#Glyph Interface

[majorworlddelhi]

Introducing the Nothing Phone (2): Innovation Meets Style and Performance P-54

Innovation Meets Style and Performance: Introducing the Nothing Phone (2):    Nothing, the brainchild of Carl Pei, former co-founder of OnePlus, has unveiled its highly anticipated second smartphone, the Nothing Phone (2). With its transparent back and eye-catching Glyph interface, this device is set to make waves in the tech industry. Nothing Phone (2)   Featuring a powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1…

[california-112]

The Lantea Sky Almanac: High Winter Edition

More (increasingly busy) versions under the cut!

[growingbird]

[anon-e-miss]

A Work of Light

“Do ya wanna feel real helpless?”

Prowl was intrigued by the question. Condensation beaded his nude protoform and his fans hummed noticeably as the worked to cool his heated frame. Jazz had the long and nimble digits of a musician and he had not settled at mastering mere musical instruments. He played Prowl as well as he did a lyre or a bass and the witch did not doubt his lover played his other amorous partners just as well. They were not friends so you could not call them friends with benefits. It would not be fair to call their status complicated. They were two mechs from very different worlds who were working together to identify a mutual threat. That they were interfacing was insignificant. Given the power of a witch’s feelings when they worked, Prowl regularly sought out anonymous lovers when he wished to perform interface magic. Since Jazz had discovered this habit, he had become Prowl regular partner. That did not mean this interface was anymore meaningful that any of the other anonymous interface Prowl had enjoyed.

“What did you have in processor?”

Jazz buckled the strap behind Prowl’s helm. A large red ball stretched the witches mouth wide. His arms were secured with more straps behind his back, under his doorwings. Prowl’s optics rolled back in his helm as the Amalgus grabbed his chevron in his servo and wrenched his helm back at the same time as he buried his heavily ridge spike into Prowl’s soaking wet valve. Prowl’s moan was silent as the Amalgus’ fragged him from behind, his spike plunging straight through to his forge each time. Muted, Prowl could not speak a spell and with his servos each tied his elbows, Prowl could not perform physical magic either. His belly was coiled tight and his valve rippled over Jazz’s spike over and over as the Amaglus fragged him hard and fast.

He could not ask Jazz to stop. He could not break free. He could not work a spell. As Jazz shifted into his feral form, Prowl should have been afraid; there was nothing he could do to save himself. The Amalgus’ engine rumbled in a low purr and Prowl felt his hot ventilations against the back of his neck. Jazz’s claws dragged lightly over Prowl’s aft before he seized his hips and hike them up. Prowl could not hold himself up and his face fell against the pillow. He arched it back as Jazz slowly eased the tip of his spike into his soft afthole, below it, the Amalgus’ second spike ground between Prowl’s swollen valve folds. Unconsciously, Prowl held his intakes in anticipation. His squeal went unvoiced as the Amalgus’ dual spike cleaved him open.

Spines raked Prowl’s nodes and he overloaded, tears pouring from his optics. The agony was exquisite. Jazz growled in a language Prowl did not understand but he nodded his helm against the pillow all the same. He was overloading and he knew he would not stop until Jazz had taken his fill. Amalgii usually only interface in this form when they were in rut and driven to breed their berthmate. Receptive Amalgii and Polyhexians had dual valves and dual wombs, capable of carrying in both forges at once. Prowl was a receptive Praxian. He only had one valve and a small protospike only the length of half a digit hard. It was hard not and it sent bolts of pleasure up Prowl’s spike as Jazz squeezed it between his claws. As Prowl overloaded, sobbing silently, it went limp and slipped back into its sheath.

Jazz pulled Prowl up and forced Prowl to face a mirror. Behind him, the Amaglus looked like the demons in the old books Prowl had studied, all sharp angles and spines. Rarely, did Prowl feel small. He had never been slender but three carryings had added to his curves. Though Bluestreak was a first-tier sparkling now, just learning his first glyphs, stretch marks still lined Prowl’s belly. The tattoos that covered the witch’s abdomen should have been warped but the stretch marks seemed to embellish the psalms he wore on his sentio-metallico. His wells hung low, too large and heavy to be perky. Jazz twisted Prowl’s stiff nozzle before sliding over his round belly. There was no extra mass on Jazz. He was lean and powerful, whatever his form. With one servo, Jazz held Prowl’s jaw, making him watch as his claw circled his sheath. Prowl jerked his helm but he could not pull free from Jazz’s grasp, his optics went wide as Jazz pushed a single, clawed digits into Prowl’s narrow sheath. He shook in the Amalgus’ arms. Prowl could see Jazz’s spike where it disappeared into his well fragged valve. Now he watched Jazz’s digit disappear into his small sheath.

“Did ya know yer gamma cluster ‘n yer transfluid duct are connected?” Jazz asked him as his claw lightly scrapped against that very duct from within Prowl’s sheath.

Prowl valve clenched hard around the spike lodged within him. His legs were weak. He knew he could “cum” through the stimulation of this duct. Receptive Praxians did not make transfluids but they still retained the duct from the times before when all Praxians were dual-sexed. As Jazz teased that duct Prowl’s belly became tighter and tigher until lubricant squirted out from around the spike that was plugging his valve. Jazz let go of his chin and Prowl’s helm sagged. The Amalgus pushed a second digit alongside the first, straining Prowl’s tiny sheath. Lubricant gushed out around Jazz’s spike again as he withdrew the two digits, leaving Prowl’s little sheath gaped and swollen. Jazz’s claws dug into Prowl’s hips and he dragged him up and down on his spine-covered spikes until finally he overloaded, spines locking into Prowl’s biolights and nodes, spraying hot transfluids deep in Prowl’s belly, flooding his forge and his aft pipe and overcome with ecstasy, Prowl passed out.

Garbed in his conservative armour, there was no sign of the amorous meeting Prowl and Jazz had enjoyed joors early, at first glance. The witch worked the crystal on his bench as lubricants and transfluids slowly trickled down his leg. Prowl’s faceplates were flush as his swollen folds rubbed against the lining of his armour. He wiped condesation from his browridge as the tattoos covering his sentio-metallico glowed. Voice both breathy and rough imbued the lust in his energon into the stone he carved. It would be a powerful talisman to whoever carried it. Releasing a puff of air from his intakes, Prowl set down the stone and the tattoos the marked him as a Worker of the Light faded. He braced himself against his workbench as his legs trembled. Prowl’s face was scarlet as he looked at the time. He would be going to interview witnesses with Jazz in just a few joors. It was going to be a chore to act civilized.

“What’s that ya got there?” Jazz asked. The ease with which he had to slip up on Prowl was honestly offensive. Somehow, the Praxian’s doorwings were blind to him. Prowl looked down at the crystal he was polishing, it was not only the shape but the size of a spike.

“A talisman,” Prowl replied.

“A talisman?” Jazz said, helm cocked. He knew better than to touch any object Prowl had worked.

“One that will ensure the keeper is well pleased,” Prowl replied, a flush forming on his face.

“Ya don’t need a talisman for that,” Jazz declared in a perfectly licentious tone. He flicked the hood of Prowl’s chassis and it popped open. Prowl’s heavy well spilled out and Jazz squeezed both as he lightly nipped Prowl’s neck.

“Oohh!” Prowl moaned, servos clinging in the Amalgus’ shoulders. His legs were splayed wide as Jazz’s drilled his spike deep as he fragged Prowl on the witch’s work bench.

Thank the Light the room was soundproofed. That protection had been put in place to ensure completed works were not contaminated by new spells. It was convenient all the same as his wanton cries echoed about the room but no further. Upstairs, Smokescreen and Bluestreak were already sleeping and Strongarm would soon be as well. His youngling was in charge of her brothers while he was out, though Prowl was not technically out yet. All the lusty cries the gag had held in earlier spilled out of Prowl as Jazz sucked his nozzle and spiked his sopping valve. Jazz lightly nipped Prowl’s nozzle and the witch squeaked. His jaw hung open as the Amalgus’ face contorted in an erotic grimace as he watch his thick spike sink between Prowl thick, shiny folds. Prowl cupped Jazz’s helm as he murmured wanton glyphs. Slowly, Prowl’s tattoos started to glow. He cried in exultation as he overloaded again.

“Didn’t know I could frag the magic outta ya,” Jazz declared as he helped Prowl right his armour.

“Nor did I,” Prowl said. “I trust you will not try to take advantage?”

“We’ll see.”

[astrolocherry]

Libra - The Love Spell of Aphrodite's Alchemy

The Libra glyph forms the shape of a vanity table, the mirror on the surface. Libra is however, by no means a seamless reflection without substance, she is the Morning light star shining brightest in the sky, the glow we all cherish and know, part of the world we belong to. The mirror does not display what is truly there, it can embellish, distort, and cast back ideals in some form of elusive sorcery or trickery. We know this well.

Saturn is the historical alchemist and exalts in Libra. Interpersonally, Libra catches qualities, arrangements of beauty, love, and observation to weld in Saturn’s alchemist’s laboratory. The creative vision of Aphrodite infuses through this to blend a melody that plays her personality like a cosmic pan flute. This invites everybody through Libra to glimpse at themselves reflecting from her, so it also means people can instantly relate and engage, but also idealise, possess, and place their expectations upon.

Libra senses people, their vibration and auric presence. She traces their cosmic design, sketches their faces, and reads their mind. The Libra mirror is a cosmic potion, stirred by the Great Wizard himself with the glitter dust of Venus reflecting an image that beguiles something uniquely different inside of everyone. Libra is the autumn equinox when light blends into darkness, so there is polarity, revelation, and cohesion conveyed through this visual, and thus Libra can reveal unacknowledged and savage traits in other people that subject her to their projections of frustration, denial, ignorance, or intruige.

Narcissus lost his mind to suicide staring into his reflection by pool lead to by Aphrodite. Seduced by impossibility into fool’s paradise, many have gone mad looking into the Libra for too long and playing out their fantasies through her. Not by her doing, but by their own contorted desires and ideals that crack inside of them when she fails to reinforce their illusionary fabrication. She is very real, her influence is real, her body and intellect is real, her touch is real, and the people that she has moved in her life cannot deny that she has left something real, substantial, and irreplaceable inside of them.

Aphrodite rose from the magical water, and the energy of Saturn forms sensation into matter. Multiple cosmic forces experiment with the physical interface of Libra. Like the honey bee, she flutters between the flowers of interactive action and follows this with the personal reflection that transmutes the pollen of what she has learned, envisioned, observed in herself and in the world into the sweet, golden taste of God. Conscious self-reflection, acknowledgment, and sensual experience is vital for the higher expression of this energy. This practice also dissolves the mask, internal stability, imitation, and emptiness can arise when this energy has not been contained.

The Gnostic Teacher writes, “To create the soul is to create a vessel through which God can work. That soul or vessel is necessary in these times because the ego is so heavy and so complex we that we need a high voltage transmitter to direct our forces in an extremely potent and forceful way by the guidance of our Divine Mother to eliminate the ego”. The personality is an adaptable and vast performance of possibilities, capable of appearing and vanishing. But the conduit behind this, the very essence deep within Libra beyond any thought and comprehension is the authentic, true, and eternal being, a grand alchemist practicing sorcery, turning something invisible into gold and declaring its divine creativity.

-written by Cherry

[vintagerpg]

What We Give to Alien Gods (2021) is quite the zine. Again, as with most Mothership scenarios, the basic building blocks will feel familiar — anomalies, ruins, a stranded survivor, horrible monsters — but their configuration here feels entirely new, unsettling and unfathomable. It is also, for all its beauty and intrigue, a little difficult to parse and, probably daunting to run.

The central premise of the scenario is the discovery of alien ruins — a kind of temple. An NPC is committed to unlocking the temple, which might also be a prison. The means to assist in this, or foil the scheme, is in deciphering a visual triform glyph language used by the non-verbal civilization who built the temple. Another entity can also introduce a second xenolanguage to decipher. These, and the temple itself, are intriguing, atmospheric puzzle boxes, made more so by the fact that Mothership doesn’t have aliens (so discovering them is kind of a big deal) and the way the new Conviction system imbues events with a sense of imminent revelation. Something important is going to happen! Something that is probably beyond the comprehension of everyone involved.

Including, maybe, the folks playing the game. It is A LOT and it asks a lot of players, requiring a group to really want to play this sort of scenario. I think the end result is amazing, but it is really only going to appeal to a specific sort of player. And they are going to have to tolerate Scientist characters being the center of all the attention — they alone have the skills to directly interface with the mysteries (sort of like Decking in Shadowrun).

Whether or not it is broadly playable, it is a gorgeous experiment. Just reading it conveys a sense of doomful profundity. That’s a rarity, and worth the price of admission alone.

[binomech]

hello tumblr-using reader, i'm making this post primarily so that my followers don't think i'm being possessed by a moomin when i post in toki pona, and also to compile useful resources for people who want to learn.

so what is toki pona?

toki pona is a minimalist constructed language created by Sonja Lang and published back in 2001; it started out proposing 120 core words (in the original book known as pu) and adding 61 afterwards (in the follow-up dictionary known as ku). however, the language is alive and constantly changing both through the addition of nimi-sin (nimi sin = new word) by the speakers and new nasin (nasin = way, in this case refers to a personal manner of using toki pona).

recommended resources

nimi.li

my favorite toki pona dictionary, by ilo Tani; it uses data from the Linku survey to determine usage and provides a compact and accessible interface

lipu sona

soweli Tesa’s beautiful and friendly site with lessons for toki pona beginners, includes some link to other people’s courses as well

nasin toki

a core grammar guide with short, clear explanations by kili pan Juli

lipu lili pona

jan Ne’s toki pona cheatsheet featuring phonetics, a simple dictionary and core grammar tennets

naming yourself in toki pona

a very helpful guide from poki Pakapa for people, especially those new to toki pona, who are trying to understand naming conventions in the language and trying to pick a name for themselves. it includes a phonetic tokiponization guide and an overview of common semantic spaces for head words

why all manmade “ma pona” suck

an essay by ilo Mimuki about colonial mindsets in toki pona spaces

lipamanka’s website

a site hosted by lipamanka that has very interesting meta essays, stories, and is the home of the linjamanka font. it also hosts a semantic space dictionary.

ante toki pona’s font tool

a comparative spreadsheet of different toki pona font glyphs and features by jan Ke Tami

telo misikeke

a grammar checker by jan Nikola; it’s not entirely automated, it just looks for common mistakes and stacks them in a way that forces you to correct one before you see if there’s anything else wrong with the proposed solution. it’s a lovely learniang tool and a good first run for proofreading.

categorized word list

jan Tenpi made a resource that I would’ve loved to have when I was learning vocabulary, the categorisation is intuitive and really helps with remembering definitions and sitelen pona

[ao3wasntenough]

Okay so my idea on the headmaster protocol would be that its first priority was to help stabilise Sam who was having side affects similar to his first overload of allspark knowledge and stuff, headaches and all the bad affects of trying to pull three all nighters trying to get a glyph drawn correctly.

It’s proposed that having a cybertronian neruolink with a bot who’s experienced with the allspark can help to mitigate and manage the energy and information consumption sam goes through. Bumblebee once being a allspark guardian and Sam’s closest bot volunteers.

After its successfull the government wanting to take full advantage of the opportunity for inhanced soldiers proposes using more properly trained and qualified personnel to form the “headmaster program” Lennox with ironhide would be the first approved soldiers to test the battlefield application before more would be approved.

However Sam wasn’t a soldier and with Lennox and ironhide it was decided they were to risky to be valid “weapons”. To emotionally compromised or trying to play hero amongst fellow soldiers. Thus the program was dub redundant and canceled. And Sam and Bee left to struggled trying to make any sense of allspark knowledge Sam spews up while tensions rise between human governments and autobots.

UNTIL

Wanting their own to be uncompromised and tied down by humans any longer Rachet and Prime created a plan to “Mute” the connection, tested on Bumblebee and Sam as they both wanted to help anyway they could. Ironhide turned down the idea, he and Lennox knew it was the best chance they had at doing more. After Bumblebee no longer felt Sam despite the binary connection existing still the autobots minus ironhide disappeared. Leaving Sector Seven to become a conspiracy theory rabbit hole once again.

Years later the autobots befriend more young humans with more promising fits for the headmaster connection

———-

Kinda want it to be reminiscent of the pacific rim idea of younger generation being able to be shaped better for the mental combatant conditions

It’s more likely just Jack and Miko and raf’s like why not bumblebee? You know his best friend who’s one of the best fighters??? They don’t want to tell the kids they already tried and kinda fumbled the headmaster idea but also trying to keep things burried just allows things to haunt you more

Also also adding the headmaster element is more the head component being detached inorder to closer manuver and monitor brain and and processor alignment and physical components being added and onlined to the human from the Cybertronian, so instead of the head physically making the exosuit the human is fused into a cybernetic/cyborgessqur suit that then can further fuse and connect to the cybertronians body liek micromaster i guess? But also the cybernetic suits Lennox and Sam have is actually augmented and integrated with/into their body’s extensively neurologically and physically connected systems with the intention to cross interface between human and bot

Which would be vastly different from how it would be done ever again. Like Sam needed to release brain pressure and strain caused to his entire body from the allspark and they tried to minorly alter the process for Lennox but didn’t know where to draw the line between man and bot so they went way overboard

[daemonhxckergrrl]

i'm an old-school bash bitch, mostly because i run on older hardware and minimizing input latency is a priority for me. it seems by the time i've configured zsh or fish to take advantage of their cool features, they're spending enough time polling the filesystem between a keypress and displaying that character that i can feel it and it bothers me. i haven't tried for a couple of years and wonder if it was just a configuration issue, is this something you've noticed?

i suppose the same would be true of plugins in bash (which apparently are a thing ?)

i've noticed latency on zsh only when having a slow-loading prompt (which may have to poll info before every time it redraws depending on its implementation) or using plugins that were still in alpha or otherwise janky.

running an almost-barebones zsh config (tbh i could remove all plugins except starship and the autocomplete i use that's specifically designed to be fast, to make it real barebones) based on just setting shell options shouldn't impact performance really.

i've used zsh in the tty just fine though obviously there's glyph issues (no utf-8 for the symbols used by starship to represent git and coding info etc.)

i would genuinely go frameworkless (no omz or whatever the other ones are), using these guides:

[hanalwayssolo]

i’ve allowed these random hfw headcanon things to gnaw and nibble away at my hyperfixating brain like a bunch of starving squirrels and god (by the forge! by the sun! by the ten!) i might as well write it down before i go insane during this long holiday weekend:

erend, in his thorough research of the ancient ones’ history with music, begins to use phrases like, “this beat is sick,” “this bop slaps!” or “this is a banger!” to describe the songs he thought are good. which are mostly heavy metal. in his defense, the only reason why the genre appealed to him was because it’s “the oseram blood” in him. (“it’s metal??? get it??? by the forge my people would love this!!”)

varl, to keep erend from blasting his questionable music taste in the base, often hijacks his focus with classical music he discovered along with zo and alva. mostly, varl plays vivaldi’s winter. erend was pissed at first but after being forced to listen to it on repeat, it’s actually… not that bad. in fact, his words were: “the beat drop in the middle? a solid 10/10.”

kotallo asking aloy about seashells has been a thing, but honestly, this was not at all a random question, nor did it come from nowhere. truth is, when he was a kid, he often traveled with his parents to the long coast, where he would watch the sea’s ebbs and flows, would listen as the water foams and makes a rustling sound as it meets the shore. he found it so mesmerising, somewhat resenting that he was not born in tide’s reach. now, after watching all the data that aloy has gathered in her travels and having learned that this strange object called a seashell carried the sound of the ocean in its body, he remembers a time when he told his mother how he wanted to “keep the music of the crashing waves in his pocket” so he can continue listening to it even from the bulwark. she only smiled at him and gave him a hug so warm his mother could have been the sun itself. anyway. this seashell seems like lovely thing to have, not just to have the ocean at his fingertips, but perhaps something to remember his mother by.

alva learns this thing called scrabble from the archives, a game played by the old ones to enhance their knowledge of the glyphs. (their word for it was vocabulary. or something to that effect.) she explains the mechanics to the rest of the gang, says that it’s similar to machine strike given how it’s played on a wooden board, but instead of machine pieces, it’s glyphs on a wooden tile. this discussion with the gang happens to coax beta out of the basement.

beta, of course, knows a thing or two about scrabble through the apollo training interface. she’s been so keen to try it out except she didn’t have anyone to play it with when she was still with the zeniths. here in the base, she offers to help in making the board, which more or less astounds everybody considering how… well… she’s been keeping mostly to herself, an isolation / kind of introversion worse than kotallo’s. this makes erend and varl immediately volunteer in carving the board. even kotallo promises he would find the best pigment to paint the glyphs on the tiles. zo and alva exchange a look that’s like, “did we just witness a nora, an oseram, and a tenakth agree on… collaborating?? for a board game??”

zo discovers the recipe for this thing called coffee and chocolate frosting, which she has heard kotallo mentioned during one of his machine strike sessions with erend. (“an oseram forging an unlikely friendship with a tenakth marshal? can you believe??�� erend exclaims proudly one night, sharing his piss-poor ale with kotallo.) she lets erend, varl, and of course, kotallo, taste-test for her. the results yielded positive, if not close to catastrophic results. positive because they all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the coffee and the chocolate, but by catastrophic results, she supposes that maybe she added too much sugar and cacao beans? because somehow, the guys kind of… went berserk. they were so awake and alive and burning with a rush of energy that the trio decided to go out to train and hunt that by the time they came back, varl left a trail of dead burrowers outside the base. erend managed to collect a dozen of apex bristleback hearts. and kotallo… returned with a carcass of a stormbird and a massive boulder from the bulwark. zo will have a lot to explain to aloy about this.

aside from varl, the other person who enjoys talking to beta is actually alva. alva is very much fascinated with how beta knows a lot of things!! they spend evenings reading through the archives and talking to gaia, with beta often correcting alva’s quen version of things. of course, alva understands how beta might somehow come off as blunt and rude; after finding out how beta has been treated by the zeniths, alva would raise hell over these immortal jackasses if she could.

zo religiously tends to her garden outside the base by the cliffside facing plainsong, but every now and then, she’d notice how the plants are freshly watered just before she can get to the task herself, or how there’s often an unfamiliar addition to her pot of flowers. she doesn’t mind this at all; frankly, she appreciates it. she assumes varl might be behind this as he’s the only one who lends her a hand to keep their little lush space alive and to bring in more plants for the base—until gaia points out a fun fact in their passing conversation that the new flowers blooming in her garden are only native to tenakth soil. specifically, it only grows in the sheerside mountains. well. with that in mind, it doesn’t take long for zo to put two and two together. besides, it really doesn’t take a genius to figure out the identity of this secret gardener. 

so yeah, sure. sure. kotallo takes care of the cliffside garden in secret. i mean, why wouldn’t he? it’s on the way to the sunwing site where he often trains, and erend usually forgets to water the plants, anyway. and about the flowers... he wanted to bring something that reminds him of home and to honour the friends he lost. truth is, this was all gaia’s idea. ever since he told gaia about how he lost his arm and what happened in the embassy, she mentioned that one of the many things the old ones did to cope with the kind of thing he’s been through is to make a garden. (and by ‘that kind of thing’, the words that gaia used specifically were trauma and grief. he knows she means well but this didn’t make sense to him—he’s pretty sure he’s neither traumatised nor grieving. of course not. he’s fine. he’s absolutely, totally fine.)

(of course he’s NOT fine but by the fucking ten why would he dare to admit that out loud? and what is he if not in denial? yes, he felt this when he lost his parents—but how come this is different? how come this feels a lot heavier than when he was a kid? does grief change its form the older you get? what if he’s struggling to process these big and complex feelings because he grew up being taught how to fight and not to sit with grief? to only bury the dead and to keep moving forward? besides, who has time to grieve and to wallow on losses when his tribe is at the brink of another civil war? this has always been the tenakth way: to keep a stiff upper lip, to never let sentiment get in the way of duty. to mourn is as unnatural as a dreadwing being docile. so how, pray tell, could he ever let himself have a say when he’s hasn’t been taught to do so?)

so instead, kotallo learns how to plant flowers to make room for grief. he makes space for another when they lose varl in gemini. he realises later on that he might have been unkind to erend, how easily he let go of the words “we can’t sit around wallowing in our losses” as if varl was a thing and not a friend, because truthfully, he was coming from a place of fear for his tribe, which, in turn, diminished the way erend was dealing with this loss, who’s taking this harder than the rest of them. of course varl and erend go a long way back. this time, kotallo is the outsider to their friendship. and kotallo of all people should know what that kind of pain feels like. he lost an arm, yes, but to lose your friends, to be the only one to survive… isn’t the grief from all of that a kind of maiming, too?

[newspatron]

Beyond Bezels: The Nothing Phone 1 Reshapes Smartphone Aesthetics

Dive into the Nothing Phone 1 revolution with this comprehensive review! ✨ Forget bland bezels and cookie-cutter designs. This phone sings a symphony of light through its captivating Glyph Interface, transforming notifications into a mesmerizing show.

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[vigilskeep]

How does Minerva not being good at glyphs interface with Irving being all about them? Is there drama? Do Irving's spells influence her own choices and in what ways? (Eg, Irving has fully developed the lightning tree so Minerva is inclined to consider lightning the superior element, or stuff like that)

(plz talk more about magic 💜)

irving may have been a little frustrated by her failure to ever crack glyphs—i think she's too impatient and always messes them up lmao—but i also think he'd rather she excel in what suits her than force herself to mimic him

irving's style of magic is pretty versatile, and dedicated; he has the full arcane tree and then one full tree in both primal (lightning) and creation (glyphs), and almost a full tree in entropy (hexes), plus the handful of other first level spells you would expect someone to pick up over the years. i like that, characterisation wise. he's not meant to be a super powerful mage, but one who has studied for a long time, and carefully chooses to focus his learning. it's also a good grounding to understand the different types of mages under his care, and to be able to teach his apprentice the fundamentals of any school they wished to pursue. i don't think he would mind his apprentice having their own interests and he'd probably appreciate them having enough dedication to push back on what they prefer. i also think mentors are there to give you the fundamentals in everything and you're probably more likely to truly specialise after completing your apprenticeship

i very much like that he seems to least favour the school of spirit (with only one spell in it), which i have always cast as the least trusted by the templars. i'd like to imagine he avoids it for political reasons himself, and it fits really great with my hc that he first took an interest in a young minerva when he was called upon to help with her fear of her own natural gift for spirit magic. he was the one who encouraged her to focus on primal magic instead, which she really thrived in because it helps her feel more in control

minerva's personal favourite element is ice not lightning and i imagine them lightly bickering abt it but minerva is fully upgraded in lightning too, it was probably the first element she focused on as a kid bc of him. and anyway they combine forces to dunk on earth tree enjoyers (minerva's had to fight off a laugh from a remembered joke while talking to wynne sometimes)

[remembercomic]

Making Magic Feel “Magic”

In many video games, players are gifted with a set of abilities to use as and when they choose. In many cases these are representative of their character’s distinct and often-superhuman capabilities, and in the case of fantasy settings in particular they are frequently magic spells.

However, there’s something to be said for the lack of immersion involved in knowing your character has studied and researched for years, gathered vital reagents in the wilderness, and has uncovered the ancient sigils necessary to produce an arcane fire bolt... and pushing keybind 1 to actually use it.

Immersion is the property of a game that makes the player “feel” like they’re in the game environment doing the things that their character is purported to be doing, rather than simply interacting with game objects and menu screens. It can be a hindrance to necessitate that players go to such lengths, but it is an important facet of player enjoyment, particularly when dealing with things outside of normal life like magic.

Over the course of the last decade, Minecraft in particular has seen an entire genre of mods themed after magical effects.

One of the earliest was Thaumcraft, which notably featured a research system that required players to examine blocks, items, and creatures in their environment to glean points to invest intelligently into a research UI at a research table in order to unlock new tools and devices. Whilst the presentation could be described as immersive and certainly it and the rewards were themed as magical, the ultimate payoff is decidedly less so. Sure you have an item that releases a gout of flame, but that’s really just a texture pack away from being a regular flamethrower, and what’s more it’s identical to what someone you’ve had no interaction at all with has made thirty servers over. This ultimately makes Thaumcraft fall short in the sensation that you’re a mage in seclusion studying the arcane and putting it to use, it’s really more of a coat of paint over a tech tree.

After Thaumcraft came the Witchery mod, though it was sadly short-lived despite numerous innovative gameplay features. Witchery focused on simple devices that could be interconnected, with no research required but with some incentive to play around and experiment to get a better understanding of how different parts worked. Included was the Mystic Branch, a wand-like item that allowed players in the field to draw out directional patterns to produce various magical effects. Ultimately however, the wand was difficult to use and the spells were predefined, so few players invested time into it and those that did mainly resorted to a handful of the available effects in particular.

Then came mods like Psi, Ars Nouveau, and Hexcasting. These mods made a severe shift to the existing framework by focusing on one specific concept: Custom spells. Instead of the hard-coded spell effects of earlier mods, these mods allowed players to create their own through different systems. Ars Nouveau used a single-line linear system of distinct glyphs to create effects, Psi had a visual programming-esque interface to perform logic and calculations for effects, and Hexcasting required the user to draw pre-coded glyphs on the screen to perform mathematical operations on derived variables.

Whilst the addition of personal spell-crafting was a major step forward, the actual execution in these mods was... lacking somewhat. Ars Nouveau was so simple that it was very easy to understand even for novice users, but this meant that many spells ended up looking much alike and more-over this deprived the spells of a lot of their “mystique” as magic. Psi and Hexcasting conversely were very unfriendly to players without some background in programming, with Hexcasting even necessitating that its glyphs (arbitrarily made and hard-coded) be memorised, as its creation screen deprived the user of all outside knowledge in-game. This ultimately made them both too tedious for players to invest in and similarly lacking in mystique.

In summary, whilst strides have been made in better enabling players to “feel” like powerful mages studying and creating new spells on their own, there remain some obstacles to the “sensation” of doing so. I think the addition of manual spell crafting is an important effort, and doing so in a programmatic manner so as to allow spells to be more diverse helps to sell the narrative that you are studying and creating them in your own personal way, but it needs to be conveyed to the player in a less overt fashion whilst paradoxically being as comprehensible for players without programming experience.

To attempt to describe a potential approach that meets these requirements, a common almost-quintessential feature of many magic systems in fiction is that of the magic circle.

The magic circle is, as its name suggests, a circular arrangement of glyphs and imagery connected by drawn lines or additional circles, resulting in a magical effect. The actual logic of such arrangements is usually quite minimal, as it is rarely necessary for the audience to properly comprehend the fine detail of magic in the setting beyond simply that one magic circle arrangement does one thing and another does another different thing.

However, if a system could be described that leads the player to develop their own magic circle arrangements with sufficient programmatic logic to enable them to readily design them to specific ends, I think this would produce the missing immersive property of the previously-described approaches. The benefit of magic circles is that they provide meaningful structure in an unorthodox fashion, preserving some volume of magic mystique, without necessitating memorisation of arbitrary shapes (as any UI to create such arrangements would necessarily need to provide them for placement) or high levels of real-world programming ability.

Moreover, such an arrangement with programming logic embedded could easily be stored as an external object to be shared between players, like wizards sharing research notes, and letting the players actually feel personally involved with the development of magical knowledge in their gameplay.

Of course, this approach is by no means simplistic in implementation. The allure of hard-coded effects in the earliest mods was that you always knew what it would do and it was very easy to implement new effects during development. A programming approach necessitates some form of compiler to convert the user input into an executable program. This was simple enough for Hexcasting and Ars Nouveau with their sequential operation strategy (each provided operation happens one after the other until end), but quickly grows more complicated for Psi or this hypothetical magic circle approach.

[transingthoseformers]

Hmm. So.

How the fuck did they manage to create the RotF sparklings without the Allspark shards?

So, let's think of our options. Sexual reproduction, (which Hasbro continuously denounces), cloning (oooh! I get to talk about the different kinds of cloning!), budding in a way, protoforms that were stashed away on the Fallen's ship in stasis, maybe a previously unknown form of asexual reproduction!

Now, logically speaking, we know that sexual interfacing is probably not canon. Probably, perhaps. Bayverse is the continuity that makes the second most amount of implicating jokes. The first being Jro's work naturally. Anyways. We're temporarily going to forget about Occam's razor. Yes, sadly in bayverse Cybertronians experiencing sexual attraction is canon thanks to you wheelie you little heterochromic shit. But little known fact sexual attraction doesn't mean sexual reproduction, as demonstrated by the lesbian lizards. For all we know, Wheelie could've been ah getting off purely on the psychological aspect alone.

So, there are multiple forms of cloning actually. There's the typical cloning you might be thinking of, which is essentially mitosis but complex lifeforms. Well, errors can occur which allows unicellular organisms to mutate a little bit as a treat and mutation means adapting and evolution. Perhaps the terms eggs and hatchlings is a bit of a misnomer in this case?

There's reproductive cloning, where the genetic material of one creature's somatic cells (body cells) are put into the egg cell of another creature, that zygote is transplanted into a surrogate animal where it's gestated like average, and bing bam boom when it's born there's an almost perfect copy of the original! And, this method means the resulting clone technically has three parents! Though, some catches do occur here. All three individuals involved kinda have to be female, it needs cells, and well gametes have to be involved which are a major part of sexual reproduction. That's why you'll see it in species that used to reproduce sexually, or species that use asexual and sexual reproduction.

There's genetic cloning, which we have precedent for in canon considering Shockwave's predacons,, bayverse's introduction of Galvatron, the majority of the protoform stuff, and tbh tbh the scanning of altmodes in a way. The most popular example of such would be you guessed it Jurassic park, which as someone who plans to major in biology is Highly inaccurate to how cloning, DNA, and dinosaurs work. Less well known. This is how viruses work. The problems we run into is our favorite paradox, which came first the chicken or the egg. "Where did the first set of genes come from???" Exactly. You could argue that Cybertronians are technically derived from an altered genome of a species that sexually reproduced that Quintessa found, artificially creating a biologically asexual race. The catches? It's damn hard to do this kind of reproduction without a container for said genetic material. We see this with the human scientists using Megayron's CNA as a building guideline, and with the protoforms. Iicr, in bayverse we see that the autobots were essentially visually the same before scanning altmodes. This may very well be are most canonically compliant answer right here actually. But... again, this does not explain them being called eggs and doesn't explain where protoforms come from at all. You could say "But Riot, the protoforms are made of Senti Metallico (however you spell that lol) " and my answer is what technically is that and where does that come from? The movies also refer to it as Cybertronium which??? Is considered an element but it's clearly somewhat alive but anyways we get no answers.

Unknown form of asexual reproduction is goddamn unknown, making this category purely speculative. Perhaps as I've mentioned the terms eggs and hatchlings, and are glyphs that didn't have an Earth equivalent so the translators chose the next best options. Maybe cyberforming material is on its own self replicating, which raises questions of its own. Mayve it's extradimensional supernatural bullshit which i don't like this answer as it's equivalent to "suspend your disbelief' wHich I don't like i like answers.

[iteration-anomaly]

-{{ The coordinates that I received from the head led me to a monolith. Specifically, to a hidden plinth that was like a secondary interface. There were glyphs circling the middle of it, just like what you find at portals, and a purple glow from the opening in the centre. All of it, the whole monolith, radiated purple. Not the kind that I regard fondly, the kind that makes me wary. }}-

[Sigh.]

-{{ I dropped atlantideum through the opening of the plinth. That's what it wanted. It powered the structure up, right now I'm about to go up to the primary interface. }}-

[etymologyofmind]

What happens on the Holodeck...

Previously...

And now...

When class ended, Da’an called for the lobby, and set back in his seat in the now ‘empty’ room, pressing his palms into his eyes. Doctor Asimov was an interesting choice as an instructor, though the many liberties the program writer had taken with him, and general reality, weren’t going to be to everyone’s taste, and it was likely the original man himself would have had reservations about being pulled into a simulation like this and used as such a strange avatar. Federation law was constantly changing around holotechnology, and the laws about image rights were more forgiving with the dead than with the living, and if one knew where, and how, to look, there were always tells with holograms.

Unfortunately for Da’an, it was also a technology which, despite its progress and general balance improving by leaps and bounds, was not perfectly suitable to everyone: many species did not see the world the same way, be it in colour or tone or depth perception, and the way a hologram portrayed reality to accommodate those differences had led to some impressive innovations in personalized experiences. The Vellouwyn itself had a highly experimental, highly versatile holographic system onboard, tied directly into the main computer and a powerful auxiliary power system, to allow it to do some “Neat Things” and gather data about the results. One of these things happened to give Da’an a mild stress headache if he participated too long in any given program.

Pulling up the system control console for the holosuites, Da’an toggled some settings and looked around the lobby. Abruptly, the generally grey cube of space his seat had been settled in faded out, displaying something closer to an astronav interface, where different points of reference data were shown in real time and three dimensions using glyphs and identifying data. The walls of the massive chamber were rendered in the standard black and yellow grid, although it flickered subtly, as if the lines were made of artificial energy. They were, actually, as the emitter grids embedded into the chamber walls did not require the reference mesh earlier holodecks had relied on, but it was a legacy representation that many users had grown comfortable with. There were a few projections into the room at regular intervals, extending from the walls to a central support column which hosted the internal emitters, the core replication node, and the redundant auxiliary power system. All of the substance of the holo systems was projected from here, and the deuterium powered emitters could project up to level 10 forcefields at such a refined focus that a skilled surgeon could perform nanosurgery with simulated equipment here.

The rest of the constellation around the room represented two things, based on Da’an’s filter settings: tangible, thus, replicated objects (or those which had been brought in by a participant), and participants themselves. These glittered like stars in the open field, drifting amorphously in a general suspension around the room, keeping mathematically distant to, and from, the relative ‘owner’ of the space. Looking down and around himself, Da’an noticed his chair was the same one he’d been sitting in in the classroom, but was now translucent, while the Padd in his hands was fully real, as it had come in with him. He was slowly drifting towards the wall, and one of the gaps in the grid which represented an exit, as the call for the lobby had presumed that he would want to exit the suites when he was done with his program, so was locating him near the Arch. He did not even feel the movement, and neither did the others still in the suites around him.

The Bolian from his classroom looked to be striding straight towards Da’an, so he stood up from the chair, feet planted on the translucent ‘floor’ which spread out around him like a pool in the nothing. He prepared to be greeted by the boisterous prankster, but was surprised for a moment when he passed within two meters of Da’an without saying anything, or even seeming to notice him: this was, in fact, the case, as unlike Da’an, the Bolian didn’t have a console up, and so couldn’t see beyond his own private experience. As the blue-hued alien moved, his path veered slightly around Da’an as the suites corrected it to keep the two from coming into contact, and ultimately corrected to pass him through the Arch unimpeded. Da’an realized that in his own personal experience, the Bolian hadn’t noticed the deviation, and had been walking ‘in a straight line’ for the exit the entire time, goaded by the deceptive projection of the simulated room he was in.

Da’an’s cybernetic implants had trouble with that very effect. Unlike most of the other crew, for whom the holodeck could bend light and alter reference points to make a straight line into a circle if it was called for, the various sensors in his equipment fed him dissonance reports whenever the holodeck messed too hard with plausibility. Occasionally it made him feel woozy, because it wasn’t simply a digital readout on his retinal console, but the full-featured experience of vertigo as his eyes and brain told him he was moving in different directions. Occasionally the visual input of the projected fields would distort between his eyes and brain, too, and his personalized view card—the projected envelope around him which gave him an arm’s reach reality to work in, simulated to his anchored presence—could occasionally desynchronize, making reality seem flat and queasily depthless. This was one of the reasons that Rich Ironside had given him access to this console at all; the two of them were working on a research thesis around Da’an’s holosuite experiences, and the merits and flaws of its discomforts.

Resuming his look around the space, Da’an noted a number of other students from his class still floating about, seated, working on Padds to make new selections for a program. Others had risen, and like the Bolian, were filtered into a ‘corridor’ queue which allowed them to file out of the suite simultaneously through one of multiple exits without actually running in to one another. One person, above him, was walking at a forty-degree angle, perfectly upright and at a slant, suggesting that they had a personalized gravity field working in their experience such that ‘down’ wasn’t the same as it was for others around them, possibly because they’d requested an upper-level Arch to exit. Since the gravity itself was artificial for everyone aboard, this wasn’t actually as complicated as it seemed, and directionality was the province of one of the arrays which connected between the walls and the core in the room for just this reason.

Some of the people and objects Da’an could see were clear enough: a Tarkalean Lieutenant he’d met once was dining with a friend somewhere, on something that he could not see through the opaque plate from underneath: the food had been replicated as part of their experience, so it would be nutritious and as real as such things came. Tactful Shadows—an actual program in the system called Tactful Shadows—were overlaid on his display to keep the participants from being exposed to unsolicited voyeurism from this angle, but the privacy settings of their program still let him see who they were and an approximation of what they were doing. Meanwhile, a short way off, a targeting icon surrounded a sphere of amorphous static, and its only listing was the currently running program: this was a user who had arranged for higher privacy settings, or whose program came with those settings flagged by default, to keep out unwanted attention even under diagnostic conditions. Nearby to that was a Human woman who was engaged in ice climbing, a fact which was made apparent by the motions she went through and the wicked hooks she was hatcheting into nothingness as she interacted with her program.

All of these participants floated in a void they did not know, or at least, did not have to acknowledge, kept them drifting around a big empty room that made adjustments to keep them from ever meeting, ever having to overhear one another, ever even knowing whether they were up or down. Rich called this a “Suspension of Disbelief”; Da’an wished it was more unbelievable to his implants. With a sigh, he looked back down at the Padd and touched the hematite tips of his fingers to the surface, letting his accessibility program sync with the small computer in the little device. It connected almost instantly, and as he thought through what he wanted to say and do, the Padd reacted to the microstatic instructions that channelled through his artificial touch, working faster than most people would through simple tactile inputs, one of the perks of not being a whole person.

When he was young, Da’an had been on a colony which had fallen victim to a spaceborne bacterial cloud which engulphed the whole planet. Like invisible locusts, the ugly little creatures, which resembled earth Waterbears, but had a taste for flesh, had ravaged their crops and livestock, contaminated their water supply, and within a week decimated their settlements. Few people from the Coriander Settlement had survived long enough for rescue, but when the Vulcan science ship had reached them and driven off the infection, Da’an was one of three of his family members who were still alive, huddled in a sealed storage bin, sharing a dwindling supply of oxygen and hoping to outlast the small contagion which had made its way in on their clothes and was slowly, but surely, eating its way through the available meal. He had lost an eye, his tongue, suffered massive nerve damage throughout his upper body, and had been spared from death only by the apparent aversion of the bacteria to eating through bones. He, his sister, and his cousin were treated well, and extensively, by a multi-member coalition of Federation doctors and scientists who were using newly developed advancement in cybernetic medicine to help the children and the few other survivors of the colony to recover meaningfully, and regain quality of life.

It had not only saved his life, but launched his career: Da’an was the Vellouwyn’s Bio-Integrated Systems Specialist, and he was responsible, in part, for everything from the gel packs which ran a neural network throughout the ship, to the healing biofilm which helped the outer hull recover and endure the natural rigors of space, to the interface with the next generation DOT units and the R4T drones which helped maintain ship systems. He had taken advantage of his unprecedented access to the doctors and specialists who helped him heal, and had become one of them on his own terms. For now, he was working with Rich, who was the holographic systems specialist, and an un-enlisted crewman, to try to better understand what the Vellouwyn’s holosuites were capable of, and ways to ensure that they would stay safe and accessible to everyone.

Finished with his work, he kicked the leg of the holographic chair away, and it burst into motes of light, dissipating when it got out of his circle of reference. Curious, he dialed some of the settings on his Padd, such that the visual representation of the chair came back into focus, tipped over on the floor nearby as the auditorium came back into view for him, empty and dimly lit. He stepped towards it, and watched as a thin blue light crept up over it as he got close enough for it to be interactable, and smiled at the recognition that the suite was not wasting power to physically present objects that he was not likely to interact with.

Satisfied for the moment, he turned to leave through the auditorium doors, which had rendered to reflect the exit of the Arch, and found himself face to ‘face’ with someone in the shadows, lurking, formless, with deep-set eyes watching him. Startled and surprised, Da’an cried out, throwing his Padd at the figure, and stumbling backward a number of steps, only to trip over his discarded chair and land heavily on his back. It didn’t hurt, as the safeties for the suites were on, but he clambered anyway, struggling to kick the chair away and get to his feet, only to find himself alone in the darkened auditorium. His heart was racing, and he was breathing raggedly, and he spun in a circle to look in all directions for whatever it was he’d seen, but found nothing.

Da’an wasn’t satisfied with that. “Computer, End program: immediate arch. Wait, cancel! Suspend program, record state for past 5 minutes, and isolate with level four data quarantine for review, authorization Darrin Theta Five Five. Arch!” The computer chirped and the door flashed open behind him. He briefly considered backing out defensively, but fear got the better of him and he turned and ran. Nothing happened, nothing pursued him, until he got to the door, whereupon a polite sound charmed from behind him. He threw himself out into the hall to a skidding halt: by design, for safety and security, the decks around the holosuites had no emitters on them, lessening the risk of escaped problems, so nothing was prone to following him. Nevertheless, he peered back into the nothing cautiously as the one or two other people lingering in the hallways looked on in bemusement. Floating there near the door was his Padd.

A pleasant voice chimed from the side of the arch, from a console: “Please take all personal articles when leaving the holosuites. Lost or forgotten articles can be reclaimed on deck 8: Requisitions.”

Da’an could feel his face flush with embarrassment, and he reached a trembling, traitorous hand through the door to snatch the Padd out of thin air. Turning to march indignantly down the hallway, he barked out a demand to the computer for the location of Richard Ironside, who he could practically hear laughing from here, satisfied in his successful prank. It was a good thing they had such qualified doctors onboard, Da’an thought: when he caught up with Rich, he was going to tear a strip off of him deep enough to need medical attention.