a dino party up there, it's crazy. I'm not lying, it's true! Why would I lie!"

Order: "I don't know. Why?"

Chaos: "Huh? No! Don't twist it around, I'm telling the truth! Widget, you believe me, don't you?"

Hope: "Well, I'm not really sure ... Max is usually pretty good at reading people ... so if you ARE hiding something this might be a good time to tell us about it?"

Chaos: It also might be a good time to consider, AM I hiding something? Do I have some sort of secret agenda going on?

Truth: That's up to you, Tui Moon. I do have an NPC goal chart here, want to have a little peek for some inspiration?

Chaos: That could be helpful, although I did just think of something. Maybe there are other survivors around, and maybe Tui has a good reason to want to avoid them. I think that's the thing she's not talking about here. The thing she isn't mentioning. It's not JUST dinosaurs you have to be careful of, on Dangerous Dinosaur Island. Then again she hasn't seen anyone else for a few days. It could be that they all got eaten, or escaped.

Hope: Does she tell us that?

Truth: She doesn't get a chance, because this slightly tense moment is interrupted by a nearby screeching.

Chaos: "Oh crap. Screechers. They're the worst. They always show up in groups and they, like, talk to each other. It's so flipping creepy."

Order: I have my SMG at the ready, looking around for possible exits. Where are we? Back at the reception desk?

Truth: I think so, clustered around the map.

Order: Snap decision, we head for the IT department. Widget probably mentioned that the backup generators are near there.

Hope: I don't know for sure though, don't be disappointed if I'm wrong!

Truth: Everyone roll Clever for me, just for fun.

Chaos: Oooh it is NOT for fun you LIAR. I got a nine though, that's not too bad.

Order: Five.

Hope: Six plus two is eight!

Truth: Max is distracted organising everyone and focusing on conventional threats. You're all heading through towards the IT section, the foyer is a big open dome sort of thing, but paths are formed and areas are closed off by big thin hanging walls, do you get what I mean? Plus pot plants and stuff, and sculptures, it's all very nicely designed but nothing's just a straight path, it's always curving or with a water feature in the middle or something. It's really fancy but very stressful to navigate through, especially with all that screeching around. Anyway, Max does a good job of getting you moving in the right direction and covering both ahead and behind, but the thing she misses, that Tui gets first and Widget gets a second later, is that the screechers doing the screeching aren't the ones hunting you. They're the distraction, and the coordinators, for the completely silent screechers who are already in place.

Hope: Noooo that's so creepy and scary, I don't like that, nooooo~

Truth: There's one more thing about them, these screechers. They're really good at keeping still, and they can angle their feathers to create a kind of camouflage effect, which means sometimes you won't even see them until ... they ... STRIKE!

Hope: Ahhhh stop this bus I want to get off! What do we do! Are they attacking?

Truth: I'm going to freeze the scene like three seconds before the first one attacks. Give you what's going to happen if you do nothing. First, there's going to be a really loud screeching from all around you. The attack signal. Second, the screecher that's nestled among those plants just a few metres from Max is going to leap at her, and the screecher that's on the hanging wall around half a dozen metres from Tui is going to leap at her. Third, the rest of them are going to come running in from all angles. That's the bad news. The good news, although it's not that great, is that these things aren't that big. Just about the size of large cats.

Chaos: I mean you describe them like that but honestly it doesn't make me feel good? If you say the horrible dinosaurs leaping at our faces are cat-sized? That's not actually better?

Truth: So, that's what will happen if no one does anything. Tui, you've spotted the one about to leap at Max. Widget, you saw the one that's going to leap at Tui. Max, you haven't seen anything. What do you all do?

Hope: I, I grab whatever's closest and I just throw it at the thing! I don't know, it looks kind of small, like only about the size of a large cat, it might work!

Truth: Whatever's closest, okay, I'll go ahead and roll fortune to see how appropriate it is ... six, wow, okay, you lucked out there. What did you grab?

Hope: I was thinking maybe a pot plant but that doesn't seem like a six, really. Oh, maybe we're passing a sculpture, and it's sort of spiky, you know sometimes there are sculptures made from a bunch of plastic pipes? Do you know what I mean? Anyway, the thing I grab is a solid heavy piece of plastic pipe and it's just exactly the right shape and size for desperately throwing at an awful dinosaur cat thing.

Truth: Okay, we'll do your roll in a second, Tui?

Chaos: I leap at the thing with my machete! I think maybe I've run into these things before, I know they hunt in packs and talk to each other but the other thing I know is that even though I'm small, I'm bigger than they are, and if I leap at them first they usually run away instead of leaping at me.

Truth: Okay, hmm. I think for Widget it's a Look Over There! roll, for Tui it's a Fight! roll, does that sound about right? Widget, you roll yours first, it might affect Tui's roll. Oh, but I think roll with Fit rather than Clever.

Hope: That's fair. Eight, minus one is seven, just barely a partial success.

Truth: Okay, I forgot to say take plus one for your excellently throwable piece of modern art, but it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Let's see, partial success on a distraction ... the dinosaur notices you. Okay, we'll deal with that in a second. Tui, your fight roll? Plus one for your weapon.

Chaos: Seven, plus two for Fit, plus one for the weapon, just barely a ten.

Truth: Okay, nice, full success gets you ... oh, this is interesting. You've bought a precious moment for someone to help you. It's kind of nice that there's no real 'take down a dinosaur' move.

Order: Except my one, the special move for The Soldier.

Truth: True, it really does make it a special thing for you. Um, anyway, let's think about this for a second ... so this all happens at once, there's that hideous screeching from all around but before either of the screechers can leap Widget grabs that pipe and hurls it at one, knocking it off the bit of wall it was clinging to, and Tui just charges full tilt at the one in the plants, swinging her machete and just barely clipping it as it leaps, drawing blood but ... no, actually, that one runs away, leaving a trail of blood behind, but Tui sees two creeping up through the plants, and Widget, that one you hit has its beady little eyes set firmly on you now, scrambling to its feet in less than a second. Max. Even though that happened in just a couple of seconds you're now fully aware of the situation. You've got Tui near you, with more of those things creeping up, and Widget a little way back, with a screecher about to leap at her. What do you do?

Order: Focus on the one about to leap at Widget. Snap shot from my SMG, just one bullet, then yell "TUI, RUN!" while I get to where Widget is, full focus on that one threatening her.

Truth: Okay. Okay. This isn't your kill move, I'm getting. I think it's Take My Hand!, because you're putting yourself in danger to help someone else. I'll give you yelling to Tui as a free action, so just roll with, um, I think Steady, to keep it together, keep calm, and maybe even hit that thing when you fire.

Order: Six, plus two is eight, partial success.

Truth: You miss with that one bullet, in any case, and now you have to choose. Either you two get separated from Tui, or you get Widget out of trouble but you'll be in even worse trouble.

Order: We're separated, that makes a lot of sense to me.

Truth: Okay, I'm going to cut at that point then. Max is the focus character, she sees Tui, she sees Widget, she yells to Tui to run while shouldering her SMG and she fires that one shot and we cut to black. For a few seconds, silence. Then heavy breathing, hard footsteps, we see Tui doing what Max told her, running hard out, all that hair trailing behind her, machete in hand, through this dimly lit foyer, she passes a sign and the camera stops to focus on it: IT DEPARTMENT. Tui has run out of the shot, and we see a couple of cat-sized shapes run past the IT sign after her. Back to Widget and Max, Max has some bleeding scrapes on her arm, Widget looks unhurt but stressed and scared. You two aren't running, you're backing away from something—or a pack of somethings—that Max is taking carefully measured single shots at. We see another sign. CONTROL CENTRE.

Chaos: So it IS just called that.

Truth: Yes, it is just called that now, I don't know, what do you call a control centre except a control centre? It's the control centre!

Order: And the most dangerous place to be, according to Tui. Can I do a flashback, for the sake of narrative convenience?

Truth: Mark one Weight, and maybe. What's the flashback?

Order: I want some way of talking to Tui, either a walkie talkie or an earpiece.

Truth: Hmm. We won't do that just yet, let's see how things go and what makes for a more interesting story first. So, the situation is that Tui is running into the IT department, where the backup generators probably are, and Max and Widget are headed up some stairs to the control centre. Both of you are being pursued by screechers. What do you do?

Hope: Oh, could I maybe use my special move? Jury-Rig, whip up a makeshift solution to a problem?

Truth: What's the problem, and what's your solution?

Hope: The problem is all these dinosaurs, so my solution is—oh, I have something! The doors that are stuck open, could I get one to close somehow?

Truth: That sounds reasonable. You scurry ahead while Max covers you, working on something to get this door shut and sealed. Roll it.

Hope: Okay, here goes ... eight, plus two is ten, I did it!

Truth: Yep, and you didn't even trap Max on the other side, which would've been the consequence for a partial success. Max, want to tell us how it went from your perspective?

Order: I didn't really understand what Widget was babbling about, but I got that she had a plan, so I focused on keeping those screechers back. Like Tui said, they're smart and they work together, but that's not always an advantage. If they were stupid they might just mob us, which probably would've taken at least one of us down. But they were cautious, hanging back, retreating when injured, and probably a little fascinated by the loud noises of my gun. I used all of that to keep them at bay while Widget worked, then when she called for me to join her I trusted her completely and did just that, the door sliding shut and sealing behind me. "Widget. How did you do that?"

Hope: "Complex technobabble! Excited and completely incomprehensible explanation! I didn't know if it would work but then it did and the door's shut!" Can I get it open again?

Truth: Maybe!

Hope: I'll take it! So where are we, actually? Are there a whole bunch of dinosaurs on the other side of this door with us?

Truth: No, it's oddly quiet. Dark too, the sun has set by this point, so the only light is from Widget's headlamp and Max's flashlight. You run your lights over dozens of screens, abandoned coffee mugs, the whole place silent and still. For now, you've bought yourself time to take a breath. Think about what you want to do as a safety move while we head over to Tui!

Chaos: Hi. I'm in the dark, aren't I.

Truth: Ooh, you very well might be. Nothing on your sheet that could be used for light?

Chaos: Nope, just my machete, my ragged clothing, some edible plants, my backpack, plus the medical supplies we scavenged. And of course, my terrible stench.

Truth: Okay, well, I guess first let's see how screechers feel about the dark. That'll be a fortune roll ... three, they can take it or leave it.

Order: In the dark, their screeching could lead other predators to them.

Truth: True, so when it gets dark they become ... completely ... silent.

Chaos: Well that's just GREAT news, isn't it. Oh, I want to roll my thing—wait, am I running from them still? Should I do a roll for that first?

Truth: No, we come in on Tui inside the IT department. It's a big open plan office, with the computer mainframe stacks in a separate room. Tui's crouched inside a cubicle, trying to control her breathing and listen for movement.

Chaos: Did I give the screechers the slip?

Truth: Anything's possible!

Chaos: Uh huh, yep, it sure is. Okay. Okay. I remember the others talking about turning on the power, and that it's probably in this area where I am. Can I use my thing to see if I know where the generators are?

Truth: Sure, maybe some things are clicking for you, maybe Widget described what generators look like and it's ringing some bells in your memory brain.

Chaos: That's a weird way to put it but okay, here I go rolling ... six, crap, my memory brain is utter bunk.

Truth: Nope, you remember it pretty clearly. You were actually in this IT department when everything went crazy and the dinosaurs showed up. You hid in the generator room with some other people. But you were the only one to get out alive. Everyone else got eaten. In the generator room. While you hid. And had to listen. And that's why you don't want to go anywhere near the generators.

Chaos: I really hate missing on that move, I truly do. Okay. Um. Hmm. I'm kind of stuck, then. Maybe that's Tui's scene here? She has a flashback and then just sort of cowers in the dark? Back to the others?

Truth: If you're okay with that, if there's nothing else you want to do?

Chaos: I'm good for now, maybe Max and Widget will figure out something that might help me in my position.

Truth: Okay, we'll go back to Max and Widget. Are you doing a safety move?

Order: Maybe scavenge again, mostly looking for a way to remotely activate the generators.

Hope: That sounds good to me, it might solve our problem instantly! Well, one of our problems. Sort of.

Truth: Sounds like a plan, tell a story and roll plus Clever.

Hope: I guess it's my turn to do one, let's see ... oh, something inefficient that infuriates me, the layout of this place! "Don't you think it's weird, Max? Nothing about this place makes any sense to me. Even putting aside the dinosaurs, and the collapsed roof blocking those stairs, it's just so inefficient. What even IS this place? What were they doing here?"

Order: "I don't know." I'm thinking about those rumours I heard, about the two year contracts and the ridiculously high salaries. I'm thinking, you don't have to pay anyone if everybody's dead. I'm thinking, maybe it wasn't dinosaurs who killed all the workers. I'm thinking, this feels big, and wrong. "Probably nothing good."

Hope: "That's for sure! I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel like this is the worst job we ever took. We should've listened to the boss. She tried to warn us."

Order: "Did she? I don't remember that."

Hope: "When we signed off, when we took the contract! Usually she's like 'break a leg, you two!' but this time she was just like, 'good luck out there'. I should've listened to her."

Order: "Huh." Should Widget roll now, to see if we turn up anything?

Truth: Oh right, the roll! Yes, do that.

Hope: I'm a clever girl I'm a clever girl I'm a clever girl—yes! I am a clever girl! Eight plus two is ten!

Truth: So when Max says 'huh', it's because she found a soft red glow, and when Widget examines it, yep, that looks a lot like the button that will start the emergency generator reboot process.

Hope: "Bingpot!" I press it instantly with zero hesitation!

Truth: There's a pretty satisfying heavy clunking noise. The light turns green. Nothing else happens.

Hope: "Uh..."

Order: "Did it work? Do we need to do something else?"

Truth: Tui, you hear a sort of whirring noise.

Chaos: I think I was just sitting there with my head down. When I hear that noise my head whips up and my machete is in my hand, gripped tight and at the ready.

Truth: Back to Max and Widget, you two don't hear anything, until the fluorescent lights flicker on, and the screens around you come to life one by one.

Hope: "It worked! We did it, Max! We did it!"

Order: "We pressed a button, don't get too self-congratulatory."

Truth: Back to Tui again, the lights are coming on, and the mainframe area too, all those computers booting up, and there's a sudden chilly gust of air—this area is usually kept cold, for computer efficiency purposes. You also hear a scuttling, lots of small things moving quickly and suddenly.

Chaos: Gulp.

Truth: So, I actually think this counts as you overcoming the first obstacle, restoring power, so you all get to pick an advanced move.

Hope: Oh, exciting. Let's see, I can either gain the ability to build something big, with the help of you two, or I can make a bomb. I'm not really so into bombs? I'll take the construction thing. Oh, maybe I can figure out how to get past that blockage!

Order: I think I'll take Close Quarters Expert. I've observed these dinosaurs. They're just animals, like anything else. I'm confident I could take one in a fight.

Truth: What does that move do? Give you a bonus when you fight?

Order: When I Fight! I improve my result by one level, so a miss becomes a partial and a partial becomes a full.

Truth: Wow. That's pretty powerful. How about you, Tui?

Chaos: Are we likely to enter any kind of 'wilderness' in this thing?

Truth: Doesn't really seem like it's going that way.

Chaos: That's what I thought. In that case Fade Away seems a bit useless, so I'll go with Hoarder. I can pull stuff out of my backpack and maybe it's useful!

Truth: Now the other thing that happens is what's referred to as an 'Extinction Event'.

Chaos: Well now, doesn't that sound lovely.

Truth: Let's see, I'm just ... no, okay, I got it. For Max and Widget, up in that control room, some of those screens that flicked on show images from camera feeds, around the island. You see jungle, hills, big rocks, little rocks, weird rocks, mundane rocks, and of course a few dinosaurs doing their dinosaur biz. There's one feed in particular that catches your attention. It shows a wide view outside the prefab part of the base, with the helicopter landing pad, and there's your helicopter, still sitting there, still safe. That t-rex is asleep in the background, but that's not what you notice. The thing that you notice is the sky. The clouds are moving very strangely. Almost like they're vibrating, and some of them are jumping backward, like the footage from the camera is caught in a three second loop, except just for that one part of the image, that one cloud.

Order: "That ... is not normal."

Hope: "On the bright side, the helicopter looks fine? Yay?"

Truth: Tui, down in the IT department you don't see any of that. You're underground, probably, as far as you can tell, or in any case there are no windows. The lights are on now, and the computers are booting up, and every few seconds you feel a distinct ... pulse. It's like everything shakes, except not physically. You feel a warm wetness on your lip. Your nose is bleeding.

Chaos: Ah yes, the universal sign of weird nonsense, sudden nose bleeds.

Truth: And I think that's where we'll end this session!

Hope: Oh no! It makes sense to stop here, but oh no! I'm really looking forward to the next one. I hope we don't all die!

Order: That was fun, I'm looking forward to continuing as well. We overcame the obstacle, but the mystery remains.

Chaos: It's definitely a blast, but at the same time I'm pretty glad it's a one shot. I've already sort of had enough of dinosaurs. Plus I'm kind of remembering, like, there was a reason we moved on from PbtA? I'm not saying it's a bad system. Just like, yeah. You can have enough of a thing.

Hope: I think it works really well for this, though. What I mean is, there wasn't any time when I felt like it being PbtA took away from the experience? But then again I don't really think about mechanics too much. Um, I like the character classes, I think we all got to pick something we like.

Order: I don't usually play a soldier, but it fit me better than I expected. I'm glad I didn't pick The Doctor, which was my second choice.

Chaos: Honestly I'm not completely on board with Tui, but I think that's mostly just one shot syndrome. You know me, I'll always take a novel over a short story, a TV series over a movie. I need time to get to know someone! Anyway, yeah, this is good times. I'm looking forward to the second part, where we all get put in a zoo after being sucked through a dimensional portal into Dinosaur Universe.

Hope: I have a question. How much of this game is in the rules, and how much did you make up?

Truth: There's a lot of stuff to draw on here, they did a really good job providing a lot of little hooks. I'll probably talk more about that once we've finished properly, but for example, every area has some prompts for potential problems and so on. I had to modify a lot, especially with the power being off, but the example problems and incidents in the rules were really useful. Like with the medical room where you had a rest, the prompt was something like, there's a dinosaur in here high on pills and looking for more.

Chaos: Oh wow, headbuttasaurus was high as a kite.

Truth: That's why I was randomly rolling for its reactions.

Hope: What about things like the lab being blocked off, was that in the rules?

Truth: Yep, one of the prompts for the foyer, your path is blocked. Oh, and here's something to consider between sessions: maybe, just like the labs being blocked off deliberately ... dot dot dot...

Chaos: Oh. The power was also turned off on purpose. Oh man. What the flip did we do.

Truth: We'll find out next time, maybe? I guess we'll see!

#replay #ttrpg #escape from dino island #actual play

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cassolotl · 7 years

Text

Autistic Survey: Results

As you may be aware due to my splashing this all over my social network presence, I’ve been running a survey of autistic people for 11 days, since January 19th 2017.

There were 1340 usable responses at closing time. This is after I removed one duplicate, removed two or three abusive responses, and removed one at the request of the participant. I promoted on Tumblr, Twitter and Reddit, and I’m aware that others promoted on Facebook on my behalf. There’s a more detailed breakdown of where everyone came from further down.

This survey was ultimately pretty aimless and led by my own curiosity. I wanted to know how we as autistic people tend to think of ourselves, how we identify and describe ourselves, and whether/how we are diagnosed. I wanted to test a few stereotypes that I’ve picked up over the years. I also threw in a couple of questions for my own personal wossname, like monogamy/non-monogamy, and how people feel about Autism Speaks, etc.

I like to do this kind of stuff for fun, and am in no way professionally or academically educated/experienced. Because it’s on the internet, self-selecting, and mostly promoted on a small number of social networks, the results are hella biased and can’t really be held as representative of any group except autistic users of Tumblr, Twitter and Reddit. Still, with over 1,300 responses, I think the results are pretty interesting.

You can see the results in full on Google Sheets here. Beware, it is huge and unwieldy. Feel free to make a copy of the sheet and mess about with the stats however you want; if you publish anything using them I’d appreciate a link back to this blog post. :)

Read on for wild and amateurish speculation!

IN RELATION TO THE AUTISM SPECTRUM

I’ve seen people refer to themselves in so many different ways, and with varying capitalisations, so I was curious to see what was most common.

Generally, people preferred not to capitalise autistic, aspie, or autie. People preferred “autism spectrum” over “autistic spectrum”. Aside from that, people overwhelmingly preferred identity-first language - “I am autistic” rather than “I have autism”. The fourth most popular was Asperger’s Syndrome, which I thought was interesting, because my understanding was that it’s slowly being phased out.

The top 5 ways for us to describe ourselves were:

I'm autistic - 66.3%

I'm on the [autism] spectrum - 40.8%

I'm Autistic - 30.9%

I have Asperger's Syndrome - 29.9%

I have an ASD (autism spectrum disorder or autistic spectrum disorder) - 23.1%

It’s also worth noting that this question let you choose more than one answer, and lots of people chose both capitalisations. By this I mean that it was not uncommon for one person to choose both “I am autistic” and “I am Autistic”.

DIAGNOSIS

For this question, participants could again select as many as applied. I wanted to allow people to, for example, tell us that they had been formally diagnosed in childhood and self-diagnosed later - or that they had been formally diagnosed as a result of self-diagnosing and then being later diagnosed by a specialist.

While the survey was ongoing, I had a conversation with someone who was opposed to self-diagnosis and felt that it shouldn’t have been an option on the form. I didn’t feel I could remove it so late in the game, and anyway I knew that if it hadn’t been an option I would’ve had to process hundreds of people’s manual write-in “i’m self-diagnosed” submissions, so I left that option there.

But I also wanted to acknowledge that self-diagnosis is very context-dependent. The best I could think of doing that wouldn’t take an enormous amount of work was to split the results by all self-diagnosed people (including people who are formally or informally professionally diagnosed) and people who are only self-diagnosed.

Here’s the numbers. Only two people didn’t answer this question.

Formal/professional/medical diagnosis - 49.0%

Self-diagnosis (all) - 45.8%

Self-diagnosis (where only this was selected) - 32.5%

Informal professional diagnosis - 22.5%

Formally diagnosed but not told about it at the time - 11.3%

PRE-DIAGNOSIS

I was curious about this because I know a few people who self-diagnosed before they were professionally diagnosed.

This question was single-choice-only, and there was no “other” box. About a third of participants didn’t answer at all - which matches the ~33% who are only self-diagnosed in the last question.

If I had more spoons I might look into whether age plays a part here. A friend of mine suggested that unless you have parents and/or teachers who’re very on-the-ball, you might have to work out what’s going on on your own, and that means that a lot of people might conclude that they’re autistic in their teens - around when a lot of kids are working out, for example, that they’re not straight.

AGE

Many graphs! Here’s the ages of all participants:

I feel I should very remind you here that this statistic shows how biased this survey is. This age graph is more representative of the ages of people who use Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook than it is of autism in the general population by age.

This next graph is a bit more fun though:

Age of diagnosis (red) is relatively spread out, because a lot of folks were diagnosed in childhood - presumably before they could work out they were autistic on their own, and instigated by parents who are a bit sensible and pay attention to how their kids are generally in life. The youngest age of diagnosis was 1, and the oldest 55.

You can also see how around the early teens people started to work out that something was up (blue), and there’s a corresponding bump in the red diagnosis line a few years later as those suspicions turn into formal diagnosis for a chunk of people - 22% of people in an earlier question knew that they were autistic before they were formally diagnosed.

Overall the yellow and blue lines suggest that most people worked out they were autistic, like, 3 years ago - in their early teens. And the red line suggests that a bunch of those people got a formal diagnosis soon after. There are a lot of people, about a third, who haven’t got a formal diagnosis, but perhaps this is not surprising - most participants were only in their late teens to early twenties when they took the survey. Since services and support for autistic people are so bad perhaps there’s not much advantage to getting diagnosed, especially if you’ve made it this far maybe not even knowing you’re autistic.

GENDER

My fave!

I’m sure a lot of you are aware of the anecdotal overlap between the trans/nonbinary and autistic communities. My gender identity clinic doctor, at the oldest gender identity clinic in the world, says that they see about ten times as many autistic people as are in the general population. And for a long time it was believed that autistic people were more likely to be gay - but now that being gay is more socially acceptable, the numbers are starting to converge. (I don’t have a source for this but I’d love one! If you’ve got it, throw it at me.) I’m curious to know whether there’s anything to suggest a similarity between the autistic-and-queer thing and the autistic-and-trans/nonbinary thing.

Again, this survey is very biased. It’s biased by age group and by the places participants came from, and the fact that it was a self-selecting sample on the internet. It would not be reasonable to extrapolate these figures to the general autistic population. On that note, here we go.

This is as many as I could fit onto the chart and still have all the gender labels showing. Here’s the percentages of the top 10:

nonbinary - 34.1%

woman (or girl if younger) - 33.7%

trans - 24.3%

man (or boy if younger) - 23.3%

transgender - 19.8%

agender - 15.9%

genderqueer - 15.8%

cisgender - 15.2%

fluid gender/genderfluid - 12.5%

enby - 11.8%

The low number of people identifying as cisgender is not as indicative as I first thought. It occurred to me that a lot of cisgender people wouldn’t describe themselves as such, and might not even know what it means. A lot of people whose genders differ from the ones they were assigned at birth also don’t relate to the trans/cis labels either.

The list of genders was taken from the annual survey of nonbinary people, which includes man and woman. I also added the three autism-related genders that I’ve ever heard of. There were a few comments in the feedback box by people who were annoyed by having to search through the long list for their gender; I’d guess around 5? But only two people skipped the question, so I’d guess the vast majority of people had no practical problems with it, even if a significant number of people may have disliked it. The wording of the question itself was taken from the results of a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who found the following to be most inclusive: “Which of the following describes how you think of yourself?”

I was nosy about biases based on social networks, so I split the top 10 gender identities by social network:

Reddit is notably less diverse, with a significantly smaller percentage than Twitter and Tumblr for every gender identity except cisgender and man/boy. The only reason I can’t say the same for Reddit vs. Facebook is because Facebook respondents were slightly more likely to say they were cisgender.

It’s worth noting that for Twitter there are only 141 responses, so the respondents here are likely only a few degrees of separation from me - and I am aware that my Twitter followership is mostly queer nonbinary people! (They’re only 10% of respondents though.)

I’ve run a few surveys of subreddit memberships in the past, and the percentage of nonbinary people is usually around 6-7% for the subreddits I tend to spend time in. (/r/bulletjournal, for example, and I ran one for /r/polyamory years ago but I have no hope of finding the URL of the results.) So it’s interesting to me that the autistic people of Reddit are just as likely to be nonbinary than the general population of Reddit.

The subreddits I promoted in were /r/autism, /r/samplesize and /r/neurodiversity.

SEXUAL AND ROMANTIC ORIENTATION

People could pick as many as they felt they identified with for both of these questions, and plenty picked more than one. For example, lots of people feel that terms like bisexual and asexual fit under the queer umbrella and could truthfully check queer and another term for one question.

The top five sexual orientations were:

asexual - 31.2%

queer - 30.3%

bisexual - 23.3%

pansexual - 18.4%

heterosexual - 16.8%

The top 5 romantic orientations were:

queer - 27.3%

panromantic - 25.1%

biromantic - 17.2%

heteroromantic - 15.2%

I don't know - 15.2%

This one I messed up a little. I regret not including “gay” and “lesbian” as checkbox options from the start; I added them at around 100 respondents, though earlier responses containing those words will still be counted in the stats. I also didn’t include “straight” at any point.

I only picked up on “gay” and “lesbian” because someone specifically said that they’re gay and they find the word homosexual to be really unpleasant, so they would have liked for gay to be added to the list. No one asked for “straight” to be included in the list, but a few people did write it in the “other” box.

A few people mentioned in the “other” box that I had missed demisexual and demiromantic off the list. If more than one person mentions a particular label I tend to assume that there’s a lot more who would check the box if it was there, so if I do this kind of survey again I will include them.

RELATIONSHIP PREFERENCES

I have no idea how this compares to the general population or the Tumblr-Reddit-Twitter-Facebook population. But hey, it’s pretty cool, huh? Here it is in number form.

It started out being super non-monogamous, because I am non-monogamous and so a lot of my online circles are too. I could tell when the survey was making it out of my immediate circle, because at around the 300 participants mark it started to get a lot more monogamous.

LIVING SITUATION

I asked about current living situation and ideal living situation, and I’m thinking these figures are mostly representative of the fact that 85% of participants are between 11 and 30 years of age? I’m thinking as people get older they’re more likely to attain independence and an ideal living situation. But I’m not really sure!

56% of people live with the family that raised them, and only 8% of them want to.

30% of participants want to live alone, but only 13% are doing so.

A little over a third of people would ideally like to live with friends, which I think is lovely and a very underrated and under-represented lifestyle choice!

And 20% of us live with partners, whereas 65% of us would prefer that. I wonder how many people living with partners would rather be alone, but it would be too much work for me to find out so there we are. Forever a mystery.

PERSON-FIRST vs. IDENTITY FIRST LANGUAGE

Identity-first language, as in “I’m autistic”. It acknowledges one’s autism as an inseparable part of one’s personality and sense of self.

Person-first language, as in “person with autism”. This seeks to define a person by their humanity rather than by their diagnosis.

I remembered that a while back the National Autistic Society in the UK did a survey and found that autistic people tend to prefer identity-first language. I was curious to see if my results would fit this, and they did - the majority of participants sometimes or always used identity-first language to describe their autism.

This was another question where you could select more than one answer, and there was an “other” box - but it’s very difficult for me to count those. Google Forms tells me 30 people selected “other”, but it doesn’t take into account the fact that some submissions were removed. If this number is accurate, then for perspective it’s less than half of the number who chose “I don’t know”.

DISABLED?

This question asked whether participants would describe themselves as disabled, in whole or in part due to their autism diagnosis.

It seems that 83% of participants sometimes or always describe themselves as disabled due to their autism.

DESCRIBING OUR ASD-NESS

This one was a make-it-up-as-I-go question; for about 100 responses I’d put “disorder” and “condition”, because those were the only terms I could think of. After a few people had entered “neurotype” I added it to the list, and around that time I noticed a few people had put “difference” so I added that too. That means, I think, that over 1,000 people had all four options available to choose from.

Neurotype took the lead pretty fast despite being added after the start, and stayed ahead.

I can kinda imagine how this happened. Disorder is pretty negative, difference is a little condescending for a lot of people, and condition is a very medical-subtext word. They could all, depending on context, carry a less than implication. Neurotype, on the other hand, is a very neutral word. Autism is one of multiple neurotypes, alongside non-autistic, and probably other neurotypes. It puts autistic people on the same level as non-autistic people in terms of power and social status and mental health. It’s interesting, and I can see the appeal.

Again, this was a question that let you choose multiple answers and it’s very difficult for me to count the “other” answers, but Google Forms tells me it’s 146, around 11%. These included words like “disability” and “impairment”, and also terms like “my brain” and “a way of thinking”.

WHERE DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT THIS SURVEY?

Again, a question that lets you choose more than one answer, and the “other” answers are hard to count, but Google Forms tells me it may be around 33, or 2.5%.

I feel like I’ve covered the stuff about diversity and bias regarding the social networks in sections above, so I don’t really have much to say here!

FEELINGS ABOUT AUTISM SPEAKS

This question was just thrown in there because it’s something I’ve always wondered. A lot of people are very angry-shouty about Autism Speaks. Is this the prevalent opinion, or does it just seem that way because of the aforementioned angry-shoutiness?

That’s a yes, most people did not feel good about Autism Speaks. And it’s worth noting that I listed the “other” answers in the spreadsheet because wow.

People skipped having their vote counted as merely “bad” in order to vent some pretty visceral feelings here.

OVERALL SUMMARY, THOUGHTS ETC.

Well, erm, I don’t really know what to say here. We are autistic and we use social networks, I guess? This was a lot of fun for me, and I hope the results are interesting for you too!

I threw this form together hastily, and that probably shows; I think I would be more thoughtful about the wording next time. I also used Google Forms, which is great and accessible and freeeeee but it does have some limitations - mainly in counting the “other” entries and not adjusting its Forms-associated summary graphs when I delete troll or duplicate entries. This is fine, it just takes more time and energy to get the blog post graphs and numbers to be helpful.

So yeah! Thank you for taking part, if you took part! And if you’d like to be notified of a future autistic survey that I may or may not run, please feel free to put your email address here. :)

#original posts #autism #actuallyautistic #actually autistic #autistic survey 2017

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