#unfilled split

[kt-splits]

Regarding the Danganronpa Space A La Mode arti mate collab.

Reservations close December 7th

I've been so focused on the Danganronpa ebten pre-orders, the arti mate slipped my mind. 😭

Here's the collab offerings as follows:

Badges $4.50/ea

Acrylic cards $6/ea

Polaroids $3/ea

Big Acrylic stands $20/ea

Big Acrylic keychains $11/ea

Faux leather cases $20/ea

Mugs $16/ea

If interested feel free to reach out and reserve!

[irisbleufic]

This new story is in answer to the anon who wants the backstory on how Rashid and Sam met and became a couple (since I only show them as an established couple so far in this series). This is Part 22 of Caldera, but can also be read as a stand-alone. Currently 6 out of 10 chapters posted. It will cover a number of scattered instances from ca. 2007 (Rashid is a teenager in the prologue) until the two weeks in Dubai; it’ll end just after where “Not the Good Guys” begins.

Never a Mercy (2024-12-21)

Hand-Picked (2024-12-22)

False Modesty (2024-12-23)

Digital Regrets (2024-12-24)

Clear a Path (2024-12-25)

Job Interview (NEW, 2024-12-26)

TEASER:

[Armand] unfolds his long, delicate fingers, revealing fingernails like Sam’s—unfiled, almost claw-like.  “If you’re amenable, let’s get started.  I must apologize for how this begins.”

Rashid maintains equanimity by the skin of his teeth.  “You need not apologize for how you conduct affairs in your own household, sir.”

Armand breaks into a calm, gracious smile.  “Much appreciated.  Now, I need you to understand that if you object to any part of what you’re about to witness over the next several minutes, you won’t be leaving this room alive.  Do you need me to repeat that statement?”

Rashid closes his mind for a split second and thinks about every bizarre, dangerous act he’s ever watched Sam commit, and decides there’s not much that Armand could do to shock him.  “No, sir,” he says, inclining his head in deliberate acquiescence.  “I understand.”

Armand blinks at him, slow and calculating.  “You understand that your life is forfeit if you express anger, fear, disgust, or horror of any kind?”

“Yes,” Rashid replies, and then realizes that Armand is pushing him.  Challenging, searching for a response.  “I understand that you will kill me.”

“Ah,” Armand says, breaking into a wider smile.  “There it is.  You’re a quick one, which is encouraging,” he says, taking a step forward as he draws his phone from his pocket.  Hitting a number on speed dial, he brings it up to his ear.  “Shamira, yes.  Bring him in.”

[pathologickinkmeme]

-*rises like a phoenix from the ashes*-

In honor of the Pathologic 3 news, thought I'd toss out a friendly reminder that the Pathologic KM is still here and we're still going strong! We've got 471 fills to date!

In our most recent update of the Unfilled Prompts post, we've had to split the post in 'twain for it could not endure the weight of our collective vice.

(Unfilled Prompts p. 1)

(Unfilled Prompts p. 2)

If you're looking for some nasty situations for our favorite bachelor in the run-up to the Patho 3 release, we've got you covered!

[stillfacingthesky]

i’ve never really identified with the name on my birth certificate. i think part of the reason, at least at the start, is that i’ve rarely heard it spoken correctly. the a’s have been stretched wide, forced apart, and the name that was supposed to be mine became flat, and lonely.

it’s a lovely name. it blossoms from my mother’s mouth, dainty and delicate and sweet the way i was supposed to be. it sounds pink, sounds like a light breeze and the scattering of petals across a river, and it is beautiful, but it is not mine.

i am not lovely. i am not dainty and delicate and sweet, and i am not the right kind of beautiful that is deserving of this name, this gift from my parents.

and try as i may, i have never found a name that fits me like my favourite ring fits my finger. i’ve collected names like a fairy, stolen them from rolling credits and character sheets, and each fits in a different way.

robin, roméo, noah. deckard, dollie, gatsby. osprey, orion, summer. moses, midas, javier. lou, lemmon, bird. creature. ghost.

hanging from my body like my father’s jacket, sticking so close that i lose my circulation. crooked and twisted in every which way. i’ve shifted the letters, unbuttoned and unzipped. two m’s compared to one. o-u instead of u. shortened and bundled— robbie, rion, mo, javi — to no avail.

my surname is too long. nine letters, awkward in the mouths of others, awkward in my own. it should be smooth, rolled over tongues and blossoming like the person my parents thought i would be, but it is not. it is choppy, slowly and tentatively spoken like it is delicate instead of regal.

and i find myself wondering if i match my names, if i too am choppy and slow and tentative, if i am seen as delicate and dainty. if others see me and wonder what i am doing out of my cushioned box, if they expect me to split in half like my surname in the mouths of foreigners. i find myself attempting to compromise, to find something that will fit in any mouth, that will sound smooth and sweet in spite of what rests in my rib cage.

i have not found my name yet. it may be hiding from me, tucked away under my skin in a place i have not yet picked raw, stuffed in the marrow of my spine or my left femur. stitched into the body i have been given, cradled by the monster in my chest as he outgrows the space under my heart. i wait.

the name badge on my mirror remains unfilled.

HELLO

MY NAME IS

[nistarot]

hi lark :3 tell us abt popov pwease 🥺

ok hi :>

EDIT: his playlist

Popov is ... not a person. sort of.

Okay, so to understand Popov you do need to also understand Rhys. And to understand Rhys, you must understand Iruiel. There's more beyond that, but that's the bare minimum to "get it" with what Popov's deal is.

The basics of it: Iruiel is something like the utter incarnation of destruction; not death, not war, destruction. Of himself, of everything, every person and every little thing. This is sort of what makes him such a dangerous antagonist, and why it is so, so dire to prevent him from fully resurrecting. Zephyr, an incarnation of creation, got Iruiel as close to death as something so divine can ever get. Over the next thousands and thousands of years, Iruiel slowly began to regrow his power, his conscience. But he's not like... fully... alive, again? He's currently just, like, a ghost at best. Make suggestions, influence folks, infect the area with a toxic magic that corrupts anything in its path. Even at arguably only 20% of his power, Iruiel is nearly world-ending already. Heartsplit revolves in part around Iruiel trying very, very hard to put his conscience into a vessel that can survive carrying him so that he has a physical form that can continue on his once-stalled plan for utter destruction.

But to find a vessel also required some physical form to collect followers, disciples that could be at Iruiel's disposal to further his plans while he waits and idles until he is powerful enough to be alive again...

That's where Popov and Rhys come in.

The pair of them were not really supposed to be a pair. Iruiel had just barely gotten past the threshold for him to have enough strength to kind of... sprout off two forms created from his will. Creating empty and unfillable hollows that could go out into the worlds and recruit, scout, destroy, build, etc. all for Iruiel's desire of destruction of everything. He really meant to only create one; a single and perfect capsule of his will. Belial, a figure in the story who is often involved in trips on both "sides" so to speak, intervened. Who knows why? Maybe there's a part of him that doesn't want Iruiel to destroy everything, so he wants to sabotage as much as possible without outright putting himself squarely opposed to any of the sides. A true centrist. Maybe he just felt bored. Either way, in the ritual where Iruiel worked for days to spawn that one perfect form, Belial ... didn't ruin it, didn't stop it, just sort of... split it... down the middle. Now, instead of that one perfect capsule, Iruiel was left with two half-perfect capsules.

Rhys, and Pyotr. Names they both took on for themselves after going out into the world; that's why Pyotr has a last name (Popov) and Rhys doesn't. The general idea is they've become sort of put into a head-versus-heart situation. They are, externally, identical twins - brothers.

However, due to the split, they are also the same person. Just two different halves. Each with their own body, personality, methods. But ultimately in lockstep with the other. Rhys is more the head of the pair - the logic. He's also, because of this, less inclined to work feverishly for utter destruction. Rhys is not a saboteur, he is absolutely the mastermind behind the cult (known as Sunless Daze) forming to help Iruiel. He is absolutely the one who killed Mimzy's parents and kidnapped her as a small toddler when he saw and found that she was uniquely going to be capable of becoming Iruiel's vessel due to her naturally high resistance-bordering-on-immunity to magic. He does the work. He just tries to savor his power more. He's a bit more bitter about the end. But not against it.

Popov, however, is the heart of the operation. Fully and maddeningly sold over into the purpose of their creation, he cannot understand why Rhys is not completely blissful and enraptured by the encroaching end of everything. Both Popov and Rhys assumed identities of evangelist, travelling priests (this was an excellently efficient guise for getting a quick route to a community's trust and thus, being able to recruit much easier). While Rhys could play the part, sometimes even more convincingly than Popov, he wasn't the most rapturous believer by any means. Popov was utterly taken with the divine; with his vague blurring of the G-d the townsfolk thought he meant and the picturing of Iruiel that Popov carried with him.

The other main difference is that Rhys tends to have a lot more... uh... stomach about the things the pair do to hasten Iruiel's arrival. To mean that he is a lot more grossed out about it. One of their main projects is extracting an essence of life force - the soul - enough to drain the person, killing them - in order to feed Iruiel and help him recover at an increasing rate. Rhys would lure the victims to the church Popov would keep home in in whatever town they stayed at, but he could not stick around to see the extraction. The needles and vials of blood and the gore - Rhys really can't stand it. It's all too filthy and earnest to him. He despises emotions and shows of pain. Popov, meanwhile, delights in it. Is completely obsessed with learning the perfect state of each victim, often pushing them to recount their feelings of pain, of decreasing blood pressure, or their heart palpitations, until they go incoherent and then expire. Together, they make an excellently lethal team, but they can fare separately just as well. Eventually, Popov settles down in a single church that serves as a headquarters of sorts, while Rhys strikes out to continue travelling. Popov continues to prey on the townsfolk, killing them methodically. Rhys devotes himself more to preying on the living.

Popov is a smiler. He's friendly. He's absolutely deranged and adores pain, adores causing death, primarily because he cannot understand it - he is a creature of emotion, not logic. He does what makes him happy. He completes his purpose. He does not think of anyone other than Rhys as sentient. And he regards Iruiel as the one and only divine end.

[white-collar-cannibal]

i get so jealous of euthanized dogs

(do you ever think too much about the implications of a plastic skeleton. i do.) genloss fic about the death — and it's subsequent consequences — of frank, last name unknown. gl!sneeg/gl!frank, title from the poem of the same name by june gehringer, heavily inspired by the locked tomb series, word count: 4,004, contains: suicidal ideation, canon-typical violence, descriptions of decomposition

Frank was not in his room. This was — mostly — expected, given his sorry state the last time Sneeg had seen him. Each morning, when Sneeg rose and he snuck out of the Cabin and down to that cramped corridor to unhook Niki from a great mess of wires and shake her gingerly awake, he also picked the lock of the room two doors down, and they would look to see that empty cot and those dark monitors which did not show any vital sign or brain activity. As they stared into that unfilled space, Sneeg thought, meanly, that this was probably what they got for being so used to walking the back rooms and the far corridors of the mall that they had forgotten the dangers of the Heart.

If it was any consolation, Frank was dead before he could realize the whole plan was going to shit. Niki had bolted in the first available direction, and Sneeg had not followed her, too busy holding the disparate bits of Frank’s skull together. He did not know where Niki had gone, only that she had not made it out. She was, after three days time, in her little room, sleeping so deeply as to be three-quarters dead, powered-down and completely unharmed. The two of them had not been very productive in the following days, and by the fifth day that Niki had been returned and Frank had not, they had begun to absolutely lose it, and they had split up to walk the parasitized mall and worry where the other could not sense it. 

On the seventh day, Sneeg encountered a strange sight: an open door that had not been open the day before. Sneeg did not recognize the door, but he recognized the hallway, and he recalled the third door from this end downward having been marked on their map with an inverted dagger: locked, keycard access. The door was clearly not supposed to be open. A sheet of laminated paper found itself caught between the body of the door and the mechanism of the lock, the little black keycard reader gleaming a welcoming LED green. A thin, pale fog rolled in half-formed locks out of the room, and it was making the hallway a little cold to stand in. The room beyond the door was cramped as any recycled Showfall room, stuffed to the gills with a series of large steel drawers, like lockers turned over onto their side so the shortest edge faced forward. All but one were closed, the source of that milky, breathy fog, and a metal slab had been shunted or rolled out of the drawer, which a single figure lay on top of. Approaching the thing was a miserable endeavor: laid as still as stillness over the slab was Frank — or at least, his body.

The body appeared very similar at first glance to its living counterpart, but at the moment’s close examination, the whole thing fell apart. It carried the same heavy-set brow, the same hawkish nose, the same worried marks at the corners of the mouth and eyes, but the whole lovely face had no blood in it at all, rendering it the tone of some anemic cornflower. It lay more still than Frank ever had, even in sleep, and it was a cold to the touch that made his fingers numb. Only the soft give of the skin and the flesh underneath convinced him that it was not a well done marble replacement by some singlely Pygmalion-minded sculptor. It was all very confusing. Sneeg held a deep, uncomfortable familiarity with death, but it all seemed off now. He could assume the purpose of the cold room with the inset drawers, but someone had, with precision if not care, dressed the body well and laid its hair flat and its hands in a kindly manner over its chest — they had put his face back together, for God’s sake — but the body was still dead. It was like dressing up a piece of plywood. What was the point?

Sneeg stared for a moment longer, at the remnant shell of the first person who had known him to the core of his misery and loved him anyway, and his eyes watered. Something was wrong. Something was awfully wrong. A body like this had been dead a longer time than Showfall had ever let them have between shows. He was in cold storage and not laid on the threadbare cot of his talent cubicle, waiting in pristine unaltered condition for whatever next taping Showfall had in mind. There was nothing good that would come from them leaving a cast member like this for so long, long enough for the body to pass into and out from rigor mortis. It betrayed a nearly unthinkable idea, something Sneeg could barely string together the words to comprehend: Frank was dead, and Showfall never intended to bring him back. This was it. The thought was like a bullet through his own brain, and he stood there, white-knuckling the edge of the mortuary drawer and breathing quite heavily.

Reaching into the pocket of that wrinkle-less jacket, he retrieved the silver Showfall-branded lighter, marked over in pen and marker and paint. It was a familiar weight, and found a familiar home in his own pocket. There was nothing else to do. He did not know how a real person was supposed to face a loss like this. He did not know how to say goodbye, and to mean it forever. 

It was with a childish, fairytale desperation mingled with his shock and his tragedy, that, in almost a dreaming haze, he pressed his lips to the pretty, bloodless mouth of the body. It did nothing so pedestrian as wake or speak. It did not flutter long, frosted eyelashes, open pearly clouded-over eyes and smile at him. It merely lay there, cold and still. Sneeg did not know what he had expected. He watched the body for a moment longer, to ensure it drew no hidden breath, nor twitched any surreptitious muscle — and then he ran from it.

In the cage of the Cabin — the safest place he had, given its having four walls and a door he could close and lock — Sneeg had tried very hard to tar over the raw wound of the loss with the thick denial that only a child of Showfall could feel. Frank was coming back. He was coming back because everyone came back. That was how it worked. That was how it always worked. It was nigh unthinkable that it wouldn’t now, for him, but oh God, would Showfall decide to pull their fingers from their own hand only to spite him, only to plant their dagger between his third and fourth rib. They would because they hated him. They had always hated him, ever since they first took him, for all the terrible things at the heart of his being, for his inability to work to standard, or live to standard, or look to standard. He tried very hard not to think about the possibility. He tried very hard not to think of anything at all. He tried very hard to focus on the shapes the path of his breath took through his body, the stucco texture hastily plastered over the walls and the floor, the hum of the tungsten day lights. He pulled his knees tight to his chest, and tried not to cry, because it would be real if he cried.

Sneeg spent three such nights in the cage, only moving on the fourth to the too-short couch in the living room when the bones of his back protested too much to ignore. He did not want to go back to the softer, better fitting mattress of his own room in the attic, to sit in the cold dark where Frank had laid his head on his chest in secret. Sneeg had done nearly everything in secret then, and now he was doing nothing, and he was doing it quite openly. He waited around, doing a great deal of nothing in the living room, or sometimes the kitchen, or the basement, and tried to be nothing in his wait for the next taping. This was the model of the perfect Showfall student, someone who wanted nothing and did nothing, and only lived to work their fingers to the bone, and then work the bones off their hand. It was almost strange to think that Management had tried for nearly twenty years, through varying cruel and unusual means, to turn Sneeg into this, when all it had taken was the maybe-death of one cosmically disposable cast member, and the maybe-shredding of that piece of Sneeg that was convinced he knew what the warmth of the Sun felt like.

The next taping arrived, as it would even if Hell froze over. Sneeg fell into the ephemeral grasp of the Showfall filter, and he forgot his grief wholly and entirely as Sneegsnag, first son of Showfall Media, first Taken, and despair of the Founder, disappeared. He melted away like so much candle wax, and someone picked him up and turned him over and over until he was the shape of whichever character they demanded of him.

The show did not matter, only that Sneeg’s part in it ended with a bullet stuck in his second lumbar vertebra. The moment Sneeg hit the ground, he began to remember again, and when each of the actors had peeled out of the room and the cameras were turned away from him, the loss had snuck its way back into his body in lung-shaking fingers of cold. It was there, bleeding onto that tiled faux-floor, that Sneeg realized that he recognized the prop corpse in the corner, the one that the prop department would have carefully set down and fiddled with before the actors were even on set. He propped himself up on his elbows, raising himself out of that scarlet puddle which had already ruined the nice shirt he had been dressed in, and he looked at it again, just to be sure.

He hated to look at it. He hated that they had not given him the mercy of smashing that pretty face into unrecognizable mush. He hated that the body was dead, and it was not moving, and Showfall had conscripted it for such purpose. The body was dead, and this was its job now, and Showfall had gotten sick of it and was not bringing him back. Sneeg wanted to scream, and he wanted to vomit, and he wanted to go home, even though he didn’t know at all what that meant anymore. He laid back down, getting his hair wet and black with fresh blood, and he had repeated, “No, no, no, no, no,” very quietly, nothing more than a breath, until two of the well-dressed employees grabbed each of his arms and sides of his thorax, bodily hauled him with their unthinking, programmed movement onto a stretcher, and caught him in the neck with the syringe.

Later that night was the first time the ghost of Frank revealed itself to him, sat beside him in the dark, and laid its hand which carried no weight over his own hand. There was no honest sensation that came from it, as was the want of a ghost or a trick of the mind, but it had left behind the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb left too long without blood. Sneeg had finally wept then, for his lost, far away family, for his dead lover, for his damned escape plan, and for his own sorry state. He hated to weep. He hated how incapable it made him feel, how it crushed his lungs and his throat. He felt like a small child again, or more accurately, like a worm. He did not know what to do, and now there was no one around to tell him. Easily, without spoken prompt, the ghost tried its stupid, spectral best to hold Sneeg. It did not succeed a great amount in this, but Sneeg’s starving want made the paresthetic touch a good enough comfort for him to lay still and try to sleep, rather than walking out of the Cabin and throwing himself over the third-story railing.

Sometimes, each night that followed, the ghost appeared to him alive, and at other times, as freshly dead as he had been the first time Sneeg saw him. Only once had he appeared in unrestrained decomposition, and Sneeg prayed it never happen again. He had been waxen, swell with rot, a deep, lush violet where the blood had been allowed to pool, leaking a dark fluid from his nose he wiped at in intermittent intervals. Sneeg had looked upon him in desperation and hunger, and the remains of his own putrefying affection, and he had still reached out to touch the apparition — but Frank smiled, and his mouth was full of maggots, and the palm that Sneeg had reached to touch him was seized with the conviction of ten thousand worms beneath its own skin, roiling and squirming. He had screamed for only one moment, but the ghost still vanished, and his brother still appeared with a quickness and a pitying concern, both of which Sneeg disdained.

Sometimes the ghost did not speak, only lay beside him in a familiar stillness, side against side, as Sneeg tried his damnedest to make himself hear Frank breathe into the dark. Most days it did speak, and often it was to needle him about how long it had been since Sneeg had eaten, or showered, or drank water. It was difficult to remember to do so those days. Sneeg spent much of his time asleep, finding it favorable in nearly every way to waking. There was very little want in his body to do much of anything, except to lie there on his mattress on the floor until God felt it right to snatch him away. 

His brother had not bothered him for one week, and then had been struck with what Sneeg could only assume was a crushing fear that God would indeed take Sneeg away, and Sneeg would be in no hurry and of no power to stop Him. He had begun placing bowls of cold porridge and glasses of room temperature water just beyond the doorway to the attic, and checking whenever he thought Sneeg was asleep to see if they had been disturbed, as if attempting to care for a stray cat. One night, in some kind of fit, Charlie had burst into the room, taken one of Sneeg’s hands between his own, between the hands that had drowned and bled and choked and killed and killed him so many times, and prayed intercessions to every saint he thought fit, and then some extra for surety: Anastasia, Raphael, Rita and Juliana and Teresa, Camillus and Christina Mirabilis, and on and on until his throat was hoarse. Sneeg watched him, and felt much like a compass that had broken somehow, no longer able to spin to point in the direction of God.

The ghost had taken this plea as sign and signal to redouble its efforts, and where God had not delivered Sneeg from his sorrows, the ghost delivered him from the IV drip and the padded room of the hunger strike. Showfall had never cared if he lived or died, but for him to waste away spoke unfortunately about how well they were paying him. They weren’t paying him, mind you, but it was about the optics of it. To this effect, Sneeg developed an unerring routine which got three nutrient rations and two and a half glasses of water into his body a day, and for his success the ghost would lay beside him at night, and leave that pins-and-needles feeling against his hands, and his neck, and his mouth. When the ghost did not appear, Sneeg comforted himself by imagining what it would be like to walk far beyond where Showfall’s patrol lines would ever find him, to break boarded windows and curl up on the floor of the condemned wing of the mall, and die like a bird which had flown in accidentally and could not get out. It was not a great comfort, and he knew dimly it was not a healthy one either, but it was enough to dull his heart and brain enough for him to sleep. In his dreams, each time he saw Frank, he felt very sick, and he would turn to Niki or Charlie or anyone that was there and ask, sorrily, “Is he there? Can you see him?” and they would look at him like a particularly sad piece of roadkill.

His brother kept praying, and sometimes he screamed into a pillow or an old shirt. Charlie knew that if Sneeg died, he would too, and Charlie did not want to die. He did not know what to do either, and vacillated between an overbearing care, as if Sneeg was a piece of glass or old china, — which Sneeg hated — and a snapping fury at Sneeg’s inability to do much of anything — which Sneeg also hated, but hated in an acute way that made him feel half a percent more alive. At those, Sneeg snapped back, and the two would fight with the familiar contempt that only grew from living together against your will for the better part of two decades. Sometimes it devolved, and ended with teeth in flesh and hands around neck and blood on the floor. Sometimes Sneeg cried — this was an arresting notion for even the most boiling over Charlie, and it made everything very strange and sad and awkward. He would place his hand on Sneeg’s shoulder, then take it away, and flap his mouth open and closed a couple times, but no noise would come out. Only once did he manage a blank “I’m sorry,” and Sneeg had just cried worse for it.

When it was clear that Sneeg was set on the rituals of self-maintenance, the ghost shunted its efforts towards convincing Sneeg to wake up Niki, and to get back on the wagon of planning their escape. He tried to convince Sneeg of this first by saying that Niki would be upset if Sneeg left her there alone much longer, which was not very effective, since he was sure she would be upset already, and then by saying that it would be good for Sneeg to get out of the house, which was not very effective, since Sneeg had nearly given up on doing things that were good for him. Then, he tried to tell Sneeg that the plan was not off yet, that there was still a chance for them to make it out, if they got together and threw themselves into it. 

The problem with this was that Sneeg and Niki had no fucking clue what they would do if they got out, on account of Niki having nearly no recollection of the details of her life before Showfall had kidnapped her, and of Sneeg's having been seven at the time. As integral to the plan as Niki’s steadfast internal map and Sneeg’s memory of the timetables and the pathing of the wandering guards had been Frank’s insistence that he could hunt down the names and the contacts of those who were close to him, who he remembered with a greater clarity. But that was all gone now. Sneeg had not known it, so the ghost would not whisper it to him. Niki did not know it, despite her constant bothering Frank to tell her all he knew, so they would have one less point of failure. He had never told her, not because he did not want to, but because he only knew it in a subconscious, animal way, and not in a way that he could tell her, and now none of them knew. Each new detail, each elaboration on the loss, made the whole thing interminably worse. They were alone, and they were damned, and there was no way out.

At this thought, the ghost jabbed at him and set off the strange nerve at the point of his elbow. “Fuck off,” it had said. “You’re better than this. You need instructions? You need an order? Survive me. Finish the job.” It had looked so close to living, breathing, pressure-bomb Frank then, sharp eyes like so much burnt-up copper, teeth at fascinating and contradicting angles, that he would have done anything it asked.

Sneeg slept, and he woke, and he ate, and he told his brother, “I’m going to go talk to Niki,” and then, at Charlie’s expression, “Give me three hours before you start to worry.” Charlie turned his face up at this, but he nodded, and Sneeg retraced, in dismally slow footsteps, that familiar back alley path from the Cabin’s panel door to the dingy hallway of the cast cubicles. Niki was lying in the abyssal, dreamless sleep of the power-down as Sneeg clacked the well-worn key combination into the console, and pulled away a lot of electrodes and finger-traps. The first thing Niki did was scream, and then she thought better of it, and just sat at the edge of the cot and hyperventilated. When Sneeg had tried to speak, she got up and pushed past him, brusquely, and left the room. Half an hour later, he started looking for her, and when he did find her in one of the many uncared for corners of the mall, she was sat, knees to chest, beneath a whole herd of quite miserable chalk-drawing horses across the wall. Her hands were bunched in her hair, and she was looking somewhere far away. Her eyes were rotten, needle ice over dark water. She had a very small voice when she spoke. 

“What are we going to do?” In the dark, it was clear to them both that Niki was still a teenager, and Sneeg was still as stunted as he had ever been. They sat there, two kicked, abandoned dogs, which had been cut free of leash and of collar for the first time, and were liable to start running into traffic. There was a length between them that felt like a missing molar. 

“Okay. Okay.” Niki rose with a fervor that nearly toppled her over, and she grabbed each of his shoulders with vile intensity. “Sneeg. I am not dying in this hole. Get up.”

Sneeg got up. He never could ignore a direct order. Sneeg got up and got up and got up, and his heart kept beating, and his lungs kept drawing in breath. Hours fell into days fell into weeks, sets fell into sets fell into moldy corridors where Niki tried to transcribe the paths of guards with too many dashed lines and corresponding sigils. They chipped at the work in short, fervid bursts, then couldn't touch it for days. Niki never prayed, but she would hold Sneeg's hands when he did, and sometimes, thinking she was alone, she would pace in languid, looping circles and speak as if Frank could still hear her.

They spent so much time working at this dreadfully slow pace that it became very hard to tell just how long it had been. Sneeg lost count of the days since he had last asked God to just kill him and get it over with, and he thought it a success, and stopped keeping track — only to end up awake in the kitchen in the middle of the night, staring longingly at the wood-paneled knife block. Time fell through his hands like it wasn't even there, and he only realized that it had been a very long while when he went to wake Niki up, and spotted, at the edge of the hall, a new temporary label on one of the previously empty rooms. It was the same mechanized handwriting as every other label, and Niki read it out, clear and crisp: T-8: HERO.

[kt-splits]

Monday extension

2 more claims needed for box one

Available characters

Makoto x2

Junko

Celeste

Byakuya x2

Danganronpa THH Fanthful glitter badges.

These are a pre-order and won't be released until April

Toko and Chihiro are the newest editions to this lineup!

$5.50 each

DM to reserve

Practice reblog karma 💜

[swagcollectivecomputer]

Tick Data × Stock API: The Precision Engine for High-Frequency Trading Strategies

In financial markets, every millisecond of delay can mean a difference of millions in profits. While traditional investors still rely on the "outlines" of candlestick charts, top traders have already combined tick data and stock APIs to build a "super-sensing capability" that captures the pulse of the market. This ability is not just about speed—it’s about transforming vast amounts of data into a precise decision-making engine. And at the core of this lies the perfect fusion of technology and tools.

Tick Data: Decoding the Market’s Microstructure

Tick data is the "atomic-level" record of financial markets, containing every transaction’s price, volume, timestamp, and trade direction. Unlike aggregated candlestick data, tick data preserves the market’s raw rhythm, enabling traders to:

Capture hidden liquidity shifts: Identify institutional actions like iceberg orders or large-order splitting through continuous tick data.

Anticipate short-term breakouts: Analyze tick distributions in high-volume zones to gauge the true strength of support/resistance levels.

Quantify market sentiment: Measure real-time shifts in bullish/bearish momentum based on tick direction ratios.

However, the value of tick data doesn’t reveal itself automatically—without an efficient toolchain, it becomes an overwhelming flood of information.

Stock API: Transforming Data into Strategy Fuel

The high-frequency nature of tick data imposes strict demands on technical infrastructure: even millisecond-level delays can cripple strategies, while data interruptions may trigger risk control failures. A professional stock API is the critical solution to these challenges:

1. Real-Time Performance: Syncing with the Market’s Heartbeat

Top-tier APIs ensure near-zero latency in delivering tick data from exchanges to strategy engines. For example:

WebSocket streaming replaces traditional HTTP polling to eliminate waiting gaps.

Multi-exchange parallel feeds prevent congestion in single data channels.

2. Flexibility: Custom Data Flows for Every Need

High-frequency strategies may require specific tick data types:

Raw ticks: Full transaction details for microstructure analysis.

Incremental updates: Only changed order book entries to reduce bandwidth load.

Smart aggregation: Time/volume-based pre-processing to lower system strain.

3. Stability: The Lifeline of High-Frequency Trading

API reliability directly determines strategy survival rates:

Auto-reconnect ensures uninterrupted data flow during network volatility.

Sequence validation timestamps prevent misaligned or lost packets from distorting signals.

Disaster recovery combines local caching with cloud backups to guarantee historical data integrity.

Case Studies: How Tick Data Powers Strategies

Strategy 1: Liquidity Arbitrage

Monitor cross-exchange price gaps via tick data. When large orders deplete liquidity on one platform, instantly execute counter-trades on another to capture convergence opportunities.

Strategy 2: Order Book Momentum

Analyze tick-level bid/ask imbalances—persistent large unfilled bids may signal imminent breakouts, triggering rapid position entries via API.

Strategy 3: Event-Driven Plays

During earnings announcements, API-captured tick anomalies reveal sentiment shifts hundreds of milliseconds ahead of news alerts, enabling preemptive positioning.

Why Alltick is the Ultimate Tick Data × API Solution?

Among data providers, Alltick stands out with three core advantages for high-frequency traders:

1. Speed Engine: Outpacing the Market

Global edge nodes in NYC, London, and Tokyo minimize physical latency.

Binary protocol slashes 70% payload size vs. JSON.

Adaptive compression reduces bandwidth costs without data loss.

2. End-to-End Integration: Seamless Data-to-Trade Pipeline

Unified API covers tick feeds, backtesting, risk controls, and execution.

Multi-language SDKs (Python/C++/Java) enable 30-minute integration.

Sandbox environment simulates live trading with historical ticks.

3. Institutional-Grade Safeguards

Data lineage tracking with exchange-native timestamps for compliance.

Rate-limiting prevents API bans during abnormal strategy spikes.

Dark pool masking obscures large-order ticks to prevent signal leakage.

Choose Alltick to Supercharge Your Trading

With the advantages of stable data quality, fast transmission efficiency and professional technical support, Alltick is committed to providing traders with stable and reliable Tick data services to help you accurately grasp every market opportunity.

Activate Alltick now, and let the professional data service provide a solid backing for your trading strategy.

[boozeforblues]

From The Lion's Den To A Pack Of Wolves, When You're Fresh Meat, Kill And Throw Them Something Fresher

Breaking hearts with just one word If you think it's "no", you must run blurred Backwards through the woods, inching my way towards irrelevancy Defying expectations by surpassing my life expectancy All because I survived another rotten day Apex predators in our own right, plot and prey On the unsuspecting, kill or be killed Falling behind on my paperwork, my will is unfilled Cashing in my chips, save the day but not my seat Self centered, so you thought my feet Would beat the pavement on your behalf Professing my love but calling it a gaffe Bring me to the forefront of my proud proclamations Ducking the laws of man, way beyond explanations But still indebted to my own sense of owed importance Get your money right, a fear of slowed discordance

Emo on the jukebox, defiance in my heart Running from your ghost and my presence, compliance at the start Goes a long way to feigned reunification A stickler for due process, we've drained adjudication To the point of dehydration, reanimation would fit the bill Two junkies at the core, looking to split the pill Among the unbalanced, flipping a coin to cast the role Drunk at the wheel and we flew right past the pole Position to warn of impending doom Drawing on the worst reserves, misspending gloom On high points, my chemistry doesn't differentiate A fresh wound is an excuse to reinvigorate My pen, drawing inspiration from the depths of agony Doing my level best to avoid upsetting her majesty

Making the most of a bad time, charging per pill Inadequacies becoming all our problems, sir chill No better argument for socialism, call it nature's raffle Maintaining the ability to upset the social order by recognizing the baffle That occurs when enzymes gather in packs Painting myself on the best canvas, I'd rather relax While taking cues from the peanut gallery Competing with abstract concepts, it's a pre-cut fallacy To put a target on the backs of the unsuspecting I've had my fill, I'm done protecting The one person who'd never put their own head on a chopping block Like a disgruntled ump I'm stopping chalk From sullying my own personal dugout Blow for blow, throwing fists instead of lips, a televised slug out To bring me back to earth, an astronaut in training Convictions on full display, all at once damning and waning

A word of mouth we'll finally outgrow Well then I guess just pout though… 

[snowdust64]

Ouma Great War Chronicles - Episode 31: We’re All Scattered Apart

Narrator:  Genzuki, confronting Nagao and Kaida, expressed his misgivings that they were scheming over something behind his back. Nagao and Kaida were bewildered by Genzuki’s words. A gap that is split open, left unfilled, is bound to form a deep crack. From then on, Genzuki was continuing his work in a state of disengagement…

scene:  Genzuki’s Workroom

Nikaido:  Oi, Genzuki. Why are the ceremonial tools in this chest, and not in their boxes?

Genzuki:  Eh…? Ah! Sorry, I put them in by mistake just now. The right place for them is… Ah!

sfx:  clatter

Genzuki:  Th-thank goodness. It looks like nothing is broken.

Nikaido:  Hahh… Aren’t you the one who was explaining the importance of the ceremonial tools? And yet, look at this mess. It’s subpar for an officer of the government.

Genzuki:  …

Nikaido:  Moreover, that’s not the only ridiculous blunder you made. Earlier, you made a mistake in your prayer. It’s a good thing I was able to make the offering in your place.

Genzuki:  I’m really sorry… Thank you for following up on all these things.

Nikaido: I’m not looking for an apology or your gratitude. If you have the spare time to feel bad, then focus on what you should be doing.

Genzuki:  nh…  (It’s as Nikaido-kun says. Even if my mind is in turmoil because of the quarrel with Haru-kun and Kei-kun, these kinds of blunders are unacceptable. I need to get myself together.)

Nikaido:  Tsk… First off, do something about that dejected look of yours. Go wash your face or something.

Genzuki:  … Mn, I’ll take that suggestion and do so. I’ll be right back, so…

sfx:  footsteps

Nikaido:  (Hm… The falling out has taken quite a toll. At this rate, if their trio goes on to internal collapse, Rihito-sama’s plans will be able to proceed smoothly. … However, this isn’t like me. To offer such words to an enemy… Seeing that guy in such a crestfallen state, I get strangely frustrated…) Geez. Killing him like that wouldn’t even be worthwhile.

scene:  Sakura Bud Kindergarten

Narrator:  Meanwhile on another end, Nagao was reflecting on the altercation with Genzuki from the previous day, and was feeling greatly anguished over what might happen going forward.

Nagao:  (Though I can say I had my hands full with my exorcist work and the issue surrounding Masamune-san, I didn’t include Toujirou’s opinion in the picture at all…)

Taishi:  Big brother Masamune! Make me go high up high up one more time! *

Saionji:  Haha, you’re such a brat. Sure, one more time!

Taishi:  Wahoo!

Nagao:  Hm? Seriously… I unconsciously ended up coming near the Kindergarten. (That reminds me, long ago, whenever something was bothering me, I always went straight to Masamune-san for advice… Even though I’m probing him as a person of interest, I just can’t get away from my old habits, huh.)

Taishi:  Huh? It’s big-brother Kei! Big brother Masamune, big brother Kei is here!

Saionji:  Oh, what’s up? Today is a day off from practice, isn’t it?

Nagao:  Otsukare-sama, Masamune-san. Taishi, you doing well?

Taishi:  Mn! Super duper well!

Nagao:  Haha, I see.

Saionji:  Mh… Taishi, can you wait a little while? I have something to talk to Kei about.

Nagao:  Eh?

Taishi:  Okay! I’ll play with everyone in the yard!

sfx:  footsteps

Saionji:  Gee, that Taishi. He’s been so lively lately, I can’t manage him anymore. What a handful. So, Kei. Something’s bothering you, right?

Nagao:  Haha, Masamune-san, you see right through me.

Saionji:  Well, I’m not your master just for show. Why don’t you tell me about it.

Nagao:  Well… A bunch of things happened with Toujirou and Haru.

Saionji:  Oi oi, don’t tell me at your age, you had a fight?

Nagao:  Maybe not… a fight.

Saionji:  That’s not it? What happened, anyway?

Nagao:  Umm… The three of us haven’t gotten together much recently… Because of that, various misunderstandings happened… or rather, Toujirou put out the idea that me and Haru were sneaking around and scheming on something together.

Saionji:  That’s… not like him.

Nagao:  Right? We were shocked too. Apparently, one of his coworkers said it to him, but… When I told him he was losing his cool over his coworker’s misleading statements, it ended up sounding like I was criticizing him… And so, since it ended in an argument, we’re all scattered apart now.

Saionji:  … I see. Without knowing the details, maybe it’s not my place to say this, but… From my point of view, ever since your exorcism school days, Toujirou has cherished his relationship with the two of you more than anyone else. Most likely, what Taishi and the institution mean to me is like what you and Haru mean to him. I’m sure he cherishes you so deeply in his heart that he would even abandon himself for you, his partners. That’s all the more reason for him to be hurt when he can’t get in contact, or when you and Haru make casual comments, isn’t it?

Nagao:  Mm…

Saionji:  He is strong, but out of the three of you, I’d say he’s the most sensitive.

Nagao:  That’s certainly true… Haru and I, we also cherish our trio’s friendship. But, because we didn’t set aside any time, maybe we left him to worry on his own.

Saionji:  Then, that’s what you need to get across to Toujirou, isn’t it. Nothing will change while you’re dawdling around and anguishing. Going head to head one more time like you usually do would be best.

Nagao:  Yeah. Thanks, Masamune-san. (I really am just getting rescued over and over by this person. With things going like this, I can’t help but feel like Masamune-san hasn’t changed since the old days after all…)

==========

Translation notes

*  takai-takai (literally, ‘high-high’) is a game where a person playing with a small child gently tosses the child up in the air

[flyingmycolours]

I started out using backstitch for the fill, like in this example:

This was a tummy symbol for a Custom Care Bear that I made. Most of the star is filled using backstitch, as is the border, but the middle heart is unfilled velveteen.

As I grew more experienced with my embroidery, I started using satin stitch more often. It gives a smoother finish, IMO.

It also helps to "split" your embroidery thread to use fewer strands at once if you want it to look smoother.

This method can take much longer, but the results can be stunning. I still use backstitch for some details when necessary.

Different projects can use different stitching techniques. Sometimes you want the more "chunky" look for different textures, like using a backstitch for an elephant's skin in one of my customs.

and sometimes even fancier stitches are called for, like lazy daisy and whip stitch, as seen on my I Love Ukraine Bear, made to raise money for charity.

Basically, keep practicing! You'll soon figure out what works best for which project!

Had a few folks interested in how I made the patches I posted for Solarpunk Aesthetic Week, so I thought I'd give y'all my step-by-step process for making hand-embroidered patches!

First, choose your fabric and draw on your design. You can use basically any fabric for this - for this project I'm using some felt I've had lying around in my stash for ages.

Next, choose your embroidery floss. For my patches I split my embroidery floss into two threads with 3 strands each, as pictured. You can use as many strands in your thread as you prefer, but for the main body of my patches I prefer 3 strands.

Next you're going to start filling your design using a back stitch.

First, put in a single stitch where you want your row to start.

Poke your needle up through the fabric 1 stitch-length away from your first stitch.

Poke your needle back down the same hole your last stitch went into so they line up end-to-end.

Repeat until you have a row of your desired length (usually the length of that colour section from one end to the other). Once you have your first row, you're going to do your next row slightly offset from your first row so that your stitches lay together in a brick pattern like this:

Make sure your rows of stitches are tight together, or you'll get gaps where the fabric shows through.

Rinse and repeat with rows of back stitch to fill in your patch design.

When you're almost to the end of your thread, poke your needle through to the back of the fabric and pull the thread under the back part of the stitching to tuck in the end. Don't worry if it looks messy - no one's gonna see the back anyway.

This next step is fully optional, but I think it makes the patch design really pop. Once your patch is filled in, you can use black embroidery floss to outline your design (or whatever colour you want to outline with - it's your patch, do what you want). I use the full thread (6 strands, not split) of embroidery floss to make a thicker outline.

I use the same back stitch I used to fill the piece to make an outline that adds some separation and detail. You could use most any 'outlining' stitch for this, but I just use back stitch because it's just easier for me to do.

Once you're finished embroidering your patch, it's time to cut it out!

Make sure to leave a little border around the edge to use for sewing your patch on your jacket/bag/blanket/whatever, and be careful not to accidentally cut through the stitches on the back of the patch.

If you have a sturdy enough fabric that isn't going to fray, you can just leave it like this. If not, I recommend using a whip stitch/satin stitch to seal in the exposed edges (I find that splitting your embroidery floss into 3-strand threads works best for this).

And then you're done! At this point you can put on iron-on backing if you want, or just sew it on whatever you wanna put it on. Making patches this way does take a long time, but I feel that the results are worth it.

Thanks for reading this tutorial! I hope it was helpful. If anyone makes patches using this method, I'd love to see them! 😁

[gretchensinister]

Daily Fic Highlight: Only One Thing To Do

Today's winner of the kudos email is:

"Only One Thing To Do" is a gen ficlet I wrote as part of my project to fill all unfilled prompts in Round 1 of the Rise of the Guardians Dreamwidth Kinkmeme. When Pitch attacks the Tooth Palace, Tooth sees his teeth. After that, there's really only one thing to do. 542 words, G, Gen.

This is very silly. But there's still a small part of it that's based in personal experience.

Sample:

He had been winning. He was certain of that. Otherwise, why would he have laughed? And that, he knew, was his fatal mistake. Because when he laughed, his teeth showed. And then—he lets out an irritated sigh. Everything had been fine while the focus of the mini-fairies (and thus, Tooth) had been split among all his nightmares as they gathered up memory boxes and prisoners. But his gloating laugh at that point had caught Tooth’s attention (as he hoped it would) but in an unfortunate and unforeseen way.

[zaptap]

now i'm looking over the unfilled splatoon 1 gear slots to see how much i'd have left to do to get those all filled (i already unlocked them all a long time ago)

the only piece of headgear i have left is the tentacles helmet (and it looks like i'm about a third of the way through filling its 3 slots, in terms of exp). i also wore the soccer cleats and baseball jersey alongside it (having planned everything out to split the gear into same-starred outfits), so those have the exact same exp

the only other pair of shoes left to fill slots on is the hero runner replicas (which is odd because i'd think i'd fill the whole hero outfit together? i guess not?)

the only other 3-star piece of clothing is the varsity jacket, and the only 2-star piece of clothing (which already has 2 slots filled) is the black anchor tee

and finally, there are 4 pieces of 1-star clothing that have no abilities unlocked, and 23 with 1 slot filled

conveniently, everything except the baseball jersey is at 0 towards the next slot, so that makes it easier to add up all the exp i need

and i can just add up what i need for the clothing (since the others will be earned at the same time and finish way sooner)

so, it comes out to... 274,802 exp. assuming i get about 1k per battle, that's 275 battles or so, and they each take like 5 minutes, so that's 22 hours of gameplay. i guess that's not totally out of the question to do in 2 months? (....especially since i forgot the win bonus. also didnt that change to like 1000 after the last fest? that's good, that'll help. that means the 22 hours is if i lose every single time. even the worst case scenario isn't looking that bad)

i'm also not sure how well wasabi splattershot does at consistently inking over 1k. when i mained aerospray i considered it a personal failure on the rare occasion i didn't ink at least that much (my record, still not beaten after all these years, is 1799p), so i may go back to that just to get through this faster

[physics-scholars]

Ms. Sathya

What is unfilled orbitals... Splitting of electrons in energy band❓

Unfilled orbitals refer to the atomic orbitals within an atom that do not have electrons occupying them. In an atom, electrons occupy specific energy levels or orbitals around the nucleus. When an atom is in its ground state, all the lower energy orbitals are filled with electrons before any higher energy orbitals are occupied. Unfilled orbitals are those that are available for electrons to occupy if the atom gains or loses electrons, or if it interacts with other atoms.

On the other hand, the splitting of electrons in an energy band refers to the phenomenon that occurs when atoms come together to form a solid material or crystal lattice. In a solid, the energy levels of the individual atoms' orbitals combine to form a continuous range of energy levels called an energy band. These energy bands can be separated by energy gaps known as band gaps.

When the atoms are close together in a crystal lattice, their orbitals start to overlap. This overlapping of orbitals leads to the splitting of energy levels. In particular, when many atoms are combined, the atomic orbitals from each atom mix and form molecular orbitals that span the entire crystal. This results in the formation of energy bands.

In a solid material, the electrons are distributed among these energy bands. The lower energy bands, known as valence bands, are usually filled with electrons, while the higher energy bands, known as conduction bands, are partially or completely empty. The splitting of electrons in energy bands is crucial for understanding various properties of solid materials, including their electrical conductivity and optical behavior.

[mischif]

You know one of my favourite things to come out of Kinkmemes?

The “I’ve got a Great Idea, you write it, and we’ll split the credit/profits 50-50” stopped.

Because kinkmemes are full to bursting with Great Ideas. Not all of them horny either.

They’re also full of unfilled Great Ideas that no one wrote.

Kinkmemes proved that it’s a lot easier to come up with Great Ideas than it is to write them.

petition

we need to bring back anon kink memes in a big way. no one is horny enough anymore. the other night i found a fic on an old kink meme from 2009 that was so well-written and also so raunchy and foul (affectionate) it could have stripped paint off my car. there is something about truly unapologetic filth that can be transcendent and tender and marrow deep and maybe if we all leaned into being anonymous depraved little weirdos again we'd learn how to have more fun.

[shsl-box-split]

BOX SPLIT

DANGANRONPA 1-2 PICKTAM! KEY CHAIN SET

PLEASE READ THE FAQ BEFORE ASKING ANY QUESTIONS

Price per key chain: 13 USD + shipping

Payment Call

Bold = Confirmed

Italics = Tenative

Makoto Naegi: @hibiscuswolverine

Kyoko Kirigiri: 

Kiyotaka Ishimaru: @orbitblitz

Secret: 

Hajime Hinata: 

Chiaki Nanami: 

Gundham Tanaka:  @icantfuckinbelievethis

Nagito Komaeda: @clashofthebunnies

Feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions/want to reserve a spot.

No money will be taken till 6 key chains are confirmed to be bought!

I will make pricing deals for anyone who purchases more than one!

Trading is also available! Contact me for more info!