#and then not try to have some part in the actual real interface changes

[adrift-in-thyme]

OOOH Tumblr’s doing user testing 👀

[doberbutts]

The real tragedy of lateral violence is we’re each other’s best advocates. Like I’m only mildly disabled but having to fight for basic accommodations has made me positively rabid about accessibility. Most people in my field don’t even use color blind safe palettes and meanwhile I’ve spent literal hours researching headings, alt text, ARIA tags, keyboard navigation, etc etc. Like I’m still learning to code and haven’t reached full WCAG compliance but at least I’m trying.

No that's it exactly.

It's only recently that my father has mobility needs- he's 70 so it was bound to happen eventually but he's also been deaf since he was 6. He can get in the door just fine but actually being able to use the services is another thing entirely. Then of course you add the intersection of him being a tall, broad black man with a big booming voice, no volume control, slurring and mispronouncing words, and unable/"unwilling" to follow commands and this goes from being inaccessible to outright hostile if he's mistaken for being drunk or high in public as a result of simply being deaf.

Now that he is getting older he also has had a double hip replacement and fell and broke the part of his pelvis that's still bone so he has a lot more trouble getting around. So take that description I just wrote and add "stumbling, halting, unnatural gait" and "sways in place when standing still".

We need to advocate for each other because at a moment's notice we can be in each other's shoes. We need to advocate for each other because for some of us this is life or death. We need to advocate for each other because we are always, always stronger together.

It's funny you should mention your field- I assume web/interface design/programming? That was my original career path before I switched tracks due to hating my clientele. Back in 2009 when I was still going to school for it, my professer was very strict about accessibility standards, requiring every single one of our projects to be up to the level suggested by W3C at the time. So in 2018 when the figurative whip was cracked and websites *had* to change, and all these companies whined and moaned about it, I had zero sympathy. Sorry but this had been suggested standard for nearly a decade so you can't say you didn't know your websites weren't accessible. There were even free engines you could run your source code through to make sure it would pass. Your website needs a complete overhaul and you're a company that's been around since at least 2009? Sounds like a you problem.

[archoneddzs15]

Sega Mega CD - The Lawnmower Man

Title: The Lawnmower Man

Developer/Publisher: SCi (Sales Curve Interactive) Ltd. / Time Warner Interactive

Release Month: November 1994

Catalogue No.: T-160015-50

Genre: FMV Action

To understand why anyone might have ever thought that there was something good in The Lawnmower Man, one must teleport their mind back to 1993, when the game came out. It must be remembered that at this time, "multimedia" was actually a new buzzword that created the same kind of excitement that "Internet" might have created just a few years later. In reality, though, as many examples have shown us "multimedia" is really the modern word for "shite". The whole idea of being able to play movies (even tiny movies which lasted a few minutes or even seconds) on your computer screen seemed like an impossible dream come true. In those days, The Lawnmower Man was something special, because in the spirit of those pioneering multimedia days, it entirely ditched any semblance of a computer game interface, preferring instead to simply use what looked like super blocky full-motion video for the entire game. Rather than any on-screen cursors or buttons appearing, you simply saw what must have looked like pretty decent full-screen video in those days. (Even though it's really just rendered polygon graphics for the most part.) Your character would respond to keypresses and the movie would evolve as appropriate, changing here and there as you continued to influence it. It was (and remains today) a little-used gameplay style. Whether that's good or bad, however, may be a matter of opinion. Even so, the graphics and sound effects were passable, at least.

This is not the same as the Super Famicom game, mind you. The Super Famicom game really showed off what the Super Famicom (and by extension the Mega Drive) could do. And the Super Famicom played like it was supposed to be a game!

This version of The Lawnmower Man came to the PC first, and a troubled port staggered to the Mega CD later. The MCD was, of course, trying to qualify its own multimedia revolution, and so it was a match made in digital heaven. The idea is that you are actually playing the kind of digital animation you could previously only watch on cassette, and directly affecting the outcome in a manner almost identical to the virtual reality it is based on. As you can guess, this doesn’t happen. The game itself is actually a sequel to the film of the same name, and Jobe has reached his full potential as CyberJobe.

You control Pierce Brosnan’s professor from the film as he braves a series of minigames inside the digital theme park of the idiot-turned-cybergod Jobe. What levels could be taken from the film were, with the rest filled out as a series of “inspired-by” challenges. This makes it a bit silly as all… well, ALL of the characters who died in the film have been turned into stage bosses; from the government director to the fucking chimpanzee. You’ll battle each other in a series of puzzles and action minigames, all the while being wowed by the virtual world your oblong black console is churning out.

Naturally, the Mega CD couldn’t possibly generate these worlds in real time, so you’re just looking at another FMV game, this time comprised of pre-rendered computer graphics. If you were really fascinated by digital art and the possibilities of VR itself, I can see the draw. There are some neat reflections and decent character animation for the era. Unfortunately, the whole experience fails to be either impressive or interactive. Due to the usual Mega CD compression, the video won’t match even one of those VHS demo reels, and the limits of FMV gameplay actually make it more annoying than just watching such a tape.

Lawnmower Man claims on its box to be an “interactive movie.” Interactive movie here means that you will watch some lengthy movie clips of questionable animation quality, then be instructed by a disembodied God-voice to “turn right.” If you don’t hit the D-Pad to “turn right,” then you have to restart the movie. If not, on we go. It’s the same old shit since Dragon’s Lair, and though a few standard puzzles break up the “run and jump for your life” segments, they all have the annoying habit of dumping you back to start after a single misstep. These sequences get reused as you go on, in harder versions without a guiding voice or on screen indicators.

What’s made worse is that the Mega CD introduces some lag between these clips and your input, so the moment you’re told to “turn left” isn’t the exact moment you need to be pressing the button. Sometimes it’s a little before, sometimes a little after. Presumably, you’re supposed to use the early sections with voice/arrow indicators as tutorials to learn the timing, but it still doesn’t feel natural. Meanwhile, sometimes just holding or mashing the button down will let you pass, sometimes the game treats that as an action that came too early, which results in you getting speared, crushed, shot, or crucified by virtual glass and run over by a lawnmower.

In the end, this game not only makes the Mega CD look extremely weak, but it also makes CD-ROM technology as a whole look boring and useless. On the plus side, this is another Mega CD disc with color print.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

To Do Today!

OK, I am gonna try to do laundry AND start reformatting the site. Obvs, one must do laundry. However, the site issues are more complicated.

Basically, WordPress is pushing out another interface change. The last major one was the block editor, that's taken years to be usable, and it still breaks sometimes. But it is more versatile than the old editor, so I get why they hafta. The new thing is some kinda universal site editor and last time I checked it was awful. You don't HAVE to use it, much like the block editor, but all the themes are scrambling to work with its new features. One of these is "global colours." My theme is really struggling with them. They keep changing, overriding my pathetic coding skills, and making things impossible to read. I either need a theme where the dang colours actually work, or one without global colours that's gonna stay that way. The former is slightly more likely.

I also have issues with ALL my custom blocks. You're supposed to be able to save a block and use it like a rubber stamp, forever, but the updates have left all of them coughing up errors. They'll usually stay legible unless I open the page they're on in the editor, and then all hell breaks loose. I need to figure if I'm going to update them all or simplify. I should probably simplify anyway, I think I get really annoying trying to make sure people understand me. Maybe that scares off potential readers?

So, first order of business, change the theme. That will change the whole look of the site, live, and it'll barely work until I find everything that broke and fix it. I'll also need to redesign the front page, and maybe the menus, header, footer, background - all kinds of stuff. When I've done that, I gotta go page by page and find/replace the blocks. That'll take me a few days. 😅I've found some more typos and errors to fix along the way too - including one major continuity error. (Mordecai doesn't seem to recognize someone he should, and I'm bringing that guy back way later, so I hadda add a couple words. It was a math thing. When I wrote it, I thought, "That can't be X it must be Y and he wouldn't know Y..." But when I went into my notes recently and added up the years, "Aw, crap, no, that MUST be X!")

They do say it's super important to know when to stop working on your art, lest you cough up a travesty like the Star Wars Special Edition that obliterates the original. I have obliterated the original, but parts of it needed to die. I've also over-edited in a lot of places - I'm trying to catch those and un-fix them! It's never going to be perfect. Even "real professionals" cough up typos and errors that go live and stay that way, but I have a real terror of being misunderstood and hurting someone. Even just confusing them. Anything that might make them not like me.

So, yeah, I gotta throw in some laundry and go kill my ego. And fix a website! Probably no feed for a while, at least not until I get frustrated and need a break.

Ah, yes, and Patreon still hasn't deleted my data so I'm yelling at them. I'm not going to worry about setting up at Ko-Fi until I'm ready to publish the next six, but I'll keep you posted. I took down my page and I didn't want to charge you for January, so check your records, my few supporters. If they charged you anyway, you need to yell at Patreon too.

[blueeyedrat]

Steam Next Fest, summer 2023, for real this time. I was able to fit in more games than I anticipated, which is good, since there were plenty that caught my eye. First impressions and general thoughts under the cut.

(Part 1)

Viewfinder — Another entry in the proud lineage of "first-person puzzle games that do weird non-Euclidean shit" — Portal, Antichamber, Superliminal, et al. These games are always impressive in some way (concept, tech, style), and Viewfinder carries on the tradition. The core mechanic, overlaying photos onto "real" space and having their contents become equally real and able to be interacted with, is pulled off well. The puzzles in the demo show off a lot of interesting ways it can be used, and how its basic rules and assumptions can be bent and challenged. I'm very interested in this one, and I'm looking forward to when it comes out.

Stick to the Plan — A grid puzzle game about getting a small dog from point A to point B while carrying a long, unwieldy stick. I've seen the original Game Jam version on itch.io but never got around to playing it. The game seems up my alley, though, so I'm glad it's being expanded upon. Easy to pick up the basic concept, but enough room for introducing new mechanics and gimmicks to keep things interesting.

Gambit Shifter — A chess-themed puzzle game. I don't have much to say about it, but what I do have to say is positive. It's a simple enough idea (if you're familiar with how chess pieces move on a grid) with a decent variety of puzzles and simple, stylized chess pieces. That's all you need, I suppose.

Iron Roads — A train management sim. This one didn't quite land for me. The management part (building stations and rails and bridges, buying trains, planning routes, implementing logic for train stops and the like) didn't hold my interest, and the rest of it felt a little bare-bones. It's relatively early in development so there's room to improve, but I don't think this one's for me.

Causeway — A sleek-looking puzzle game about connecting traffic lines. I expected more to it than that, but it's actually pretty minimalist: draw paths, connect input roads to output roads, let the simulation play out and hope you did it correctly so there's no overflow or collision. I couldn't find any way to adjust the camera and the interface felt a little awkward in general, especially when trying to fine-tune a road on the edge of the map or place a bunch of roads and bridges near each other. I like this one in concept, but less in practice.

Laysara: Summit Kingdom — So, uh, all of the city builders I've played in the past few years are getting sequels all of a sudden. Cities: Skylines, Airborne Kingdom, Before We Leave, all have sequels lined up. I hope I have time to play them. I also hope I have time to play Laysara when it comes out, because it pushes all the same buttons. A builder with a nice gameplay loop of making numbers go up and having everything fit together just right (but it's all on a grid, so you don't have to fit it all into place that much), and a unique gimmick or two to top it off. I've been looking forward to this one for almost a year, and I don't think that'll change any time soon.

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles — A sandbox city builder that shares a setting with the dev's previous work, The Falconeer (a game I'm not actually that familiar with, and have only seen in passing). As far as builders go, this is one of the most unorthodox I've played, mostly due to its control scheme. You traverse a network of connected buildings and extend that network upward and outward, rather than moving around the map independently and building from the top down (though with a useful airship, you're not entirely locked out of the latter). It's streamlined, but at the same time it feels like there's some nuance that I'm either not quite getting or can't access in this demo — supply lines and logistics, defenses, managing diplomacy and conflict with the different in-game factions, and so on. Despite Bulwark's oddities, or perhaps even because of them, I actually kinda dig it and I'm interested to see more. Mr. Sala, you have my attention.

Quest Master — A 2D Zelda-like with a focus on creating custom dungeons. It's been too long since I've dug into a good level editor. A good Zelda Maker might scratch that itch, though, especially since we've got options on that front (I should check out Super Dungeon Maker at some point, for comparison). Admittedly, this one might need some more time in the oven; no matter which control scheme you're using, the interface isn't as intuitive as I'd like and feels a bit awkward switching in and out of build mode, and currently there's no way to re-map any of the controls to mitigate this. It's got some neat ideas, though, and I'd like to see the game when it's been fully fleshed out.

Saltsea Chronicles — A point-and-click narrative game. I've had Die Gute Fabrik's previous foray into the genre (Mutazione) on my backlog for a while, and started up a playthrough after this game was announced. What I've seen so far in both games has been really interesting in terms of worldbuilding and character writing. Saltsea Chronicles seems particularly ambitious, with an ensemble cast and an episodic plot — each "episode" brings your motley crew to a different island in the Saltsea and you can choose who goes ashore to gather information, resources, mementos, etc., discovering more of the world and its inhabitants, advancing individual stories and the overarching narrative throughout. The demo episode was really well-written, and I am immediately invested in this setting and these characters. Of all the games I played in this Next Fest, this one might be the sleeper hit of the lot.

[isa-ghost]

@staff​ out here once again saying the dumbest, most untrue shit about their site in the universe. When the fuck are you guys going to listen to your userbase? We’ve been telling you things that ACTUALLY could improve this site for eons and again and again you start trying to speak Miserable Corporate Data-Mining Hellscape at us like we’ll be stupid enough to listen.

Maybe read the above reblog and rethink this trillionth post spewing utter bullshit. I don’t know where you get your analytics for these claims, assuming they aren’t completely baseless (which wouldn’t surprise me), but I have never read something that fails to understand the Tumblr climate more in my entire 6+ years of being on here. Tumblr is SO INSANELY EASY TO USE. Literally any site is “hard to use” if you’ve only been on it for like 3 days and haven’t taken the time to fuck around and find out how it works. Have y'all seen ANY of the super helpful, lengthy posts from veteran users giving new users tips on how to have a good time and use this site properly? I swear to god we do a million times more work than you bumbling shitheads do when it comes to user experience. It’s laughable.

And on the note of new users, do you like. Realize that Tumblr has become a SANCTUARY SITE? Reddit is crumbling under greed, Twitter I don’t even have coherent words for without turning this into a novella. And guess where the users on those sites who don’t want to be tormented by algorithms, ads, and other corporate soulless “content” bullshit escape to? HERE. Why and how the hell are you going to sit here and claim Tumblr is failing and confusing and clunky when you’re getting floods of refugees from other falling sites who are immediately in love with the climate and culture here? I’m seeing nothing but positive feedback from posts that cross my dash and yet here you are claiming there are masses of users saying Tumblr is a terrible site with awful interface. Which is blatantly false.

You know what parts of Tumblr have become terrible and clunky and hard to use? The ones you changed despite there being nothing wrong with them, like the tags or moving tons of shit around on the mobile app. For the umpteenth time: Start following the concept of “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” Time and time again you’ve made completely unnecessary and at times totally tone-deaf changes to Tumblr as if there aren’t countless posts with bullet points of ideas that would ACTUALLY improve how Tumblr works; some which have existed for longer than some of us have been on this site because there have always been certain features users widely agree would be amazing to add.

Like the above reblog said: stop treating your users like they’re stupid and incapable. In fact, that attitude feels like you’re implying users are brainless and need constant streamlined and instant content no matter it’s quality or source, like a bunch of needy monkeys straight out of some dystopian sci-fi movie. STOP. Tumblr isn’t a fucking feeding trough and we aren’t pigs who’ll just devour whatever gruel you put in front of us be it ads or actual user-made stuff. We know how to curate our own experiences on here and we do it well. We do it strictly. We even implement add-ons made by fellow users to make doing so even easier, since you can’t. We curate our things CONSTANTLY.

For once, just actually fucking listen to input from your users for once. Put out feelers, ask questions, just SOMETHING properly communicative that takes genuine and intelligent effort so you can get REAL, factual feedback rather than taking these ridiculous leaps in thought and action based off claims that your core userbase cannot for the life of themselves figure out where the fuck you got them. Maybe if you did this, you’d stop being met with nothing but venom and spit in your faces from every user who sees you spout this kind of stupid shit.

Oh, and, as always: Maybe forget dicking around with things that don’t need changing on this site and START TAKING ACTUALLY EFFECTIVE STEPS TO ERADICATING YOUR STUPID FUCKING BOT PROBLEMS. If we started a drinking game where every user takes a shot every time you start fiddling with something on this site that doesn’t need to be fiddled with instead of solving the bot problems somehow finally, Tumblr would ACTUALLY collapse then because we’d all die of alcohol poisoning. You can start being actually useful instead of spouting out buzzword-ridden capitalism algorithm bullshit that’s untrue about the site literally any time. We’re all waiting.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[tenth-interviews]

Week 10 – Building What Matters: Prototyping PlastiCash

Transitioning from Research to Action

This week feels like a turning point for the project. After spending the last couple of months deeply involved in user research, we're now entering the implementation phase. It’s exciting (and a little nerve-wracking) to finally start building something tangible. All the insights we’ve gathered—from conversations, surveys, and feedback—have helped shape the direction of PlastiCash. Convenience, rewards, and impact continue to be the three core motivations that keep popping up. These are the pillars we’re using as we begin prototyping the first version of our PlastiCash machine.

Our Assumptions

From the beginning, we believed that people would be most engaged if we focused on ease of use, meaningful incentives, and giving them a sense that they’re doing something good. Our assumption was simple: if we made recycling feel rewarding and impactful—on both a personal and community level—people would come back and keep using it. We thought that adding features like progress tracking, impact summaries, and visualized community stats could spark more motivation. Plus, we assumed that rewards like GCash, vouchers, or similar incentives would be a major driver of engagement.

What We Worked On

To test that, we zeroed in on the MVP this week. A lot of our attention went into exploring interface design options for the machine—keeping everything user-friendly, intuitive, and quick to navigate. We also brainstormed reward systems that would actually excite users, and thought through how to visualize impact data in a clear, non-overwhelming way. I spent time talking with our developers and designers, as well as some potential partners, to see how feasible certain features are. We’re trying to strike a balance: giving users enough to feel engaged without overwhelming them with too many options right out of the gate.

What We Learned

The feedback we’ve gathered so far has been really validating. Rewards are still the top priority for most users, especially monetary or tangible ones. People love the idea of getting something back instantly for recycling. Simplicity came up again and again—if the machine isn’t easy to use within seconds, people just won’t bother. I was also happy to see that many are genuinely interested in tracking their progress. They want to know how many bottles they’ve recycled or how much plastic their community has diverted from landfills. There’s clearly still frustration with traditional recycling systems, which makes me believe that a tech-driven and rewarding alternative like PlastiCash has real potential. Features like leaderboards and donation options were seen as fun extras, but users made it clear: don’t let those things complicate the main experience.

What’s Next

Looking ahead, our next step is to finalize the MVP design and start bringing it to life. We’re close to having a working prototype of the PlastiCash machine, and once that’s ready, we’ll begin testing the reward system—starting with GCash codes and cash vouchers. I’m also preparing to launch our first round of user testing, which will include the full journey: scanning bottles, earning points, and receiving rewards. We’re planning to set up our pilot sites soon, so we can see how everything works in a real-world setting. This part is going to be crucial for making tweaks and improvements before scaling further.

The Direction We’re Taking

Based on everything we’ve seen and heard, we’re choosing to stay focused on simplicity and rewards. These are the features users care most about. The impact tracking tools will still be part of the system, but we’ll introduce them in a way that feels light and optional. At the end of the day, the experience has to be seamless. If it’s too complicated, we’ll lose people. But if we can make it smooth, fast, and rewarding—we’ll be onto something that really changes how people interact with recycling.

Documentation:

[gamblingrewards]

Why Skyexchange Is Gaining Attention Among Sports Fans

If you’ve spent any time around the sports betting scene lately, chances are you've heard people talk about skyexchange. It’s not just another platform in a crowded market—it’s quickly becoming a go-to choice for those who want a smarter, smoother, and more rewarding way to engage with their favorite sports. Whether you're deep into cricket season, following European football, or casually checking odds during your coffee break, this platform has something that fits your lifestyle.

One of the first things users notice is how fast and responsive the interface is. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to figure things out. The layout is intuitive, odds are updated in real-time, and switching between sports or markets is seamless. This kind of ease is exactly what makes skyexchange stand out—no clutter, no confusion, just a direct line to the action.

What really makes it click for regular users, though, is the balance between serious functionality and casual accessibility. You can be watching a live football match and checking odds side-by-side, all without missing a beat. The mobile app handles live streams, bet slips, and account management so smoothly that it’s easy to forget how clunky some other platforms feel in comparison.

The platform also understands the value of rewards—not in the gimmicky “spin-to-win” sense, but in actual incentives that reward loyalty. There are deposit bonuses that stretch your bankroll, cashback deals on select games, and even reward programs based on activity frequency. Users appreciate that these benefits aren’t just for new sign-ups—they continue long after the initial promo fades.

Language support is another strong suit. Skyexchange is clearly designed for a multilingual audience. Whether you're more comfortable in English, Hindi, or a regional dialect, the platform adjusts smoothly. This makes it incredibly inclusive, especially in households where multiple people share access but prefer different languages.

Security and transparency are big draws as well. You always know what you’re betting, what your risk is, and when payouts are expected. The system sends updates on match changes or postponed events, and the withdrawal process is fast and reliable. Users often mention how reassuring it is to have such consistency, especially when stakes are high.

Another underrated feature is how well it fits into a daily routine. Many users report checking skyexchange during work breaks or while commuting, thanks to its light interface and quick-load performance. It’s not a heavy app that drains your battery or floods your screen with pop-ups. Instead, it feels like a well-crafted tool made for real life—not just for peak sports hours.

But let’s not forget about the social side. While the platform isn’t built like a social network, it does allow for live chat during matches, user-driven odds insights, and shared bet slips among friends. It’s just enough interaction to feel part of a bigger community without becoming distracting.

New users often discover skyexchange through word of mouth, and once they try it, they tend to stick around. If you’re curious about giving it a go, you can check out skyexchange for yourself. The signup is quick, the UI is welcoming, and you’ll likely find that it slips easily into your daily sports routine.

There’s no hard sell here—just a smart, well-designed platform that delivers what it promises. And that’s why more and more people are making the switch to skyexchange as their go-to sports hub.

[fromdevcom]

Haven’t Heard About Starbis - Multipurpose HTML5 Template Well, there is no reason to doubt that this all-in-one solution will definitely help you to create a professional and top-notch business presence online. Most probably you have checked hundreds of website designs, with no real success. Today we want to help you with your choice and suggest you to use Starbis to become a member of the web world. More | Demo To begin with, Starbis from TemplateMonster is considered to be a cutting-edge multipurpose template, which can be handled equally great by both experienced users and newbies. In general, Starbis implies a wide number of features, pages, and extensions that are suitable for creating any type of business or personal websites for a quick start. In addition, it sticks out with a user-friendly interface, a set of custom page templates, W3C validation pages, and an SEO optimization option. As to SEO-friendly option, it provides your visitors with an excellent performance on all handheld digital devices and popular browsers. Functionality  In all honesty, Starbis HTML5 template features a fully responsive design enhanced with a Bootstrap framework, W3C standard-compliant pages for better usability, a well-commented code, load speed and SEO optimization for more traffic, etc. All these and many more smart features differ this template from the others solutions and provide great visual and user experience. Custom Pre-Designed Pages Speaking about pre-design pages, Starbis offers 50+ different out-of-box pages, which will save your time and efforts. Depending on your business marketing strategy you are free to choose between pre-designed HTML5 pages, make any changes in the color scheme, add your content, set up fonts, etc. Some of these layouts are Cooming Soon Page, 404 Page, FAQ Pages, Registration Page, Pricing Page, and maintenance pages. A great and unique design is the very feature, which differ them and make their look perfect. These ready-made solutions allow you to interact with your audience and keep them informed. Customization Mode As we have already mentioned, the best part about website templates is the possibility to play with their skins, switch between all of them, try how they look like, whether they fit your business strategies and goals. A well-organized structure of your website will enhance its visual performance, provide a user-friendly interface, easy-to-use navigation, etc. Starbis boasts multiple header and footer variations, a fully-fledged MegaMenu, a set of UI elements, CTA buttons, icon lists and boxes, smooth CSS3 animation, a cutting-edge Parallax technique, live search, etc. Actually, this is not the whole list so far. Smart use of these options will make your website to stand out from competitors, for sure. Let your audience know that you are interested in it. Provide them with all possible contact details, newsletters subscription form, a feedback form, multiple web forms. Thus, you will create a strong communicative chain, enhance your website’s navigation and increase traffic. eCommerce Ready In addition, Starbis features eCommerce pages in order to run an online store right on your web page. They can be also customize depending on your liking. As a result, you may showcase your products and services using grid or list layout, single page or cart page layout, and a checkout page for shipping and paying details. Each type is intended to provide your visitors with the detailed information, color, size, photo gallery, video review, testimonials, etc. Starbis Multiple Gallery Types   When it comes to the visual presentation of your works and projects, multiple gallery types enable to organize their structure properly. Thus, you can choose a grid, masonry and cobbles gallery type. This option allows you to combine images of different size into a captivating presentation. Child themes   n fact, Starbis offers 5 child themes suitable for different business niches.

You can find here a ready-made solution for a financial and business project, investment and accounting companies, lawyers and insurance agencies, as well. Choose the one you need and stay one step ahead of your competitors. Customization Service Center You cannot neglect the fact, that choosing a great website template sounds like investing in a new house. Your website should be user-friendly, simple in navigation, creative and professionally designed, as well. Even now, many of you still hesitate with their choice. Right from this point stop worrying about the perfect design and empower TemplateMonster’s

[roomscanner]

3D Design Room Software: Perfect Your Interior Layouts with Smart Tools

Modern interior design, interfaced with technology, has made it much easier to model, change, and perfect the interior layout of your home before any real work is done. With the correct equipment, you will be able to create your home floor plan, arrange furniture, or even try out color schemes without having to move a single item out of place within your space. Here is where 3D design room software has played a major part in revolutionizing the way we create and plan interiors.

Benefits of 3D Design Room Software

Numerous advantages are legion when talking about the benefits of using 3D design room software to create apartment floor plan. Some of the most important benefits include: 

Visualize Before Committing

The most significant benefit is that it brings your layout to life without a single structural change. Thus, you can determine whether you are comfortable with your design decision before investing time or finances in something that might not work out.

Explore Layout Options

Experiment with room arrangements in which the furniture, including your decor items, can be easily edited with software to help you design your own home floor plan. This will give you an idea of how various alterations to the plans allow you to perceive the ambiance of the whole area.

Accurate Dimensions

Some 3D design tools include a room-scanning app that can bring actual measurements into your floor plan down to the tiniest detail. This guarantees that your design is not just attractive but also practical. You can ensure that the furniture fits well and that there's enough space for all your daily activities.

Save Time and Money

Every guess of how a piece of furniture could fit is awful when one may simply model a floor plan and rearrange it virtually. With 3D design room software, one avoids expensive mistakes. Rather than purchasing furniture that does not fit a layout that does not work, one basically gets to live plan everything.

Why Choose 3D Design Room Software?

Anyone who wishes to create apartment floor plan can use 3D design room software. This software removes the guesswork from interior design, enabling far more abstract and interactive experiences. 

User-Friendly Interface

Most of the 3D design software is aimed at ease of use, which makes it comfortable for homeowners, renters, and professional designers alike to take up. With no prior experience in interior design software, a characteristic called "intuitive interface" empowers you with simple tools to create your apartment floor plans. Most tools offer drag-and-drop functionality for furniture, doors, and windows within your digital layout.

High-Quality Renderings for Realistic Visualization

Access to 3D design room software gives you a great view of your room as it could be. Many systems offer different levels of realistic rendering, which can help you picture just the right feel for the desired space by easily manipulating materials, textures, and lighting. Such visualizations make comparing various design choices very simple and informed. 

Smart Technology with Room Scanner App Integration

The new kind of 3D room-design software integrates with room scanner apps to facilitate a far more accurate creation of floor plans. Augmented reality (AR) and LiDAR technologies scan room dimensions and carefully develop an authentic model of the room. The coming together of such technologies brings with them liberation for those not versed in geometry-they no longer have to measure the spaces manually and input dimensions.

Flexibility with Different Styles and Themes

One great benefit of 3D room design software is that it perfectly combines a variety of interior design styles. Whether you prefer modern minimalism, suburban farmhouse charm, or classical sophistication, you can use these tools to experiment with different furniture arrangements, wall colors, flooring options, and decorations. 

Customization for Unique Home Designs

With such freedom in designing one's home floor plan, a designer has the creative upper hand over the space. Unlike traditional 2D blueprints, this feature gets much better with 3D software since you can include completely custom-built furniture, unique architectural elements, and storage solutions. The model user can try out different placements for walls, types of flooring, and furniture arrangements until they find the perfect layout. 

Conclusion

Combining the room scanner app and 3D design room software is best for nailing the final interiors. These engines can produce blueprints that look great and are functional. You can easily create a plan layout for your home, try numerous options, and visualize the work from the comfort of your home. 

[learnindigitalmarketing123]

What is React Native?

React Native is a JavaScript framework for writing real, natively rendering mobile applications for iOS and Android. It’s based on React, Facebook’s JavaScript library for building user interfaces, but instead of targeting the browser, it targets mobile platforms. In other words: web developers can now write mobile applications that look and feel truly “native,” all from the comfort of a JavaScript library that we already know and love. Plus, because most of the code you write can be shared between platforms, React Native makes it easy to simultaneously develop for both Android and iOS.

Similar to React for the Web, React Native applications are written using a mixture of JavaScript and XML-esque markup, known as JSX. Then, under the hood, the React Native “bridge” invokes the native rendering APIs in Objective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android). Thus, your application will render using real mobile UI components, not webviews, and will look and feel like any other mobile application. React Native also exposes JavaScript interfaces for platform APIs, so your React Native apps can access platform features like the phone camera, or the user’s location.

React Native currently supports both iOS and Android, and has the potential to expand to future platforms as well. In this book, we’ll cover both iOS and Android. The vast majority of the code we write will be cross-platform. And yes: you can really use React Native to build production-ready mobile applications! Some anecdota: Facebook, Palantir, and TaskRabbit are already using it in production for user-facing applications.

Advantages of React Native

The fact that React Native actually renders using its host platform’s standard rendering APIs enables it to stand out from most existing methods of cross-platform application development, like Cordova or Ionic. Existing methods of writing mobile applications using combinations of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS typically render using webviews. While this approach can work, it also comes with drawbacks, especially around performance. Additionally, they do not usually have access to the host platform’s set of native UI elements. When these frameworks do try to mimic native UI elements, the results usually “feel” just a little off; reverse-engineering all the fine details of things like animations takes an enormous amount of effort, and they can quickly become out of date.

In contrast, React Native actually translates your markup to real, native UI elements, leveraging existing means of rendering views on whatever platform you are working with. Additionally, React works separately from the main UI thread, so your application can maintain high performance without sacrificing capability. The update cycle in React Native is the same as in React: when props or state change, React Native re-renders the views. The major difference between React Native and React in the browser is that React Native does this by leveraging the UI libraries of its host platform, rather than using HTML and CSS markup.

For developers accustomed to working on the Web with React, this means you can write mobile apps with the performance and look and feel of a native application, while using familiar tools. React Native also represents an improvement over normal mobile development in two other areas: the developer experience and cross-platform development potential.

Developer Experience

If you’ve ever developed for mobile before, you might be surprised by how easy React Native is to work with. The React Native team has baked strong developer tools and meaningful error messages into the framework, so working with robust tools is a natural part of your development experience.

For instance, because React Native is “just” JavaScript, you don’t need to rebuild your application in order to see your changes reflected; instead, you can hit Command+R to refresh your application just as you would any other web page. All of those minutes spent waiting for your application to build can really add up, and in contrast React Native’s quick iteration cycle feels like a godsend.

Additionally, React Native lets you take advantage of intelligent debugging tools and error reporting. If you are comfortable with Chrome or Safari’s developer tools (Figure 1-1), you will be happy to know that you can use them for mobile development, as well. Likewise, you can use whatever text editor you prefer for JavaScript editing: React Native does not force you to work in Xcode to develop for iOS, or Android Studio for Android development.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I want to build a world where there is communication between the native intelligent life and native animals. Maybe they're all telepathic? Maybe they just have to learn, with some kind of system that is a lot more advanced than when people communicate with apes or dogs? Definitely something more biological, not some sort of translator that does everything and I do want to show signs of it various development. I wouldn't 100% ignore all translators  though, but that type of stuff would be merely tools like it is in real life, where we are perfectly capable of learning a new language but a translator makes it quicker.

Tex: If I train a dog to sit when I click the fingers of one hand and raise that same hand upward, reinforcing that movement with the introduction of a treat they like, is that not communication? That is in itself communication via body language and exchange of resources, the latter of which functions as a microcosm of economy.

Many apes that interact with scientists have been taught sign language, and frequently communicate with researchers about multiple subjects. While there has been criticism about great ape language (Wikipedia), there has been investigation into proof of concept via mutual intelligibility (CNN, PLOS Biology).

Neither of these forms of communication use either verbal or telepathic means, but ideas are effectively exchanged in a manner that both sides usually find satisfying. Humans use sign and body language with each other, as well as exchanging resources such as food, as forms of communication, so I doubt the method of communing is inherently less-than because other species can also use it.

Are you prioritizing speech as the highest form of communication, and then stepping up into telepathy because it frequently comes up in media and literature as a “higher” form of communication? A lot of people, even if they are verbally monolingual, can communicate the basics of ideas with gestures or trading of behaviour for items despite a verbal language gap. I hesitate to assign non-verbal, non-telepathic means of conversation as lesser because it’s more widely understood across more species than, say, speaking American English to another human being whose native language is not American English.

What subjects are your species prioritizing in communication with each other? Is it directions, social structures, scientific knowledge? Written language and visual interpretations such as drawings and diagrams are also quite useful, and often ameliorate spoken communication - sometimes more effectively.

Wootzel: An example that I think is similar to what you’re asking for is the communication between the Na’vi of Avatar and the various fauna they ride. It seems like a bunch of the species on that planet have a structure that’s primarily for interfacing with each other. 

I agree with Tex that the first question should be what you want your species to communicate, and what benefit this gives them (or what caused it to come about, if it’s not part of the evolution of the world).

Do sapient species have to learn how to “dumb down” their communications to get less intelligent beings to understand them? I can imagine someone trying to explain their bad day to their parrot, and in response, the parrot suggests they bite their coworker who was present. The coworker didn’t cause the upsetting thing, but the bird can’t understand the complexity of the situation! 

Let me try to offer an example of why I think this could be tough, and some issues you might run into. I have a dog who has serious anxiety and reactivity issues. It sure would be nice if I could communicate to him “That other dog is not going to come get you, you don’t need to go try to bite his face, please ignore that and look at me,” and have him immediately understand what I am saying. But what would actually change if I could say that in words he could fully understand? Would he believe me? I could say to him, “nothing is happening” but to him, FEAR is happening. What would it take for the communication between us to have the desired effect? Would I have to impose my own will and/or emotions on him? Would that risk him being able to override my rationale with his panic, resulting in both of us freaking out? 

In the real world, I can look at my panicking dog and ask him to sit. He knows what sit means, he can definitely hear me, but he’s very convinced that what’s going through his head is more important, and he definitely feels his anxiety more strongly than any emotions going through me right then. Would being able to speak to him in pure concept and have him speak back make that interaction different? Could I convince an animal to care about what I do and act accordingly, when it might go against his perception of the situation?

What would happen if you asked a bird for directions? Perhaps the bird could tell you which direction something is in by pointing. How far away is it? Beyond the tree that has a specific scent? Animals would see the world very differently and use different landmarks than people. Birds don’t know what miles are, so how could you determine the distance? You could ask a bird how long it takes to fly somewhere, but you might not get an answer you can use, because what words do they have to communicate time passing? Many of them have no use for numbers, either. 

Being able to communicate in images and/or other sensory information might be a lot more effective for many species. This would almost certainly require something like telepathy, or a brain-to-brain connection of some kind.

Don’t take this as discouragement, or that I’m saying you shouldn’t try to build a world where everything communicates differently. Just… think in great detail about what you’re trying to accomplish with this, and what the limitations will be based on cognitive ability even if the communication itself is effortless.

Maybe in thinking about your goals, you’ll come to an answer that satisfies you. If you don’t though, feel free to ask again and give us more details about what functions you want this communication to serve in your world, and if you want it to have any limitations, or avoid specific things. We might be able to offer better input with more information. Ultimately though, it’s going to come down to what you want to do and what level of handwaving sits well with you. 

[thewertsearch]

Let’s start with a theory update.

‘John not dead’ is confirmed, of course, saved by his apple. That one was a lock, so let's move on.

'Sburb is bugged’ 

There wasn't much direct evidence for this one in Act 2, to be honest. Sure, if John ends up spawned above an endgame location you could call that a bug, but I’m starting to think bullshit like that is actually more of a feature.

Generally, there's not much in this Act to suggest that things aren't proceeding as intended. The meteors, now that we know they have a purpose, are definitely meant to be doing what they’re doing, and it looks like the Kernelsprite supplants any game manual that may or may not exist. 

Still, there's a lot of weird, unexplained issues with Sburb from Act 1, like the Kernelsprite’s odd behavior, so I'm not going to call this one dead just yet. 

I'll bump my confidence down from 50 ==> 20%.

‘Sburb wasn't supposed to be a game.’

This one's weird. It's kind of confirmed, in the sense that they're in a 'real' place and not a virtual world, but that wasn't really what I was trying to get at when I came up with this theory. 

My thinking was more that Sburb sessions, alchemy and the rest weren't developed in service to a game mechanic, and so far, they have been. Everything is quantified, everything is gamified, number go up and number go down. Not exactly the interface you’d expect to see anywhere but in a video game.

Therefore, still equally confident in the crux of my theory, I'm going to rephrase it to be more precise: 

We're going to see a 'true purpose' or alternative purpose of Sburb, that is completely unrelated to games. (10%).

‘Sburb is for terraforming.’

Dark horse alert! I was basically just joking with this theory, but since I've made it, we've seen Sburb spawn structures where they have no business being, create an island and desertify a continent. I'm starting to think I wasn’t as far off the mark as I expected here. 

A lot of the large-scale Sburb effects we’ve seen lend credence to this theory. It’s still a fringe idea, but things are starting to come together here. Sburb changes planets, and we don’t know what the ultimate purpose of that is yet.

There's also some biotechnology at play that I wasn't fully aware of before - facilities grow out of trees, and we've been following a sentient being who seems to have been made, with a ‘brand’ that seems analogous to a Capcha ID. Part of fully terraforming a planet involves seeding it with life, to generate a sustainable biosphere...

Anyway, while I'm not convinced that Sburb will be used to terraform, I'm absolutely sure now that it easily could be, and someone is bound to bring it up. 1% ==> 5%.

[worldsover]

Judgement to the Desiccated ft. Karina

length ✦ 5573

genres ✧ sm type future; asphyxiation; blackmail; virtual_servant!Karina;

✦✧✦✧✦✧

Air did a poor job of not being polluted so Lee Soo Man flooded the world instead. The man himself certainly must be long gone and could not have been in charge of that decision but the legacy of his company far exceeds the legacy of any other human collective in history. Once on this planet, gas was the fluid of choice for respiration and breathing was an unconscious reflex. Now there’s Aether by SM. How very on-brand of them to have the liquid air you breathe follow perfume naming conventions.

Open your eyes and exit the sleeping chamber. Aether has you work for each inhalation, it desaturates the color of the bedroom—maybe there’s a subtle but uncomfortable tinge of yellow—and it makes your nose itch. Your muscles wield much less force than they used to because of the lack of resistance the fluid provides. Moreover, it smells like hairspray as though the ozone layer is taking sardonic revenge.

Screens impersonating windows track your eyes to ensure realistic parallax, playing the scene of divine blue heavens that could not exist. An azure sky is a reward for those planets that have an atmosphere and a sun for light to scatter. Your walls are either chrome or drywall white and your whole bedroom is plainly decorated just like the day you moved in.

“Etymology of bedroom,” you think out loud, though it falls on no ears.

“Bedroom is a compound noun consisting of bed and room. Bed goes back to Old English bedd ‘sleeping place, plot of ground prepared for plants,’ which goes back to the Germanic-”

Plants and sleep are both strong words to use nowadays. The former doesn’t exist in nature and it seems you’re the only one who bothers with the latter. Faint buzzing distracts you from the AI’s response and signals you to the nano drones that swim throughout the liquid to process carbon dioxide from your lungs. This whole ordeal could’ve been much worse if you didn’t have brain interfaces doing the hard part of controlling your diaphragm. The most you need is a purposeful thought. Still, it gets tiring having to think the same thought every three seconds. In. Out.

Was the metaphorical Soo Man teaching a lesson in perseverance? You love K-pop and imagine it’s how trainees used to practice dancing, singing, being charismatic. Being an idol had to be as natural as breathing air. Inhale and exhale. Right now with any antiquated programming language you clung on to, you could write a single for loop that did the same job. For every three seconds: breathe in, breathe out.

“What’s for breakfast today?” Not loud enough. “What’s for breakfast?” you think it louder.

“Welcome, master. Ae-Karina is ready for service.” It’s quite a kindness for SM to blur the bland dystopia you live in by augmenting reality through your neural device. A bosomy woman in a gold-lined but otherwise modest maid outfit appears from the corner of your eye and she bows. Ae-Karina is bewitching and almost becoming of her basis as its graphics have gradually upgraded over the rotations but you wouldn’t misconstrue the avatar as human.

“I said, what’s for breakfast!” It feels impolite to scream in your head, there’s other residents there, but finally the fridge lights up.

“Of course master. May I remind you eating is unnecessary?”

In. Out. Every day, she does remind you, yes. How kind of the company to put all your nutritional requirements in the new air. Aether goes in then Aether goes out. You wish the thoughts of breathing could fade into the background but they’re just like your cravings for food. Always hungry but never starving, whole though not once satisfied. Your eyes pause at her gorgeous face and she tells you there’s bacon. Take it from your fridge. Bacon goes in. Well, the drones take care of the out.

Your assigned living space is the entire 207th floor of a tower. Two hundred and seven floors below the surface. The neighbor a few floors upstairs says that he thinks living deeper is a sign of status. What a luxury. That guy should check the status of his facial muscles, maybe improve his code that lets him tell lies while he’s at it. A couple hundred flights of stairs to swim up is a useless skeuomorphism of skyscrapers in the days of the sun. In fact they were more than useless, you would've preferred a single vertical hallway as it would have let you propel upwards unimpeded. Each floor is the exact same, a glass door that affords no privacy for its residence, a false tree on each side. At the upper levels, malls, convenience stores and other gaudy retail, but it’s the gyms that mock you that you mock in return. They’re always empty.

Finally reaching the top is no true break even if it is a change in scenery. Inhale. Aether tastes a little different up here. Exhale. Can’t say you like it.

Countless satellites form a parody of the star from which the planet flew away, the false image refracted by the upper boundary of Aether. They can’t take away your memories of this star. Looking up at the sky once blinded you with ultraviolet radiation, burning your cornea. It was beautiful. Now everyone’s decided that if they’re playing the part of corporate dystopia, they might as well fit the aesthetic. In a way, it’s self-fulfilling. They wouldn’t have chosen a neon pink sun to compliment the blue and metallic gloom of the cityscape if it weren’t so ingrained in popular media already.

Still, you would’ve expected Google or Walmart to become the megacorp responsible for the state of the world, not a Korean entertainment company. Must’ve been quite the red paperclip scenario. Instead of material design or utilitarian architecture, tacky artistic structures line the streets. The same advertisements for albums that they’ve been selling for the past however long. It's all so obvious, the city could've been designed from scratch to accommodate new forms of travel and goddamn liquid air but instead they went with futuristic Tokyo.

Dubstep permeates your inner ear implants. A notification informs your thoughts that it’s “Hip-hop EDM dance pop with a strong jungle house groove and urban influences.” It’s dubstep. Liquid carries barely any sound so SM affords the option for implants if you're nostalgic for one of the senses. Even though it’s a slower form of communication than direct neural transfer, the noise comforts you. Of course the company would choose dubstep as their background music, but maybe they make money off refunds somehow. It switches to Ice Cream Cake. Much better.

You walk the not so busy roads towards a short brick warehouse in the distance and heavy rain soaks your clothes. No such thing as weather without the sun and water but it’s all simulated anyway.

A warm Seulgi adlib and you know it’s Psycho that starts playing. No, none of your senses are real. The most you could trust is your vision but even that’s being lied to. You could be living in a vat and fed all these thoughts, but then why make it so mediocre? Not paradise, nor torture but a lukewarm in-between. Guess that's what happens when SM Entertainment manages the post-apocalypse. Good on them for trying. The alternative would be a frozen hellscape without solar radiation. Can’t deny their work with geothermal and nuclear energy to keep the Aether warm so that you didn’t have to live underground for the rest of human history. It’s quite great PR to save humanity.

“Hey now, we’ll be okay,” repeats a few more times than you remember.

The Idea Factory Alpha White Delta Green says the neon tubes lighting the front of the brick and mortar building. Your ID card bears a name but it’s not yours, not until they approve your name change. Those usually get processed faster with how often people liked changing their names.

Sit at a desk with a sterile white keyboard and slick new monitor. Type and empty words appear on the screen: “Think for the many, not for the one. We need to think ahead.” A thumbs up. The company appreciates the input. That’s probably enough work for one day. Some SNSD live stages help the time pass, SM certainly appreciated the streaming numbers and it would net you some social points.

It’s hard to say what comes to mind when they ask you to envision a world without the sun and air, especially since it’s what you’ve known for... Two hundred years? There’s no frame of reference, that much you can tell from when you counted seconds to see how often the satellites completed their orbit. SM really took time to have them propel at random speeds, they love withholding sensitive information like that from citizens. To be fair, time is sensitive. Guess the meaning of that phrase changes like all parts of language.

Look around. Dozens of employees at identical workspaces all try to answer the same questions. Naturally, there’s no need for manual labor anymore but there will never be a replacement for human ingenuity. Nice slogan but you know you’re only here for data. Can’t see a need for customer retention though—what’s the alternative, skip Earth? See you on another planet?

“Hey bro, you come up with anything new?” Dave says. Two desks away, you see the enthusiastic, surprisingly spry man play around with a Newton’s cradle. The balls at each end bounce back and forth, not slowing down their rhythm any time soon.

“I think I got something,” you say, “Earth is not the answer. It can’t be, long term.”

“Ooh, I like that. Actually, I really like that.”

“What are you gonna do, copy me?”

“Of course not. You know how much SM hates plagiarism.” Click. Clack.

“Ha. As if there’s a single original thought left in the world.” Click. Clack. The imaginary sounds of metal spheres bouncing play in your mind. They got the volume wrong, no way it’d sound that loud from that distance. “You’d think with all their resources, they’d have figured out space travel by now.”

“I don’t think they want to leave, bro. Wouldn’t be great for profits.”

Your mouth opens to laugh and causes laugh8942.mp3 to play in Dave’s head. “I love it. SM probably hates that sass too,” you say.

“Oh no, they’re gonna arrest me for thoughtcrimes. Nah, they love creativity, just when it suits them. Also, if they actually did bust you for wrongthink like rumors say, I wouldn’t have this on me.” Dave twirls a finger and points at you and you thank his absurd flair for the histrionic that keeps you amused with such drab work.

“NewDrug.mp6. Would you like to play it?” the dry system voice notifies you.

“Woah woah there tiger, hold on.” Dave must’ve noticed your intrigued eyes and holds his hands up. “You might wanna experience that at home. But if you’re interested in more, ask for chicken parm at the vegan place. You know the one.”

Dave leaves his desk. He doesn’t return. You finish your work. Inspire. Expire. You’d rather not.

In contrast to your commute to work, the roads fill with others on your way home. You have to know. Take solace in the comfort of a bench where a huge McDonald’s arch bathes the surroundings and its people with a yellow glow. Really shouldn’t watch it now, especially if Dave says it’s a home type of watch but you have to know. A family of five watches you pass out. They, along with every other passerby, ignore your still body draped over the chrome outdoor seating as you look like yet another junkie. The title is correct after a fashion, the simulation is some sort of new drug. The details of the exploits that happen in the immersive replay wash over you but you don’t need them to know that it’s the sort of lewd that SM would not allow—at least not publicly and not without the right exorbitant payment.

Suit pants and underwear go straight to the laundry. That must’ve been an embarrassing sight but no one bothered to stop you, so it doesn’t matter. Look up where this vegan place was that Dave so presumptuously assumed you knew about and you find that it’s about four Avengers’ stores down from work. He must’ve eaten there before.

“Yo Dave, just wanna make sure, what’s the name of the vegan place called?”

“What are you talking about, man? You telling me there’s some secret underground farms that SM wouldn’t know about?”

You can’t tell when you got to work, a lack of standardized timing would help as well the haze of living in a monotonous dark. “Nah, I mean, for the-”

“I have no idea,” Dave emphasizes each word, “what you’re talking about.”

“I see.”

Work flies by, unusually.

“Hey, can I get a chicken-”

“Uh, this is Maron’s Veggies Only, it clearly says on the sign.”

Clear your throat. “Parm.”

The shifty part-time worker looks around and rubs his fingers gesturing for money. “No digital.”

Over the counter, you pass him a gold coin stamped with a holographic 1 and he hands you a USB stick and a laptop in return. How old-fashioned.

“It’ll sync with whoever you have set as your avatar experience aspect,” the worker says.

“Thanks.”

Ever vigilant as the patrol is, the alleys are the last place you want to go to hide with the obvious criminal element within them all but you head to one anyway. Dump the anachronistic technology in your storage pocket dimensions. Looking at its contents, you’d have to clean that mess up later, but the more you look like an average slob the better. The biggest problem with the inventories is all the people squatting in them. Inspectors wouldn’t care about the archaic ruins you left in yours.

“Welcome, master. Ae-Karina is ready to service.”

“I’d like to go on a date. A special date.” You highlight the key word special and sit on your living room couch. No one’s going to look in your glass door and regardless, you wouldn’t be the pervert for glimpsing into someone’s home.

“Ah yes, master. Ae-Karina is ready to fully service,” she says with a provocative tint in her tone, her sclera disperses to black to match. A pole drops from the ceiling while parts of her maid outfit dissolve which reveals more of the silky skin of her thighs, her lissom arms and most importantly her overflowing breasts. Ae-Karina wraps her legs around the pole and spins around, teasing fingers trace curves on her body to harden you. Her dance is precise but sultry regardless. She pulls up her short skirt to flaunt more of her ass beneath white panties and then pulls down to flourish her cleavage, not trapped by a bra. “Are you enjoying your maid’s show?”

“Very much so, yes,” you say.

Half of a smile forms before a glitch occurs and she teleports next to you, fully nude. It doesn’t pull you out of the illusion however. You just stare and drink in the splendor of her created body.

“You’re not going to touch?” Ae-Karina says.

A feel of her tits and you find it softer than pillows you used to rest on. Soft isn’t much of a character that exists anymore when the whole world is engulfed in liquid. No one has beds, especially with the rarity of sleep. Therefore, her mounds are a consummate dedication to the texture as you squeeze and pinch at her cute nipples.

Her maid outfit rematerializes as she straddles you. It provides more friction to your pants as she begins her lap dance. The weight of her body dragging across your legs and clothed erection induces your carnal impulses further. If only you could fuck the virtual idol. You have to make do with the imprint of her pussy lips on your bulge sliding up and down. Breath in. Breath out.

Ae-Karina pulls down your boxers and spits on your erection. It's not real but her hands so slick on your cock and you let reality slip. Real is for the past, you have desires gratified in the present. There is no real person nibbling at your neck but your nerves activate in sexual desire without discernment for truth. No, she doesn't love you, but when the voracious mass of ones and zeroes says it loves its master, you say it back.

"I love you."

ILOVEYOU infected ten million computers in 2000. An explosion. Calibration engaging. It’s 1:21 PM, Sunday, July 18, 2286 and hypothetically the sun would be out in its full rage. At this latitude and longitude, you’re at what was once the epicenter of all—Seoul, where a fountain caused a chain reaction allowing the hopeful remnant of a world to exist. It lasted a surprisingly long time without the sun and without Aether but the dying planet would succumb inevitably to the ever-increasing contamination so SM of all corporations took charge. A different kind of chain reaction occurred when they acquired a restaurant chain that discovered the recipe for liquid air. The law is on its way and prepared to punish you to its full extent.

You reel while your ears ring. An even sexier version of the woman you already fantasized about appears from your peripheral vision in the crater of your floor. A skimpy cop outfit, striated with reflective material that seems to wane black at different angles, outlines Karina’s curves. She has a tool belt with absurd gadgets, such as a knife baton hybrid, a taser combined with a spray bottle and a Tamagotchi. None of this is necessary. They could just immediately arrest you, impose limitations on your devices. Sure, SM cloned people to deal with underpopulation, but why Karina would be the enforcer is a whole nother issue. Maybe the entertainment company loves their irony?

“Halt. You’re under arrest. Any resistance will be penalized according to the combined Terms of Service of all SM and SM associated products.”

Fucked anyway, you figure you might as well go for it. Escape into your inventory and only seconds later you’re forced out. You manage to get what you need regardless.

“Violation of access rights will be charged to your account.”

It’s so obvious but there’s a reason you kept so much gold in physical storage. As you swim away, the sides of your apartment start to bubble. Bubbles? Already, your limbs feel unsteady. Something’s wrong in the Aether.

“This is standard procedure for escaping suspects that are indoors. Again, this is all agreed to under the Terms of Service.”

“When the fuck did I ever click accept to that shit?”

“When you were born in this world and decided you want to stay in it,” Karina says out loud. You hear her say it. Your physical ears process the vibrations in the air that come from her mouth. Gravity thwarts your desperate escape as your limp body floats on the limit between liquid and air. The atrophy of your muscles becomes apparent within the gaseous atmosphere. She watches you sink down as the room drains of all the false air though her eyebrows crease when she inspects you closer. Your breaths are involuntary. Despite your muscles shorting out, the force of gravity and the pressure of the gas bearing down on you, you’re breathing and you don’t mean to. Her eyes wander farther down. On your pants, a concrete rod stamps the fabric.

“Oh, you like what you see?”

“Shut up, criminal. Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

“Your pussy,” you say and she scoffs.

“Original.” Karina bites her lip as your erection continues to grow behind its prison. You use all effort to put your hands up.

“Please, miss Karina. I’ve been bad.”

“I could punish you even more for sexual assault.”

“Then do it.”

Heat radiates the room in a way you haven’t felt in a while and droplets of sweat form on each of your bodies, especially on the thighs that her revealing outfit parades. Her facial features contort in deliberation and the wait kills you. You bat your eyes at her before Karina takes off her tight shorts and drops herself into your anticipatory face. This makes no sense but none of this life made any sense so you decide to go with the tides.

Centuries of training your respiration has led to this moment, but when you finally have real air to breathe, you spit at the opportunity and choose to suffocate. Then you spit at her pussy and lap it up. Karina’s nectar transfixes your olfactory glands, for once a smell that isn’t the sterile Aether. Your eyes are mesmerized in parallel because of the perfect design of her pussy, a single crease that leads into her hole that your tongue emphatically explores. Karina spreads her thighs wide to reveal a small nub that craves attention. So give it. Suck and swirl and flick your tongue, and the woman provides you the tight clench of her legs as a gift. And the sounds, rediscovered glorious noise. Loud, almost too loud, and clear is how they assault your ears, even surrounded by the flesh of her thighs. Muffled by the weight of her legs, you hear Karina moan in approval but she’s still clearly in charge with how she chokes you with her legs. This is not about your pleasure but hers, and any satisfaction that you derive is not only incidental but probably punishable by SM copyright law.

Karina squirms her hips subtly on your mouth. Her eyes are sharp and she’s just about to stop your hands from moving but she notices them clasp together.

“I’ll do anything to make you cum, please.” you say sloppily as her pussy juices fill your cheeks and drip down your chin.

“God. I can’t.” She takes deep, contemplative breaths. ”That’s more time added on for inappropriate behavior.” Her groaning and brief squeals make her words sound incogent.

You give her a concluding lick and a kiss on her slit. “So what have you been doing right now then?”

Point to a corner of the room and a subtle red light indicates a recording camera. At once, she pulls out a hose from a pocket that could not fit it and the vacuum submerges the room with noise. Her expression shifts quickly to serious.

“We don’t play games here in SMTOWN unless it’s SuperStar so don’t fuck with me.”

“Look who's trying to be a comedian. How about you fuck with me any further and the video gets released.”

“That’s funny, you think you have any sort of power-”

“Yoo Jimin, I suggest you don’t push me more.”

“Where do you know that name from? Right now.” She weighs herself down on your neck.

“You think I don’t have contingencies for if I die too? Karina, we can make this a  win-win scenario. We both get to cum, we both get to walk away unscathed.”

“Fuck you.”

Your weak arms wander between her thighs. At any moment, a feeble punch towards your face or another ten seconds of asphyxiation and she could call your bluff. Even if you did have the ability to expose her perversions in any way, there would be no permanent recourse, not as long SM was in charge. So it surprises you when Karina takes off her shorts. 

“Goddammit. Your cock just looks too good. And your mouth, how are you so good with it?” Put up five fingers when she motions to remove her top as well, and instead she opts to take off your clothes, seizing your pants and throwing them to join the rubble in the room.

A finger slips in, then two and a third dares. Her flawlessly architected pussy lips clings to your digits and Karina shudders in reply. You explore her wetness and find it’s smooth to the point of having no faults, but her juice inside is gloppy and causes your fingers to stick more than the liquids she spills from her slit.

“Who said you’re allowed to have more?”

You lap up the nectar on your fingers. “Then why’d they make you taste so good?”

Your thumb teases her sweet tight asshole and puts just the slightest amount of pressure on it while you finger her with more intensity. The mass of her butt burdens your torso the closer she gets to orgasm. Her eyelids squeeze close and you see her body ripple in anxious pleasure. Karina shows off her pearly whites, teetering on the cliff of hysteria.

“Yes, yes! I’m so close,” she screams.

"Not yet."

“Fuck." Karina sobs, "God. Damn, fuck I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just fuck me.”

“My pleasure,” you say. There’s no need for you to grab her since she brings herself down to your groin, which you’re thankful for as your arms are as good as jelly now. Fortunately, your cock throbs as hard as ever while Karina’s slit rests on it.

“Say you’ll delete it all, all the evidence, promise me.”

“You’re gonna fuck me first or what?” Your breath hitches while she makes a strangled noise as her velvety walls swallow your cock whole to leave no room for comfort. Her tightness is stifling and you have to start counting just to breathe again.

“One two-”

“Be quiet.”

But there is no quiet when pleas for your cooperation intersperse her excessive profanities when she seats herself into your cock and ricochets up and down. Sweat emanates from her creamy skin while her legs widen to find a better angle for her supporting knees in her cowgirl position. Grapefruit and other citrus mingle with the scent of the sweat, fruits you haven’t seen except on billboards in music videos. As much as your mind crackles and your blood roars for every atmosphere of pressure Karina’s walls provide on each thrust in and out, you can’t help but reminisce on sweeter, more innocent times.

The white fluorescent lights in your apartment sputter. For all the advancements in technology, some among many things never change. Light refracts differently in air, less bright, but you can see the pure enjoyment on Karina’s face no matter the luminescence. Karina slows her ride to pull her hips down harder instead and she jolts when your cock finds the most tender spots inside her pussy and it interrupts her babbling.

Karina almost hyperventilates when she gets up to spit on your cock. She pulls out some kind of meter from her tool belt and sighs when there’s no beeping and you recognize it having to do with carbon dioxide. She gets back to dribbling saliva and the filament trailing down to your shaft mesmerizes you. This spit is real, not simulated, and it wettens your erection in a mix with her pussy juices to paralyze you further in your already listless state. Her bare thighs jiggle and you can’t exert much force with your hands but her buttcheeks are firm with just a bit of give.

“Thank you for this cock, thank you for being bad,” Karina says as you watch her ass sink deeper while her pussy holds your dick taut. She’s frenetic when bounces up and down to play an unadulterated orchestra of slick noises between your groins.

“You’re welcome,” you accomplish getting out the words between planned breaths. Your hands cup her buttcheeks but you fear they may break with how she strikes her ass into you.

Karina turns around once more to give you the spectacle of her facial expressions as she fucks herself into you. Knead her calves laying on your torso and they take no energy to spread them though she brings them back together, compressing your hard shaft within her pussy. A new game you play with her, a separate rhythm of loosening and tightening. Her feet press on your chest to help her bounce, but the way they bear down on your lungs against the timing of your breathing causes you to fumble. Your cock bends straight forward as she plunges herself into you and it sends prickles to your entire skin, making the new angle difficult but worth it. Karina takes your hand and starts sucking on your fingers.

“You want my promise that bad?” you say.

“Yes, as bad as I want your cum. I swear, I need it.”

She draws her knees up to her torso and hugs her legs to keep thighs as tight together as possible. Karina couldn’t keep her word, she was trying to kill your cock with constriction.

“Fuck, your pussy is so fucking tight. God, Karina, fuck. You’re so good.” Even if good isn’t the word you want to use to describe her.

“Do it, please, please. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, baby. Karina can be a good girl, a good maid, a good cop, whatever you want. Just don’t get me in trouble, please.”

Karina’s mouth stops saying words though her lips writhe, drunk in increasing lust. Her cheeks flush, before the rest of her skin joins in redness while she grapples your chest and whatever spare limb she can find. You still struggle wresting control of your body but nature seems to take over when you drive yourself into her and match her needy cadence. The air in the room is replaced by a new air but it isn’t Aether. Passion, sweat, heat and all fluids that you both exude join squelching sounds, slaps and moans in harmonic bliss when her body tenses and she screams. As her body tightens, her pussy especially holds your cock for dear life and endeavours to wring out all your semen as her wetness throbs and spills. Karina starts counting to three repeatedly and you laugh though your amusement quickly subsides when you feel her juices become more viscous and she continues her ride, even in the dying pulses of her climax.

“Was I good?” Karina asks.

Just a moment goes by before you mentally send her a screenshot of all the recordings being deleted. Karina hasn’t stopped fucking you yet so at least it wasn’t a ploy.

“Thank you, thank you, I love you.” The flexion of her pliant legs brings them all the way back to rest on top of your legs. Karina lays prone above you and finally give you a kiss. The citrusy flavor may be closer to lime than grapefruit but it’s been so long that you can’t remember which scent is which. Lips crash and her tongue lashes out at yours trying to establish dominance. Keep still to let her investigate your mouth while her pussy does the same to your shaft.

You savor the way Karina’s top emphasizes the bouncing of her tits synchronous with the rebounding of her waist on your cock, but your mouth waters when she frees them. Take the shortest moment to relish in the sight before Karina smothers you with her plump globes. You wriggle your face to try to breathe. Inhale, up and exhale, down, but all you inhale is the scent of her orbs’ sweat. Her hips undulate with a pace at least double yours breathing and the echoes of slapping flesh resonate throughout the air-filled chamber. The loudness is unlike any you’ve experienced in a long time. It’s almost a flashbang every time her ass slams into your lap, especially as you start to see white when orgasm threatens to overload you with preludial pulses.

The last words you hear infected ten million computers in 2000. Fade to black. Cut. You’re slammed out of existence back into existence as a sun rebirths both within you, heating your core to a dangerous high, and from your eyes, dazzling you in an unforgiving white light. In the throes of unconsciousness relapsing to consciousness back to tenebrosity, your streaks of semen suspend in the Aether like a dead tree resting from the wind. What flashes your mind in its orgasmic state are two things only you would remember, plants and weather. Your hyperventilation is unconscious but not unwelcome, as it’s the first time in a while your breaths were reflexive even in the liquid air. However, basking in your newfound power, you start to choke. Right. You breathe in and out again. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. Back in.

“Replaying KarinaArrestsYou.mp6.” A hint of vexatious glee in the system’s otherwise dry voice. You don’t stop for it.

✦✧✦✧✦✧ 

AFF, AO3

It’s pretty silly but the idea danced around in my head ever since I saw the absolute Black Mirror concept that SM had for aespa and I concur that Karina is insanely hot.

As I’m writing this, this Kurzgesagt video on the idea of a rogue Earth comes out and now I have to rewrite stuff to make it at least a little consistent. I’m obviously already going nuts with all these ridiculous sci-fi concepts but this video almost feels too targeted to me writing this for me to ignore it.

[xhisokas-harleyx]

Random Hisoka HCs :)

Hey everyone! This is my first actual post on tumblr, in honor of Hisoka’s birthday (which is when I started writing but uh… it’s not anymore). I’m super new, and don’t really know how to use this interface just yet, so bear with me! This, however, is not my first time with fanfiction (I’m typically a Wattpad gal myself!).. I plan to write things mostly for Hisoka here, so feel free to shoot me some requests if you have some! I write scenarios, one-shots, and anything you like, and yes- I will do NSFW if I see fit ;)

Btw- I wrote most of these at work originally XD

A little disclaimer: I see Hisoka as a very complex character. I couldn’t even begin to describe how wrong some people are when they characterize him as simply being a pedophile or disgusting. I hope that I capture his character well!

Random Hisoka headcanons: Part 1

Hisoka, as you might imagine, is a rather difficult man to love. You need to be patient with him, because although it might appear like he’s an open book, he’s actually extremely guarded and does not appreciate feeling vulnerable. He knows what it’s like to have toys to play with, and he doesn’t want to become one himself.

He’s not the sleazebag everyone thinks he is. When you have a certain thing said about you so often though, you start falling into acting like people’s perception of you, and he doesn’t have the care nor energy to change that.

Based on his outward characterization, it might appear that Hisoka is constantly looking for some sort of romantic gratification, seeing as how he's so flamboyant and outspoken with his desires, but that is actually not the case. When Hisoka is actually interested in someone (as opposed to just playing games, which he does tend to do), his personality actually becomes a lot more reserved and shy.

He knows he has the tendency to be a bit… obnoxious, and normally he would let that shine without a care. But when he finds out you might actually be interested in him, he tones it down a bit because he’s curious to see where it might lead if it doesn’t end the first time he sniffs your hair or stalks you from the treeline ;)

Controlling himself around you is really... hard. Especially for the first few months of your relationship, if you choose to start one with him. Especially, when the only thing ever on his mind is banging you. However, it is because you are NOT like anyone else he has ever met, that he does try to restrain himself a little, in an effort to not scare you off.

He’s a visual person- the initial thing that attracts him to you would be either your unique looks or fighting style. From that point on, he watches you from afar for a little while, like a predator stalking his prey, although he means no offense by it. If you see him staring at you, don’t be alarmed- he has a difficult time controlling his whims and pretty much acts on his desires.

Speaking of staring at you: Hisoka’s typically very blatant about his stalker tendencies, and when people catch him staring, he usually just gives a sickeningly complacent smirk, or stares more intensely because he gains pleasure from seeing them fluster or be uncomfortable. However, you know he likes you if he looks away when you catch him, or even tries to deny the fact that he was ever looking in your direction in the first place.

Hisoka lacks the care for normal social cues and interaction. He’s very observant, however, and can read anyone like a book- except you. What is it about you that he can’t figure out?

The way your eyes shine and sparkle really gets to him. When you look into his eyes, he has to fight the urge to tackle you on the spot.

Hisoka’s “love” is almost always conditional. Not with you. When he realizes that your feelings for him might actually be genuine, he starts seeing it as less of a competition to conquer you, and more of something that he’s never experienced before: an endeavor of true emotion. Hisoka is used to playing games with people, and he doesn’t really know what this feeling is at first, but it slowly creeps over him every time he’s near you.

It could take him months, or even years to open up to you. There will be things that you never know about him.

He’s a little worried at first that your feelings for him aren’t real, and he doesn’t want to indulge this feeling of his if you aren’t 100% on board. Once again, he’s not down with feeling vulnerable. His walls are impenetrable, but if you can get in, Hisoka will be a loyal partner, contrary to popular belief.

If you can get past his initial shock factor, and all the antics he might engage in during his courtship of you, the you will gain the one place in Hisoka’s heart that hasn’t become convoluted with thoughts of murder and battle. He will become (and remain) hopelessly devoted to you because he recognized how special it is that you gave him that chance to at least feel human, and didn’t see him as a monster like almost everyone he meets does.

Hope you guys enjoyed this little tidbit/sample of how I write for Hisoka. Feel free to request anything, there’s SO MUCH more where this came from, I just can’t put them all in one post! :)

Best wishes,

Mac

[youngbugandtonystank]

Wait in your analysis you said wanda not only mindcontrolled the avengers but some other people too in age of ultron. I don't remember her doing it to someone else? when was this? if this is true then I have no idea how she's even considered a hero wtf

If you remember, there’s a brief time where Wanda and Pietro worked with Ultron, during this time, Steve asked Hill where they were and she says this:

Maria Hill: He's all over the globe. Robotics labs, weapons facilities, jet propulsion labs, reports of a metal man, or men, coming in and emptying the place. Maria Hill: Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears, and something too fast to see. Steve Rogers: Maximoffs.

In simple words, all over the globe, while Ultron and Pietro stole military weaponry, propulsion lab equipment, robotic parts, and more, Wanda mind-controlled the people in those facilities. Ultron did this because he wanted to mass-produce the Ultron sentries created by HYDRA and also, some of them assisted Helen Cho (mind-controlled) in activating Vision. 

This also means that Wanda was indeed right, 80% of what happened to Sokovia was her fault and Pietro’s ('How could I let this happen? This is all our fault’), leaving aside the obvious one (Ultron), since those sentries were the ones that destroyed and killed half the citizens of Sokovia:

And I want to add, @deehellcat raised a pretty good point the other day in one of my posts: 

@deehellcat: In AOU both Tony and Bruce explicitly say they do not know how Ultron came to life because they had been working to make it happen, but could not. We all know Tony is notorious for taking blame for stuff he couldn’t have had anything to do with. Yeah, he said Ultron was his fault, and partly maybe it was, but he did not create Ultron. From all appearances, the Mind Stone itself did. Which brings to my mind the question of whether Wanda is in some way an avatar of it, but we won’t get into all that right now.

Thor mentions that Ultron and Vision’s powers all came from the Mind Stone but only one was corrupted. Wanna guess why? Tony and Bruce wondered what they missed while working on the program and Jarvis told them that he was going to continue to run variations on the interface and any developments because they were unsuccessful in creating Ultron. 

This was also confirmed in Infinity War where Shuri asks Bruce why didn’t they just reprogram the synapses to work collectively. Bruce explained that they had to attach each neuron non-sequentially, meaning that Tony and Bruce couldn’t program the A.I.’s polymorphic structure by themselves. Something or someone else did it for them. The sentience integration trials were unsuccessful and even Jarvis didn’t know what triggered his activation, couldn’t read how Ultron blocked the mainframe and finally rendered the program as a ‘malfunction’. Then the Avengers were scared that Ultron was going to find military’s nuclear codes while he was free, but he couldn’t do it because someone didn’t let him find those: JARVIS. Ultron attacked Jarvis because he was scared of what the A.I. could do, so Jarvis went underground. Ultron didn’t even detect Jarvis when he was still operating. Why? Because both work on a different matrix. Tony and Bruce had to reconfigure Jarvis' matrix to fit Vision.

And as we saw in Wandavision, at first, Wanda wasn’t really conscious about what she was doing, it was her chaos magic reacting to her whims. Hill (AOU) mentions that Wanda’s powers (under the impression that those were enhancements and not a mutation) are neural-electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation and more, but how is it possible that she can manipulate those and commands them like an expert if she doesn’t understand them? As agatha said: ‘It’s magic on autopilot’. At the beginning of AOU, Wanda mind-controls Tony;

Ultron: But you needed something more than a man. That's why you let Stark take the scepter. Wanda Maximoff: I saw Stark's fear, I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct. Ultron: Everyone creates the thing they dread. 

And the first thing Ultron says to the Avengers at his activation is this:

Ultron: I'm sorry, I was asleep. Or...I was a-dream?

Wanda Maximoff: I can read him. He is dreaming.

Then Cho explains that those are not called dreams, It's Ultron's base consciousness. Wanda previously stated she couldn’t read Ultron’s mind but she can do it with Vision. This is probably because Ultron’s consciousness comes from her very own magic; something even Wanda can’t understand.

And notice the way he talks about life in general:

Ultron: But, down in the real world we're faced with ugly choices. Ultron: How could you be worthy? You're all killers. Ultron: There's only one path to peace: The Avengers' extinction  Ultron: I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me, no strings on me. This quote with what Agatha told Wanda: ‘You're making her say this. She's your meat puppet, I just cut her strings.’ Ultron: Men of peace create engines of war. Ultron: You think I'm one of Stark's puppets, his hollow men? I mean look at me, do I look like Iron Man? Stark is nothing! Don't compare me with Stark! he's a sickness! 

Ultron tells her that he’s ‘come to save the world’ and he accused the Avengers of not wanting to change the world ‘You want to protect the world, but you don't want it to change’, similar to what Wanda told Agatha about joining and volunteering for HYDRA; ‘We wanted to change the world’. It’s kinda funny because Wanda told Steve that Tony doesn’t really know the difference between saving the world and destroying it, and I think that was her. She was describing herself. This would also explain Ultron’s gigantic hate for Tony. It doesn’t directly come from him. It comes from Wanda.

She saw this and was scared, but at the end she smiled:

(there’s seriously something dark going on inside of her lmaoo)

Thor: If you believe in peace, then let us keep it. Ultron: I think you're confusing peace with quiet.

-

Citizens of West-view: When you let us sleep, we have your nightmares. Wanda: That's not true. I've kept you safe in here. You feel...You feel at peace.  Citizens: No. We feel your pain.

Here she’s trying to convince them that she was helping them, that they felt peace and that she kept them safe. And after they denied this and told her they were in pain, she actually attacked them. 

Wanda Maximoff: Ultron can't tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it. Where do you think he gets that? (YOU lmaoooo)

Wanda is more powerful than Doctor Strange (confirmed in WV) and Vision (confirmed in WV and Civil War), it’s not unreasonable to think it was her who activated and created the integration of the corrupted consciousness of what Ultron was, since she can also recreate Vision with her chaos magic too.