#no banner or caption for this one either :o

[matchalovertrait]

[peachycheol]

| reliable |

© banner credit: thank you to the love of my life @suhdreams​ for making this banner for me 🥺💘 ➸ summary: when people say ‘not all men’, they’re actually right. kim mingyu, your best friend, would never disappoint you. especially not in the bedroom.  ➸ genre: pwp 😌 ➸ pairing: best friend!mingyu x reader  ➸ warning: dirty talk, slight dumbification, heavy petting, unprotected sex (pls use protection irl), cream pie, oral (fem. receiving), cum eating, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, yn is really horny? ➸ w.c: 3.2k ➸ tags: you can all thank @risquewonu​ for this <333  

➸ author’s note: ahh, i’m sorry this took me so long! i didn’t mean to write this much, but what the smuth wants, the smuth gets. also, i want to thank you all for 100 followers! i’ll make a separate post to properly thank you all, but i am!!! baffled!!! i really appreciate the support ;u; love you guys! 

If there are two things in this world that you are absolutely certain of, they are: 1) Men ain’t shit, and 2) with the exception of Kim Mingyu. Knowing this information doesn’t really benefit you in any way. You still go out on Tinder dates that leave you high and dry 15 minutes after taking you home. And Kim Mingyu is still your very platonic best friend, who seems to be reliable in every single way except perhaps in the one way you need most desperately. 

But for all you know, he could be just like every other male in bed. He couldn’t be unbelievably handsome, the most thoughtful, caring person you know, and a sex god; it just wouldn’t be fair! No, it is much easier to convince yourself that Mingyu’s perfection only extended to being a best friend, if only for your peace of mind. Otherwise, you’d have to live with the possibility that the only person who can give you sweet release is the only one you’re technically not supposed to fuck. 

For reasons that seem to become annoyingly hazy every time you lie down next to him on his bed, just as you are at this moment. 

The two of you often end nights out like this, scrolling through one another’s TikTok’s until the wee hours of the morning, laughing loudly until his neighbors threaten to file a noise complaint. As someone who has claimed him as your best friend for three years, you know you’re supposed to be used to the smell of the musky cologne that clings onto his sheets and the feeling of his warm body as he leans closer to show you his For You Page. But lately, it seems harder and harder to fight off the warmth that pulses straight to your core whenever he does anything as simple as laugh, making you shiver when his breath tickles the side of your neck. 

God, you just really need to get laid properly. You lick your dry lips and try to remind yourself that you have no idea if Mingyu would even be able to satisfy you. Though you do have to admit you couldn’t imagine any situation where the boy isn’t overly generous and eager to please-- No! Just watch the damn TikToks! 

“Hey, you good?” Mingyu suddenly asks, nudging your side. “Why aren’t you laughing? ‘His package needs to come in the fe-mail’! That one’s gold!”

You let out a snort. Leave it to Mingyu to bring you back to reality with one line. Even when you don’t say a word, he knows exactly what you need in a moment, which in this case is a reminder that he’s your very dorky friend. “Shut up, that’s so stupid,” you say, but you can’t help but laugh along with him when it replays.

“Aha, you laughed though.” Satisfied with your response he scrolls down to a video of a girl smiling suggestively into the camera. She points to the caption that says ‘If all the boys that made me cum were in my room with me right now, I would…’ Suddenly, the camera pans and she looks at the screen tiredly. The caption now read as ‘Be alone. Men are trash’.

At this, you bust out with a howl of laughter, clutching at your stomach. It was kind of sad, but it was good to know you weren’t alone in this world. All the while, Mingyu stares at you with an eyebrow raised. Once you calm down, you meet his amused gaze. “What are you looking at?”

“You thought it was that funny, huh? It’s not even that accurate,” he says teasingly. 

You roll your eyes. “Um, yeah it is. I’ve never met a man who could make me cum, and clearly many other people can relate. This video has 1.4k likes!”

Mingyu quickly puts his phone down and pouts. “Nu uh! Not all guys are that incompetent!” 

“Men are such babies,” you sigh. “They are that incompetent! You know how many dates I went to last semester, right? Not one of them made me cum!”

“Okay, I told you before you even went on those dates that those guys weren’t worth your time.” Mingyu waves his hand dismissively. “For your information, I have made sure that all the ladies that I’ve taken to the bedroom had at least one orgasm. At least!”

“Mingyu, sweetie,” you coo, patting his cheek as if to comfort him. “They were all faking it, because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”  Right? They all had to have faked it. You try to tell yourself this, try to reign in the last bit of sanity you have before your mind wanders off to anywhere inappropriate.

Your best friend now props himself up so that you could properly see the smirk plastered across his annoyingly chiseled features. “You’re so sure, huh? I bet I could make you cum multiple times. Easily.” 

Your mouth falls open in shock. It isn’t uncommon for the two of you to taunt each other like this, but you have also never been in such a vulnerable mood. It’s the type of mood that has your heart racing impossibly fast, the type of mood that has your panties pathetically damp from just one sentence. You blink, trying to regain as much composure as you can. You know it’s too late, though; your imagination is already flashing through scenes of your deepest desires, all being fulfilled by the man in front of you. But Mingyu is only joking, so you do what you can to continue playing along and pretend like you don’t want him to just fuck you into the mattress until you were drooling into his sheets. 

“I-I seriously doubt that!” you say, but there is no conviction in your voice. Clearing your throat, you try adding, “Dude, I’ve literally seen you fall down a flight of stairs when you were sober. And we were going up. Kinda hard to imagine that you’ll know how to fuck me to an orgasm when you can’t even walk right.” 

Now you’re just lying through your teeth, but you want to hold off the inevitable moment that Mingyu discovers your apparent arousal for as long as possible. The last thing you need right now is for him to laugh in your face.

Mingyu chuckles, then suddenly shifts so that his arms are placed on either side of your head, trapping you underneath him. To his surprise, you do nothing to push him off like you usually do at this point. Still, he doesn’t plan on being the first to back off, so he continues his little game, intent on winning. “See, this is why you can’t find a guy who can satisfy you. You clearly don’t know what to look for.” He leans down until the tip of his nose grazes yours. For good measure, he drops his voice an octave and says, “You’ll be the one who can’t walk right when I’m done with you.” 

Perplexingly, his shameless flirting doesn’t make you move as he predicted. Nor does it make you look annoyed. Instead, you look up at him with eyes that are unmistakably glazed over with something he didn’t quite expect to see: pure lust. It immediately sends a rush of blood down to his cock. He blinks. Oh. So this is where the night is going. He only falters for a moment, but he soon flashes a breathtaking smile down at you, his eyes glinting mischievously. 

 It isn’t like he’s never thought about it before; he had just assumed that once you started calling him your best friend, you were also lowkey telling him that sex was off the table. And it wasn’t like he minded, because he definitely liked being by your side knowing it was fully okay to be himself since you were obligated to love him regardless. Plus there was just something about you that made him want to take care of you and if being your best friend was the only way he could do it, then that had been fine by him. But now that he knows that he can take care of you in another way, in the way that he sometimes found himself yearning for on lonely nights, he is all too eager to break free of the unspoken boundaries between the two of you. 

“And what am I looking for?” you whisper. 

“It seems like you’re looking for me, baby,” he responds softly, before pressing a kiss where your jaw meets your neck. He slowly drags his lips down the side of your neck, and revels in how it already has you pressing your legs together. “Damn, you weren’t kidding when you said those guys didn’t make you cum, huh? Is that why you’re already so fucking worked up? You want to cum that badly?”

You nod wordlessly, not quite ready for Mingyu to hear the desperate whine that would surely leave your lips as he continues pressing wet kisses along your skin. You opt to simply thread your fingers in his hair and tug hard enough to show your impatience. It seems to trigger something in him; all in an instant, your best friend’s soft lips clash against your own, his tongue easily sliding into your mouth, all the while while his hand reaches down to grab one of your thighs. He squeezes it teasingly before pushing it outwards, which causes the mini skirt you’re wearing to bunch up around your waist, revealing your panties and how they cling to your pussy like a second skin. 

“M-mingyu!” you squeak into his lips when you feel his fingers tentatively rub small circles into the wet spot. He nips at your lip harshly as he starts to rub more deliberately, the flimsy fabric of your underwear creating a delicious friction against your clit. “H-hah! Yes, o-oh my god!” 

“Fuck, you’re already so wet for me, baby girl,” he chuckles, but he knows he isn’t one to talk while his cock is half hard just from hearing the way you moan his name. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of you. You’re not leaving this room until your little pussy cums nice and hard on my cock.” 

“Ngh!-- yes p-please! Please, Mingyu,” you beg mindlessly. Your eyebrows are scrunched together in concentration. Despite your best friend’s promises, you are still hesitant to hold out any hope for anything more than what you’re accustomed to, so you try to take as much as you can while it lasts. However, in your lustful daze, you had forgotten that if Kim Mingyu is anything, he is a man of his word. 

 You let out a high-pitched moan when his fingers suddenly grind harsh circles into your clit, more surprised than anything else that he even knew where to find it. “But first,” he says, licking his lips, “you’re going to be a good girl and cum just like this. Right into your filthy little panties. Can you do that for me, baby?” 

He takes your drawn out whine as a response, and continues to rub relentlessly over your hardened clit until your legs begin to shake. That’s when he shoves the soaked material of your underwear to the side and pinches the bud. Hard. 

He rolls your clit between the pads of his fingertips over and over, sending jolts of electric pleasure all the way to your toes. It causes them to curl, all the while you feel the heat simmering in your lower abdomen finally coil tighter and tighter. “Fuckfuckfuck,” you chant, the words coming out slurred like you’re a teenager who’s gotten drunk from one sip of champagne. “M-mingyu-- mmh! I t-think I’m going to--!” 

A loud cry leaves your lips the moment the coil snaps, and you nearly tear up from how much better it feels to finally cum on someone else’s fingers, especially Mingyu’s long, thick digits.  He soothingly slides them through your drenched folds, mesmerized by how much wetness now covered his hand. “That’s it, baby,” he encourages. Once your body slumps back into the mattress, he brings his fingers up to see how they glisten in the light. “We’ve barely even started and look at what the mess you’ve already made. You must have been waiting so long for me to fuck you, huh?” 

Not even your post-orgasm buzz can keep you from getting irked by Mingyu’s cockiness, which is why you reach your own hand down to squeeze his cock through his jeans. “Seems like I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for this,” you say with a sly grin of your own. He watches you, jaw clenched, as you swiftly pop the button of his pants open and slip your fingers past the waistband of his underwear to take hold of his fully hardened member. 

It feels warm and heavy in your palm, which can barely wrap around the girth. You bite your lip, your pussy greedily clenching around nothing at the thought of how good it would stretch you out.

“I should have known you’d be a fucking tease,” Mingyu rasps. His hips buck into your hand involuntarily, and his smile returns when he notices how the movement makes you whimper in anticipation. 

There is a beat of silence when you and Mingyu meet eyes before the both of you begin undressing each other as fast as you can, haphazardly tugging off both your shirts, his pants, and your pesky undergarments. Once he’s tossed aside your soiled panties, he immediately presses your thighs apart to get a full view of your sopping cunt. “So pretty,” he mumbles to himself, spreading the lips apart with his fingers. His member throbs at the sight, the tip leaking precum when he sees how your pussy clenches in anticipation. “I bet it’s going to look even prettier when it’s taking my fat cock, don’t you think?”

The two of you watch in awe as Mingyu starts to sink into your entrance, a garbled moan leaving your lips when the tip alone already has you feeling so full. “Mingyu, h-how is-- ooh!-- your d-dick soo-- f-fucking big? A-Ah!” It takes a good while for you to finish your sentence as each of Mingyu’s shallow thrusts leave you gasping for air. By the time he bottoms out, the both of you are panting hard, both engrossed by how snugly his cock fits in your walls. 

“Shit, if I had known you’d be this tight, I would have fucked you sooner,” Mingyu groans. He slowly drags his member out of you, letting you feel every inch of him before he surges forward into a feverish pace that already has his bed frame creaking loudly. He is definitely getting a noise complaint from his grumpy neighbors tonight. But seeing you underneath him like this, lips parted and legs spread, definitely makes it difficult to care about anything other than the desire to hear more of your needy cries. “Does it feel good, baby girl? Do you like how my cock fills your little pussy?”

“It fuh--!--ngh, feels s-soo good,” Having already came once, your sensitivity is on overload, and each rough thrust of Mingyu’s hips, each crude slap of his skin against yours, is enough to drive you closer and closer to delirium. “Mmh-- please, Mingyu! F-fuck me so deep!”

“Anything for my little cockslut.” He moves quickly to kneel between your legs, hooking his arms underneath your knees to keep them open as he continues to pound into you. The new position instantly makes you keen loudly, eyes rolling to the back of your head when you feel his member brush against your cervix. 

“Fuuuuck,” you sob and clutch at the sheets. His grip on your legs tightens and he angles his hips so that he hits that spot every time, rendering you completely incoherent. You want to beg him to fuck you like this forever, to tell him you’d do anything to feel his cock fuck you open every night, but you can only babble, unable to comprehend anything that isn’t the insatiable thirst burning within you.

“Damn baby, did I fuck you stupid?” Seeing you so drunk on his cock, he wonders how anyone could ever fuck you without wanting to see you cum over and over again. His hair falls over his eyes as he fucks up into you with renewed vigor, his hot skin covered in a light sheen of sweat. He grits his teeth when he feels how tightly your walls grip onto him.“Shit-- you must want me to make you cum again, baby girl. Your little pussy just keeps sucking me in.”

“H-hah, y-yes! Yes, please god, Mingyu, I want to c-cum again. P-please let me cum,” you beg, practically writhing as you pathetically attempt to meet his thrusts. Without any hesitation, Mingyu brings down his thumb and presses it into your swollen clit, causing your body to seize up suddenly. “A-Aah Mingyu! I’m--!” The intensity of your orgasm has your back arching off the mattress, head thrown back in a silent scream. Wave after wave of pleasure continuously washes over you, seemingly unending, unlike any orgasm you ever thought possible. 

“That’s right baby girl, get my cock nice and wet,” Mingyu growls. He fucks you through your release as he sloppily chases his own, not too far behind with how your walls are pulsing around him. He makes sure his cock is deep inside you and stills his hips when fills you with his hot cum. “Fuck, this pussy was fucking made for me.”

Just as you think you’ve finally come down from your high, he pulls out of you and he shifts to lower himself to place his mouth on your spent pussy. “M-mingyu!” 

You squirm and half-heartedly try to shove his head away, far too sensitive to have his tongue licking into your leaking entrance, but Mingyu is persistent. He pushes your legs to your chest to keep you from squeezing them close, and hums when he tastes the hot mixture of your and his own cum on his lips. The way he slurps and sucks at your folds is absolutely sinful as he eats you out like you’re the most delectable treat. It almost hurts to feel so much ecstasy at once, but it still leaves you mewling for more, unable to get enough of the boy.

Your third orgasm ripples over you when he suddenly scrapes his teeth over your abused clit, and you feel a tear slide down your cheek as you weakly shake against his mouth. 

Mingyu is smiling when he pulls away, looking slightly ridiculous with how his lips still glisten with cum. You tiredly slump back into his pillows, eyes already drooping close. “What is it?”

“I told you I could do it~” he says proudly. He goes to grab some tissues from the bedside table so that he could start cleaning you up, giggling all the while. It really is unfair how he could look so cute moments after railing you into another dimension. 

You groan. You’re never going to hear the end of this.

[laufire]

post nine pics of 2021!

whether it's photos you've taken or content you've made or certain screeenshots or favorite memes.

I was tagged by the lovely @angelfishofthelord​ (ty!)

I’m not showing my face here lol, but have some other pictures/edits:

1. The banner I made for the Megstiel Halloween Fest, Because:

[ID: combined image of a scene from Supernatural, where after Meg saves Castiel from Hesper’s beating, they stare at each  other. Meg is in front of him, holding the bloodied angel blade she  used, and Castiel is on his knees looking up at her with blood running  down his nose. The image includes the title  “Megstiel Halloween Fest”,  in Halloween-themed dark red letters,  dripping blood, with a pumpking  as the “o” and spider webs in the “w”; it’s also framed by the silouette  of a film kodak picture.]

2. This edit I made for @nectargrapes‘s original WIP.

[Caption: three edited stills of oil paintings. The first one (Falling Star, Witold Pruszkowski), shows a woman floating in the night sky, falling and shinning among the stars. The second one (Death and the Maiden, Ana Sanchez) shows a woman drapped in a white cloth that covers her face, and a dark hooded figure with his hands on her shoulders standing behind her. The third and last one (The Eruption of Vesuvius at Night, Joseph Rebell) shows the volcano erupting, with the light of the lava surrounded by smoke and ashes.]

3. This edited image I used to illustrate an original excerpt (link here):

[ID: image of two black women dressed in golden clothes and jewelry, including diadems with runrays coming out of them, over a background with a golden cloth. They have their eyes closed; one of them is sitting down, and the other is standing up behind her, with her hands on the other’s shoulders.]

4. All the images in this post I made with my SPN women + flowers, but especially this one of Ruby:

[Caption: Poppies for Ruby, for PLEASURE, SACRIFICE, AND DEATH. The image shows Ruby lying in bed while Sam was drinking of her.]

5. Again, all of the post, but especially these two images:

[Caption: Meg is leaning up and closing her eyes, their faces put close together while they stare at each other; Castiel pushes her to the ground and walks over her to avoid the fire.]

6. This FDTD graphic I made for @chiara-mastroianni

[Caption: screenshots from the first season of From Dusk Till Dawn. The first few saw Kisa appearing as a vision asking to be freed, either directly to Richie or in reflections; the last one shows her dancing on stage, holding a snake in her arms and looking towards the camera. The images have lines and spots that made them look like old photographs, and the set includes the quote “First you will raise the island of the Sirens, those creatures who spellbind any man alive, whoever comes their way.” from the Odyssey.]

7. This edit of Max, Silver, and Jack in Black Sails, because it’s simple but illustrates their dynamic and the injerence they have in the plot when they act together *-*

[Caption: three screenshots of Black Sails. In the first one, Max sits on Silver’s lap as they conspire to sell the page (to Jack) that he stole from Flint’s prize; in the second one, Jack opens the door of the room where they’re storing the Urca’s treasure (that Silver tipped them off about) to an astonished Max; in the third and last one, Jack and Silver converse, about to make an alliance against Flint in the series finale to achieve both of their goals (thanks to Max’s plans in Philadelphia).]

8. And all of the images in this Caroline Forbes graphic (best beloved).

[Caption: Caroline smiling at Stefan while they sit on a bench to talk during Jo and Alaric’s wedding. The image includes the words “you kinda struggle not to shine.”]

9. Also, have one (1) picture from my camera roll, brought to you by the fact that I often stop on the streets to take photos of pretty flowers xD

[Caption: close-up photography of a yellow rose.]

And I had a lot of fun making icons this year, but there are too many for me to choose lol.

A couple of people were already mentioned during the post itself (so considered yourself tagged for the meme if you want). Also tagging @habibialkaysani​ @idontwikeit​ @juliareed​ @ladyculebras​ and anyone else who want to do it (no pressure!).

[kaialone]

Yokai Watch News: Yokai Watch 4 & Forever Friends

The official websites have updated with new information again, and Corocoro has been released for this month as well.

So, as always I will translate and summarize the most notable news that have come out from this.

Beware of spoilers, naturally! 

--

This time around we got news about:

Yokai Watch 4

5th Yokai Watch Movie - Forever Friends

Merchandise

New Yokai for Puni Puni and World

This time around there won’t be much of Corocoro because for the most part the websites either updated with the same information, or there isn’t  much new info to begin with.

--

Yokai Watch 4 News:

Corocoro has released information about Yokai Watch 4, and the official website of the game has updated as well.

For the most part both of these just go over information that is evident from simply watching the trailer and the demo footage, both of which I have translated already.

That of course being showing off the new battle system and graphics, as well as the fact that yokai who appeared in the Shadowside anime will also appear in the game. All of these I feel are better understood by just watching the footage.

But the website does have this bit on changing playable characters that they spell out more clearly:

操作キャラクターをチェンジ！ Change Playable Characters!

プレイヤーが操作するキャラクターを ナツメから途中でトウマにチェンジ！ 操作キャラクターを变使することで、 入る場所や使えるウォッチが変わる！？ The playable character changed from Natsume to Touma along the way! When you switch between playable characters, the places you can enter and the Watch you use change!?

操作可能なキャラクターは 複数。 遊びの幅がグングン広がりそう！ There are multiple playable characters. The scale of the game keeps expanding!

To me, this doesn’t make it completely clear if you can change characters by choice, or if there is pre-determined instances when the switching occurs.

But based on the fact that it seems that there’s places exclusive to certain characters, and how changing characters worked in 3, I’m assuming you can change between available characters whenever you want? But you might need to be certain characters to advance the plot at points.

--

Yokai Watch Movie 5 News:

This month’s Corocoro has a section on Forever Friends, but it’s fairly short, and for the most part just goes over old information. For example, all the little descriptions next to the characters are just repeats from older issues, essentially.

These are the only truly new pieces of information out of it:

おなじみのエンマ大王に 重大なヒミツが！？ The Enma we're familiar with has an important secret?!

エンマ大王はシンたちの仲間ではなく、 敵として立ちはだかる！？ 真相は次号で判明だ！！ The Great King Enma stands before Shin and his friends, not as an ally, but as an enemy?! The truth will be revealed next issue!!

妖魔界を��るがす戦い、そして- エンマ大王誕生の物語！！ A battle that shakes the Yōmakai, and - The Story of how the Great King Enma came to be!!

シンたちは妖魔界で次代のエンマ大王を決めるため開催される「エンマ武闘会」に参戦！！ ここで世界を支配しようと企む悪の妖怪と対決することに。 猫又たちの大暴れを見逃すな！！ In the Yōmakai, Shin and his friends participate in the "Enma Butōkai", which is held to determine the next Great King Enma!! There they confront evil yokai who plot to take over the world. Don't miss the great rampage of Nekomata and the others!!

-

Note that Cocoro also currently features the manga adaptation of this upcoming movie, though from what I hear it’s like the previous one, so it will be a fairly condensed, shortened version of the story.

I’ve not seen anyone post full scans of the manga chapters, which is understandable, but this image has been making the rounds, featuring a new character who could presumably show up on the full movie as well:

His name is 紫炎/Shien, which is written with the kanji for “purple” and “blaze”, and the caption informs us that he is a candidate for becoming the next Great King Enma.

Now, while this isn’t much info, the new merchandise I am about to go over is all tied to the movie as well.

--

Yokai Watch Merchandise News:

First of all, the official website for the 5th movie has updated to feature the winner of the Yokai Ark Design Contest, where children where supposed to draw an Ark design, featuring their favorite yokai together with Nekomata.

And the winning design is the one that will be turned into an actual Ark:

However, there is various lesser prices as well, which I have gone over before, and various magazines will gradually reveal the rest of the winners.

-

Next up, the b-boys website has updated with two more toy sets that are coming up.

First is the “DX Yokai Watch Elda Zero & Jin Power-up Kit”.

This entire kit will be released in December and will cost 2400 Yen.

It comes with two new covers one can attach to their Yokai Watch Elda (sold seperately) to give it either the “Zero” or “Jin” look:

Adding to that, this banner here talks about how one will be able to download update data for the Yokai Watch Elda, to get it up to speed:

The URL listed there will supposedly provide additional information on how to update the Elda, but as of right now it doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

Also, this kit will come with a new Yokai Ark, the first Ultimate Rare Rank, which had previously been listed as the rarest possible rank. (Though I wouldn’t wonder if they introduce better ones eventually.)

The yokai on this Ark is called “Ame no Murakumo”, which seems to be derived from ”Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi”, the original name of the legendary sword Kusanagi.

I also want to point out that Ame no Murakumo seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Sū-san, who was also suspiciously not given a “Godside” form in last month’s issue of Corocoro, leading me to believe the two are the same character, but that is just me speculating.

I dunno, what do you think?

-

Next is a new toy set called the “DX Enma Rod”, though note that “Enma” here is written with the kanji 炎/En (”blaze”), rather than the 閻/En from Enma’s name.

This set will be released in November and cost 4800 yen.

It’s this toy weapon:

The light in its center, called an “Oni Face” here, is said to be able to glow in 7 colors, though they only show five here:

The set also includes a special “Ryūtō Yokai Ark” that can be used with the toy:

“Ryūtō“ would literally translate to “dragon light”, and from what I gather, it refers to mysterious lights, similar to will-o'-wisps, that can sometimes be seen at sea. It’s also written with the exact same kanji as the Chinese word “lóngdēng”, which refers to dragon-shaped lanters.

The two sides are called “龍燈羅雪” and “龍燈紅華”, but I don’t know what the correct pronounciation of them is. I’m going with “Ryūtō Rasetsu” and “Ryūtō Kōka” right now, but they could be wrong.

EDIT: “Ryūtō Rasetsu” is correct, but “Ryūtō Kōka” is wrong, it should be “Ryūtō Benibana” .

This graphic depicts the different play functions:

The first, labelled with ��1″, shows the way you’re supposed to summon the “dragons of fire and ice”, so, the dragon depicted on the Ark.

It’s as simple as turning the Ark to the left for the ice dragon, and to the right for the fire dragon. After turning the Ark, the toy will play a different tune depending on the dragon, and then pushing the trigger will “summon” the dragon of your choice.

The second, labelled with “2″ is the fact that the light will turn into different colors and play different sounds depending on how long and often you push the trigger.

What’s interesting is this part:

This part mentions that you can use other Arks too, who have a different sound, but it also mentions a “Yasha Enma”, without explaining who or what that actually is.

It’s also said that the Ryūtō Yokai Arks can be used with the Yokai Watch Elda, too.

-

And one last merchcandise thing, Corocoro teases that in their next issue they will reveal/talk about a “Yokai Ark Movie Special Pack”, which based on its name I am just going to assume will be a Yokai Ark pack with Arks specifically based on yokai from the movie?

--

Yokai Watch Mobile Games News:

This is going to be brief, since it’s just new yokai that were announced.

First off, Yokai Watch Puni Puni has a new event, which has already started as of the writing of this post, I believe.

It celebrates the game’s 3rd Anniversary, and adds new crossover characters with other notable franchises of Level-5, as well as Shadowside Hi no Shin/Hinozall:

-

And finally, Corocoro has shown off various Halloween-themed yokai variants that are coming to Yokai Watch World.

They’re Majokko Fubuki-hime, Trick Hikikōmori, 8-tōjin Hallowhis, Horror Orochi, Vampire Kyūbi, and Halloween Jibanyan.

The event will start on the 22nd, but of course this game can only be played in Japan.

--

And that’s it for the notable news from this month so far, I hope you found this helpful and/or interesting!

--

[dangoghz]

hello my friends! this is the weirdest thing i will ever ask of anyone! but here i am, nevertheless, asking it! (yes the banner says dangoghs but im danghosts rn it’s only for halloween so o well)

in june of 2017, i made a post (here if it’s after halloween when u see this) saying that whoever reblogged would get a picture of a cat with dan howell’s face photoshopped onto it. this got 2k notes. for two weeks, and may i remind you that my final exams were during those two weeks, i must’ve sent out about a hundred or more of these cats singlehandedly. it was hard work. i had no bots or anything to help me, and i didn’t want to repeat too much so i made over 60 (as well as some my friends made for me) dan cats, or dats. to this day about 1,000 people still have not received their long awaited prizes, and it pains me daily. 

it’s time to stop. it’s time for the dats to rise. it’s time for the apocalypse. and with your help, i can make it happen. here is my plan. pretty much everyone who applies to this will be accepted as long as they’re not a creep. everyone will be assigned a letter or group of numbers. you must search through the reblogs for every person with a url which starts with that letter or number, and send them their dat. obviously we’ll have a message or smth as a caption because no one will remember reblogging that on instinct lol. 

how will it work? basically, i will make a shared google photos album with everyone who applies, and place all 60 original dats in there. you are welcome to either use those or make you own to add to the collection. this folder will become a DATabase for everyone to use. and, it won’t be that much work because there’s so many people helping. as well we will have a gc on telegram! 

how to apply: here are the steps!

reblog this post

fill out this typeform (must b willing to give email n have telegram)

follow the dat blog

if u want u can download the dat sticker set i created for telegram (which is increasing in quantity daily) (lov that dat merch)

that’s all !! i will stop accepting applications on november 20th, which gives u a full month to apply. have fun! live love dats!

[inquiringquilter]

QAL By the Sea - Final Round-Up

Welcome to the setting ideas post and the linky party for the Segment 3 Prize Giveaway and the Grand Prize Giveaway of the QAL By the Sea!

By now you've downloaded all 4 block patterns for Segment 3 of our quilt along, and have made or are making all your blocks. If you’ve missed some, click here to catch up!

Although you don’t need to sew your blocks into a quilt or even sew them into small projects in order to enter any of our giveaways you might want to.

If you plan on making a quilt, I’ve got some setting suggestions for you.

If you’d rather make projects instead of a quilt check out my project ideas for Segment 1 and Segment 2.

Setting Idea 1

In this setting, I added 6” side borders in a bright blue, and 6” finished Snails Trails blocks in several shades of blue. By rotating the blocks, it looks like rolling waves. At the top of the quilt I added some applique to depict a rolling ocean, a tiny sail boat, and a bright sun.

Setting Idea 2

In this setting, I moved the applique banner to the bottom and used a pinky orange batik to create a sunset. For the side borders, I placed several 6” squares of batiks from orange to red to purple. The top border is a strip of dark purple.

If you make your quilt using either setting suggestion, I’d love to see it! You can link up a photo any Wednesday here on my blog (in my weekly Wait Loss Wednesday post) or share one in my Facebook group. If you share a photo through your social media, please tag me so I’ll see it by adding @inquiringquilter to your post text.

Segment 3 Wrap Up

Did you enjoy Segment 3? I sure did!

In this segment, you learned how to sew a curved sail, add raw edge applique and add embroidered touches to a block. Great job!

Here are my four blocks from Segment 3. I can’t wait to see yours!

Drop by other hosts for their wrap up posts!

Abbie @ Sparkle On Becca @ Pretty Piney Jennifer @ Inquiring Quilter (that’s me!) Karen @ Tu-Na Quilts, Travels and Eats Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts Sherry @ Powered by Quilting Sandy @ SandyStar Designs

Link up below to enter the Segment 3 Giveaway

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

To enter for the Segment 3 prize, take a photo of the four Segment 3 blocks that you made then upload your photo to one of these places:

To the linky below (in the Caption, add your name and the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad

To our private Facebook group with the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad

To Instagram (in a single post) with the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad and #partnersindesign.

You must use the hashtag #QALBytheSeaAbroad or #QALBytheSeaUS regardless of where you post (Facebook, Instagram, or the linky below) to be considered a valid entry. Counting the entries for Segment 1 was difficult and we’re making this change to help facilitate the process. Thanks for your cooperation!

Make sure you post before 7:59 AM November 17th.

If you want to link up but you need help, click the Wednesday Wait Loss tab above. It’ll give you step by step instructions on how to use a linky.

Here’s what you might win by making all the Segment 3 blocks. There will be one US and one International winner chosen.

US WINNER

A Fat Quarter bundle of Kismet by Tamarinis for Island Batik

A 60” x 60” batting of Quilter’s Dream Angel. A heavenly Batting made with 100% flame retardant fabric.

INTERNATIONAL WINNER

A one year Premium e-subscription to Online Quilt Magazine

You will gain access to more than 50 pages of great quilting stories, hints, and tips, how-to’s and bonus patterns each and every month.

A pattern from each of these Partners in Design:

Becca @ Pretty Piney: Madras About You

Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing: Blooming Desert

Link up below to enter the Grand Prize Giveaway

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

To enter for the Grand Prize, take a photo of all 12 QAL blocks that you made then upload your photo to one of these places:

To the linky below (in the Caption, add your name and the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad

To our private Facebook group with the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad

To Instagram (in a single post) with the hashtags #QALBytheSeaUS or #QALBytheSeaAbroad and #partnersindesign.

You must use the hashtag #QALBytheSeaAbroad or #QALBytheSeaUS regardless of where you post (Facebook, Instagram, or the linky below) to be considered a valid entry. Counting the entries for Segment 1 was difficult and we’re making this change to help facilitate the process. Thanks for your cooperation!

Make sure you post before 7:59 AM December 1st.

If you want to link up but you need help, click the Wednesday Wait Loss tab above. It’ll give you step by step instructions on how to use a linky.

Here’s what you might win by making all the quilt along blocks. There will be one US and one International winner chosen.

US WINNER

A Fat Quarter bundle of Island Batik Fabric

A Queen size batting from Dream Batting

A Collapsible Sewing Kit Box from Everything Mary

Exclusively from Shabby Fabrics: Blooming Daffodils Wall Hanging Pattern

International Winner

Assorted adhesives from Therm O Web

Visit their blog where you will find free patterns and endless ideas and inspiration as well!

Provided by Shabby Fabrics:

A Festive Roses Fabric Panel by Jackie Robinson for Benartex Fabrics with 1/2 yard each of the coordinating fabrics; Festive Damask Green and Trailing Buds Red.

and

Two packets of Shabby's exclusive Pre-Fused Laser Cut Appliques (Popsicles & Turtles)

A pattern from each of these Partner's in Design:

Jennifer @ Inquiring Quilter (that’s me!) PDF of your choice

Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts PDF of your choice up to $10

Note: To keep the contest portion of the quilt-along fair and fun for everyone, only quilters that make all of the designers' blocks will be eligible for the Grand Prize. Likewise, our Segment Prizes will only be open to those that make all of the designers' blocks in that segment.

The prize giveaways are open to all participants, even international ones! However, you must be 18 years old to enter.

In order to include all eligible participants in our prize giveaway, we are having two separate prizes for each Segment Prize and for the Grand Prize; one for our USA participants and one for our International participants. Due to the demanding cost to ship to Canadian and International addresses, these prizes will be patterns and/or an e-magazine that will be sent in electronic format only. International prizes may be from companies other than what is shown in the sponsor logo.

You can follow me on social media or sign up for my newsletter if you’d like to see other projects I design and make. You’ll find all the ways to follow me at the top of my sidebar.

you might also like

Tell me…will you be entering our giveaway?

[khalilhumam]

Students lead mass protest against dictatorship at Thailand's Democracy Monument

Register at https://mignation.com The Only Social Network for Migrants. #Immigration, #Migration, #Mignation ---

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/students-lead-mass-protest-against-dictatorship-at-thailands-democracy-monument/

Students lead mass protest against dictatorship at Thailand's Democracy Monument

Protesters gathered at the historic Democracy Monument. Photo from Prachatai.

This article is from Prachatai, an independent news site in Thailand, edited and republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. The student group Free Youth Movement organized a public demonstration at the Democracy Monument on the evening of Saturday (July 18) to protest against the government and call for the dissolution of parliament and constitutional amendments, and for the authorities to stop harassing citizens exercising freedom of expression. Before the start of the protest at 5 p.m., more potted plants were added to the decorative garden surrounding the Democracy Monument, filling the space on the footpath. A row of uniformed police officers also stood behind the fence surrounding the monument.

READ MORE about Thailand's political crisis, the rise of the military-backed government, and 2014 coup

A police crowd control unit was seen near the monument at around 6:30 p.m. while a Prachatai reporter also spotted a water cannon truck heading towards the protest site at around 7 p.m. A large number of officers were deployed around the area, as well as stationed inside Satriwithaya School. At one point during the evening, protestors also shouted out that they saw officers on the upper floors of a school building. Officers clashed with protestors early on in the evening as the group tried to remove the metal fencing placed around the protest area. At 9:20 p.m., plainclothes officers attempted to take away two protestors, claiming that the content of their banner was an offense against the monarchy, but other protestors stopped them and forced the officers to leave the scene.

Uniformed officers stood behind the fence around the Monument. Photo and caption by Prachatai.

During the protest, student representatives took turns giving speeches, including Student Union of Thailand (SUT) President Juthatip Sirikhan, student activist Parit Chiwarak, and student activist Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Boonpattaraksa, as well as a student from King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, who said that the 2014 coup reflected that the lack of people’s representation had damaged the rule of law and national prosperity. Panupong Jadnok, one of the activists from the Eastern Youth Leadership group who protested in front of the DVaree Diva Central Rayong Hotel during Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha’s visit on July 15 also joined the protest.

Another summons was delivered to my house today. If you think that you can use these summonses to stop me, you think wrong. People like me are born only once and die only once. I was just holding up a sign saying ‘“Don’t let your guard down, dad’ and you can’t take it. If you can’t take it, then you shouldn’t be prime minister and should just resign.

Human rights lawyer Anon Nampa also gave a speech, leading protestors in a chant in support of political refugees either dead or living, prisoners convicted under the lèse-majesté law, and Tiwagorn Withiton, the Facebook user who posted a picture of himself wearing the viral “I lost faith in the monarchy” T-shirt and who was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital last week. Anon said:

We are calling for the dissolution of parliament because this government came from an unfair election. After the election, the Future Forward Party was dissolved. We are calling for state officials to stop threatening citizens, to not be a slave to dictatorship, and to draft a new constitution, because no constitution anywhere gives a dictator the power to appoint 250 senators to vote for himself to be prime minister. That is shameless.

At 7 p.m., the organizers asked the protestors to turn on the flashlights on their phones and hold them towards the Democracy Monument. According to the organizers, this activity lasted 112 seconds. At 8:45 p.m., representatives of the Free Youth Movement read out a statement, in which they make the following three demands:

-The dissolution of the Palang Pracharat-led parliament which has failed to handle the Covid-19 situation; -An end to harassment by the authorities of people who are exercising their freedom of expression; -The replacement of the current constitution, which favors the regime, with a new one which is meant for the benefit of the people.

They also announced that they will give the government two weeks to respond to their demands, or they will escalate their activities.

Protesters turning on the flashlight of their phones and holding them up towards the Democracy Monument. Photo by Prachatai.

The student group Spring Movement also joined the protest, handing out yellow “missing person” posters with the pictures and names of victims of enforced disappearance, such as Somchai Neelapaijit, Haji Sulong Tomina, Surachai Sae Dan, and Siam Theerawut. The main protest took up about a quarter of the Democracy Monument roundabout, in front of McDonald’s and Satriwithaya School, and grew from around 500 protestors at the beginning to around 2,000. The hashtags #เยาวชนปลดแอก (#FreeYouth) and #respectdemocracyTH trended on Twitter, as they were used to share information about the protest. Around 9:30 p.m., two men were seen running through the crowd and tried to tear down the organizers’ tent, causing a disturbance among the protestors before security personnel were able to control the situation and take the two men out of the area. The organizers previously announced that they would stay at the Democracy Monument until 8 a.m. on Sunday (July 19). However, at midnight, they decided to conclude the protest for safety reasons.

The “missing person” posters handed out by a group of members of Spring Movement. Photo and caption by Prachatai.

Written by Prachatai · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

[iyarpage]

Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction

Google I/O 2018 began this week at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. The I/O conference is Google’s annual opportunity to set a direction for the developer community as well as share with us the technologies and development tools they’ve been working on in the past year. The conference features presentations on Google products and services such as Google Assistant, Google apps like Google Maps and Google News, Chrome and ChromeOS, Augmented Reality, and of course, lots of Android. :]

The conference starts each year with two keynote presentations, the first a feature-focused presentation led by company CEO Sundar Pichai, and the second a developer-focused keynote. One of the first sessions after the two keynotes is What’s New in Android, often called “the Android Keynote”.

The opening keynote focused primarily on Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) advancements, and had recurring themes of responsibility and saving time. The Google Assistant was one of the main technologies discussed, and another recurring theme was using the Assistant to improve your Digital Wellbeing.

The Developer Keynote started with a review of new Android features such as App Bundles and Android Jetpack. It then moved on to developer-oriented discussions of Google Assistant, Web apps and running Linux on ChromeOS, an expansion of Material Design called Material Theming, and new Firebase and AR advancements.

The What’s New in Android session gave a brief introduction to each of the topics that were being announced or covered at the conference for Android, and along the way pointed you to the sessions you need to see to learn more.

The most exciting announcements from the keynotes were:

Google Duplex: Google demoed the Google Assistant literally making a phone call for you. Google said that they’re “still working” to perfect this capability, but the the sample calls they played were jaw dropping in their naturalness and possibilities. Google is planning on simple use cases in the near future. A use case I could imagine would be having the Assistant call a number to talk through an automated system and stay on hold for you, and then notify you when the person on the other end is ready while telling them you’ll be right back.

Computer Vision and Google Lens: A pretty sweet AR demo in Google Maps was shown. The demo overlayed digital content on the real world over your camera feed from within the Maps app, while still showing you directions at the bottom of the screen, making it much easier to find your way in unknown places.

Android Jetpack: The Jetpack incorporates a number of Google libraries for Android into one package, including the Support Library and Android Architecture Components. Having them all under one name should simplify discoverability of the features and encourage more developers to use them in their apps.

MLKit: MLKit is a library that is Firebase-hosted and makes it easier to incorporate Google’s advanced ML into your apps, including text recognition and image labeling. There was a pretty sweet demo of grabbing the name of an item off a menu, which you could then search for a description of. And its available for both iOS and Android. MLKit, CoreML, ARCore, ARKit: hey what’s in a name? :]

App Actions and Slices: These will increase engagement with your app by helping you embed pieces of the app into other parts of Android like Search and Google Assistant results. The options go far beyond a simple icon for your app on the system share sheet.

ARCore and Sceneform: The original ARCore API required either using a framework like Unity or working with lower level OpenGL code. Sceneform promises to make it easier to code AR interactions into your apps.

New Voices for Google Assistant: ML training has advanced to the point that less work is required to incorporate new voices, and Google’s working with John Legend to create a voice for him. In the future, you may be able to use your own voice or select from popular celebrity voices. Would love to have a Google Assistant voice for James Earl Jones! :]

The rest of this post summarizes the three keynotes, in case you may not have had a chance or had time to watch them. At the bottom of the post are links to the actual keynote videos on the Google Developers YouTube channel, and I encourage you to watch them for yourself. And then also dive into the session videos on YouTube, once they’re available.

Opening Keynote

The keynote began with a video of little multi-colored cube creatures with some type of glow inside them. Kind of like intelligent building blocks. The video ended with the banner “Make good things together”.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai then took the stage and announced that there were over 7,000 attendees and a live stream, as well as a lot to cover. He joked about a “major bug” in a key product, getting the cheese wrong in a cheese burger emoji and the foam wrong in a beer emoji. :]

He then discussed the recurring Google theme of AI being an important inflection point in computing. He said that the conference would discuss the impact of AI advances, and that these advances would have to be navigated “carefully and deliberately”.

AI

The AI portion of the keynote started by reviewing some key fields in which Google has made advancements:

In healthcare, not only can retina images be used to diagnose diabetic retinopathy in developing countries, but the same eye images can also non-invasively predict cardiovascular risk. And AI can now predict medical events like chance of readmission for a patient. The possibilities for AI in the healthcare world seem to be just scratching the surface of using big data to improve the medical industry.

Sundar showed two impressive demos of using AI to improve accessibility. In the first, those with hearing impairments can be helped in situations like people talking over each other on closed-captioning, as AI can now disambiguate voices. The second was using AI to add new languages like morse code to the Google keyboard Gboard, helping those that require alternative languages to communicate.

Gmail has been redesigned with an AI-based feature called smart compose, which uses ML to start suggesting phrases and then you hit tab and keep autocompleting. The short demo in the presentation was pretty impressive, with Gmail figuring out what you next want to write as you type.

Google Photos was built from the ground up with AI, and over 5 billion photos are viewed by users every day. It has a new feature Suggested Actions, which are smart actions for a photo in context, things like “Share with Lauren”, “Fix brightness”, “Fix document” to a PDF, “Color pop”, and “Colorize” for black and white photos. All in all a very practical example of the combination of computer vision and AI.

Google has also been investing in scale and hardware for AI and ML, introducing TPU 3.0, with liquid cooling introduced in data centers and giant pods that achieve 100 petaflops, or 8x last year’s performance, and allow for larger and more accurate models.

These AI advancements, especially in healthcare and accessibility, clearly demonstrate Google taking the AI responsibility in a serious way. And features like those added to Gmail and Google Photos are just two simple examples of using AI to save time.

Google Assistant

Google wants the Assistant to be natural and comfortable to talk to. Using the DeepMind WaveNet technology, they’re adding 6 new voices to Google Assistant. WaveNet shortens studio time needed for voice recording and the new models still capture the richness of a voice.

Scott Huffman came on stage to discuss Assistant being on 500M devices, with 40 auto brands and 5000 device manufacturers. Soon it will be in 30 languages and 80 countries. Scott discussed needing the Assistant to be naturally conversational and visually assistive and that it needs to understand social dynamics. He introduced Continued Conversation and Multiple Actions (called coordination reduction in linguistics) as features for the voice Assistant. He also discussed family improvements, introducing Pretty Please, which helps keep kids from being rude in their requests to the Assistant. Assistant responds to positive conversation with polite reinforcement.

Lillian Rincon then came on to discuss Smart Displays. She showed watching YouTube by voice and cooking and recipes by voice on the smart display devices. They’ll also have video calling, connect to smart home devices, and give access to Google Maps. Lillian then reviewed a reimagined Assistant experience on phones, which can now have a rich and immersive response to requests. These include smart home device requests with controls like adjusting temperature, and things like “order my usual from Starbucks”. There are many partners for Food pick-up and delivery via Google Assistant. The Assistant can also be swiped up to get a visual representation of your day, including reminders, notes, and lists. And in Google Maps, you can use voice to send your ETA to a recipient.

Google Duplex

Sundar came back on stage to discuss using Google Assistant to connect users to businesses “in a good way”. He noted that 60% of small businesses in the US do not have an online booking system. He then gave a pretty amazing demo of Google Assistant making a call for you in the background for an appointment such as a haircut. On a successful call, you get a notification that the appointment was successfully scheduled. Other examples are restaurant reservations and making a doctor appointment while caring for a sick child. Incredible!

The calls don’t often go as expected, and Google is still developing the technology. They want to “handle the interaction gracefully.” One thing they will do in the coming weeks is make such calls on they’re own from Google to do things like update holiday hours for a business, which will help all customers immediately with improved information.

Digital Wellbeing

At this point the keynote introduced the idea of Digital Wellbeing, which is Google turning their attention to keeping your digital life from making too negative an impact on your physical life. The principles are:

Understand your habits

Focus on what matters

Switch off and wind down

Find balance for your family

A good example is getting a reminder on your devices to do things like taking a break from YouTube. Another is an Android P feature called Android Dashboard, which give full visibility into how you are spending your time on your device.

Google News

Trystan Upstill came on stage to announce a number of new features for the Google News platform, and the focus was on:

Keep up with the news you care about

Understanding the full story

Enjoy and support the news sources you love

Reinforcement learning is used throughout the News app. Newscasts in the app are kind of like a preview of a story. There’s a Full Coverage button, an invitation to learn more from multiple sources and formats. Publishers are front and center throughout the app, and there’s a Subscribe with Google feature, a collaboration with over 60 publishers that lets you subscribe to their news across platforms all through Google. Pretty cool!

What’s going on with Android?

Dave Burke then came on stage to discuss Android P and how it’s an important first step for putting AI and ML at the core of the Android OS.

The ML features being brought to Android P are:

Adaptive Battery: using ML to optimize battery life by figuring out which apps you’re likely to use.

Adaptive Brightness: improving auto-brightness using ML.

App Actions: predicting actions you may wish to take depending on things like whether your headphones are plugged in.

Slices: interactive snippets of app UI, laying the groundwork with search and Google Assistant.

MLKit: a new set of APIs available through Firebase that include: image labeling, text recognition, face detection, barcode scanning, landmark recognition, and smart reply. MLKit is cross-platform on both Android and iOS.

Dave then introduced new gesture-based navigation and the new recent app UI in Android P, and new controls like the volume control.

Sameer Samat came on to discuss in more detail how Android fits into the idea of Digital Wellbeing. The new Android Dashboard helps you to understand habits. You can drill down within the dashboard to see what you’re doing when and how often. There is an App Timer with limits. And Do Not Disturb improvements like the new Shush mode: turn you phone over on a table and hear no sounds or vibrations except from Starred Contacts. There’s a Wind Down mode with Google Assistant, that puts your phone in gray-scale to help ease you into a restful sleep.

Lastly, an Android P beta was announced, for Pixel phones and devices from seven other manufacturers, and available today. Many of the new Android P features introduce ways to keep your mobile phone usage from taking over your entire life but still being meaningful and useful.

Google Maps

Jen Fitzpatrick gave demos of the new For You feature in Google Maps, which uses ML to see trending events around you, and also a matching score that uses ML to tell you how well a suggestion matches your interests.

Aparna Chennapragada then gave a pretty cool demo of combining the device camera and computer vision to reimagine navigation by showing digital content as AR overlays on the real world. You can instantly know where you are and still see the map and stay oriented. GPS alone is not enough, instead it’s a Visual Positioning System. She also showed new Google Lens features that are integrated right inside the camera app on many devices:

Smart Text Selection: Recognize and understand words and copy and paste from the real world into the phone.

Style Match: Give me things like this.

Real-time Results: Both on device and cloud compute.

Self-Driving Cars

The opening keynote wrapped up with a presentation by Waymo CEO John Krafcik. He discussed an Early Rider program taking place in Phoenix, AZ.

Dmitri Dolgov from Waymo then discussed how self-driving car ML touches Perception, Prediction, Decision-making, and Mapping. He discussed having trained for 6M miles driven on public roads and 5B miles in simulation. He noted that Waymo uses TensorFlow and Google TPUs, with learning 15x more efficient with TPUs. They’ve now moved to using simulations to train self-driving cars in difficult weather like snow.

Developer Keynote

The Developer Keynote shifts the conference from a consumer and product focus towards a discussion of how developers will create new applications using all the new technologies from Google. It’s a great event to get a sense for which of the new tools will be discussed at the conference.

Jason Titus took the stage to start the Developer Keynote. He first gave a shoutout to all the GDGs and GDEs around the world. He mentioned that one key goal for the Google developer support team is to make Google AI technology available to everyone. For example, with TensorFlow, dropping models into your apps.

Android

Stephanie Cuthbertson then came up to detail all the latest and greatest on developing for Android. The Android developer community is growing, with the number of developers using the Android IDE almost tripling in two years. She emphasized that developer feedback drives the new features, like Kotlin last year. 35% of pro developers are now using Kotlin. Google is committed to Kotlin for the long term. Stephanie walked though current focuses:

Innovative distribution with Android App Bundles that optimizes your application size for 99% of devices and are almost no work for developers.

Faster development with the Android Jetpack that includes Architecture, UI, Foundation, and Behavior components (see more below in “What’s New in Android”) with new features including WorkManager for asynchronous tasks and the Navigation Editor for visualizing app navigation flow.

Increased engagement with App Actions and Slices, interactive mini-snippets of your app.

Stephanie then mentioned that Android Things is now 1.0 for commercial devices, and that attendees would be receiving an Android Things developer kit!

Google Assistant

Brad Abrams discussed Google Assistant actions. There are over 1M actions available on lots of categories of devices. He described a new era of conversational computing, and mentioned the Dialogflow library that builds natural and rich conversational experiences. He said you can think of an Assistant action as a companion experience to the main features of your app.

Web and Chrome

Tal Oppenheimer came on stage to discuss the Web platform and new features in ChromeOS. She emphasized that Google’s focus is to make the platform more powerful, but at the same time make web development easier. She discussed Google’s push on Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) that have reliable performance, push notifications, and can be added to the home screen. She discussed other Web technologies like Service Worker, WebAssembly, Lighthouse 3.0, and AMP. Tal then wrapped up by announcing that ChromeOS is gaining the ability to run full Linux desktop apps, which will eventually also include Android Studio. So ChromeOS will be a one-stop platform for consuming and developing both Web and Android apps. Sweet!

Material Theming

There was a lot of discussion prior to I/O about a potential Material Design 2.0. The final name is Material Theming, as presented by Rich Fulcher. Material Theming adds flexibility to Material Design allowing you to distinguish your brand to provide customized experiences. You can create a unified and adaptable design system for your app, including color, typography, and shape across your products.

There’s a new redline viewer for dimensions, padding and hex color values as part of two new tools:

Material Theme editor, a plugin for Sketch.

Material Gallery, with which you can review and comment on design iterations.

There are also now the open source Material Components for Android, iOS, Web, and Flutter, all with Material Theming.

Progress in AI

Jia Li came on to give more developer announcements related to AI. She discussed TPU 3.0 and Google’s ongoing commitment to AI hardware. She walked through Cloud Text-to-Speech, DeepMind Wavenet, and Dialogflow Enterprise Edition. She discussed TensorFlow.js for web and TensorFlowLite for mobile and Raspberry Pi. She finished up by giving more information on two new libraries:

Cloud AutoML, which can automate the creation of ML models. For example, to recognize images unique to your application without writing any code.

MLKit, the SDK to provide Google ML to mobile developers through Firebase, including text recognition and smart reply.

Firebase

Francis Ma discussed the Firebase goals of helping mobile developers solve key problems across the lifecycle of an app to build better apps, improve app quality, and grow your business. He mentioned that there are 1.2M active Firebase apps every month. He discussed the following Firebase technologies:

Fabric + Firebase. Google has brought Crashlytics into Firebase and integrated it with Google Analytics. Firebase is not just a platform for app infrastructure, but also lets you understand and improve your app.

MLKit for text recognition, image labeling, face detection, barcode scanning, and landmark recognition.

He mentioned that the ML technology works both on device or in the cloud, and that you can bring in custom TensorFlow models too. You upload to Google cloud infrastructure, and you can then update your model without redeploying your entire app.

ARCore

Nathan Martz came on to discuss ARCore, which launched as 1.0 three months ago. There are amazing apps already, like building a floor-plan from walking around a home. He announced a major update today, with three incredible new features:

Sceneform, which makes it easy to create AR applications or add to apps you’ve already built. There’s a Sceneform SDK, an expressive API with a powerful renderer and seamless support for 3D assets.

Augmented Images, which allow you to attach AR content and experiences to physical content in the real world. You can compute 3D position in real time.

Cloud Anchors for ARCore, where multiple devices create a shared understanding of the world. Available on both Android and iOS.

What’s New in Android

As is tradition, the What’s New in Android session was run by Chet Haase, Dan Sandler, and Romain Guy. They describe the session as the “Android Keynote”. In the session, they summarized the long list of new features in Android and directed you to the sessions in which you can learn more.

The long list of new features in tooling and Android P is summarized here:

Android App Bundles to reduce app size.

Android JetPack includes Architecture, UI, Foundation and Behavior components. Mainly a repackaging and you’re already familiar with most of what’s in it, but they’re adding to it, and also refactoring the support library to be AndroidX. New features are Paging, Navigation, WorkManager, Slices, and Android KTX.

Android Test now has first class Kotlin support, with new APIs to reduce boilerplate and increase readability.

Battery Improvements include app standby buckets and background restrictions that a user can set.

Background Input & Privacy, where in background there is no access to the microphone or camera.

Many Kotlin performance improvements from ART, D8 & R8. Increased nullability annotation coverage in the support library and libcore, and easier to use platform APIs. Android KTX, to take advantage of Kotlin language features in Android APIs.

Mockable Framework, and Mockito can now mock final and static methods.

Background Text Measurement which offloads and pre-computes text measurement on a background thread so there is less work done on the UI thread.

Magnifier for text but also an API for other use cases.

Baseline Distance between text views for easier matching with design specs.

Smart Linkify to detect custom link entities using ML in the background.

Indoor Location using android.net.wifi.rtt.* for WiFi Round-Trip-Time APIs.

Accessibility app navigation improvements.

Security improvements via a unified biometric dialog, stronger protection for private keys, and a StrongBox backend.

Enterprise changes that include switching apps between profiles, locking any app to the device screen, ephemeral users, and a true kiosk mode to hide the navigation bar.

Display Cutout, aka the notch, using WindowInsets. There are modes for “never”, “default”, and “shortEdges” with variations

Slices are a new approach to app remote content, either within an app or between apps. They use structured data and flexible templates and are interactive and updatable. They’re addressable by a content URI and backwards-compatible in Android Jetpack all the way back to API 19.

App Actions are related to slices and act as deep links into your app. They are “shortcuts with parameters” and act as a “visible Intent”.

Notifications have a new messaging style and allow images stickers and a smart reply UI.

Deprecation Policy has been updated and apps will soon be required to target newer versions of Android, for security and performance. As of August 2018 new apps must target API 26 or above. November 2018 for app updates. And in August 2019, 64-bit ABI will be required.

App Compatibility means no more calls to private APIs.

NDK r17 includes the Neural Network API, JNI Shared Memory API, Rootless ASAN, and support for UBSAN. It removes support for ARMv5, MIPS, and MIPS64. NDK r18 will remove gcc support, instead you must use clang.

Graphics and Media changes include camera API improvements like OIS timestamps and display based flash, support for external USB cameras, and multi-camera support. There is an ImageDecoder, support for HDR VP9, HDR rendering on compatible hardware, and HEIF support the HEVC/H.265 codec, a container for multiple images.

Vulkan 1.1 has lots of improvements to the graphics API, including multi-GPU support and protected content.

Neural Network API 1.1 is a C API for ML and on-device inference. TensorFlow is built on top of it, and it’s hardware-accelerated on the Pixel 2.

ARCore additions such as Sceneform.

ChromeOS now allows Linux apps and soon Android Studio on ChromeOS, for a full-blown Android development environment.

Summary

Overall, the keynotes saw Google proudly representing their AI prowess. They are making incredible and futuristic advances while also attempting to ensure that the advances in AI are used in responsible ways for the benefit of all (except maybe certain competitors :] ).

Google is spreading their AI capabilities and expertise across the entire business, and at the same making it easier for developers to use in their own apps.

Google AI is clearly ahead of competitors in terms of performance and accuracy. By helping developers integrate the technology into more and more apps, Google and its platforms like Android will maintain their lead and keep bringing these futuristic features to more and more people around the world.

Where to go from here?

There was so much to digest in just these three sessions! You can see them for yourself at these links

Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogfYd705cRs

Developer Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flU42CTF3MQ

What’s New in Android: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHsnvhcf78

There’s a nice short introduction to Android Jetpack here:

Introducing Jetpack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8U5Rtcr5UU

And here are some links given out during the keynotes to various new technologies:

http://g.co/androidjetpack

http://g.co/androidstudio for 3.2 Canary

http://g.co/slices

http://actions.google.com

http://g.co/cloudtpu

https://github.com/material-components/

http://developer.google.com/ar

Some condensed versions of the opening keynote are here:

Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeF0zpT4gNE

The Verge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUvbiWLwFI

Finally, you can see the full Google I/O 2018 schedule here, with descriptions of the various sessions that you may want to later check out on YouTube:

https://events.google.com/io/schedule/

Two which you definitely want to see if your an Android developer are:

Modern Android Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMw7MEgADk

What’s New in Android Development Tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxAZk7A7OkM

What did you think of all the announcements made on the first day of Google I/O 2018? Share your thoughts in the forum below.

The post Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction appeared first on Ray Wenderlich.

Google I/O 2018 Keynote Reaction published first on https://medium.com/@koresol

[cbilluminati]

There have been reports that Marvel Comics will be going under a reset of sorts in order to directly compete with DC Comics and their popular REBIRTH line. This is a good idea! Not only has Marvel’s sale dipped according to the only numbers we’re allowed to see, but DC has overtaken their rivals for months now in sales, market, and quality. Marvel’s overall quality has suffered since the end of Secret Wars, and there are many reasons for it. One of the biggest reasons, however, is the fact that many of their standard, most popular characters are currently unrecognizable to one extent or another.

While Marvel has put crazy spins on their A-List characters in the past, outside of line-wide events I’m not sure we’ve ever seen so many widely famous and popular characters so wildly different from their traditional personas at the same time, and it’s become part of a larger issue for the publisher. This alienates current fans and new readers alike, and these are just the top of list of culprits over at the House of Ideas. So, without further ado, that’s not Wolverine, he’s not really Spidey anymore, and that definitely ain’t Cap, with Outright Geekery’s Top o’ the Lot: 6 Famous Marvel Characters Non-Readers Wouldn’t Recognize.

Honorable Mention: Spider-Man

This article isn’t meant to be a bash or even a critique on Marvel’s line overall. The facts are just that. Marvel’s sales are down, the negative critical reception is up, and changes should be made. But Spider-Man is still Spider-Man…kind of.

Peter Parker is still wearing the suit, swinging around, doing his superhero thing, but he’s also a CEO in control of a billion dollar company, and it’s weird. Gone is the photographer barely getting by with his day job while striving to do well in his night job. He’s not that Peter anymore, and although there’s an interesting story going on, it’s a book that certainly needs more of a traditional tone after Slott’s very long run as writer. Miles Morales is turning out to be a shining star as he continues to settle into the Marvel Universe proper, but having Peter back to where Peter belongs is long overdue.

#gallery-0-7 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-7 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

6. Iron Man

Because of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone knows who Iron Man is. It’s Tony Stark, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, genius. But those people would be wrong, as Tony has been replaced by Riri Williams, a super-smart firecracker of a character with a lot of appeal. Marvel killed off Tony at the end of their last event, and have replaced the well-known hero with a black girl who has plenty to prove.

Riri as Iron Man has actually been pretty fun, and her A.I. counterpart is the digitized form of Tony Stark himself, but she’s still not the Iron Man most people know. And this is a problem. No, it’s not a problem because Riri is black or a girl, it’s a problem because Iron Man is very well-known as a (wait for it) man. New readers looking to get into a character they learned to love from the movies will have no idea whatsoever who Riri even is. This makes for a huge obstacle for gaining new readers, and the sales numbers support the fact that this partuicular character change simply isn’t working to attract new readers.

5. Captain America

Every aspect of this entry has made big news and caused major uproar, but it’s all unfounded nonsense. Sam Wilson makes a terrific Captain America and Steve Roger’s current predicament as brain-washed member of Hydra is certainly temporary, but it’s not nearly as temporary enough.

There’s a specific problem with this entry that makes it unlike the others. Like the other entries on this list, Steve Rogers was in fact replaced by another character, but that really wasn’t a big deal. Captain America becoming a vile, evil, villainous member of the same organization readers have watched him fight against for decades is very much a problem. How does a comic book fan explain a Captain America who’s now a member of – for all intents and purposes – the Nazis? The more important question, however, is how do you get a non-comic book reader who only know Cap via the movies and his 70 years of backstory to pick up a book like that? Answer: You don’t.

#gallery-0-8 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-8 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

4. Thor

Thor is a tough addition to this list, but hear me out. The story of Odinson losing his Worthiness via a Nick Fury whisper leaving him hammer-less was a terrific story. His long time co-star Jane Foster picking up Mjolnir and donning the armor, helmet, and name of the God(ess) Of Thunder has always been a spectacular tale penned by superstar writer Jason Aaron. It also makes it difficult for new readers wanting to read Thor to pick up the series and have any clue at all what’s going on, but there’s also the problem that the other Thor never really left.

The original Thor never really left the Thor title. While the new, Jane Foster Thor is indeed the star of the series, Aaron never truly let go of Odinson. He appeared sporadically throughout the series, was mentioned repeatedly in terms of calling out the supposed usurper Foster, and eventually got his very own mini-series (also penned by Aaron) as he searches for his lost Worthiness all alone. The new Thor has been amazing, but unrecognizable to new readers, while the old Thor hung around just enough to keep current readers hoping that the other Thor would be back eventually. And, oh look! There he is. Marvel, of course, wanted to have its cake and eat it too by changing Thor (arguably for the better) but also kept the other Thor around in what felt like an odd insurance policy against a poor reception. The worst part? Old Thor is getting a new hammer, making him a new Thor, which not only puts Jane Foster back in the shadow of the original, but changes the original to the point where new reader aren’t really going to know who he is either.

3. Hulk

Bruce Banner is arguably the character who saw the most success in the comic because of Marvel’s series of films (maybe Black Widow). But Bruce is dead in the comics. In his place is the absurdly named Totally Awesome Hulk, a teenage version of the green monster, who isn’t a monster at all. Cool, calm, and collected, this Hulk is a complete 180 from what the majority of new Marvel fans know from the screen. It doesn’t take Hulkbuster armor to beat this kid, while hacking into his online video game account is sure to stop him in his tracks.

This one particularly upsets me because Banner Hulk underwent dozens of changes to his persona, his attitude, his look, and even the language he’s able to use while Hulking Out. Yet, Marvel decided to take the wonderfully appealing character Amadeus Cho and shoehorn him into a role that just didn’t need to be changed. Cho was a terrific teenaged, Asian-American character before Marvel forced him into the role of Hulk. It was completely unnecessary. And, yes again, no one knows who this kid is! Everyone knows who the Hulk is, but no one knows who this Hulk is.

2. The Wasp

This is the craziest one to me. The Wasp is a founding member of the Avengers, although she never appeared in Marvel’s Avengers films. The character has, however, appeared (kind of) in Marvel’s Ant-Man movie, and has earned a title role in the upcoming sequel Ant-Man and The Wasp. Previously The Wasp moniker was adopted by Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man), but is now claimed by Pym’s young daughter.

This change up has actually been a great read, as the young woman in the book is a science nerd with a very high intelligence. She’s a wonderful role-model for young girls, and a great example of what true equality in fiction looks like. But no one is going to know that who isn’t already reading comics, and those people don’t really care. Furthermore, if any movie character needs a bit more of a spotlight in the comics to help push their onscreen version it’s The Wasp. Onscreen she’s a middle-aged scientist with a love interest for Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man character. In the comics she’s a newly discovered daughter to a B-Lister with nothing really at all going for her but a familiar name.

1. Wolverine

The worst there is at being a subject of this list, Wolverine has so many problems in the comics right now, especially when put into the context of how people have become familiarized with these hugely popular characters. Maybe you’ve heard about the Logan movie breaking Box Offices, the internet, and our hearts. This film stars an old man Logan and a young girl called X-23. But instead of these characters doing what they did best on the screen, they’re just being that dead guy in the comics.

Don’t get me wrong, X-23 is an awesome character. But by giving her the Wolverine moniker and the yellow-and-blue suit (soon to be given other classic black-and-greys) just keeps her in the shadow of a dead mutant. She had her own thing going on, it was cool, and this just feels like cheap marketing gone wrong. And Old Man Logan doesn’t even feel like an old man, he just feels like a grey-haired Wolverine. And how does that even work? Plus, neither of these characters even look like their on-screen versions. Hot iron, Marvel: Strike it!

See a mistake? Disagree with the choices? Let us know!

Send emails to OutrightGeekery@Gmail.com Find us on Facebook at the Outright Geekery Page Join the discussion at the Comic Book Illuminati Leave us a comment below

TotL – 6 Famous Marvel Characters Non-Readers Wouldn’t Recognize

There have been reports that Marvel Comics will be going under a reset of sorts in order to directly compete with DC Comics and their popular REBIRTH line.

TotL – 6 Famous Marvel Characters Non-Readers Wouldn’t Recognize There have been reports that Marvel Comics will be going under a reset of sorts in order to directly compete with DC Comics and their popular REBIRTH line.

[outright-geekery]

There have been reports that Marvel Comics will be going under a reset of sorts in order to directly compete with DC Comics and their popular REBIRTH line. This is a good idea! Not only has Marvel’s sale dipped according to the only numbers we’re allowed to see, but DC has overtaken their rivals for months now in sales, market, and quality. Marvel’s overall quality has suffered since the end of Secret Wars, and there are many reasons for it. One of the biggest reasons, however, is the fact that many of their standard, most popular characters are currently unrecognizable to one extent or another.

While Marvel has put crazy spins on their A-List characters in the past, outside of line-wide events I’m not sure we’ve ever seen so many widely famous and popular characters so wildly different from their traditional personas at the same time, and it’s become part of a larger issue for the publisher. This alienates current fans and new readers alike, and these are just the top of list of culprits over at the House of Ideas. So, without further ado, that’s not Wolverine, he’s not really Spidey anymore, and that definitely ain’t Cap, with Outright Geekery’s Top o’ the Lot: 6 Famous Marvel Characters Non-Readers Wouldn’t Recognize.

Honorable Mention: Spider-Man

This article isn’t meant to be a bash or even a critique on Marvel’s line overall. The facts are just that. Marvel’s sales are down, the negative critical reception is up, and changes should be made. But Spider-Man is still Spider-Man…kind of.

Peter Parker is still wearing the suit, swinging around, doing his superhero thing, but he’s also a CEO in control of a billion dollar company, and it’s weird. Gone is the photographer barely getting by with his day job while striving to do well in his night job. He’s not that Peter anymore, and although there’s an interesting story going on, it’s a book that certainly needs more of a traditional tone after Slott’s very long run as writer. Miles Morales is turning out to be a shining star as he continues to settle into the Marvel Universe proper, but having Peter back to where Peter belongs is long overdue.

#gallery-0-7 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-7 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

6. Iron Man

Because of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone knows who Iron Man is. It’s Tony Stark, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, genius. But those people would be wrong, as Tony has been replaced by Riri Williams, a super-smart firecracker of a character with a lot of appeal. Marvel killed off Tony at the end of their last event, and have replaced the well-known hero with a black girl who has plenty to prove.

Riri as Iron Man has actually been pretty fun, and her A.I. counterpart is the digitized form of Tony Stark himself, but she’s still not the Iron Man most people know. And this is a problem. No, it’s not a problem because Riri is black or a girl, it’s a problem because Iron Man is very well-known as a (wait for it) man. New readers looking to get into a character they learned to love from the movies will have no idea whatsoever who Riri even is. This makes for a huge obstacle for gaining new readers, and the sales numbers support the fact that this partuicular character change simply isn’t working to attract new readers.

5. Captain America

Every aspect of this entry has made big news and caused major uproar, but it’s all unfounded nonsense. Sam Wilson makes a terrific Captain America and Steve Roger’s current predicament as brain-washed member of Hydra is certainly temporary, but it’s not nearly as temporary enough.

There’s a specific problem with this entry that makes it unlike the others. Like the other entries on this list, Steve Rogers was in fact replaced by another character, but that really wasn’t a big deal. Captain America becoming a vile, evil, villainous member of the same organization readers have watched him fight against for decades is very much a problem. How does a comic book fan explain a Captain America who’s now a member of – for all intents and purposes – the Nazis? The more important question, however, is how do you get a non-comic book reader who only know Cap via the movies and his 70 years of backstory to pick up a book like that? Answer: You don’t.

#gallery-0-8 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-8 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

4. Thor

Thor is a tough addition to this list, but hear me out. The story of Odinson losing his Worthiness via a Nick Fury whisper leaving him hammer-less was a terrific story. His long time co-star Jane Foster picking up Mjolnir and donning the armor, helmet, and name of the God(ess) Of Thunder has always been a spectacular tale penned by superstar writer Jason Aaron. It also makes it difficult for new readers wanting to read Thor to pick up the series and have any clue at all what’s going on, but there’s also the problem that the other Thor never really left.

The original Thor never really left the Thor title. While the new, Jane Foster Thor is indeed the star of the series, Aaron never truly let go of Odinson. He appeared sporadically throughout the series, was mentioned repeatedly in terms of calling out the supposed usurper Foster, and eventually got his very own mini-series (also penned by Aaron) as he searches for his lost Worthiness all alone. The new Thor has been amazing, but unrecognizable to new readers, while the old Thor hung around just enough to keep current readers hoping that the other Thor would be back eventually. And, oh look! There he is. Marvel, of course, wanted to have its cake and eat it too by changing Thor (arguably for the better) but also kept the other Thor around in what felt like an odd insurance policy against a poor reception. The worst part? Old Thor is getting a new hammer, making him a new Thor, which not only puts Jane Foster back in the shadow of the original, but changes the original to the point where new reader aren’t really going to know who he is either.

3. Hulk

Bruce Banner is arguably the character who saw the most success in the comic because of Marvel’s series of films (maybe Black Widow). But Bruce is dead in the comics. In his place is the absurdly named Totally Awesome Hulk, a teenage version of the green monster, who isn’t a monster at all. Cool, calm, and collected, this Hulk is a complete 180 from what the majority of new Marvel fans know from the screen. It doesn’t take Hulkbuster armor to beat this kid, while hacking into his online video game account is sure to stop him in his tracks.

This one particularly upsets me because Banner Hulk underwent dozens of changes to his persona, his attitude, his look, and even the language he’s able to use while Hulking Out. Yet, Marvel decided to take the wonderfully appealing character Amadeus Cho and shoehorn him into a role that just didn’t need to be changed. Cho was a terrific teenaged, Asian-American character before Marvel forced him into the role of Hulk. It was completely unnecessary. And, yes again, no one knows who this kid is! Everyone knows who the Hulk is, but no one knows who this Hulk is.

2. The Wasp

This is the craziest one to me. The Wasp is a founding member of the Avengers, although she never appeared in Marvel’s Avengers films. The character has, however, appeared (kind of) in Marvel’s Ant-Man movie, and has earned a title role in the upcoming sequel Ant-Man and The Wasp. Previously The Wasp moniker was adopted by Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man), but is now claimed by Pym’s young daughter.

This change up has actually been a great read, as the young woman in the book is a science nerd with a very high intelligence. She’s a wonderful role-model for young girls, and a great example of what true equality in fiction looks like. But no one is going to know that who isn’t already reading comics, and those people don’t really care. Furthermore, if any movie character needs a bit more of a spotlight in the comics to help push their onscreen version it’s The Wasp. Onscreen she’s a middle-aged scientist with a love interest for Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man character. In the comics she’s a newly discovered daughter to a B-Lister with nothing really at all going for her but a familiar name.

1. Wolverine

The worst there is at being a subject of this list, Wolverine has so many problems in the comics right now, especially when put into the context of how people have become familiarized with these hugely popular characters. Maybe you’ve heard about the Logan movie breaking Box Offices, the internet, and our hearts. This film stars an old man Logan and a young girl called X-23. But instead of these characters doing what they did best on the screen, they’re just being that dead guy in the comics.

Don’t get me wrong, X-23 is an awesome character. But by giving her the Wolverine moniker and the yellow-and-blue suit (soon to be given other classic black-and-greys) just keeps her in the shadow of a dead mutant. She had her own thing going on, it was cool, and this just feels like cheap marketing gone wrong. And Old Man Logan doesn’t even feel like an old man, he just feels like a grey-haired Wolverine. And how does that even work? Plus, neither of these characters even look like their on-screen versions. Hot iron, Marvel: Strike it!

See a mistake? Disagree with the choices? Let us know!

Send emails to OutrightGeekery@Gmail.com Find us on Facebook at the Outright Geekery Page Join the discussion at the Comic Book Illuminati Leave us a comment below

TotL – 6 Famous Marvel Characters Non-Readers Wouldn’t Recognize There have been reports that Marvel Comics will be going under a reset of sorts in order to directly compete with DC Comics and their popular REBIRTH line.