Digital Horcrux

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Yes, the Zutara baiting is real, as is the not-so-subtle put-down on the ship. It's June and the Ember Island Players all over again...except that, when you consider the context, it's even better (in-universe), and worse (from a meta/IRL perspective).

But that's old news, and literally everyone is talking about Bryke and bait and "The Spirits Ship It!". And while I definitely agree with most takes, I'm here to say that the whole "An old couple!/NOT A COUPLE" interaction isn't what drew my attention, but rather the fact that they're both portrayed as elderly in the first place.

Allow me to explain: I don't know the plot of the movie and I don't know if the age changes happen because a) they're in the Spirit World, or b) something made it happen.

B) means that said something had a reason for making the changes like they did, even if it's just mischief.

But A)...

A) implies that the Spirit World shows the true appearance of your soul/spirit instead of your physical age, or something of the like. Sokka's an interesting example: in the Spirit World, he's shown to be a teenager, not yet the man he's become in the physical world. He has so much learn still, so many things to do...and he's still stuck on his war years.

Now, Toph is a funny one. Which is honestly the best thing I can say about it. (I'm not yet fond of Baby Toph, in case it's not obvious. Or, well, I'm not a fan that they made it happen. Seeing twelve-year-old Toph again would've been amazing and far more in-character, IMHO.) And Aang...he's a young adult, closer to his current age than anyone else in the Gaang. Balanced.

So, if in the Spirit World physical appearance = spiritual age... Where does that leave Zuko and Katara?

Zuko, who has experienced more pain and life-changing events than most people do in their entire lives. Zuko, who had no childhood. Zuko, who was tossed into a world at war after having his innocence destroyed by his own father. Zuko, who saw the most horrid things life has to offer, and instead of succumbing to his worst instincts, he decided to bring life and honor to his people.

Zuko, who by age sixteen had the maturity and serious-mindedness of a much older man. Zuko, who has carried the weight of a nation on his shoulders since he was seventeen. Zuko, who tells horrible jokes and takes everything too seriously and whose love-language are acts of service.

Is it a wonder he's an old man, too tired to even stand on his own?

And then there's Katara. Katara, whose mother died to protect her when she was a young child. Katara, who adopted Kya's role in her family because nobody else could, because the void she left behind had to be filled. Katara, whose face overcame their mother's in Sokka's mind. Katara, who raised her brother, kept her family glued together, did chores, looked after the children, brought babies to life before she was even fourteen.

Katara, who found a legend and became a war hero. Katara, who continued to care for everyone else, mothering her friends and family. Katara, who never turns her back on people who need her, except for herself. Katara, who longed for someone to help her, support her, someone to share her burdens with. Katara, who tells horrible jokes and takes everyone's emotional burdens as her own and whose love-language are gentle words and acts of service.

Is it a wonder she's an old woman whose first instinct is to take over a baby's care?

My headcanon for this is Fire Lord Zuko gifted her this for her sixteenth birthday.

Here are his updated illustrations using the new movie as his reference!

Read about these two characters in “The Mask Between Us” on archive of our own and wattpad to see their story build 2 years after the war!

An updated cover will be coming once he swaps out the characters!

if you send multiple presents, I’ll write 5 for each, and then share that many sentences!

(sasusaku doujinshi translated by me)

Credits to it's actual artist @asako .

We have a cover! I think I’m total it took my husband 2 months to finish this (only because he’s a perfectionist) but I love it!

Check out The Mask Between Us on AO3 and wattpad