#how to create an array of zeros

[felassan]

David Gaider on Fenris, under a cut for length:

"Fenris. Now, DA2 is a story all on its own but I'm not going to go there other than to sum it up as "we had just over a year and a half to make this". It's why I only wrote one follower, Fenris, and although it'll make his fans mad: I probably shouldn't have. Let me explain. The way we'd approach making the followers is brainstorming a list of concepts covering first the array of gameplay classes (and sub-classes) and then making sure they each have some skin in the game when it came to the story's conflicts - ideally having characters on both sides of the major ones. Why? You can't make a player care about the world, but you can make them care about characters who care about the world. It's the easiest way to provide hooks into a conflict, outside of it knocking on the player's door. Heck, it's probably better than that. Players will burn the world for approval. After that, we'd decide things like romances/sexuality. Then the writers would pick who they'd write. I always let my writers pick first. I figured they do their best work when it's something they're inspired to write... and they got so few chances at ownership, I wanted to give it whenever I could It's why I (reluctantly) let Patrick wrest Cole from my grasp in DAI, a character I'd created in Asunder. It's also why I let Jennifer take Anders in DA2, who I'd started in Awakening. In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want."

"It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him. The art concepts were all over the place - from mages to crows to... well, even weirder. No matter how hard I tried to explain the idea, the artists simply didn't seem to get it Does this mean he was a bad character? Not exactly. Just an idea that probably deserved some re-examining. You can tell when an idea has a certain spark, and part of that is being easy to communicate. Sadly, there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me. And it didn't, not yet. If it had, if I had time, maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity. But this falls into the shoulda-woulda-coulda category. I had a follower to write. Quickly. I struggled, at first. It was hard to get away from "Fenris hates everything, all the time". It felt very one-note, and I didn't know where to take him. My third clue, I guess. I also wasn't sure if I was the right person to write a former slave. I did know that couldn't be the center of his story. I did know trauma, however. How it can eat you up. How the hate and resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. How it can infect your relationships. Fenris's trauma isn't my trauma, obviously, but here I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before."

"It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts. I wouldn't have done the "Fenris doesn't talk to you for three years" thing if I'd known we were going to cut all the reactivity initially planned for the time jumps. When that call was made, I campaigned to cut the jumps to a year, but there was no time for the revisions it'd need. So, um. Awkward. I used to get asked where the name came from, and I... don't remember? Obviously it's derived from Fenrir, but I don't recall why we picked that. Someone pointed at Fenris the Feared from Joe Abercrombie's books... and I did read them, so maybe the name lodged in my head? Wouldn't be the first time. Casting Fenris turned out to be easy. He was the first time I requested a specific VA and got him. (The other times were Merrill and then Solas, my two "I want these specific Welsh actors, please".) Why? OK, if you must know, I'd played a bit of Final Fantasy XII. I heard Balthier. "Yes, that." 😅 And Gideon Emery was a delight, as it turned out. Consummate professional, and that lovely gravel in his voice... good god. Bite the knuckles. There was a struggle to find the voice at the outset where I did my best not to say "just pls do Balthier" but he found Fenris on his own and it was amazing. Overall, Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad. Do I regret anything? Probably having him live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update. That's a hindsight thing, though, as again the cut to reactivity over the time jumps came late. Outside of that, maybe letting the player give him back to Danarius? Poor shock value and a waste of resources because almost nobody took the option. Good evil options are ones that are tempting to take. And the lyrium tattoos. Interesting concept, but they're probably why you'll never see Fenris in a future DA. He requires a custom body, and the tattoos make that expensive. It's why I put Fenris in my 4th DA novel - the cancelled one. Don't fret, though. He died in it, so this way he lives on. 😉"

[source thread]

User: "Wait wait how does he die in [the cancelled novel]??" David Gaider: "Gloriously, after taking up a cause he didn't believe in at first but then made his own, one that allowed him to rediscover what it meant to be elven." [source] David Gaider: "I’m not sorry about the novel cancellation. I’m the one who cancelled it. I am kinda sad we couldn’t make it work, though. Considering it was after I left the DA team, it would have been my final DA hurrah." [source] David Gaider: "From my perspective, it was kind of "well if you're never going to use him again, let me at least give him a proper send off" and the story required a glorious death... but I get that's not the story his biggest fans would want (which is Hawke + Fenris 4ever), so it's just as well." [source]

User: "You all did some incredible work with such a tight deadline" David Gaider: "I'm of the opinion that even if we'd had only another six months to bake, DA2 would be remembered as a classic and not either a flawed gem or underbaked sequel, depending on who you ask." [source]

David Gaider: "Just to clarify the "they're probably why you'll never see Fenris" thing, as it's spawned commentary: 1. It's the reasoning as was explained to me back then. 2. Obviously, if Bio *really* wanted to, they'd find a way around it. But it was a complication that meant he couldn't be included casually." [source]

[centrally-unplanned]

IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And The Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this is what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows: 

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and form “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting” aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors.  I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans. 

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less.

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

[mewvore]

Salacious Scolipede: An Unserious Unsexy Fanfiction Born Out Of Maliciousness

I was stunned. Not because of my dick; I did in fact have it for many years, was born with it even, so I was sure I knew the ins and outs of the mechanics of it like the back of my hand. No, I was stunned at the why of my erection, because it was responding to something I never believed it would. A Scolipede.

As it sits between Nacrene City and the bridge to Castelia, on a rather balmy autumn afternoon, I found myself traversing through Pinwheel Forest. The forest, with its lush grass and various hollow, fallen trees hosted an array of pokemon. The passage to the bridge was either a minor inconvenience or a nightmare, depending on the amount of pokemon you happened have with you, and on that day I had a quite alarming number: zero. The dead wood that laid across the landscape created a number of passages to higher and lower cliffs, and I eagerly sought them out to take advantage of the many shortcuts to exit the forest promptly.

Most residents of Nacrene heard the tales and legends about the forest, some involving hostile ghosts, others involving hostile people. I would be lying if I said the stories had no effect on me; I did in fact believe some strange things to be possible at any time and refused to take any chances. So when the grass around me would rustle and shake, I would immediately increase my pace. Initially, it was a small jog, but by the time I was hearing a faint chittering of small teeth in front of me, I sprinted north, away from the main path and, consequently, deeper into Pinwheel Forest.

Once I slowed down and calmed my heart, I found myself at a small pond in the center of the forest. I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily. Despite being twenty years old my physical fitness was far below average. Even I was shocked at how far into the forest I had gotten with fear and adrenaline carrying me. As those faded and my breathing returned to normal, I collapsed to my knees, unable to hold up my own spindly frame after running what I thought to be several miles but was closer to several yards.

"Are you alright?" spoke a sultry voice in front of me. I looked up to see a Scolipede and immediately my penis stood at attention.

It really was that sudden and inexplicable. The rising surprise made me scuttle backward until I slammed into a tree, hoping the creature didn't have time to have seen the tent I pitched in my pants and with the new pain in my back I hoped to have my mind and body focused on that instead.

"You're rather clumsy, aren't you?" the Scolipede said, looking at me with a pitying glare.

"I'm sorry I-" I began, but before doing so I stopped. The Scolipede was sitting on the edge of the pond, its wet body glistening in the beams of sunlight that broke through the trees. The hard purple shell that covered it was glossy, looking almost hand polished to a fine sheen, with the soft dark flesh of its large stomach beneath moving slightly as it breathed in and out slowly. Despite sitting, the Scolipede was a massive pokemon, no shorter than seven feet tall with its long neck making up most of its height. Along its neck and down to its backside were several small protrusion that resembled claws, and while not visible as it sat with them tucked underneath it, it had four long legs it used to gallop around. It resembled a pokemon like rapidash or mudsdale, a creature large enough to ride but by all visible metrics was just a very large bug.

I had seen many Scolipedes in many books and programs on TV and while I couldn't recall any of them making me instantly horny, I could recall something important: none of them spoke. I stood up, wincing from the dull pain in my back and leaned from side to side, looking for a human who may have been talking to me but was blocked by the massive creature. I found only the pond glistening behind it, and a large bird pokemon that had flown down to take a drink.

"You're sorry?" It spoke again, confused.

"I uh. I'm not sure. Are you...speaking?"

"Can you hear me or not?"

"I can hear you. I think?"

The Scolipede stood up. Small drops of water cascaded down its body and dripped into the grass as it approached me. I slowly started backing up, before once again hitting the tree. The Scolipede had taken two relatively small steps and already covered the distance between us. It leaned forward, its neck lowered and the two of us stood face to face.

"Are you okay? Are you sick?"

"I'm good, I just...I'm confused"

"Oh, so you're lost in the woods"

"No. I mean maybe. I think I've seen this pond before"

"I see."

"I'm more confused about why...you can...talk...?

"You can talk, can't you?" The Scolipede looked at me puzzled.

"Yes," I began, stammering a bit before regaining my words. "But I've never met a pokemon that talks, is the thing."

"That seems like a personal issue."

"Excuse me?"

The Scolipede lifted it head and began to turn back towards the spot it had sat in. The patch of grass had a large beam of sunlight cast upon it, and even to me it looked rather inviting. The large body of the Scolipede swayed slightly as it took its small steps to return to lazily drying off in the sun. Once settled, it turned towards me.

"You don't have any pokemon with you?"

"I'm not really into raising pokemon."

"I see."

I wasn't a very strong conversationalist, and neither was the Scolipede, but at least the Scolipede had a reason. It was a pokemon. I had eschewed most attempts at conversation or getting to know many people, never attempted any trainer courses and was working as a delivery person. It was a job that required picking up and dropping off parcels, and very little conversational skills. I enjoyed it that way, until now, facing what could only be described as 'an enlightening experience'.

"So...do you have a trainer?"

"I don't."

"Do you live here?"

"I do."

"Do...all pokemon talk or are you like a special kind...or something?"

"I believe many pokemon communicate in many ways. Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Do you know many humans that casually get erections while talking?"

I immediately turned around to hide my shameful short-sword from view. The brief conversation had me me forget about the struggle in my actual briefs. The Scolipede let out a light chuckle. "I'll take that as a no, then." it said.

"This doesn't happen, like this is something new, I'm sorry to bother you. Goodbye." And on that note I started to leave the pond area. The back pain didn't stop me from attempting a full sprint, but my dick made it less of a run and more of a three legged race. I wasn't exactly a star athlete on the best of days so I couldn't say if I'd have gotten far enough to avoid it, but the Scolipede, in one jump, had leapt over my head and landed in front of me, making a thunderous crash onto the forest floor. A slight tremor and a gust of wind blew away debris and leaves, and caused me to fall flat on my ass.

"What? Not a fan of flirting?" its sultry voice whispered into my ear. In a flash it had leaned in, and was now slowly beginning to lower it body on top of mine. The deliberate and gentle lowering of its weight to not crush me was meant to assure me that it meant no harm, but its speed and size made me panic anyway because of course it did.

"Please don't kill me."

"Why would I kill you?"

"Because of my penis."

"Because of your penis?"

"Yes."

"I'm not mad at you for having an erection if that's what you mean"

"Well that's good."

"I would however like to have sex with you."

"Well that...I don't know about." I looked at the Scolipede. Its immense size and stature were intimidating, but the smooth voice it spoke with and its deliberate tone betrayed its presence as a dominating monster. My ears, and apparently my dick, had fallen for whatever charm the creature was creating, but my eyes and brain were absolutely not yet won over.

"You seem to have reacted to my pheromones. I assumed that's why you came running through the woods alone to find me."

I laughed, nervously. "OH that? That was, well, you know, you see I'm a coward? And I was running through the forest to get to the other side quickly. Huge misunderstanding."

"Even the erection?''

"Even the erection."

The Scolipede slowly lifted its body off of mine, and backed away to let me get to my feet. I dusted my pants off and stood up straight, as did my member. Despite the persistent shocks and perceived peril my dick was stiffer than a fresh pressed suit at a funeral.

"I'm sorry. This time of year I get rather aroused and it seemed like your body was reacting to mine. And I might have mistaken your timidness for arousal."

"Well you know how it is with humans, right?" I laughed.

"I don't."

There was a slightly lengthy pause as the two of us stared at each other. The Scolipede was inquisitive and looked for deeper understanding for something I was positive was so obvious you could tell from the fact humans didn't lay eggs.

"Humans and pokemon don't mate with each other."

Another long pause, this one seeming to stretch way beyond a reasonable amount of time. I began to sweat a little, as the half closed eyes of the Scolipede seemed to be burning a hole in my very soul. I sat there staring into its eyes, searching for meaning in the freakishly long amount of time it took for either of us to break the silence.

"Oh, you're serious?" It finally said.

"Yes! What, do you think I'm lying?"

The Scolipede looked puzzled. "Not that you're lying, but that you think humans don't have sex with pokemon is..."

"They don't."

"They absolutely do."

"Are you sure?"

"I've slept with several."

What can only be described as 'violent throbbing' started up in my pants and I quickly placed my hands over my dick. "Okay maybe this is just a you thing, you ever think about that? That maybe you met a couple of weirdos?"

"No."

"Well please start!"

The Scolipede let out a gentle scoff and turned to walk past me back to the pond. "You'd be cute if you weren't so strange."

"Thanks. Good luck with the...sex."

"You'll know where to find me if you want me."

"Okay. Goodbye." I began my hobbled sprint once more back to the main road. I turned to see the Scolipede trotting beside me. It leaned its neck downward and, placing its head under my butt, lifted me into the air, where I proceeded to slide down to the nape of its neck and rest on it back. "I'm starting to think you genuinely don't know what the word 'goodbye' means"

"If you really didn't want sex, the least I can do is offer you a ride outside the forest, as an apology for attracting you."

I began to respond, but the up and down motions from the trotting was giving my dick its own kind of ride. My cock was pressed against the Scolipede as I clung hard to avoid slipping off. I had never rode a Ponyta but I assumed it was similar, minus the unintended arousal. I sat in silence as my ride to the forest entrance made its way through the foliage.

"Here you go." the Scolipede said. After a short trek, we had made it to the exit leading to Skyarrow Bridge. I slowly slid down the side of the Scolipede and started my pathetic hobble to civilization. "If you change your mind, I'll be at the pond."

"Yeah. Thanks."

I watched as the Scolipede turned and sprinted off into the forest, graceful yet powerful as it jumped over a cliff back to where I had stumbled upon it.

I walked out of the forest into the blinding light of the sun. The darkness from the trees had made me forget it was still midday. As I began walking to the bridge, I realized I had once again regained my proper gait. I was no longer struggling with my incredibly hard dick. I looked down to see in place of a hard rod was a stupidly sized wet stain that covered the entirety of the crotch and inner thighs of my pants. I prayed that I had simply peed, but the pungent odor made it clear I had just cum all over myself riding a pokemon. I sighed heavily and muttered the only thing that I could the entire way to Castelia.

"Why me...."

[lullabyes22-blog]

In FnF, Silco spent a long time with Sevika and Nandi. You've mentioned he used to visit the Equinox Bazaar and haggle with the vendors. Does Silco speak Vekauran? How many languages besides Va-Nox can he speak? Also I'd love to know how you picked out the languages each character uses!

<3

I based all the languages in FnF on RL equivalents (as does League to an extent - Va-Nox is literally described as "German spoken through a mouthful of mashed potatoes" lmao).

In FnF, the most common language spoken in Zaun is the Piltovan dialect.

i.e Standard,

i e. English.

It is the common language of both cities, and used widely for trade overseas as a commercial lingua franca. Zaun, meanwhile, has its own unique patois in League lore, so I built upon that to create a sort of a fluid vernacular that borrows from different languages/dialects/slangs/syntax in FnF. (A little modern netizen jabber, a little Victorian slang, a little Mancunian, a little Roaring 20s etc)

With that in mind, I decided to base Vekauran on Hindi (given it's the home of champions like Akshan, who is pretty Bollywood-inspired in his look). Nandi and Sevika both grew up speaking Vekauran at home. But they don't have the same amount of exposure to the language; Nandi is described as having an accent when she speaks in Standard (I headcanon her as sounding similar to the actress Ashwarya Rai in this interview). After she lost her hearing, she still retained those speech patterns, having been so enmeshed in that community (folks can still have an accent even if they're hearing-impaired because they'll focus on vocal patterns and mouth movements of others around them and can retain the accent as a result).

Sevika, on the other hand, speaks fluent Standard with zero accent, but is deeply rusty at Vekauran, having run in completely different circles. Her grammar's a bit off. She struggles with the pronunciation of certain words. She can curse up a storm, but she can't do formal greetings, honorifics or small talk to save her life. Poor woman understands more than she can speak.

(Very much a third gen immigrant vibe - and it causes her no small amount of distress because her sister was the Priestess, a storyteller, poetess, and a master of the old tongue, so she feels she has to measure up to the legacy.)

Silco grew up speaking Standard, Va-Nox and Ur-Nox. His mother was from a Noxus-colonized settlement in Ionia, so she spoke that tongue at home, and could barely read or write in Standard. Also they lived in an area full of other Va-Nox-speaking families (Vander's mom was also from a nearby region, so the boys literally shared a common language and bonded over that) and it was a pretty insular community.

Silco's father was of old Oshra va'Zaun stock and spoke Ur-Nox (the ancient precursor to Va-Nox, so similar to Middle German in FnF). He was a Riverman by trade, but well-educated as his family had been part of the intelligentsia and the merchant elite before the Cataclysm. He was the one who taught Silco his letters and made sure he knew his history. After Silco entered the orphanage, he was exposed to a wide array of dialects, so picked up a smattering of everything along the way. In Holle Correctional Facility, his warden, Jonah Lascelles, spoke East Demacian (French in FnF) as well as sign language, so Silco, for three years, was immersed in that dialect, learning both at the same time. He was a fast mimic with a near-uncanny ear for accents. After moving Topside for his stint in the Academy, he picked up the Piltovan manner of speaking (and learnt to mask his working-class accent).

By the time he was a grown man, he was a code-switching chameleon who could pass as a businessman in the streets or a thug in the sheets.

However.

He can't, for the life of him, master Vekauran. Those 'R's roll too much. The consonants pop like bubble wrap. The 'D's are weird. He's got no ear for it, and that frustrates the shit out of him because Nandi could get very expressive and animated (especially in bed), and he had no idea what she was saying half the time.

("Is she cursing? Is she sighing sweet nothings? Is she singing me a nursery rhyme? What?")

("Hush," Nandi says, seeing his confusion and peppering his face with kisses. "I'll teach you.")

(It never happens, alas.)

By this stage in FnF, he can hold a basic conversation with Sevika, and his understanding is passable. His speech patterns are hella stiff, his gramma's off, and the pronunciation is your equivalent of the typical Brit with a very, very posh accent ordering a chicken curry at a Leicester Tipu Sultan.

(Sevika thinks he sounds like a complete twat. But it's kinda cute how hard he tries, so she tolerates it. For a while. )

He does have a favorite Vekauran curseword tho.

"Bhenchod" - lit. "Sister-fucker" in Hindi.

First time he heard Sevika use it, he nearly choked on his whiskey.

On the whole, he speaks Standard as a native, in addition to Va-Nox and Ur-Nox (but his diction is nowhere near as sublime as, say, Mel's), fluent East Demacian, passable Vekauran, and very rapidfire sign language. He's conversant in basic Drekkenian (Czech), a bit of old Shuriman (Classical Latin), South Shuriman (Egyptian Arabic/Masri) and knows a handful of Vastayan phrases (it's just eldritch hisses and growls). The core Ionian languages (Sintic IRL) all sound the same to him.

He can't tell the difference between any of them, so he doesn't bother. That's what Ran and Maven (his translators) are for.

Disclaimer: I speak none of the aforementioned languages besides German and sign language, so I apologise if anything's off.

Share your own language headcanons in the comments. I'd love to read them.

<333

[orgasming-caterpillar]

Dancing On Your Heartstrings

Chapter 10 (chapter 1-9 here)

A minor correction about the prev chapters

Raghav pov

An array of emotions flashed through Ranveer's eyes, too quick for Raghav to read. He gulped. The significance of the moment, the unspoken knowledge that this right now will determine both their fates, hung heavy in the air. Still he couldn't help but look at his Adam's apple, its motion and how it sent a subtle ripple of activity throughout his throat muscles. Rein it in, Raghav, he told himself, this is NOT the time. 

Raghav could see he was conflicted. He couldn't blame him. If he was in Ranveer's position, he would also contemplate if he was worthy of divulging his emotional baggage and secrets. 

Whatever they were, it seemed Ranveer had decided he was not worth knowing those. 

Ranveer took a step back, "it's none of your business. Please mere case se utar jaa." He took another step back, "Me ab kabhi dance nahi kar sakta, and there's nothing you can do about it."

He pivoted and started to go back, but Raghav took his hand and stopped him there. He didn't turn back, just letting him hold his hand. Raghav wanted to see his face, but it seemed his back had to do. 

"Mujhe koi idea nahi hai teri life me kya ho raha hai, nor will I pretend that I do, but it seems you're letting it win, whatever it is that has pushed you into this." Raghav saw his back go rigid, his shoulder tense, and he knew he struck a chord. So he continued, "Some dance to release their tension, others dance to relieve their souls and escape their lives. But I've seen you, Ranveer, I see you," Ranveer's hand on his tightened, his grip on him giving him strength to continue, "and I know dancing sustains you. It feeds your soul. It gives you life. You come alive onstage and it's something people cannot tear their gazes off. You are magic to behold, Ranveer Kashyap. It would be a bit selfish of you to deprive the world of that beauty that only you can create, won't it?"

By the end of it, Raghav's voice was hoarse and he was surprised he wasn't on his knees begging him to stay. It certainly felt like it, like he just bared himself open and put himself on platter for Ranveer, his to stitch or ravage further. 

After an eternity of silence, Ranveer faced him. What he saw on his face made his knees buckle in relief, made him release the breath he didn't know he was holding. Ranveer's eyes were wide, lined with silver. There was devastation written plain on his face, as if he was the victim of a Shakespearean tragedy. 

He cleared his throat, cleared twice, "That's a lot of pretty words."

Raghav pulled his lips into a resemblance of smirk, even though on the inside he was damn near weeping, "What else did you expect to come out of this pretty mouth?"

Ranveer's eyes zeroed on the said mouth, and it made Raghav's heart stop. He couldn't move a muscle, couldn't do anything but watch him look at his lips. What is happening here? He wondered faintly. What in God's name is happening here? 

His already dark eyes seemed darker, and the intense look of his eyes focused on his lips made Raghav bite them, feeling the look as if a burning finger stroked him there. 

The movement jarring him out of his thoughts, Ranveer's eyes snapped to his, an odd look of determination and something else in them. Raghav jumped when he felt Ranveer's hand squeeze his. He'd forgotten they were still holding hands. 

Ranveer pov 

Pull yourself together, Ranveer scolded himself. Dear Lord, what was he doing, shamelessly staring at Raghav's lips like that? He felt goosebumps rising on his arm. 

Raghav had gone through all that to get him back to dancing. And Ranveer repaid that by being a creep who didn't know where to put his eyes on. Sure, Raghav's lips were unlike any other he'd ever seen. They were the softest hue of pink, plush as the petals of a carnation. And then he was pulling the bottom lip between his teeth and oh lord. 

Ranveer looked at him, determined to not let his eyes lose their way this time. What was he doing? Feeling ashamed of his own actions, he asked the first thing that came to his mind, "Where's the music?"

Raghav smiled, and the sparkle of joy in his eyes was almost enough to keep Ranveer's gaze from flickering back to his lips. Almost. 

What brought him back to his senses was when the smile was replaced with a scowl. Whatever mysterious potion had been swirling in the air around them, it was gone now. He could sense the tension trickle back in. 

"What do you mean where's the music? First you'll tell me why you ever even thought of quitting dancing."

The question he had dreaded the most was back, but he knew he couldn't avoid it any longer. "Raghav, I…"

"I'm listening," he replied.

"Listen. I know maine tujhe ignore kiya, I'm sorry. Maine bohot stupid decisions bhi liye recently, I'm sorry for that too." Ranveer mentally winced. This was just turning into him apologising for what a spectacular ass he had been, and he hadn't even realised until now. "I'll tell you everything, pakka. Just… abhi nahi."

Raghav weighed the options. Even through his fifteen layers of judgement, Ranveer saw where the favour was falling. "Okay," he said, and relief flooded through Ranveer. "But just know, I'll be haunting you for every waking moment until you tell me."

That was… okay. That was alright. Ranveer had survived worse. "So… Where's the music?"

The smile was back on his face, that unguarded joy back on those damned lips of his. "Right here."

[americasass81]

Not Your Kinda Love

Warnings 18+ for the following:- Implied Stalking, Threatening Behavior, Non-consensual Sex, Dubious Consent, Implied Smut {m/f, oral f receiving), Implied Use of Sex Toys, Implied DBSM Dynamic, Use of Pet Names. Seriously do not read if any of this upsets you, the warnings are there for a reason. Feedback is welcomed and any mistakes are my own.

By proceeding you are acknowledging that you are over 18 and are consenting to the content below the cut.

Synopsis:- It might not have been your kinda love, but perhaps in the end it would be just what both of you needed.

Author’s Note 1:- Written for @caplanbuckybarnes Titles For Caplan Writing Challenge.  Thank you for hosting this fun challenge Caplan.  I really enjoyed creating this piece.

Author’s Note 2:- As usual all images have been found through google search.

Pairing:- dark!Loki Laufeyson X Female Reader

Total word count:- 4,134

Turning over in bed and reaching for the body beside you, you couldn't believe you were here ... again.  What was it about him that kept drawing you back night after night, heartache after heartache?  You knew he was never going to change given who he was.  Hell, he had all but proven as much that first night you had ended up beneath the sheets together.  And yet the more time you spent with him, letting him do the things he did, the more your heart still held out hope.  Still had room for the possibility that if you continued to give enough of yourself, he would hold you the way you now held him as your mind wandered back to when and how this fucked up situation first began.

Exactly three months previously and thank god the party was winding down.  Of course you loved being Tony Stark's personal secretary and knew any number of women that would kill for the job you now held and the opportunities it presented, but damn that man if he didn't take the 'personal' part of your job title far beyond the scope of what you had signed up for.  Calls at all hours of the day and night for stupid little things whenever a thought popped into his head as if he didn't have an array of virtual assistants capable of recording a quick email.  Work AND home things that Pepper insisted were not all your responsibility, which Tony continued to ignore to both her annoyance and yours.  And of course, there was the organizing of all those Stark parties.

Dressed up to the nines for every holiday event along with any other frivolous occasion the master of ceremonies decided was worth celebrating.  And you just had to be in attendance.  After all, not only were you a highly valued member of staff, but as Tony liked to remind you every chance he got, someone as wonderful as you deserved to have men and women falling over themselves to wine and dine you as they tried to prove themselves worthy of claiming your heart and where better to meet such individuals.  As if he'd actually stop pestering you long enough to give these potential suitors the opportunity to even talk to you.

No, picking up your latest drink from the bar now and taking a sip while looking at your watch, you promised yourself once the liquid ran out you were heading home.  Sure some of the women here had seemed interesting and hell having spent quite a bit of time in Stephen Strange's company you could certainly see the appeal where he was concerned.  But something wasn't right.  Maybe all your years working now as Tony's assistant had heightened your sense for trouble but you just couldn't get comfortable.  Then again maybe it was the trouble that followed the Avengers through no fault of their own that had you so on edge or maybe it was the eyes you felt tracking you all night yet never seemed to be there when you tried to zero in on them.

Yes, it was most definitely them you should have paid more attention to.

Raising your glass to your lips again to take another sip and just as you and the liquid kissed, all hell broke loose ... in a manner.  Shutting off the music and taking command of the sound system, Tony Stark’s trusted A.I. F.R.I.D.A.Y. clearly informed all those present that a minor emergency had occurred in the compound that required part of it to be locked down.  This meant of course that everyone, yourself included, was now expected to take up residence in an available room in the accommodation wing since all the main exits had been sealed.

So as you now downed the rest of your drink before heading off to find a bed for the night, you couldn't help but sigh at this inevitable turn of events while simultaneously grumbling at your lack of a family and the easy out that came with it.  After all, those people with kids had it all you now thought as you calmly passed some worried party goers making their way along the corridors or stopping for directions despite the fact that people were only permitted to head in one direction.  No, those lucky sods had shown up, enjoyed a few hours break and then headed back home at a reasonable hour under the guise of having been away from their little ones for far too long.  Hell it was even rumored on many occasions that Tony forked out for the childcare costs of those that attended these little shindigs.  Talk about having your cake, frosting and getting to eat it you thought.

Setting this aggravation aside and finally reaching the accommodation wing, you now let go of these jealous musings long enough however to claim the first open door you came across, stepped inside and closed it behind you before you realized none of it really mattered where you were concerned.  Here or at home, being the first or the last to leave, you worked too hard and too long to ever land a partner willing to slot themselves into your lifestyle and even if you did, Tony would probably still find some stupid reason to have you hanging around.

No, this was the job you ended up doing and there was nothing you could do about it other than quit … and even that hadn’t worked.

Sighing deeply now as you locked the door and began removing your dress and heels, the fabric pooling at your feet made you wish your resolve had been stronger.  So much stronger.  After all, was this not the reward the great Tony Stark had bestowed upon you the last time you had typed up your resignation letter and left it on his desk.  That and of course a fabulous week at a top of the range spa and the promise that he would also scale back his unreasonable demands on your personal time.

Yeah like that had materialized.  Two days back at work and all was as it was before.  He just couldn't manage without you it seemed.

Walking towards the bed now and slipping under the covers feeling totally exhausted, you were just about to close your eyes and leave Tony Stark and the rest of the compound to do whatever it was they were doing when a noise alerted you that sleep was not your destination just yet.  Sitting up in bed mindful now of all that might be going on within this private space, you thought about calling out to F.R.I.D.A.Y. but then thought better of it.  After all, the eyes you thought were on you all night never materialized and for all you knew F.R.I.D.A.Y. was busy elsewhere dealing with whatever problem had landed you and the other guests in your current locations to begin with.

Then again, there was also the real possibility that it was simply the night's drinks playing tricks on your mind.  After all, now that you thought about it, you couldn't accurately remember how many you had actually consumed and thanks to you organizing this blessed event, it had been one long week that saw you burning the candle at both ends and now found you beyond exhausted.

No, listening intently now a bit longer and hearing nothing, you reassured yourself the situation had simply heightened your senses while your imagination flew off to the land of make believe.  You were safe and everything was fine.  Holding onto this thought then, laying down on the bed again and closing your eyes to the world around you, sleep came to embrace you once more before it was cruelly snatched away again however ... you had most definitely heard something this time.  You were sure of it.

Cursing yourself now that you had not worn anything under your dress, but smart enough to know that you couldn't fight off a possible intruder with a massive sheet wrapped around your body, you climbed out of bed and called out for F.R.I.D.A.Y. as loud as you were willing to under the circumstances, but wasn't surprised when no answer was received.  It seemed you were on your own.  Listening out once more now but again hearing nothing, you slowly opened the bedroom door next and looking around the living area was a bit relieved at least to see that you seemed to be alone.

Now you just had to prove it.

Walking quietly over the threshold then from one room into the other you didn't need the missing dress or the altered lock on the main door however to tell you that something wasn't right.  You felt it in the chill surrounding you that had nothing whatsoever to do with your thoroughly naked form.  No, you were most definitely not alone.

Placing one foot carefully now in front of the other while picking up a heavy glass ashtray from the nearest side table you passed, it still surprised you when you made it to the other side of the room without incident.  Reaching up to examine the locking mechanism then and confirming that it was indeed open now, your hand moving down to catch the handle and pull the door open raised a whole different set of questions however as the door held firm.

Placing the ashtray on the nearest surface now and using both hands this time to pull the door with as much strength as you possessed, you finally had to admit defeat and accept that perhaps exhaustion had at last caught up with you and had now reached the level of paranoia however.  For certain facts proved your theory wrong.  The door for example, despite your best efforts, remained closed.  The room, both of them in fact, remained to the naked eye completely devoid of humans except for yourself.  And there was definitely no other sound other than that of your racing heart.  Even if there were other minor inconsistencies.

Okay so your dress no longer occupied a circle of the floor by your shoes, but walking back to the bedroom then, its shimmering fabric resting now across the back of the couch brought your feet to a total and shocking stop.  Had you put it there?  Reaching out to touch it, it didn't align with any memory you had, but then again you were the only one here.  Perhaps your memory was the altered factor in this situation.  It's not like this hadn't happened before where you and copious amounts of alcohol were concerned.  So picking up the dress and this time taking it back to the bedroom with you, you now closed and locked this door too and placed the garment on the only chair in the room before telling yourself this whole experience was all in your head.  Now if only you could convince your eyes of that exact same fact.  For their experience told a totally different story.

Turning now to face the bed, its soft sheets and embracing comfort should have been waiting to welcome you back once more, but it seemed you weren't truly alone after all.  Stretched out before you now, every bit as naked as yourself, Loki, the god of mischief, was unashamedly ogling you like a predatory animal ready to pounce and devour you whole.  And it wasn't a pleasant thought.

But it wasn't your only thought either.

Running back to the door now and finding it every bit as stuck as the main door you had just assured yourself was perfectly fine, you now screamed out for F.R.I.D.A.Y. but quickly realized you were on your own when a chuckle behind you reached your ears and two strong hands rested now upon your trembling shoulders.  You were cut off from the outside world it seemed.

Turning back around to face your captor now, for that's exactly what he was, you knew you stood no chance of fighting him off however and since running was clearly out of the question, it seemed logic, reason and conversation was now your only avenue to head off whatever sick and twisted scheme Thor's diabolical brother had concocted with you at its center.  So removing his hands from your shoulders then and walking towards the foot of the bed, you sat down and let out another deep and exhausted sigh before finally speaking the words that forced you to acknowledge his very real presence.  "Loki, what the hell are you doing in my room naked and why am I unable to leave?"

Moving towards you now but stopping abruptly however when you stared him down with an exasperated expression, he held up his hands in surrender and walked instead towards the chair that now held your dress.  Picking it up then and dumping it on the floor as you had earlier in the night, he then sat down in a manner that left his whole being on display for anyone to witness.  Which explained why your eyes remained laser focused on his face instead.  You wanted answers and you were going to get them.  So, with a calm breath, you asked once more what he was up to and waited for his answer.  One you absolutely did not like.

"Well pet," he started, as his fingers skimmed lazily along his thigh, "we're on lockdown remember.  I needed a bed, you're all alone, so I didn't think you'd mind sharing.  After all, that bed is big enough for two and I promise not to bite,” he finished with a devilish look that told you all you needed to know.

‘Unless you ask me to,’ your mind now heard, though those particular words never actually left his lips.  They didn't need to.  Loki was a trickster after all.  Hell he was THE trickster.  If a bed was all he wanted there had to be a vacant one somewhere in this whole compound and his answer only covered why he was here in your room.  There was still the question of why you couldn't leave, not to mention why his naked form was occupying your bed when the couch in the living room would surely do him just fine.  No, he was definitely up to something and you were determined to find out what that was despite your fear associated with any answer he provided.  So you soldiered on and reminded him again of the second part of your question.  And of course he had an answer for that too.

"Come on pet, we do not know what this emergency is or what terrible beast my dimwitted brother and his band of buffoons may have tempted into this building," he stated now as he rose from his seat and walked towards you before continuing, "no, my conscience could not allow any harm to come to one such as you.  Best to make sure you are utterly protected," he now finished as he stood before you, reached out his hand to take hold of your chin and run his fingers along your cheek as you imagined they had on his thigh just moments ago.

Leaning into his touch now as if he was somehow working his magic on you, you may very well have fallen for his charms if the memory of the party had not suddenly presented itself front and center in your mind however.  The eyes you swore were following you all night but could never find ... "it was you," you suddenly blurted out as you broke free from his hand and now scurried up along the bed putting as much distance as possible between the two of you in the process.  "You were watching me all night.  You planned this?" and though these revelations all came out as a question, you knew.  Even without a word passing his lying lips, the truth could not be denied.

This was all his doing somehow.

Standing before you now as a wicked smirk graced his features, you didn't need his following actions to know that you were screwed.  If you were being honest with yourself, you knew it the minute the main door of the apartment wouldn't open.  You knew it when you found him lying on your bed.  You were what he wanted, but he wasn't about to have his way.  Getting ready to move from the bed and at least attempt to fight him off this time, it seemed he still had the upper hand however as magic tendrils coiled around your arms and held you firmly to the bed frame before he spoke again.

"Now pet before you think about doing something stupid, allow me to paint you a picture so you are fully informed of all that your future actions will entail," and with that a series of images flashed along the wall off to your right in a show of horror that would keep you awake for many nights to come.  Walking from room to room, muttering words you knew you'd never understand over each peaceful party goer he came across, you didn't need his explanation to know their fate now lay in your hands.

But then again Loki wouldn't be Loki if he didn't love to talk, so he stuck the knife in and told you anyway.  Told you that if you should refuse him now or any time here after, one, more or perhaps all of those assembled before you would meet a horrible and untimely death.  Tell his bumbling brother, your boss or anyone remotely associated with the Avengers, law enforcement or earth's governments and again, you knew the consequences.  Try to warn any of these innocent people in any way and it wouldn't end with their lives.  Their families?  Their friends?  Hell tragedies could so easily befall entire neighborhoods these days without anyone ever knowing why.

Best to do as you were told it seemed.  But could you really do that?  Could you really just give in and give this madman what he wanted?

Lingering on this question while gazing once more now as the images wound down to end on one of Shona, a temp you knew that worked for Natasha Romanoff, your blood ran cold and a tear escaped your eyes as the reality of your predicament truly settled in your heart.  He really had left you with no way out.  These people were innocent after all.  They could not be harmed because of you.  And it was because of you you suddenly realized as a totally different image all your own crystallized into being before your very eyes and superseded all of those that Loki had created.

Falling farther into memory's flow now of a night before you had started working for Tony Stark, your life had almost been cut short by a drunk on a motorcycle but for the intervention of a mysterious stranger clad in green and gold armor.  Pulling you out of harm's way and making sure that not a single hair was out of place, he had offered to see you home safely … and how had you shown your appreciation?  You'd walked away and never thought of him again.  You'd never spoken to him, never danced with him whenever your paths crossed at any event both of you attended.  Hell you hadn't even stood up for him and protested that he wasn't himself when the attack on New York had marked him as public enemy number one.

No, you had simply gone on with your life like nothing had happened and forgotten all about him as everyone else had his entire life.  And now you wondered why he was seeking retribution.

Had you only just said thank you or accepted one of his many dance offers.  Had you badgered Thor into realizing just how far Loki had strayed from the boy he had played with as a child.  But no, you had treated him worse than dirt and now your fate was sealed.  Yours and countless others.  So who was the real monster here then?  The god who had been cast aside for doing something any decent person would have done or you, who may now be responsible for many, many deaths as a result of thinking only of yourself?

Pulling against your bindings again as you still refused to accept defeat, Loki laying down beside you and muttering some nonsense as a redhead began writhing on the wall before you suddenly forced the reality of your new situation upon you however in a way his words never really could.  You were all at his mercy.  Sitting back on the bed then and asking him to stop, you exhaled a sigh of relief at his immediate compliance ... at least until he made his true intentions known.

Situating himself between your legs as his fingers and lips now mapped out every mound and hollow of your glorious body, his tongue and shaft reaching places no one ever had before left you completely lost as to what was so wrong with what was going on.  And that was long before the orgasms started.  The orgasms that shook your body, stole your breath and made you realize your life as you knew it would never be the same.  For there was no backing out of this arrangement even if Loki reversed whatever spell he had placed upon the party guests.  You couldn't give this up.

Sure the god of mischief had forced himself upon you by threatening innocent people, but damn him if he didn't make it worth your while.  Positions and toys you never knew of.  Pleasure that bordered on pain.  A tongue ... oh a tongue that could do so much more than spew filthy words that turned you on and disgusted you in equal measure.  And how could you even forget what his godly equipment was capable of.  A human phallus could never compete with his impressive erections, though many had tried.  No, as each night after your initial encounter became a new adventure in what depraved sex act your body could tolerate, even him disappearing in the morning without so much as a kiss on the forehead or a kind word could not it seemed protect your all too human heart.

You had started falling in love with him to the point where very little else mattered.  Work for example now became nothing more than a means of wasting away the day until night fell and your dark prince appeared once more to take you apart as you screamed his name for all the nine realms to hear.  Sure you still worked just as diligently and no one close to you ever suspected what night time brought your way, but beneath the sheets, in Loki's arms, someone else it seemed had taken your place.

Someone who loved to be dominated.  Who loved to be spanked, marked and pushed to new heights of pleasure over and over and over again at the whims of her dark lover.  Who loved ice it seemed far more than heat.  And who, no matter how many mornings her god pushed her arms aside and reminded her she was nothing more than a warm place to stick his cock, was only all too happy to provide whatever small comfort his body was willing to accept when he finally agreed her frail human form couldn't handle any more.

Which brought you back full circle now to him sleeping in your arms while your left leg rested across those muscular thighs that proved every bit as skillful at getting you off as the impressive length currently recovering from yet another night of pounding your pussy apart.  Pulling your body closer to his then as your mind finally accepted what you allowed him to do to you, you now prepared to join him in sleep as your dreams replayed him fucking you to pieces and then putting you back together into this new being that longed to have him acknowledge your growing feelings for him while also admitting that perhaps he too had fallen victim to love's influence.

Admitting that such a thing was most likely doomed to failure given who he was, his arm unconsciously moving up to encircle your waist brought a glimmer of hope you desperately clung to however when his muttered confession told you that his spell had been removed weeks ago.  Bolstered by this new information, the path ahead looked very different now however as your bodies rested together until your carnal desires called out to each other once more and this new dance took both of you to higher plains of euphoria all over again.

[writing-in-sin]

BAKUGOU KATSUKI FANFIC IDEA: SUPERHERO

In my previous post (the "Wherever the Chaos is" part of the fic ideas), I had the idea for Kacchan being a solo hero who leaves the whole system of rankings and agencies to be a superhero similar to what we usually see in comics after Izuku rejected him

The title of the fic is inspired by amazing fanarts that were in turn inspired by the song "Let me be your superhero" by Smash into Pieces

It'd be a Kacchan centric fic where he rises to not just be a hero but a superhero. I hc that he's build up other skills in different fields during the suit project so I wanna see that while he's far more willing to work together and help others, he is 1st and foremost, aiming to be the Symbol of Victory and those skills are gonna help him achieve that

Not only he's gonna trailblaze on through to shaping and maintaining a new era of peace but he's gonna drag everybody else along with him whether they want to or not

Its win to save for him after all

He's not here to make nice or for people to like him in rankings and all other bullshit. He's gonna be a superhero that'll win against a world and system that could give birth to villains. To help maintain an era and all the generations to come into retaining their empathy and humanity even when the uglier side of society threatens to break that

He'll be the Star of Victory in both times of peace and strife even after he's long gone, a reminder that there'll be no pyrrhic victories as people struggle and live thru life

Anyways!

Things I'd like to see for this au of mine:

- a secret hideout based on the mountains, named 'Ground Zero'

- different array of skills, he's grown to be a Jack of All Trades in the 8 years since the War. Some of the skills he's learned and perfected:

• Polyglot: Japanese, English (New York accent), Chinese, German, French, Korean, Spanish and Italian

• Medical science & paramedicine: he wants to know everything there is to know about his heart and body so that he can be a hero for as long as he can. Since he's also learned how important medicine is in helping others (as Edgeshot had done for him), he's learned to be a paramedic over the years as well

• Science & Engineering: the suit mostly but also because he enjoys getting to design and create his own gear

• Architecture: I'd love the idea that Kacchan builds his own hideout and house

- his struggle and triumph over his heart problems that he got when Shigaraki killed him

- after working together for 8 years on the suit, he's become close friends with Melissa. He wont admit it, but outside of his usual group of friends back in Japan, he grudgingly admits that Melissa is one of his best friends

- as I hc that Kacchan is both demisexual and demiromantic, he has zero interest in dating unless its with the person he's in love with

- has a (seemingly) unrequited love for Izuku

- continues to be in a band with Jirou, Momo, Kaminari and Tokoyami so they get together pretty often when they're not out being heroes. Its become a tradition for them to perform every year during the UA festival

- eventually, he and Izuku will be partners (both in private and professionally) but it'll take awhile. Still not sure on how it'll happen yet though

- also would like the possibility of Kacchan being one of the founders for the League of Heroes (similar to the Justice League or the Avengers)

------------

So....yeah, thats the gist of what I'd like to write one day

Hopefully 😅

Thanks for reading this far!

[polliantics]

Walmart's Union Busting History

Walmart has a long and well-documented history of aggressively resisting unionization efforts. This resistance spans decades and includes a wide array of strategies—some legal, others ethically questionable or outright illegal under U.S. labor law. Below is a comprehensive overview of Walmart’s union-busting history:

🏢 Walmart’s Anti-Union Stance: Origins and Philosophy

Founder’s Vision: Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, believed unions were unnecessary if a company treated its employees well. Walmart adopted a paternalistic corporate culture with a strong emphasis on maintaining direct relationships between management and workers, bypassing unions entirely.

Anti-Union Manual: Walmart has long maintained an internal anti-union playbook for managers, known as the “Manager’s Toolbox,” which provides scripts and guidance on how to detect and respond to union activity.

📜 Key Moments and Tactics in Walmart’s Union-Busting History

1970s–1980s: Early Union Encounters

Early attempts by unions to organize Walmart stores, especially in the South and Midwest, were met with fierce resistance.

Walmart began developing a reputation for shutting down union efforts quickly and decisively, even before they gained traction.

1990s: Escalation of Sophisticated Tactics

Walmart created a labor relations team at its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to monitor union activity and coordinate responses.

The company deployed a 24-hour hotline for store managers to report any signs of unionization.

Union avoidance specialists were dispatched to stores at the first sign of organizing activity.

2000: Meatcutters Union Victory in Texas

Historic union win: In 2000, 11 meat department workers at a Walmart Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)—the first successful union vote at a U.S. Walmart.

Walmart’s response: The company responded by eliminating meatcutting departments from over 180 stores, switching to prepackaged meat—a move widely seen as retaliatory.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed complaints, but Walmart claimed the change was a business decision.

2004: Walmart Closes Canadian Store After Unionization

In Jonquière, Quebec, Walmart workers successfully unionized with UFCW Canada.

Before bargaining could begin, Walmart shut down the entire store, citing unprofitability.

Canada’s Supreme Court later upheld Walmart’s right to close the store, though the case sparked outrage and drew international attention to the company’s union-busting tactics.

2005–2008: Surveillance and Retaliation Allegations

Reports emerged of Walmart using sophisticated surveillance on employees, including monitoring phone calls, emails, and organizing activity.

Former Walmart workers and union organizers alleged retaliation for union sympathies, including firings, reduced hours, and denied promotions.

Walmart routinely held mandatory “captive audience” meetings where management warned of job losses and store closures if workers unionized—legal under U.S. labor law but widely criticized.

2011–2013: Rise and Suppression of OUR Walmart

OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart): A worker-led group supported by UFCW, advocating for higher wages, better scheduling, and labor rights.

Organized walkouts and “Black Friday” protests across the country.

Walmart retaliated by firing or disciplining dozens of worker-activists. In 2016, the NLRB ruled that Walmart violated labor laws in these cases.

2014–Present: Ongoing Resistance and PR Strategy

Walmart shifted tactics to emphasize corporate social responsibility and internal promotions, while still maintaining a zero-tolerance policy toward union activity.

Introduced employee satisfaction apps and programs designed to detect unrest early.

Continues to employ anti-union consultants and attorneys.

⚖️ Legal and Ethical Concerns

NLRB Violations: Walmart has been charged numerous times with violating the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), including unlawful surveillance, retaliation, and coercion.

The NLRB has ordered reinstatement and back pay in some cases, but penalties are minimal compared to Walmart’s size and profits.

Walmart denies wrongdoing, asserting that it respects employee rights and prefers a direct relationship with associates.

🌍 International Labor Relations

Outside the U.S., Walmart has also faced unionization battles:

China: Chinese law mandates unions in large companies. Walmart has attempted to control union leadership, leading to criticism and strikes.

Mexico and Latin America: Allegations of bribery and union suppression have surfaced, alongside broader corruption investigations.

📚 Notable Sources and Documentation

Books:

The Walmart Effect by Charles Fishman

How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World) by Bill Quinn

News Outlets: NYT, Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and labor-focused outlets like Labor Notes and In These Times.

NLRB records: Public documentation of labor disputes and legal rulings.

Documentaries: Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005) offers an overview of labor issues.

🧠 Conclusion

Walmart’s union-busting history is marked by a persistent, multifaceted campaign against worker organizing. From closing stores and departments to firing outspoken employees and leveraging legal loopholes, the company has become a case study in corporate resistance to organized labor. Despite public criticism and repeated NLRB violations, its anti-union stance remains largely intact—highlighting the structural weaknesses in U.S. labor law and enforcement.

[zandyland]

Say, for the sake of argument, you want to make a bad programming language. Why would you do this?

Well, for instance, you might get your hands on a book of scripts to generate ephemera for celestial events, only to find out it was written for Microsoft QuickBasic for Macintosh System 7. You quickly discover that this particular flavor of BASIC has no modern interpreter, and the best you can do is an emulator for System 7 where you have to mount 8 virtual floppy disks into your virtual system.

You could simply port all the scripts to another BASIC, but at that point you might as well just port them to another langauge entirely, a modern language.

Except QuickBasic had some funky data types. And the scripts assume a 16-bit integer, taking advantage of the foibles of bitfutzery before converting numbers into decimal format. BASIC is very particular -- as many old languages are -- about whitespace.

In addition to all this, BASIC programs are not structured as modern programs. It's structured to be written in ed, one line at a time, typing in a numbered index followed by the command. There are no scopes. There are no lifetimes. It's just a loose collection of lines that are hopefully in a logical order.

So sure, I could port all these programs. But I'm sure to make mistakes.

Wouldn't it just be easier, some basal part of my brain says, to write your own language that some some modern ameneties, that you compile for your own laptop, that kind of acts like BASIC? A language where you just have to translate particular grammar, and not the whole structure of the program?

Of course it's not easier. But I'm already too far in to quit now.

Memory

Who doesn't love manual memory layout?

In QuickBasic, memory is "kind of" manual. The DEFINT and DEFDBL keywords let you magically instantiate types based on their first letter. I don't know how you deallocate things, because all the scripts in this book finish quickly and don't hang around to leak a lot.

In QuickBasic, this looks like

I guess that the second statement just overrides the first.

There is no stack in a BASIC program, so there will be no stack in my language. Instead you just give names to locations.

creates a symbol named age and makes it refer to 0x1F. The pointer operator should be obvious, and the walrus means we're defining a symbol (to be replaced like a macro), not doing a value assignment during the execution of the program. Now we can assign a value.

Atoms infer types. age knows it's an int.

You cannot assign a new type to an atom.

However, you can cast between types by creating two atoms at the same address, typed differently.

The language does not convert these, it simply interprets the bits as the type demands.

Larger types

Not all types are a single word. Therefore, you can use the range operator .. to refer to a range of addresses.

Note that strings are stored with an extra byte for its length, instead of null-terminating it. Assignment of a string that is too long will result in a compilation error.

Next and Auto

There are also two keywords to make the layout of memory easier. The first is :next which will place the span in the next available contiguous location that is large enough to hold the size required. The second is :auto. For all :auto instances, the compiler will collect all these and attempt to place them in an intelligent free location. :auto prefers to align large structs with 64-word blocks, and fills in smaller blocks near other variables that are used in the same code blocks.

String Allocation

Strings come with a macro to help automatically build out the space required:

This is equivalent to:

That is, a string with capacity 5, a current size of 0, and zeroes (null char) in all spots. This helps avoid memory reuse attacks. ZBASIC is not a secure language, but this is still good practice.

There is also another macro that is similar to a "string literal".

Verbose and annoying! Just like BASIC.

Array Allocation

Likewise, arrays have a similar macro:

Which expands in a similar way as strings, with a capacity word and size word. The difference here is that the type given may change the actual size of the allocation. Giving a type that is larger than a single word will result in a larger array. For instance, f64 takes up two words some systems, so array::empty!(5, f64) will allocate 10 words in that case (5 * 2). Larger structs will likewise take up even more space. Again, all this memory will be zeroed out.

Allocation order

As an overview, this is the order that memory is assigned during compilation:

Manual Locations -> Next -> Auto

Manual locations are disqualified from eligibility for the Next and Auto phases, so a manual location will never accidentally reference any data allocated through :next or :auto.

Here is an example:

This produces the initial layout:

Which, after the code is run, results in the memory values:

Note that types are not preserved at runtime. They are displayed in the table as they are for convenience. When you use commands like "print" that operate differently on different types, they will be replaced with one of several instructions that interpret that memory as the type it was at compile-time.

Truly awful, isn't it?

[webthreecorp]

🌟 Understanding Arrays: A Beginner’s Deep Dive! 🌟

Hey Tumblr friends 👋

Today I want to break down something super important if you're getting into coding: Arrays. (Yes, those weird-looking brackets you've probably seen in code snippets? Let’s talk about them.)

So... What Exactly Is an Array? 🤔

Imagine you have a bunch of favorite songs you want to save. Instead of creating a new playlist for each song (chaotic!), you put them all into one single playlist.

That playlist? That’s what an Array is in programming! 🎶✨

An array is basically a container where you can store multiple values together under a single name.

Instead of doing this:

You can just do:

Why Are Arrays Useful? 🌈

✅ You can group related data together. ✅ You can loop through them easily. ✅ You can dynamically access or update data. ✅ You keep your code clean and organized. (No messy variables 👀)

How Do You Create an Array? ✨

Here's a simple array:

Or create an empty array first (you must specify size in C++):

Note: C++ arrays have a fixed size once declared!

How Do You Access Items in an Array? 🔎

Arrays are zero-indexed. That means the first element is at position 0.

Example:

Changing Stuff in an Array 🛠️

You can update an item like this:

Looping Through an Array 🔄

Instead of writing:

Use a loop:

Or a range-based for loop (cleaner!):

Some Cool Things You Can Do With Arrays 🚀

In C++ you don't have built-in methods like push, pop, etc. for raw arrays, but you can use vectors (dynamic arrays)! Example with vector:

Quick Tip: Arrays Can Store Anything 🤯

You can store numbers, booleans, objects (structures/classes), and even arrays inside arrays (multidimensional arrays).

Example:

Real-World Example 🌍

A To-Do list:

Output:

👏 See how clean and readable that is compared to hardcoding every single task?

🌟 Final Thoughts

Arrays are the foundation of so much you'll do in coding — from simple projects to complex apps. Master them early, and you'll thank yourself later!

🌱 Start practicing:

Make a list of your favorite movies

Your favorite foods

Songs you love

...all in an array!

If you liked this C++ explainer, let’s connect! 💬✨ Happy coding, coder fam! 💻🌈

[anthem-for-orion]

Trazyn the Infinite, Overlord of Solemnace, Chief Archaeovist of the Nihilakh Dynasty, et cetera et cetera, awoke suspended mid-air, upside down, and, by his immediate reckoning, quite far from Solemnace, Nihilakh space, or anywhere he was supposed to be at all.

Being an archaeologist of tremendous prestige, skill, and unchecked authority, he was no stranger to trespassing. What disturbed him was that his progressively deeper scans of his own memory engrams produced no useful information on where he was or how he got here. His most recent timestamped memories ended abruptly mid-sentence - he had been aboard the *Aeonlight*, a heavy cruiser he occasionally commissioned to ferry larger acquisitions, discussing how to organize the cargo with his chief curator, Sannet. The conversation had been light, just filling the dusty silence as the overlord and  his cryptek had walked among the newly-obtained relics.

The two had been alone among the jumbled mess of statuary taken from Nefrka-wy, a deserted fringeworld of some unnoteworthy Sautekh vassal dynasty. The planet had been overrun by first T'au, then Tyranids, and finally Orks, which all combined had made the excavation a rather rushed affair. Artifacts had been practically thrown into the *Aeonlight* as fast as the translocation arrays could take them, which generated a disorganized heap of history that the Nihilakh crew now had to sort through. With Nefrka-wy now safely burning far off in their rear auspices, Trazyn had come down to the cargo hold to begin untangling his new, delicious little puzzle.

In hindsight, perhaps he had been a bit too enamoured with it all. His engram reads, after five separate denoising passes, finally returned something useful. In the very last frame of his vision, just above and to the left of his curator's shoulderplate, there floated an orange-tinged sigil of carefully-inscribed cryptomantic power.

A cryptek's hex.

Trazyn cursed.

Two options presented themselves. Either one of his own crypteks aboard had decided to go AWOL (unlikely - he considered himself a visionary for how generously he paid his scholars specifically to avoid potential treachery), or they had picked up a hostile stowaway at some point (unfortunately far more likely, given the hectic getaway, but the thought of him being captured due to completely avoidable carelessness was too embarrassing for Trazyn to seriously consider it). In place of thinking about either discomfort, he decided to focus on freeing himself instead.

It turned out to be an extremely sufficient distraction, as whoever had designed his prison must have been an intensely clever sort. It was akin to a repulsor field, like those which kept the Lokhust subtype of Destroyers aloft. But, instead of directing the repulsion along one axis, this field was omnidirectional, creating a zone of perfect zero gravity at the center of which Trazyn was now uselessly writhing in an undignified attempt to leave the area. Try as he might, and oh did he try, his center of mass remained stubbornly in one spot.

He cursed again. Of all the fields of study to neglect, he had never expected zero-G movement mechanics to be the end of him.

"Having fun over there?"

Trazyn froze. Dead gods above and below, he knew that voice.

Slowly (for that was as fast as he could move at the moment), Trazyn rotated to get a look at his captor.

Orikan the Diviner stood at the shimmering edge of the repulsor field with pure, unrestrained glee flickering through his nodal array. He was leaning on a support pillar with crossed arms and a casual grace that made Trazyn want to strangle him, lack of lungs be damned.

*Focus.* Trazyn's goal was to escape intact, not get in another fistfight with his rival. He took in his surroundings - not that there was much to take in. The chamber was a large, smooth blackstone cube with hardly a seam visible. Four support pillars stood, one at each corner surrounding Trazyn in the room's center, too far apart for him to have any chance of grabbing one and pulling himself through space. Orikan's tail twitched, and Trazyn considered how helpful having such a long, prehensile appendage would be in his current situation. Then, he noticed that the tip of the elongated vertebral column was tinged with indigo light. It whipped through the air on an unceasing circuit, tracing the classic calligraphic lines of cryptek hexwork into the air.

Purple. Dimensionalism. Trazyn was familiar enough with his own crypteks' work in the subject. Orikan was manually maintaining the repulsor field, or at least actively controlling it. And that meant Trazyn now had a means of changing his fate. All he had to do was get the Diviner's control to slip.

"This is an act of war, Diviner," Trazyn hissed. "The capture of a Nihilakh Overlord -"

"- A thief, caught mid-heist," Orikan corrected him, "stealing from a Sautekh vassal. If you want to play the honor card, then by all means. I would love to watch you try to explain this one away to your peers."

Trazyn twisted awkwardly in space as he tried to keep eye contact with the cryptek. "They weren't using it anyway. The whole planet had been abandoned and taken over by organics."

"A temporary tactical withdrawal."

"For three millennia?"

"Three millennia is nothing to our kind and you know it. It is still a Necron world, and now I have an entire hoard of evidence of you plundering it. And, as it is a vassal of the Sautekh Dynasty you are, in effect, stealing from the coffers of the Stormlord himself."

"... So?"

"So, stop being so damn cavalier about it!" Orikan snapped. For all the acid in his voice, not once did his tail-tip falter in its mesmerising loop. Trazyn would have to try harder.

"Why, Orikan," he nearly crooned, "you almost sound concerned. In your own way."

The diviner paused before answering. Not for the first time, Trazyn wished that he still had access to the Timesplinter Cloak, if only so he could get a hint on when Orikan was applying his chronomancy. "Any other agent of the Sautekh would have shot you out of the sky the moment they realized your intent."

"Quite likely. So why didn't you?"

"Because I did not feel like letting you die so easily." The words were bitter, but Orikan's tone was somber, almost melancholy. "Serenade was... for lack of a better term, enjoyable, in some ways. You, of course, were an insufferable menace the entire time, but I did enjoy the times we had and made there."

"Excluding the exterminatus."

Orikan winced. "And encountering the Deceiver. But truly, I suppose I... want to do it again. Not now, of course, but sometime. This is not exactly something that can be planned, but it is certainly more likely if you remain alive until it does."

Now it was Trazyn's turn to pause.

[[]]

"You stupid, irreverant, half-witted-" Orikan stepped into the zero gravity field at last. He did so with a grace completely foreign to Trazyn, who, still having not developed far past impotent flailing, had no hope of avoiding. The diviner latched onto him with grasping talons like a feline pouncing on its prey.

Static burst from Trazyn's vocal actuators as a pulse of searing cold flashed through his flux, radiating out from the point of impact. His diagnostic readout screamed that yes, Orikan had indeed pierced his necrodermis, though the damage readouts were more appropriate to a hyperphase glaive than the tiny pinpricks he saw they were. Somehow, the diviner was magnifying the pain Trazyn experienced, or otherwise was causing some greater damage than his systems were designed to diagnose.

But he had entered the field. Time to even the footing.

Trazyn lurched his full bodyweight to the left. He still hadn't quite figured out how to move directionally in zero gravity yet, but he did know how to send the pair into a chaotic spin. Orikan squawked in surprise at being dragged along by his fingertips, and Trazyn took his split-second shock as an opportunity to reach around the other's wide frame and drag his fingers across the jewel-bright energy collection orbs embedded in the diviner's backplates.

Orikan's blurted a crackle of trash glyphs at the sudden stimulation. His head nearly slammed forward into the crook of Trazyn's neck as he shuddered involuntarily, and his fingers clenched deeper into the overlord's necrodermis. But still, the tip of his tail continued, somehow, to persist in weaving the dimensionalist hex *Bloody stars, how is he doing that?*

Trazyn's voice was low against Orikan's auditory receptors. "You said you enjoyed those days on Serenade, those stories we lived together. Who's to say we can't make a few more of our own accord, rather than waiting for adventure to find us?" A trace of longing was sneaking into his voice now too - perhaps he was letting himself get too involved again.

Orikan mumbled something into Trazyn's shoulder that was swallowed by the mechanisms within.

"Pardon? You'll have to speak up, my *dear astromancer.*"

He looked up, oculars dimmed slightly. "Bastard."

"Nevermind. You're becoming predictable, in insults at least."

"Tcheh. You think you can get me to relent in the repulsor field conduction, do you not?"

Trazyn tried to be nonchalant about his entire plan being exactly that. "Well. Are you going to stop me?"

One of Orikan's hands released its claw-grip on Trazyn's necrodermis and rose to rest on the latter's neck. A talon tip scritched along the edge of one of his spinal coolant lines, and he choked down a gasp. Orikan's own voice now dropped to a teasing murmur to match Trazyn's. "It will take more than some clumsy groping to do that." The claw traced its way up the fluid line, across Trazyn's neck servos, and along the ridge of his skull to rest at the bottom of his long chin. There, it hooked the overlord's head and lifted him to meet Orikan's cyclopic gaze. "So, if that is really how you think you can outsmart me, then get to work."

The necrodermis of Trazyn's faceplate shifted a few millimeters into a taunting smirk. "With pleasure."

His fingers dug once again into the energy collection orbs, this time a more gentle, teasing, inviting caress. Orikan's eye flickered momentarily, savoring the attention, before he began his own assault. Still keeping one finger on the other's chin, his other hand drifted down Trazyn's side to run a claw-tip along the outer ridge of his pelvic assembly. 

[[]]

[Neural connection allows them to coordinate phantom sensations. In perception, they feel tactile feedback from each other's proprioceptive “bodies”, which in reality, it's a mix of pantomime thrusting and actual nodal manipulation (sending pulses of discharge into Orikan's energy receptors while also pounding/clanging into him)]

Over interstitial command, Trazyn sent a link request laden with a half dozen signifier glyphs: sweetness. Honey. Exotic spice. Intoxication. But the message practically bounced off of Orikan's communications buffer in an automatic refusal.

“Come now, Diviner,” he said, his voice layered with the same alluring depth he had tried to put into his text. “When have you ever been known for doing things in half-measures? Let me in, love.”

When the Necrontyr had marched into the furnaces of biotransference, none had emerged with any meaningful aspects of their physical sex. It was just one of the many insults of The Deceiver, and in the face of lacking lungs to breathe with or a mouth capable of opening to scream, lack of genitalia was relatively far down the list in terms of how pressing it was to ignore. Having most mortal desires stripped of them and being distracted with a five million year long war helped. But after the Great Sleep, the Necrons found themselves somewhat adrift, oddly free of both terrors to run from and triumphs to fight toward. With that listlessness came boredom, and with boredom came… experimentation. 

Orikan and Trazyn had not been the first to figure it out. The first public instance had been a mild scandal on the eastern fringe, where a phaerakh and one of her retainers had been found in flagrante despite appearing to lack all necessary equipment for such. Rather than let the scandal devolve into slander, the queen had published a tutorial of sorts and advertised it as a breakthrough in the Necrons’ mastery of their own bodies - and it worked. The nobility quickly, in varying degrees of secrecy, took back their ancient tool, and the tangled political morass of the Infinite Empire once again had a convoluted layer of sexual intrigue tossed into the mix.

In brief, the proprioceptive drivers of the Necrons retained an echo of what their bodies once were shaped like. This incongruence was one of the potential wicks on which the Flayer Curse could spark, which made it generally inadvisable to entertain for an extended time. But with sufficient self-control, some Necrons had learned to acknowledge portions of those phantom bodies, and in doing so, relieve a fraction of the tension that denial had built in them. It was like leaking air from a high-pressure canister through a valve rather than letting it build until it exploded. Once they had experimented alone, a Necron could then synchronize their perception suites with another - or multiple others, one supposed - and enjoy each others’ bodies as they remembered them. It was imperfect, difficult, and required significant study to make it worth the effort. For a pair of academic obsessives like Trazyn and Orikan, mastering it had been a delightful challenge. They had spent more than a few nights on Serenade working through the eastern phaerakh's manuscript, at first apart, then, hesitantly, together.

But that had been centuries ago, now, and evidently Orikan had shut himself back up again. A pity, considering how long it had taken Trazyn to convince him the first time. The diviner, previously quite reactive, froze up at those last words, and Trazyn was momentarily worried that his entire escape plan was a bust.

“... Orikan? Have I-”

Orikan's hand slammed into Trazyn's throat at the same time as a high priority synchronization request flooded his communication array. His voice sputtered out in static from the combined shock, and his concerns about being caught in his escape were quickly replaced with what, for a semi-instinctual instant, looked like his impending death. The fear abated just a fraction when his mind reordered itself enough to read the glyph determinants on the request: Fury. Vengeance. Hunger. Dominance.

Oh, this was about to get fun.

“Never. Again. I am not letting you in anywhere, you jackal-faced spawn of a khilopode.” Orikan's face was close enough that his monocular took up nearly all of Trazyn's field of view, and though the Necrons were never particularly good at facial expression, Orikan's eye was filled with as much rage as lights and polymers could express. “You are going to let me in, and you are going to take what I give you.”

[[Orikan penetrates Trazyn. Trazyn is uncomfortable with it but goes along, finding the psychological portion incredibly arousing even if he isn't fond of bottoming. Orikan climaxes, Trazyn doesn't. Trazyn teases orikan about leaving his partner unsatisfied, which prompts Orikan to ride him until Trazyn cums. Finally, aroused again, Orikan skullfucks Trazyn, delighting in getting him to shut up for once]]

In the barest hint of preamble, Orikan pulled Trazyn's pelvis toward his until they were pressed flush against each other. The two smooth metal plates collided in a deep clang; in their shared perception suite, though, the space between them was now filled with their two half-remembered cocks being squeezed quite pleasantly between each others’ bellies. 

Trazyn rocked his hips against Orikan. The two phantom members were each crowned in rings of ridges, too smooth to catch fully but just textured enough when erect to tug at each other as they passed. He took both cocks in his hand and pressed them together

[[]]

Trazyn felt the tip of Orikan’s cock slide against his entrance, and it was his turn to freeze. In his phantasory array, the contact was pleasant, with what he remembered of his canal having already sent plenty of autolubricant and aphrodisiac compounds to the area. But pseudobiology aside, he had never gotten himself accustomed to… bottoming. The euphemism made him flinch. Perhaps it was some side effect of living as nobility, or simple personal preference - was there any way to separate the two? - but he found the prospect of taking another’s seed unappealing. He knew it from experience, not guesswork. What’s more, some of that experience was with Orikan himself. The chronomancer had to know exactly what Trazyn thought of this.

Just in case he didn’t, Trazyn growled against Orikan’s neck, where his head had somehow landed in a desperate kiss. “Bastard. You’re taking too much advantage of this.”

The other Necron only smirked and thrust forward. Trazyn gasped as the tip of Orikan's cock pierced him up to the first ring of ridges. He had been tight, unprepared, tense, and Orikan’s voice caught as his dick slipped into the impossibly tight cavity.

The chronomancer leaned down to put his vocal emitter close to Trazyn's head. “Like I would ever going to give up the chance to fuck a noble into submission.”

“You could have a quarter of the Sautekh court on their knees if you teased them right. Promise them a little chronomantic nudge, and they would drool for you.” A short groan escaped him. Orikan had slipped another ring deeper, and he was teasing Trazyn open with tiny, slow, dead gods would you speed up already thrusts.

“Perhaps. But that is sycophancy.” Orikan pulled away then and gripped Trazyn by the chin, forcing two oculars to meet one. “I want the real thing. I want you craving my cock and begging me for more - because out of anyone, I know you would never say such things unless you truly mean them.”

For that, Trazyn had no rebuttal, because he knew it to be true.

[[]]

Now look at where you've gotten yourself  Trazyn mused. Well, this was part of the plan, wasn’t it? Or something close to it, at least.

[[Necrontyr male vagina is a blind cavity, vestigial, occasionally closes fully 

[[]]

“Brilliant,” he said, his lipless mouth pressed against the shin plating before him. “Radiant. You are hope incarnate, my dearest Orikan, a blazing pyre that lights a dim future. You are powerful of will despite everything, so much undeserved that has happened to you. I admire you. I envy you. I hope that you will let me love you.”

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

I have an idea that instead of very fast spaceships in my story, the spaceships are kinda slow and the main way to get places is via teleports. However there is also max range for these teleports so they have to have a relay of them, especially the oens in deep space that stretch between galaxies. Installation is slow of course - they had to wait many years between dropping each teleport off as the spaceship had to use the previous teleports to the latest location and travel slowly in the spaceship to drop a new one off. Then here's the question of objects in space moving all the time, so these teleports are obviously moving. What exactly is keeping them where they are supposed to be? Or can we say that doesn't matter as much as long they are still in range and these teleport systems are on platforms that have an engine and can get arranged properly? You might think there is a big hole here since the spaceships are so slow, how did they know what's out so far, and why is there even a need to build quicker travel. That's because there is someone else with even better technology that initally got them there, and they now know about it but they had to design their own system to get there themselves without the help of that someone else. Note that my story starts after the teleport systems are in place and there is regular transportation via these teleport systems across several galaxies so this is basically history.

Tex: Stargate stargate stargate- ahem. There is a very well-known set of TV series about this exact subject (with some occasional plot, of course): Stargate. The three main series are Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Stargate Universe, and each deal with a different environment of technology created by a group of people known in-universe as the Ancients (later known as the Alterans) as they are used in different galaxies.

The eponymous technology that features most prominently in all of these shows are stargate, which stabilize wormholes generated between two gates and can be connected to via a series of addresses based upon celestial constellations. These addresses are dialed via something nicknamed DHDs (Dial Home Devices - yes, jokingly after the movie E.T.), and the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies (the latter of which is the setting of Stargate: Atlantis) have different gate systems that cannot connect to each other - the protagonists were only able to do so with a huge boost of energy from a device called a ZPM (Zero Point Module) that draws power from subspace.

The gates themselves are relatively stable, and can - through a lot of legwork - be operated without a DHD; Samantha Carter in SG-1 figured out how to do so via an Earth program to use Earth computers, whereas in contrast the puddle jumpers in Atlantis (a type of ship small enough to fly through the gates) have their own dedicated versions of DHDs in the pilot’s console.

Although it’s not explicitly stated in canon, each galaxy’s gate system seems to be manufactured differently from each other, given the differences in their appearances. Realistically speaking, since these connect via wormholes, there should be no issue connecting any gate to any other gate, but it’s possible that each gate has a hardwired address array paired with its DHD that’s specific to a given range of its position in spacetime, thus giving a self-limiting range.

In SG-1, the Jaffa and Goa’uld would be of most interest to you, and in Atlantis, everyone not from the expedition would be of interest to you, as these groups of people have used their stargate networks for thousands of years on a regular basis.

[notesonphotography]

"The contingency of photographs confirms that everything is perishable; the arbitrariness of photographic evidence indicates that reality is fundamentally unclassifiable. Reality is summed up in an array of casual fragments - an endlessly alluring, poignantly reductive way of dealing with the world."

- Susan Sontag

We seem to barely hold on to the technologies we create. The moment we unleash it, it runs away and tells US how we should behave instead of the other way around.

Now that we find ourselves face to face with the unreality of Ai and all that it will potentially disrupt, it is even more important to be aware of how powerful images can be.

We are still trying to make sense of photography - the Point Zero - the building blocks that thicken our modern environment.

We are still reeling from the introduction of the internet that has fundamentally changed how the world operates.

Now we are facing the next evolution which will exponentially raise the stakes.

And we seem poorly prepared - it’s shocking to see how people take images that one would think are OBVIOUSLY fake - as reality....gawk over Ai art that is vacuous, saccharine and sentimental.

And I'm a Concept Artist, we specialise in a lot of that. 😅 The Ai is not coming up with this by itself! We created the beast. 😬

But at the very least WE were/are responsible for it, and unable to pass blame to a nebulous algorithm...

Or maybe it's going to free us to do more meaningful things…

Maybe visual literacy courses should start being mandatory in schools.

Lots of maybes…

There are many great writings on images and how we have been dealing with the “crisis of photography” in the age of mechanical and now digital reproduction.

The preface to Guy Debord's "Society of Spectacle" is a quote by Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach - from 1841 - that hits the perfect note.

“But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."

I've been, for a while now, slowly trying to pick out the nuggets from books and share it as part of learning and understanding myself.

@notesonphotography (Instagram)

I plan to continue this as long as I can, and if I do stop, it will not be for the lack of material, as the amount of literature on this subject is overwhelming, increasing exponentially as we try to make sense of a world that slowly reconstructs itself into its doppelgänger - that of one vast mirage.

I can’t say it better than the descriptor by Roland Barthes “I am trying to render the special quality of this hallucination”

IMAGE: Stephen Shore

#photography #images #technology #ai #art #Stephen Shore #Susan Sontag

[evelhak]

📚

Since some people have evidently found my books through Tumblr despite of me not being very active on the Finnish side of it, I thought: why shouldn't I post about my books? It doesn't matter they are not available in English (yet, anyway) because I would be curious enough to read about stuff my mutuals do even if I couldn't read the actual material.

So, I plan to make a post about every book I write, do cover art for, or am otherwise involved with. Best case scenario is someone finds something new to read, worst case scenario is someone is bored.

This time, I'll introduce you to my debut novel:

☁️ Unitytöt ☁️

(dream girls)

Published: 2021 by Nysalor

Genre: New Adult, Fantasy, Slice of Life, LGBT+

Certainly not the first book that I wrote but this is my first published novel and my first cover project. ✨ I wrote this book in 2017 when I was about to graduate university, trying to juggle a full-time job as a mail carrier, nearly daily ballet training and writing both my original work and fanfiction which I also started doing the same year. The schedule turned out to be too much for my autistic brain and physical conditions. Regardless, I'm so happy I wrote this book!

It's a story about a technically bodiless creature, Venna, and a human, Aiju. Venna's species lives in people's heads or musical instruments because they need music to live. Venna is an outcast, and has been living in a wind chime to avoid people and their overwhelming array of feelings, which Venna's kind experiences directly in the human brain they are living in. Circumstances force Venna to move into the head of a young woman, Aiju, who is starting her studies at a temple (=a magic university). Unlike Venna's previous humans, Aiju can hear and feel Venna and is curious for, rather than scared of a new friend in her head. Aiju is also able to control and create elaborate dreamworlds where she and Venna can meet in their own separate forms. The two begin to live their life together, studying, enjoying music, maybe even falling in love when an older student is intrigued by Aiju's peculiar behaviour. It's a story about sharing a body and partially a mind, about merging, sense of self, neurodiversity and particularly sensitivity, and also abuse and healing. It's a slow love story, a fantastical exploration of the subconscious, a fantasy focused on characters and dreams that also touches on the larger context of the universe and existence.

I wrote this book because I had read many body sharing stories and was dissatisfied with the lack of portrayal of the ordinary every day experiences that would come with it, as well as I was with the ease with which body shifting creatures always seem to adapt to their new circumstances. I wanted to see more of the reality. I wrote this book because I had briefly introduced and later edited out a music eating demon in another fantasy story of mine, who possessed a girl and made her dance in a tavern until she fainted. I was curious what a story about a similar but gentle creature would be like. I wrote this book because themes of merging and separating your sense of self were relevant to me and I wanted to explore them through a fantastical world but also reality based concepts.

I was so much more nervous about the cover project than I was about actually publishing the story. I had zero experience apart from my personal cover doodles, no graphic design studies, and had only recently started learning Photoshop. Thankfully I'm still pretty happy with the cover, although there are technical details I would do differently. The most glaringly obvious one is the ginormous bar code. It was hard to tell how big it would actually look and my publisher had warned me not to make it too small, so I overdid it. My publisher is small so there are no resources to make test copies of the books, and it's due to the smallness of my publisher that I even had the opportunity to design the cover myself despite having no experience, just some visual skills.

I still like the cover art itself, the only problem which I did suspect back then too, is that in an attempt to make the cover dreamlike, it turned out a bit like children's literature. I was the only one who was worried about it, but in some libraries people have clearly thought this is aimed at 12-year-olds. I'm sure some of them would enjoy this, but it's a bit off. A lot of people have told me not to underestimate children, but it's not that I'm doing that, I'm simply aware that this book is not written in a way nor does it contain themes or life events that are relevant to very young people. It's a very psychological story and its issues are the most relevant to people in their late teens and early twenties. It's not that there's anything in this book that a 12-year-old couldn't handle, it's just going to be boring for most of them because it would be a lot to ask from a child's attention span to be interested in stuff they can't relate to for 400 pages. Even if many 12-year-olds still like to read about characters older than them, characters they can look up to, this book is written with people in mind who can relate to 20-year-olds. Of course there are exceptions. I probably would have loved this book as a 12-year-old. But I'm sure 90% of my peers would not have cared enough to finish it.

The cover seems to have done some of its job well too, because I know some people (adults) bought this book because they thought the cover was pretty, so that's good at least. Most of the feedback I've received has been really positive, the book seems to have found some of the readers it was clearly meant for. Some relevant criticism has also come my way and I believe I've learned some things since writing this book. The only really negative review I came across so far contained so many factual errors that it seemed the reviewer had been too busy to actually process the book. From that perspective it seems like the cover has also worked well enough to draw mostly the intended people towards the book.

The most memorable experience in its publication process was probably how it was chosen for an interview at the biggest national book fair by high school presentation/communication students who hold interviews on one of the stages there every year. It was such a good interview because the two students interviewing me clearly loved the book, related to it, and were excited to talk about it with me, and asked really thoughtful questions. I couldn't imagine a better first interview as an author. It was also the day the book officially came out. It was also my first time at that book fair (I don't often visit the capital) and I was the first author from my publisher to land an interview there, so I was really very nervous at first. I was unfortunately a COVID debut author so this was the only place I was able to present my book physically that year, which obviously affected its already marginal distribution. But it was such a lovely event for me that it is the more memorable for it.

I wish this book would find more readers who love dreamy, character driven and fairytale-esque fantasy. It's not without plot, mystery, or danger, but it's definitely not the best pick for someone who needs an epic, fast paced and world-shaking chain of events from their reading experience. This is for the other sensitive dreamers out there who just love to drown in characters, experiences and subtle magic, and would rather stop to contemplate it than to rush forward at all times.

[ezmagreen]

I think too much and do too little lol

The battle handler/system or other may know it as a form of a gameplay ability system is kind of the next step. Lucky the system I am designing focus more on modifying attributes and combat states for registered combat objects. I just need to have enough energy and focus to decide what the share function the actions will have and the general structure of the combat object (as well as decide if it should be ref-counted or a resource). Basically the battle node will register combat to the combat system objects and listen to them as needed for updating the map. Also it sends actions to it as well as tell it when to run the status update function (for processing buffs and debuffs). So the node handles the combat loop and listen to input while the system process requests with resource that can notify other systems (like UI). Eh It seem simple, but I just cannot focus today lol. Also to test it better I would need that battle node and battle UI and probably think how I should handle the AI. I probably use a resource that act like the AI script. I guess it would be best for it to know about the combat objects since it can get a lot of the needed info from that object. (Update kind of) There is one issue I just remember and that is attribute modifiers. If there is only a few, then they can be recalculated without an issue else I guess I may need to group them based on how often they change (bonus: limit recalculations by attributes affected). This I believe would be the combat object responsibility (or mostly. assignment and update calls would happen elsewhere). I may just have the mods as an array for each attribute with each index as a predetermine group. Like one for equipment and one for buffs that are added to the base attribute when needed. (I just find arrays easier to do math with instead of objects. I could use a dictionary and not have predetermine order, yet I want it to be more compact in size. I guess if it usually less than 10(like on average), then I could use a dictionary to cull out calculating zero cases). (Also it is only gdscript objects I try to limit use for simple cases since I see them as an extended dictionary with more data and initiation costs. I could be wrong.) (I also could create a bunch of dictionaries as tags to hold modification info from buff and debuffs base on what they effect. I just dislike that memory use, but it may be fine for this project only if I find myself having a lot of buffs being applied which probably won't happen).

[deligraphix]

THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD'S... SLIMMEST FOLDABLE?

Being a foldable fanatic I have been lucky to test use the last generation Honor V2 and it satisfied if not almost what I expected of a foldable for its time.

It's the year of the Honor V3 and several noteworthy features has undeniably grabbed my eyeballs.

My thoughts is first of all on the newest and thinnest body plus folded look, not just for Honor past foldables but the foldable industry in general, it comes with a 9.2mm folding thickness, it weighs about 226 grams and that's next level based on what brands have offered so far making it already dubbed as the "World's Slimmest Foldable", the slim design plus the weight earns it a 10/10 in my durability rating, the Honor V3 is definitely sending me some comfort vibes, so sleek looking and compact to be carried and lifted anywhere with zero chances of burden, A1 rating here ✅

Periscope on this device is nothing short of the word INCREDIBLE, the device already has some impressive array of cameras but I'm most thrilled with the periscope, we are still crying to some brands to help us develop a periscope lens on regular slab devices which is more easier and practical, but look the Honor V3 has a 3.5x optical periscope telephoto lens even for a foldable, foldables before are known to miss out on certain features because of their come factor, but Honor definitely did not compromise with the Honor V3 🫴

They gave it their all.

50W wireless charging on a 5150mah is mega, someone please help me ask Honor how they managed to achieve this incredible battery while still maintaining the compact 9.2mm look of the V3?

I have no idea about smartphone engineering but I know a great job when I see one, the battery is good enough to cover daily needs for us consumers even the hardcore Call of Duty gamers, I use a basic bar phone with 4600mAh, so I hope you get why I'm so excited for a foldable to beat me to it lol, we don't get this much on the foldable side of things but the Honor V3 did it and it's worth feasting on, I would definitely love to share my feedback after some time of real life uses.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is the processor of this generation so i definitely saw this one coming since Honor V3 is a flagship foldable like the Samsung Z Fold 6, but I still would love to see how the processor blends in terms of performance and optimisation with Magic OS, OS often times determine how best the hardware responds that's why two phones can have same hardware but one performs better, it's not rockery science, since the MagicOS has a history of doing well, I'm eye peeled to see the optimisation with this beastly processor.

The Ai features is something I haven't seen more light on since but I think after the launch in September 5, we would be seeing more of that. Ai easily gets me excited these days, why you may ask?

So many scenarios are painted in my head for the Honor V3, like what would it do?, how far does it take user experience? What are the features; I know there is Ai eraser, Ai studio, Ai camera focus.. but is there any chance the Honor V3 has anything different in store for the enthusiasts?

I'm genuinely positive for the possibilities the Honor V3 can create with Ai integration for the foldable department, let's wait and see. September 5 it is guys 🗓️

#HONORMagicV3