#yield nodes

[hidden-poet]

President Snow; part 1

President Snow

part 1/3

DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

summary: After lucy gray there was you.

warnings: unco/dubco, power imbalance, dark!Coriolanus, possessive!Corirlanus, Dark themes, mentions of death, punishments not fun-ishments, P in V, Spanking, face fucking, oversimulation, SA, breedding kink, unfaithfulness.

I would like to apologize to god for witting this.

Coriolanus would never allow himself to love again. Not after Lucy Grey. Not after his full discovery of who he really was; a victor.

He held no love for his wife, Clemensia or their four children they had. Coriolanus was grateful when she told him she was done providing him with children to parade around. Rutting into her never held the same level of satisfaction that your cunt provides.

He couldn't love you. He won't love you. But he does love the way you feel.

3 out of 4 of his children were conceived with the memory of your first night. It was his favorite memory of you to get hard to.

The power he felt as he dragged you across the marble floors that you had just cleaned by your wrist. The other servants avoided the sound of your screaming. He was president Snow now. No longer a impoverished school boy. He could do as he liked.

And he liked you.

From the first time he set eyes on you he liked you.

It was why he was so cruel to begin with. Nothing was up to his standard's, try as you did. The tea was too cold. The tea was too hot. he could feel the dust in the room, even if he couldn't see it. Most days ended with the cane to your back from your head mistress.

It was ironically his downfall. He would squirm in his chair while trying to get his work done. The picture of you getting flogged just below him plaguing his mind.

He shook it off for as long as he could before yielding to the need to see it for himself. If only to ensure it was being done correctly.

It was painful for him to see you tied to the whipping post, your back exposed and red with big hot tears dripping down your face. It was physically painful as his pants were tight against his growing member.

oh how you needed him. oh how he had complete control of you.

He was busy memorizing your half dressed figure when you had called out to him. His eyes flicked to yours as you spoke.

"president Snow-President Snow-please-I am sorry".

There was only three other maids in addition to the head mistress who had stuck around to watch the show. They all looked at him now.

"Headmistress" Coriolanus pinned the older women under his icy stare, "twelve more lashes for speaking out of turn".

she nodes in return and you cry out as the show continues.

It was important you knew that you had no control over him. No matter how much you whined or begged. He decided what happened.

It was a lesson that your learnt quickly. He was impressed in fact that you learnt your place beneath him so fast.

The next day when he pushed your face up against the bookcase and tore the back of your shirt to expose the red lines. You said nothing. You said nothing when he ran his hands along the marks, no matter how much pain it caused you.

You stood silent and still until he told you to leave. Only a slight tremble of your hands told him you even registered what had happened.

You learnt that the more permissible you were to his touch, the less likely your day was to end tied to the whipping post.

You trained yourself not to react when you felt his hand slide up the back of your leg when delivering his afternoon tea. Funnily enough, his complaints of cold tea stopped.

You were the only one to bring it, you found out. Having swapped this duty with another girl one afternoon after a particularly spine chilling incident where Snow had grabbed your wrist to keep you from going in front of his wife and placed your hand under his shirt collar. He held it there pressed against his chest.

The flow of his sentence never halting as he discussed with his wife an upcoming interview. You were sure Clemensia would skin you alive, otherwise you never would have yanked your hand back and ran out of the room.

two peace-keepers found you not 10 minutes later in the servants quarters and escorted you to the whipping post where you spent the remainder of the night with open sores on your back. twenty lashes for interrupting his sentence, and thirty for leaving a room when not excused.

It was rare Clemensia was in the presidential estate. But when she was you were terrified of crossing paths with her. It would be impossible to serve her and Coriolanus at the same time without it resulting with you begging for mercy at the end of a whip.

So when you were told to bring tea for the president AND first lady. You thought the smartest thing you could do was swap this duty to the nearest girl.

You had promised to finish her days work in the yard in exchange for the five minutes it took to mix his tea and serve it.

A good exchange you both felt.

But you had only begun to rake the leaves in the hot sun when you saw a figure fast approaching you. The sun blinded you to the identity but when a harsh slap knocked you to the ground out of the sun rays you could see your president standing over you.

His light blue eyes had clouded over as they bore down at you. His well-dressed lanky figure casted shade over your hot body. He had dressed for a climate where he controlled the temperature. Despite only barreling down the grand staircase and barley a metre across the yard his curls stuck to his head in perspiration.

He grabs you by the hair, yanking you up and back to the controlled atmosphere. You could feel your face turn red as the eyes of your fellow colleagues follow Coriolanus as he drags you through the estate and to his office.

His hold tightening at every struggle and every slip of your foot. Most of the resistance wasn't intentional, only a natural consequence of being lead by your head. Yet, his fingers showed no compassion as they latched themselves amongst your hair.

His office door was left open from when he had yanked it open to come find you. He kicks it closed upon your return.

You expected him to let go upon the sound of the slamming of the door but you go flying as he throws you into a table and chair setting.

You knock a chair and the table over with your weight.

'get up and make my tea, lazy girl" he demands with much more calmness then his face suggests he had.

He sits at his desk across from his wife and watches as you rise upon Shakey legs and make your way over to them.

You felt dizzy and sick as you take the pot from the tray and fill his cup to his taste.

"you should be honored to serve the president" his wife states as you place his cup in front of him and return to make hers.

"I am, Ma'am".

I had no choice, you wanted to say. Fallen houses often sold their children. The highest aristocrats loved to bask in anothers suffering. Having the child of a former elitist was the highest standing you could gain among peers.

"Cream. No sugar" She directs. You make the tea, and turn to leave the room.

"Who said you could go?" Coriolanus quickly swallows his tea to snap at you.

You felt the thirty lashes upon your skin once more and you turned around.

You curtsey to them before standing against the farthest wall with good posture and a head held high like you were taught.

"Who told you to stand there?"

"Honesty, Corio" Clemensia huffs.

Coriolanus clicks his figures and points to the space beside his chair, "Sit" .

Your legs felt like lead as your dragged them over. They cemented you as you sunk down on them next to the arm of his chair.

he picks up his chia set and balances it on your head as he continues talking to his wife about the selected subjects that their son was to complete as he enters school.

They talk slow as your neck cranes under the pressure. When he would take it off to have a sip the rebalancing became harder but you were determined not to spill a drop.

You peeked through eyelashes at Clemensia. For pity or just to look for any animosity growing in her eyes, you weren't sure. But she never looked your way. Not even as she rose and bid goodbye to her husband in a manner that was more suited to an associate than a lover.

The cup remained balanced on your head after she leaves, as Coriolanus shuffles papers and begins to put them away for the day.

He could feel his eyes on you, and you prayed that he would soon tell you to leave so you could undo the tension in your neck.

Instead, he picks up the tea pot and begins to pour more into the cup. With the uneven weight of the tea as it pours, it is impossible to keep the expensive chia on top of your head and it smashes upon the floor.

The lukewarm tea continues to tip over you, and your shrick as it follows your face as you try and maneuver out of the way.

He empties it upon you and places it back on the desk.

"tomorrow when i take my tea I expect it to be you that serves it. I hate surprises".

He pushes he chair back and walks over to his get his coat of the day from the rack. Today it was a thick black one with feathers for a collar.

He looks at you still kneeling wet like a good girl.

"oh, and Y/N that will be your new spot from now on. Known when to be there".

He walks out the door but you remain kneeling for a long time after. He was done with the cat and mouse game. It would take a lot more to save yourself from pain of the lashes from now on.

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

Part 1/3

second part here

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[seafoamreadings]

week of march 17th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: the first half of the week is very you. maybe everything is going your way, or maybe not but you're at least positive that you're the main character. later, your ruling planet mars moves into pisces - it is a strange and passive sign for him but it means you can do magic. for real.

taurus: your ruling planet venus harmonizes beautifully with benefic jupiter in your sign this week. it is hard to ask for a better aspect, although it is quick and fleeting. make good use of it. it gives you charm, allure, and an appetite for pleasure.

gemini: it's not mercury retrograde yet, but mercury is already in the shadow of his next retrograde. his alignment this week with the lunar nodes makes this effect more powerful than usual for everyone, and profoundly so for mercurial you.

cancerians: next week involves an eclipse, the start of eclipse season. it's so profound that one as lunar as you are likely feels the buildup already. things will bubble over - start preparing now to catch the overflow and prevent trouble so you can make the most of eclipse season.

leo: this week starts off aries season. and the sun has its rulership in your sign, but its exaltation in aries, so this period is VERY favorable (and shiny! and fun!) for leos. increase the benefits by learning about something you feel passionate about.

virgo: what is coming up in the next several weeks involves your shared resources and money from sources like inheritance. avoid merging households at this time, make sure your taxes are in order, keep your debt as low as possible, and so on.

libra: this week is the equinox, in your opposite sign and house of relationships. partnerships can be looking sunny indeed. but hold on to your hat, because *next* week there is a major lunar eclipse between libra and aries that can have these same relationships in turmoil, or at least upheaval.

scorpio: were it not for your ancient affiliation with mars, you would find little in common with aries. however, when the sun is in aries it is a bit of a special time for you due to that old connection. for a little bit, your martial side may become stronger than your plutonic side. meanwhile mars for its own part heads into pisces this week, and while many flounder with this placement, you do have an affinity with that watery sign. this ingress helps you make magic.

sagittarius: a couple of quite important ingresses occur this week. but the most noticeable for you will be the start of aries season. that marks the movement of the sun into your very fun and romantic 5th house. go wild. but keep your home beautiful and clean just in case you end up doing a bit of hosting, with mars in your 4th! a party would not be out of place if the mood strikes you.

capricorn: you will not read much about ceres out there in the world, but i hope that as she traverses your sign this time around, you develop a great appreciation for her. she makes some very benevolent and nourishing sextiles this week; try to be open to the fruits they yield.

aquarius: now with the start of spring, mars follows his lover venus into the sign of the purest love itself, pisces. this is your 2nd house, and a deeply romantic set of ingresses. it's good news for your money. but more than that, it's good news for anything that you value. cherish those things.

pisces: the sun in aries always means lovely things for you financially - it's like actual gold. furthermore by the end of the week you'll be hosting in your sign not just neptune and saturn and venus but also mars. you're deeply magical, and hardly tangible to the creatures of this realm. you're on another plane, in the best way. be kind to yourself and avoid addiction, compulsion, or dishonesty, and the results will be beautiful.

[theslimeologist]

curious as to how you feel about slime rancher's gameplay as a whole, if you wanna talk about it

oh boy.

slime rancher has a unique chaos-focused gameplay design unlike any other game ive played while also going for a chill farming vibe. after years of playing the first game, and just a handful of hours in the second.. i believe the gameplay loop and level design to be the reason I havent played the series in recent years.

everything in slime rancher is random.

crop yield, crop grow time, slime spawns, slimes feeding themselves, everything. and this is the core, foundational game design philosophy they’ve dedicated themselves to. and they’ve doubled down on the randomness in sr2.

shop stock is random every day. unlocking blueprints come unpredictably. resource nodes are randomly scattered about. weather, which can dictate slime AND material spawning, is 100% random. not even to what weather happens, but what DEGREE the weather is.

this much random chance has made the series appeal to me less and less with time. i love to strategize beyond all else in a farming game, and slime rancher’s “chill chaos” just doesnt accommodate my style of gameplay anymore. i want resource extractors. i want to have a reliable income in terms of resources so i can do all the incredible decorating they’ve added.. but i dont think anything could get me to play hundreds of hours of sr2 to collect resources by hand at the mercy of rng. i did this with gilded gingers for fun. i never wanted to do that for EVERYTHING.

now, to look at sr2’s gameplay and design decisions more closely..

slimes live in corrals. boxes. this is one thing i thought could have always been expanded on. enclosures are as simple as ever, essentially what they always were right from sr1 beta. slimes being fed are still dictated by the chance of food hitting their mouths at the right angle, right time, with the slime in the right mood. it just doesnt work reliably, leading to slime chaos despite any player’s best efforts. the devs seem to see this as part of the game, and not something that could be revolutionized or improved upon. the ranch expansions are as simple as ever. we can decorate them though…! i guess…! i wish there was more thought and love put into the ranching. more involved slime care. i had a lot of ideas i never drew down for how things could change..

moving on to the level design itself, the areas in sr2 feel more confusing than ever for me to navigate. and ive stubbornly believed that is not on me. the islands are focused on experiencing beauty and wonder, but not really designed with normal gameplay quirks that can help players navigate without even knowing they’re being helped. like landmarks. sr2 has the volcano, split tree and the conservatory. these three things are actually pretty difficult to spot in most locations, which really fucking sucks. if you’re lost on the sr2 map, they really just want you to open the map or wander. another thing that has always bugged me a TON, is in the rainbow fields there is a fucking death drop into water that looks like youre walking home. like…. LIKE???? another thing that feels especially controversial to point out is how the super-saturated aesthetic of every area can make an area feel samey, confusing even. rainbow fields have rainbows everywhere. imo, you could have gone for that idea while having brightly coloured trees, rocks, grass, that are DIFFERENT COLOURS. FOR CONTRAST. pick bright colours that complement eachother and sculpt the world with it. when i think of rainbow fields, i honestly can only imagine the purply blue grass and moss on grey stones…

it feels as though sr2 was all about pushing the teams creative and aesthetic abilities with a huge sacrifice to regular gameplay design. a slime rancher sequel was an opportunity to build anew from the ground up and address huge issues with 1’s unreliability due to physics and loading zones, etc. the full game isnt out yet so i cant speak on whether they’ll ever take these kinds of issues into consideration in future patches.

anyway at the end of the day, for a game so focused on aesthetic, slime rancher 2 doesnt even have properly textured tangle largos. I wont bother to look or photograph them all myself because tangles are only from rare weather. but next time you’re in game, check out that flat batty tangle flower for yourself. until that flower gets a proper texture patch i dont really have much else to say.

[valve3nthusiast]

I had a thought the other day. So you reckon sometimes, just maybe, Minimus would just ride the Magnus armour?

Like, imagine him after a tiring day of paperwork, fixing Rodimus's reports, detaining Whirl, -the usual-, He slowly makes the walk from his office to his habsuite, feet aching from walking around the ship with his armor removed. And as he sits at the edge of his berth (i firmly believe he does 'breathing exercises' before recharging), he looks up at the crotch plate of the armor and an idea comes to mind. (I know realistically the Magnus armor wouldn't have a spike, but we can dream, and we can draw)

Next thing you know, he's feverishly hopping up and down on that Magnus-mega-cock. Oh~! Imagine the stretch~! Imagine his throbbing anterior node~ (Wouldn't it be funny if he manages to get a piston motor installed, so essentially, the spike does all the work and Minimus just has to hold on for dear life)

(staying anonymous because i have a teensy bit of dignity left)

Anon, you've stumbled across one of my favorite things to think about

Of course, he'd have that moment of thinking, Am I really going to do this? as he stares at the armor's modesty plate. Imagining the armor's spike filling him, his panel opens and his array starts dripping, valve cycling down on nothing (for now)

Still pretending it's just morbid curiosity as he commands the armor's spike to extend. Pulling it out and running a hand over the biolights. Maybe he puts his arm up next to it, sees that the spike is bigger than his entire forearm. It just makes him wetter

That final I can stop moment shatters as he slides the spikehead against his dripping slit. His spike is out, he'll need the space, and his anterior node pulses from how charged this has him. Maybe he gives it a mean little pinch to get the lubricant flowing more, slicking up the spike with his own fluids

He's never done something so gauche as fisting himself, but when the spikehead sinks past the first calipers, he imagines that this must be what it feel like. Slowly, steadily, he makes his way down the spike, valve walls yielding to its massive girth

Maybe he's made such a mess by now that his legs slip and he drops a couple inches down on the spike faster than he meant to... Surprised with himself that he doesn't overload on the spot as it slams into his internal nodes

When he's finally sat down completely, do you think his abdominal plating bulges from it? Every caliper cycled out to the max, array so charged he's already trembling on the edge of overload

It would be hot if the spike was so big he couldn't even ride it properly, he has to grab the Magnus armor and pull himself up because his thighs don't have the strength to lift him

Maybe he can't move at all and just has to sit on the spike and grind it into his internal nodes until he overloads... He would feel so depraved, thighs covered in his own fluids, fucking himself with what he thinks of as his own spike...

[starvonnie]

Our Pink Living Room

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Megatron/Rodimus Additional Tags: Sticky Sexual Interfacing (Transformers), Artificial Intelligence, Angst, Androids, Post-Transformers: Lost Light 25

Also on AO3

He's not your Megatron.

Rodimus gasped as his spike met with aching ceiling nodes.

This is a lie.

Blue optics met red before shuttering closed for a vent-stealing kiss.

This isn't right.

Rodimus did everything he could to ground himself in the moment. For Primus’ sake, he was more than filled with spike—Megatron's spike—but it wasn't his. 

His Megatron. 

The condemned one. The dead one. The absolutely-not-alive one that couldn't be here. Couldn't be holding him.

And yet, he was.

“I love you,” the fake whispered against his lips.

Rodimus moaned before whispering back, “I love you, too.”

But what he loved was a program. AI. Just ones and zeros strung together in just the right way, with a one-to-one scale non-sentient (well… his sentience was debatable) robot. His only solace was that whatever this near-clone did, supposedly Megatron would have done, too. So maybe Rodimus had been too much of a coward to take that leap, but at least he knew his love was horribly requited.

Rodimus regretted. He regretted so much. He wished he had been braver. He wished he'd enjoyed Megatron while he'd had him. And he wished he had fought harder at his trial. Maybe if he had said the right things…

He mentally shook his helm. Interfacing. He was fucking. He shouldn't be getting sad, he should be getting railed.

Rodimus kissed him some more. He'd wanted to kiss Megatron more than anything. While Brainstorm had assured him that this Megatron would be as close to the real thing as could be, he knew deep in his spark that Megatron's lips wouldn't have been as soft and yielding. He imagined they'd be scarred and a little rough.

He couldn't really believe this wonderful lie. He talked like Megatron. Moved like him. Sounded like him. But they never bickered. Not like they used to. He was too damn agreeable. He wanted him to mock Rodimus’ garish colour choices or raise an optic ridge at the amount of sweetener he put in his morning cube. Instead, he awoke to Megatron—or this facsimile of him—having already made his morning cube. With the exact number of sweeteners he usually added.

He tried to test him. 

“I don't actually like it this sweet,” Rodimus lied.

“No? I apologize. Tomorrow I will make it how you like it.”

And the stupid programming remembered, leaving Rodimus to suck down less-sweet energon until he corrected Megatron again.

It was always how he liked it again.

“Can you write me a poem?” Rodimus asked.

Megatron cocked his helm. “What would you like it to be about?”

Rodimus frowned. “Me, obviously.”

Megatron had nodded, stood, then immediately got to work on a datapad. Within a few minutes he'd completed a whole-ass poem, and it was good. Definitely in Megatron’s voice, too, but it still felt off.

Rodimus glanced at that very poem, sitting on the nightstand. He wondered if Megatron, had he loved him, would have actually written him poetry. He burned to know.

“You love fucking my valve, don't you?” Rodimus said between breathy moans.

“I love fucking you,” that damn AI corrected.

It always said exactly what he wanted to hear. Like it was reading his damn processor. He hated it. 

But he couldn't live without it.

Rodimus returned home from work later that day, and Megatron was waiting. Same chair. Same energon blend. Same damn day. Over and over and over.

Frowning at the fake, Rodimus did something different. He ignored him. He walked straight to the washracks and scrubbed at his plating until it felt raw. He wanted to go back to the beginning where he was just so happy for the companionship that he didn't care that this wasn't real. That it would never be real.

Still simmering beneath the surface, Rodimus went back out to the kitchen where Megatron still waited, unmoved. It was like he was waiting to start some program.

Once again, Rodimus did something different. He grabbed some engex and took a swig straight from the bottle. 

“You're drinking again?” Not-Megatron sounded concerned.

“I'm having a drink,” Rodimus corrected. “What do you care?”

“You're my conjunx.”

A flare of anger burst from Rodimus’ field. Of course, this fake never understood him in that way. “Too complicated,” Brainstorm had said when Rodimus asked about his lack of a field.

“We're not conjunx,” Rodimus said quietly.

“What? Of course we are, I lo—”

“You are not real! How could we become conjunx if i didn't initiate, huh? What could possibly put you in a bad light? You have no substance for the Act of Disclosure!”

Megatron's optics dimmed and he lowered his gaze. “Perhaps because I am not real. But I am. I am Megatron.”

“Megatron never would've let me paint the living room pink! Much less with flames around the door!”

Not-Megatron looked around, his brow creased with worry. “We can paint it another colour.”

“That's not—AARGH!” Rodimus kicked the couch. “No! You're supposed to tell me this is a hideous colour and then suggest some bland shit that's an offense to colours everywhere!”

“Maybe… beige?”

“Maybe beige? Are you serious? I lied! You'd want to paint it purple! It's always purple with you!”

Megatron stood and closed the distance between them, and Rodimus stupidly let him. “Then we can paint it purple.”

“That's not the point!” Rodimus grabbed him by the collar faring and tugged him down until they were optic-to-optic. “Fight me on it. Argue with me. We always argued!”

“Will that make you happy?”

No.

“Yes!”

Megatron frowned. “It's a hideous colour.”

Rodimus should've been embarrassed, but his horniness hit him full-throttle and he smashed his mouth against Not-Megatron’s too-pillowy lips. It wasn't long before those strong arms had whisked him away to their berthroom and Megatron was deep inside of him again, fucking him like it was his Primus-given purpose.

Except Primus had no purpose for him. Primus didn't make him. Really, he was basically just a sex robot. Which, normally, Rodimus wouldn't have a problem with, but that wasn't why he had him made.

He needed more.

The next day, while at work, he did the bare minimum and spent most of the day just thinking. He weighed the pros and cons and did some deep soul-searching to figure out what he really wanted.

His processor hurt by the end of it.

Of course, he came to the same realization he always did: he wanted Megatron. He wanted to actual mech. The one with free will who wouldn't just let him do whatever he wanted without consequence. 

What finally pushed him to do it was the realization that Megatron wouldn't want this. The dead were dead and there was no way to emulate that.

Megatron didn't resist when Rodimus told him to open his chest. Where a spark should've been was nothing more than a computer compiling and spitting out data. All it took was a few snips from wire cutters for his not-conjunx to go dark and silent.

Rodimus still cried.

[alyss-erulisse]

Morph Madness!

Fixing Exploding Morphs

Marik's Egyptian Choker is currently in production. It is the first accessory I've made that involves assignment to more than one bone and morphs for fat, fit and thin states. So there is a learning curve, and it is during that learning curve that interesting and unexpected things can happen.

As with my other content, I'm making the choker fit sims of all ages and genders--that's 8 different bodies.

Adding fat, fit and thin morphs multiples this number to 27 different bodies.

I'm also making 3 levels of detail for each of these. The number comes to 81 different bodies, 81 different bodies for which I need to tightly fit a cylinder around the neck and avoid clipping.

That's a lot of work. I can see why most custom content creators stick with one age, gender and detail level. At least, they did in the past. Our tools are getting better day by day, and that may partly be because of creative, ambitious and somewhat obsessive people like me.

There are usually multiple ways to solve the same problem. Some ways are faster than others. This I've learned from working in Blender3D. You can navigate to a button with your mouse or hit the keyboard shortcut. You can use proportional editing to fiddle around with a mesh or you can use a combination of modifiers.

If I am going to be creating 81 chokers, I don't want to be fiddling around on each one of them for an hour. I need something automated, repeatable and non-destructive so I can make adjustments later without having to start over from the beginning. I need to work smart rather than just work hard.

This is where modifiers and geometry nodes come in. After you develop a stack to work with one body, the same process pretty much works for the others as well. That is how it became easier for me to model each of the 81 chokers from scratch rather than to use proportional editing to fit a copy from one body to the next.

But I was about to confront an explosive problem…

Anyone who has worked with morphs before probably knows where this story is headed. There is a good reason to copy the base mesh and then use proportional editing to refit it to the fat, fit and thin bodies. That reason has to do with vertex index numbers.

You see, every vertex in your mesh has a number assigned to it so that the computer can keep track of it. Normally, the order of these numbers doesn't really matter much. I had never even thought about them before I loaded my base mesh and morphs into TSRW, touched those sliders to drag between morph states, and watched my mesh disintegrate into a mess of jagged, black fangs.

A morph is made up of directions for each vertex in a mesh on where to go if the sim is fat or thin or fit. The vertex index number determines which vertex gets which set of directions. If the vertices of your base mesh are numbered differently than the vertices of your morph, the wrong directions are sent to the vertices, and they end up going everywhere but the right places.

It is morph madness!

When a base mesh is copied and then the vertices are just nudged around with proportional editing, the numbering remains the same. When you make each morph from scratch, the numbering varies widely.

How, then, could I get each one of those 81 meshes to be numbered in exactly the same way?

Their structures and UV maps were the same, but their size and proportions varied a lot from body to body. Furthermore, I'd used the Edge Split modifier to sharpen edges, which results in disconnected geometry and double vertices.

Sorting the elements with native functions did not yield uniform results because of the varying proportions.

The Blender Add-On by bartoszstyperek called Copy Verts Ids presented a possible solution, but it was bewildered by the disconnected geometry and gave unpredictable results.

Fix your SHAPE KEYS! - Blender 2.8 tutorial by Danny Mac 3D

I had an idea of how I wanted the vertices to be numbered, ascending along one edge ring at a time, but short of selecting one vertex at a time and sending it to the end of the stack with the native Sort Elements > Selected function, there was no way to do this.

Of course, selecting 27,216 vertices one-at-a-time was even more unacceptable to me than the idea of fiddling with 81 meshes in proportional editing mode.

So… I decided to learn how to script an Add-On for Blender and create the tool I needed myself.

A week and 447 polished lines of code later, I had this satisfying button to press that would fix my problem.

Here are the index numbers before and after pressing that wonderful button.

My morphs are not exploding anymore, and I am so happy I didn't give up on this project or give myself carpal tunnel syndrome with hours of fiddling.

Marik's Egyptian Choker is coming along nicely now. I haven't avoided fiddling entirely, but now it only involves resizing to fix clipping issues during animation.

Unfortunately, I'll have to push the release date to next month, but now, I have developed my first Blender Add-On and maybe, after a bit more testing, it could be as useful to other creators in the community as its been to me.

Looking for more info about morphing problems? See this post.

See more of my work: Check out my archive.

Join me on my journey: Follow me on tumblr.

Support my creative life: Buy me a coffee on KoFi.

[data-dominant]

Another late night pouring over the clues, pearlescent fingers flying over the screen of his workstation at a blistering pace. Geology was not a field of study he often visited, but there must be some commonality between Bloodstone and Tiger Iron that would yield something useful. Nothing in their chemical compositions were conclusive, perhaps he was looking too deeply... And then it dawned on him in the form of a name. The entire reason he was sifting through all this information.

Not Ruby, but Jasper. A quick minerology search confirmed it was present in both.

That left the number. This ship surely meant the Enterprise herself.

Flipping back through the messages, only one number not associated directly with an ask was 29.

A small satisfied smile crept across his face, the thrill of solving another mystery soaking into each node of his neural net, and he composed a short note to send to their PADD:

@jasper29enterprise,

I applaud you on your game, Lieutenant. Not many have the ability to keep me preoccupied for that long.

Perhaps we should meet in person and see how long you can keep me preoccupied in a physical sense. To see how your organic form compares to the relentless perfection of a Soong-type android, among other things.

Yours,

-Lt. Cmd. Data

[fatgumsurpremacy-remastered]

so like the thing is, i want medic to wrap his hands around my neck until i hear the latex in his gloves start to squeak, nd i wanna feel him up while hes still wearing his heavy over coat and watch him get hotter nd hotter under the collar, and i wanna feel the heavy rubber sole of his shoe between my shoulder blades as he slowly crushes me into the floor, nd i wanna help clean him up and wash all the sweat and gore off him when he returns home from a mission, and let him knock me out with painkiller nd go absolutely fucking crazy on my almost dead body, and - *i am forcibly removed from the podium and booed off the stage*

Ouuuggh wonderful!

Tw: choking, asphyxiation, degradation, horny medical examination, medical malpractice, biting, blood, violence, kicking, stepping, non con, drugs, allusions to death, unprotected sex.

Cycle of Violence Yandere Medic x Fem reader.

Medic had never fazed you before, you made it a mission in the field to either try or die trying.

Your position, in fact, had you actively apart from medic. As a type of support.

The doctor of course, noticed you.

It was nearly impossible not to! In the heat of the battle no one shone as great as you did in the field. So he always had his eyes on you.

When the winter months rolled around your first year you grew weary. Where the respawn machine could keep you from death, it could never keep you from illness.

When you’d respawn.

It’d come back.

Even the blistering heats of New Mexico had to yield to lady winter.

This year was the worst yet. Your engineer had fallen victim to the worst head cold he’d received on account of record breaking cold spikes. Causing you to not only pick up his end of work but also the itching feeling in your throat.

You weren’t scared of your medic.

In fact you found him quite harmless, professional at work, silly off hours. The steel of his door felt like nothing to you as you pushed it open.

The doctor himself seemed frazzled at the notion.

You merely sat yourself on the edge of his operating table and explained the issue to him. After a while he took out his necassary tools.

“Ah yes, and you were saying it was causing breathing abnormalities?”

You nodded as he pressed the stethoscope to your chest. One breath brought wheezing, and the next sharp, dry, coughs. Your shoulder hurt from the intensity of such, and the pain traveled down your arm.

The doctor tsked slightly before practically trotting off to find some more supplies.

Here was the time you likely should have realized something was wrong.

The doctors cold gaze softened as he stared at you. He smiled just as brightly as he normally had, placing a warm, welcome hand on your shoulder. His warm breath smelling fresh as he spoke to you about possible treatment.

And then he pegged this-

“Would you mind at all if we did some testing?”

Something you, didn’t mind at all.

You sat as straight as he told you before the hand, which was previously at his side pressed two fingers against your lymph nodes. He felt around for the ball, just a moment though.

Standard practice would’ve dictated longer. Instead his thumbs met above the center of your throat. Warm rubber feeling strange, as you could feel him shaking.

“Just a test my friend! Don’t worry.” You gave him a thumbs up and his hands clamped down. Your hands shot up to his wrists and your vision instantly began to cloud.

The severity of such a force sent you backwards. Medic fell forward with you, his words garbled. All senses were replaced with energetic heat. It sizzled through your body as if you were being burnt alive.

You couldn’t keep your eyes open during the struggle.

Only high pitched noises breached your ears, and you found yourself not breathing at all.

The cartilage in your spine popped noisily in your brain, and your lungs felt empty. Or full, you couldn’t tell. You felt like you were going to pop. You could barely tell how the doctor was easing his knee between your thighs. Pressed harshly against your heat, how he spit words of filth to you as you weakly held onto his face,

Begging for him to stop.

When you woke up in the respawn machine you couldn’t remember a thing.

How you got there or what caused your death. The idea frightened you but the day went on and every time you breathed your chest pound in anger back at you.

You felt spent and afraid. Whimpering pathetically as you drove your hands along the wall, in a plea you’d make it to Medics room before you died.

And that you did.

You looked up pathetically at the doctor, thanking him with what little breath you could that he let you in.

You were comfortable around medic and had no reason to fear him.

You barely knew him, but he’d always given you a dashing smile around the breakfast table so you knew he could be trusted.

“Now what would you rate your pain my dear?”

You held up an eight on your fingers, whimpering a bit more when he went between them and pressed right above your belly.

Pain coursed in a circle inside you. Painting a portrait in vicious hues before swiping it away again. You held onto the doctors shoulders as he continued. He explained his actions as “Checking for bumps.”

You didn’t understand how that would help you in the slightest but his warmth allowed you to breathe.

Your hand absentmindedly went under his labcoat, fiddling dazed with the shirt underneath.

You expressed no discomfort as his hand stayed stagnant over your chest. The heat permeated your flesh and you felt to do the same.

Your hands fished his shirt out of his pants and slid up the curled expanse of his body. The thick muscles underneath would’ve shocked you had it not been for the beheamoth of medicine he carried around on him. You hummed pleasantly as your seemingly permanently cold hands trailed along him.

As you reached his chest you contentedly rested there. Medic removed his hands from you, only to plant them by either side of your hips and lead closer. You closed your eyes and breathed deeply, hearing the fast paced thudding of his heart.

Beads of sweat ran down his neck and you had little thought left in your brain but to lick it. He panted, nearly falling on top of you as you did. The wet feeling of your tongue on him catching him in a vice grip.

He moaned as his arms moved further behind you.

And you only kept working your mouth over his neck, hands kneading gently at his soft and hairy chest.

Suddenly the needle of a syringe stuck your own neck.

When you woke up in the respawn machine you couldn’t remember a thing.

You felt hot and sweaty, unnerved by the way you’d waken up.

You found yourself sticking by medic that entire day. Conversing with the busy man, and fucking up every shot you took.

Your team glared at you as you walked in that day. Your body was wrecked with pain, and one by one you filed into the medbay.

You were mature enough to know you’d fucked up. And you stayed at the back of the line. Dell, who had recovered the night before smiled at you as you went in. He pulled you into a hug before hand offering some words of advice.

“Take it from me kid. We’ve all got out off days out there. It can be pretty stressful, you just gotta remember to keep to your own and stay out of trouble ya hear?” You smiled sheepishly, “Thank you Engie.”

“Anytime sug’.” He said calmly before walking off.

Today you didn’t feel right about medics lab. You hesitated to even call it an “office” as there was no feeling other than brutal tension inside.

“What happened out there?” The door slammed closed from its open position. A shocking feat given its weight. Then man positioned behind it had a calculating gaze. His usually happy demeanour skulking as he slowly brushed by you.

You looked towards the ground, aching hands clasped tightly across your body as you sought for a word that couldn’t be found.

Medic sat impatiently in his rolling chair before gesturing with his finger. When you got close enough to him he grabbed you tightly from the collar of your uniform and pulled you in.

“Sit. You don’t deserve to be above me.”

You sat abruptly listening in for any change in his tone. His demeanor. But you swallowed hard upon realizing what he expected.

Before you could understand what you were telling him, you babbled out apologies on top of one another. You incohearent sentences music to the man’s ears as his posture decompressed. His eyes stared right back into yours, and he could feel the sincerity from you.

“Oh schatz, I understand. I don’t think it was entirely your fault… but then again.” He tilted his head to one side as an impish grin crawled unto his features. “We’re you nor the one who caused our team to loose?”

He stood up imposingly, backlit from the dim white lighting above.

Before you could say anything he shoved your shoulder to the side harshly before taking his heel to your back.

You thrashed up in a feeble attempt to fight back, but his heel stomped down in your tailbone with a sick thud noise.

You yelped in pain, attempting in vain, to crawl away. Like a helpless roach pinned beneath a cat. The feeling only continued to worsen as he slammed his heel back down with reverence between your shoulder blades.

The crack was unholy, and your vision went black. You could only feel the horrible mans boot above you. The pressure keeping your chest flat to the ground. You whined and he hushed you as soft as any lover would.

And again he ground into your back. Heel digging into your muscles until they forcibly snapped- from one another.

You could only scream and hear him laugh as you cried yourself to sleep.

When you woke up in the respawn machine you couldn’t remember a thing.

You sat there, huddled in the corner for a good three hours before someone found you. You can’t remember who.

You don’t remember what you were wearing but it showed that you’d been bleeding for a very long time.

When you were dropped off in the medbay you were unconscious, eyes glued to something in the darkness. Never looking at the lights or grey world around you.

The men had called that day off, but medic insisted that they could go on without you. He’d left you patched up and in your room, recovering well as you stared ahead.

You didn’t understand. It’d been almost a week and you couldn’t remember a thing. You sobbed for a while.

No one came.

You talked to yourself and made yourself mad trying to understand what you were thinking.

No one came.

But he came when you were asleep, gently shaking you awake. Smiling blue eyes the only reprieve you had from a splitting headache and fragmented reality.

His hand came up to meet your head, now bare and uncaring of your flesh.

“Doctor, I’ve been having nightmares.”

You grabbed a wet wipe from your desk and absentmindedly cleaned his hand still sticky with sweat.

You rolled his sleeve up a bit more.

You continued,

he pressed about the dreams, smiling to you as you described how bad they were.

He no longer had a shirt on. He was above you and in his boxers. You wondered just how you ended up this way. Gently wiping off your teams medic, but his warm flesh seized your brains capacity to function.

You brushed through his hair with your fingers, an action that seemed to have him taken aback. But as you retracted them be grabbed your hand and kissed it smiling happily up at you.

“You’re so so cute did you know that?” His smile was unreasonably bright, it hurt to look at.

“I need medication doctor.”

Medic paused his advances as you said this. Confusion melted in his brain but the same hadn’t shown on his face. Instead he scrambled off the bed in search of what he’d brought.

A jar full of pretty pink and blue pills.

You leaned back and popped the ones he gave you with little thought behind the action.

Why would you think?

The room was soooo hot.

Could you remember what happened? What you’d seen, heard, felt…

Felt…

Felt. Hands.

His hands grazed your sides as your eyes glazed over. Already wet with tears you couldn’t feel a damn thing.

Your vision was beging go cloud with liquidy static, starting at the edges before fizzling around the pupil.

You knew it was sleep, but your adrenaline kept you awake.

Awake enough to feel your body being yanked towards him, breasts fondled harshly as he allows his flesh to not examine, but devour.

His nipping, and gnashing jaws, things that would usually be an issue felt like itching at the flesh of a disembodied system. Nothing coukd hurt you here. The ripping threads of your garment littered the floor and he dipped below.

Everything around you felt like it was falling, and moving up around you at the same time.

A horrifying caress of Alice’s experiences in wonder land.

Warm

Wet

Tongue, his tongue on your flesh felt searing, and you couldn’t be bothered in the slightest, your body was limp.

A small and very pliable doll.

Something to wreck

To tear into and devour.

But he didn’t want that now, he wanted you. And he needed just a bit more than the surface level blood he could draw from his biting.

What drew you into this wild world of killing? Had you grown so numb to your natural life that you expected something different here?

Medic shoved his face between your thighs, lasciviously flaunting skills that took years in the making with small flicks and harsh presses of his mouth.

No sounds roused from you. No nothing.

You were still,

And quiet.

And present.

How he wanted you really. From the start he’d hoped to be knuckle deep in your dripping hole. Who cares if the dripping was from lube or not?

It didn’t matter when he held you close and whispered to you. Pretending like what he was doing was normal when you were little more than a warm pillow by then.

He could get over it.

With the same hand inside of you, he started jacking. Warning his cock to slip deep, deep into you.

He wanted you to feel it.

But you couldn’t, so he’d have to improvise.

He lined himself up and slammed in.

Oh it could’ve wakened you.

The thrust almost against your cervix, pounding away the moment he stuck himself in you. The pulsing of his balls, dripping with the precum of a man who had held his orgasms for nearly a month.

He was desperate and he needed you.

He always needed you. And he rolled his hips, thrusting his cock harshly in and out. A brutal pace to set for a cooling fuck doll. The sleep made you cold. You could feel your breath.

The sleep made you cold, and you could feel his hands.

The sleep made you cold.

It made you…

You could feel everything.

The veins on his dick were thick and weaves through the complex structures in your walls. He always angled his cock to hit at the top, and a fraction of a centimeter away from your cervix.

His hair scratched at your skin, sometimes leaving raw red patches were it dragged.

And he just pulled your hair back and hit.

And hit

And hit.

It was at random and accommodating only what he enjoyed doing. And the fuzziness came back, this time the liquid static shot down, furling and curling. It lead your stomach to churning a vicious wave. Everything was floating.

“Ich werde dich zum Abspritzen bringen, Mädchen. Du wirst es tun, bist du nicht mein Haustier? Du bist nah dran und du weißt es. Sperma jetzt, komm jetzt, mach es!”

His spitting words and hand snatched ruthlessly across your face forced the waves within you to crash.

The feeling sent you forward on shaky legs, ass in the air as he turned you around and shoved himself back in.

Warmth.

Finally.

Deep and burning, and placid.

Like a thick blanket of-

When you woke up in the respawn machine you couldn’t.

[sunshinesmebdy]

Power Surge for Business: Moon in Aries Meets Mercury, Eclipse & Destiny (April 8th)

Get ready for a firestorm of opportunity, because on April 8th, we experience a powerful convergence of astrological forces that can dramatically impact your business and finances. Buckle up, entrepreneurs and go-getters, because I’m here to guide you through this dynamic cosmic dance!

Triple Threat Tuesday: Aries Takes Charge

Three key transits collide on this potent Tuesday, each influencing your business and financial landscape:

Moon Conjunct Mercury in Aries: This dynamic duo ignites clear and concise communication. Negotiations flow effortlessly, and innovative ideas spark like wildfire. Action Item: Schedule important meetings, pitches, or presentations for this day.

Business Implications:

Effective Communication: Use this alignment to express your ideas clearly and persuasively. Collaborate with colleagues, clients, and partners to convey your vision.

Swift Decision-Making: Decisions made during this transit may be impulsive but can yield positive results. Trust your instincts.

Marketing and Sales: Promote your products or services boldly. Engage with customers through direct communication channels.

Financial Impact:

Increased Transactions: Expect brisk financial activity — sales, contracts, and deals.

Risk-Taking: Be cautious of impulsive financial decisions. Balance boldness with practicality.

Moon in Aries Conjunct Mercury in Aries:

Effective Communication:

During this alignment, communication becomes assertive and direct. It’s an excellent time for negotiations, pitching ideas, and closing deals. Business leaders should express their vision clearly to clients, partners, and colleagues.

Swift Decision-Making:

Decisions made now may be impulsive but can lead to positive outcomes. Trust your instincts and act swiftly. Avoid overthinking; seize opportunities promptly.

Marketing and Sales:

Promote your products or services boldly. Use direct channels — emails, phone calls, or face-to-face interactions.

Customers respond well to confident communication.

Aries Solar Eclipse: Eclipses signify new beginnings. The fiery energy of Aries makes this a particularly potent time to launch new ventures, rebrand your business, or unveil a revolutionary product.

New Ventures:

Solar eclipses mark powerful beginnings. Use this energy to launch new projects, products, or marketing campaigns. Set intentions for growth and innovation.

Self-Discovery:

Reflect on your business identity. What drives you? What needs healing or transformation? Realign your business goals with your authentic purpose.

Courageous Initiatives:

Aries encourages bold moves. Take calculated risks. Innovate, even if it means stepping out of your comfort zone.

Business Implications:

New Ventures: Launch new projects, products, or marketing campaigns. The eclipse provides a burst of energy.

Self-Discovery: Reflect on your business identity, purpose, and leadership style. What needs healing or transformation?

Courageous Initiatives: Aries encourages bold moves. Take calculated risks.

Financial Impact:

Investments: Consider long-term investments or diversify your portfolio.

Debt Management: Address financial wounds — pay off debts, seek financial advice.

Innovation: Invest in cutting-edge technologies or business models.

Moon Conjunct North Node & Chiron in Aries: The North Node represents your destined path, while Chiron, the “wounded healer,” highlights past challenges. This alignment sheds light on any past financial roadblocks and empowers you to step into your true financial potential. Action Item: Reflect on any past financial hurdles you’ve faced. How can you use those experiences to propel yourself forward?

Moon in Aries Conjunct North Node and Chiron in Aries:

Purpose-Driven Actions: This alignment signifies a karmic turning point. Align your business actions with your soul’s purpose. Seek meaningful work that resonates with your core values.

Healing Leadership:

Address past wounds in your leadership style. Lead with empathy and authenticity. Healing within your organization can positively impact financial outcomes.

Networking and Guidance:

Connect with influential individuals who can guide your path. Collaborate with like-minded businesses for mutual growth.

Business Implications:

Purpose-Driven Actions: Align your business goals with your soul’s purpose. Seek meaningful work.

Healing Leadership: Address past wounds in your leadership style. Lead with empathy.

Networking: Connect with influential individuals who can guide your path.

Financial Impact:

Karmic Financial Shifts: Expect changes in income sources or financial stability.

Self-Worth and Abundance: Heal any scarcity mindset. Value your unique contributions.

Collaborations: Partner with like-minded businesses for mutual growth.

Remember: While the impulsive energy of Aries can be a powerful asset, balance it with careful planning. Do your research before making any major decisions, but don’t let hesitation extinguish your spark. This is a day to seize opportunities, ignite your passion, and take your business to the next level!

[baldursyourgate]

re: the pregnancy plotline

There isn't much about it actually. Out of all we've seen so far, this miiiight actually be to be cut content that's still partially available in game file.

As per usual, giga super mega spoiler under the cut

So first I'm going to show all the lines itself, then I'll examine the whole thing a bit deeper, looking into the flags.

The lines: If you've been around for a while, you might have seen this post with the pregnancy related lines. What I've found bellow is exactly just that, now with the companions' name attached.

Astarion's lines on Minthara are always my fave lol. The "Link to Node 101" just sends me to nowhere in the end, so no other pregnancy related lines from Astarion.

Aww godmother Karlach for baby Minthy <33 Cute cute, wholesome! Similar to Astarion, "Link to Node 347" doesn't actually lead to any content.

Do you think Lae'zel knows only Giths lay egg and not the majority of humanoid species? Something to think about.

And that is all for the dialogue. Now to the less interesting part: Digging around the code.

So far the keyword "pregnancy" only yields 16 results. That's not a lot at all, as you've seen above, neither Wyll nor Gale has a reaction line. Moreover, no continuation or further elaboration from other companion nor any narrator lines.

"TG_ORI_Minthara_TalkedAboutPregnancy" flag only has dialogue when its value is "False" and no dialogue in case of "True". Very much incomplete and further points to this plotline being incomplete/dropped/cut but not entirely removed from the code.

"ORI_Minthara_State_ChildIsPlayers" flag only has one instance. Can't seem to find _ChildIsntPlayers or _ChildIsSomeoneElses or anything similar.

And that leaves us to the...

Conclusion: I'm convinced that this plotline is dropped.

Not gonna lie... I'm kind of glad that it is. I'm unsure how it can be handled well, but that might just be my skepticism.

[misakicchi]

Thoughts and Experiences in CBT2

Before we start-

I would like to talk about the recently concluded Closed Beta Test of Wuthering Waves-

All are from my own interpretation and criticism over the state of the for this beta test.

1. 3 days before the end of CBT2 on March 17, they had given a LOT of energy, that would have been better to be given while the testing was far from the final day, it would have helped testers build more characters (40 energy per run on EXP farming and 60 energy for bosses). It would have been nice to be able to test the game to a much further potential.

2. ECHOES- literally echoes… While I was farming for intimacy and dropping a LOT of energy on bosses, there was 0 gold drops on bosses, like 0, nada. How can you expect players to build characters when the STATS they need on better rarity echoes are locked due to the low drop rate of golden echoes.

3. I don’t know if it is just me or a lot of people in the test experiences red ping even though they are on the correct server from their own regions (for me it is Asia-SEA region in-game). I am used to having red pings from other games, but that is because I have my account on other regions, however in my own region, I get a red ping. It is weird because my laptop is literally connected to as fast wifi setup.

4. ECHOES AGAIN- the limit of echoes in a character that I have achieved is 12- a stinking 12 limit, not my fault most better rates are on boss echoes that uses 4 SLOTS out of the 12. It wouldn’t be bad if the limit was just not there so that any good echoes can be slotted onto the character of choice than be limited to how much I can equip to a character. 5. The exp drop rate is bad- could be better. I mean it is easy to farm the node itself… but 40 energy per run is just horrific.

6. Intimacy- man I disliked how much it takes to level a character’s intimacy, in cbt2 it would be easy since we were given extra help by the devs. But anyone who just wants to read a profile or hear voice lines would be locked with quite a while. Intimacy drop from bosses (60 energy) yields 180 Intimacy Points, meanwhile 40 energy farming nodes yield only 120 Intimacy Points, this is only for CBT, I really do not mind farming this on the actual game... just that the time constraint to farm more character's intimacy in such a short amount of time is hard with limited energy (until the last 3 days) in the CBT.

7. The length between Lingyan and Jiyan story quest are light and day. We literally took more time helping an NPC on Lingyan story quest than actually spending more time with our temporary team (and actually trying to win the race with them) I felt more connected with the temporary team, maybe because I actually liked the whole Jiyan quest in general than running around with an NPC who wants to find her brother. Albeit I did enjoy both chapters, I wish we did get to continue the race... The cutscene was also not enough on Jiyans chapter compared to that of Lingyans.... like??? Give us more Jiyan cutscene pls.

I wish they would improve more on the coming months before release and that all criticism and suggestions will be taken into account. If I remember more of my comments in the forms I have sent to the devs, I will update this.

I did manage to get the characters I want, Jiyan and Mortefi to be exact. But man I started enjoying using Calcharo and Aalto.

I also post some videos while I was still in CBT2, if you are interested- here is my Youtube channel.

[coffeeangelinabox]

Whumpril #20: Touch Starved

The others think they know. Untouchable Darrow who lets no one near him, more likely to snarl like a wounded wolf and chase them away when he needs them the most; sensitive David who has no one who reaches out with gentle, soothing touch because it doesn’t fit in with their ideals of masculinity, never noticing what that deprivation costs him; Rosie - little more than a child to crawl into a parents’ hold for comfort and cosseting, and yet blossoming enough into woman hood that to hold her in such a way makes her predominantly male crew worry that their intent will be misconstrued. 

They think they know. 

But for Nico and Casey, the lack of touch is a branding iron, a deliberate slow torture, a sickness that never goes away. 

Humans find the tactile aspect of them repugnant. They are told that they feel soft, squashy, but in the way of partly decomposed meat or large larvae instead of in a way that could be construed as comforting. And yet, unknown to their crew, that yielding flesh holds more than triple the sensory receptors of humans. Their species communicates almost fifty percent of the time by touch alone, an array of nuances in caressing tendrils. 

They hold themselves, running fronds over their back and neck and nodes. It keeps them warm even if it doesn’t offer what they need. 

“We can do it.”

Jay looks doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“You are the superior pilot and should remain aboard. Ensure we are able to leave after ramming the station. Our limbs,” they wave them demonstratively, “are not suited to weaponry. We will require Rosie as cover. But we can manipulate the electronics and find Jemma and we can do it quickly.”

It’s true. Logical. Necessary.

And when they are injured, as is inevitable, David will give soft touches as he heals them. 

[bumblebeeappletree]

Woody herbs are staples in most productive gardens. Being woody herbs, it’s not much of a surprise that they can grow woody as the supple young plants you put into the ground become tough and mature. They also can lose their vigour as they become woody, after a few years not bouncing back quite as well as they once did after a hard prune.

Cuttings are the most common way to propagate plants for home gardeners as well as large-scale propagation nursery. Get this technique down, and you can apply it to almost all plants in your garden!

This can be done any time of year, except for the dead of winter. Undertaking it in spring will yield the fastest results.

Step 1: Taking the cutting

- Use sharp, fine-tipped snips to take cuttings. This prevents damage to the plant using blunt force or ripping the stem.

- Look for nice healthy tips to harvest from. You don’t want to take any stems or leaves that are sad or diseased. If your plant is diseased or struggling, taking healthy cuttings can be a good way to give it a fresh lease on life.

- If it is a hot day or you are taking lots of cuttings, it is a good idea to keep them fresh by storing the cuttings in a container with a wet towel to keep them hydrated while you work. If the stems dry out, they won’t strike.

- An ideal length for cuttings is about 10-15 cm long, or with around four nodes. Don’t worry about the length too much as you can always trim it back when you get to the planting phase if they are too long.

Step 2: Trim stems & excess foliage

- Bring your cuttings into your workstation or greenhouse. Now you can clean up the foliage and trim back the length.

- A minimum of four nodes is ideal for sage cuttings. The node is the area where leaves and stem meet. Josh can demonstrate how to find and count the nodes. Ensure the base of your cutting is cut underneath the node. This area has a higher concentration of the plant hormone, auxin, which encourages rooting.

- Trim or gently pull off the leaves from the bottom three nodes, leaving just the foliage at the top growing tip. Any extra foliage will speed up drying of cutting which is not ideal. If the leaves left are quite large, you can cut them in half to reduce the surface area. This will not harm the plant but will reduce water loss.

Step 3: Place in growing medium

- Fill pots with propagation mixture and wet well beforehand. This mix is a bit finer than conventional potting mix, it should be nice and fluffy and hold onto moisture well. Extra perlite mixed in is also a good idea as it allows the developing roots to push through and access air.

- Dip ends of stem in rooting hormone if you have it or would like to, but it is not required. If you do use it, remember that a little goes a long way.

- Stick the stems directly into the pre-prepared pots, up to the bottom of the remaining leaves. You may put several cuttings in the same pot at this early stage.

Step 4: Managing moisture

- Water in well and place the pots in your greenhouse, propagation station, or under a DIY humidity dome such as a plastic container to keep the soil moist. You can take the lid off of the humidity dome every few days to allow fresh air in and prevent root rot, but keeping the soil moist during the initial growth phase is crucial. If the cuttings dry out, the rooting with cease and the cuttings will die.

Step 5: Separate your plants!

- Rooting time required can take a couple of weeks or up to 2 months, depending on the season. How do you know if you have been successful, and the cuttings have set root? If you see new growth of leaves from the top of the plant. Also, you can give them a tug and they should hold nice and firm in the soil.

- Once your baby plants have grown a bit and developed a good root mass in their pots, you can separate them out from each other and pot up individually. After they have grown healthy roots in their individual pots, plant them out in the garden.

[luvwich]

word search tag game 📖

tagged by @wanderingaldecaldo 💜 these are always fun!

looking for privacy, claim, suspicion, flush, chords in Arpeggio & Jaded...

privacy

She scowled at her surroundings. Tufted booths curved womblike to shelter each node of straight-backed suits from one another. Nattering imbeciles, all their droning voices signifying jack shit, but everyone was convinced that whatever they had to say required privacy. Their world had told them their words mattered, and enough of them believed the lie that it became the truth.

-- Arpeggio, ch. 25

claim

He pushed her further, and then the tiniest bit further than that… and then he stopped. V felt like she'd been dangled from a thirty-second-floor balcony and then yanked back. Her shoulders tensed as she wriggled within the restraint, aching to regain control. But she ached even more to yield further, to feel him claim every part of her with every part of him.

-- Arpeggio, ch. 23

suspicion

Visited by a phantom of familiarity, River wondered where he might have seen this guy before. An actor? He cleared his throat. “Skiing, eh? Never been, myself. Tahoe hasn't had a full snowfall for as long as anyone can remember around here." He let the small talk settle like a cloud of banal dust and pressed onward. "So what worries have been troubling you.. I'm sorry, it was Charlie, right?”

River lifted the whiskey to his lips. An unnamed suspicion crept up the back of his shirt to prickle at his neck as he met the man's eyes.

-- Arpeggio, ch. 16

flush

It’d been a long-ass day. Weird dreams last night. The tiger reappearing on his arm, animated, telling him things. He hadn’t been sleeping enough, but he was flush with eddies and that’s got a way of perking you up even when you should wind down. That’s how Mike ended up with five gin-and-tonics in him before eleven p.m., his head heavy and propped on his hand as he held court at his usual spot.

And when he saw her this time, when he heard her light laughter at the other end of the Afterlife, he didn’t run and hide in the boy’s room. 

-- Jaded, ch. 5

chords

After that interminable date in corpo hell earlier, though, the dive's cheery bustle put her spirit at ease. The booths were ratty but comfortable, the lighting low enough to be flattering and warm enough to see the color of your companion's eyes. Patrons enjoyed hearty bites of food as a man with wisps of silver hair plucked ethereal chords from a guzheng, the sounds of ancient mountains and rivers weaving around the laughter of Watson's raucous sons and daughters.

She spotted him in a corner booth, surrounded by half-empty small plates and a huge stein of beer that was as pale as the hair on his head. His lips split into that crooked grin when he saw her. 

“Whoa, glad you could make it, hotshot. Didn’t think you’d show.”

-- Jaded, ch. 6

keepin it going sans pressure if yall want:

🔎 spice, question, fury, paint, gentle 🔍

@another-corpo-rat @cinnamon-mey @dani-the-goblin @fly-amanitaa @ghostoffuturespast @gracewithsomesacrifice @merge-conflict @theviridianbunny

[materialsscienceandengineering]

High-loading single cobalt atoms on ultrathin MOF nanosheets for efficient photocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction

Using solar energy to convert CO2 into synthetic fuels is currently one of the most promising technologies to achieve carbon neutrality with the embedment of sustainable energy into our modern economy. However, the efficiency of photocatalytic CO2 conversion is greatly limited due to the high thermodynamic stability of CO2 molecules and their multiple-electron-reduction process.

The synthesis of stable single-atom catalysts with high metal loading is desirable to boost photocatalytic CO2 performance, which, however, has remained a great challenge. To overcome this challenge, a study was performed by the groups of Prof. Yongfeng Zhou and Prof. Yiyong Mai (School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

They developed a bottom-up synthetic strategy for the construction of ultrathin MOF nanosheets coordinated with Co single atoms, by directly using CoII tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl) porphyrin (CoTCPP) as the linkers and Cu2–(COO)4 paddlewheel cluster as the metal nodes. The bottom-up strategy avoids the tedious exfoliation processes and low yields encountered in top-down synthetic approach.

Read more.