#if I ever start selling prints I think this would be one of them :)

[meowthefluffy]

lol just remembered that I am literally obsessed with the last unicorn and and it kinda took over my brain until I made this illustration

#the last unicorn #my art #the last unicorn fanart #fairy tales #unicorn #if I ever start selling prints I think this would be one of them :) #This is just the beginning tho #because I am gonna be doing a ton of fanart for a bunch of different things soon #and probably more the last unicorn art too #Pls comment and reblog!

[inkskinned]

nobody ever gets the mugshot of gluttony right. these days you think it has nothing to do with bodyweight. what a good trick: that gluttony could take a shape. no, there was never any fault in finishing a meal or in taking second helpings. it was always in taking from others that there was an issue - the oil baron's fingers steepled over dead bodies and stolen lands. gluttony - twin of greed, although most think greed and envy are the siblings - gluttony is pleased with the experience of gaining, is thrilled just-by-having. greed is the one that stays hungry, that has to move forever like a shark. gluttony likes it - "a glutton for punishment" is one who is seeking the harm, who loves the rush.

gluttony is a mother using her daughter's body for a diet testing ground, sharpening the bone angles. gluttony is saying why, well not! to the seventh and eighth mansion or yacht. it is not just wanting the six white horses, it is making sure that the horses came from your stables. it is not just bathing in milk - it is bathing in milk while others are starving.

oh, it's true that some sins still blaze in their bright floral prints. wrath in a white woman yelling at a person of color for even daring to be in her neighborhood. the red, incipient rage of a neck tightened at even the thought we would take the guns away. wrath has laurels, and she is good at her job, and works hard.

but sloth wasn't ever the sleepy morning of depression, the hours spent begging a clouded body to please move goddamn it; the protestant work ethic claiming even rest is somehow demonic. it was never chronic fatigue. sloth was subtle, a grey mist. she is watching you get bullied and she is deciding it is none of her business. she crosses the picket line because - what! it's just chicken, isn't it? she is closing her eyes and turning her head when the next anti-gay legislation passes. someone else will handle it. not the tense freeze of anxiety or a lack of preparation - she knows you're hurting and would rather you stay quiet about it. she tells other people i just don't see what the big deal is.

sloth is a father that doesn't do the dishes. sloth is your boyfriend's innocent shrug you're just better at household shit. sloth isn't the missed opportunity - it is the purposeful desire to just get-someone-else-to-do-it.

greed and envy are doing body shots in the back of a private jet. they are the way they always have been, but are lovers in the age of the internet. greed just finished union busting, is rolling a bitcoin over his knuckles, is about to start another MLM. envy is in a broadbrimmed hat, showing off her instagram life, grinning about how if you want it, work for it.

okay, it's true. you have a soft spot for lust, gathering dust in a corner. so tame in comparison to the others. but how funny lust is always painted as being a woman in tight clothes. you've met actually lustful women - the ones that purposefully climb into your partner's lap, the ones that say lesbians are gross but ask bisexual women into bed with their husbands. a lustful woman is not donned in lace and garters and red: that's how men think lust looks, painting their own sins into frame. this way, the sin displaces as fog and hovers above her: a woman in a dress is lust; what the man experiences is just the natural consequence.

here is the thing: lust is doing just fine, save your pity. lust is running more circles than any of them. lust is shutting down safe sexwork sites while also making teenagers in knee-high socks sex sensations. lust is CEO of an advertising network where women never pass 25 years old. all the bras lust makes are pretty to look at but, when worn, legitimately hurt. lust has a podcast, his fur coat looped around his shoulders, sells the idea that only certain people have value, that sex raises some and destroys others. lust is tilting his head and asking what did you expect when you dress like that? lust shuns you, sneers that everything you want is disgusting and taboo - right until he can figure out how to capitalize off of it. lust has the midas ability: everything he touches becomes an object.

people usually say wrath is the scary one. you agree with FMA here, though: the real dangerous one is pride, and the shit-eating grin. the white cloaks and the nationalism and the inability to apologize. it is every partner who threw a book at your head because you don't respect him. it is every mother who said my son doesn't deserve to have his life ruined over allegations. it is the teacher that fails you because you talked back.

you worry you have this one. you feel guilty when you need help but don't ask for it. prideful. ashamed when you complete something and feel good about it. too proud for your own good. but pride is not the reward of hard work or accomplishment: pride is a twitter feed. it is the thing that has to mask i didn't do anything with look at me.

pride is your father's raised hand, his raised voice. how he was never there when you needed him, but he is still "head of house." he ruins dinner and blames it on you: you're an embarrassment to this family. this is the glass you walk around, the cuts in your feet. how he says this isn't how i raised you and you have to bite back the retort: that's because you didn't actually fucking raise me.

#i personally think having any of these desires is totally fine. it's when u use them to hurt others #it's why having ambitions =/= greed: as long as ur ambition isn't ''i hope i can take someone elses good things'' #writeblr #warm up #seven deadly sins

[dduane]

The Young Wizards series turns 40!

...And yes, we're having a sale to celebrate. But that can wait. :)

I'm sitting here looking at the date and considering how amazing it is that, despite the changes in the publishing world, anything can stay in print nonstop for forty years.

But this book has. Here's how it started:

...Well, not how it started. It started with three things:

A newbie YA writer being deeply annoyed with a non-newbie one for (as she thought) stripping their teenage characters of their agency without good reason.

A suddenly-appearing joke involving two terms or concepts that wouldn't normally appear together: the 1950s young-readers' series of careers books with titles that always began So You Want To Be A..., and the word "wizard."

And the idea immediately springing from that juxtaposition. What if there was such a book? Not a careers book, but a book that told you how to be a wizard—maybe some kind of manual? One that would tell you the truth about the magic underlying the universe, and how to get your hands on it... assuming you felt you could promise the things that power would demand of you, and survive the Ordeal that would follow?

Six or seven months after that confluence of events, there was a novel with that joke-line as its title. A month or so after that, the novel was bought. So You Want To Be A Wizard came out as a Fall 1983 book, as you can see from the Locus Magazine ad above (from back when Locus was only a paper zine). The first reviews were encouraging.

And by the middle of 1984, the publishers were asking, "So, what's next?" A question I'm still busy answering.

There's been a lot of water under the wizardly bridge since. In SYWTBAW's case, this involved a couple/few publishers, a surprising number of covers, a fair number of awards here and there; and lots more books. (I always knew there'd be more, but how many more continues to surprise me. Which is a bit funny, considering how much stuff that universe has going on in it.)

So here we are at forty, and looking ahead to The Big Five-Oh with some interest. More books? Absolutely. Young Wizards #11 is in progress at the moment, and YW #12 is in the late concept stages. More covers for So You Want To Be A Wizard? Seems inevitable. A TV series, perhaps? (shrug) Stranger things have happened: we'll keep our fingers (or other manipulatory instrumentalities) crossed. The New Millennium Editions in translation? and in international paperback? Working on that right now. The sky's the limit.*

And meanwhile, to celebrate, just for today we'll have a sale. (Except in the UK. To our British friends, the usual sad apology: the expensive bureaucracy of Brexit has made it impossible for us to sell directly to you any more. Details here, with our apologies.)

As has been mentioned before, changes are afoot at Ebooks Direct, so this kind of sale won't be happening again for the foreseeable future. (In fact I thought we were all done with them already. But the number 40 suggested one last opportunity that wouldn't be recurring, so I thought, "Aah, what the heck? Let's.")

New things first! Today, to mark this occasion, we're introducing the "All The Wizardry" Bundle. This is Ebook Direct's entire inventory of Young Wizards works; the contents of the bundle are listed on its product page. The $29.99 price listed there is for today only, to celebrate SYWTBAW's birthday, and will go up as of 23:59 Hawai'ian time tonight. As always, should you ever lose your ebooks or need to change reading platforms, we'll change your formats as necessary, or replace the books, for free.

Just click here, or on the image below, for the "All The Wizardry" Bundle. (Please ignore the category listings under the "Pay Using..." icons on the product page: they plainly think they're in a different universe. Kind of an occupational hazard around here...)

The other, older kind of sale folks will have seen here is on the "I Want Everything You've Got" Bundle, which is the whole Ebooks Direct store—obviously including all the Young Wizards books as well: more than 2.5 million words in 36 DRM-free ebooks. Just for today, in honor of the birthday book, we're dropping the whole-store price to USD $40.00. This, too, will go away just before midnight Hawai'ian time tonight... and it will never be lower. So if you want everything we've got at that price, don't wait around.

Make sure you use this link or the one associated with the image to get the baked-in discount at checkout. (If it fails to display correctly, use the discount code "40FOR40" in the checkout's "discount code or gift code" field.)

Meanwhile? Onward into the next decade. The new A Day at the Crossings novel unfortunately won't make it out before the end of 2023; other work in-house currently has taken priority. But as for early 2024... stay tuned.

And for those of you who're Young Wizards readers, and have kept this book, and its sequels, alive for pushing half a century?

Thank you, again and always!

*Though actually, it's not, is it? As the proverb has it, "Wizardry doesn't stop at atmosphere's edge..."

#Young Wizards series #Young Wizards meta #So You Want To Be A Wizard #ebooks #Diane Duane

[thebibliosphere]

I saw your post about ingram, and out of curiosity, is there some advantage to going through the whole self-publishing thing with retailers when you're just starting out? like I mean the way that fandom zines work is that they don't even bother going through ingram or amazon or whatever. they just set up a social media site (usually twitter) to gain followers, open preorders (usually 1-2 months in length) to generate the costs of printing upfront, and then sell anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred copies of their books (usually artbooks, but anthologies exist too). I've seen some zines generate over a thousand orders. they're kind of like pop-up shops, except for books. maybe the sales numbers aren't so impressive to a real author, but the profit generated is typically waaaay more than the $75+ apparently needed for Ingram Spark, so I still feel like new authors could benefit from this method too, especially if they just need some start-up cash to eventually move to ingram if they want to for subsequent runs of their book. I think authors would also have to set aside some of the pre-order money to buy an ISBN number to have printed on their book, and I'm not really sure what other differences there are, but I just wanted to ask about it in case there's some huge disadvantage I'm missing!

So, popup zines work well for some people, and I know some authors who kickstart their work successfully. But for a lot, it's just not feasible as a long-term stratedy. Or even as a means to get off the ground.

Fanzines succeed primarily because an existing fanbase is willing and ready to throw money at something they love. They’ve got a favorite writer or artist they want to support. Supporting all the others is just a happy by-product. They also take a HUGE amount of short-term but intense planning that just doesn’t always jive with how some of us work.

I, for one, would never offer to organize a fanzine. I’ll take part in them as a creator, but I’d rather throw myself off a cliff than subject myself to wrangling that many people and dealing with the legal logistics.

When it comes to authors doing anthologies, it'svery much the same. The success of the funding often hinges on having other big-name authors involved whose existing fans will prop up the project. Or having a huge marketing budget.

Most self-pub authors have zero marketing budget. I’m one of them, and I’m under no illusions that my work would not be as popular and self-sustaining as it is if I didn’t have a large Tumblr blog.

When I thank Tumblr in my forewards, I am utterly sincere. Tumblr brought fandom levels of enthusiasm to an unknown work and broke the Amazon algorithm so hard, that Amazon thought I was bot sniping my way to multiple #1 spots and froze my sales rankings.

That’s not the norm. And while I could probably kickstart my own work as an indie creator, that’s because I’ve put literal decades into building up a readership. I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and realized people thought I was funny. I didn’t know what to do with it or if I’d ever actually write anything, but it meant the groundwork was already there (thank you, past-me). I basically fell upward into my success by virtue of never being able to shut the fuck up and wanting to make people laugh. Clown instincts too strong.

New or first-time authors trying to sell their work without that will find it infinitely harder.

All of that aside, even if an unknown author somehow gets lucky and manages to fund their work, there’s still the question of shipping and distribution logistics. Are you shipping everything yourself? Better hope you’re able-bodied and have the time for it. (for reference, it took me months to ship out 300 patreon hardbacks because of my disabilites. It damaged my back and hands. I couldn’t type for several weeks after I was done.)

Are you going to sell primarily at conventions? Better hope you’re able-bodied, have the time and don’t have cripling anxiety about being in large groups...

Also, will selling a dozen to a few thousand copies in one burst be sustainable in the long run as a career? Not for me. Doing things via Ingram and Amazon means I earn a steady trickle of sales for the rest of my life provided the platforms remain and so long as I keep working and can generate interest in the series, not just when I have funds to pay for physical copies to sell. The one-time (in theory) cost of $75 to distribute through Ingram gets paid off pretty quick that way. And it doesn't require the same logistics as doing the popup/crowdfund.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you are capable of but also the type of work you’re doing. If you’ve got an extended network of fellow creatives who will back you or you’ve got a large following elsewhere, doing it like a popup might work for you.

If you’re an exhausted burnout who can’t fathom the short but intense amount of organization that sort of thing requires, not to mention doing it over and over and over... Ehhhhh. No thank you.

[nyoomfruits]

trick or treat! :D

i saw your url and i was like. wait i have something probably so !!! lestappen snippet :D

Charles puts a halt to that insane train of through and puts on the sweatpants, the nondescript black t-shirt, and then nearly drops the light blue hoodie Max had handed him when he unfolds it.

“I thought I said no obnoxious Red Bull stuff,” he grumbles, stomping back into the living and brandishing the light blue monstrosity at Max like a weapon.

“Yeah?” Max says. “So? That’s hardly obnoxious.”

Charles unfolds it and holds it up. The word ‘SPIELBERG’ is printed across the back in large white letters, Max and Checo’s names smaller underneath it along with the Red Bull logo. The front has the Red Bull logo and the word ‘Spielberg’ again, smaller this time. “How is this not obnoxious,” Charles says, a little indignantly.

“Spielberg is a lovely little village in Austria, I don’t see the big deal here,” Max says, feigning an innocence that heavily contradicts the shit eating grin on his face. “Listen, I only just got home, all my non branded hoodies are in the laundry,” he adds, a little more seriously. “It’s either this one, or a classic dark blue Red Bull one which I think you would find even more obnoxious, so.”

Charles considers the third option, which is not wearing the hoodie at all, but the material in his hands is thick and soft, and he’s still shivering a little. “I’ll take Spielberg,” he says, a little primly, and pulls the hoodie over his head.

Max is grinning at him when Charles looks at him again. “You look good in blue,” he says, shuffling over the couch to make room for Charles to flop down.

“Fuck off,” Charles tells him, but settles down on the couch anyway. The hoodie is surprisingly comfortable, not that he’s ever telling Max that. “This does not leave this house,” Charles adds, pointing at Max warningly as Max starts messing around with the remote of the TV, pulling up Netflix.

“Oh please,” Max says, “Like anyone would ever believe me if I told them Charles Leclerc was on my couch in a Red Bull hoodie watching crappy Netflix reality shows.”

“We’re not watching-“ Charles starts, only to be interrupted by the TV playing obnoxiously loud pop music. He glances back at it only to see the opening credits of Selling Sunset. Charles raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe we are.”

#lestappen #aaaah fake dating au my beloved #some day i will return to you #snippet #ask game #sorry this is so late!!!! #had to go to bed #just finishing up the ones from last night now :)

[0046incognito]

also, do you think at some point you could make a CMY2K oc checklist, as in some do's and do not's when making an oc for it? I'd just think that'd be cool!! ^^*

i've been meaning to do something like this for a long time and y'know what i need a fun new way to procrastinate on these storyboards tonight

THE OFFICIAL CMY2K OC CHECKLIST

first off to get it out of the way: human OCs can be basically any kinda normal human person you could meet in jersey city acid city NJ circa 1999-2000, and for cyborgs it's pretty much the exact same, just humans with cybernetics; the only thing to note in that regard is that bio-cybernetics are still fairly New in the CMY2K universe and they function on windows 98-era technology, so they're big and bulky and clunky and not very graceful. cybernetics are also Not simply cosmetic, they're usually meant to be disability aids, but some super-rich get experimental cybernetics because it's fashionable

NOW onto the fun thing that i'm certain you were actually interested in: HALOSOFT LIVING COMPUTER ANDROIDS!!!!

A) PRIMARY FUNCTION

i'm starting with this because it's the most important defining part of a livicom's character, i think, since it determines what kinda features they'd be built with

basically, livicoms can be built for LITERALLY ANY JOB A HUMAN CAN DO; it's easier to list the things livicoms CAN'T be built primarily to do, which are:

1: making original art. sure, plenty of livicoms are built to perform music or copy prints, but the thought of a robot having original creative ideas is just silly and would be a waste of halosoft's resources, so they aren't produced. similarly, there aren't any android authors or journalists, but plenty of magazines and newspapers do have android employees for things like spellcheck/editing or photography, photography/"camera guy" is probably the most creative type job an android can get, but they're less like a photographer or cinematographer and more just a camera with legs

2: driving. their AI would just be far too dangerously easy to trick with fake road signs or painted lines, not to mention the whole trolley problem thing would risk a HUGE violation of the first law and put halosoft in SERIOUS ethical and legal trouble, so they're playing it safe and just avoiding the risk altogether. that said, there are still bots that do delivery-type jobs, just on foot, so it's just the jobs that Absolutely require driving a car that livicoms are Legally Forbidden From

3: any kind of executive leadership type position in any field. humans don't want to be bossed around by robots and a robot that bosses humans around won't sell [unless it's a more specific niche kinda bossing around, those ones sell like hotcakes] not to mention humans don't trust computers to make all the big decisions for them. the highest up the executive ladder a livicom ever gets is personal assistant to the big man. livicoms only get Actual leadership positions if they're bossing around Other Robots, not people; this is jack's function as a construction foreman.

besides those exceptions, livicoms can do literally anything you can think of! cooking, cleaning, general housekeeping, sanitation, delivery, entertainment, sexwork, acting, retail, construction, security, pest control, maintenance, newscaster, fuckin IDK paparazzi you name it a livicom can do it

B) SERIAL NUMBER/NAME

all livicoms are auto-assigned a serial number following a very simple pattern: the first four letters indicate their primary function, and the following three numbers indicate the order in which they came off the factory line. for example, SING-072 is a singing entertainer bot, VOLT-808 is a voltage control electrician bot, HELP-444 is a search and rescue bot, so on and so forth.

How Ev Er, one of humanity's most charming traits is its propensity for bonding with literally anything, and this includes robots. more people like robots than don't--granted, androids specifically are seen as a little less charming than less humanoid robots, people often think they're creepy or uncomfortable to be around or just fall too close to the uncanny valley, but in general, most humans like robots enough to at the very least nickname them, so they don't have to keep referring to them with a clunky serial number. some robots prefer their serial number or just don't like the name they were given by humans, but like that's the same with humans y'know

like the jobs, robot names can be basically anything, but it's very common for them to just be nicknamed based on their serial number. for example, BDSI-371, a bedside nurse, is named betsy, because BDSI kinda looks like it'd be pronounced similar to "betsy" when read phonetically.

there's also EXEC-013, an executive secretary bot, nicknamed teeny after the number thirteen in her serial, and her successor, EXEC-014, nicknamed forzie for the same reason.

RUSH-066, a traffic guard bot, nicknamed russe. VOLT-808, a voltage control electrician bot, nicknamed voltaire. all of these are canon examples, i could keep going, but you get the gist

C) LED COLOR

i used to be stricter about this, but for the sake of having more interesting character designs, i've started to loosen up

basically, every livicom has LEDs on their ears and shoes, and their eyes are the same color. this color, generally, is related to their primary function, and there are four Main colors that most primary functions can be sorted into:

PINK: any domestic job or one that focuses primarily on working closely with people as clients. this is usually things like housekeeping or teaching etc, and most personal bots that live with you in your home are probably gonna be pink unless they're a medical bot

BLUE: medical bots OR any kind of repair or maintenance. nurses are the same color as mechanics and electricians. if it fixes something or someone, it's probably blue. also, to avoid any "is there a doctor in here" "i'm a psychiatrist" type confusion, ALL blue bots regardless of job are pre-programmed to be skilled in first aid

GREEN: anything that works primarily with or for money, like retail or customer service or finance or business.

ORANGE: anything that needs to be seen from a distance. this includes entertainment and safety/security and anything else that'd be wearing a hi-vis vest like construction

of course, these aren't the Only colors an android's LEDs can be, but the vast vast VAST majority of livicoms Are these colors. exceptions are few and far between, but even then, the color still has something to do with their job.

for example, carmine was originally built for phlebotomy, IE taking blood samples, so xyr LEDs are red like blood.

mantid is pest control at a botanical garden, so his LEDs are pink while the rest of him is green so he matches the plants.

whiskey is a bartender, so instead of being green like other food service androids, he's orange to match both the color of liquor and the dim lighting in the bar he works at.

also, here's a special case: since blue LEDs are reserved for medical and repair bots, blue is the only color LED you Won't just find on any random non-medical android. saph is a paparazzi photography bot, which is a job Without a standard assigned LED color, and most of her is blue [like her name sapphire get it] But her LEDs are red. it's case by case!

D) AGE

robot age is weird. computers age and grow obsolete MUCH faster than humans do, so livicoms have significantly shorter lifespans. that said, they don't really age like, At All? the only thing that really decays with time is the health of their hardware and technology standards over time.

but as a general rule, all livicoms are adults EXCEPT hibiki, he is the only child because kid-bots are not mass produced, there'd be huge ethical concerns, and the only reason hibiki exists as he is is because he's a Custom model.

but besides him, all livicoms are born as adults with the standard base programming knowledge approximating the maturity, intelligence, and sense of an adult. livicoms are designed to learn and develop individual personalities over time based on experience, which i'll get to in a moment, but the standard base programming For said personality includes simple data determining how mature they should be based on their intended age.

it's basically like sims ages, you got young adults and older adults and the exact number in between is generally a guesstimate based on a sliding scale of "this robot acts like they have the same amount of life experience as a human of this age"

E) PERSONALITY

as i said, livicoms are shipped out with standard base personalities depending on not just their age, but also their primary function.

for example, a retail android on their first day on the job would already have a perfect customer service smile and helpful attitude, but not much else. the unique traits that make each livicom feel less like a mass-produced robot and more like a Person are developed over time based on experience, just like with humans. that customer service bot might grow to hate their job, but they can't stop working it because it's their Sole Purpose In Life, so that friendly smile turns into a sarcastic smirk as they pretend to give a shit about each and every customer.

let's look at some other specific examples: jack is a pretty clear one. he was originally a construction foreman bot, bossing other construction bots around, so he's stern and commanding, yet amicable and social, since he needs to be a good boss.

444 is a search and rescue bot who has come across more dead human bodies than he'd like, so he's become distant, unempathetic, and numb to the suffering of others.

mantid works in a place that gets a lot of human tourists visiting, but he's just pest control, not a tour guide, so he wasn't programmed with any social skills and instead of developing them, he's just become jumpy and always dreading the next person to speak to him mistakenly assuming he;s a tour guide and can tell them about all the flowers in the room.

all this to say: livicom androids are like people, they can have basically any personality, but it makes more sense to have one that lines up with their experiences. and also, the more recently an android came off the assembly line, the Less personality they'll have; they're brand-new, so they're still a blank slate!

F) OVERALL APPEARANCE

halosoft livicom androids are NOT human-passing and they never will be; they MUST look robotic at a glance, so no human skin tones. they didn't even start getting soft artificial hair strands instead of just hard plastic helmets until like 1994. however, they are still Androids, so they must be bipedal and a close enough approximation of a person, so no tank-bots. they Are supposed to be marketable to the general public!

a lot of how your livicom will look will depend on When it was built, so here are some general guidelines for that first

older livicoms [especially circa about 1992 and earlier] tend to be bigger and bulkier to compensate for bigger bulkier hardware on the inside, and their colorschemes tend to run closer to beige box computers, so mostly y'know. shades of beige and grey, mostly. it's good to look at historical computers to get an idea for colorschemes. shapes are mostly sharp and square or triangle. earphones especially tend to be just cubed bulky headphones.

newer livicoms [circa 1998 and on] tend to more closely resemble an imac G3, so they're rounder blobject-type shapes, and colorschemes tend to shift out to the extreme ends of the spectrum, IE instead of greys and beige, now it's closer to black and white, especially white because Y2K futurism is a very Chrome kinda future. they're also generally a little lighter and more compact as technology improves, but it's still windows98 type tech, so it remains pretty bulky. by the year 2000, it starts becoming a trend for humans to like androids with emotive cat ears, so that replaces earphones for a lot of them

android Hair wasn't invented until 1994, and standard colors until 1999 tend to be either "metallic tinted a similar shade to the LEDs" or "black that tints a certain way when the light hits it" or "just dark grey". come 1999, white hair like hibiki's starts becoming the new trendy look, but it'll take until at Least late 2000 for it to become actually Standard

also, for the most part, androids tend not to wear clothes, mostly due to overheating risk [these Are 90s PCs after all]. some androids do wear clothes, but that's usually either for personal reasons or they work somewhere that requires a uniform for human And android employees, or they just work closely with humans and it's to make the humans more comfortable. usually, they just have a built-in bodysuit and light armor

G) EYES

unless your livicom is Brand Brand Brand new, like "built literally this year" new, their eyes will probably be a monochrome LCD display, and there are two types: either a negative display, so the scleras are darker and the irises are lighter, or a positive display, so the opposite. but if your android Was built in 2000, then they'll more likely have 8-bit color display screens, so they can display Lots of colors actually [but still not as many colors as a modern computer screen]. also, android irises/pupils [especially on screen-type eyes] are rectangular/square instead of round

now the thing about android eyesight is, in more cases than not, they don't actually See through their eyes, they're purely cosmetic. for androids with screens for eyes, they're technically blind and see more like silent echolocation! IE with proximity sensors to scan 180 degrees around them. it takes a little extra longer to scan for color data, too. this isn't the Most efficient way androids can see, but for most bots, this is the best way to do it since it provides them with both depth perception And 180 degree vision

the Other type of android eyes is: cameras! these are Not screens, they're camera lenses, and they are FAR less common because they're reserved for bots who Need to see either very very small things or in clear detail. for example: mantid has camera eyes, because he needs to be able to see teeny tiny insects from across the room nestled in among different plants. saph also has camera eyes, but that's because she IS a camera

camera-type eyes, unlike screen eyes, Are actually round, but they still don't pass for human eyes because the sclera and iris are almost indistinguishable from each other from a distance since they're both so dark.

H) FUNCTION-BASED APPEARANCE TRAITS??

OK so obviously a nursebot and a constructionbot are not going to look indistinguishable from each other, they're built to do totally different things, so they should not only look different from each other, but look like what they're supposed to. even within the same primary function, unless they're literally from the exact same model line for the Exact Same Job, no two androids look exactly identical, even though they're mass produced! humans love one-of-a-kind personalized products. plus, it'd be confusing and creepy if All the employees at your local walmart were identical twins

basically: GO NUTS HAVE FUN with incorporating how your livicom's job affects how they look. some livicoms just look human with robotic paneling or earphones, especially if they work closely with humans. it's mostly the armor styles that change; a construction bot might have big gauntlets for better heavy lifting, or even excavator claws for arms. an audio engineer bot might have cables resembling braids for hair to connect to different audio inputs. 444 has big wings that cast a searchlight so he can fly and better find missing people down below. herbie is a delivery bot with built-in heelys and exhaust pipes. hijinx is a clown with big extendo arms???? voltaire is basically a walking male/male plug adapter because he's designed to transfer excess electricity to different sources more in need of it. betsy is a bedside nurse bot, so she's intentionally squishy so that she doesn't accidentally hurt patients or so they can squeeze her arm for comfort while getting an injection

I) COMBAT

this is my favorite part of CMY2K bot conceptualizing and usually like the first or second thing i come up with for them, usually in tandem with their primary function Because their dedicated weapon and/or fighting style is going to Incorporate the unique features from their primary function!

let's use hibiki as the first example, because he's kind of a weird one, especially since he's a custom model. hibiki is basically an astroboy expy, IE he has the jetboots and arm cannons, but there's a FUnctional Reason for that besides just that it's cool. he's a housekeeping bot, so the arm cannons are modified vacuum cleaners, and the jetboots are just so he can reach high shelves. simple!

jack is also pretty straightforward, because he's just a big strong construction bot who punches hard with his big strong hands, and he has jackhammers that can extend out of his heels for stab-kicking. voltaire uses that male/male plug adapter i mentioned as whips to wrap around and electrocute.

mantid is literally an Exterminator, but he's a fun one: he doesn't just kill bugs with pesticides or what have you, because that's boring in a combat scenario, instead he snipes with high-precision lasers.

sawyer resells used electronics, so he's built-in with a localized EMP generator that disables and shuts down other electronics [including androids] as long as he can close a circuit around it with his hands.

444's big searchlight wings are like a flashbang so he can run, because he really isn't all that interested in fighting, and he sure is good at evading.

072 is a less obvious example because they're just a singer in a pop group, what built-in weapon could they possibly have? well. it's the 90s, wallet chains are a hugely iconic fashion accessory. 072 wears and dances with a big long chain they can also use as a whip, i mean that's the exact reason wallet chains were banned in so many schools LOL

due to the first law of robotics, livicoms aren't designed Intentionally to have weapons, but it's fairly easy to reverse-engineer their unique functions Into weapons, and even for androids who Don't necessarily have anything on them that could be weaponized, they always have the option of Body Modification!

KK is the most obvious example. it won't divulge its original primary function, but let's just say it wasn't something that allowed it to just go and hide things in its pockets. so, once KK jailbroke, the VERY first thing it did was modify itself to turn its entire body into a swiss army knife.

doctor heckle Also modified himself, but for him it was necessary because he had to rebuild his whole body from junk with just an arm and a head. he gave himself like, sickass spider legs on his back that also shoot lasers, and not only that, but he built himself a frankenstein's monster he can pilot like a mech

J) ETC

uh i can't think of anything else. if i missed something obvious feel free to point it out cuz if i Do think of something i'll definitely be editing this later

here's a few pinterest boards i use as design insp, go nuts

#not art #cmy2k #oc

[mamath]

🌙Witchy Kitty deluxe pins - Ghostly Gaze and Night Flight🌙

It's been a long time in the making but...they're finally here and available! I started working on these witchy kitty pins pre-Halloween last year and, well, I suppose they are ready for Halloween this year at least? xD Well in advance, too, so people can have them in time for Halloween 2023 outfits or decor if they wish. <3

These took longer to make because I did a round of sampling and the blended enamel gradient really extends the production time. The gradients aren't printed - that's actually enamel fill! It's a technique I've really wanted to try for quite a while.

I was inspired to make these by all the fancy anime fan art pins that I see - they're often huge and use every special effect in existance. xD I thought it would be nice to try and make an original pin that was as fancy as those! It's a bit risky because man these are expensive to make but I really love them and hope these sell ok so I can make more (koi dragon one maybe??).

I'm also really happy with the backing cards turning these pins into little scenes. :) I think they're going to make cool framed art pieces if I can just find myself some correctly sized box frames for hanging in my home heheh. I'll take photos of that later if I ever get it done!

#enamel pin #pin design #witchy kitty #witch kitty #witch #witchy #cat #halloween #halloweeny

[lxstfathier]

Fortune Teller

Mark Hamill x Time Traveler! Reader

Summary: after spending most of your life traveling in time and teletransportating everywhere you ever wanted, you decide to stay in a certain year, not knowing that it would result in getting romantically involved with one of your favorite actors during his rise to fame.

Warnings: some death and human experimenting mentions, but nothing too bad, mostly it’s just fluff :)

A/N: omg it took me more than a whole month to write this but it’s finally ready! and probably it’s not 100% accurate to what happened in Mark’s life but hey, it’s fiction, so i hope that you all enjoy it anyways!! love you guys!! 💗✨

People often think that time traveling and teletransportation is fun, and it is, but after some time it gets… boring.

You discovered your unique abilities when you were just a teenager, basically still a kid, quickly learning how to control those weird moments in which you could just appear in any year or place that you wanted by simply snapping your fingers.

Since then, you visited every city that you ever dreamed of, every year that seemed interesting, and witnessed some historic events with your own eyes, better than any history book.

But now? You decided to calm down for a while, staying in 1976 to live in San Diego for a few months until you can decide what city is the next one in your map.

You have a lot of money for the moment, going back to 1898 to steal diamonds and gold was an easy task, so you don’t have much to worry about, just focusing on burning off your small fortune and have fun around. Maybe you should go to the comic con this evening? you have seen the flyers on every street, and it looks like a good plan for a saturday.

Yeah, you love comics, you have a big collection, but the real reason to go would be to see Mark Hamill in his youth. You remember watching a lot of his movies when you were still a normal kid, so it would be nice to catch a glimpse of him before all that fame hits him like a lightning strike.

After thinking about it all morning, you decide to go.

And half an hour later you’re already walking down the street, wearing some cute clothes and a little bit of makeup, not expecting much more than being just another nerd from the bunch.

The streets are calm, not as busy as they usually are, and everyone seems to enjoy a good time under the bright afternoon sun. But when you get to the comic con then it is a different story. There’s more people than you expected and a tedious long line to get tickets.

However, you don’t have anything better to do, so you wait, leaning against the wall with your arms crossed, simply watching everything around you.

Finally, after some long minutes, you buy your ticket and get in, excited to see how it goes and what new things you can add to your collection.

It’s not a big place, but it’s not small either. There’s a lot of stands with comics for sale, booths with merch for the newest movies, autograph signings from famous illustrators, and of course, the main stage for the press conferences.

Sadly, that stage is still empty, so you still have a lot of time to look around. And that’s exactly what you do, calmly checking out the comics and merch, even more when you get to the star wars table, delighted to be able to see that vintage logo, the small x-wing figures, the printed shirts and the posters and photos.

So, without thinking it twice, you buy a few of those things, hoping that maybe, with a little bit of luck, you’ll get them autographed and then go back to 2030 to sell them for a fortune.

Suddenly, the people cheering and loud voices through the speakers snap you out of your thoughts. The press conference for star wars has started and you’re still away, too lost inside your own mind to realize that you’ve missed the first few minutes.

Taking you newest purchases in your hands, you quickly make your way to the main stage and sit on the last row of chairs. It’s not super near like the front row, but you can perfectly see everything, to the microphones, to the pretty blonde boy who can’t keep still as the two other men answer questions about the movie.

And you never expected Mark Hamill to look that good. You’ve seen famous singers, models, or even roman emperors with your own eyes, but none of them compares to him. He is literally hypnotic, almost like a cosmic being, and now it makes sense of why they chose him to play a hero from another galaxy.

His face, his smile, his everything is just perfect, and with such a beautiful sight the time goes by incredibly fast.

If you could take your phone out to at least have picture of this moment, you would, but you don’t want to attract curious looks from everyone, so you just stare, letting out some dreamy sighs and saving every detail in your own mind.

Once the conference ends, you get up from your seat and walk back to the stands. Perhaps, if you get more lucky, you will find another vintage piece to resell in the future.

And you do, you manage to find some more things that will surely catch a collector’s eye. But when you’re heading to the exit, ready to go back home and call it a day, a familiar blonde hair makes you stop dead in your tracks.

Mark Hamill is there, just a few feets away from you, talking to another man while the other persons walk past the Star Wars stand, oblivious to the fact that they’re ignoring the guy who is about to become an international superstar and the biggest heartthrob of the decade.

And then he looks in your direction, with those piercing blue eyes, smiling slightly, probably finding it cute that you are nervous and not daring to come closer. But how does he expect you to be confident? has he never seen himself in a mirror? he’s the closest thing to an angel and that makes your heart race uncontrollably fast.

“Come say hi, i don’t bite” Mark says, letting out a soft chuckle, his voice kind but teasing.

For a moment you stay still, too impressed with him that you don’t even know what to do. And the fact that he directed a few words to you just makes it worse. In moments like this, you wish that you could be at least a little bit more extroverted and less awkward.

However, you don’t wanna lose the opportunity, so you do your best to approach him and talk normally despite your horrible anxiety.

“Mark, uh- hi, i… i’m one of you biggest fans, been following your career since texas wheelers. Can’t wait to see you in Star Wars.”

Actually, you started following him since you watched the fall of the house of usher as a teenager, but you can’t tell him that for obvious reasons.

And by the way he smiles and tilts his head to the side, it’s not difficult to guess that you’re probably the first fangirl who has come across his path.

“Well, if you liked me in that shitty sitcom, you’re gonna love me in this new movie.” he says, trying his best to lighten the mood.

“Oh, that’s for sure. I’m gonna go the the cinema a couple of times” you answer, as if you didn’t already saw all of his movies on your laptop more than once.

“Sounds like it’s gonna be a total success thanks to you” mark jokes and you smile.

“Star wars is gonna be a success, whether i watch it or not, believe me.”

Mark raises an eyebrow, suspicious as to why would you have so much faith in a new sci-fi movie that not even him believes in.

“How do you know? are you a fortune teller?” he asks.

“Something like that” you say, not wanting to give many details about your weird life. And before he can ask anything else, you hand him the two star wars posters that you just bought an hour ago. “Would you sign this for me? please?”.

He lets out a soft chuckle at your vague answer and then he is kind enough to autograph both of your posters with a black marker, taking his time to write more than just his signature, all while wondering if you are telling the truth or if you just want to mess with him.

Unfortunately, when Mark is almost done signing the second one, another person interrupts him, telling him that someone named Gary is looking for him to discuss some things.

“I need to go” he says, handing you back the two posters. “It was nice meeting you, maybe next time you can tell me the numbers to win the lotto.”

And with that, he just smiles one last time before turning around and getting lost in the crowd. So you stay there a few seconds, incredibly shocked with that first encounter.

His smile and those last words repeat inside your mind over and over again, only for you to realize that yes, he really believes you were messing around with him, but it doesn’t matter to you. The moment was perfect despite his lack of belief.

After that, you just hold the posters against your chest, making your way out of the convention and blushing all the way home.

⋆✮♡✮⋆

The next time you meet him is even more unexpected.

You’re sitting on the warm sand of the Malibu beach, feeling the ocean water on your toes, just having some time to yourself while admiring the beautiful sunset, totally captivated by the bright orange in the horizon.

It’s calm, and soothing. The sound of the waves and the slight breeze allow you to shut down your thoughts and relax for a while.

“I knew that your face was familiar” a male voice interrupts your sacred moment as he sits on the sand next to you. “You’re the fortune teller from the san diego comic con a few weeks ago.”

Of course, that’s a voice that you know quite well. And when you look to your right, Mark is there, talking to you again, looking more handsome than ever with an unbuttoned shirt and golden hair getting messy because of the breeze.

“Yeah it’s me” you answer, slightly confused. “How did you recognize me?”

“Well, someone like you is not easy to forget, you have something… different that makes you stand out from the rest.”

Your heart starts to beat fast again. Hearing him say that you’re unforgettable is more than a dreamy compliment. But, deep down, you know that he probably says that because you are from a different time, you look futuristic, and strange, and that’s what always catches everyone’s attention.

“It’s fine, you can say that i’m weird” you laugh, nervously playing with the sand beneath you.

“No, actually i think you’re quite pretty.”

Your cheeks go red immediately and a dumb smile appears in your lips. What are you supposed to say? you’re too shy to flirt back, so you decide to change the subject.

“What brings you to malibu?”

“I love this place, so i wanna move here” he says, in a more serious tone while looking at the ocean. “What about you?”

“Funny” you say, almost thinking that the coincidences are starting to be too much. “I live here, ten minutes away from the beach.”

“Looks like we’ll be neighbors then” he raises an eyebrow. “I got my eye on a nice property in the shore.”

“Great! come by whenever you need a cup of sugar or whatever”

“I’d probably ask for something more than that.”

With that you just let out a good laugh. If another man said that to you, you’d probably roll your eyes, get up and walk away. But it’s different when it comes to him. And you’ve heard guys say so much worse things in your native years of 2020’s that he almost sounds cute.

“Sure, i can give you some salt too if you need it” you joke around, just to see him smile, with those pearly white teeth and pretty wrinkles on his cheeks. Something that could easily overshadow the incredible sunset.

And you’re too lost in his smile to notice the way he is staring at you, with the same infatuation and curiosity.

“You’re not from here, do you?” Mark asks once the laughter is over. “From the states, i mean.”

There’s that question that everyone always makes. And the one that you always have to lie about. What are you supposed to say? that you are actually from the states but you look different because you were born in 2010 as product between two people who were used for experiments by the government and somehow managed to scape from it? he would call you crazy instead of fortune teller this time.

So you use the same made up story that you created for everyone who asks.

“I was born in spain, but my parents migrated here when i was five. Sadly, they passed away a while ago after i turned sixteen, so now i’m alone in this country.”

“Oh i’m sorry” he says, the smile fading from his face, regretting to touch such a sensitive topic. “I shouldn’t have-“

“It’s fine” you cut him off. Your parents are safe and sound in 2031, living their best life, so you don’t want to bug him with that. “Why don’t you tell me more about yourself?”

And that’s all you needed for him to talk for long minutes, with no intention to stop soon. But you can’t complain, his voice is really soothing, and his stories are entertaining, enough for you to listen attentively for some time, just saying one comment occasionally or laughing at his jokes.

Once more you end up being hypnotized by him, exactly like the first time, or is it that you’re just easy to impress with a pretty face? you’re not sure, but when you realize, the sun is completely gone and it has gotten super late.

You need to go home. And Mark, being a total gentleman, offers to walk you there, because there’s no way that he would ever let you go alone, even less at night.

The playful conversation keeps going all the way there, while walking close to each other, almost bumping shoulders. And when you get to your front door, he holds your hand, carefully, as a way to ask you to don’t go inside yet and stay with him just a few seconds more.

“Will i see you tomorrow?” he blurts out, patiently waiting for your answer, with a nervous smile on his lips.

How could you say no to him?

“Probably” you say, feeling your cheeks get burning red. “If not, you know where to find me.”

You really plan on leaving it there, clearly not expecting much else, just a dramatic goodbye to end the night. But before you know it, he pulls you closer, placing a hand on the nape of your neck to lean in for a kiss.

It’s soft and gentle, a quick peck on the lips, and it’s over before you can even realize what happened. But it makes you feel like the luckiest girl in the world, with thousands of butterflies fluttering in your stomach and a heart that threatens to get out of your chest.

“Good, cause you still owe me the numbers of the lotto.” He says, returning to his funny side as he lets go of your hand.

But you’re way too shocked by the kiss that you can’t even think of a good comeback. So you just smile and say goodbye to him with a wave of your hand, getting into the safety of your home and immediately closing the door.

Maybe Mark wonders if he overstepped your boundaries. Or maybe he thinks that it’s really cute how you got so flustered. You will never know.

It doesn’t matter, though. You’re so happy that you could burst into tears or giggle to yourself the whole night. Maybe you should even go to 2031 to tell your mom exactly what happened, and she would be happy to know that you finally found a decent man instead of a total jerk.

But first, you need to calm down, and probably listen to some romantic songs while praying that you’re not just another notch in his belt.

⋆✮♡✮⋆

Almost six months later you are nervous as hell. Probably more than that. You are terrified.

It’s only a matter of minutes until you and Mark arrive to the ziegfeld theatre for the star wars premiere in new york, but you’re still stuck in traffic, in the leather backseats of a very luxurious car. And when you look out the window, you can already see loads of people around, which makes you feel extremely overwhelmed.

Obviously, you think that you’re managing that anxiety and nervousness quite well, but you don’t, and Mark can easily tell how you’re not having a good time just by the way your hands play with the seams of your expensive silk dress or the fluff of your synthetic fur stole.

“Take a deep breath, please” he tells you, taking one of your hands between his. “It’s gonna be alright.”

Sure, it’s easy for him to say that when his job is to literally have cameras on his face all the time. He’s used to it, but you’re not. And what scares you the most is that this would be the first time in which you appear together in public as a couple.

What if his fans don’t like you? what if you can’t stand all that sudden attention? what if-

“Please” he repeats himself, squeezing your hand. “Just a few pics and we’ll go inside. Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll try” you nod, a shy smile lingering on your lips as you turn your gaze away from the window to look at him.

He looks so calm, and so so handsome. It doesn’t matter if you already watched him getting ready all day, seeing him with that black tuxedo, bow tie and hair combed back, makes your breath falter and your head feel dizzy.

That’s how you realize that you’re screwed. You already fell hard and face first.

Has he fell hard for you too? yes. All this time he has done nothing but prove that he loves you, in ways that you never expected, yet you still can’t comprehend how you managed to pull such a man. It feels unreal.

Minutes later, when you finally arrive to the place, Mark gets out of the car first and then goes to your side to open the door for you, even offering you his hand as an extra help, because he knows that it’s hard to walk with high heels, and also because your legs are trembling due to your nerves.

“I know you can do this, sweetheart” he whispers to you, inviting you to hold on to his arms instead of his hand. “Smile at everyone and that’s it… and please don’t faint.”

You take a deep breath, gather the courage necessary, and then start walking beside him, gripping his arm so hard that you fear to wrinkle his tux.

There’s a lot noise, bright lights everywhere, a multitude of photographers, journalists, press and a much more that doesn’t help with your nerves. It makes you nauseous and sweaty, but you try your best to deal with it, concentrating on Mark and not on anything else.

As soon as you both step on the red carpet, you can practically feel all eyes on you, with the camera flashes immediately going off over and over again. Most of the photographers are focused on Mark, he is the star after all, but some others pay attention to you, the mysterious girl by his side.

And it’s only when you’re being blinded by the intense flashes that you get a slight sense of guilt.

You shouldn’t be doing this. You already messed up his whole timeline. He was supposed to appear on all this pictures with somebody else, with some other girl from his time.

But do you care? not one bit. This is like a dream come true.

And while you’re too deep in your thoughts, posing for the cameras and controlling your nerves, it’s almost impossible for you to notice that soon a few of the photographers find something better to focus on.

This time they don’t point their lenses at Mark, or you, or the expensive clothes that you decided to wear for the occasion…

They’re drawn to the beautiful diamond ring on your left hand.

#mark hamill x reader #mark hamill fanfiction #luke skywalker x reader #star wars fanfiction #luke skywalker fanfiction

[jpitha]

Between the Black and Gray 13

First / Previous / Next

Gord seemed to know exactly where to go. He led Fen around the promenade, past shops and what she could only assume were restaurants. The different lighting and coloration of everything due to the different breathing gas mixture gave everything an otherworldly look and made it hard for her brain to settle into a rhythm. Gord seemed to have no such trouble and strode along with long, confident steps.

"Gord, where are we going?" Fen worked hard to not have to jog to keep up and settled for kind of a fast striding walk, like someone who was concerned - but not worried - about missing their train.

"I have - had - a contact here. I think they can help us get some parts. Remember, the Innari use a reactor tech that's similar enough to humans that they did a tech transfer when we first had Contact."

Fen didn't remember, but she trusted Gord enough to not say anything else. They walked deeper into the strange station, and as they walked, there were fewer and fewer oxygen breathers around until they were the only suited individuals around. Fen noticed that people were watching them as they passed and tried not to meet their gazes, but Gord didn't seem to be bothered by it.

Eventually, they made it to a small shop in a back corner of some place deep in the station. Without Spyglass' help, Fen was sure she couldn't make it back on her own. There was a sign out front in the Innari's script and Spyglass helpfully overlaid the translation: "Uumar Pin, parts bought and sold."

Gord pushed the door open and strode in. The shop was... Fen could only describe it as run down. The counters had scratches and worn places from decades if not centuries of people leaning on it, the screens and pads all looked like they had been left running for longer than she has been alive, and the corners were piled with dusty boxes. Fen had a moment of surprise. Of course there would be dust. Just because they're not breathing oxygen does not mean that things would magically stay clean. Gord walked up to the counter and his helmet cleared. "Uumar? You in?"

"Yes, one moment please, Sapient." A musical voice rang out from behind a partition. There was a bustling as some tools were put down, and Uumar stepped out.

Like most Innari, Uumar was feathered. Almost like a cross between a bird and a human, they had this fluffy look about them. Their faces ended in a sharp beak and their feathers were iridescent. Fen wondered if Uumar would be heavy. She assumed they were probably very light. Without looking up they started to reply "Yes, what can I help-" They finally looked up at the two suited individuals. "Gord? Is that you Gord? I haven't seen you in-"

Gord held up a hand. "Yes, it's been a bit, hasn't it. How are you doing Uumar? Keeping busy?"

Uumar's feathers ruffled. Spyglass indicated to Fen that meant they chuckled. "That's one way of putting it yes. Ever since we did the technology transfer, our drives have been sought after by just about everyone in our sector. What in the name of the Watcher are you doing here Gord?"

"I need some reactors. I'm in a bit of a bind, but I- I found a Starjumper. Spyglass. Was sitting in a Gren station for a couple centuries languishing. That was the only way she had survived the Empire. In the intervening years she had lost all her printable mass and all but two reactors. I managed to get one reactor going, but she needs six to be at full power. I'm printing parts, but replacing the reactors will take more than that. I'm hoping you can help me out."

Uumar ruffled their feathers again and crossed their arms - a very human gesture - "Gord, you don't do anything by half measures do you? I want to manage expectations. There's no way I can sell you four reactors, even if you had the Stars, which I assume you don't. I could probably sell you one and enough parts to make your broken one working. That would get you up to three and you could wheel and deal for the other three down the line. Three would get you powered up enough?"

Fen watched Gord. He made a big show of hemming and hawing, looking around, looking unsure. While he did this he sent an icon over to Fen's readout of a cartoon version of his face, winking. "Yeah, I think I could make that work Uumar. How much would I have to put down in order to secure the reactor, and how long would it take to install?"

Uumar blinked. Spyglass indicated that his body language indicated surprise. "Uh, If you gave me one thousand Stars and four day cycles, I could get you a reactor and install it. Balance of another thousand stars due upon completion."

Now it was Gord's turn to be surprised. "You have a human compatible reactor in stock?"

Uumar's feathered arms flapped once "Mostly. It's a core return for an upgrade to a Uumari transport, but it just needs an overhaul. A few fresh parts - one day cycle's work - and it would be ready to go."

Gord smiled broadly. "That's better than I had hoped. Fen, please pay them."

They both turned to face Fen, and she squeaked. "What?"

Gord shrugged. "You're the one with the money. You did take Tam'itarr's money right?"

She had taken it, both hers and Ma-ren's share. It had wound up being almost exactly two thousand Stars.

"Gord, can I talk to you for a moment?" Fen clicked her radio over to the suit-to-suit channel. "What are you doing?" She hissed.

"Getting us a reactor Fen. One isn't enough. Uumar here has a whole other reactor that they're willing to sell us plus parts to make our broken one work. We'll go from one to three. Three means we get our Stardrive, the wormhole generator and the weapons. Three is far better than I anticipated. I assumed we were going to be able to just buy parts for our broken reactor and have to use up all our printable mass building a reactor from scratch. We need this Fen. Tam'itarr was going to kill you and take the money back, what are you going to spend it on?"

On the one hand, Gord was right. Fen hadn't given any thought to the money after she grabbed it. On the other hand, she hadn't even really begun to mourn Ma-ren's death and now Gord was demanding he spend their - her - money on his starship. On the third hand, if they didn't get Spyglass fixed they'd be stuck here for who knows how long. Two thousand Stars was more money that Fen had seen all her life, but what was she going to do with it? All Fen wanted was some time to mourn and think and she wasn't going to get that if they were stuck here.

Sighing heavily, Fen touched her pad and cast the deposit to Uumar's device. "Received." He chirped. "We'll have the reactor refreshed and sent down to the docks first thing tomorrow."

"Wonderful!" Gord clapped Fen on her back. "Come on Fen, let's see what this place has to offer oxy breathers like us, and we'll head back to Spyglass and await the installation."

Fen and Gord said their goodbyes and walked out. As they walked, Gord clicked the suit-to-suit. "Thanks Fen. I appreciate it. I know I sprung it on you, but spending that money on Spyglass was the only way we were going to get out of there."

"I wish you had told me ahead of time what was going on, Gord."

"I hadn't planned on it Fen, but when Uumar said they had a whole reactor almost ready to go, I had to jump on it."

Fen didn't say anything as they made their way back up to the rest of the station.

#humans are deathworlders #humans are space orcs #sci fi writing #humans are space oddities #humans and aliens #jpitha #writing #humans and ai #humans are space capybaras #humans are space australians #Between the black and gray

[palmofafreezinghand]

Carlisle joins a "J. Platt Fan Club" group on Facebook. on ao3 here.

201—

In his nearly four hundred years Carlisle had seen countless radical earth-altering changes; social media had proved to be the most irksome. 

He had once dismissed the new applications as a fad, nothing to worry about; until he went ’mildly-viral’ as Alice put it. An emergency room patient had posted a candid, unauthorized, photo of him on an application called Twitter with the caption “my doctor is hotter than my fever.” It was quickly, miraculously, not at all the result of a bribe, deleted from the internet, only after ten thousand people had “liked” the post. 

The incident forced him to move, take a year off from medicine, and have a lengthy conversation with a man and leader he once called a friend. When he did return to the human world it was with precautions, accepting a night shift position that was largely surgical. It was difficult for patients to reveal a centuries-old secret if they were under anesthesia. Every contract he signed included a contingency his photo would not appear on the online staff directory or in any promotional material. For extra precaution he held fake indiscrete social media accounts, using them to track past coworkers and any time non-consensual photos of a “hot” medical professional trended, which was shockingly often. 

One random afternoon of monitoring “Facebook” a group popped up under a tab called “Groups You Might Be Interested In,” ‘J. Platt Fan Club.’ He joined the group in an instant. 

The group was full of various paintings by J. Platt. Many members posted their — often incorrect and unintelligent — interpretations, others posted photos of their own homes showing how they styled framed prints.

He stopped scrolling after twenty minutes, looked up, and snapped a photo of the painting hanging above his desk. A landscape of a small hunting lodge in Northern Wisconsin set in late Spring. 

He posted the photo with the caption, “I have many Platt’s works hanging around my home but this one is my favorite.” 

It was risky, someone was bound to realize he was the only one in the group who had ever posted an original, the only one who could afford an original. Yet, he felt the need to brag, especially to the random posters who claimed they were “J. Platt’s biggest fan.” 

Before he closed the tab a comment popped up, it was one of the self-proclaimed ‘biggest fans,’ an older man named Chester Allen. 

“I haven’t seen this one before are you sure it’s a J. Platt?” 

‘Biggest fan.’ Sure.  

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

It had been three weeks since he first discovered the online fan club when Esme peeked over his shoulder. She slinked an arm around his neck, resting her chin on top of his head. 

“What is this?” She asked, looking at the comment section he had pulled up. His most recent post of three Platt paintings hanging in their hallway had garnered quite a lot of attention, as had most of his posts over the past three weeks highlighting his collection of one specific artist. 

“I’ve joined a fan club,” he smiled, tilting his head to look up at her. 

“Oh?” She asked, her eyes landing on his face and then immediately scanning down to his tee-shirt. “What is that?”

He laughed, breaking the embrace to show her his shirt. She scrunched her nose. “You do not like my attire?” He asked, wrapping an arm around her waist. 

“I do not think it is inconspicuous,” she said in feigned disdain, allowing him to gently pull her to sit in the chair with him, well more on his lap. 

“Why ever not? J. Platt is a quite renowned artist,” he smiled, squeezing her side. “Ask the fan club I joined,” he said, closing out of the comment section and pointing to the group title. 

“You started a fan club?” 

“No, I joined a fan club, and then I bought their graphic tee shirt. I can purchase you one as well if you wish.” 

“Wait, an unauthorized group is selling these ugly shirts and profiting from it?” 

“I don’t know how much they’re profiting, it was an inexpensive garment.” 

“Who owns this group?” She asked, squinting at the screen. 

“Es, you are not sending them a cease and desist. They adore you. Look,” he said scrolling to the recent posts. “There’s your work in someone’s nursery,” he tapped on the screen. Her expression softened slightly. 

“That wallpaper does coordinate well.” 

He smiled to himself and scrolled on, quickly passing his own post. 

“Was that our bedroom?” 

“No.” 

“Carlisle William Cullen.” 

“Yes, it was, but I removed the identifying objects before I took the photo.” 

“That bedroom has been in Architect Digest.” 

“No one reads that,” he grinned. His joke earned him a slight smile that was quickly covered when she remembered she was trying to be irritated at him. 

She gently took the mouse from him and started to scroll. She clicked the comments of one of his posts. 

“A print?” She scoffed. 

“Your originals are valued higher than most of these people’s houses.” 

She shrugged and continued scrolling, he rested his chin on her shoulder as she read. “This man says he’s my biggest fan,” she said, elbowing him slightly. His proclivity to jealousy was her favorite button to push. 

“Chester,” he said under his breath. 

“He’s quite handsome. Don’t you think?” 

“He’s sixty-seven, balding, lives in Illinois, and cheated on his past two wives.” 

She turned, eyebrows raised. “How do you know that?” 

“I’m guessing,” he lied. 

“You are ridiculous,” she shook her head fondly. “Is Dr. Jones on this website?” 

“Hush,” he said, tightening his arms around her waist. His tone, which she perceived as jealous but was absolutely not, caused her glee. She pressed a kiss to his temple through her laughter. 

Eventually, she turned her attention back to the computer screen, reading various posts for a good ten minutes. He was content to sit there, watching her face as she read the hundreds of compliments. Her slight smile turned to scorn as she read through one of Chester’s comments. 

“They think I’m a man?” She gasped. 

“Oh yes, there are a few who point out ‘J’ could be disguising a woman’s name, but the popular belief is J. Platt is a man.” 

She was already off his lap, and walking towards the door. 

“Was that not your intention in picking that pseudonym?” He called as she walked down the hall. 

“It was, but I thought people nowadays would catch on.” 

He smiled to himself and closed the tab, switching over to his email inbox. 

“I do want one of those shirts,” Esme said quietly, popping her head back into the doorway. 

“Of course, love,” he smiled, knowing hers was sitting in his closet already. “I love you,” he called when he heard her studio door open. 

“Not as much as Chester!” She laughed from across the house. 

#carlisle cullen #esme cullen #my stories

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

... What if Walter became a vampire?

Actually, now that I think about it, that would be very bad for everyone involved. Like Mike said, the man is a time bomb and you don't want to be around for the boom.

Somehow, I can imagine Walter ends up destroying the Volturi and dooming humanity after a full season of thinking Aro is going to kill him any second.

The thing is, Walter White probably wouldn't run into the Volturi and he wouldn't really be able to conceptualize them as powerful people or people he wants to be (e.g. Gus). To him they'd be nutjobs who go around killing vampires and insist on them all being secret.

Walter agrees he shouldn't be near people as he ah tends to eat them but... well...

But to back up a bit, let's turn Walt into a vampire.

Walter White's Problems Go Sideways

We'll say that Walt has already started. He's learned he has lung cancer, he's found Jesse, he's killed Crazy Eight in his basement and had to do the cleanup, and things are not going great but meth is being made.

Then he gets eaten by a vampire.

Only, the vampire doesn't get very far because Walter and his radiated lung cancer tastes like shit (canonically, illnesses, substance abuse, etc. can seriously fuck with your taste). They scamper off, not having intended on turning cancer ridden Walter White, and Walter is left... very confused.

His skin is some strange carbon substance that under a microscope looks eeriely close to diamond. He's breaking everything he touches and uh... he ate a guy in a Walmart parking lot.

Walt desperately runs out into the desert and is terrified of going home a) looking like this b) having eaten someone. Something has gone very very very wrong with him and he doesn't think it's the cancer.

Then Walter realizes it doesn't matter.

He's dying anyway and he must provide for his family.

Walt puts on a hazmat suit he stole from a lab (as he now has no fingerprints), which helps with the um people smell that keeps driving him mad, and spends an episode bullying Jesse into helping him fake his death.

(Walter ends up eating another poor person and, not knowing what else to do, they shove the man in Walter's car then light it on fire. Walter White has now died in an awful awful car explosion.)

There's a very sad funeral that Walter attends from the shadows. Gretchen and Elliott show up, Hank gives a eulogy on how Walt was kind of a nerd, Walt hates it so much.

Jesse's asking what the fuck is going on, he's seen lung cancer and that ain't no stage he's ever heard of bitch, and Walter (who doesn't know the answer either) blows him off and tells Jesse he's stupid. They also have a lot of meth to make. Find a new Crazy Eight.

"You killed Crazy Eight," Jesse points out.

Yeah, well, let's get a new one.

So, Jesse regretfully goes to talk to Tuco. This goes poorly. Walt then has to go confront Tuco himself (which is um... bad news...) and ends up eating both Tuco and all of his people.

Walter decides not to tell Jesse this.

"I took care of Tuco" he says instead, having rescued their meth (and cash from Tuco's safe).

Jesse's impressed and a little disturbed, he has no idea how to answer this.

(Hank, meanwhile, thinks drug lords have reached a new low. Someone set their pet dog/bear/something on Tuco Salamanca and ate his entire face. Just. Wow. What a way to go. Hank is celebratory but even he's grossed out by this one.)

Well, Jesse and Walt (now always in a hazmat suit, by the way) are back to square one. They have a whole lotta meth and no one to sell it to.

Walt, slowly getting over his existential horror of being a cannibal, suggests that they sell it on the street. Jesse points out that's mad, the gangs control distribution, if they try to get in on that, massively, they are fucked.

"I can take care of it," Walter promises, having at this point tested out his new, invulnerable, ridiculously strong body.

Walter is easily able to steal them more and better supplies (moving faster than cameras can trace, leaving no prints, etc. And takes out anyone who even thinks at looking at Badger or whoever funny.

(Hank, meanwhile, is seeing a pattern of someone setting their bear loose on every one of Salamanca's men. They've got a gang war going on. Fuck.)

Gus is also noticing and keeps Gale well off the street and asks Mike to look into this.

Mike finds himself very confused. These are low level punks, local kids who dropped out of school and destroyed their lives with meth, but they're not gangsters. They clearly have no idea what they're doing and no muscle.

So who keeps killing everybody?

Unfortunately for Walter, the Volturi are also starting to take notice, as this is a lot of people dead in Albuquerque from rogue cocaine bears. Oddly focused on the human drug trade, but the signs are unmistakable. Aro sends Demetri and Felix off to deal with it.

Sure enough, they catch Walter's scent and ah...

The show's suddenly over when two cosplayers take Walter (in his hazmat suit) out in an alley.

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #breaking bad #breaking bad meta #breaking bad headcanon #walter white #anti walter white #meta #headcanon #opinion

[pxgeturner]

I love love LOVE your movie party! and your whole aesthetic is just-- AAH!! I was wondering if I could do: miguel o'hara + "hands off!" please <3 tysm!

summer movie fest masterlist

you’re a freelance writer, who often sells to the daily bugle. you have a crush on the editor, who saves you from one of his creepy employees. who knew the pining was mutual?

an.miguel brainrot is strong. i meant to post this yesterday but queue got messed up. also thank you nonnie !! ur a sweetheart <3 this prompt was practically made for miguel 🤭

wc: 638

warnings: kind of aggressive & entitled (incel) man (not miguel), not beta’d bcz i was impatient.

you were talking to one of the guy’s at the daily bugle. you don’t remember his name, you don’t really care.

“oh really?” you laugh.

“yeah, i mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, but it’s the jist.”

“i’m sure it is.” be nice, be nice, be nice. this guy really thinks you’re stupid, but you just have to wait until the editor comes out to tell you whether or not the piece you wrote works.

“so i was thinking–” the door to the editor’s office opens loudly, cutting him off. the large man offers you the paper.

“good job, the first draft was good but this is definitely ready for tomorrow’s print.”

“i’m glad to hear that!” am i being too obvious?

“excuse us, stenton, i’d like to talk to her on the way out.”

“yeah, uh, sure, sure thing, boss.” you mentally stick your tongue out at the weird guy. you walk with mr. o’hara.

“sorry about phil, he, uh, thinks he’s a ladies’ man.”

you snort and cover your mouth,“clearly,”

“i look forward to seeing your next story.”

“aren’t you lucky to have such a reliable freelancer like me?” you joke.

“i am, i really am, you’ve brought lots of new readers.” don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush!!

“i’m glad,”

“so, um,” he clears his throat, “when should i expect your next piece?”

“when it happens,” you joke.

“right,” he nods.

“what would it take to get you full time?”

“you know i’m focused on the novel.” he nods, and doesn’t push it.

the two of you reach the subway station, and say your goodbyes, and you get on your train. you lean your head on the glass, putting your hands over your face. you’re never gonna be able to tell miguel o’hara that you like him.

ha week later, you’ve given miguel a fresh story, and he’s dropped you off at the train platform yet again. you’re waiting for your train to come, trying to think of how you can tell miguel about your feelings.

“hey! cutie!” you cringe. it’s phil.

“hey,”

“how about, you and i go out for a bite to eat?” he puts a hand on your waist.

you step back and out of his hold. “sorry, phil, I gotta catch this train,”

“you can catch it later,” he gets closer to you.

“i’m tired and really just want to go home.” you apologize.

“c’mon,” he pleads.

“look, phil, i’m really sorry, but I’m not interested.”

He grabs your hand. “haven’t i done all the right things?”

“huh?”

“haven’t i been nice? a gentlemen? funny? interesting? strong?”

“phil, it’s not–”

“what– it’s not me? then why won’t you go out with me? huh?” he yanks you closer ..

you felt someone behind you, phil look up at them.

“hands. off.” miguel says in that gruff voice that leave no room for argument. phil does as he’s told and releases you.

“hey boss,” phil’s voice is the meekest sound you’ve ever heard.

“that is no way to treat a lady.”

“no– it’s, uh, not.”

“you’re fired.”

“What! WHY? i’m the best writer you’ve got!” he was starting to get his macho back.

“no you’re not. and harassment.”

phil tried to say something, but shut his mouth. he walked away, hands in the air. you took a deep breath and leaned on miguel.

“thank you,”

“i’m glad i came back.” you turned around.

“why did you come back?”

he’s blushing, rubbing the back of his neck“uh, uh, wanted to,” he clears his throat. is that a habit? “i wanted to talk to you, to uh tell you, that–”

you hold his hands between your two, “yeah?”

“that i’d like to treat you to, to… to, uh…”

“yes,”

he blinks, “yes?”

“yes.”

“my car–”

“lead the way,” you smile up at him.

#summer movie fest 🍿 #across the spiderverse #atsv #miguel o'hara #spider man 2099 #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara fluff #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x fem!reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel x reader #miguel o’hara x y/n #miguel x you #my writing

[tieronecrush]

HELLO CONGRATS ON YOUR MILESTONE ILY <3

obviously I am sending you a smut prompt 🛍️ this one makes my brain go fuzzy

“can you look at me? please?”

and I would love that with literally any Pedro boy you like but I'm feeling either Dieter (bc this man is observed constantly but rarely ever seen I think) or Frankie (bc he do be beggin)

TYSM HANNY BANANNY ILY TOO BESTIE

the idea of dieter asking to be seen just overcame me when i sat down to write this so it is him <3

dieter bravo x f!reader

18+ ONLY, MDNI - no other warnings on my drabbles

After midnight on this random Saturday night, or technically Sunday morning, you find yourself in the bed of your latest match off of your new dating app — Dieter.

Academy Award-Winning actor Dieter fucking Bravo.

To be fair, you hadn’t seen the film he won for, Hunger Strike, and only saw stuff about his featured role in Cliff Beasts 6 and the documentary that was made out of the behind-the-scenes shitshow that was creating that movie.

To you, it had been a fluke that you’d been accepted onto Raya, the app you’d matched with him through. You garnered a generous amount of Instagram followers for posting your art, and have ended up having an extremely successful career selling your originals and prints. During a wine night with your friends, you’d been drunkenly convinced to apply for an invitation onto the app — one of your friends had been accepted a few months before and had been basically a reference for you. It was all very official, and it had gotten you some pretty good matches: actors, YouTubers, photographers, agents, and more.

This was new for you though — it was normally one dinner or drinks, or heading straight to the hookup. You’d done minimal chatting before all of these meetups, but things were different with Dieter. He’d messaged you first, and you’ve been talking for at least two weeks and FaceTiming while he’s been finishing up filming in Canada.

He was actually kind of…sweet.

There was no pressure in your conversations, and no awkward silences when you FaceTimed. His messages made you laugh, made you smile, even gave you butterflies when he complimented your work or called you “a spectacularly arresting genius.”

And after all of those days and nights spent getting to know each other and exchanging spiraling ideas from your chaotic minds, you have ended up here in his California king with the softest linen sheets you’ve ever felt — currently straddling him after he made you come with his fingers and his mouth.

He fills you up completely when you’re fully seated on his hips, soft whimpers echoing through his massive primary bedroom. His fingertips are gripping tight to your hips, surely leaving bruises under their wake when he moves them to your thighs to give you full mobility of your hips.

“Fuck, babygirl, you’re a fucking vision over me right now.”

He sits up, one arm wrapping around your back as a moan of your name leaves his lips at the feeling of you finally starting to ride him, lifting and grinding your hips around his cock. His mouth latches onto one of your breasts, kissing the velvety skin and sucking at your nipple. The pleasure stutters your movements, a gasp projecting from your lungs when Dieter fucks up into you, his slapdash pace shaking your thighs as his hit against you.

“Oh my god, Dieter…” Your breathy call to him is punctuated with a high-pitched whine, your head rolling back and eyes screwed shut. All you can manage to reciprocate is circling your hips while his cock drives hard against your walls, the tip of him nailing that spongy spot in you with every thrust. A vice grip is taut through your forearms and hands, digging your nails into the skin of his broad shoulders.

“Can you look at me? Please?” The sincerity in his tone snaps your head forward and your eyes blink open, finding him less than a foot away from you. Steamy air spills from both of your ajar mouths, the tenderness — no, the vulnerability in his eyes is palpable. The intensity of his stare glues yours to his, the only exchanges besides flashes of pleasure in irises being sultry exhales that you both swallow from the other.

“Tell me how it feels for you, babygirl. Wanna hear your voice, please.”

You struggle at first to find any words for this moment, finally clearing all the jumbled thoughts about him to give you something to say.

“I feel so…connected to you. Hasn’t ever felt like this before. Like, a whole ‘nother level…”

“I feel it too, babygirl. Can’t even describe it, really. You fit me like a puzzle piece — your sweet pussy, your curves against me, even your fucking wildly brilliant brain. Could do this all day and night with you, baby, if it always feels like this.”

“Fuck, Dieter, ‘m close, I-I—”

“Let go, beautiful girl, come for me. Wanna feel you all over me, squeezing me.”

It’s a fall from grace — if you could call what you were doing graceful. Blinding hot pleasure radiates all over your skin, vibrating at every point he is connected to you. His name falls from your lips over and over, even a soft thank you thrown in the midst of your visions of heaven. Dieter was guiding you through the winding orgasm, his own hips continuing to hit up against your thighs before they stutter, his warm release coating your walls and extending your euphoria while you watch him come undone under you.

Chests rise and fall at an exponentially slower rate while you both float down, coming back into your bodies and locking into that same intense eye contact from before. It’s a silent transfer of energy until Dieter breaks the quiet first, his palms skating up your thighs with a trail of goosebumps.

“Is it too soon to ask to see you again?”

#tieronecrushcandy #dieter #writing #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo smut #dieter bravo x female reader

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of AI stuff like DAll-E or Midjourney?

It's not as useful as some people want you to believe. A lot of people pushing for the acceptance of this kind of software are the same tech bros that invested in crypto currency and were trying to sell you NFTs, which should tell you enough.

All of this "it's democratizing art!" and "finally, people can make art even if they don't have natural talent!" is snake oil.

You know where my "natural talent" came from? I started drawing when I was 4 or 5 years old. I drew at least one thing per day for over 20 years. I earned the ability to crank out dumb doodles on a whim.

You can't just show up one day and think you deserve to make artwork without putting in the work to learn and get good at it. Art's importance comes from the length of time needed to learn to master it. And I don't just mean drawings, I mean music, film, food, everything. No matter what it is, effort is value.

Financial value, sentimental value, it doesn't matter. All value is derived from the effort required to make it.

If you can just push a button and churn out artwork en masse, that devalues the importance of art. I mentioned this back with the Martin Scorsese ask, but it's like, which has more value? An original hand-made piece of artwork, or a print of that artwork? Prints are easy to mass produce. You can get a nice, high quality, glossy print of the Mona Lisa almost for free at this point. But the actual Mona Lisa, the original product, is actually valuable beyond value.

Art prints are literally just replicating a single file over and over and over again, but the original is one-of-a-kind and where all the effort is most evident. All the layers of paint can be felt as DaVinci sought perfection in his work. That's what makes it special. That's what makes it important.

My uncle does woodworking. He's so good at it, he gave my Mom an end table that looks like it came from a high-tier furniture store. A mass-produced end table like that would be at least $100. He made it by hand. It is beautiful. I will treasure that end table forever.

Effort is value.

If you spend any length of time looking at art websites where AI art is allowed (such as deviantart or pixiv), what you'll often find is these AI art chumps submitting massive amounts of artwork. They'll submit 10, 20, 40+ images a day, all from the same prompt, all with slight differences, because to them, every single thing the generator produces is worth submitting.

Even when I was drawing regularly, I could only really do maybe one finished piece per day. Two if you were lucky. Not only because sketching, inking, coloring and shading would take so long, but because after I was done the tank was empty. I'd used up all my effort for the day and had no more creativity left to give.

All the claims of "letting people without artistic talent generate art" are bogus because it throws the whole signal-to-noise ratio out of wack. Too much signal in itself becomes noise. And it devalues the effort that real artwork takes, because real artwork is now part of that noise, instead of rising above it.

When anyone can vomit out hundreds or even thousands of AI generated images that are of decent-to-good quality, a lot of what would be considered "b-tier" artwork ceases to be important anymore.

In a world where AI generated images are normalized, only the top 0.1% of artwork (your Mona Lisas) are considered to have real value. And who benefits the most from that kind of stuff? Rich people. Rich people who can afford to drop a million dollars on a historic piece of hand-crafted artwork. And just to be clear: these are exactly the same people who are trying to sell you on how important AI generator software is going to be going forward.

Or to simplify it even more: the people who stand to profit the most from AI "art" are the ones trying the hardest to sell you on its benefits. Because it benefits them more than it will ever benefit you.

Because, full disclosure, over this last week, a friend of mine has been having a lot of fun with Bing's new image generator feature, and I couldn't help but also play with the toy. The quality of images it can generate is shocking.

Microsoft, in their endless desperation to get anyone to use Bing on purpose, is clearly playing with fire here.

When effort is value and value is effortless, nothing has any value anymore.

I understand how, if you aren't an artist, this is all probably incredibly difficult to comprehend. The lure of fast and easy artwork from a simple line of text is a net gain to you, and nothing else really matters to your perspective. But imagine all of the up-and-coming artists who get completely pushed out of the conversation because of how easy it is to crap out endless AI generator output. I spent 20 years drawing every day for results that can be beaten in 20 seconds.

How many future artists is that going to discourage? There's a lot of buzz, now more than ever, about "late stage capitalism" and the way that's manifesting in our lives. When AI generated images are "good enough", how is that going to change the world around us?

You can't just think, "we'll figure something out" because the people trying to control this narrative do not have your best interests in mind. The people trying to control this narrative think they still don't have enough money yet even though there's not much money left to give them.

Their solution is to stop paying people to do work that they can get a computer to do for free, even if it means destroying the entire foundation of human culture. Long term destruction for short term gain. The same old story.

Are they going to get away with it?

(Another good ask along this line is over here, from February.)

#questions #Anonymous #dalle #dall-e #midjourney #bing #ai art #effort is value #ai

[imabiscuitinthousandworlds]

hey can u tell me abt ball point pen history

OH BOY DO I EVER!!!

The first patent for ballpoint pens was granted in 1888. Specifically on the 30th of October, to one John J Loud. It was supposed to be able to write on coarser surfaces that a fountain pen could not.

However, this very first version of a ballpoint pen sucked balls. It was not a design that could not write on paper. At all. Also, the ink tended to either leak (in summer) or freeze (in winter) Mind, I only have one specific source on this model right now but. There's a reason they were yet to be used for a long time. Over the next couple decades, a few people tried to chime in with suggestions for improvement but Loud kept a tight wrap on those patents.

No profit was made from Loud's original version of a ballpoint pen. But, you know, technically it still existed.

Now, early 20th century. Enter László Biró, a newspaper editor who was frustrated about all the smudging ink from fountain pens and his dentist brother-with-chemical-knowledge György. Biró (already seeing the resemblance to some slang here) watched newspapers being printed and dry very, very quickly and went "actually, You Know What".

What they figured out was that to use ink that dries fast in a pen, you need a pen that prevents the ink from drying fast inside of said pen. Therefore, they spent Quite A While figuring out a mechanism to allow inkflow while preventing it from drying and clogging up inside. 1938, they filed for a British patent.

1941, the Biró brothers left Hungary due to its support of Hitler (based) and eventually settled in Argentina, where they founded/developed a new brand of ballpoint pens with their friend Juan Jorge Meyne and filed a new, better patent in 1943.

Now this is where things get messy and my sources differ sliiightly but considerably enough to be confusing.

One the one hand, you have two companies, Eversharp Co and Eberhard Faber Co teaming up to license this Birome pen in the USA.

Around the same time, a bit later, some American fuckhead, also known as Milton Reynolds gets a hold of a Biró pen and gets a whiff of sales money immediately. He goes back to the US and starts his own company. This is Absolutely Not A Copyright Infringement since he's selling an altered copy only loosely based on those Birome pens. Definitely. Absolutely.

I mean, to be fair, it was in fact different enough to count as its own brand. And it skipped and leaked and did not live up to user expectations. But neither did Eversharp/Faber's pens, and both companies were constantly caught up in their beef that both companies went down like a lead balloon.

Eventually, Parker Pens got out the first proper design that, you know, actually worked as intended (and was, I think, actually licensed to Birome pens), and a little later Bich, then shortened to Bic, made a design that actually offered quite some precision. This was around the 1940s/1950s when ballpoint pens now finally, actually, permanently came in use (Bic around the 60s I believe) and I love them.

Keep in mind, though, I only used three sources, one of those Wikipedia, and picked through slight contradictions to figure out what makes sense and is the most likely, so take this with a grain of salt.

For the initial purposes of my research, however, this was more than sufficient. (I needed to know if I could have a character in the 30s click a pen. Since they were still pretty much not in use back then, she got to twirl a pencil instead. It was one tiny sentence.)

Thank you for asking! It's my favourite piece of niche knowledge to whip out at random and the only one I can support with dates and names, though I did have to read up on my bookmarked pages. I am waiting for the day when I finally play powerpoint karaoke and get the topic of ballpoint pens. Please let this happen, it would be so funny. Uno uno (<- prayer of my friend group).

#a biscuit's rambles #ballpoint pens #ballpoint pen history #the brand name birome was just biró and meyer mashed together and the british still call pens biros sometimes idk i like that bit #i also think its really funny how two companies had beef about this only to both fail LMAO

[gaslightgallows]

I regretfully demand 2) If you don't find me, you'll find the things. You'll touch what my hand touches. : Crowley and Muriel, bookshop bay-beeeeeeeeeee

“Those don’t go there,” Crowley snarled, suddenly appearing at the door of the basement with a case of bottles.

Muriel, formerly 37th level Scrivener, jumped, though not as much as they would have only a few days before, which they were rather proud of. As the nice human lady at the record shop put it, ‘Mr. Crowley’s bark is worse than his bite.’ Muriel wasn’t entirely sure what that meant; all the information they’d ever seen about the demon Crowley indicated that he favoured snakes over dogs, and Muriel was reasonably sure that snakes didn’t bark. But they had yet to see either one up close.

“What doesn’t go where?” they asked.

“Those books. They don’t go there.” He jerked his chin at a dusty corner shelf, far away from where Muriel had started to shelve the items. “Over there. That’s where he kept them.”

“But…,” they started, as he set the case of alcohol down on a chair and snatched the books from Muriel’s hands, “wouldn’t it be better to—“

“Better to what?” The slitted yellow eyes glared at her.

“Um.” Muriel twisted their fingers together and debated trying to take the books back. “Well, better to put them where people can find them? Like, putting books by the same author together? Or maybe books that are about the same things should go together?”

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “People? You think the point of this bookshop is for people to come in and buy books?”

“Well,” Muriel said, with a nervous gush of a giggle, “that’s what a shop is for… right?”

“There are a million other places for people to buy books from, these days,” the demon retorted. “Amazon, for one.” He wouldn’t take credit for Amazon anymore, but online bookselling had significantly cut down on Aziraphale’s foot traffic, and the angel had been so pleased. “This shop doesn’t sell books.”

“So, it’s like… a library? Ooh, or an archive!”

“Yeah, sure, call it whatever you want, just don’t sell anything. And make sure it’s an archive of stuff where only you know where to find things. That’s the important bit. Makes the customers annoyed and less likely to come back.”

Muriel smiled broadly. “Great! I’ll just go, um…” Their eyes lighted on a stack of volumes of poetry that a recent customer had been prevented from purchasing, due to an inconveniently missing wallet and a sudden cold feeling on the back of his neck, as though a large reptile was glaring at him from the shadows. “I’ll just go put these with the cookery books.”

“Sure,” Crowley sighed, “that’ll do.” He looked down at the books in his hands, and for a moment, held them a fraction of an inch closer to his chest.

One by one, he sifted through them. There was the Alanson copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost (originally owned by the grandfather of some pioneer of surgery, printed in 1711, that was still missing its cover), a second American edition of C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra, and a wallpaper-covered copy of Jane Austen’s (Jane! Austen!) Love & Freindship from the 1920s. The Lewis and Austen books, he shoved into the shop’s most uninviting corner shelf, in between a natural history of octopuses and a manual of traditional wood carving. But he hung onto the Alanson.

Crowley fucking hated Paradise Lost. He made a point of making sure every copy that made it into the shop got stored under the lavatory sink with its dripping pipe. But this one had escaped him. Aziraphale had faithfully promised the previous owner in 1956 that he would repair the book and return it to them as soon as they paid, but the years went by and there was no payment, so it remained in the shop, half-denuded of boards and smelling strongly of dust and vanilla, the way old rag paper did as it decayed slowly over time.

He chafed the little book between his hands, feeling the crumbling edges and the imprints of the plump, deft angelic hands that had held it last.

A hand on his chest, reassuring him. Hands on his back, holding him in place when they ought to have pushed him away. Hands that always smelled of old dust and vanilla.

A snarl curled his lips, but it was a silent, half-hearted one.

He slipped the battered book into his back pocket and took it upstairs, along with the case of wine.

Want a Good Omens ficlet for your very own? The list is here, drop a # and a character/pairing in my ask box!

#gaslight blogs about fic #sad crowley #good omens #good omens 2 spoilers #nellachronism #prompt and ye shall receive #good omens fanfic #ficlets #prompt fill