#creating a new artificial high elder

[artheresy]

Warning for discussion of Jingliu leaks… again

While I am heavily uncertain of what exactly happened to make Baiheng into Bailu, I am very convinced she wasn’t the draconic abomination

Mostly due to the fact that Jingliu is said to have killed it, like definitively brought about the end of its life.

However, I also think she isn’t the draconic abomination because we know that the draconic abomination is a result of the experiment Dan Feng was conducting to create a new High Elder after being lied to by the Preceptors. Now perhaps he was blinded by grief and ended up being stupid as hell and not thinking about this part, but why would he try to make one of his friends into the new High Elder knowing that they would be condemned to an awful life and future lives of being controlled by the Preceptors and that loss of identity he was trying to run away from or at least seemed to have a desire to escape from.

Of course again, maybe Dan Feng wasn’t thinking and was solely focused on creating a new life, but yeah, highly doubt Baiheng/Bailu was the draconic abomination and either she was a separate experiment Dan Feng might have been involved in or,, dare I say it, she was an experiment he wasn’t actually that involved in. Perhaps instead something cooked up by the Preceptors having witnessed Dan Feng’s failure…

[moonlight-tmd]

Aright so- i had an idea. Here i vaguely explained how i think new cybertronians are made. And i wanted to expand on that idea.(please go look, it's not very long and it's important to this)

I have read multiple fanfics and posts about transformers having robot equivalent of human bits- that doesn't sit right with me. So i made my own. [I used Bee as a reference]

So the most common is for Newsparks to be created in artificial chambers and then transferred into protoforms for Sparklings to come online. Then they are transported into Cybertron's version of an orphanage- Carequarters, and are up for adoption until they reach younglinghood(more on that later).

TW: it's nothing bad but just to be safe- robot reproduction and naughty act talk. Plus some details about sparklings, age and growing at the end.

They have 2 slots on either side of their Spark Chamber[4 in total]. Each slot has 2 parts that close it. When transformers interface, the slots open and glowing cables[Tendrils] are released, these things are very sensitive. Now i'm skipping on all the dirty play stuff- for the full course the Tendrils need to be intertwined with the Tendrils of whoever the transformer is interfacing with. Once intertwined, those Tendrils send pulses or energy to the other thus providing pleasure.

On the bottom side of the Spark Chamber is a cover for the Reproduction Strut[commonly called a 'Spike']. The cover has 4 sections that close it. This cover is only opened when both partners want to to create a Newspark, the transformers interfacing don't have to be Conjunxes for it to work. Once the two get on with it and are both content, the cover slids open and the Spikes intertwine with each other. Unlike the Tendrils that are connected to the outside of the Spark Chamber, the Spike has an output sensor on the inner side of the Spark Chamber, meaning that when the energy pulses travel thru it, they go directly into one's Spark.

Now, there is also a way for the slots and the cover to be opened manually. This is either done when one has technical issues with their parts... or when one is "forcing an interfacing without consent."

Interfacing without the Spikes intertwining has nearly impossible chances of creating a Newspark since the energy pulses stop at the Spark Chamber, not the Spark. When the Spikes are intertwined the chances of creating a Newspark are high, but it's mostly the matter of how high is the voltage in the energy pulses of either partner. If the voltage is too low then nothing will happen. The Newspark usually is created inside the Spark Chamber of the transformer with lower voltage than their partner.

The Newsparks are carried inside one's Spark Chambers until they reach their full size, depending of how big the Carrier and Sire are the outcomes are either; the Newspark being transferred into a protoform without trouble or having to be extracted early due to risk of outgrowing the Carrier's Spark Chamber. The risks are; it can get snuffed out, get absorbed into the Carrier's Spark when not transferred in time, or break into multiple Newsparks- last one isn't exactly bad but it can be if one isn't prepared for more than 1 Sparkling. The carrying process usually last from 4-5 Earth Months.

After transferring the Newspark from Carrier's Spark Chamber to a protoform, a Sparkling's frame is fully developed around 12 Earth Years*1. Their frames can change and grow even after they reach the full development, but it is very slow compared to the speed of development. *1 Note that it's Earth Years, i have absolutely no fuckin idea how long that is on Cybertron. Their alt modes start to come it at 5EY old.

Side note; a fully developed frame does not mean the transformer is an adult. Transformers reach the age status: -Youngling [teen]: 10+ Earth Years (this one is more of a moral status since biologically they are full grown) -Young Adult: 100+ Earth Years -Full Adult: 10k+ Earth Years -Elder: 100k+ Earth Years

A transformer that's been made due to the influence of the AllSpark is automatically considered a Youngling.*2 *2 A protoform can be onlined using an AllSpark Shard[shard will turn into a Spark], it is still a Sparkling and will go thru development. Transformers don't have genders, so a Sparkling is either referred to as It or They. That is held until the Sparkling starts speaking and they choose how they wanna be adressed[Speaking usually starts at 2EY old but they are asked the question at 3EY old].

I will be using this as a reference when writing, thank you.

btw, all of my general ideas about transformers/tfa now have a tag "transformers headcanons" on my blog, so go check that out if you want.

[wordpress-blaze-244022290]

In The Time It Takes To Rise

People say I'm too soft sometimes, that I let things slide, wait too long, or give too many second chances. But I don't see it that way.

I think my patience is one of the few things that's kept me steady in a world that's anything but. When the cafe gets busy and the orders stack up and tempers flare, I take a breath. I smile. I keep moving. There's a rhythm to waiting, like the way bread rises, or tea steeps just right. You can’t rush good things. People need time too, as well as space. And someone who won’t give up on them the moment they mess up.

I guess that’s where the kindness comes in.

I don’t really go around calling myself kind, but I notice things. I notice when someone in sad or happy. When they stir there coffee for too long, lost in thought. When they say “I’m fine” but won’t meet your eyes. I’m not great with big, loud gestures- but I’ll remember your order even if you haven’t been in for a few days. I’ll slip an extra cookie into your bag if it looks like you had a rough day.

that’s what I like about myself. That I try to make room for people, even when they’re hard to understand. That I wait. That I care, quietly.

Source: In The Time It Takes To Rise

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/a-curmudgeon-in-the-family-of-man/

A Curmudgeon In The Family Of Man

I was grateful to my neighbor for helping me with a technical problem.  He’s the resident guru on computers at the retirement center and far too modest about himself. Aware that I might need his advice in the future, I asked if he’d care to adopt me despite my advanced age.  A smile parted his lips as his gaze dropped to the carpet. “We’re all family here,” he said. I walked away thinking he’d uttered a beautiful notion, though I tend to reject sentiments that are warm and fuzzy.  I’m old enough to know that the history of “the “family of man” is dysfunctional. Since Caine slew Able we’ve worked to perfect the art of violence. Murder isn’t the kind of glue to hold society together, so we attempt to contain it by inventing rules. Murder on a grand scale we call war.  The rules on those occasions are those of The Geneva Convention. The smaller stuff we leave to religion, laws, politics, and the whims of tyranny. But, like the potter who leaves his fingerprints upon newly shaped clay, because we are flawed creatures, the systems we create can be weaponized and used to threaten others. Justice, after all, is the gloved fist of vengeance. Bill Clinton, our 42nd President, sees philanthropy as a better way to promote social cohesion. Philanthropy can help bust through political and cultural gridlock by showing what can be done. He has many true believers, so many that at his last conference on philanthropy, a thousand do-gooders had to be turned away.   Enthusiasm on this scale is heartwarming, but I’m a curmudgeon. I’ve never been keen to turn the world over to philanthropists.  Who are they, after all, but people otherwise known as oligarchs? Nick Caraway in The Great Gatsby told us about them. They are people who don’t think like the rest of us. I doubt any butcher, baker, cowboy, or tailor would choose to live in a Martian colony under Elan Musk’s rules. I place my faith in “we the people.” Democracy’s collective mind is where we are most likely to find common ground. Alexei Navalny, Vladamir Putin’s murdered opponent, was a man of the people. Having survived attempts to assassinate him, he warned his followers their fate didn’t depend upon his survival but upon their will. If it happens, if they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong.  We need to use that power. (“A  Hero of Our Time,” by Mariam Elder, Vanity Fair, April 2024, pg. 34.) His words may seem like a whistle against the dark, but the Ukrainian people are a living example of that courage. Their David and Goliath story can set this curmudgeon’s heart to racing. Even so, dreams can become fodder for blind ambition.      Our Republican House has placed a chokehold on future aid to that country, reversing their past support.  They did it to placate their revenge candidate, Donald Trump, in the upcoming presidential election.  Trump holds a grudge against Ukraine and is happy to curry the favor of their invader, Vladimir Putin.  If elected, our former president promises to leave Ukraine to the Russians. The predatory world in which we live is Nature’s doing, but humans have wasted no time in making a hell out of the heaven they inherited.  Some attempt to escape the violence by turning to drugs or alcohol. Others rely on religion, mysticism, or conspiracy theories for the dopamine high that makes them happy. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and augmented virtual reality could provide other avenues of escape. Their illusions might help us create worlds so satisfying, that many won’t return to planet Earth. For proof of that possibility, observe how people are mesmerized by their smartphones. We humans aren’t algorithms, however. Wherever we go, we drag our dark side behind us like a beloved toy.  That’s a drawback to consider as we cheer the coming of augmented reality. Despite the challenges ahead, like Navalny, I have hope because….well, what else is there?  Fraternity, equality, and liberty are pretty good ideas. To obtain them all we have to do is curb our tribal nature, though some have argued it doesn’t exist. Whether Instinctive or learned, history confirms that group-think seems natural to us.  We desire to be among people who look like us and share our values.  That passion for conformity rivals our growing need to respect diversity and sometimes makes democracy seem like a fool’s dream.    Given my doubts about the future of mankind, I left the caring gentleman at the retirement center with one request.  “please don’t include me as a member of the community.  I prefer to be the resident alley cat.”

[rowan-noah]

Harnessing AI in Game Development: Innovations and Future Trends for 2025

The game development industry is changing in numerous ways because of artificial intelligence. The experience players get has also been revolutionized along with the improvement in game creation. AI is on its way to procedurally generating worlds and creating responsive NPCs (Non-Player Characters). Let’s look at how AI is helping the game development services in the USA grow in the long run.Smarter NPCs and Immersive InteractionsIn the earlier days, NPCs used to follow scripted paths or repeated predictable dialogue. Many organic interactions and unpredictable gameplay have happened since AI introduced machine learning models capable of crafting NPCs that can react intelligently to player behavior. This potential was already highlighted in modern games like The Elder Scrolls series. And 2025 will see even more game development services in the USA using innovative implementations, in which NPCs can evolve based on long-term player choices, which helps in creating engaging and realistic stories that feel truly alive.Advanced AI in Game DesignFor automating tedious tasks, game designers are using AI, so that they can focus more on creativity. AI-powered animation systems and texture generation software, which are some effective AI tools, can narrow down cycles of development. Developers can create deep characters and environments at scale by training neural networks on massive datasets. Some of the other things game development services in the USA can do are identifying bugs, balancing of gameplay, and testing mechanics, all of which help in creating high quality games with reduced production timelines.Improved Visual Realism with AITo bring more realism in games, AI is the key. Deep learning is being used for rendering lifelike textures, realistic physics simulations, and cinematic-quality animations. Mimicking the behavior of light, known as real-time tracing, is going to take game development services in the USA to a whole new level through its integration with AI tools.The possibilities in the gaming industry are endless due to the continuous growth of AI. Game development services in the USA are looking forward to bringing creative storytelling and player immersion. Currently, game developers and players are equally excited about this reality.FutureOfGaming #TechInGames #GameTech2025 #AIRevolution

[fortunerobotic]

AI Robots For Sale

Artificial intelligence (AI) stands out as one of the most revolutionary developments of our day in the quickly changing field of technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) robots are changing how we live and work, from automating repetitive chores to generating major advances in industry, healthcare, and personal services. Now is the ideal moment to investigate your options if you're thinking about making an investment in this novel technology. AI robots for sale are now a reality rather than a pipe dream, poised to revolutionize both your home and work environments.

Why Choose an AI Robot?

Productivity and Efficiency:

AI robots are excellent at tackling time-consuming and repetitive chores, freeing up people and enterprises to concentrate on more creative and strategic endeavors.

Economical Solutions:

The long-term advantages, such as lower labor costs and more precision, make AI robots a cost-effective alternative, even though the initial investment may appear high.

Individual Support:

Personal AI robots come with capabilities to make your life easier, whether you need a robot to help with home duties or just to be a companion.

Applications in Industry:

By streamlining procedures and improving results, AI robots are transforming a variety of industries, including healthcare, agriculture, retail, and education.

Types of AI Robots for Sale

Robots for service:

These robots, which are made for both home and office settings, are capable of performing caregiving, cleaning, and security duties.

Robots in Industry:

These robots, which are widely employed in industry, are incredibly accurate at activities like welding, assembling, and material handling.

Medical Robots:

These robots provide accurate and reliable assistance in medical settings.

including operations, rehabilitation, and elder care.

Robots for education:

With their interactive features, these robots help students of all ages study in an interesting and approachable way.

Robots for entertainment:

These robots, which blend AI and creativity to create new experiences, are perfect for gaming and leisure activities.

Key Features to Look for in AI Robots

AI Capabilities

Connectivity

Durability

Customizability

Support and Maintenance

Artificial intelligence (AI) robots are here and ready to change the world; they are no longer just a thing of science fiction. Finding the ideal AI robot for sale has never been simpler thanks to the wealth of options accessible. Take a step into the future, investigate the possibilities, and utilize artificial intelligence. Are you prepared to join the revolution now?

To know more, click here.

[jcmarchi]

AI-powered NLP enhances legal aid at Justice Connect

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ai-powered-nlp-enhances-legal-aid-at-justice-connect/

AI-powered NLP enhances legal aid at Justice Connect

Australian non-profit Justice Connect, dedicated to providing legal assistance to disadvantaged individuals and advocating for social justice, has integrated natural language processing (NLP) technology to enhance its operations and extend its reach.

NLP, a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) focused on enabling computers to understand human language, has been pivotal in increasing the organization’s efficiency and helping more people access crucial legal support.

Extensive network and mission

Justice Connect collaborates with over 10,000 pro bono lawyers, aiding thousands of individuals annually with issues ranging from housing and employment disputes to elder abuse and family violence. The organization also offers practical legal resources online and advocates for systemic changes to unjust laws.

However, categorizing and assessing each unique case to provide the most effective assistance was historically a time-consuming manual task. This changed with the involvement of Professor Timothy Baldwin, an expert in large language models (LLMs) and a Melbourne Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, who saw the potential for an NLP-based solution to streamline these efforts.

Recognizing inefficiencies

Tom O’Doherty, Head of Innovation at Justice Connect, recognized inefficiencies in the organization’s digital intake tool, leading to unnecessary resource expenditure and delays in service delivery. “Our mission is to provide essential legal advice to Australia’s most vulnerable populations,” he explained, emphasizing the importance of maintaining efficient and effective systems.

Professor Baldwin, also a Professor of NLP at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), contributed his expertise in high-impact LLM products to this initiative. They developed and integrated NLP models with Justice Connect, yielding significant positive outcomes.

Training the model

Justice Connect collected anonymized data from their intake tool to train the NLP-based solution. They created a ‘tagging game’ where legal partners tagged and categorized legal requests, refining the data to teach the model to triage casework. This supervised learning process resulted in the tool effectively understanding various legal queries and directing them to appropriate solutions.

The impact of this integration over the past year has been substantial, with a 50% reduction in incomplete entries and a 10% increase in service delivery efficiency. This improvement has allowed Justice Connect to assist people more quickly and accurately, with positive feedback from paralegals noting the ease of dealing with cases referred by the AI tool.

Future expansion

Encouraged by these results, Justice Connect is expanding and enhancing the system’s functionality to further refine user segmentation and self-help legal advice available on its website.

It also envisions developing an open API for other non-profits in Australia to adopt similar technologies, fostering broader social justice advancements.

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[tobiasnakamura]

Make Any Face Come to Life With AI!

Imagine being able to create a human face with just a few clicks. Consider developing faces that convey emotions, charm, or wisdom from the ages—all inside a framework of pixels and imaginative programming. Artificial intelligence has broken yet another barrier to creativity by giving us the ability to create lifelike visages. Whether you're a passionate storyteller looking for characters, a marketer looking for various personalities, or simply someone who enjoys experimenting with digital art, AI face generation technology is opening up a universe of possibilities in which every face tells a narrative. The magic starts with a free AI face generator. These marvels of modern technology use advanced algorithms to create innumerable unique visages without breaking the bank. A user just enters criteria or selects preferences, and a new face appears from the digital ether, ready to join your project. These generators use artificial intelligence to create images that are often indistinguishable from those obtained by a camera. This is technological advancement at its most personal; from the arch of a brow to the curve of a grin, free AI-generated faces embody an astonishing level of detail and realism. For those desiring even more creative freedom, the variety is even greater. With a ai generate face free, you can experiment with different facial characteristics, ethnicity combinations, age progressions, and emotional expressions, each of which changes the virtual genetic fabric of your creation. Whether you're creating a benevolent elder for a fantasy novel artwork or a series of realistic client representations for a marketing pitch, the AI's powers are limited only by your imagination.

Perhaps what distinguishes this technology from traditional graphic design tools is the ease and quickness with which these visuals come to life. "AI generate face free" is more than just a technological mantra; it's a testimonial to the ease with which high-tech tools may be used by current creators. Smart algorithms eliminate the need for considerable training or intricate software skills; anyone with an online connection may create magnificent images bearing the distinctive hallmark of artificial intelligence. Indeed, free face generator AI technology has proven to be a valuable resource for both corporations and to learn more. It promotes diversity by including faces from a variety of ethnic origins and ages, eliminates the need for expensive photo shoots, and preserves privacy by not using images of real people. Furthermore, these tools evolve. Developers are constantly refining their algorithms based on user feedback and data research, hence improving the experience. As tech-savvy enthusiasts enjoy creating AI-free looks, they also contribute to the ever-changing world of AI innovation. The world of photography has never been more vibrant and accessible, thanks to AI-powered face generating technologies. It invites you to explore regions that were previously thought to be too complex or expensive for anyone other than professional artists and photographers. AI democratizes creativity, making the power to create new identities from scratch a universal advantage. If you've ever wanted to populate your digital environment with unique characters or find a visually appealing way to reflect demographic variety, AI-generated faces herald a day when your vision may be easily turned into reality. From blank canvas to lively portrait, every pixel is alive with potential—that's the beauty and pleasure of bringing any face to life with AI!

[mariacallous]

Last week, one of the stories that most caught my attention in the sort of random but uniquely fulfilling way one can get from browsing newspapers was an item from Italy that said, with more than 7 million of the country’s 60 million people over age 75, some are turning to small, cute-looking robots to attend to older adults. Looking forward to coming breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, some experts there are already predicting that this will produce a revolution in caring for this cohort.

“We all have to look for all the possible solutions, in this case technological,” Loredana Ligabue, the president of Not Only Elderly, an Italian advocacy group for family caregivers, told the New York Times.

Another story that seized my interest in this same unexpected manner a week or so before was the news out of the U.S. state of Arkansas that lawmakers there, as in a few other states, were rolling back child labor protections to make it easier to employ children under age 16.

Later, as I wondered what could connect such seemingly disparate topics—the one about a socially costly and hard-to-manage surfeit of older adults and the other, the urgent need felt by some to employ minors, even in dangerous industrial settings—an answer arrived in the name of a country that has been much in the news itself lately due to mass street demonstrations against changes in government policy toward people whose age places them between the extremes of young and old: France.

This European nation, which has long been admired as something of a lifestyle superpower, has been locked in an explosive social and political crisis over a modest adjustment to its retirement age, from 62 to 64—a figure still to the envy of many others, notably including Americans. For decades, the trend in France had moved in the other direction, meaning devoting less time to work, starting with the push decades ago by former President François Mitterrand to whittle away at the 40-hour workweek, which culminated with the voluntary adoption of a 35-hour workweek in 1988.

So what does France have to do with the desperate turn to robots in Italy or children in sweatshops in the United States? Like almost all wealthy Western countries (and not a few rich, non-Western ones, too), France is suddenly being forced to come to terms with brutal new demographic realities that are placing enormous stress on social security and retirement systems and calling into question basic assumptions about the comforts that a long period of prosperity once seemed to guarantee them.

Part of the problem in France is that its people are living longer and longer. This is a blessing shared by growing numbers of highly developed countries—but not the United States, where average life expectancy is experiencing a stark decline. In France, people can expect to live approximately 25 years after they retire, the most of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

For most people, living longer will mean needing to rely on the financial support of the state longer, and this creates steadily increasing fiscal pressures. This difficulty is compounded by another trend that has been unfolding alongside it: people wanting to have fewer and fewer children on average. In Italy, which ranks near the bottom of the scale in the European Union, only 1.29 children were born per woman in 2022. In France, close to the high end, that figure stood at 1.79. The bad news for people who have to plan state budgets and future outlays for national retirement and health care systems is that even that number is far below the average number of children per woman that can sustain a population without shrinkage, known as the population replacement rate, which is usually put at 2.1.

Having enough children to stave off population decline has nothing to do with bragging rights or old-fashioned nationalism. Rather, its importance lies in what demographers call population structure and, most specifically, making sure that there are always enough young people entering the workplace to sustain a social compact built around guaranteed support for older adults in retirement.

France’s ongoing showdown among street demonstrators, opposition parties, and President Emmanuel Macron can be looked at in countless ways, from the democratic deficiencies some have denounced in a constitution that concentrates excessive power in an almost monarchical presidency to the shocking violence employed by the police as they try to restore order in the streets and suppress the protests. However one looks at things, though, one unavoidable reality stands out: France simply needs more working-age people or to have people work longer in order to finance the kinds of benefits in retirement that its citizens have long come to regard as their birthright.

And although the surface manifestations and political and social tensions will play out differently in each rich Western society where fertility rates are in retreat and people are already living far longer than when today’s retirement systems were drawn up, here and there throughout this economically privileged part of the world, the basic problem—of needing more workers or for people to work more—is much the same.

Notwithstanding the statement of the Italian advocate quoted at the top of this column about everyone needing to search for possible solutions, in most of the rich countries that are starting to experience the gravity of their demographic conundrum, few are looking to the most obvious places for relief from the looming fiscal problems that drastic shifts in population structure will bring. Indeed, that is the common message one can distill from stories about care robots and 14-year-old factory workers: People in rich Western societies will go to almost any length to avoid the readiest and most humane solution available, which involves steady but substantial increases in immigration from parts of the world where young people are eager to learn and work, with decades of productive life ahead of them.

Immigration, in fact, kills two birds with one stone: Bringing billions of humans more deeply into the global economy, with the possibility of building economic security and uplift for themselves while also contributing to the financial stability and overall prosperity of the places they migrate to.

An ugly paradox comes into play here. The part of the world that offers the greatest reserves of such young, energetic, and ambitious labor—Africa—is the same part of the world that arouses the strongest aversion among the rich. The continent situated immediately to Europe’s south, and the source of over one-tenth of the U.S. population, has a median age of a mere 19.7 years, meaning that it is utterly dominated by precisely what the old rich world increasingly lacks: youth.

During a visit to Brussels last spring, though, a liberal Belgian intellectual told me: “I fear that the threat of immigration from Africa will drive people here to extremism. They will do anything and everything to avoid being inundated by Africans, and even though I oppose extremism, I completely understand them.”

But in a world where an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of young people are African, the question that will increasingly confront Europeans—and, indeed, all Westerners—is whether clinging to self-identities deeply bound up in race (or, to be more explicit, whiteness) is more important than economic growth; prosperity; competing with the obsession of the day, China; being able to retire with a pension; or, ultimately, maybe even economic survival? Scarcely polite today, sooner or later, questions like these will become unavoidable.

There is another way to frame them, though, that may be helpful. During the four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, mass commerce in people brought in chains from Africa had been justified on the basis that they were not fully human. In the United States, the era when people of African descent were legally treated as less than fully human is still well within living memory. Going forward, will rich Europeans and Americans be able to overcome their aversion toward Africans, who may hold the key to their economic salvation, and embrace them as their fully human equals? As I told my Belgian friend, their future will depend on it.

[princesssarisa]

Cinderella September-through-November: "Zolushka" (1947 Russian film)

Now we reach the first full-length sound film on my list of Cinderella adaptations. This 1947 film from Soviet Russia isn't a version a that many people in the US have grown up with. But that certainly doesn't mean it isn't a charming, adorable version!

Set in a pastel-colored fantasy land literally named Fairytale Kingdom, with lavish 16th century-style costumes, this Cinderella is brimming with old-fashioned charm. Even though its look and its special effects have an artificial quality that by modern standards can definitely be called "cheesy," this somehow adds to the fairy tale atmosphere. The overall tone of the film is comic, never taking itself too seriously, yet without detracting from the warm sincerity of Cinderella herself and of her romance with the Prince. While not a full-fledged musical, it does feature four songs as well: one sung by the Prince, the other three by Cinderella. And while the film is faithful to the classic fairy tale as a whole, it still finds its own creative touches to add.

Once again, we find an adaptation where Cinderella's loving father is still alive, but henpecked by his wife, in this case because she's a noblewoman with powerful "connections" and could have her husband banished or imprisoned if she chose. (The Stepmother's "connections" are satirically mentioned throughout: even the Fairy Godmother remarks "I'd like to turn her into an ugly frog, but the old hag has lots of connections.") This version also gives an extended comic role to the Prince's father, the King: a flighty, melodramatic man who proclaims at every slight inconvenience that he'll give up the throne and become a monk, but kind and amiable nonetheless and charmed by Cinderella. Another endearing character is a new one: the Fairy Godmother's apprentice, a little Page Boy who aspires to be a wizard. He's the one who creates the glass slippers for Cinderella, which presumably explains why they don't vanish at midnight like the Fairy Godmother's creations. At the ball, one of the guests is a wizard who, at the king's request, transports everyone to the wonderful Land of Magic for a few brief minutes; Cinderella and the Prince find themselves in a romantic garden, where the Prince declares his love to her. And after the ball, the King sends his soldiers out into the kingdom wearing seven-league boots, so they can travel all the faster to find the girl who fits the slipper.

We also get an interesting new twist on the finale. The Stepmother takes advantage of Cinderella's skill at all types of handiwork by ordering her to make the glass slipper fit the elder stepsister Anna, threatening to harm Cinderella's father if she refuses. Cinderella succeeds in squeezing Anna's foot into the slipper and Anna is taken triumphantly to the palace. The King knows instantly that she's an imposter, but can't go against his own orders that whoever could wear the slipper would marry the Prince; but when she tries to dance in the ballroom, the slipper flies from her foot. Meanwhile, Cinderella and the Prince have both fled into the forest in despair of ever meeting again, and there they find each other (shades of the opera Cendrillon), but Cinderella runs and hides when the Prince recognizes her, either ashamed of her rags or afraid of what the Stepmother will do if she wins the Prince. It takes Cinderella's father discovering that she has the other glass slipper, and a little magical interference, to finally reunite the two lovers.

Yanina Zhejmo, although 38 years old and not exactly a "classic" beauty, is a nicely innocent, gentle and endearing Cinderella: one with a high, sweet singing voice reminiscent of Disney's Snow White, and who remains an artless country girl even in her ballroom finery, sewing up the King's torn collar and leading the ball guests in a lively peasant-style dance and a silly song about a beetle. Aleksey Konsovsky is also endearing as her tender, passionate Prince. (Both he and Zhejmo would later lend their voices to a Russian fairy tale film that's better known to Western audiences, the 1957 animated version of The Snow Queen: Zhejmo voiced the little heroine Gerda, Konsovsky the Reindeer.) Meanwhile, Erast Garin steals the show as the silly yet likable King. The rest of the supporting cast is uniformly good, and Antonio Spadavekkia's musical score evokes the perfect atmosphere of fantasy, humor and romance.

If you don't mind foreign films with English subtitles, and you don't mind older fantasy films with a slightly cheesy, old-fashioned look and feel, this is an excellent, underrated Cinderella that I wholeheartedly recommend to fairy tale lovers.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @superkingofpriderock

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

Chinese Footbinding

Instructions Before Reading Chapter

Find a piece of cloth 10 feet long and 2 inches wide

Find a pair of children’s shoes

Bend all toes except the big one under and into the sole of the foot.

Wrap the cloth around these toes and then around the heel.

Bring the heel and toes as close together as possible.  

Wrap the full length of the cloth as tightly as possible

Squeeze foot into children’s shoes

Walk

Imagine that you are 5 years old

Imagine being like this for the rest of your life

The origins of Chinese footbinding, as of Chinese thought in general, belong to that amorphous entity called antiquity. The 10th century marks the beginning of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual dehumanization of women in China through the institution of footbinding. That institution itself, the implicit belief in its necessity and beauty, and the rigor with which it was practiced lasted another 10 centuries. There were sporadic attempts at emancipating the foot — some artists, intellectuals, and women in positions of power were the proverbial drop in the bucket. Those attempts, modest though they were, were doomed to failure: footbinding was a political institution which reflected and perpetuated the sociological and psychological inferiority of women; footbinding cemented women to a certain sphere, with a certain function — women were sexual objects and breeders. Footbinding was mass attitude,  mass culture — it was the key reality in a  way of life lived by real women— 10 centuries times that many millions of them. […] 

The physical process which created this foot is described by Howard S.Levy in Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom:

The success or failure of footbinding depended on skillful application of a bandage around each foot. The bandage, about two inches wide and ten feet long, was wrapped in the following way. One end was placed on the inside of the instep, and from there it was carried over the small toes so as to force the toes in and towards the sole. The large toe was left unbound. The bandage was then wrapped around the heel so forcefully that heel and toes were drawn closer together. The process was then repeated from the beginning until the entire bandage had been applied. The foot of the young child was subjected to a coercive and unremitting pressure, for the object was not merely to confine the foot but to make the toes bend under and into the sole and bring the heel and sole as close together as physically possible.

A  Christian missionary observed:

The flesh often became putrescent during the binding and portions sloughed off from the sole; sometimes one or more toes dropped off.

An elderly Chinese woman, as late as 1934, remembered vividly her experience:

Born into an old-fashioned family at P’ing-hsi, I was inflicted with the pain of footbinding when I was seven years old. I was an active child who liked to jump about, but from then on my free and optimistic nature vanished. Elder Sister endured the process from six to eight years of age [this means that it took Elder Sister two years to attain the 3-inch  foot]. It was in the first lunar month of my seventh year that my ears were pierced and fitted with gold earrings. I was told that a girl had to suffer twice, through ear piercing and footbinding. Binding started in the second lunar month; mother consulted references in order to select an auspicious day for it. I wept and hid in a neighbor’s home, but Mother found me, scolded me, and dragged me home. She shut the bedroom door, boiled water, and from a box withdrew binding, shoes, knife, needle, and thread. I begged for a one-day postponement, but Mother refused:  “Today is a lucky day, ” she said. “If bound today, your feet will never hurt; if bound tomorrow they will. ” She washed and placed alum on my feet and cut the toenails. She then bent my toes toward the plantar with a binding cloth ten feet long and two inches wide,  doing the right foot first and then the left. She finished binding and ordered me to walk, but when I did the pain proved unbearable. That night, Mother wouldn’t let me remove the shoes. My feet felt on fire and I couldn’t sleep; Mother struck me for crying. On the following days, I  tried to hide but was forced to walk on my feet.  Mother hit me on my hands and feet for resisting. Beatings and curses were my lot for covertly loosening the wrappings. The feet were washed and rebound after three or four days, with alum added. After several months, all toes but the big one were pressed against the inner surface. Whenever I ate fish or freshly killed meat, my feet would swell, and the pus would drip. Mother criticized me for placing pressure on the heel in walking, saying that my feet would never assume a  pretty shape. Mother would remove the bindings and wipe the blood and pus which dripped from my feet. She told me that only with the removal of the flesh could my feet become slender. If I mistakenly punctured a sore, the blood gushed like a stream. My somewhat fleshy big toes were bound with small pieces of cloth and forced upwards,  to assume a new moon shape. Every two weeks, I changed to new shoes. Each new pair was one- to two-tenths of an inch smaller than the previous one. The shoes were unyielding, and it took pressure to get into them. Though I wanted to sit passively by the K’ang, Mother forced me to move around. After changing more than ten pairs of shoes, my feet were reduced to a little over four inches. I had been in binding for a month when my younger sister started; when no one was around,  we would weep together. In summer, my feet smelled offensively because of pus and blood; in winter, my feet felt cold because of lack of circulation and hurt if they got too near the  K'ang and were struck by warm air currents. Four of the toes were curled in like so many dead caterpillars;  no outsider would ever have believed that they belonged to a human being.  It took two years to achieve the three-inch model. My toenails pressed against the flesh like thin paper. The heavily-creased plantar couldn’t be scratched when it itched or soothed when it ached.  My shanks were thin, my feet became humped, ugly, and odiferous; how I envied the natural-footed!

Bound feet were crippled and excruciatingly painful. The woman was actually “walking” on the outside of toes which had been bent under into the sole of the foot. The heel and instep of the foot resembled the sole and heel of a high-heeled boot.  Hard callouses formed; toenails grew into the skin;  the feet were pus-filled and bloody; circulation was virtually stopped. The foot-bound woman hobbled along, leaning on a cane, against a  wall, against a servant. To keep her balance she took very short steps. She was actually falling with every step and catching herself with the next. Walking required tremendous exertion. Footbinding also distorted the natural lines of the female body. It caused the thighs and buttocks,  which were always in a state of tension,  to become somewhat swollen (which men called “voluptuous”).  A  curious belief developed among Chinese men that footbinding produced a most useful alteration of the vagina.  A Chinese diplomat explained:

The smaller the woman’s foot, the more wondrous become the folds of the vagina. (There was the saying: the smaller the feet, the more intense the sex urge.) Therefore marriages in Ta-t’ung (where binding is most effective) often take place earlier than elsewhere. Women in other districts can produce these folds artificially, but the only way is by footbinding, which concentrates development in this one place. There consequently develop layer after layer  (of folds within the vagina); those who have personally experienced this  (in sexual intercourse) feel a super-natural exaltation.  So the system of footbinding was not really oppressive.

Medical authorities confirm that physiologically footbinding had no effect whatsoever on the vagina, although it did distort the direction of the pelvis. The belief in the wondrous folds of the vagina of footbound woman was pure mass delusion, a projection of lust onto the feet, buttocks, and vagina of the crippled female. […] Bound feet, the same myth continues, “made the buttocks more sensual, [and] concentrated life-giving vapors on the upper part of the body, making the face more attractive.” If due to a breakdown in the flow of these “life-giving vapors, ” an ugly woman was foot-bound and still ugly, she need not despair, for an  A-1 Golden  Lotus could compensate for a C-3 face and figure. […] 

The upper class bound the feet of their ladies with the utmost severity.  The Lady, unable to walk, remained properly invisible in her boudoir, an ornament, weak and small,  a testimony to the wealth and privilege of the man who could afford to keep her - to keep her idle. Doing no manual labor, she did not need her feet either. Only on the rarest of occasions was she allowed outside of the incarcerating walls of her home, and then only in a sedan chair behind heavy curtains. The lower a woman ’s class,  the less could such idleness be supported:  the larger the feet. The women who had to work for the economic survival of the family still had bound feet, but the bindings were looser, the feet bigger— after all,  she had to be able to walk, even if slowly and with little balance. Footbinding was a visible brand. […] 

Women were perverse and sinful, lewd and lascivious, if left to develop naturally. The Chinese believed that being born a woman was payment for evils committed in a previous life. Footbinding was designed to spare a woman the disaster of another such incarnation. […] 

In arranging a marriage, a male’s parents inquired first about the prospective bride’s feet, then about her face. Those were her human, recognizable qualities. During the process of footbinding, mothers consoled their daughters by conjuring up the luscious marriage possibilities dependent on the beauty of the bound foot. Concubines for the Imperial harem were selected at tiny-oot festivals (forerunners of Miss America pageants). Rows upon rows of women sat on benches with their feet outstretched while audience and judges went along the aisles and commented on the size, shape, and decoration of foot and shoes. No one,  however, was ever allowed to touch the merchandise. Women looked forward to these festivals, since they were allowed out of the house.

The sexual aesthetics, literally the art of love, of the bound foot was complex. The sexual attraction of the foot was based on its concealment and the mystery surrounding its development and care. The bindings were unwrapped and the feet were washed in the woman ’s boudoir, in the strictest privacy. […] The physical process of washing helped restore circulation. […] The rest of the body was never washed at the same time as the feet,  for fear that one would become a pig in the next life. Well-bred women were supposed to die of shame if men observed them washing their feet. The foot consisted, after all, of smelly, rotted flesh. This was naturally not pleasing to the intruding male, a violation of his aesthetic sensibility. […] 

When she entered her husband’s home for the first time, her feet were immediately examined by the whole family, neither praise nor sarcasm being withheld. […] 

Certain feet were better than other feet, more beautiful. Perfect 3-inch form and utter uselessness were the distinguishing marks of the aristocratic foot. These concepts of beauty and status defined women:  as ornaments, as sexual playthings, as sexual constructs. […] The natural-footed woman generated horror and repulsion in  China. She was anathema, and all the forces of insult and contempt were used to obliterate her. Men said about bound feet and natural feet:

A tiny foot is proof of feminine goodness… Women who don’t bind their feet, look like men, for the tiny foot serves to show the differentiation… The tiny foot is soft and, when rubbed,  leads to great excitement.… The graceful walk gives the beholder mixed feelings of compassion and pity… Natural feet are heavy and ponderous as they get into bed,  but tiny feet lightly steal under the coverlets… The large-footed woman is careless about adornment, but the tiny-footed frequently wash and apply a variety of perfumed fragrances,  enchanting all who come into their presence… The natural foot looks much less aesthetic in walking… Everyone welcomes the tiny foot, regarding its smallness as precious … Men formerly so craved it that its possessor achieved harmonious matrimony … Because of its diminutiveness,  it gives rise to a variety of sensual pleasures and love feelings…

Thin, small, curved, soft, fragrant, weak, easily inflamed, passive to the point of being almost inanimate— this was footbound woman. […] 

This fetish became the primary content of sexual experience for an entire culture for 1,000 years. The manipulation of the tiny foot was an indispensable prelude to all sexual experience. Manuals were written elaborating various techniques for holding and rubbing the Golden Lotus.  Smelling the feet, chewing them, licking them, sucking them, all were sexually charged experiences. A  woman with tiny feet was supposedly more easily maneuvered around in bed and this was no small advantage. Theft of shoes was commonplace.  Women were forced to sew their shoes directly onto their bindings. Stolen shoes might be returned soaked in semen. Prostitutes would show their naked feet for a  high price  (there weren’t many streetwalkers in China). Drinking games using cups placed in the shoes of prostitutes or courtesans were favorite pastimes. […] Some men went to prostitutes to wash the tiny foot and eat its dirt, or to drink tea made from the washing water. Others wanted their penises manipulated by the feet. Superstition also had its place — there was a belief in the curative powers of the water in which tiny feet were washed. Lastly, footbinding was the soil in which sadism could grow and go unchecked —in which simple cruelty could transcend itself, without much effort, into atrocity. These are some typical horror stories of those times:

A stepmother or aunt in binding the child ’s foot was usually much harsher than the natural mother would have been.  An old man was described who delighted in seeing his daughters weep as the binding was tightly applied… In one household,  everyone had to  bind. The main wife and concubines bound to the smallest degree, once morning and evening, and once before retiring. The husband and first wife strictly carried out foot inspections and whipped those guilty of having let the binding become loose. The sleeping shoes were so painfully small that the women had to ask the master to rub them in order to bring relief. Another rich man would flog his concubines on their tiny feet, one after another, until the blood flowed… about 1931… bound-foot women unable to Bee had been taken captive. The bandits, angered because of their captives’ weak way of walking and inability to keep in file, forced the women to remove the bindings and socks and run about barefoot. They cried out in pain and were unable to move on in spite of beatings. Each of the bandits grabbed a woman and forced her to dance about on a wide field covered with sharp rocks. The harshest treatment was meted out to prostitutes.  Nails were driven through their hands and feet; they cried aloud for several days before expiring. One form of torture was to tie-up a woman so that her legs dangled in midair and place bricks around each toe, increasing the weight until the toes straightened out and eventually dropped off.

End of Footbinding

How could men idealize the bound feet of crippled women? How and why? The bound foot existed for 1,000 years. In what terms, using what measure, could one calculate the enormity of the crime, the dimensions of the transgression, the amount of cruelty and pain inherent in that 1,000-year herstory?  In what terms, using what vocabulary, could one penetrate to the meaning, to the reality, of that 1,000-year herstory? […] 

Here one sex mutilated (enslaved) the other in the interest of the art of sex, male-female harmony, role-definition, beauty. Consider the magnitude of the crime. Millions of women, over a period of  1,000 years, were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name of erotica. Millions of human beings, over a period of 1,000 years, were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name of beauty. Millions of men, over a period of 1,000 years, reveled in love-making devoted to the worship of the bound foot. Millions of men, over a period of 1,000 years, worshiped and adored the bound foot. […] 

But this thousand-year period is only the tip of an awesome, fearful iceberg: an extreme and visible expression of romantic attitudes, processes, and values organically rooted in all cultures, then and now. It demonstrates that man’s love for woman, his sexual adoration of her, his human definition of her, his delight and pleasure in her, require her negation: physical crippling and psychological lobotomy. That is the very nature of romantic love, which is the love based on polar role definitions, manifest in herstory as well as in fiction —he glories in her agony, he adores her deformity, he annihilates her freedom, he will have her as sex object, even if he must destroy the bones in her feet to do it. Brutality, sadism, and oppression emerge as the substantive core of the romantic ethos. That ethos is the warp and woof of culture as we know it. Women should be beautiful. All repositories of cultural wisdom from King Solomon to King Hefner agree: women should be beautiful. It is the reverence for female beauty which informs the romantic ethos, gives it its energy and justification. Beauty is transformed into that golden ideal, Beauty — rapturous and abstract. Women must be beautiful and Woman is Beauty. Notions of beauty always incorporate the whole of a given societal structure, are crystallizations of its values. […]

Standards of beauty describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body. They prescribe her mobility, spontaneity, posture, gait, the uses to which she can put her body. They define precisely the dimensions of her physical freedom. And, of course, the relationship between physical freedom and psychological development, intellectual possibility, and creative potential is an umbilical one. In our culture, not one part of a woman’s body is left untouched, unaltered. No feature or extremity is spared the art, or pain,  of improvement. Hair is dyed, lacquered, straightened, permanented; eyebrows are plucked, penciled, dyed; eyes are lined, mascaraed, shadowed; lashes are curled,  or false — from head to toe, every feature of a woman’s face, every section of her body, is subject to modification, alteration. This alteration is an ongoing,  repetitive process. It is vital to the economy, the major substance of male-female role differentiation, the most immediate physical and psychological reality of being a woman.  From the age of 11 or 12 until she dies, a woman will spend a large part of her time, money, and energy on binding, plucking, painting,  and deodorizing herself. […] 

Pain is an essential part of the grooming process, and that is not accidental. Plucking the eyebrows, shaving under the arms, wearing a  girdle, learning to walk in high-heeled shoes, having one’s nose fixed, straightening or curling one’s hair —these things hurt. The pain, of course,  teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the woman who would be beautiful. The tolerance of pain and the romanticization of that tolerance begins here, in preadolescence, in socialization, and serves to prepare women for lives of childbearing, self-abnegation, and husband-pleasing. The adolescent experience of the “pain of being a woman” casts the feminine psyche into a masochistic mold and forces the adolescent to conform to a self-image which bases itself on mutilation of the body, pain happily suffered, and restricted physical mobility. It creates the masochistic personalities generally found in adult women: subservient, materialistic (since all value is placed on the body and its ornamentation), intellectually restricted, creatively impoverished.  

- Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating

[sonderrow-moved]

ROY’S BIO IS FINALLY UP ! It is available on his about page, mobile about or under the cut !

♚ “AND LATER MY MACABRE JOY SOURS AND I’M WEEPING FOR MYSELF, UNABLE TO FIND SOLACE IN ANY OF THIS, CRYING OUT, SOBBING, “I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED,” CURSING THE EARTH AND EVERYTHING I HAVE BEEN TAUGHT: PRINCIPLES, DISTINCTIONS, CHOICES, MORALS, COMPROMISES, KNOWLEDGE, UNITY, PRAYER - ALL OF IT WAS WRONG, WITHOUT ANY FINAL PURPOSE.”

This man has lived too long. A classic concept written, imagined by artists. To comfort them about their mortality, explore the ins and outs of an alien narrative full of ifs. How would this even work ? Even the people with the best memories, to a genius level even, eventually forgets, for the brain can only retain so much. This feeling people gets as they grow older, the biased nostalgia of glorified items they saw through their pure, untainted, still developing eyes and the resentment towards new trends as they cannot see anything without any scum anymore. The yearning not for those movements, but for this soft sensation, of looking, admiring something and think, for a moment, that it’s idealistic form was real.

This sweet, unadulterated notion became only a distant, forgotten memory as time hardened the one known today as Roy. For years. Decades. Centuries. Millenniums.

A man who was born during another civilization, another time, long forgotten with only myths remaining of it. Not even a relic to be talked about, as everything had disintegrated, returned to earth for another life cycle.

♚ “THE PAST ISN’T REAL. IT’S JUST A DREAM,” I SAY. “DON’T MENTION THE PAST.”

Roy was born under another name, one he still remembers, but has long buried away, as it is not his name anymore. No one remembers it. It is not him anymore, as much as he might like to. It is only an appellation to let go of. As humankind developed its technology to a peak, so did their power, as they yielded control over nature people nowadays couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t as clear as one making a motion to have the waves, wind and earth respond to it. It was a much more fundamental, rawer sense to it. Where the energy of the world could be used to build even new life.

Always the diligent person who only lived to serve, executing tasks exactly as he was asked to, Roy had been appointed to be the Right Hand of the High Priestess. A young female who had only recently bloomed into womanhood. So perfect in existence, like a bright, pale, white being given to their kind in exchange of their discovery over worldly power. She had embraced her role as a symbol since birth, and he was to accompany her every step of the way as she rose to an official position. To inspire and love. Untouched by anything, for her importance was too great as people shook the world order in their insatiable human curiosity. Nowadays, Roy could have been defined as a bodyguard, yet, in this time, there was no fear of another person’s mishap. Only was he to protect her from accidental injuries, get more menial tasks off her shoulder and, most of all, as they understood this aspect deeply, have her emotional and social needs satisfied.

The way she was so beautiful, the way she would only crack a laugh at his shenanigans, the way he knew how to soothe her and she, in her infinite kindness, learned to soothe him back when a crack of worry grew between his impeccable … how could he not fall in love ?

He loved the way she would recite poetry while he slowly got used to her wanting him to caress her head, and she loved the way he would sing her verses in his smooth, sultry voice. The way she would eye him while someone else was talking on stage with a soft smile while he was guarding the entrance and he’d let a smile crack.

It wasn’t a consummated love like you would see in the current, modern days. There were, of course, pairings who held deep affection towards one another and brought in the next generation, but she had a role where she would never have the chance to do so, for her symbolism was not to replicate, only to be a happenstance, a gift which mustn’t be tainted by an attempt to be artificially redone. She accepted her role with no issue, and so did Roy. And the two of them were perfectly happy with this.

This was a time before the continents even started to noticeably separate on Earth, or even before the initial ground became more and more flooded by the waters. A time where Roy’s kind felt so unified, at peace… until this built up, free of conflict power shattered in on itself.

Raw abominations started roaming, not in the form of creatures, not exactly. So ephemeral, yet spreading chaos and distortion at every corner, fueled by the abuse and infighting of those who had gathered too much and only yearned for more. Years and generations of peace had made civilization take harmony for granted, and the couple was powerless as they saw it unfold. As the world balance collapsed, Roy was approached by a group of pacifists, trusted people for outside the conflicts, everyone knew anyone, respect one another, grew with one another. And as sickly dear ones, growing tainted by the plague pleaded with him, for his position had him perfect for what needed to be done for the greater good: kill the priestess, so the good in her would spread across the land, calm the spirits through their weeps, and save them.

Someone like Roy, of unfathomable loyalty, had a decision to make. And despite the tugs at his heart, it was an easy one. For he believed that, if the Priestess was present, the choice would be simple. That she would understand, because, in her infinite goodness, she could forgive them, forgive him, in the end. And as his trust towards her was strong, it is during a bright morning, away from the war, in the beautiful temple they inhabited, up in the mountains, away from civilization, that he entrusted her with what the people wished of them… and like the great woman she always had been, she kept a serene, albeit slightly sorrowful expression as she accepted. If there was a chance the power built inside her since birth could save more than one person, she would die.

But when his blade pierced her heart, tainting her white, ceremonial clothing in the middle of the garden, she only clanged onto him, eyes wide with desperate sorrow, an expression she, and he, never ever witnessed in anyone before. Fear and betrayal spread across her dark eyes as they grew more and more obscure.

I don’t want to die. My love, I don’t want to die…

―were her last words before, as she wept and choked, the High Priestess expired in her guardian’s blood soaked arms, him wearing too stunned an expression for her to ever hear an answer for him.

Just like beliefs and idolization are made-up by man for comfort and, ultimately, are fake, so was the glorification that one death, from someone incredibly beautiful from the inside out, would be a solution to mankind creating their own demise.

And so, it was at his feet that Roy saw the last of humans slowly die out, first from their endless conflict, so harsh they forgot where it even started, and then to the unforgiving nature, taking back the life they had abused off her.

Only, as he himself felt like he was expiring, with all lifeforce living him in the deserted, now ruined temple he had taken cared of with his beloved.

♚ “THIS IS TRUE: THE WORLD IS BETTER OFF WITH SOME PEOPLE GONE. OUR LIVES ARE NOT ALL INTERCONNECTED. THAT THEORY IS CROCK. SOME PEOPLE TRULY DO NOT NEED TO BE HERE.”

And with the end of this first Humankind was the land so dry of its lifeforce that the cycle of resurrection immortality and resurrection ended. It was quite simple at the time, and helped with the utopia free of grief and unnecessary sadness for their knowledge-seeking kind. If happenstance had you gone, your aether would go back to the earth, only to rise again in the next year, century, no one knew, but they would rise again, the same people, to meet the ones they knew in another life again, with hazy memories, but just enough to recognize your loved ones, and find them again. The more time passed, the less did people come back from this dormant phase, millions and millions now sleeping under the crust of the Earth, never to awaken again. Only the one who had gathered more power could come back more quickly, not the servants, no matter how strong they were, like Roy, who was only, despite all his strengths, a support to a higher one.

Only, as their kind ended, in her last breath, was he given the last link to the cycle, to be connected to his brethren, when he wasn’t supposed to be the one to live again to better the world.

She gave it to him, as her last gift. As the forgiveness she could never give him while she clung to dear life so desperately.

For the greatest gift to give to someone where inevitable death surround them is to still live……… isn’t it ?

I have seen too little, did too little to be of any solace in chaos. You, my love, have seen, experienced. I cannot think of a finer person to carry out our legacy, for I trust that only the best will come out of you.

♚ “PEOPLE CAN GET ACCUSTOMED TO ANYTHING, RIGHT? HABIT DOES THINGS TO PEOPLE.”

Life went back to its natural course. Ancient structure became ruins as vegetation took over, and, strong as it ever was, mankind rose again from the ashes. At the dawn of a new civilization, an orphan would be found at a nearby river, taken in by farmers and eventually would be a child raised by the whole humble village… a child who hadn’t forgotten a thing, and worked towards the dawn of a new age where he could protect what was dear to him.

And so, the one these days called Roy, grew up like he did before, to train and refine his ways. Only, this time, he didn’t only focus on his personal growth, but on others’ too. Estranged from other children like he had always been, with adulthood reaching his mind too quickly, only devoted to his craft. Despite snarl from the youth, his reputation grew amongst the adults and elders, and the communities beyond. As soon as his body was barely out of its formative years, did the boy set home in the mountains. Out of the leftover ruins his past life would let him have. A strong foundation to not lose sight of his objective.

Discipline. Commitment. Responsibility. Peace of mind. Realism. Alongside harsh but fair mental and physical training, all from what he had been taught and remembered, Roy kept exploring martial disciplines he even hadn’t touched in the past, wanting to reestablish what had been lost, and, before he knew it, he was known nearly as a Sage Deity across the land. A man coming from another world, who set up his temple atop the mountains made of smooth boulders eroded with time, near a clear water source, in the middle of a blossoming garden full of colors and hybrid one never knew how such an abundance of different species naturally grew alongside one another in this location, like it was enchanted.

Often, the village elders sought Roy’s advice, which he hoped have given sparingly, in neutrality, since he couldn’t guide mankind every step of the way, only show them a flourishing path. Travelers would come from afar to seek both his teaching and words, with glorified stories growing slightly intimidating to the young man. Despite this, he did his best to carry on his duty, taking care of the new temple grounds he assembled himself, wearing flowing clothes he sew himself; all loyal to the form and aesthetic of the woman he cherished, adorning the same attire she did and flowing, long hair. He wasn’t hoping for them to meet again, only honor her memory. He had grieved and grieved, wept and wept before she gave him the gift of eternity. His salvation was throwing himself into his training, contemplating his sorrow, and so on and on again until he only felt peace.

Roy’s stories of a lady in white with the darkest of eyes became legends, tales of kindness, bravery and adventure. And, amongst his own legacy growing, did Roy decide, after much deliberation, to take in disciples. One, then two. People under his tutelage, who would, in return, vow to spread and defend what the temple fought for, alongside taking equal parts in temple duties. And as the young people he accepted under his wing grew, Roy would soon be surrounded by four bright students he deeply loved. Unable to truly have a father’s touch, he, at least, believed he was a good guardian, hoping that, with time, his students would become masters, and that humanity could flourish.

It was then that, surrounded by his disciples, minus one, actually, that Roy had just finished drinking light tea and eating some sweets. He sighed as a cloud formed in front of his thin lips, the cold air announcing the winter to come. Even as his eldest disciple spoke, Roy didn’t reply. He stayed still, unmoving, silent, for there was nothing to say about what he felt was to come.

He didn’t even groan when he felt the ornate blades of his disciples pass through him, all three at the same time, for they were bound to be guilty together. While the screeching pain enveloped his senses, he wondered if this was what she felt, when he betrayed her.

That night, the Sage’s remains were cut to pieces, scattered far and wide, while his head was burned in the courtyard bonfire, all in an attempt to stop the link he had with his brethren, to cease the “gift” he had been given and for the cycle carried by the billions sleeping to come to an end.

But, unlike what men thought, Roy’s cycle was only part of nature, and he was to rise once more.

♚ “MY NIGHTLY BLOOD LUST OVERFLOWED INTO MY DAYS AND I HAD TO LEAVE THE CITY. MY MASK OF SANITY WAS A VICTIM OF IMPENDING SLIPPAGE.”

It was always the same. Again and again. He would be reborn, train, work, bond, and die at the hands of the very ones he had linked himself. The only reliable companion Roy ever had was nature outside of mankind, harsh but fair, just like him. With a behavior he could coexist with peacefully. It started eating him from the inside out. This time around, Roy had come back from the dead a few decades after his murder, found stark naked in a rice field even farther East, still in a young adult form, regenerated. Mankind hadn’t been doomed yet, and so, he vowed to save it by himself.

Roy would travel far and wide as mankind spread its territory and the continents started separating, being the only one of his kind which could still read the flow of life, its remaining corruption, and how to neutralize them. He would never stay in one spot for too long, only focusing on what he had to do. Because if he didn’t do it, who would ? If he didn’t do anything, he would only be left seeing the same amount of suffering and death, all by himself.

He couldn’t sit down. He couldn’t lose hope.

But Roy’s respect for life took the better of him. As he helped others with his abilities, presenting himself as somewhat of a medium as others also showed special traits, he hadn’t seen how darker human’s hearts had become. So much more quickly than the society he had known in the past. People turned envious of his abilities, and, soon enough, he needed to fight and run for his own life, at the risk of being torn apart yet again.

This fight and flight narrative happened again. And again. Until Roy’s duty had no time to be done; if he wasn’t around, there was no way anything could be done. He had to survive. And as the world grew around him, his mind and memories became muddied, and the depravity surrounding his person slowly creeped into his mind, as any remainder of his initial purpose was muddled with a constant years of bloodshed. An age of decades where he was to be burned and tortured, captured again and again before he’d lay waste to entire villages for his own safety. So no witness was to remain, and less people were to go after him. His training was used in a way he had never done before. For a cause he couldn’t decide to stop. He learned how to kill as efficiently as possible, how to decimate communities, destroy morale through underhanded means. Jumping from one allegiance to another as he either killed or fled before they’d go after him. For the first time, Roy could see how much his raw abilities could be of use in carnage, with no ceremony, no cause behind them. Only death. The very somber death he swore to stop.

He didn’t even stop to wonder at the technology men came up with, using the growing devices as meant for an end, anger and rage creeping into his very soul, indulging in vices he was being offered by humans which morals he always despised. There was no relief in this life, no moment of quiet, only screams and chaos, and only sins could provide a moment of respite. Roy, actually, never remembered how he died, but he did, at some point, in some time, after all sane people had left the territory, and only savagery had roamed the land he had loved so dearly.

During this time, he had forgotten her name, even her face.

♚ “THE CONVERSATION FOLLOWS ITS OWN ROLLING ACCORD - NO REAL STRUCTURE OR TOPIC OR INTERNAL LOGIC OR FEELING; EXCEPT, OF COURSE, FOR ITS OWN HIDDEN, CONSPIRATORIAL ONE. JUST WORDS, AND LIKE IN A MOVIE, BUT ONE THAT HAS BEEN TRANSCRIBED IMPROPERLY, MOST OF IT OVERLAPS.”

At some point, Roy had no recognition if he had been in the same world, the same plane of existence amongst the cycles when he awoke once again. This time in a white, desperately empty desert. With no one at his side. He was still, somehow, a fully grown person, with the fresh memories of violence he had laid, and the scent of blood into all his pores, and the grotesque weapons he had used with no ceremony.

Yet, in this newly regenerated body, in this empty space by himself, his mind centered itself. His discipline kicked in between the silence and hunt for sustenance. He had spent so long a time by himself, alone, in the most chaotic of scenarios. With no one who remembered him, no one who remembered his loved ones, no one who remembered who everyone he even knew were.

After spending time and time, he couldn’t count how long, to rebalance his person, reshape his senses and skills yet again, Roy readied himself to reach civilization once more… yet when he started his journey again, he stopped, the sudden weight of his contact with humankind anchoring him to the ground, unable now to stand. His body was trembling, and everything he had packed fell to the ground. He knew what would happen if he gave up. What he would need to go through and experience. Again and again. He tried. He tried so hard. But no matter how good he could be, it seemed so… hopeless. However, even if it was an impossible endeavor, he couldn’t stop, or else he would have nothing.

He wouldn’t be able to, maybe, one day, see everyone again. How many times had it been ? His memory couldn’t bear so much, what important things could he not recall ? He could start counting, but there was no way to say if entire lifetimes were not thrown into the abyss, and if forgotten crucial knowledge would end up with yet another failure…

This is when, hunched onto himself in this deserted, white horizon, Roy held his head in his hand. He groaned of pain as his mind was strained to its limits, drooling as he agonized, and images faded far, far away as he life flow was being torn apart from him by his own hands. He could hear the screams of his brethren, their legacy being desecrated. Useless. Useless. He didn’t need to remember their names. He didn’t need to remember their faces. Everything deemed useless to the core of his mission was shred out of his very soul, making the pain, the worries fade away, for he only needed to focus on what needed to be done.

Discipline. Commitment. Responsibility. Peace of mind. Realism. For those virtues to lead mankind to a greater part. And maybe, just maybe, recover part of everything he had lost.

For it was the one thing she had not accounted for, for she saw this man as someone so perfect through her affection for him.

That, ultimately, he did all of this so he could see them, see her again if he ever succeeded, and mankind could doom itself if it wasn’t the only way he knew to move onwards. That he did what was needed of him, without taking it so much to heart, that, in the deep of his heart, laid a hidden, selfish reason for all of this. Yet, it may not be this one anymore, he couldn’t tell.

And as Roy literally lost his mind, all by himself, with not a soul around to witness his sorrow, he laid there, vegetable from the trauma, feeling but unable to move, in a haze of horror and pain, before, finally, dehydration took him, and he was back in the cycle again.

Only, this time, there would be no memories. Only physical ones. No loneliness, only fake memories pieced by the world to balance his existence. Only a man, his training, his virtues, and an impossible task that is his only defense against despair and insanity.

♚ “THERE IS NO TIME FOR THE INNOCENT.”

[rodpupo2]

Research: Persona Project 

Ronin by Frank Miller

Ronin was a comic released by DC comics in 1983, and was created by Frank Miller, who besides having worked on the script, also worked on the illustrations.

Ronin is a internal evolution of the author, something that translates into a leap in quality in his work, transforming and aesthetically renewing his work.

It’s like stepping out of his comfort zone to face challenges to innovate.

Frank Miller stood out for his ability to break models, to shape a canon to a new look. And when he got to DC, he had a lot of new ideas involving the past and future, honor, society, discipline, technology, science and ecology. Miller’s mind amalgamated all this essence that culminated in this miniseries, overcoming any obstacles and marking the industry.

Ronin is the story of a past and a future that come together through science. From feudal Japan to the most decadent and technified New York, a samurai without a master, will return to solve the mistakes of the past, and do whatever it takes.

Miller brings with Ronin his interest that he already showed in other comics, which is the Japanese tradition, molding a crucible in which the past and future are mix organically, when technology is the next step in evolution. New York is engulfed by artificial intelligence that replaces the obsolete, the rotten and the dead, with the new and pure.

But for me, the best part of the comic, apart from the script and the whole idea of setting, is certainly the art.

The art of Ronin, maybe not for everyone’s taste, because it looks quite experimental and surrealist.

However, Miller broke new grounds with new page layouts, playing with the text, the thickness of the lines, close ups, cut plans and pictures, violence, death and pain like never before seen and felt in a comic book.

With a super stylized, bold and almost surrealistic streak. This led to a rejection of the miniseries, but it was necessary because Miller opened up, a new path in terms of narrative and composition of art, and invented new graphic tools with which he went in the direction of the unknown.

Josan Gonzalez

Josan is a renowned for exploring themes related to science fiction, dystopia, and above all, cyberpunk. He has already stated in an interview that he is strongly inspired by big names like Moebius, Katsuhiro Otomo - creator of Akira - and Geoff Darrow.

Gonzalez likes to create characters full of personality and compose scenarios rich in details. Josan has a very characteristic artistic artistic style: he uses complex line arts, flat colors and limited color palettes.

Being born in Spain, Josan starts reading comics since he was a teenager and this will influence later in his artistic aesthetic.

Initially he adopted a more painterly style which evolved later in the line work. Despite being always passionate about art he never thought it would make a real career from it. He succeeds in publishing his own books and working for big names such as Dark Horse and Boom Studios.

People is considering Josan’s work as being part of Cyberpunk genre, but the artist doesn’t like to classify them. He enjoy creating illustrations without establishing rules, just giving shapes to a futuristic world. Many of Gonzalez characters are linked by cables, which are a perfect metaphor for linkage human-technology. For a lot of artwork the artist get inspiration from religious imagery. Providing his characters with catholic and Hindu symbols. Mostly this happens, because of his catholic background in Spain. Another aspect, is showing people’s addiction with technology, which keep them repressed. Even if the artist explores different social questions his main goal remains the illustration and making interesting and timeless.

some of his most recent works are, for example, is the cover of the new edition of the science fiction book Neoromancer, and the steelbook art of the game Cyberpunk 2077.

The Story of Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi was Japan’s most famous samurai. He is credited with authoring the most important treatise in Japanese strategy, the “Book of Five Rings”.

Musashi Sensei, as his disciples still call his fighting style, lived from 1584 to 1645.

Musashi dedicated his life to reach perfection through the art of the sword. He fought and won more than 60 life and death duels, and was never defeated. He made contact with other art forms, such as painting, sculpture, calligraphy and poetry, in addition to Zen meditation and Buddhism.

Musashi was born in the province of Harima during one of the most troubled periods in the history of Japan, when the last great battles of the time of the samurai took place.

At the time, it was common in Japan for the same person to change his name at different stages of life. In childhood, Musashi Sensei was called Shinmen Bennosuke. It is believed that he received the first Kenjutsu (famous Japanese martial art) instructions from his father,Shinmen Hirata.

At the age of 13 he won his first duel, and won the second duel when he was 16 years old, as reported in The Book of Five Rings.

In his book Musashi says that his strategy to deconcentrate the opponent and beat him was to arrive late at the place of the duel. On the way, Musashi carved a sword out of a broken paddle and with this sword  he dealt a blow to Kojiro winning the duel,  which, although fast, is one of the most famous in the history of the samurai. The duel was immortalized in a monument on the island of Funajima representing the figure of the two warriors.

The Funajima duel was a turning point in Musashi’s life because from then on he began to reflect on how he had won so many duels and to dedicate himself to the task of leaving a legacy for future generations. It was from there, too, that Musashi began to dedicate himself to other arts such as painting and poetry.

He worked primarily with a style of ink painting, creating minimalist, monochromatic works portraying nature.

The last years of his life, Musashi spent as a guest with his friend, and then isolated himself in the cave of Reigando where he dedicated himself to meditation and practice of his art writing his Book of Five Rings right there.

Ned Bear Mask Artist

Sculptor Edward (Ned) Bear has combined study in Native education with an Honours Diploma from Vancouver college.

He has an extensive knowledge of Native art and culture, Bears has also made contributions to change as a curator, guest speaker and juror.

Bear was born in the town Frederecton, New Brunswick, Canada. When he was young boy he was inspired by a Native elder carver, and later on he received a formal training at New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, where he became the first aboriginal student to graduate. Bear received additional training at a Indian Federated College in Nova Scotia.

Bear created sculpted masks and marble or limestone figure forms. His masks are approximately three feet high and are usually carved from butternut. Each mask is adorned with horse hair ( symbolizing the free spirit), bear fur ( symbolizing healing) and metal ( symbolizing something which is of the earth). Each mask tells a story and offer a modern interpretation of traditional spiritual beliefs.

When creating art, Bear considered himself to be simply a vehicle through which energy flows from the eternal Great Spirit to the medium he is using. He doesn’t create any sketches for the masks, he said that he allows the great spirit to guide him through the process.

Ned Bear made significant contributions as an instructor of Native art and culture, a curator, a guest speaker, and a juror.

The indigenous sculptor died on the Christmas evening of 2019, at the age of 65.  “ We delve into so many past wrongs of our lives that we forget to revel in the present. Learn to capture what you may never have again, now. Do what makes you content for this time, and begin to realize the true purpose of life”, said Bear.

Jim Henson

Jim Henson was an American puppeteer and filmmaker, and most known for creating the Muppets, and directing most of their movies and tv shows.

In the 1960s Henson and his future wife, Jane Nebel, created a puppet show on Washington television station and kept their jobs through the school years, developing the first Muppets (including Kermit) on a one minute television show called Sam and Friends.

The success of Sam and Friends led Henson to create his own company in 1958, initially called Muppets,inc. and many years later, The Jim Henson Company.

Part of the resounding success of Henson’s puppets was due to their innovative view that puppet controllers did not need to be hidden by physical objects while controlling them.

By instructing the camera controllers to focus on the puppets and keep the controllers out of sight, he allowed the puppets to dominate the TV screen and acquire more lively and similar behaviors to real people.

From the productions of Sam and Friends, many characters emerged who became famous over the years and who would become part of the famous cast of the Muppets, including their most famous member, Kermit the Frog.

The Muppet Show, which premiered in 1976 and was produced in England, gained an international audience ( it was shown in about 100 countries) and was soon followed by the film The Muppet Movie (1979).

Henson was able to create an interesting set of characters by developing innovative ideas with a sense of rhythm and humor that won an audience for both children and adults. His works are remembered in part for promoting positive values in childhood such as friendship, magic or love, themes that appeared in most of his works.

Research: Persona Brazilian Folklore research- Lobisomem 

The legend of the werewolf is known practically all over the world. It defines him as being, part man, part wolf, who was cursed with lycanthropy ( the act of becoming a wolf).

The one who is cursed, becomes the werewolf on the nights of the full moon. Some variations of the legend say that lycanthropy was the result of the pact of one man with the devil.

Once transformed into a werewolf, the person frantically sets out in search of victims to kill them. Modern popular culture has spread the idea that the werewolf is vulnerable only to silver bullets or sharp objects made of silver.

Naturally, the legend of the werewolf arrived in Brazil through Portuguese, during the period when they colonized Brazil, in our country, the legend arrived and took on different characteristics in each region.

Some studies have concluded that there is no such legend among indigenous people. The closest to that were legends who believed that men or women could become some animals of the forest.

This legend in Brazilian folklore ended up acquiring elements present in its Portuguese version. Thus, it was common to believe that the werewolf was the man born after the mother had seven daughters, although versions of the legend say that if seven sons were born, the eight son would also be a werewolf.

In the north, of Brazil, the werewolf was the man who was in poor health, and the one who was anemic would eventually would become him. Once transformed, it feeds on the blood of other humans to make up for the poor diet as one of them. The transformation took place from Thursdays to Friday nights.

In the south, in turn, the fact that turned the man into a werewolf was incest. In Brazil, there was no record in the folklore of the belief in transformation of women into werewolves. In the folklore, only men becomes werewolves.

In the interior of São Paulo, it was believed that this being tried to invade the houses to eat children. Many believed that the werewolf went after, especially, unbaptized children.

One of the ways in which the person turned into a werewolf, was if he seriously injured with certain objects. One of these objects was a bullet bathed in candle wax from an altar.

[thedistrictroleplay]

ID:

Name | Nickname | Age:  Katherine Beckett | Kat |  28 Birthday | Astrology:  March 21, 1993 | Aries sun, Pisces moon, Scorpio rising Pronouns | Sexual identity:  She/her | Pansexual Birthplace | Raised:  San Diego, CA  Residence:  Brookland Occupation: Dance teacher with a side hustle selling Art on Etsy  Faceclaim: Danielle Campbell

TRIGGER WARNINGS: drug abuse tw, infidelity tw, narcissistic parent tw, injury tw, overdose tw 

TIMELINE: 

1860s- The founding of Hawthorne wine in Northern California

1981- Dottie married David and pays for his medical school

May 1991- Older sister Briar Rose is born 

April 1992- Older sister Evie is born

March 21, 1993- Katherine is born in San Diego, California @ 9 pm

1996- Enrolled in Ballet and started doing child pageants 

2008- Wins Miss Teen International at fifteen

2010- Has her Debutante coming out ball 

2011- Is accepted into San Francisco Ballet Company 

2013- She has a massive fight with her mom and O.D.s (survives)

2014- Finishes rehab and skips out on being picked up by her parents and runs away to DC

2015- Kat joins the Washington Ballet 

2018- An injury puts an end to Kat's career in Ballet, she's gifted Baby as a consolation for her ended career

2019- Moves in with her "casual" fling and starts working on new avenues for her life and career. Still has a terse, basically non-existent relationship with her parents

2020- "Casual fling" proposes, and she bounces and gets her own place with roommates

2021- Has her own dance studio and sells art on Etsy.

BIOGRAPHY:  

Katherine Vivienne Beckett was born to be perfect. Failure was not in the realm of possibilities for the youngest Beckett child. It was never even mentioned outside of being a non-starter. Her mother, Dottie, was from old money, the heiress to the Harlow wine company. Dottie had antiquated, regal if not conservative values that she fought hard, perhaps too hard to instill in her daughters. Her own drive for perfection and success bled into the foundation of her relationship with Kat. Thus from an early age, Kat associated success and praise with love. Any deviation from the absolute best was a failure. Her father, David, was absent. At best and at worst, he wore disinterest and pretense like a coat he never took off. A serial cheater who was never home, Kat was left putting all of her external needs for parental approval on her mother.

Lack of praise left her with the fear that the love was gone, and Kat developed a sickening need for perfection. A child beauty queen who was never satisfied. No matter the number of titles or crowns, she won no matter the talents she mastered. And talented she was. Gifted in languages, piano, singing, painting, sculpting, and best of all, ballet Kat was the master of her gifts. She curated them under the best instructors money could buy. Her mother encouraged these things, her unrelenting press for the perfect socialites for daughters often putting her and Kat at odds. Kat often excused her toxic behavior as tough love and fell back into the cycle of practice, perform, praise, repeat. Eventually, her success didn't even seem to impress her mother, and Kat was facing a terrible case of burnout.

She was exhausted, sixteen years old and already she felt spent. All of her best years seemed to be drifting behind her, more bitter than sweet Kat felt at odds with herself and who she was meant to be. All the certainty she had in life was her desire to please the people she loved, so Kat continued to do what her mother instructed. After her elder sister moved out, Dottie had even more time to pick a part Kat, push her and curate her into everything Dottie insisted a young woman was supposed to be. With her father often traveling for "work," it was just Kat and Dottie inside the house. There was no reprieve then, only expectations that often looked like Dottie waking Kat before dawn for morning runs followed by extra ballet practice until late morning. Kat could barely stand it any longer. She had no idea who she was or what she wanted.

Quietly, she began to rebel. She was sneaking away to parties, joy riding at three a.m, sleeping with anyone and everyone. She was looking for freedom and feeling, and eventually, she found it the form of illicit drugs. The euphoria of being high was unparalleled to anything she'd felt before. Combine that with the ability to work harder and longer, and Kat was sold, hook, line and sinker. The drug abuse and rebelling continued for years, even after Kat was accepted into her first Ballet company at eighteen in San Francisco. She kept her addiction tightly wrapped for two years, worked long hours, and outperformed the girls below her and even a few senior performers. The shining moment of her young career was when she was given the role of The Sleeping Beauty in the ballet of the same title.

Kat spent most of her waking hours practicing for her upcoming role. She was stunning, acclaimed in her part as Aurora. It was the first time in years she'd felt happiness that wasn't an artificial sort. Sadly, it was short-lived. Dottie attended the closing show, leaving before the final number didn't go unnoticed by Kat. Her emotions were shaky, and her performance less than her best. The disappointment was personal. She felt feral. Confronting her mother, she discovered Dottie had left early to make dinner plans with a college friend. Arguably the most prominent moment in Kat's life, she had left for dinner, a dinner she was early for; Kat exploded. Twenty years of pent-up sadness, anger, and disappointment accumulated into a vicious and aggressive fight between mother and daughter. The argument came to an end when in a rare moment of transparency, Dottie told Kat she had never wanted her in the first place.

Kat kicked her mother out of her apartment and spent the night partying when she went too hard and overdosed on a nearly lethal amount of concoction of party drugs. Kat's so-called friends dumped her at the emergency room, none sticking around to ensure she was okay. Thankfully, Kat survived, but her entire life had felt like it had been ripped away when Kat woke up. No longer was she on the way to becoming a prima ballerina, but she was in a rehab facility. It was the most excellent form of rehab, luxury, and resort-like in many ways, but it was ultimately still rehab. Kat spent a year as a resident of Harmony Place rehab in Malibu, California. Her parents informed her, stay or lose all her inheritance. Already having lost her job and life in San Francisco, Kat obliged. The year was not a lost one but one of personal growth and therapy. Finally, the fog she had been living under lifted, and Kat knew what she had to do.

Once her stay at Harmony Place ended, Kat did not return home like was expected. Instead, Kat took a bus to the countries Capitol, where she spent a couple of weeks couch surfing before going to her sister looking for the family she had always craved. A year later, Kat found herself a new therapist and a new ballet company to work with. Her life didn't feel as over as it once had, and there was hope for her future here, brighter than she had ever anticipated before. Unfortunately, three years of performing was all Kat had left when a tragic accident ended her professional career. A snapped Achilles tendon. A pop heard all throughout the theater was the last sound of her career. Over a year of Physical therapy and one surgery later, Kat knew the ballet world knew she'd never dance professionally again.

In the aftermath, Kat got the best gift ever in the form of a small black Doberman puppy she affectionately named Baby. During all her new downtime, Kat spent the time painting and sculpting. She was finding the art to be therapeutic and aid in keeping her from a relapse that some days felt inevitable. While her art sold well on Etsy, Kat could not keep things going independently and moved in with a casual fling Kat felt closer to as a friend. However, it seemed she had misinterpreted the depth of their affection. A realization that came when they produced a ring and a question Kat had only one answer for; no. Kat moved to Brookland, taking an apartment with roommates rather than marrying someone she didn't see a future with; she was no stranger to starting over.

Kat now spends her time creating original pieces for her Etsy store, Kat's meow. While her professional ballerina career has ended, Kat has not given up on dance. Instead, Kat resumed tentative communication with her parents if only to receive her inheritance. The money was used to buy the space for her own studio where Kat teaches ballet to all ages and private Burlesque classes for adults once a week. In between, Kat attends therapy and meetings with her sponsor. She is unlearning the toxic parts of her childhood and finding ways to honor her passions without losing herself. Some days the struggle is more complex than others. Rome was also built on ruins.

Kat is written by L.

[kbox-in-the-box]

Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers

1988 was the year that the planet Aetheria was liberated at last from the mad Emperor Xerxes, but it was neither the great space hero, Samuel Gerald “Astro” Armstrong, nor his daughter, Samantha Gillespie “Astra” Armstrong, who struck the final, decisive blow.

From 1933 to 1938, Astro Armstrong, Hedy Fine and Dr. Leon Volkov fought for the freedom of the people of Aetheria against the tyranny of Xerxes and his daughter, the wicked Empress Eris.

But in 1959, Astro Armstrong went missing, and in 1966, Astra Armstrong and her mother, Prof. Hedy Feynman, returned to Aetheria after Dr. Leon Volkov’s son, Dr. Leonid Volkov, told them that Astro was still alive, on Aetheria, but captive in the clutches of Xerxes.

As Astro’s family and allies sought to find him again, all while resuming their war with the forces of Xerxes and Eris, they found themselves facing a new foe, the first human ever to join the dark side of the Aetherian Armada, a mysterious masked man known only as Kommissar Blitzkrieg, who somehow seemed capable of anticipating Astra and Hedy at every turn.

By the 1980s, Hedy had begun to suspect the terrible secret of Kommissar Blitzkrieg’s true identity, one that could never be revealed to Astra, which the ruthlessly clinical Prof. Feynman recognized would necessitate the enlistment (or more accurately, the compulsory impressment) of new allies into their struggle, young outsiders with new ways of thinking, whose strengths would draw from their lack of preexisting emotional connections to this star-spanning conflict.

In 1984, the “Hyperspace Pilot” video game had cabinets distributed to the Bits & Blasts Arcade near the edge of the Ned Pines Neighborhood, the Pink Flamingos Mobile Home & RV Park on the outskirts of Eliot’s Expanse, and the Cabaret Cinema in the core of Edwin A. Abbott Square.

Opening in 1922, the Cabaret Cinema remains the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the state of Calizona, its infrequent stints as a Union Gospel Mission location notwithstanding.

The Cabaret Cinema was where a young Valerie Gail Zappa watched nostalgic rescreenings of Saturday matinee serials such as “The Adventures of ‘Astro’ Armstrong," and by the summer of 1984, Val was not only 18 years old and freshly graduated from Stanford S. Strickland Junior High & High School (go Teen Wolves!), but she was also a veteran usher at the Cabaret, where she took in countless classic films for free, and racked up high scores on “Hyperspace Pilot.”

Val and her two-years-younger sister, Tara Moonchild Zappa, lived at their parents’ double-wide at the Pink Flamingos, but like their fellow Pink Flamingos resident Crystal Swan, who was still attending Strickland Junior High in 1984, all three girls were pretty much raising themselves.

Tara had aspirations of enrolling in Beauty’s Beholder Cosmetics & Cosmetology, so she could eventually work at Nagel’s Picture-Perfect Cuts & Colors in the Gold Key Commercial Core.

And while Val’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Buckminster “Bucky” Martínez, was still sorting through prospective career paths, he’d already earned an athletic scholarship, as a soccer and volleyball player, through Coral Shores Community College (go Atoms!), part of the Calizona Community College Athletic Conference and the National Junior College Athletic Association.

Even Morten Emory Thistlethwaite, the spoiled antisocial prodigy whom Val grudgingly agreed to babysit when she was in junior high, because he was three years her junior, was already on track to attend the University of Calizona, Santa Teresa (go Manticores!), with the Quatermass University of Abstract and Applied Sciences (go Tachyons!) as his designated fallback school.

And yet, Val herself simply drifted, never pursuing a post-secondary education or a long-term occupation beyond what was required to pay for the rent and fun nights out on the town during her weekends off, much to the dismay of her peers and former teachers, all of whom sensed far more potential in her than punching ticket stubs at the Cabaret Cinema, subbing in to lead group workouts at Aphrodite & Adonis Aerobics, or feeding quarters into “Hyperspace Pilot” cabinets.

By 1987, the band of Valerie and Tara Zappa, Bucky Martínez and Morten Thistlethwaite knew they had little enough left in common to wonder aloud why they were still hanging out, but they knew the answer to that as well, since not only had they all remained avid players of “Hyperspace Pilot,” but they’d taken up the next iteration in the franchise, i.e. the “Hyperspace Pistoleer” light-tagging toy guns released in 1986, for which Bits & Blasts had economized its existing space, and even leased adjacent property, to set up a hide-and-seek arena for — among other players — Captain Zap, Brigadier Buckyball, Lieutenant Luna and Master Sergeant Mars, as they preferred to be called on the game clock.

And by the summer of 1987, the band had reasons to celebrate, with Morten’s acceptance for UC Santa Teresa’s fall semester confirmed, Tara feeling confident she would finally be promoted from apprentice to junior stylist at Nagel’s Picture-Perfect Cuts & Colors, and even Bucky finally having settled on a major, after three years, at Coral Shores Community College.

Everyone was heading places, except for Val, who’d always dreamed of travel, but never had the free time or finances to spare, just as her ongoing consumption of classic cinema ensured her lock on the pink-for-entertainment slice of the pie any time she played Trivial Pursuit, and yet, for all her fascination with the film industry, she still couldn’t summon the patience to audition, or even sit still for test shots, for more than sporadic roles as an extra.

“Why does this feel like the end of that made-for-TV movie where roleplaying games drove Tom Hanks crazy?” Tara asked despondently, as the band sat at their regular table in Bits & Blasts, nursing their slices of Pizzazz Pizza.

“You know why,” Val smirked ruefully. “Everyone else is about to embark on grand adventures in bold new campaign settings, while some of us are just destined to ... hang back from the action, and become non-player characters.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Bucky clasped Val’s hand in his own to console her.

“I heard Lis Berger is shutting down the Hyperspace Pistoleer arena after this summer,” Morten blurted out, acutely uncomfortable with the unpleasant emotions his peers were displaying so openly. “Even though it’s still popular, she’s losing a ton of money on it. I say we play one last round now, before it gets torn down.”

Val stood up and laid down a few dollars for the tip. “Might as well go out shooting,” she grinned.

The entry of every officially licensed “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arena was equipped with speakers to play the same opening narration before the players went inside, complete with a flash of light to simulate an interplanetary tesseract:

“As the people of the planet Aetheria cry out for aid, in their fight for freedom against the evil forces of the mad Emperor Xerxes and his Aetherian Armada, a highly trained special mission force has been recruited from the ranks of ordinary humans, right here on Earth, to respond to this call. They are the Hyperspace Rangers, and their brave battles began when they stepped into the Star Point Portal ... and vanished.”

After the obligatory flash of light, Lis Berger’s assistant games supervisor, Rachelle “Ratchet” Chennault, checked the activated “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arena, only to find it empty.

The “Strickland Slackers,” as they came to be branded in subsequent press reports, were gone.

Hedy Feynman knew she had a limited window of time within which to work, because time itself passes on Aetheria at roughly one-seventh the rate that it does on Earth, and because she knew the start of the Harmonic Convergence would commence on Aug. 16, 1987, but even she had failed to grasp how quickly most toy and video game franchises fall out of fashion.

Hedy had commissioned the younger Dr. Leonid Volkov to produce the “Hyperspace Pilot” and “Hyperspace Pistoleer” game lines, as covert training and recruitment tools for what she had envisioned as crack commando units to be branded the “Hyperspace Rangers,” since they would be able to operate not only behind enemy lines, but also between the boundaries that defined both the war and space travel itself.

Because Hedy wished to avoid drawing too much notice, and because she’d retained enough of her conscience not to want to press-gang too many child soldiers into risking life and limb for a cause for which none of them had knowingly consented to sacrifice themselves, the Star Point Portals affixed to the “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arenas absconded with only scattered handfuls of players from her former home planet.

The sustained toll of their secret missions was brutal, culling all but a few of the promising crop Hedy had authorized to transport from Earth during the summer of 1987, but one unlikely band of Hyperspace Rangers somehow not only kept on surviving, but also succeeding in completing their missions, thanks in no small part to the guidance and motivation they drew from the canny strategies and inspiring speeches of their Valkyrie-like leader.

Eventually, the rest of the units were reduced in number enough that their remainders were seconded to Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers.

During the final push to overthrow the misrule of Xerxes, when Astra Armstrong was devastated by the discovery that the merciless Kommissar Blitzkrieg was actually her long-lost father, Astro Armstrong — whose innate heroism had been artificially suppressed by technology the elder Dr. Leon Volkov had been conscripted to create for Xerxes — it was Captain Zap’s Hyperspace Rangers who kept up the pressure on the Aetherian Armada, giving Astra the chance to break through those psychic barriers to reach her real father’s heart, and ultimately redeem his soul.

... And so it was that 1988 was the year that the planet Aetheria was liberated at last from the mad Emperor Xerxes, not by two generations of the same heroic family, but by a third generation of complete strangers to their cause, and yet, even as the rest of the surviving Hyperspace Rangers were returned to Earth per their request, one band asked to stay behind.

Captain Zap, Brigadier Buckyball, Lieutenant Luna and Master Sergeant Mars each had their own reasons for wanting to venture further into the largely uncharted frontier within which they’d found themselves, but Hedy Feynman, as newly elected head of the likewise recently installed government of Aetheria, harbored equally ulterior motives for agreeing to retain their services.

Hedy knew that a tentatively democratic Aetheria, one which was now seeking to atone for the misdeeds of its empire by forging alliances among adversaries, needed free agents to act on its behalf, to make contact with the broader cosmos that Xerxes’ simultaneously expansive and provincial priorities had impacted, and yet also ignored.

Hedy also knew that Astra’s appetite for such crusades had been ground down hard over the course of the war, even before she’d inadvertently unmasked one of her fiercest foes as the vanished father whose legacy she’d sought to live up to her entire life, and for the first time since 1966, Astra found herself missing the old home planet she’d abandoned so casually.

Which was how Astra Armstrong woke up late one morning to the fanfare surrounding the hastily rescheduled launch of the Moebius Loop-powered Cavalry Cruiser-class Unification Searcher Spacecraft (USS) Starlin, the ship she’d simply assumed she would be tasked with commanding, because it had already taken off with its new crew, Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers, without Hedy telling her.

Astra had resigned herself to the likelihood that she would be assigned to provide Captain Zap’s Hyperspace Rangers with essential insights on the various alien species, civilizations and cultures they might encounter, but Hedy had instead sentenced the former Empress Eris to serve as a Hyperspace Ranger, under the command of Captain Zap, as Ensign Eleutherios (”Eleutherios” being the birth name that Eris had always hated), as repayment for her sins.

And with a capable crew protecting the peace in her stead, Astra couldn’t help but smile when Hedy presented her with the Reckless Endeavor, the spaceship with which Astra’s parents and the elder Dr. Volkov had originally traveled to Aetheria, now freshly restored and ready to fly wherever Astra wished.

“First, I’m gonna take a long nap, and then, I’m gonna spend some time doing nothing at all, because I’ve been meaning to do both of those for years,” Astra laughed, even as tears spilled down her cheeks. “After that ... when we left Earth, I was so ready for something so much bigger. The only other gals I knew who wore pants were you, Katherine Hepburn and Laura Petrie on Dick Van Dyke. So much happened, just right after I left.” She chuckled. “It’s like Earth waited until I was gone to get cool.”

“And now?” Hedy brushed the blonde spit-curl from her daughter’s face. “You want to catch up?”

“I want ...” Astra paused, then unclipped the Walkman from her belt loop, that she’d carried to honor all the fallen Hyperspace Rangers, more than one of whom had worn such portable music players into the fray of combat.

Astra cranked the volume on the headphones up to the max, then pressed play, and the voice of Stevie Nicks began to croon:

♫ No one knows how I feel ♪ ♪ What I say, unless you read between my lines ♫ ♫ One man walked away from me ♪ ♪ First he took my hand ♫ ♫ Take me home ... ♪

“I want to go where the music sounds like THAT,” Astra’s voice choked up, as her eyes welled up with fresh unshed tears.

Hedy struggled to keep the quaver out of her own voice, as she squeezed her daughter tight to wish her safe travels. “Then you go there, baby. You go follow the music that’s in your heart.”

[fortunerobotic]

benefits of robots in the future

Robots' roles are changing quickly, and they have the potential to revolutionize almost every aspect of civilization. Robots have a number of uses that could change the course of human history, from manufacturing to healthcare and from the home to space. Here are some predictions about how robots will affect industry and our lives in the years to come.

Enhanced Productivity in Manufacturing and Industries

Robots have already begun to do repetitive and labor-intensive activities. In the future, robots will be able to do ever more intricate and complicated activities because of the advancement of superior AI and automation technologies. This minimizes downtime, lowers human error, and increases production. Because robots can operate around the clock, organizations may boost productivity and efficiency while allowing human employees to concentrate on strategic, creative work.

Revolutionizing Healthcare and Personal Assistance

Future robots with sophisticated sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to support patients with mobility impairments, assist with very precise procedures, and even aid in diagnostic and treatment planning. Additionally, robots can play a part in elder care, offering seniors support and companionship to enhance their quality of life. These robots could improve patient safety and independence by keeping an eye on vital signs, reminding patients to take their medications, and alerting medical personnel in the event of an emergency.

Supporting Education and Learning

By introducing interactive and customized learning experiences into homes and classrooms, robots are emerging as useful educational aids. Particularly for pupils with specific needs, robots can make education more accessible, offer one-on-one coaching, and adjust to different learning styles. Schools can prepare the next generation for high-tech jobs by integrating robots into STEM curricula and helping kids acquire the skills they will need to succeed in a technologically advanced world.

Expanding Agricultural Efficiency

Robots are expected to assist in addressing issues related to global food security. With accuracy and efficiency, agricultural robots can handle jobs like planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. These robots can maximize crop yields, decrease pesticide use, and reduce waste through the use of AI-powered sensors and data processing, all of which support more environmentally friendly farming methods. Such advancements in food production will be essential to guaranteeing food security for future generations as the world's population continues to expand.

Improving Home Automation and Daily Life

As technology develops, robots will be able to perform even more domestic duties, including cleaning, cooking, and maintenance. AI-enabled personal assistant robots will be able to plan ahead, foresee needs, and offer company. Robots will provide useful solutions to enhance ease and quality of life as they get more intelligent and perceptive, especially for people with hectic schedules or restricted mobility.

Robots have a bright future and will have an impact on every industry by introducing new opportunities, capabilities, and efficiencies. By adopting robotics, humanity can address some of its most pressing issues and open up new avenues for advancement. A balanced, moral, and inclusive approach to robotics will be crucial as we advance in order to fully realize its potential in creating a more wealthy, healthy, and sustainable world.

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