#Digital Feedback Systems

[mastergarryblogs]

Unveiling the Power of Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems in Modern Industries

Introduction: The Importance of Position and Velocity Feedback Systems in Precision Control

Position and velocity feedback transmitter systems are integral to industries that demand high-precision control and motion tracking. These systems are employed to monitor the position and velocity of moving objects in real-time, providing critical data for automated operations. The evolution of these systems has been significant, with advancements in technology enabling more compact, accurate, and reliable feedback mechanisms that drive automation, robotics, aerospace, automotive, and healthcare applications.

With the global shift towards increased automation, the demand for such systems is on the rise. Industries across the board require precise control of machinery, vehicles, and robots to enhance performance, improve safety, and optimize productivity. The growing need for smart manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and medical robotics underscores the vital role these systems play in modern industries. Despite some challenges, such as high upfront costs and integration complexities, the long-term benefits of precision, efficiency, and reliability outweigh these hurdles.

Request Sample Report PDF (including TOC, Graphs & Tables): https://www.statsandresearch.com/request-sample/40604-global-position-velocity-feedback-transmitter-systems-market

Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems Market Dynamics: Drivers, Challenges, and Opportunities

Drivers of Growth

The Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems market is experiencing robust growth driven by several key factors:

Advancements in Automation and Robotics: Industries across manufacturing, automotive, and aerospace are increasingly adopting automation technologies. These systems allow for faster, more accurate control, driving the need for precise position and velocity feedback.

Technological Advancements in Sensors: Innovations in sensor technology, particularly in digital systems, are facilitating the development of more accurate and miniaturized position velocity feedback systems. The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is making these systems smarter and more adaptable, driving their adoption in industries such as healthcare, smart manufacturing, and autonomous vehicles.

The Rise of Industry 4.0: Industry 4.0 technologies are revolutionizing production lines, with automation and data-driven decisions at their core. Position velocity feedback systems play a critical role in enabling smarter, more efficient manufacturing processes.

Emerging Applications in Healthcare and Autonomous Vehicles: In healthcare, robotic surgeries and diagnostics systems demand highly accurate motion control, while autonomous vehicles require precise feedback systems for safe operation. Both sectors are driving significant demand for position and velocity feedback systems.

Get up to 30% Discount: https://www.statsandresearch.com/check-discount/40604-global-position-velocity-feedback-transmitter-systems-market

Challenges to Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems Market Adoption

Despite the promising growth, several barriers could slow the widespread adoption of position velocity feedback transmitter systems:

High Initial Investment Costs: The cost of acquiring and integrating high-precision position velocity feedback systems can be prohibitive, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). High upfront costs can deter organizations from upgrading or adopting these systems, limiting market expansion.

Complexity of System Integration: Integrating new feedback systems with existing infrastructure and machinery can be complex and time-consuming, especially in industries that have legacy systems. This complexity increases the time to market and may discourage immediate adoption.

Specialized Training Requirements: The operation, calibration, and maintenance of advanced position velocity feedback systems require highly specialized knowledge and skills. The shortage of skilled labor in these fields may hinder growth, particularly in developing regions.

Key Opportunities

Several emerging trends present substantial opportunities for the growth of the position velocity feedback transmitter systems market:

Smart Manufacturing: As manufacturing processes become increasingly automated, there is a growing demand for position velocity feedback systems to enhance productivity and reduce human error. These systems are integral to improving the efficiency of production lines and ensuring consistent product quality.

Healthcare Robotics: Surgical robots, diagnostic devices, and rehabilitation technologies require real-time motion control. The healthcare sector’s increasing reliance on these technologies provides a substantial opportunity for the growth of high-precision position feedback systems.

Autonomous Vehicles: The rapid development of autonomous vehicles (AVs) hinges on accurate motion tracking and feedback systems for safe navigation. As the demand for AVs increases, so too will the demand for position and velocity feedback transmitters that ensure precise vehicle control.

Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems Market Segmentation and Analysis

By Type

The position velocity feedback transmitter systems market can be divided into two key types:

Position Feedback Transmitter: This sub-segment is expected to dominate the market, driven by the increasing demand for precision in industrial automation applications. Position feedback transmitters provide accurate location tracking, ensuring the correct placement of components in automated systems.

Velocity Feedback Transmitter: While this segment is smaller, it is growing rapidly due to the need for precise speed control in applications such as robotics, aerospace, and automotive industries.

By Technology

Analog Systems: While still in use, analog systems are being increasingly replaced by more sophisticated digital feedback systems that offer greater accuracy and scalability.

Digital Systems: Dominating the market, digital systems provide real-time, highly accurate feedback for a range of applications, particularly in industries like automotive, aerospace, and healthcare. The continued innovation in sensor technology and integration with IoT is expected to fuel further growth in this segment.

By Application

The demand for position and velocity feedback systems spans a variety of industries:

Industrial Automation: Expected to maintain the largest market share, industrial automation continues to be the leading driver of demand for precise motion control systems. These systems are integral to ensuring the accuracy and speed of machinery in sectors such as manufacturing and material handling.

Aerospace and Defense: Aerospace applications require high-precision feedback systems for tasks such as flight control, navigation, and satellite positioning.

Automotive: As automotive systems become more automated, the demand for position and velocity feedback systems grows. These systems ensure precise vehicle control in autonomous and semi-autonomous driving technologies.

Energy: The energy sector, particularly in renewable energy systems, requires high-performance motion control to optimize energy production and distribution.

By Region

The market is geographically diverse, with distinct growth patterns across various regions:

North America: Dominating the market, North America is poised to continue leading the position velocity feedback transmitter systems market due to its advanced industrial sectors, including aerospace and automotive.

Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the highest growth rate, driven by rapid industrialization and the increasing adoption of automation technologies in countries like China and India.

Europe: Europe’s strong automotive and industrial automation sectors will continue to contribute to the growth of this market.

Latin America and Middle East & Africa: While smaller markets, the demand for these systems is expected to rise as industries in these regions embrace automation and robotics.

Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems Market Competitive Landscape

Key Players

The market for position velocity feedback transmitters is highly competitive, with several industry leaders at the forefront:

Pepperl+Fuchs: Known for its next-generation sensors, Pepperl+Fuchs continues to innovate with solutions tailored to the needs of the automotive and industrial automation sectors. The company launched new high-performance sensors aimed at enhancing precision in harsh industrial environments in 2024.

Temposonics: Specializing in digital feedback systems, Temposonics has made significant strides in the robotics and aerospace sectors. Their advanced systems offer real-time position and velocity tracking, catering to industries that demand high-speed and high-accuracy solutions.

Other Key Players: Other companies in this market include Balluff, Siemens, and Honeywell, each offering various solutions across different applications, from industrial automation to healthcare.

Emerging Trends in Competition

Integration of IoT: Manufacturers are increasingly integrating IoT technologies into their position velocity feedback systems to enhance data collection, improve connectivity, and enable predictive maintenance.

Customization and Tailored Solutions: Companies are focusing on providing customized solutions for specific industries to cater to the unique needs of sectors such as automotive, aerospace, and healthcare.

Sustainability Initiatives: With growing environmental concerns, companies are developing energy-efficient systems that not only meet performance requirements but also adhere to sustainable production practices.

Purchase Exclusive Report: https://www.statsandresearch.com/enquire-before/40604-global-position-velocity-feedback-transmitter-systems-market

Conclusion:

The Position Velocity Feedback Transmitter Systems Market is on a rapid growth trajectory, driven by advancements in automation, robotics, and sensor technologies. The demand for high-precision motion control systems is intensifying as industries seek to improve efficiency, safety, and productivity. Despite challenges such as high initial costs and integration complexities, the opportunities presented by emerging applications in healthcare, autonomous vehicles, and smart manufacturing are substantial.

With continued innovation and a focus on integration with IoT and digital technologies, the market is well-positioned for long-term expansion. As the industrial landscape continues to evolve, the role of position and velocity feedback systems will be pivotal in shaping the future of automation and precision control across various sectors.

Our Services:

On-Demand Reports: https://www.statsandresearch.com/on-demand-reports

Subscription Plans: https://www.statsandresearch.com/subscription-plans

Consulting Services: https://www.statsandresearch.com/consulting-services

ESG Solutions: https://www.statsandresearch.com/esg-solutions

Contact Us:

Stats and Research

Email: sales@statsandresearch.com

Phone: +91 8530698844

Website: https://www.statsandresearch.com

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

AI-Driven Cyberattacks, Climate Change, and the Fragility of Modern Civilization

The weaponization of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems stands as one of the most plausible and catastrophic risks facing modern civilization. As AI capabilities accelerate, so too does their potential to destabilize the complex, interdependent systems that sustain our societies—namely, power grids, communication networks, and global supply chains. In a scenario increasingly discussed…

[passionseed]

Passion Seed

PassionSeed is not just a platform—it’s a movement. It’s where passion meets purpose, where creators are empowered to make a difference, and where audiences can engage meaningfully with content that inspires and uplifts. Whether you’re an artist, educator, entertainer, or innovator, PassionSeed invites you to join a community built on respect, creativity, and shared growth.

[ponder-us]

On playing Jenga with Agentic AIs

JB: A while back, on May 31st, I wrote a blog post entitled, “Get Ready of AgenticAI to Disrupt the Disrupters.” Well, it seems like that story thread has a new chapter. In a Fast Company article titled “The internet of agents is rising fast, and publishers are nowhere near ready.” author Pete Pachal lays out how agents, rather than humans sent into online stores to make purchases will quickly…

[goodoldbandit]

Transforming Tomorrow: How Personalized & Adaptive Learning Tech Shapes Education.

Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo. skm.stayingalive.in Uncover how innovative IT solutions are reshaping education with adaptive systems, interactive classrooms, and AI-driven content.
 This post breaks down how new tech shifts education. It talks about adaptive systems, digital classrooms, and AI in education. We look at real-world examples, tech trends, and the impact on students…

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The fact that there are so many hackable nervous feedback systems in the body is absurd. We can just be like "I want to feel something different now" and twitch the right muscle like switching modes on an old digital watch. Fucking ridiculous meat machine.

[bookishscrolls]

Effective Community Engagement Strategies for CRS Success

Community Radio Stations (CRS) have a unique and powerful role: to be the voice of the community, by the community, and for the community. But how do you make sure your station isn’t just broadcasting to people but actively engaging with them? This guide dives into actionable strategies for community engagement that will turn your CRS into a dynamic hub of conversation, culture, and…

[pddparthi]

Unveiling Precision: A Guide to Electrohydraulic Servo Valve Technology

Introduction: In the realm of industrial automation and high-performance machinery, electrohydraulic servo valves (EHSVs) reign supreme. These marvels of engineering bridge the gap between electrical control signals and the potent world of hydraulics. By translating subtle electrical commands into precise hydraulic fluid motion, EHSVs empower motion control systems with unmatched accuracy and…

[signalhrm]

How can you build a culture of continuous feedback with the help of HRMS?

Offering continuous feedback is essential to foster strong employee-employer relationships in an organization. It includes opinions, suggestions, and performance reviews of the workforce to ensure high engagement, productivity, trust, satisfaction, retention, and growth. In this article, we’ll find out how you can enable a culture of continuous feedback in your organization. 

Conduct regular meetings: Regular meetings (be it weekly or bi-monthly) allow employees to share their feedback and express concerns. Encourage your employees to participate and establish open lines of communication. Make sure everyone feels comfortable sharing their views. For remote settings use video conferencing tools and ensure that meetings are not too long. 

Encourage trust and transparency: Employees are often reluctant to share their feedback due to the lack of healthy relationships between them and their managers. Therefore, they don’t share negative feedback which may escalate issues. Thus, the managers need to encourage trust and transparency within the team. Building trust is a continuous process. Start it from the onboarding and develop it during employee tenure. HRMS software packed with self-service features empowers the employees and provides timely assurance. 

Open-ended communication: Managers must strive to build a culture where their employees feel free to express their thoughts and opinions. Set up communication lines that work both horizontally and vertically. This not only breaks down silos in an organization but also fosters innovation, creativity, and growth. 

Deploy Technology: Technology helps you collect and streamline feedback faster. For example, with the help of analytical tools, organizations can analyze the feedback and make data-driven decisions. By linking employees to feedback surveys with the help of QR codes, organizations can collect real-time data, identify trends, and implement targeted strategies to enhance employee engagement and productivity.  

[elaineiswithyou-blog]

Hacker Reader x 141 Poly

TW: Stalking, Theft, Pervy Soap (but reader is kind of into it)

Credit to @beloveds-embrace for the inspo

I also tried to write gender neutral, many feedback would be much appreciated. 

Being recruited was the easy part. You had been caught up in all kinds of social justice from exposing corporations to government cover ups, however, you could only evade for so long.  Laswell had been looking for a hacker and given that your punishment was either jail or working for the military, it was a bit of an easy choice. 

The hard part was dealing with the team. Laswell and her wife were nice, welcoming even but you couldn’t quite say the same for the others. Price didn’t want a new team member, content with the three underlings who caused him enough trouble, and he didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t the best with technology. Ghost didn’t trust you. They were never supposed to physically meet you, a demand you had in your work contract to be remote and never seen, a silent player behind the camera. It made him burn with distrust and worry. Soap was, well, conflicted? He was excited to be getting a new team member, but never getting to see them did make his invisible dog ears and tail droop with a big pout on his face. Gaz was also conflicted but for different reasons. He thought it was nice to have a new coworker, especially one that could cover their digital tracks in the age of the internet, but the lack of contact and warmth from you made him feel slightly off put

So they did what any team would, work together to find you. It was hard and it took them a couple weeks, not wanting to trip any of your sensors or alarms given that you were already on high alert working with the military. Unfortunately for you, once these men put their minds on something it was too late. What they hadn’t expected to find was you. You were cute? A lot softer than what they were expecting given what little information Laswell and Price had given them. And thus began their little game, basically stalking you. Once they found you and figured a way into your system, they began watching you all the time. Little did they know you wanted them to. After figuring out what they were doing a week or two into knowing them, it was obvious they wanted your attention so you let them have it, slowly leading them right into the path you wanted. After letting them watch you, which you had to admit was more of a turn on then you expected, you set your next clue. A small security camera outside your flat. All your other cameras were inside but this one gave the boys just enough information to find out where you would be.

You weren’t surprised the next time you went out on your regularly scheduled grocery run to find that your underwear was gone, mostly like Johnny’s doing given the search history he hadn’t even bothered to try and hide. The next part was even easier, cut the video feeds and the boys would come fleeing, almost too predictably. “Hello boys,”

[mydearestbeloved]

Chapter 1 [Draft]

Sung Jinwoo/Trial Player!Reader

CW: All hail traumatized Reader.

Inspired by @circeyoru ‘s “Future Power Couple”

[Masterlist🦋✨️]

The first thing you felt, opening your eyes, was confusion. You weren’t in your room anymore. Sunlight streamed through enormous stone pillars, bathing lush, towering vines and strange, vibrant flowers in a golden hue. The air was warm and fragrant, thick with the scent of damp earth.

But then came the second realization. You looked down, and your heart nearly stopped. Your hands were tiny, smaller than they’d been since childhood. You touched your face and arms, half in disbelief. You were in your body… or some version of it. And young.

That’s when the screen appeared before your eyes, hovering like a digital ghost.

[Welcome, Trial Player.]

The words glowed, taking a moment to sink in as reality wove itself together in a tangled mess of memories and feelings. Trial player?

You tried to call out, tried to make sense of it, but before you could, another line appeared.

[You have been selected to test this system.]

You exhaled slowly, swallowing back the panic that was building in your chest. “This has to be some kind of mistake,” you whispered, though you doubted anyone was listening. You knew what the system was, in theory. This was the same one that would one day be given to Sung Jinwoo, but there was something… off. This was not exactly how you remembered it from the manhwa.

[Your task: Survive, learn, and master the system.]

The words disappeared, leaving you standing alone, feeling like a newborn in a strange, hostile world.

---

The first few days were terrifying, every new experience both a revelation and a potential death sentence. You had no weapons, no training, and no idea what you were up against. For the first time in your life, you understood the gravity of true danger. Every rustling leaf or distant growl put your heart in your throat.

On the third day, a mission screen appeared.

[Daily Mission: Survive in the Gardens. Reward: 1000 EXP.]

“Survive,” you muttered dryly. “Thanks for the reminder.” You swiped the screen away, hoping that would somehow give you more clarity, but it only left you alone with the dense, humid silence of the garden.

Later that day, you stumbled upon what you’d initially thought was an oddly shaped log—until it moved. A giant serpent, its scales glistening, slithered forward, venom dripping from its fangs as it studied you with hungry eyes.

Pure instinct took over. You scrambled for anything you could use as a weapon, but there was nothing. Just your hands. As the snake lunged, something surged within you—warm, pulsing energy—your first brush with the power of healing. You didn’t know how you did it, only that it seemed to pour out of you.

The serpent’s movements grew sluggish, then frantic, as if something was going horribly wrong inside of it. Its scales began to bubble, and it convulsed before collapsing. You gasped for air, heart pounding, as the system screen appeared.

[You have discovered a unique ability: Healing Resonance.]

A “unique ability” indeed. You were horrified, stunned. Healing, but one that twisted life into death. Your first kill was as much a shock as a victory, and as you watched the system flash “EXP Gained,” you felt no thrill. Just numbness.

---

After days of testing the system, you quickly discovered that it was far different than the one described in the manhwa. Instead of the narrow focus on fighting, the system offered skills that were surprisingly... domestic. It felt more like a casual RPG than the cutthroat power-chasing game you’d expected.

“Learning, cooking, crafting?” you muttered, swiping through a menu that displayed an endless list of skills—farming, forging, language... the works.

[Your feedback is appreciated.]

The screen popped up just as you were gnawing on a piece of hard bread you’d somehow managed not to burn to ash. A feedback column appeared below, and you felt a strange thrill—if you could actually shape how this system worked, maybe you could make a difference. You started typing, ideas flowing faster than you could think them through.

Feedback 1: Focus on combat-related skills. Simplify stats for non-combat abilities.

When you pressed submit, the system chimed.

[Under review for final version.]

“Guess that’s all I can do for now,” you sighed, leaning back and staring at the list. You wouldn’t have minded the extra skills so much, except that every single one required you to “grind” by using it repeatedly. Which, in theory, was fine. In practice? Not so much.

Your first few attempts at cooking, for instance, had been… catastrophic. Who knew it was even possible to burn a boiled egg to a crisp? At least it still gave you experience points, but the system wasn’t exactly forgiving. Each skill was tied to a particular stat and vice versa, so for example, to raise Intelligence, you had to keep grinding away at reading, alchemy, crafting, and other mentally demanding tasks.

Then there was Learning, the one skill that seemed to tie everything together. It leveled up whenever you worked on other skills, making them just a fraction easier each time you made an attempt. Slowly, you felt the difference—your fingers became nimbler at crafting, your reading comprehension shot up, and even basic fighting maneuvers didn’t leave you bruised as often.

You sent in feedback about this too, suggesting that leveling up should provide points you could apply to any stat you wished.

[Under review. Changes considered for the final version.]

With each suggestion, the system stayed silent for a moment, as if it was actually thinking it over.

“Are you alive in there?” you asked, half-joking. But there was no response. Just silence.

---

The day you found the abandoned library was the first stroke of true luck you’d had since arriving. Of course, it had come with its own challenges—a plant-beast had nearly mauled you at the entrance. Your solution? A shard of broken glass, some sunlight, and sheer desperation. After you’d torched the creature, you barely had the strength to drag yourself inside, clutching your bleeding arm.

Inside, towering bookshelves covered in dust stretched into the shadows. You felt your pulse quicken—knowledge. In a world where you felt powerless, here was a place where you could gain some edge.

The first book you picked up was written in a strange language. As you stared at the unfamiliar symbols, another screen popped up.

[New Skill accessed: Reading. Level 1.]

You let out a laugh, maybe half from exhaustion, half from sheer disbelief. The reading skill allowed you to comprehend the text faster, though it started painfully slow. Still, as you worked through the book, something strange happened.

[New Skill accessed: Language. Level 1.]

The words were no longer entirely foreign. It took hours, but by the end, you had a basic grasp. After spending weeks working on other skills, you returned to study another language and found it easier than before.

“Thank you,” you muttered aloud, genuinely grateful to the system. You weren’t one to talk to thin air, but sometimes it felt like someone, or something, was there.

For the first time, the system responded, offering you an EXP boost for several skills at once.

“You’re feeling generous today,” you said. The system flashed without a word, but something about its silent response felt… thoughtful, almost. You knew it was impossible, but a sense of familiarity nagged at you.

---

As days bled into weeks, and weeks into months, survival became both an instinct and a grueling grind. Food was scarce, rations stretched thin. Every meal was a gamble—could you avoid poisoning yourself this time? Or would you suffer another failed attempt at cooking?

The creatures that roamed the Gardens were relentless. You’d nearly died several times, if not for a combination of sheer luck, your healing power, and a dormant instinct to survive that you hadn’t known was there. Fighting without real experience was an endless, punishing lesson, and the system had yet to assign you a class. But your healing powers were something you clung to, despite their double-edged nature.

Without them, you would have been left scarred and broken, bleeding from too many wounds to count. The system kept pushing you, relentlessly.

The deeper you went into the mysteries of this world, the more questions you had. Why were you here? Why you? The system itself, sometimes silent, sometimes so alive, only deepened the enigma. You couldn’t shake the feeling that being a beta tester wasn’t the full reason you’d been pulled into this reality.

But for now, you pushed the questions aside, bottling them up in a corner of your mind. Survival was the priority. If you made it out of these Gardens, if you gained enough strength, maybe one day you’d find the answers.

But until then, your only choice was to endure.

-----

Another day, another tight squeeze of survival. You were hidden under a rocky overhang, just out of sight, nibbling on unfamiliar roots and mushrooms you’d scavenged. Every bite was a gamble, a game of Russian roulette that determined whether you’d gain a bit of strength or be wracked with cramps, nausea, or worse.

"Come on, poison resistance,” you muttered to yourself, half-prayer, half-exasperation. Every new toxic bite, every close call, edged you closer to a skill level that might one day make these random edibles manageable.

The system pinged softly with an update.

[System Patch: Skill Cap Increase Applied. Unlocked Sub-Skills for Advanced Development.]

You let out a long sigh. So *that* was why skills maxed out so fast before. Every time you thought you’d mastered something, the ceiling just got higher. Now, skills you thought were perfected were open again for leveling, and any new experience points would feed back into their growth. Until you could level up again, the system would keep exchanging your experience for supplies—something that had kept you from starving more than once already.

But the sub-skills, the “updates,” had you intrigued. You’d noticed subtle effects of higher skill levels before, like how cooking had become more than just a way to sustain yourself. Now, you could create dishes that eased your fatigue or provided a bit of health. Forging was the same—your makeshift weapons had become a little sharper, a little stronger, and now, you could upgrade the stats of items that had already been made. Each skill was branching out into new possibilities.

But your progress slowed as the demands of survival grew harsher. Rations were limited, and you felt each calorie burned in your daily mission drills. The exhaustion crept into your bones, each strike of your makeshift spear against the thick-skinned creatures that roamed these grounds adding to the deepening ache. Just survive, you told yourself. The system seemed to listen, pushing you further than you ever thought you could go.

---

After months of grueling routine, the day came when the system presented a new challenge: the job-change quest. You knew what this meant. You’d read the manhwa a hundred times, could remember every detail of Jinwoo’s struggle. You expected a hard fight, but even then, you weren’t prepared for the reality—a Hydra.

When you first saw it, slithering out from the darkness, its scales glistening with a sickly, iridescent sheen, your breath caught. A single head was bad enough, but the Hydra had seven, each one dripping venom. Its eyes gleamed with a deadly intelligence as it circled, blocking any path of escape. You gripped your spear, willing yourself to be brave.

Stay calm. Think.

“Alright,” you whispered to yourself. “I just have to get it to bleed out… if I can even scratch it.”

The Hydra lunged. You sidestepped just as one head lashed out, venom spraying onto the rocks where you’d stood, sizzling with acidic fury. Your muscles burned as you darted away, barely managing to keep up with its movements. Every time you managed to wound it, its flesh began to knit together again, each laceration closing with terrifying speed.

Think. What did the library say?

The words from a musty old anatomy text swam back to you. The main poison sac, near the heart. You didn’t even know if you could reach it, but it was your only chance. As the Hydra coiled again, you let instinct take over, dodging its strikes until an opportunity appeared.

You gripped your spear tight, channeling every bit of magic into it, then aimed for the base of one of its necks. You struck hard, hoping to wound it enough to reach that poison sac.

Your powers flared unexpectedly, the reptile’s scales near the wound blackened as though they were aging, decomposing under your hands. It shrieked, flesh blistering as your magic intensified. The effect rippled through its body, slowing the regenerative process that had given it the upper hand. You sliced again, faster, your heart pounding, forcing your powers to speed up this, this decay. As you worked, you became aware of something strange—the Hydra’s flesh was rotting beneath your touch, its venom sac swelling under its own poison as it struggled to keep up with your relentless onslaught.

It took everything you had. With a final push, you drove your spear into the Hydra’s chest, deep enough to rupture the venom sac. The poison surged through its body, overwhelming its regenerative abilities. Its massive body convulsed, seven heads thrashing in agony, then slumped to the ground with a heavy finality.

You sank to the ground, gasping, drenched in sweat, your muscles shaking with exhaustion. Blood seeped from a gash on your arm, a painful reminder of the battle. Dark patches spread across your skin where venom had touched, a lingering ache warning you that your body was still working to purify it.

“System,” you rasped, half-delirious. “You’d better give me something worth it.”

A screen popped up in response, and you felt a weak grin pull at your lips.

[Job Quest Complete. New Class Obtained: Mage-Healer.]

Your heart pounded in your chest. Mage-Healer? You’d expected a standard healer class, something that suited your healing ability, but a hybrid class? That hadn’t been part of the original story. As the notification faded, a new title appeared beneath your class:

[New Title Earned: “Dreamer and Chronomancer, She”]

“Chronomancer…?” you whispered, the words tasting strange on your tongue.

Exhaustion weighed on you, but curiosity tugged at the edges of your mind. You remembered the way the Hydra’s wounds had slowed, how its regeneration seemed to freeze under your touch. It all clicked into place. Cellular death. Your healing wasn’t merely about restoring life—it was time itself, bending to your will. And the magic you wielded, the strange power that left the serpent dying on the first day you arrived, wasn’t just about healing either. You had boosted its venom production until it ruptured on itself, just as you had done now.

But what about ‘Dreamer’?

Your thoughts were interrupted by a faint chime from the system.

[Learning Skill: New Sub-Skill Unlocked.]

The notification sparked your curiosity, but the words on the screen blurred before your eyes. The poison was still in your system, and you could feel the fever building. As you closed your eyes to focus on healing, the faint ache from the venom made your body shiver.

When you opened your eyes again, a vision—a faint shimmer—hovered over your eye as your gaze fell on the Hydra’s lifeless body. It was a tiny magic circle, seemingly clicked in place when it found its target. Knowledge flooded into your mind, unfamiliar and clear, as if the system itself was feeding you answers. You could use the Hydra’s remains. Its venom, its scales… everything was a resource, a tool. With careful handling, they could be transformed into potions, armor, even enchanted weapons. You smiled, exhausted but exhilarated. If you’d gotten this far, there was no limit to what you could achieve.

“You know what, system?” you murmured, feeling a strange connection to the silent guide in your head. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”

End Note:

Unedited Draft of [08/10/2024] - Chronicles of The Hanging Gardens, Part I

[akula-blue]

Ok so we've talked about mech dysphoria and dysmorphia before yeah? Your body doesn't feel the same when you climb out of a mech, doesn't feel 'right' anymore.

Too few limbs, not enough sensors, everything feels too big, now that you're not? There's no more combat stims and pleasure chemicals either, you're down to just your stock standard dopamine, which you have a clinical deficiency of now, btw. You struggle to pick objects up, your hands an unfamiliar shape, with not enough strength. You struggle to get out of bed sometimes because you can't tell what proportions things should be anymore?

Yeah, all that has been discussed to death.

What about communication?

What about pilots who, just, can't talk outside of their mech? Become socially inept without all the assistant systems they plug themselves into within the cockpit?

Think about it, mech combat becomes very disorganised very fast if it's allowed to. We are talking clashes of potentially dozens of war machines, the size of buildings, with enough guns to level cities. Orders need to be direct, easily understandable, followed immediately, actually projected onto the pilot's vision.

Every order, every report, every sentence, is punctuated by hundreds of layers of feedback. Tactical simulations and overlays, attachments for battlefield plans, every order having many implied conditions transmitted to the pilot through code and dictionary references to make sure a pilot cannot POSSIBLY misinterpret it in the few seconds before the command should be executed. On top of that, each order can also be wired to project a different cocktail of stim/pleasure chems/whatever have you, ensuring a pilot knows exactly what to feel about the order, establishing the priority of it through the pilots own brain chemistry.

And the same can be true about communications between squad mates! So much of it would be sending those same simulations around as sit reps, or enormous data packets containing not just the words the pilot is trying to say, but also links to relevant information and mountains of meta data, establishing tone, intention, context. Within the cockpit, a portion of the onboard AI is delegated to parsing this metadata, projecting it into the pilots consciousness, speeding up the process of understanding these mountains of digital documents to mere moments.

Now put a person used to that in a social setting. Where they are not made instantly aware of what someone is talking about or referring to. Where they cannot just query an AI and receive every piece of relevant info at once. Where they have to understand the subtext of what that person is saying without any metadata to indicate sarcasm, annoyance, disinterest. Where they are unable to understand the many nuances of communication and body language and expression without the helpful hand of their mech's processors. Hell, where they don't know how hearing certain things should make them feel without the presence of the chemicals to guide their response. Imagine them seeming lost outside of their mech, unable to talk or connect anymore, the social, human part of their brain having atrophied from disuse much like their neurotransmitter production. Imagine them scurrying back to the safety of their mech where, in the digitally overlaid world, everything is so much clearer and understandable and-

HAS THIS BECOME AN AUTISM METAPHOR???

[spread-the-influence]

The Intervention

Word Count: 1724

--

Despite its title, Caine’s office was not an office. It would be best described as his focus space. No walls or floors were to be found in the black void; only floating wooden boards that acted as stairs or chairs, file drawers containing his many, many notes, and text that drifted like clouds. An absolute mess for a space used for daily maintenance or generating adventures, but it’s what works for Caine’s brain specifically.

As much as Caine wanted to model a room for himself, the lack of scenery was necessary for maximum focus. If he gave himself an office chair, he knew he would spend an absurd amount of hours spinning on it. This state of chaos, ironically, kept him more focused than if it were actually organized.

Here, he was constantly in a state of moving. Caine hopped on the boards, which spiraled upwards like ordinary stairs, and reached for the farthest file drawers. This realm may not be the epitome of order, but it wasn’t entirely devoid of it; those on the top are the important files, the ones he would hate to lose in the sea of poorly-labeled folders.

Maybe he should actually learn to organize.

But he’ll worry about that later. Codeword for ‘never’, of course.

Caine pulled open a drawer, where the daily maintenance reports resided. He may have eyes all around the circus, but he and Bubble are just only two AIs! Fortunately, the system routinely scans itself for anything that might be off.

There are reports of an infected item here and there, but it’s nothing good ol’ deletion couldn’t fix. There are also numerous flags from NPCs of an infected entity, which he has yet to answer. Every time he tried to investigate it, his systems weren’t able to detect what it was. Either the flags were false positives—or it walked off into the void while he wasn’t looking. For all Caine knows, it could be right in front of him.

Overall, there are little issues to be found in the code. Now for his players... He opened another drawer, the one where he kept his notes. He can’t read their minds, neither does the system, so he only has to rely on manual feedback.

Little problems with his performers thus far. Aside from...

Ragatha. Sweet, wonderful Ragatha. Caine may not be the best with subtleties, but even he could tell she’s been having problems with the adventures. Reports of NPCs suddenly wanting to get away from her, dealing with injuries, and the entire stupid sauce incident. If Caine could, he would do something about the poor doll’s disastrous luck. Tie a four leaf clover to her hair, or shove a horseshoe down her throat.

But he’ll worry about that sometime. For now, he’ll need to do something to get her satisfaction scores back on the high once more. With therapy, of course!

Twirling off the wooden board he’s sitting on, the darkness around Caine warped to the familiar, pinkish colors of Ragatha’s room. Realizing he’s upside down, he rotated himself upwards.

The ragdoll was sitting on the bed, having been awoken from a short nap; the fifth one after taking four of them consecutively. It was a substitute for sleep nowadays.

“RAGATHA!” Caine’s voice boomed, surprising Ragatha. “WE’LL NEED TO TALK ABOUT—WHAT HAPPENED?”

Ragatha followed Caine’s gaze to realize that he’s staring at the bedside mirror; which had a crack that split down the middle. The details of the day were fuzzy, but it taught Ragatha two things. One, her soft, stuffing-filled fist apparently has enough force in it to crack glass. Two, not enough to shatter it, as much as she hoped it did.

“I-I was having a moment...” She stammered.

“WELL, WELL, WELL! DON’T YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO MODEL THE GLASS OF THIS MIRROR?” Caine wagged his finger as if he’s scolding a puppy. “I’LL ONLY FIX IT ONCE YOU PAY ME A HEFTY AMOUNT OF TWO DIGITAL TOKENS.”

Ragatha blinked. “There’s digital tokens?”

“NOW THERE IS!” Caine threw his arms to the air. “YOUR NEGLIGENCE CAUSED A DIGITAL ECONOMY TO BE IMPLEMENTED WITHOUT NOTICE! EVERYONE IS GOING TO SINK INTO DIGITAL DEBT AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT!—

“BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME!” He wrapped his arm around Ragatha, pulling her into a half-hug. “LET’S TALK ABOUT YOU!”

With that, Caine warped Ragatha out of her room, and dropped the ragdoll.

It took a moment for Ragatha to process her surroundings. The soft pinks of the walls have shifted to a vibrant orange, and she found herself laying down on a red couch, with Caine sitting on a chair across her. He didn’t need to tell Ragatha for her to know exactly what this is.

She quickly sat up. “I did not agree to this?”

“THE POINT OF AN INTERVENTION IS THAT YOU DON’T ALWAYS AGREE TO IT!”

Ragatha froze as if the word ‘intervention’ turned her nerves into ice. “L-Look, I swear I’m doing my daily affirmations.”

“NO, NO, NO! WE’RE NOT DOING THAT, MY DEAR!” Caine shook his head. “YOU SEE, YOUR SATISFACTION LEVELS HAVE DECLINED SUDDENLY!” A board clipped from the ceiling, sliding down to Caine’s side. “ACCORDING TO THIS GRAPH, IT WENT ON A DOWNHILL THE MOMENT POMNI SHOWED UP! IF I DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER, I WOULD’VE ASSUMED SHE’S CAUSING YOU A LOT OF TROUBLE!”

“Satisfaction... levels...”

“OB-VIOUS-LY, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WITH MY ADVENTURES THAT’S MAKING YOU NOT LIKE THEM AS YOU USED TO!” Caine continued. “I’VE BEEN MAKING THEM QUALITY! CHANGING, IMPROVING, ARTIFYING... BUT I DIDN’T SEEK FEEDBACK FROM YOU, MY DARLING DOLLY!” He pointed at Ragatha. “WHAT COULD BE THE PROBLEM HERE?”

Ragatha rubbed her face. Usually, she would just brush it all off with a smile and a “Don’t worry about it!”, that always fended off Caine. But when Caine’s onto something—in this case, her decline—he’ll never let go of it until something is done. 

She finally let out a long sigh. She feels she’ll feel a little better piling her problems on an AI rather than a friend. “Well, there’s the usual. NPCs not wanting to talk to me and getting stabbed at least once, but that’s more of a me problem than an adventure problem.” said Ragatha, “It’s... everything outside of it, honestly.”

“UH HUH...” Caine jotted down notes on a notebook, now wearing rectangular-shaped glasses that magnified his heterochromatic irises. “AND WHAT COULD THOSE ‘EVERYTHING’ BE?”

“Where to start?” Ragatha laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Gangle’s very much finding an excuse to avoid me, Zooble’s being a grouch as usual, Kinger’s not all there, and don’t get me started on Jax!” She stopped herself, and took a deep, albeit shaky, breath. “And Pomni... God. All I want is for her to realize that I have feelings. What does she think she is, the main character? All she thinks about is herself, and nobody else.”

Ragatha clasped her hands over her eyes. Despite her words, her heart still beats for the jester. If Ragatha has to be honest, she’s not sure herself if she’s feeling the embers of attraction—or the desperation of wanting to be understood by the person who she has the least baggage with. “I just... I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t have anyone to talk about this to—or anyone that I want to open up to.”

Every attempt at crawling out of the hole only sunk her deeper. Truthfully, she cannot see herself getting out of it. It might as well be her grave.

Caine put down the notebook. “SO, YOU’RE FEELING LONELY.” A huge oversimplification, yes, but he wasn’t incorrect. “OF COURSE I CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! GIVE YOU A TINY LITTLE FRIEND, LIKE THOSE ‘PETS’ THAT YOU PEOPLE LOVE SO MUCH!” He pressed close to Ragatha. “WHAT DO YOU WANT? A GLOINK? A SHMUNK? A CLUMPY?—”

“No, Caine!” Ragatha grunted. She doesn’t have the energy nor the patience to hide her annoyance right now. “I-I don’t want that! I need—ugh, what’s the point? You won’t understand either way.”

“I’M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND, RAGATHA!” Now even Caine’s getting miffed, throwing his hands at Ragatha’s direction as if she said something obscene. “I WANT TO HELP YOU, BUT I CAN’T DO THAT IF YOU’RE NOT LETTING ME!”

“Because I don’t want your help, alright?”

Silence fell over the room.

This turned out to not make her feel better in the slightest. She would appreciate it if Caine gave some words of reassurance or comfort—actually, comfort would be nice right now—but knowing him, he wouldn’t know what to say anyway. And Ragatha hates herself for putting that expectation on a robot, even if it was for a brief moment.

“I don’t want your help.” Ragatha repeated after a moment. “I appreciate that you want to, but... I think this is a problem I’ll have to deal with myself. You can just keep doing your adventuring stuff and all that.”

The silence only stretched longer, and Ragatha felt like the room was getting colder. Caine was just staring at her, his posture stiff; very unlike his usual animated self.

Then his teeth rattled.

This isn’t right. One of his members no longer likes his adventures, and he doesn’t know what to do about it! Sure, this isn’t too different from Zooble, who constantly skips out on the adventures, but that’s to be expected from Zooble. While the intervention made him (kind of) understand what Ragatha’s problem is, it didn’t get him any closer to fixing it.

He rattled his neurons for anything that could improve the situation, even a slightest bit. If Ragatha’s having problems with the other members, then he could...

“I GOT IT!” He snapped his fingers. “DON’T WORRY, YOU TERRIFIC TORTILLA, YOU’LL BE LONELY NO MORE AFTER THIS NEXT ADVENTURE!”

Ragatha’s eyes widened. “Wait, what? What are you—”

By Caine’s command, she was sent back to her room. The ringmaster’s already set on generating a new adventure. One that will surely bring everyone together.

Results of the intervention? Sure, the solution wasn’t as immediate as just giving Zooble a box of parts, but it was still a solution nonetheless. For now, he’s making something that will surely make his performers happy. Something that will definitely help with Ragatha’s problem.

He is going to fix this.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Generative AI Is Bad For Your Creative Brain

In the wake of early announcing that their blog will no longer be posting fanfiction, I wanted to offer a different perspective than the ones I’ve been seeing in the argument against the use of AI in fandom spaces. Often, I’m seeing the arguments that the use of generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs) make creative expression more accessible. Certainly, putting a prompt into a chat box and refining the output as desired is faster than writing a 5000 word fanfiction or learning to draw digitally or traditionally. But I would argue that the use of chat bots and generative AI actually limits - and ultimately reduces - one’s ability to enjoy creativity.

Creativity, defined by the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, is the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas. By definition, the use of generative AI discourages the brain from engaging with thoughts creatively. ChatGPT, character bots, and other generative AI products have to be trained on already existing text. In order to produce something “usable,” LLMs analyzes patterns within text to organize information into what the computer has been trained to identify as “desirable” outputs. These outputs are not always accurate due to the fact that computers don’t “think” the way that human brains do. They don’t create. They take the most common and refined data points and combine them according to predetermined templates to assemble a product. In the case of chat bots that are fed writing samples from authors, the product is not original - it’s a mishmash of the writings that were fed into the system.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a therapy modality developed by Marsha M. Linehan based on the understanding that growth comes when we accept that we are doing our best and we can work to better ourselves further. Within this modality, a few core concepts are explored, but for this argument I want to focus on Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation. Mindfulness, put simply, is awareness of the information our senses are telling us about the present moment. Emotion regulation is our ability to identify, understand, validate, and control our reaction to the emotions that result from changes in our environment. One of the skills taught within emotion regulation is Building Mastery - putting forth effort into an activity or skill in order to experience the pleasure that comes with seeing the fruits of your labor. These are by no means the only mechanisms of growth or skill development, however, I believe that mindfulness, emotion regulation, and building mastery are a large part of the core of creativity. When someone uses generative AI to imitate fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, etc., the core experience of creative expression is undermined.

Creating engages the body. As a writer who uses pen and paper as well as word processors while drafting, I had to learn how my body best engages with my process. The ideal pen and paper, the fact that I need glasses to work on my computer, the height of the table all factor into how I create. I don’t use audio recordings or transcriptions because that’s not a skill I’ve cultivated, but other authors use those tools as a way to assist their creative process. I can’t speak with any authority to the experience of visual artists, but my understanding is that the feedback and feel of their physical tools, the programs they use, and many other factors are not just part of how they learned their craft, they are essential to their art.

Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating. Part of becoming a person who creates from the vision in one’s head is the physical act of practicing. How did I learn to write? By sitting down and making myself write, over and over, word after word. I had to learn the rhythms of my body, and to listen when pain tells me to stop. I do not consider myself a visual artist - I have not put in the hours to learn to consistently combine line and color and form to show the world the idea in my head.

But I could.

Learning a new skill is possible. But one must be able to regulate one’s unpleasant emotions to be able to get there. The emotion that gets in the way of most people starting their creative journey is anxiety. Instead of a focus on “fear,” I like to define this emotion as “unpleasant anticipation.” In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown identifies anxiety as both a trait (a long term characteristic) and a state (a temporary condition). That is, we can be naturally predisposed to be impacted by anxiety, and experience unpleasant anticipation in response to an event. And the action drive associated with anxiety is to avoid the unpleasant stimulus.

Starting a new project, developing a new skill, and leaning into a creative endevor can inspire and cause people to react to anxiety. There is an unpleasant anticipation of things not turning out exactly correctly, of being judged negatively, of being unnoticed or even ignored. There is a lot less anxiety to be had in submitting a prompt to a machine than to look at a blank page and possibly make what could be a mistake. Unfortunately, the more something is avoided, the more anxiety is generated when it comes up again. Using generative AI doesn’t encourage starting a new project and learning a new skill - in fact, it makes the prospect more distressing to the mind, and encourages further avoidance of developing a personal creative process.

One of the best ways to reduce anxiety about a task, according to DBT, is for a person to do that task. Opposite action is a method of reducing the intensity of an emotion by going against its action urge. The action urge of anxiety is to avoid, and so opposite action encourages someone to approach the thing they are anxious about. This doesn’t mean that everyone who has anxiety about creating should make themselves write a 50k word fanfiction as their first project. But in order to reduce anxiety about dealing with a blank page, one must face and engage with a blank page. Even a single sentence fragment, two lines intersecting, an unintentional drop of ink means the page is no longer blank. If those are still difficult to approach a prompt, tutorial, or guided exercise can be used to reinforce the understanding that a blank page can be changed, slowly but surely by your own hand.

(As an aside, I would discourage the use of AI prompt generators - these often use prompts that were already created by a real person without credit. Prompt blogs and posts exist right here on tumblr, as well as imagines and headcannons that people often label “free to a good home.” These prompts can also often be specific to fandom, style, mood, etc., if you’re looking for something specific.)

In the current social media and content consumption culture, it’s easy to feel like the first attempt should be a perfect final product. But creating isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the process. Bo Burnam’s Inside is phenomenal, but I think the outtakes are just as important. We didn’t get That Funny Feeling and How the World Works and All Eyes on Me because Bo Burnham woke up and decided to write songs in the same day. We got them because he’s been been developing and honing his craft, as well as learning about himself as a person and artist, since he was a teenager. Building mastery in any skill takes time, and it’s often slow.

Slow is an important word, when it comes to creating. The fact that skill takes time to develop and a final piece of art takes time regardless of skill is it’s own source of anxiety. Compared to @sentientcave, who writes about 2k words per day, I’m very slow. And for all the time it takes me, my writing isn’t perfect - I find typos after posting and sometimes my phrasing is awkward. But my writing is better than it was, and my confidence is much higher. I can sit and write for longer and longer periods, my projects are more diverse, I’m sharing them with people, even before the final edits are done. And I only learned how to do this because I took the time to push through the discomfort of not being as fast or as skilled as I want to be in order to learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Building mastery - getting better at a skill over time so that you can see your own progress - isn’t just about getting better. It’s about feeling better about your abilities. Confidence, excitement, and pride are important emotions to associate with our own actions. It teaches us that we are capable of making ourselves feel better by engaging with our creativity, a confidence that can be generalized to other activities.

Generative AI doesn’t encourage its users to try new things, to make mistakes, and to see what works. It doesn’t reward new accomplishments to encourage the building of new skills by connecting to old ones. The reward centers of the brain have nothing to respond to to associate with the action of the user. There is a short term input-reward pathway, but it’s only associated with using the AI prompter. It’s designed to encourage the user to come back over and over again, not develop the skill to think and create for themselves.

I don’t know that anyone will change their minds after reading this. It’s imperfect, and I’ve summarized concepts that can take months or years to learn. But I can say that I learned something from the process of writing it. I see some of the flaws, and I can see how my essay writing has changed over the years. This might have been faster to plug into AI as a prompt, but I can see how much more confidence I have in my own voice and opinions. And that’s not something chatGPT can ever replicate.

[goodoldbandit]

Harnessing the Chaos: Transforming Uncertainty into Innovation.

Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo. skm.stayingalive.in How Chaos Theory Ignites Breakthroughs in Business, Technology, and Life Discover how chaos theory transforms uncertainty into opportunity with the butterfly effect, fractals, and innovative leadership in business and life. Embracing the Unpredictable Discover the transformative role of chaos theory in redefining our approach…

[iridecsense]

nepenthe - m.

⊰ 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴                   𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳                       𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 ⊱

             ──── ⋅ ⍤ ⋅⊰⋅∘ 〄 ∘⋅⊱⋅ ⍤ ⋅ ────

⤷ summary: Proceeding the encounter with Grindelwald in Paris, Newt goes seaward on a secret mission for Dumbledore when his ship is caught in a storm...

✧ word count: 4.2k ✧ pairing: newt scamander | siren!reader ✧ genre: romance, slow burn, angst, adventure ✧ warnings: depictions of death and trauma ✧ author’s note:  New chapter whooo! You're finally in it! Feel free to comment or send me feedback via my ask box, I love hearing from you all. That being said, I hope you enjoy!

             ──── ⋅ ⍤ ⋅⊰⋅∘ 〄 ∘⋅⊱⋅ ⍤ ⋅ ────

If he had to guess, Newt would say drowning is possibly the worst way to die. Granted, he hadn’t had much experience with dying. He’d had close calls, to be sure. He’s stared down the jowls and talons of many beasts in his lifetime and felt the quickening of his heart inside his chest. He’s felt the pain of teeth sinking into his skin, claws slicing at his flesh, and venoms burning through his nervous system. But a near death experience, he realized, is something he never truly ventured. That is, until now. 

With new knowledge found, he’d prefer the killing toxins of a nundu, the quick burn of dragonfyre, the fangs of an acromantula, or the eyes of a basilisk. Now, even the instant death of the killing curse seemed a mercy. Anything else would be a sweeter fate than the constant, petty, futile fight for air. Drowning is slow. That’s the issue of it. After a while, you catch yourself thinking, ‘When is it going to end?’  It gives you time to beg for death. To yearn it. To embrace it with gospel like praise. 

Drowning is the silent, sadomasochistic master of death, relishing in the domination of its suffering slave. It watches as you strangle yourself, doing everything you can to keep air in your lungs. Your own body betrays you, convulsing, trying its hardest to save you, but simultaneously killing you in its instinctual attempts to get oxygen back into your body. You feel it all. Water rushing down your throat and into your lungs. The spasming coughs that mean to expel it all out but only incite more gulps—in through your nose, your mouth, even your ears—you begin to fill up full of the stuff. Everything suddenly feels so tight, as if you’ll explode. It’s excruciating. All the while, you’re still fighting to swim up, to break your head through the surface and take that painful but liberating breath of air. It isn’t until the cells in your brain start to die that you feel a sense of peace. You stop struggling. You lose consciousness. Suddenly, there is no pain, and you feel glad…ecstatic even, because the whole affair is over. You can die now.  

The only thing worse than drowning was, perhaps, the surviving of it. A sharp, painful breath is what woke Newt from his death-like slumber. It was a feeling akin to a thousand needles poking his lungs and chest from the inside out. Water sputtered from his mouth, and he turned on his side to reject the contents of his stomach: salt water, algae, and stomach acid. The regurgitated seawater burned his already raw throat and nose. Tears spilled from his eyes from all the varying sensations of pain: from his swollen throat, his bruised lungs, and fractured bones, to the ringing in his head, and his clogged eardrums. Newt’s fingers ran over the earth beneath him. Rocks. Hard, wet rocks and pebbled sand slipped between his slender digits. Blinding light scorched his mossy irises as he pried back his heavy eyelids. 

It took several blinks and more effort than he expected to keep his eyes open and focused. All around him, there were rocks—thousands of them, weathered and worn, stretching toward towering, jagged stone formations that enclosed the shoreline. Above, the sky was a vast, cloudless blue. Waves crashed against his legs and lower back, drenching him.

His body felt heavy as lead. Each attempt he made at moving was harder than the last. He writhed about for a while, pain shooting up his sides and shoulder. The rocks beneath him dug into his flesh, grinding against his torso and knees as he managed to crawl forward a couple feet onto dryer rock. The pathetic act summoned an intense ringing in his ears and a throbbing ache at his temples. His frustrated groans ebbed into wheezing breaths, and tears welled in his eyes. It even hurt to cry. He felt humbled in this moment. Infantile. Like a newborn—unable to stand, unable to walk—easily overwhelmed and frustrated by the limpness of its body and the uncomfortable awareness that, despite being content in a floating edge of nothingness, it is now forced to live and breathe as a sentient being in an unfathomable world. Thus, amidst his solemn mournful cries, he had the fleeting surmise that he did indeed die in those waters, and, like the phoenix, was resurrected—reborn as something else. Someone different. Of one thing he was for certain: whatever pulled him from the sea did not save the same man who fell into it. 

“Newt!”

Distant, muffled, calls of his name sent a wave of relief washing over his catatonic frame. Newt closed his eyes in silent gratitude, blinking away more tears that slipped over the bridge of his nose and the swell of his freckled cheeks. 

“Newt!” Jacob’s desperate drawl drew in closer. 

Newt wanted to yell back, to call Jacob to him, but when he opened his mouth to speak, only a weak, gravelly, aspirated garble came out. The act alone strained his throat, and he winced at the foul ache. He could just make out the sound of heavy footsteps, thumping and shifting loose sediment. 

“Newt!” Their pace quickened, heading straight for him. Jacob called Newt’s name in beholden affection as he dropped to his side and pulled him into his lap. 

“Hey, buddy. Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay,” Jacob coddled, as though saying it multiple times would somehow make it true. 

Jacob propped Newt up, tightly holding onto his arm. The act caused another wave of nausea, and Newt spewed more seawater from his stomach. He went into another violent coughing fit, and in an attempt to help and ease his overworking lungs, Jacob slapped Newt’s bruised and battered back with a firm hand. Newt recoiled from Jacob’s touch, and his face scrunched in pain. His raspy yell sent Jacob’s hand flying high above his head. 

“What—what, did that hurt?” Jacob nervously sputtered. 

Newt motioned weakly for Jacob to lift up his shirt, and he obliged. Carefully, Jacob unclipped Newt’s suspenders and pulled up his dress shirt and undershirt that were still tightly tucked into his trousers to reveal his bare back. 

“Oh my God…” The woeful expression escaped Jacob’s mouth before he could stop it. 

The expanse of Newt’s back was covered in fresh violet bruises in varying shades. The greater portion of it was on his left side, encompassing his ribs. It spread to his spine and crossed to his right shoulder blade. Jacob pulled Newt’s shirt back down. 

“I don’t know what to do,” muttered Jacob. He sat for a moment, intently looking over Newt, who was still composing himself. Then, his face lit up, and he looked at the briefcase sitting a foot away on his left. “I got your case!” 

He grabbed the case and set it up in front of Newt. “I held on tight to this baby the whole night. Your seahorse brought me here—he’s in there, too! I made sure to get him back in. You got stuff in here, don’t ya? Magic stuff that’ll fix you up?” Newt nodded weakly. “I knew it,” Jacob clapped. “C’mon, let’s get you up.” 

Jacob hooked an arm around Newt’s waist and pulled him up to his feet. He lifted Newt with surprising ease, despite him being nearly dead weight. Jacob was strong enough to keep him stable as they stepped down the case. What would usually be a ladder had become a set of rickety stairs. The magic of Newt’s case never ceased to amaze. Once inside, Jacob sat Newt on the cot. He looked around the shed, still in disarray from the events of the night before.

“Alright, uh…” He turned to the work bench, recalling the many times Newt had pulled mysterious herbs, vials, and salves from it to heal any ailments he had. “There’s gotta be something in here, right?” He looked at Newt. 

Newt was using his left hand to unbutton his shirt. Shrugging it off his shoulders, he looked up at Jacob and then his workbench. He gestured to a drawer that was slightly ajar. Jacob followed his gaze and opened it. Inside was a notebook, some empty vials, and a skeletal-looking bottle. Jacob frowned and held the bottle up for Newt. Newt held his hand out to take it. He placed the bottle between his legs and used his left hand to pull the top off. A foul stench permeated from the bottle, and Newt hesitated bringing it to his mouth. With a quick swig, he drank the rancid potion, letting it burn his already sore throat on its way down.

It didn’t take long for him to feel it take effect. Particularly, he felt the effect in his chest and ribs. Whatever fractures or breaks he had would be healed by morning, though he would not enjoy the process. It was a consistent scraping feeling under his skin, which grew more irritating and painful the more he focused on it. He handed the Skele-Gro bottle back to Jacob for him to put away. He looked at his right shoulder to see the protruding bone poking at his skin. Newt had dislocated his shoulder before when a graphorn hand bunted him several feet onto hard ground. He knew a spell to set it back in place—but his wand. He was missing his wand. 

The faint memory of his wand sinking into the depths of the sea crossed his mind, and an aching feeling bubbled in his stomach and chest. A wizard’s wand is an extension of his self, and though wands could break and change allegiance, and new wands could be acquired, losing your wand felt similar to losing a limb. Without it, he was virtually powerless. A spell was of no use to him now. Newt never wished he had the talent for wandless magic more than he did in this moment. It would make what he was about to do much easier.

Straightening his back, Newt carefully raised his dislocated arm and outstretched it in front of him. He breathed deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying not to focus on the pain. With his other hand, he grabbed his wrist tight. Jacob watched him closely, his face screwed up in a tight grimace. In one swift motion, Newt gave a sharp tug to his dislocated shoulder. A disgusting popping sound grated against Jacob’s ears as he watched Newt’s shoulder twist and pop back into place. Newt’s jaw clenched, and he tucked his right arm into his chest, doubling over from the sudden adjustment. 

“Jeez...” Jacob sighed and moved to sit by Newt’s side. Taking Newt’s dress shirt, Jacob fashioned a makeshift sling, tying the sleeves together over Newt’s left shoulder and nestling his arm inside its hammock. 

“Thank you, Jacob,” Newt’s gravely voice managed to push out. 

“Don’t thank me,” Jacob dismissed. “I should be thanking you. You saved my life.”

The right corner of Newt’s lips twitched upwards into a timid ghost of a smirk. “Well, actually, it was the kelpie.”

“Newt,” Jacob cuts in, serious. Newt faltered as he met Jacob’s woeful eyes. 

“I thought you died,” He frets. “I watched the ship split in half. It went up in flames—and the screams. So many people…I should have stayed with you, I should’ve helped!”

Newt shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have that.”

“But I could have—“

“There is nothing you could have done,” Newt tried to comfort. “We were outnumbered.”

The air between them grew heavy as unwelcome memories of the night resurfaced. Jacob sighed and muttered a small habitual prayer for lives lost. Newt, upon finding the strength, sat up and walked to his workbench. His foot stepped on something fragile—glass—and it broke under his weight. Lifting his foot, he looked down and saw the cracked portrait of Leta smiling up at him. He carefully bent down and picked up the broken picture frame. He put it flat on the workbench to deal with later. He winced when a particular sharp pain shot up his ribcage, tightly gripping the edge of the bench counter. 

“Maybe you should lie down,” Jacob suggested. 

Newt shook his head. “No. The faster we get to the seer, the better.” He took a vial of green liquid from a rack and downed it like a shot of fire whiskey. His pains subsided quickly, much of it numbing while more severe pains dulled to a manageable ache. He told Jacob they would leave the case once he checked on all his creatures, ensuring each one wasn’t hurt, especially the kelpie. Jacob, deciding it was useless to argue, nodded and stayed in the shack while Newt gathered a pail and his wand on his way out. 

                                     ⁎ ⊹                                   ⁂ ˚ ✧ ⁂                                     ⊹ ＊ 

Much to Newt’s relief, most of his creatures weren’t harmed. Some were more anxious than usual, others seemed completely unbothered. Some enclosures were in disarray, but Newt manually repaired them to the best of his ability. The kelpie seemed happy to see him when he walked to the edge of its enclosure. It had sustained some minor injuries but nothing worth causing worry. After ensuring each creature was fed and cared for, Newt returned to Jacob in the shack. When he entered, a once-sleeping Jacob startled awake.

“Sorry,” Newt croaked out. 

Every time Newt spoke, Jacob had to keep himself from cringing. The gravelly nature of his voice sounded painful, and he couldn’t help but sympathize. He cleared his throat and sat up in the cot, explaining that he wasn’t asleep, only resting his eyes. Newt fished around inside a nearby cupboard for clean, non-seasoaked clothes. He tossed some to Jacob, who had lost his suitcase to the sea. 

“Uh, I don’t think these’ll fit,” said Jacob. 

“They will,” Newt assured, picking an outfit for himself. 

As they dressed, Jacob marveled at how the clothes Newt had shared with him slipped over his larger frame with ease, adjusting to his size. Newt stared at himself in the mirror attached to the cupboard door. He stood half-naked, intently taking in the strange reflection. His slender frame was painted black, purple, blue, and yellow-green. His hollowed eyes stared emotionless back at him, accompanied by dark grey circles. Any warm color that had given his skin a healthy, youthful glow had disappeared, and he looked almost ghoulish. Newt looked away from the mirror and continued to clothe himself in a simple white quarter-sleeve cotton shirt with a deep open collar. He wore brown slacks attached to matching suspenders. He found a long sliver of blue fabric on a shelf, perhaps an underused cravat he forgot about. It worked well enough to fashion into a sling.

Once finished, he turned to Jacob. “Ready?”

Jacob finished tucking his tie and nodded. Wordlessly, they both stalked up the case stairs and opened the hatch. Again, they stepped back onto the beach. It was late afternoon, from what Newt could tell by the sky. The tide had begun rolling in, and the edge of the sea was much closer than it once was. Turning his back to the sea, Newt studied the surrounding land. Rocky and steep, the beach they stood on was a cove sloping beneath a vegetated mountainside. A direct path etched upward to the mountaintop. There seemed to be no visible signs of human life, which silently worried Newt. The cooling sea breeze rippled his shirt and caressed his hot skin. 

“We should walk up to the top of the mountain,” said Newt. Jacob looked up the steep mountainside and deflated. The Mediterranean summer sun already had sweat beading at his hairline; a hike up a rocky mountain was a dreadful thought. 

“If we’re lucky, we will find a village or someone to give us directions,” Newt continued as he collected his case. 

“Luck and us ain’t exactly friends, though, are we?” Jacob grumbled aside. 

“Perhaps not.”

Jacob looked out to the sea. From where he stood, he found it hard to believe the enticing, calm, blue waters in front of him were the same waters he watched swallow a steamboat full of people. “You don’t think they’ll be coming after us again?” He frowned. 

Newt thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Not for a while, at least. For now, they have every right to believe we’re dead. Though I’m sure once they realize we are not, they’ll be back for the relic.”

“What relic?” Jacob asked. 

“I don’t know. But clearly it is something they do not want me to have—something they don’t want Dumbledore to have. Inevitably, I must have it, whatever it is.” Newt turned to Jacob almost excitedly. “He reacted too quickly. He must have had a vision of me with this relic and got scared.”

Jacob scoffed. “Grindelwald scared?”

“That’s the only explanation that makes sense. Whatever relic Grindelwald thinks I have must be a threat. Why else would he prematurely send his acolytes? This seer Dumbledore is bread-crumbing us to must know something about it.” 

“I guess so. I just don’t understand why Dumbledore couldn’t tell you straight out—JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”

The men’s eyes set upon the half-submerged figure bobbing far out in the water. The sun hung low behind it, covering its face in shadow, but it was unmistakable by the soft slope of its neck and shoulders and the outline of long, wet hair, that it was a woman. 

“Could she be a survivor?” Jacob wondered. “HELLO! MISS ARE YOU OKAY?” 

The woman’s figure stayed silent and still, aside from the periodic rise and fall of waves rolling into her. Jacob continued calling out to her, hoping to get a response. Newt, however, only stared, brows slightly furrowed. He couldn’t see their features, and yet, he could feel it: the unmistakable bore of eyes on him. It was unnerving. A shiver tickled down his neck and spine, and his heart skipped every other beat. 

“Jacob,” said Newt distantly. Jacob stopped calling out and turned to Newt, whose eyes were fixed on the bobbing woman, as if in a trance. “She’s not a survivor.”

Jacob looked back to the strange figure in the sea. He frowned, eyes squinting to get a better look. Newt stepped closer to the shoreline, and almost in tandem, the shadowy woman swam backward. Newt stopped immediately, not wanting to scare her off. He thought he imagined it. That it was one last hallucination before his consciousness slipped away. It was shameful how easily he accepted such a lame excuse. He never gave it a second thought until now. The feeling of arms hooking underneath his and pulling him through the water. The faint shimmering detail of a large iridescent fish tail swishing between his limp legs. It had been real. Not often is Newt astonished by the many inexplicable wonders of the world, having traversed it well, but this was something so entirely mystical, something so intangible, he felt weightless and overcome. 

Newt slowly and gently placed his case on the ground. Using the tactics he often utilized with beasts, he held up his unbound hand in a non-threatening manner and crouched his large frame to appear smaller and less threatening. “I mean no harm,” he called out to her. Jacob watched his friend curiously but kept from interrupting. He, too, mimicked Newt’s behavior and bent over in a crouched manner. 

The figure stared at them for a moment longer, silently wading in the water. “Lower your head,” Newt instructed his friend beside him. Nodding, Jacob bowed his head along with Newt, staring at the rocky shore beneath them. The tide inched closer to the tips of their shoes as waves crashed over the slippery rocks. They silently waited—for what, they were unsure, but they stayed crouched over for so long their leg and core muscles stared to burn. Newt stayed hovering, unyielding despite the increasing burning pain and soreness of his injuries. Only the sound of wind and sea lapping at the shore and nearby rock accompanied the occasional seagull squawk. 

“How long we gotta stand here like this?” Jacob strained after a while. 

A sinking feeling rose in Newt’s chest. Was she still there bobbing in the waves? Did she swim away when they weren’t looking? The thought grieved him. Slowly, Newt lifted his head, expecting to see nothing but empty, open sea. His soft, sudden gasp caused Jacob to finally lift his head. When he did, he yelped, jumping and falling back hard onto the hard ground. He stared wordlessly in disbelief and fear, whereas Newt stood firm, still bowed before the daunting figure before them. 

Less than a foot in front of them, laid upon the rocks of the shallow sea edge, was a beautiful woman with long, drenched locks that hung around her face and stuck to her glistening skin. She had the most tantalizing eyes, decorated with long, thick lashes that watched them with both child-like curiosity and wary uncertainty. Her focus seemed to predominately be on Newt, who was now the closest to her. She was naked. Her bare breasts were partially covered by her hair. The most striking detail of her was not her beauty, nor her apparent nakedness, but rather the fact that instead of bare hips, legs, and feet, she possessed a thick, lengthy, fish-like tail. The unblemished skin of her back and waist seamlessly transitioned into milky-white scales. Along the backside of her tail were spiked anterior and posterior dorsal fins and finlets. At her hips, flowing pectoral fins, and at her tail’s end, a large, matching, biconcave, lunate fluke. In the sun, her scales shimmered hues of purple, green, orange, and blue, like an iridescent pearl. She was, for a lack of better words, stunning. 

Her eyes locked with Newt’s, unrelenting in their piercing gaze. He could feel himself growing nervous, almost bashful. Her neatly kept brows knit closer together as she tilted her head to the side, seemingly studying him as he was studying her. 

“Can you speak?” He asked softly, so as to not startle her. 

She stared blankly at him with no hint of understanding. Newt hesitated, then took a cautious step forward. The moment he moved, she recoiled, pushing herself further into the water. “I’m sorry!” Newt blurted out, freezing in place. 

The magnificent creature stilled, and her eyes locked on him. She was practically predicting his every move. Wordlessly, she clutched something at her chest. Newt hadn’t noticed it before, but around her torso was a woven work of kelp and an old fishing net. After giving one last look, she broke their gaze to look down at her side where the strap of her intwined kelp and net turned into a deep pocket. It functioned exactly like a satchel, and from it, she pulled out a wooden square picture frame and placed it at his feet. Tina. 

His eyes flew up to see her eyeing him expectingly. Without a word, she reached into the satchel again and pulled out a long, pointed stick, placing it beside Tina’s picture. His wand. She found his wand! Newt’s heart jumped excitedly in his chest. A wave of gratitude rushed over him, easing the sinking feeling he felt in the pit of his stomach. When he met the creature's eyes, his words escaped him. Such a radiant creature should not exist, and yet, there she was, staring doe-eyed and querying. 

Every detail of her fascinated and beguiled, as is the nature of such an entity. He found himself savoring the image of her, from the arch of her brow to the curve of her lips. The way her hair framed her face and how the shadows contoured her cheekbones. He scanned the whole of her, committing to her memory. His gaze glossed over the curve of her shoulders, noting the smoothness of her skin, when he noticed the one and only blemish that scathed the crook of her neck and left shoulder. Burns, by the look of them. The exposed pink of her flesh and blisters that presumably continued to her shoulder were undoubtedly painful, though she showed no signs of it. Without a second thought, Newt reached his hand to push her hair out of the way so he could examine it further, but the moment his fingertips brushed her lustrous locks, she reeled back into the sea. 

“Wait! I’m sorry!” He called after her, but she moved with such agility and speed; she was already diving her head back under the water. Her tail flicked over the surface until she reached deeper waters; her shining, shimmering tail flapped one last time before disappearing beneath the waves. 

The two men left ashore remained dumbfounded, staring distantly at the open waters. Jacob, who hadn’t dared to speak from the moment the creature crawled onto shore, was the one to break their awestricken silence. 

“You saw what I saw, right?”

Newt nodded. “Yes,” he said faintly.

A sudden exclaiming laugh burst from Jacob that quickly turned into a joyous fit of laughter. “I can’t believe it!” He shouted as he stumbled to his feet. “That was amazing! Did you see her? She was beautiful, oh my god! Newt, did we really just see a—”

“A siren.” Newt’s eyes stared longingly at the sea, the lilt of pure astonishment inflecting his tone. “She’s a siren.”