#a mail system between worlds

[evilvillain123456789]

. envision the warmth of an infected cut, feel its inviting redness upon the back of your hand as you lightly press against it there on your wrist in tenative investigation.

you never noticed this was here before.

now imagine the slight bruise around it, tender, the jaggedness of the cut itself, the show of exertion required to create such a thing. why did it take so much? was it not a knife? look deeper. imagine remembering how it was aquired- self inflicted? accidental, purposeful, but not your choice,

you victim.

what is it?

have you decided, or decided not to decide? you don't care. look at it. closer and closer. the pink central dampness, the dry red crumbs of scar around the edges. now lap at it, the serum, the slight amount of blood mixed in with a clear fluid, lacking pus, lucky bastard, taste the saline. press your lips against it,

feel its complex ridges in ways your fingertips can't, gauge the red heat radiating.

smell at it. scratch at it. why won't you just let it rest? why won't you leave it alone? it festers upon and within you, in a tampered state since before your awareness of it.

You could never leave it alone, could you?

you wish it were worse. you wish it were deeper, you wish more filth had gotten into it, you wish there were more of it to always touch, to always feel its burn, the proof and awareness, and force to keep gaping and dripping and letting god-knows-what in- into your system and onto your bed and into your blood and lungs and bowels, underneath your fingernails, in between folds of flesh, coating the scalp, the soles of the feet, between the breasts, behind the ears. the entire world as but a scar in one place, being cut over and over and over, a sore limb with a needle stuck into its crook in the same puncture hole, over and over and over, just over and over and over again, the dull thud of the axe, the most sensitive parts of the body repeatedly violated, injured, come to harm, for the sake of nothing at all.

You go think of that. I'll gotta e-mail tumblr staff. Just found out that #poop is in grave danger.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip started, I have been reviewing British media and its everyday items, such as the newspaper, phone, posters, and TV channels that seep into the public’s consciousness. Without the critical tools and education to puncture through their framing, we become complicit and easily intimidated. Some media outlets have gone as far as spreading misinformation, which surely would have been considered a hate crime in other contexts. Both the Daily Telegraph and The Times chose this misinformation as the headline for their October 11th issues. Although some (not all!) of those newspapers have already retracted their original false claims, the damage has already been done.   The Guardian chose to adorn its main headline for October 12th with the words ‘Israelis suspended between fear, grief and foreboding.’ The Daily Mail selected ‘The King Calls Them Terrorists, Why Can’t the BBC?’ Marching to the same beat, the Daily Telegraph opted to plaster the Royals’ condemnation of Hamas on its front pages. Survey the pages of the newspapers, and the stories eliciting support and empathy for Israel abound, making it clear who the perpetrators are and that vengeance against them is justified. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are only evoked through the register of terrorism and violence. Even those headlines, which are shy in their coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, intentionally omit the perpetrators: the Israeli army and state. They are designed to neglect the root and cause of the violence: Israeli settler colonialism. By settler colonialism, we mean the gradual transfer of European Jews to the land of Palestine, the coercive displacement and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population, and the imposition of a coordinated and sustainable system that turns this displacement into a continuous process.  Western media relies on racial, gendered, and colonial tropes to describe the atrocities in Palestine. It instrumentalizes white female faces to elicit support for Israel. Such a tactic simultaneously serves racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. It relies on notions of white female ‘innocence’ and ‘victimhood’ to justify the continuous erasure of Palestine. In a headline by the Daily Telegraph about a British IDF female soldier, below, we are shown a smiling white female soldier wearing military attire and a keffiyeh on her head. Neither the photograph nor the article questions why a British citizen is justified in enlisting in a settler army elsewhere, let alone the same army that is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. To the contrary, the article frames such enlisting as voluntary and dignified. These strategies bring to mind 9/11, Laura Bush, and the weaponization of white feminism in the service of imperialist and colonial expansion. Black and Brown feminist scholars and activists, including Lila Abu Lughod, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde amongst others, have long debunked and punctured through such strategies. It is this same white feminism that has been utilized by the media and governments to justify the intensification of Israeli brutality against the Palestinian residents of Gaza. 

[theminecraftloser]

Mumbo and grian are those two kids in class who are attached at the hip

Season 6, their bases were like 150? 200? blocks apart and connected via mail system

Season 7, their starter bases were in the same hill and connected by mail system. Grian was a self proclaimed “clingy girlfriend”. They also had two sons this season. Grumbot and Jrumbot.

Season 8, their mountains were beside each other with like 50 blocks between them max and then they joined it together into one mountain

Season 9, their bases are connected by a bridge and Grian’s lair is directly underneath mumbo’s vault. An alternate reality version of their son appears, grian builds another version of their son in a different world. Grian and mumbo both used candle rings to summon the other back to the server after they were on holidays

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Hypothetical AI election disinformation risks vs real AI harms

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Feb 27) in Portland at Powell's. Then, onto Phoenix (Changing Hands, Feb 29), Tucson (Mar 9-12), and more!

You can barely turn around these days without encountering a think-piece warning of the impending risk of AI disinformation in the coming elections. But a recent episode of This Machine Kills podcast reminds us that these are hypothetical risks, and there is no shortage of real AI harms:

https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod/311-selling-pickaxes-for-the-ai-gold-rush

The algorithmic decision-making systems that increasingly run the back-ends to our lives are really, truly very bad at doing their jobs, and worse, these systems constitute a form of "empiricism-washing": if the computer says it's true, it must be true. There's no such thing as racist math, you SJW snowflake!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/aoc-algorithms-racist-bias.html

Nearly 1,000 British postmasters were wrongly convicted of fraud by Horizon, the faulty AI fraud-hunting system that Fujitsu provided to the Royal Mail. They had their lives ruined by this faulty AI, many went to prison, and at least four of the AI's victims killed themselves:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

Tenants across America have seen their rents skyrocket thanks to Realpage's landlord price-fixing algorithm, which deployed the time-honored defense: "It's not a crime if we commit it with an app":

https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-backs-tenants-price-fixing-case-big-landlords-real-estate-tech

Housing, you'll recall, is pretty foundational in the human hierarchy of needs. Losing your home – or being forced to choose between paying rent or buying groceries or gas for your car or clothes for your kid – is a non-hypothetical, widespread, urgent problem that can be traced straight to AI.

Then there's predictive policing: cities across America and the world have bought systems that purport to tell the cops where to look for crime. Of course, these systems are trained on policing data from forces that are seeking to correct racial bias in their practices by using an algorithm to create "fairness." You feed this algorithm a data-set of where the police had detected crime in previous years, and it predicts where you'll find crime in the years to come.

But you only find crime where you look for it. If the cops only ever stop-and-frisk Black and brown kids, or pull over Black and brown drivers, then every knife, baggie or gun they find in someone's trunk or pockets will be found in a Black or brown person's trunk or pocket. A predictive policing algorithm will naively ingest this data and confidently assert that future crimes can be foiled by looking for more Black and brown people and searching them and pulling them over.

Obviously, this is bad for Black and brown people in low-income neighborhoods, whose baseline risk of an encounter with a cop turning violent or even lethal. But it's also bad for affluent people in affluent neighborhoods – because they are underpoliced as a result of these algorithmic biases. For example, domestic abuse that occurs in full detached single-family homes is systematically underrepresented in crime data, because the majority of domestic abuse calls originate with neighbors who can hear the abuse take place through a shared wall.

But the majority of algorithmic harms are inflicted on poor, racialized and/or working class people. Even if you escape a predictive policing algorithm, a facial recognition algorithm may wrongly accuse you of a crime, and even if you were far away from the site of the crime, the cops will still arrest you, because computers don't lie:

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/texas-macys-sunglass-hut-facial-recognition-software-wrongful-arrest-sacramento-alibi/

Trying to get a low-waged service job? Be prepared for endless, nonsensical AI "personality tests" that make Scientology look like NASA:

https://futurism.com/mandatory-ai-hiring-tests

Service workers' schedules are at the mercy of shift-allocation algorithms that assign them hours that ensure that they fall just short of qualifying for health and other benefits. These algorithms push workers into "clopening" – where you close the store after midnight and then open it again the next morning before 5AM. And if you try to unionize, another algorithm – that spies on you and your fellow workers' social media activity – targets you for reprisals and your store for closure.

If you're driving an Amazon delivery van, algorithm watches your eyeballs and tells your boss that you're a bad driver if it doesn't like what it sees. If you're working in an Amazon warehouse, an algorithm decides if you've taken too many pee-breaks and automatically dings you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

If this disgusts you and you're hoping to use your ballot to elect lawmakers who will take up your cause, an algorithm stands in your way again. "AI" tools for purging voter rolls are especially harmful to racialized people – for example, they assume that two "Juan Gomez"es with a shared birthday in two different states must be the same person and remove one or both from the voter rolls:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eligible-voters-swept-up-conservative-activists-purge-voter-rolls/

Hoping to get a solid education, the sort that will keep you out of AI-supervised, precarious, low-waged work? Sorry, kiddo: the ed-tech system is riddled with algorithms. There's the grifty "remote invigilation" industry that watches you take tests via webcam and accuses you of cheating if your facial expressions fail its high-tech phrenology standards:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

All of these are non-hypothetical, real risks from AI. The AI industry has proven itself incredibly adept at deflecting interest from real harms to hypothetical ones, like the "risk" that the spicy autocomplete will become conscious and take over the world in order to convert us all to paperclips:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

Whenever you hear AI bosses talking about how seriously they're taking a hypothetical risk, that's the moment when you should check in on whether they're doing anything about all these longstanding, real risks. And even as AI bosses promise to fight hypothetical election disinformation, they continue to downplay or ignore the non-hypothetical, here-and-now harms of AI.

There's something unseemly – and even perverse – about worrying so much about AI and election disinformation. It plays into the narrative that kicked off in earnest in 2016, that the reason the electorate votes for manifestly unqualified candidates who run on a platform of bald-faced lies is that they are gullible and easily led astray.

But there's another explanation: the reason people accept conspiratorial accounts of how our institutions are run is because the institutions that are supposed to be defending us are corrupt and captured by actual conspiracies:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

The party line on conspiratorial accounts is that these institutions are good, actually. Think of the rebuttal offered to anti-vaxxers who claimed that pharma giants were run by murderous sociopath billionaires who were in league with their regulators to kill us for a buck: "no, I think you'll find pharma companies are great and superbly regulated":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Institutions are profoundly important to a high-tech society. No one is capable of assessing all the life-or-death choices we make every day, from whether to trust the firmware in your car's anti-lock brakes, the alloys used in the structural members of your home, or the food-safety standards for the meal you're about to eat. We must rely on well-regulated experts to make these calls for us, and when the institutions fail us, we are thrown into a state of epistemological chaos. We must make decisions about whether to trust these technological systems, but we can't make informed choices because the one thing we're sure of is that our institutions aren't trustworthy.

Ironically, the long list of AI harms that we live with every day are the most important contributor to disinformation campaigns. It's these harms that provide the evidence for belief in conspiratorial accounts of the world, because each one is proof that the system can't be trusted. The election disinformation discourse focuses on the lies told – and not why those lies are credible.

That's because the subtext of election disinformation concerns is usually that the electorate is credulous, fools waiting to be suckered in. By refusing to contemplate the institutional failures that sit upstream of conspiracism, we can smugly locate the blame with the peddlers of lies and assume the mantle of paternalistic protectors of the easily gulled electorate.

But the group of people who are demonstrably being tricked by AI is the people who buy the horrifically flawed AI-based algorithmic systems and put them into use despite their manifest failures.

As I've written many times, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, but we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

The most visible victims of AI disinformation are the people who are putting AI in charge of the life-chances of millions of the rest of us. Tackle that AI disinformation and its harms, and we'll make conspiratorial claims about our institutions being corrupt far less credible.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/27/ai-conspiracies/#epistemological-collapse

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[scotianostra]

On March 3rd 1883 three hundred inhabitants of the remote Shetland island of Foula were on the point of starvation as the first supply boat of the year reached the stormbound community.

Foula, often described as the "Edge Of The World" is our most remote inhabited island. It is situated in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 20 miles to the west of the Shetland mainland. It is an island of crofting townships, breath-taking sheer cliff drops, and a wealth of wild flowers and wildlife.

Over a century ago, in 1881, Foula had a population of 267, mostly employed in fishing...at the last census in 2001 that figure had dropped to just 38.

On March 3rd 1883 the Shetland Times published this;

The Weather and Mails – Foula

Nine weeks have now expired since our last mail was landed, and all our resources are almost exhausted. Sugar and tobacco have been all done for more than a fortnight, and tea, coffee, etc, are now done also. Those who had a little meal to spare have helped those who had none, a thing often done in Foula, but if the weather does not moderate we will soon be all alike. The boat has been in readiness now for some time to go to Walls for supplies, and as the weather has become a little more moderate today they are going to make a start, so we hope that they may get safe through, and a chance to return again soon. But we doubt if the mail boat will be able to cross today yet, as the wind still inclines to the westward.

There isn’t much more than this about their plight, but it seems that same day they breathed a sigh of relief as a boat must have made it to Mainland and back successfully.

Today crofting as well as fishing are the main activities, half the population living at Hametoun in the south east and the remainder to be found at Ham near Ham Voe on the east coast. The island is not connected to any mainland electricity grid system. In 1987 a community electricity scheme was constructed, comprising a 3.3kV island grid which linked diesel generators, a wind turbine and a hydroelectricity scheme to the island’s properties. This scheme gradually fell into disrepair and has undergone a major refurbishment, funded primarily through grants.

Before refurbishment, the entire island's power was supplied by one of the two diesel generators which operated between approximately 7.20am and 00.30am. That’s not to say they were without power for the, just under 7 hours the generator is off, a battery/inverter system was installed between 2006 and January 2007, a solar charging array helps top up the batteries as well . The system was fully commissioned at the beginning of March 2007 and already the islanders not only have continuous power ( instead of the previous 17 hours per day) but are noticing considerable savings in diesel fuel use. Since diesel has to be shipped in by ferry (and often the weather is too bad for the ferry to run for up to 3 weeks on end) this of huge value.

An interesting feature of the island's people is that they still observe the old Julian calendar, replaced in 1752 in Britain by the present Gregorian system which deleted 11 days from the year. Remote areas of the country kept to the old calendar, adding an extra day in 1800, which was a leap year, and some parts of Shetland continued to observe festivals 12 days after the dates in the new calendar. The most remote areas kept to the old calendar longest, and the people of Foula still celebrate Christmas on 6 January and New Year's Day on 13 January

Travel to the island is by sea or air and is completely dependent on suitable weather conditions.

A wee bit more, and a short video can be found at the link below.

[vera-keller]

easy company registration cards part 1

part 2

included in this compilation under the cut are the registration cards of 15 easy company veterans featured in band of brothers (2001). all are taken from publicly available draft records held in online databases and collected by me, and contain details like the registrant's serial number, physical attributes, date and place of birth, phone number, residential and mailing addresses, place of employment and nominated next of kin, as well as their handwriting sample and signature. like or reblog if you use or save.

a note about draft registration

during the second world war, the united states selective service system conducted a total of six draft registrations, the records of which are held collectively in two groupings at the national personnel records centre in st. louis, missouri. members of easy company were drafted in all but one of these registrations from october 1940 through to december 1942. the six registrations are as follows:

16 october 1940: males aged 21 to 35 "within the continental united states". winters, nixon, welsh, toye, perconte and liebgott were among those registered on this date.

1 july 1941: males "who had reached 21 since the first registration". lipton and speirs were registered on this date.

16 february 1942: between the ages of 20 and 45 "who had not previously registered". roe, bull, malarkey and luz, among others, were registered on this date.

27 april 1942: between the ages of 46 to 65 "not eligible for military service". no known easy company members were registered on this date.

30 june 1942: between the ages of 18 to 20. talbert, webster, grant, guarnere, babe, shifty, skip and christenson, among others, were registered on this date.

10-31 december 1942: "those who reached the age of 18 after 12 november 1942". penkala, who turned 18 in august 1942 three months before the cutoff, was nonetheless among those registered in this period.

if you have a family member or ancestor who served in a branch of the us armed forces during either the first or second world war, chances are that you can find their registration card on databases like ancestry.com and familysearch.org.

richard "dick" winters

lewis nixon

carwood lipton

ronald speirs

harry welsh

charles "chuck" grant

note: a few online sources incorrectly state that grant was born on 14 july 1915. his registration card gives his real date of birth as 1 march 1922, making him about 7 years younger than people generally think he is. supposedly this misconception comes from confusing grant with another veteran drafted between 1940-42, charles m. grant, who was born on 14 july.

william "bill" guarnere

joseph "joe" toye

george luz

eugene roe

donald malarkey

denver "bull" randleman

frank perconte

joseph "joe" liebgott

[coochiequeens]

'There are wonderful surrogates but the system is also allowing ­others to take advantage.' Says a woman who exploited another woman

Twins? No, but this couple's baby boys were born just five months apart after a terrifying tale that raises grave questions about modern-day surrogacy

Cáhan and Cómhan Kilgannon look to the outside world like they are twins

But pair from County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland were born five  months apart 

Parents Kiara and Stevie conceived naturally just after using a surrogate mother 

By JENNY JOHNSTON FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 17:16 EST, 18 February 2023 | UPDATED: 17:16 EST, 18 February 2023 

Snug in their double buggy, peeking out with matching, adorable blue eyes, Cáhan and Cómhan Kilgannon look for all the world like twins as they enjoy a stroll with parents ­Stevie and Kiara.

'When we are out in shops, people assume they are twins,' says dad Stevie. 'When they were younger and the size difference between them more noticeable, we'd explain that there was actually five months between them.

'But you could see people doing the maths and getting confused.'

Cáhan (it means 'little battler' in Irish) is 15 months old, while his brother Cómhan (meaning 'twin') is ten months. 

And there is a fascinating and heartwarming reason for the age discrepancy. 

Biologically, Cáhan is Kiara's and Stevie's child, conceived through IVF using her egg and his sperm, and born via surrogacy after Kiara had been told she would never carry her own child.

The couple opted for an increasingly common surrogacy route – delighted to find a stranger who effectively offered them her womb. 

Stevie says: 'We explained it to family and friends as 'our bun, her oven'.'

Yet five months into the surrogate's pregnancy, the 'impossible' happened – Kiara became pregnant herself. Entirely naturally. 

'The doctors – we'd been to them all, even an expert in the US – said it simply wasn't possible for me to carry a child,' she explains. 

'When it happened, we couldn't believe our double miracle. The boys will be in the same class at school, so we have years ahead of having to explain why they appear to be twins, but aren't.'

At their home in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, this couple's joy is palpable

So too, though, are more com­plicated feelings. It turns out their 'surrogacy journey' was anything but joyful. 

Indeed, they're speaking out today because they want to warn other couples – 'who may be as desperate as we were' – that the whole experience can push you to the edge.

The reality of their situation is that the relationship with their surrogate broke down during her pregnancy. 

They even feared she would abort their child. 

'It was a real worry – later confirmed when she posted on social media that she'd con­sidered a termination,' says Kiara. '

At another stage she threatened to keep our baby if a whole list of requests that had never been mentioned before were not met.'

It sounds as if everything that could go wrong with the surrogacy agreement – 'a piece of paper that is legal but not legally binding', says Stevie – did.

Petty disagreements, mostly about money, escalated to the point where they were consulting lawyers and trying to get mediation.

'In the process, she cut us off, blocked us from messaging her, refused to allow us to go to scans, which she'd previously said we could attend. 

'She told midwives and hospital staff – who deal with surrogacy arrangements all the time, and had been wonderful about making us feel part of it – not to include us.

'In the weeks coming up to the birth, we had moved over to England, where she lives, to be in place for the birth. Yet for that full four weeks we had no contact with her.

'We had no idea if she would even hand him over when he was born. We discovered – the hard way – that biological parents have no rights,' Stevie recalls.'

Kiara – pregnant during the latter stages of this delicate process – was distraught. 

'My pregnancy was deemed high-risk and the ­doctors said I must I avoid stress.

'But I could not have been more stressed. I thought I was going to lose both babies.'

It is very rare for a couple to be in this situation – and also uncommon for a couple who have had a 'successful' surrogacy journey to talk about the pitfalls. 

They can share their story now because, in December, a court granted them a Parental Order, giving them full legal res­ponsibility for Cáhan.

In any surrogacy situation, there is a period of some months when the intended parents are in a legal limbo. 

Although Stevie was even­tually named on Cáhan's initial birth certificate – they had no birth certificate at all for him for several months – Kiara was not, as the surrogate is always the mother, by law, until a Parental Order is granted.

Issues such as who is authorised to make medical decisions can be contentious – but in amicable surrogacy arrangements, these things can be agreed and made workable. 

The frustrations were made all the more difficult with two babies in the mix.

Kiara says: 'It meant we were in this ridiculous situation where I could get treatment for Cómhan, but with Cáhan, Stevie had to do everything.'

It has long been accepted that the law surrounding surrogacy in the UK, which has not been changed in 40 years, needs to be updated, but a much awaited review by the Law Commission has been delayed. 

Meanwhile, the number of couples using surrogates has quadrupled over the past ten years.

Commercial surrogacy is banned in the UK, but surrogates can be paid reasonable expenses, which Stevie and Kiara believe has 'led to commercial surrogacy under the table'. 

Stevie, who works in the justice system, says: 'It would be more transparent to allow commercial surrogacy because, as it stands, there are no rules about what constitutes reasonable expense. We came to feel we were cash cows.

'Our surrogate alerted us to a chipped windscreen on her car, and we paid for a replacement tyre. 

'She charged us £1 for an envelope to send a scan picture and refused to post it until the money was in her account. 

'It all got incredibly petty, but when we asked for documentation for expenses over the agreed figure, she cut contact.

'We discovered surrogates advise each other about how to push their expenses up. 

'One couple even paid for a gardener to mow their sur­rogate's lawn – then learned she had no grass. 

'Surrogates even discuss charging for slimming club memberships, spa treatments, even car valeting after vomiting in the car because of morning sickness.

'This is not about money – we paid our surrogate expenses of about £15,000 but we'd have paid much more from the off if the pro­cess had been fair. 

'Our point is that we felt held to ransom.

'There are wonderful surrogates but the system is also allowing ­others to take advantage.'

See rest of article

[angelpuns]

I lied I actually have a LOT more to say about this au! Cause there's like a whole mail system and everything okay? I have thought very hard about this au fr

Here's some Leosagi doodles, the second and third are what they look like when they use cloaking brooches. Mystic stuff does technically exist in this au, the turtles just don't have powers and all that. Mystic powers aren't really a thing in the yokai world either, but they do have mystic artifacts and stuff like that. It's more of a science than magic at this stage!

So they do have cloaking brooches ( they work the way I wrote them to work in the ring fic basically) and they are typically used to do things like deilver mail to the human world/the inner yokai cities and for yokai to get jobs when they wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Particularly the way the mail works is that a yokai will use a cloaking brooch to deliver mail between the two civilizations - since they are trying to integrate more into human society it became a necessity.

It's a very dangerous job because it can lead to humans finding out about yokai and all that. Anyway Leo and Yuichi probably won't get to use them in the canon of this au (maybe when they're older) but I wanted to draw the sillies if hey got their hands on brooches.

Rural au masterpost

[chaosverseline]

Imu sama as monkey d luffy great grandmother

I had a crazy idea

It a mixture of a lot of one piece theories regarding luffy’s family.

First off , Instead of imu sama being luffy’s mom.I am making imu sama as luffy’s great grand “mother”.

Why?

Because here is how it works,

Imu sama is the immortal ruler of the world government (pronouns are them and they. despite this they prefer female fashion),But secretly yearns for freedom , but can’t because of the responsibility of running the government.

Quoting from a Reddit post, “To make it simple: Imu ……..related to ya boi Joy Boi and because she is a a ruler she Needs to act like one in front of everyone….”

Imu sama may not be able to experience “full freedom”. however ,when they did have free time ,they would traveled around the world and go sightseeing in a disguise.

During this they met a young man named……….

……..xebec d rocks.

Yes that rocks.

But during this time ,rocks isn’t a pirate yet.

Or maybe he was just starting out .

What happens between imu and rocks was what started out as a friendship ,Then to lovers and yeah they banged.

Resulting a adorable baby girl ,The princess of Mary geoise. For now, we call her “Yriaf” for simplicity sake.

After Yriaf birth, rocks loves his daughter but still left to continue his pirate career.Which made imu bitter and harbor a grudge against pirates.

Imu and xebec broke up and went on to their separate ways,Imu takes Yriaf with them,But allows xebec to call from den den mushi ,writes letters and sent presents to their daughter ,Using a cipher pol agent (who swore secrecy )to deliver the mail.

Yriaf grew up to be a kind and benevolent woman despite being the princess of Mary geoise. She disliked the attitude of the celestial dragons and slavery. She treats people like her equal and tries her best to free the slaves and help treat/heal/nurse the injure/sick ones until they are healthy to go home or stay with her (she would pay them with wages)if they don’t have a place to stay.Sadly, she was banned from buying more than six slaves per month by imu sama

Imu sama didn’t do this to be cruel,They are worried about Yriaf getting the wrong people’s suspicions. Imu sama honesty didn’t like the whole slavery system ,But the majority of the world nobles wanted this and imu have to go along. otherwise imu will become unpopular and risk getting deposed or worse case scenario,Getting Killed.

As much power imu has,Imu can’t protect Yriaf if all the world nobles voices their disapproval (Kinda like Garp’s situation ).

because of this ,Imu is strict with their daughter.Eventually Yriaf ran off to her father’s ship to get some fresh air from the royalty business. There she met her father’s crew and develop a relationship with one of the crew mates. Rocks is fine with it,after a long shovel talk.

Imu sama,However…… is a total different story.

Imu straight up disapproves.

But there is nothing imu can do, Other than sending cipher pol assassins to watch but not kill the crew mate who caught their sweet daughter’s eyes.

Yraif marries the crew mate,Whose name is Edward Newgate,Yes that Newgate.

Their child would eventually be known as crocodile.

Yes that crocodile.

Then imu noticed changes in rocks as the years goes by,How by each passing year,Xebec getting even more crueler and unhinged, starting to have bloodthirsty ambitions thanks to his devil fruit that messed up his brain, until imu can no longer recognized the man they had used to loved.

For now,Xebec’s sanity is barely keeping together thanks to his paternal love for their daughter .But imu is not taking any chances if one day xebec snaps and cause irreversible harm to his own crew and potentially to imu’s family. Besides,Imu is still mad about xebec choosing career over them and the lack of child support other than toy stuff animals and unhealthy snacks. Yes ,imu can be petty like that.

So imu hires a hit on xebec, saying xebec is a terrorist threat and a crazy manic. Then sends a message to the elders to inform the world government of this dangerous individual.

Battle of god valley happens and imu takes back Yriaf. Gives her a decision to either take crocodile and never met up with Edward again or hand the custody of crocodile to Edward and forbids yriaf from meeting them again, save for one day per 5 years. Imu allows for calling via den den mushi for during the whole time but that’s it .

The princess chose the 2nd option and tearfully waved good bye to her love and child.

Years pass, crocodile left the white beard pirate crew and joins the revolutionary. Also get knocked up by monkey d dragon.

When Imu founds out , they are not pleased , But At least they gotten a great grand child out of it.

His name is ……

Monkey d luffy.

Pure Chaos.

[sunny-porridge]

fics that held me softly in July

the depths - by @bahbahhh

I don’t even know how to begin describing this. I have to frequently put the phone down to let the words sink in. The prose is so beautiful, the emotions are so raw, the relationships (specially between Link and Tulin) are so profound, and the plot is developing into one of the most intriguing and fascinating takes I’ve ever read. This is truly a piece of art - and it has visual art, too! Give the comic a shot and prepare for a ride > the depths au (tumblr.com)

--

Frenetīk - by @not-freyja

If I ever do one of these rec lists and not include my dear Freyja, call the guards. I’ve been kidnapped and replaced with my evil twin sister, brand new hair band. 

It’s hard to put into words what this story made me feel. Our most beloved soft boy is dealing with grief, and what’s left after the loss.

Frenetik is, once again, part of the Concatenation series, but I think this one stands alone on its own as a truly rich exploration of Sky. Of course, it will make a lot more sense if you’ve read This is an Adjuration (how many times will I have to tell you to go read it?), but the thing that stands out the most about this story is the powerful emotion surrounding love, and loss, and change – a change that you can’t outrun, or escape, or stop, because it’s happening inside of you.

It's something that feels undescribable, and yet... It's here.

--

The Inn at the End of Time - by @musical-chan

If I were to choose one word for this story it would be haunting. It’s a very intriguing concept, sort of a Links meet, except these are all based on the one guy who broke the timeline... Several times.

Yeah, several Times.

Anyways, the execution is wonderful, mixing a sort of muted fridge horror and a levity that has left me thinking about this story from several different angles. 

Idolatry - by @tashacee and @a-manicured-lawn

After the War, The Captain is the cornerstone of progress in his era, helping rebuild his town stone by stone, but lately he has hit rock bottom. Iconic as he is to his people, it’s easy to take a hero for granted. Fortunately, the Chain has just arrived at his era, but will they be able to help him before he crumbles? Will he become a hollow monument, or are there precious stones hidden deep within his core?

Tash, Lawn, take the wheel. I’ll go where you go. And I have so many more rock puns.

The Fairy Dance - FilipaMariaKerachitomene

This series is another one of my regulars in my lists. I truly love the setting and the connections it makes between every era, every Hero and Princess, and even side characters. The main story is very plot driven and touches on heavier subjects, but The Fairy Dance is a sweeter side story set in Hyrule’s childhood, and it really sets the scene for who Hyrule is and how he makes sense of the world around him and his Princesses.

NSFW ZONE !!

The Obligatory Beach Episode - Anonymous

Listen, I don’t know what to tell you. This series made me who I am, and this entry has been nothing but high notes. Solid character development? Check. Carefully crafted worldbuilding? Check. Interesting plot? Check. Are you wondering how the mailing system works, or why the heroes can use their rupees interchangeably? The answers are all here.

And of course, well… You know what you’re here for. Truly wonderful sex scenes that go beyond the merely physical and really show how intimacy and love are some of the most powerful drivers of a hero’s journey.

Beach Episode also features a guest star that is absolutely stealing the show - not without her introducing a fair share of unexpected changes and complicated feelings. Bah.

one night / all night / every night - ocean__blue

Link and Impa, rivals as sworn protectors of the crown, both want to go after Zelda, but neither of them has any practice in the matters of love. So, they make a deal to set aside their differences and help each other out to learn together. What could possibly go wrong?

Featuring Zelda/Impa/Link from an unknown era - loosely based on the era of the Wild, but with some original spins that make it completely unique. It’s a fresh story with humor, heart and a lot of heat.

[lassieposting]

I think the most important think to as qustions about us how we got the first letter and tape to begin with,someone had to have wrote it and sent it in the mail and had have to known the protagonist address,but maybe I'm just overthinking it ,its just a way to start the game, btw I think the only info about the protagonist or the player from the developers is their height 5'10 - 6' idk how canon it is ?

Do you think poppy is "evil" ?

Hmm...no, I don't think Poppy is evil.

I think Poppy is traumatized and misguided, with quite a naive outlook on morality, and her actions are guided by that and her limited experience of the world and humanity for the past like, fifty years.

Ultimately, both Poppy and the Prototype want the same thing - to put a stop to the atrocities committed by Playtime Co. They agree on that. But they're implied to have had vastly different experiences with Playtime, and that is very relevant to how they approach their shared cause.

It's worth noting here that these two have, potentially, been trapped in that facility for half a century or more. The word prototype suggests that he was the very first test subject to survive having his brain and nervous system grafted to a constructed, partially organic body. If his name is correct, he should predate Poppy. He is the template they used to create and refine the process to make her. She is the "perfect" version of him, the finished product. He is a rougher, less polished first draft.

And Poppy was created in 1950. Since you can't have a living doll walking around and living her life in the outside world, that means she's been inside the factory for 55 years, 10 years of which she spent locked in a case. And if the Prototype is rightly-named, he's been there even longer.

And look at how different their situations are:

Attitude Towards Procedure

In Poppy's cut dialogue from the end of Chapter 2, she explains to the Player that:

"Terrible things have happened, and I am the cause. Being able to exist as a doll, it has killed so many people."

Her choice of words here is interesting, because it implies that there's a fundamental difference between Poppy and the other Bigger Bodies experiments. Specifically, it implies that Poppy was a willing test subject. She uses positive phrasing to describe her experience. Being able to is a phrase that suggests that existing as a doll is a desirable state. She could have said existing as a doll. She could have said making me a doll. She could have said turning me into a doll. All of those are negative phrases I'd expect from one of the unwilling test subjects. But Poppy uses being able to, and I think that's significant. I think what we have here is someone who has a more positive, favourable view of her current existence than the others - someone who sees toyhood as either a second chance at life, or a second chance at childhood.

The Prototype, on the other hand, is strongly implied to not be a willing volunteer - quite the opposite. He's highly aggressive towards Playtime staff. He's uncooperative with Playtime scientists. He's actively trying to escape the facility in the backstory. That is not the behaviour of someone who consented to his procedure.

Containment & Care

When we first find Poppy, we see that her living situation is actually pretty good.

Like. Yes. She's locked in a case, ripping off Annabelle like her little heart depends on it, but we know that's not where the Playtime staff kept her - she explicitly attributes that to the Prototype:

"He's the reason I was trapped in that god-awful case for so long."

(We can even make an educated guess as to when this happened and why. Poppy was in the case during the Hour of Joy - she remembers hearing it all happen, but not participating. Given that she was firmly opposed to the idea, it's likely that Prototype sealed her away ahead of time to make sure she wasn't able to interfere. It was a tactical manoeuvre, so it would've happened shortly before the Hour began, so that no staff had time to discover her and remove her from the case.)

So anyway. Ignore the case. Look at everything else.

We find Poppy in a section of the factory that's been refitted to look like a house, in what looks like a child's playroom, full of toys, cushions and furniture. If this is where Poppy has been living all those years, that suggests she's well-cared for, well-treated, and kept mostly happy by the company - we know, of course, that she wasn't entirely spared from the trauma; her maintenance tape is pretty horrific. But she's definitely been treated more kindly - or at least kept more comfortable - than some of the other experiments, and that's reflected in her feelings on the Hour of Joy: she's seen humanity in the Playtime employees who've interacted with her, so she sympathises with the terrified workers.

(Which? Actually makes me wonder if there was a reason none of the other experiments ever came to let her out in the ten years between then and the beginning of the game. Poppy's perspective is very different to that of most of the toys who were created from frightened, imprisoned children, experimented on against their will, and it would make sense for them to feel resentful or angry about it. Mommy Long Legs is mocking and lowkey aggressive towards her, and her avoidance of CatNap suggests he would be, too. Maybe her opposition to the idea of the Hour of Joy made her unpopular with them. Though she seems to have made up/never fallen out with Kissy Missy, at least.)

This is a huge contrast with the Prototype, whose entire experience with Playtime is one big human rights violation. He's kept in a prison cell in the labs under 24/7 surveillance, in almost complete isolation - CatNap, who's allowed to socialise with him, isn't created until the 90s, and the only other time we see or hear of anyone interacting with Prototype is in his regular sessions with Harley Sawyer, who spends that time coldly torturing him in the name of science. And that's given him a very different perspective - that nothing will change at Playtime without drastic and violent rebellion on the part of the experiments. Playtime doesn't care about their experiments' quality of life. They don't care about their feelings. They know that the toys have no rights, that they can't safely leave the factory, and that post-transformation, they have very little recourse against their tormentors. He knows that he'll spend the rest of his life a slave unless he's willing to kill.

(The other experiments also seem to have fallen closer to Prototype's end of the containment spectrum than Poppy's. There's a literal dungeon beneath the playhouse, with enough cells for each of the Bigger Bodies Smiling Critters. We know CatNap was locked away in what is explicitly described by a Playtime worker as a prison, when he's not doing his duties in Playcare, and also segregated from the other Critters - his cell is outside their dungeon. Playtime's idea of "protective custody" for Thomas Clark - now in the body of a Bron toy - was an empty padded cell with no company or stimulation, and he was a loyal employee who'd dedicated like 40 years of his life to the company. When Thomas was placed in with the other experiments, it appeared that they were all thrown into a "genpop" situation together in a big room. Like, Poppy is the only toy getting special treatment, accommodation and enrichment here. It's no wonder almost nobody stood with her against Prototype - he's "one of us", and she would've seemed like "one of them".)

The vibe I get is that like. Both of them are activists, of a sort. But Poppy, before the Hour of Joy, is the "middle-class white woman" moderate sort of activist. She will write a strongly-worded letter of protest to her local Head of Innovation. She will wave a colourful poster at a peaceful rally. She thinks that compromise, diplomacy and patience are the ways to solve her chosen cause. And she can afford to wait for compromise, diplomacy and patience to work, because while she is affected by the oppression she's protesting, it's a bearable situation for her. She has parts of life she enjoys. She has reasons to keep living. Whereas Prototype is a "frontline" kind of activist who's willing to lock horns with riot police in the street armed with only a brick and a smashed bottle, because he's part of the group whose lives have become so unbearable under the oppression that they have nothing left to lose.

Neither is evil. Neither is undeserving of empathy or understanding. Neither is morally beyond reproach. Both their viewpoints have been shaped by experience - Poppy's by her "privilege" (in comparison to the other experiments), Prototype's by his abuse. They're not even truly on opposing sides. The difference between them is simply a matter of degrees on spectrums. Patience/desperation. Optimism/cynicism. Idealism/realism. Hopefulness/hopelessness.

And that's what's most tragic tbh. Poppy believes Prototype is just as evil as Playtime, not realising just how easily she could have been him, or become him, had she been treated the same way he was.

(As to how we got the letter...honestly, I'm not sure. The childish writing suggests Poppy wrote it, but she couldn't possibly have walked it to a post box. Maybe Prototype's mind control reaches far enough to have a postperson collect it from outside the factory's front door? For that to be the case, Prototype and Poppy would need to be working together, but I do have a few disjointed thoughts about how that could turn out to be the case.)

[ladytabletop]

Do you have any suggestions for a two person letter writing games? I've seen a couple on itch but haven't ever tried one. One of my ttrpg friends moved states and we still play online but something physical and asynchronous could be fun

Oh heck yeah do I have recommendations for you.

If you want something setting-agnostic:

Ephemeron by ephemeron

It functions as a collaborative world building exercise between player/s and GM, in which letters and other ephemera are used to create and describe a world and a series of events that might transpire within it.

If you want something with romance (pining involved):

Empanel by Bogus Cheesecake

Empanel is a two-player narrative roleplaying game based around telegrams and queer yearning.

Beyond Reach by Annie Johnston-Glick

Beyond Reach is a two person play by post game about falling in love with someone unattainable to you. One player is a mech, the other their pilot.

If you want sci-fi generation ships:

Signal to Noise by LunarShadowDesigns (this is a personal favorite of mine)

One player takes on the role of the Explorer, one of the lucky few chosen to join the generation ship while the other takes on the role of the Earther, forced to stay behind as their companion departs the solar system.

The Wanderers by Adventure by Mail

YOU AND YOUR FRIEND wait to board two ARK-4 Civilian Class Shuttles charted for new colonies in the hinterlands of space.

If you want observers outside of time:

The Reaper's Almanac by Mitch Schiwal

The players will portray Reapers who write to one another after reaping a human in order to keep them alive in memory.

chronicle by A. Fell

The CHRONICLER documents a world, neither part of it nor detached from it. The WITNESSES find their artifacts some time later, and reflect, and remember.

if you want something specifically designed for messaging instead of mail:

When the Messages Began by Law of Names Media

You live in the dark. Or you did, until the computer came to life.

What's a Vaporwave? by fen slattery

One player is Casey, who kinda knows what vaporwave is. Another is Grandpa, who loves Casey and wants to understand their life. Played via text message.

and finally some miscellany:

A Response to the Esteemed Dr. Crackpot by Emily Jankowski

A game of academic squabbles for two or more players. Fight for your hypothesis in a series of responses published by one of the journals in your field. Defend your academic integrity at all costs. Everyone needs to know your rival is wrong.

Epistolary by En Sattaur

In Epistolary, the player characters work together to solve a mystery and prevent something terrible from happening.

Your Friend in Witchcraft by Kay Marlow Allen

One player will portray the Novice: you are new to witching; there are no other witches in your community who can advise you. The other player will portray the Expert: you're an old hand at witching, and have knowledge to share.

And if you need more to whet your appetite, you can check out the Step Up for the Postal Service game jam!

[travelingthief]

Zeus Devotions and Offerings

Learn About:

Clouds (what’s their part in the water cycle? How do you tell the difference between types of clouds?)

Weather (predominantly rain, wind, & thunder and lightning) (What causes these phenomena scientifically?)

The justice system

Eagles, hawks, and other birds

His myths and genealogy (there’s a lot there!)

His Roman counterpart, Jupiter

Political history in your country (or any country of interest)

Climate change and how you can help reduce it

Storms/Rain

Collect rainwater as an offering or for use in spells

(Safely) Watch a storm (I like to do so in my car)

If you can, safely offer shelter to those during storms (travelers, unhoused folks, or even stray cats/dogs!)

Participate in storm clean-ups

Splash in puddles/Dance in the rain

Thank Him for the rain and acknowledge how helpful it is for providing life to all of us

Take proper storm precautions, like buying enough food, having flashlights/candles on hand, and having non-electric ways to keep warm

Keep a rainy day fund

Spend rainy days with your [chosen] family

Meditate/fall asleep to rain sounds

Learn how to respond in the event someone is struck by lightning

Sky

Go cloud-gazing (try making up stories for the shapes you find!)

Go parasailing

Travel on planes

Hot air balloon rides

Ask Him to bless your flights and travels

Go birdwatching

Ride a zipline

Fly kites

Learn cloud divination

Order and Justice

Keep up-to-date with local political happenings

Participate in your city/school council

Attend protests and advocate for equality  

Vote in local, state, and nationwide elections

Take breaks for yourself when learning about politics! That shit can be overwhelming!

Learn de-escalation methods

Join a debate team

Keep your schedule in order

Maintain a clean and orderly environment

Advocate for a greener future

Visit your state house

Leadership and Protection

Trust yourself to take on leadership roles

Build your self-confidence 

Be assertive in your boundaries 

(If you're able to) Work out and build muscle

Take proper measures to protect your home (locking the door and windows or a protection spell/jar!)

Take self-defense classes/martial arts/wrestling etc.

Make your own self-love affirmations 

Do things that make you feel powerful!

Understand your power. So many people are afraid of power because of negative connotations, but power can be used for good as well

Carry yourself with pride

Speak with conviction

Misc.

Support small businesses

Check the weather and dress appropriately (or pack emergency backup clothes if the fit is too good)

Carry an umbrella on you! And a spare if you can, to pass out to someone in need!

Wear grays and sky blues

Travel and see the world!

(Safely and sanitarily) collect bird feathers. Make sure you’re aware of which bird feathers are restricted from being collected

Show Him things you’re proud of!

Set attainable goals and make a plan to achieve them

Offer hospitality to every guest, even if you’re not thrilled to see them

Be a pleasant guest, even if you’re not thrilled to be there

Offerings

Feathers

Bull/swan/eagle imagery

Rainwater/snow water

Representation of lightning/storms (Paintings, trinkets, drawings, etc.)

Imagery of Scales of Justice

Voting stickers/Absentee ballot envelopes

Political mail for causes you support

Homework you put a good effort into and are proud of

Pictures of the sky/clouds

Bird figurines

Crown imagery/figurines

Lastly, it’s undeniable that Zeus has a long history of assaulting and mistreating women. Everyone has their beliefs on the matter and I think it is entirely possible to worship/work with a god while fully acknowledging the messy past. Furthermore, as I dive deeper into the history surrounding the myths I gain a better understanding of the factors surrounding Zeus’s philandering, like the synchronization of Gods and Goddesses across religions and how Zeus likely assimilated past male deities and the people of the time created the stories of his many affairs to explain this merging.

There’s no way to justify the raping by our human standards. That being said, I don’t think it’s cause to completely shut Him out. He is the King of the Gods, the Bringer of Life! Surely that is something to celebrate. 

With all that, some final acts that support women:

Believing victims

Donating/volunteering at women's shelters

Learning the signs of domestic abuse

Learning and acknowledging red flags in a partner

Talking to friends about any major red flags you’re concerned about with their partner

Advocating for women’s rights 

Learning about domestic abuse/rape/abortion services in your area

Hoping this is helpful to someone! I see very few posts for Zeus on here.

[trashgremlendoesart]

So my dad is somewhat of a computer wiz and I asked him about some of the tech stuff in the magnus protocol

my dads says..

"I was involved in a rollout of about 1,000 NT4 workstations over four campuses back in the day (mid to late 90s)

Our machines started at Pentium 120 with 32Meg of RAM and 1.2G hard drive in a mini tower case. Apart from the drive bays in the case front for 3 1/2 floppy disk drives and CD ROM drives they don't look all that different to a small gaming pc today.

The mice still have balls though, the keyboard have big 5 pin DIN plugs but otherwise are just as dishwasher safe as modern ones.

If connected to a network you are very likely to find its Novel Netware 4.1. The networking will look like a thin black cable strung from machine to machine with a little silver T shaped connector on the back of each one, apart from the first and the last they have 'terminators'.

You probably won't be connected to the internet yet, there is probably no TCP/IP on your LAN at all, only Novel IPX. The ZenWorks NT4 workstation management tools from Novel are sublime, it take Microsoft quite a while to copy them.

If you are in our publishing class we will be teaching you Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark Express. If you are in our business course we will be teaching you Office 97 with that bloody paperclip. We will also be teaching you Groupwise, Microsoft haven't copied that off Novel yet so there isn't any Exchange.

If you have email its probably Pegasus, maybe early Eudora. Its unlikely you can email out of the organisation you are in. Internet connected mail is still to come, mind you so is any interoperability between mail systems. You expect attachments to work?

We still taught some things on Windows 3.1 so our machines all boot from the Lan initially to fetch the boot menu. You can choose Windows 3.1, NT4, in some classrooms Win98, or you can re-image you machine if its broken. Thats all done in assembler in the boot sector on the network boot disk image, theres no PXE yet.

Internet arrives one day in the form of a product called "Instant internet", it will share its single built in 36Kb dial up modem with a whole classroom of only IPX connected NT4 workstations if you install the Winsock32.dll file that it comes with.

You are probably looking for Mosaic or early Netscape if you want a web browser, Altavista is likely your search engine.

Better things are coming though soon we have a whole 128K ISDN service to share with about 10 classrooms, we have TCP/IP on the LAN now. Your classroom is still going to have to book when it wants internet access though, as that's still woefully inadequate.

I think the Macs are System 8 or 9 they have not made the jump to the unix kernel of OS X yet, they keep my colleague busy, she seems to be reinstalling the System folders on them on a daily basis.

One day you find I have changed the default home page for all the machines to Google Beta.

My job is done, the world as we know it has been ushered in."

Dad worked In TAFE (only Australians will get that lol) for a few years as well as other tertiary education providers.

This is probably not going to be very relevant for anyone but I figured having some sort of info available could be helpful for other people's writing, fanfic or whatever.

Feel free to send asks for any clarification or further info

[askagamedev]

What goes into the vertical slice of an MMORPG? I feel that it would be hard to prototype when a lot of the game's premise relies on quest progression, player-to-player interactivity, etc. It seems like something that cannot be communicated effectively until much later in development.

It's good to remember what a vertical slice is - it's a functioning version of all of the systems we plan on having in the game working together so that it is representative of the final game experience. MMORPGs tend to come with a lot of expected table stakes features, which means our vertical slice needs to have those features. For a MMORPG, that generally entails:

At least two distinct players on separate accounts able to log in and play in the same game world

A persistent game world - all players are able to log out and the same game state persists between logins

Functioning gameplay systems - skills, targeting, combat, leveling, crafting, etc.

MOBs that exist within the world independent of players

At least one quest that the players are able to accept, progress, complete, and obtain rewards

A functioning leveling system that allows players to level up and obtain rewards

Functional UI - combat, looting, character inventory, NPC interaction (e.g. quests, cinematic), chat, grouping with other players, etc.

A functioning chat system - player A can type a message and player B can read it in real time

A functioning item storage system (e.g. bank)

A functioning asynchronous mail system - player A can send a mail to player B who can receive it when they next log in.

A functioning player-to-player commerce system (auction house)

Functioning player-to-player direct trading

A functioning gear system

For a vertical slice to be a vertical slice, we don't need all of the different classes or races or gear or systems, but we need at least one of everything working together so that the play experience of the vertical slice is representative of the finished game play experience. Core functionality all has to be there. It can be a little unstable and it can be cobbled together, but everything should be there and it needs to feel like the intended final experience. The purpose of the vertical slice is to persuade the executives that the rest of the game is worth making.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[archergrid]

“I had a dream. I was in a strange land. A vast wilderness. I went on and on, but met no one. I called, I shouted... but no one answered. I was alone.”

-Akira Kurosawa, Ran

<< Ch1-5 Ch 6-10>>

Chapter 1

Look, I get this question a lot for obvious reasons, so I know you won’t like the answer. It’s dissatisfying. But, because you asked, the best cybersecurity commercially available is something called an air-gapped computer.

An air-gapped computer has no network card. You won’t see a cerulean ethernet cord spouting from the stern of the case. There’s no hard, hollow plastic antenna to receive a wifi signal. It doesn’t have Bluetooth. My compsci professor at Tech explained it like this: there’s a literal wall of air—a gap—between the computer and anything that could inject it with compromising code. This abstinence-only approach makes air-gapped computers cheap, simple, and impenetrably secure.

But much like celibacy, not a lot of people opt for the air-gapped method. What’s the point of a computer, they ask, without e-mail and Twitter and porn? And I understand that. There were days I got so dog-tired of the manual data dumps, of examining each file down to the binary before connecting the USB, of hand-transcribing scraps of code onto sheets of paper, of the day-to-day ennui of existence inside those invisible walls. But when I broke into a system, all I saw back then was each and every way very, very bad things could get in.

The air wall was better. It let me breathe.

My laptop had to be online so I could access those vulnerable systems, but my desktop was air-gapped—a little black lockbox of my pdfs, jpgs, pngs, mp3s, mp4s, xls, txts, zips, bins, bats, dats, all my associate backgrounds and every line of my code. Knowing how safe they were in there calmed me at times like this, when I felt Julian Ek’s omniscient data network watching me like an enormous, electronic eye.

Notifications came like machine-gun fire into my phone. My apartment was dark, black under blackout curtains. I saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing but automated search alert after automated search alert filling my notifications: ek trial, julian ek trial, ek trial update, ek trial verdict, ek inc, joseph chambers, joseph chambers shooting, joseph chambers deepfaEk, deepfaEk, deepfaEk scandal, deepfaEk shooting edit, deepfaEk trial. More and more, on and on. I With dread, I went to Twitter, and there it was in blue and white. #EkAcquitted. It was the #2 trending topic, below #NationalVideoGamesDay. My hands began to shake. It had to be misreported—a mistake. I searched “Ek trial” and clicked the first link, scrolling past Ashlan’s disbarment and the Marshals’ conspiracy convictions to read the 6 words I’d dreaded for 4 years.

Julian Ek acquitted on all charges. 

Ek walked. I went to the Herald for nothing; became a fugitive for nothing. I gave up my parents, my friends, my condo—my dream job obviously. I blew my whole life up, and now I’m stuck here, all alone on the other side of the world. Jeopardy attached, meaning I was officially of no use to anyone; meaning I could never, ever go back home. This dusty, pitch-black 300-square foot apartment really was my life. 

I was hyperventilating. Breath after keening breath, air refused to reach my lungs, only rattle in the back of my throat. My head and stomach and knees went fuzzy. My phone screen smeared as it slipped from my hands. I reached for it and missed. The clatter of it hitting the floor—the dull pain of my thigh hitting the floor too—degraded into garbling static as I sank into gasping, grasping unconsciousness.