intoxicated by the urge | Glowfic Constellation

Park Eun-ji finishes carefully placing the final copy of the adorable little calico-with-chocolate-on-her-head avatar with the rest of the text. This isn’t a circumstance that needs anything more complicated than ‘tiny cat pointing dramatically in various poses, sometimes with a stick,’ so she doesn’t take the time to get her avatar any new kind of prop or pose, and just sticks with her current library of premade options. Speed is more important than personalization right now, and Eun-ji doesn't have the time to sink into lovingly creating new adorable ways for a cartoon cat to gesture.

Hey guys! It’s Kitkatcat’s semi-regular reminder that espers are people, not robots!

It would be great if they could be perfectly efficient dungeon clearing machines that can accurately judge risk factors and always respond accordingly. But they’re human, and let’s face it, no human can do that all the time. And sometimes, humans want to have fun with their job, even if their job is really really important!

Clearing dungeons quickly is good! If a dungeon is cleared quickly, resources spent keeping people safe from that dungeon can go elsewhere. The most obvious are espers, yeah, everyone likes thinking of them on the news, but espers are only one part of a system for keeping people safe. There are many officials in charge of detouring civilians around dungeons, or keeping track of missing people and getting accurate counts for rescue missions, or figuring out which sets of teams would be best suited for which dungeon. They all work together to make things easier on the people on the ground! But every person that’s keeping a dungeon safe now is too busy to be able to do the same for a newer dungeon, whether that be finding the portal’s exact location or tracking down all of the monsters that come out or getting word out early that something’s gone wrong. There’s a lot of work to do, and only so many people doing it!

So! In the appropriate circumstances, espers doing their best to close dungeons quickly helps everyone!

Does this mean that all espers should try to close all dungeons as fast as possible? Absolutely not! Lee Tae-gun and Kim Hye-jin's dungeon race got a little bit out of hand, but there were some important factors to remember about their chosen dungeons! The first and most important is that no one was inside any of them, and they were isolated from any really centralized or populated areas. The second is that these dungeons were all well within standard parameters of dungeons of their type. Some dungeons can be unpredictably dangerous, holding unexpected risks or nonstandard monsters, but these were all checked over by sensor specialist espers beforehand. For experienced espers who specialize in combat and clearing, it was just a normal day of work. Everybody gets bored at their day job sometimes, and man-made difficulty in a safe environment (with support staff standing by to help in case of a medical emergency!) keeps everyone ready for if things go wrong in a real emergency. A safe stress test gives important information about what things might go wrong where, and how they can be mitigated and prevented in the future, which makes everyone safer in the long run when something unexpected inevitably happens.

Did both of Quasar's powerful A and S rank espers get a little bit too competitive? Absolutely! The rankings Korea uses are more than just based on raw power - it takes a lot of hard work and determination to get recognized as a high ranking esper. That means that most espers ranked A or higher are very driven and ambitious. Put two very driven people together as partners, and, well... sometimes things go a little bit too far! Quasar does not recommend espers having unplanned dungeon-related competitions for exactly this reason. If you are going to do something, especially when it comes to something as dangerous as dungeon closing, your first priority should always, always, always be safety.

She's got another post planned and half-drafted, but she is not going to be putting that online until and unless ~~idiots~~ driven and ambitious espers start actually copying their idiots. A set of recommended ground rules for racing dungeon clears would seem like encouragement, instead of the urging of caution and risk management, at least this early. She really, really hopes she doesn't have to make that post, but she doesn't have high hopes. People are stupid, and there are several A-ranks who want to make Korea's S-rank tier a bit more crowded. Lee Tae-gun publicly getting into a dumb race - and losing! - with his new partner is just blood in the water for ambition. Some of it will be well planned, some of it won't be. She can't really urge people to do the former this early without some freelance espers without guild support getting the bright idea to be like their idol.

Anyway, that's just planning for the future. For now, she just wants to get the basic explanatory 'this wasn't quite as dumb as it looked, but it's still stupid, don't do it' post up. She gives it another spellcheck, and then throws it out to the vicious wolves of public opinion.

Park Eun-ji

This complete, she goes to see about something like this never happening again, at least not in Quasar. There is a department that is to blame for letting the powerful and high energy and therefore very easily bored espers actually, you know. Get bored. She sends one of the members of that department a direct message over guild chat.

kitkatcat: hey so have you learned your lesson about not underscheduling our star players
kitkatcat: because if not
kitkatcat: don't do that

ChoiBokBok: it wasn't even a very gentle ramp up!!!!!
ChoiBokBok: sunbae hasn't had a partner in years!!!!
ChoiBokBok: I put them on the accelerated schedule!!!!!!!!

kitkatcat: hunny gunny has never been normal or rational
kitkatcat: if you were expecting him to suddenly become normal because he got a partner
kitkatcat: surprise!
kitkatcat: his partner beat him in a race!!
kitkatcat: she's crazy too!
kitkatcat: neither of them are normal, throw out your standard dungeon clear ratio charts
kitkatcat: all of them
kitkatcat: they're useless now

ChoiBokBok: they're still very useful!
ChoiBokBok: even for them, actually, though not for standard scheduling reasons
ChoiBokBok: I now have a much better idea of the level of extended time working to backlash ratio for Kim Hye-jin-nim
ChoiBokBok: it means I don't have to be as worried about dungeons doing something unexpected

kitkatcat: sure sure
kitkatcat: whatever you need to say to not have to give up your comfort spreadsheets
kitkatcat: just don't let them get bored again

ChoiBokBok: THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN BORED AT ALL AFJKDSHTIFDSH

Getting a reaction out of him makes her feel a little better, but it's still going to be a very long day.

taegun fan no. 1183: @youngwoo are you seriously only going to upload that video to insta?
taegun fan no. 1183: you can barely see sunbae's face!

nomu?: ?

taegun fan no. 1183: this video and this face

qt patoo t: oh wow

Assorted Quasar members

Zzzzgirl: that's a travesty, give the people what they want!!
Zzzzgirl: they want that face!!

Tconnoisseur: I'm not sure why you're trying to hide it tbh, there are already memes of just a picture of it online.

Zzzzgirl: yeah!!!!

yoo-min-max: have you guys seen the meme with Kim Hye-jin?
yoo-min-max: hang on let me find it

nomu?: this one^*?

yoo-min-max: yesssss

taegun fan no. 1183: oh me too bc same sis

* A gif of Hye-jin saying "I'm really enjoying Korea!" above a gif of Tae-gun's face with the text "Korea:" written on top.

Assorted Quasar members

Zzzzgirl: yesssss get it girl

discountraidcaptain: I know it's all in good fun, but there are pictures of espers with all kinds of faces and that doesn't mean any of the emotions are accurate or endorsed.

beancounter: also it's dickish
beancounter: would you guys be joking about this meme if Kim Hye-jin were in here or if Lee Tae-gun actually read the chat.
beancounter: if you wouldn't, here's a hint
beancounter: you're being a dick

Min Woo-young

youngwoo: yeah Kim Hye-jin is not here and most of you guys don't know her so maybe chill a bit
youngwoo: sunbae is fair game though if he wants to object he can do so himself

taegun fan no. 1183: ...yeah ur right sorry

yoo-min-max: you're right I didn't think about that 😦

Assorted Quasar members

Zzzzgirl: yeah, sorry.

Min Woo-young

When Hye-jin wakes up, she'll have a cute cat video waiting for her in her inbox.

Awwww. Thank you, Woo-young. She sends a laughing face and then a thank you.

Then she checks on Tae-gun.

Hey, are you allowed to text again yet?

s_rank

Yes.

Okay, good! Hope you're doing well. Do you need any guidance before I head home?

Well. 'Home.' The place that she's sleeping, more like.

s_rank

I'm fine, thank you.

And I'm sorry about the way I was behaving.

It was very unbecoming.

I'm sorry I got so bad you needed to babysit me!

I don't think espers in the middle of backlash should have anything they say or do held against them?

Just the things we do when we're fully functional

... the race was really fun though. I'd be up for doing another, but maybe with better rules and enforced breaks between them.

Still. Worth it!

s_rank

I also had fun.

They will probably change our planned schedule though.

Hopefully we will get more appropriate dungeons in the future.

Yes!!! I was getting so bored!!!!

They might make us have a mandatory day off for being dumb though.

So, uh. Oops. I think we played ourselves, sunbae.

s_rank

Perhaps.

I suppose we will see.

If they start sending us on dungeons of appropriate power level we will need to start doing proper research on them anyway, so having some time to prepare will not be so bad.