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irishhorse-blog · 6 months

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I've been thinking about the tracklist for Golden, especially the writing credits. I confess that I sort of expected JK to write or at least co-write some of the tracks, so I was surprised that he didn't put pen to paper on anything.

Then I thought about what he's said about himself. He's said that he doesn't think he's good at writing songs, because he can't write lyrics that he likes. He constantly says how unintelligent he thinks he is, and I think the idea of writing for an actual album was too intimidating. He wasn't convinced that he would even release an album at all, according to what Bang Si Hyuk said in his interview. By the time they started presenting him with songs that other people had written, time was running out and he wouldn't have had the time and space to write and record an LP-length collection of his own songs.

He picked "Seven" and "3D" because he thought they'd be fun to sing, and, let's face it, they're catchy as hell and were always destined to be hits. As for the other songs, I would expect that he chose them for their sonic qualities and potential success, like how he selected the first two. He wants to be a hit, both in Korea and in the wider world. It stands to reason that he would want songs that were hit-worthy with a Western pedigree, at least to some extent.

So I was reconciling myself to the idea that the songs wouldn't be heartfelt and the lyrics wouldn't be illustrative of him at all. But then...

Then I thought about how for generations, singers have been interpreting songs written by others, but putting their own emotions and soul into the words. I thought about how I have turned to other writers - poets, lyricists, thinkers - to express my feelings when my own words were too weak, or too clumsy, or when I was feeling too much to let words flow at all, my emotions standing like a log jam in my throat.

Maybe these songs weren't written by JK, but he found something in them that resonated with him. Maybe it was their hit potential. Maybe it was their sound or their "fun" quotient. And maybe it was the lyrics, which might have been saying things he couldn't find a way to say for himself, especially in English.

You can't tell me that JK wasn't feeling some kind of way when he recorded his cover of "Falling." You can't tell me that he didn't feel the words for "Begin," even though Namjoon wrote them. The songs on this album will be helping him to display parts of himself, and he will sing these the way he always sings: with emotion, with dedication, with beauty and with intention.

I'm looking forward to the album. Even if he didn't write the songs, they're still going to give him a way to express himself, and I'm here for that expression.

Quick disclaimer: I know my interpretations of these songs and these performances will be subjective, but that's the way art has always been. Songs are heard by each person individually, colored by each individual's past experiences, present emotions and future hopes. We all live alone in a way, because nobody else will ever hear or feel or see things the way you do, or the way I do, or the way JK does. Humanity is connected but separated by the very singular, isolated perceptions of life that we all have. My interpretations may not be yours, but to me, they will be valid.

Let's give "Golden" a chance. I think it's got the potential to set the world on fire, because JK is destined for greatness. He always has been. It's time to let him shine.

#jungkook #Golden #song choices

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vtuberconfessions · 1 month

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i am so tired of being nice i just want to go apeshit PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VTUBER ARTISTS WHO HAVE NEVER RIGGED BEFORE: ASK A RIGGER FOR ADVICE ABOUT SEPARATION AND LISTEN TO IT!!!! as a rigger and artist i am so fucking tired of having to spend 8+ hours re-separating and fixing all of the bullshit with your artwork that makes rigging a nightmare. AS A BASIC RULE PLEASE...

1: NEVER USE A SPACE IN LAYER NAMES!!! if you use a space in the name of any layers ( i.e. "leg l" "part 1") the name will be switched in live2D to "artmesh" and your rigger will have to RENAME EVERYTHING. if you do this for every layer THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. it's not easy to fix PLEASE use underscores instead of spaces.

2: have ANY KIND of naming system. it literally doesnt matter, as long as it exists and is consistent the rigger will figure it out. don't name one thing "left_arm_1" and another thing "Bang>SidePart" and expect me to be able to easily work with your file.

3: KEEP. LAYERS. ORGANIZED. please please PLEASE understand basic rigging hierarchy and stick to it. If the left eye folder is ten thousand layers below the right eye folder this will be extremely confusing. also make sure the limbs are ordered properly. if the shoulder is in the layer for the jacket and the hand is somewhere floating in the ether i now have to spend time to reorganize the psd.

4: LIVE 2D DOES NOT WORK LIKE A DRAWING PROGRAM. it only allows for multiply, add, and normal layers. no overlay, no screen light, just add and multiply. if I have to clip a layer to more than five other layers the program WILL lag for both you and the person who ends up using the model. Do not just leave a massive multiply layer over the entire model it doesn't work that way. 5: oh my fucking god PLEASE draw EVERYTHING even if it isnt in view. if you have a separate layer for the bang's shading, for example, in normal illustration you just draw what's visible and call it a day. I'M TURNING THE HEAD, MEANING IT WILL JUST CUT OFF. if i have to fix this for every single instance of shading i am taking time away from my work, my whole process takes longer. as a rule of thumb, always draw more than what you think you need.

6: separate more than you need, but not everything. sometimes I work with models that have not enough things separated, and its a pain to work with. sometimes i work with models that feel like the artist just sent me their work file with every tiny brushstroke on a different layer and then I have to spend a day merging and checking everything. use your head while you are drawing, think to yourself "is the thing I'm drawing something that will need to move independently?" try to imagine the model in 3D space as your working, and if you can't do that perhaps study an object in real life and see how turning it in space interacts with the lighting or whatever idk. also: if there are too many separations the model will come out looking blurrier. live2D doesn't just read the photoshop file, it creates a new texture file. imagine the model like a paper doll, it takes every piece of paper and spreads each piece down flat. this takes up much more space and many more pixels then the photoshop document, and the bigger i have to make the texture file, the laggier things become. if i don't want it to lag, everything has to be shrinked down to fit, and thus everything becomes blurry. if I don't want it all blurry, I basically have to spend hours upon hours manually placing every "piece of paper" on another piece of paper essentially playing the worlds most annoying jigsaw puzzle.

I feel like I'm working on a group project and doing half of your work. please, stop making my job much harder than it needs to be.

#vtuber #vtubers #vtuber confessions #rigging #l2d #live2d

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quitealotofsodapop · 8 months

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Thinking about a scenario where the Ink Demon/Ink MK/Curse the gang encounters in S4 accidentally forms an outer conscieness.

I feel like it gains sentience partially from MK refering to the Curse as a being separate from the Scroll - and not solely as a tool created to torment it's prisoners. Almost like a magic artifical intelligence.

I could see MK finding a way to contact the demon, mostly to gain greater insight on things he's mentally avoiding. Like by writing with an enchanted ink set, or with the ink left behind by the Curse's rampage.

MK, putting ink brush to paper: "Hi?" *The ink begins to blob and shape itself into words* Ink Curse, as writing on the paper: "You could have just used a pen, idiot." MK, excitedly writing back: "It's you!!" Ink Curse: "Why do you seem excited? Are you a glutton for punishment?" MK: "So, I know your whole thing is to pick people apart mentally, right?" Ink Curse: "Yes. I was spawned from the ink used to detail the crimes of those written into the scroll of memory. It is my purpose. Like how you were made for-" MK, writing over the response: "Yeah yeah chaos and destruction and stuff I know that part. But like, when I got home... I started thinking about the other stuff and... you seem pretty good at voicing thing people don't want to know about themselves. It almost feels I dunno... catartic almost? (is that how you spell it)? Ink Curse: "It is spelt Cathartic. And If you take any comfort in what I did, then I have failed my purpose. Or you are hopelessly dense." MK: "But thats the thing! I didn't feel comfortable! You dragged me out of my comfort zone and made me think about junk. It's actually helping me a little in coming to terms with... what I am." Ink Curse: *doesn't respond for some time* "You are strange." MK: "I mean, I guess. I'm writing to a demonic ink curse instead of going to an actual therapist. Hope to talk to you again soon Mozhi*!" Newly dubbed "Mozhi": "Excuse me?"

*"Mozhi/Mòzhī/墨汁" - meaning "squid ink" or the ink used in traditional chinese calligraphy.

And since putting a name to something gives its power, "Mozhi" begins to manifest beyond ink and paper. Ink stains and monkey handprints litter the apartment. The magnets on MK's fridge start rearranging into swear words. The menu at Pigsy's shuffles to critique minor flaws in the kitchen. Mei starts recieving scathing texts from an unlisted number. The tv starts glitching in the viewer's insecurities.

Eventually the gang break down MK's door to figure out wtf is going on, only to see an Ink!MK physically pull itself into the 3d world from the Cursed ink. Everyone starts screaming.

Macaque, laughing: "Oh my gods, I know what happened here - I've heard of it happening before in shadow demons. MK gave the ink Curse a name and that gave it power to, quote a little puppet made of pine; become a real boy." Ink Curse/Mozhi, stumbling like a newborn fawn: "Why is my body being pulled down?" Wukong: "It's called gravity, spot. You get used to it." Ink Curse/Mozhi: "You are actively floating." Wukong: "Yeah, doesn't mean I have to like gravity."

In his "physical" form, Mozhi looks like monkey!MK with inky black fur and colder toned skin - his facial marking a smeared grey color with a distinct heart-shaped outline. He reduces to his inky form when physically damaged or when he wants to "hop into" a book or artwork. Dislikes sunlight/heat, it dries him out.

And because he is no longer within MK's head/the scroll, he's a lot less all-knowing. He is however scarily perceptive of others thoughts and fears, and loudly narrates his opinions on things.

Red Son: "Is that a sentient ink curse?" Mozhi, mockingly: "Is that an emotionally-constipated daddy's boy who almost destroyed the world with a toddler temper tantrum, and still refuses to admit that he's more morally righteous than he lets on?" :3 Red Son, flames up: "Oh its on, you glorified Rorshace test!" MK: *sprays water bottle at them* "Down! Both of you! Mozhi, I said no commentating on people's inner thoughts!" Mozhi: "If y'all actually went to theraphy, then there would be nothing for me to talk about."

This also makes Mozhi the best person to roast somebody when the others are too busy/emotional to do so on their own. And since he mirrors the power of the person he's roasting, it gives him Jester's Immunity to damage from angry Celestials.

The Jade Emperor: "Why is there a loose ink demon in my throne room?" Mozhi, giggling manically as he morphs into an ink!Emperor: "Hahahahahaha~ wow. Ruler of all beings, mortal and divine. And you can't even recognise yourself. Disappointing really. Then again, can't expect much from a glorified intern that was gifted the throne and hasn't done much else since." *Vicious Mockery continues for many hours*

Mozhi is however... kinda bad at admiting and recognizing his own feelings? He's never had any before that weren't projections of others. Is this what true sadness feels like, or does he just need to get some sleep? Can come off as cold, even when trying to be geniune. He's just not used to having emotions or empathy yet.

Enjoys fictional works that dive into the concepts of meta-fiction and medium awareness, ex; Deadpool, Bandersnatch, and Doki Doki Literature Club.

#lmk ink mk #lmk the curse #lmk ink demon #lmk aus #lego monkie kid #lmk s4 spoilers #lmk character ideas

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ottiliere · 1 year

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oh my goodness your dios.. what a delight to see someone so fully invested in phantom blood dio wow. i am very happy. i love your 3D dios. really makes me want to sculpt him as well

Do it... clay is cheap bake it in the oven paint with 10 dollar set of acrylics your life will never be better. I adore phantom blood Dio so very much... years ago saw someone coin the term “phantom blood purist” and it's so funny I think about it literally every time I enter a Dio cycle. There are many aspects that go into this preference of course, and upon a great amount of time pondering i can say confidently that this is because mainly that:

1) I love history (especially the fin de siècle) and I love thinking about him in relation to Victorian values/etiquette/sociology in general... there's something so special about a society that enabled such a gross disparity of wealth&poverty while being so inherently pretentious that its asinine etiquette rules would completely elude you unless you were raised in an aristocratic family or had access to etiquette books. Dio absolutely read a great amount of these before going to the Joestar mansion btw, even before his father snuffed it I think. God help him he would not be doomed to look like a slovenly ill-bred gamin if and when he needed to manipulate the upper classes. I really can't think of a way for him to have developed these skills enough to outclass Jonathan otherwise. god and like thinking about him as a barrister too with his profligate fashion sense you just KNOW he gets drawn that way into all of the court sketches that go in all the newspapers since everyone loved to read about crime and there were a million papers for this in England alone... he'd get caricatured so bad sometimes and he is NOT happy about this.

2) You can probably tell from my indifference to the rest of the parts (except sbr; I call this the "diego rule") that I'm not the biggest fan of fantastical elements and I'm much more interested in interpersonal conflict/relationships in general... PB is extremely unique to the rest of the series because for five WHOLE chapters absolutely nothing abnormal happens and we just get to see Dio harassing Jonathan and his girlfriend until Jonathan snaps and humiliates him so bad in beating him up that he makes Dio cry. and then Dio kills his dog. Like it's literally just some impoverished child abuse victim bullying a spoiled rich kid who wanted to be his friend because lalala sunshine daisies only knows what "poverty" is from reading Oliver Twist and has no conceptual understanding of what the real-world implications of that are. That was the character development that needed multiple chapters to develop it's so fucking awesome. like yeah I'd read an entire novel of just this alone happening and how it impacts their relationship as adults no vampirism needed. I reread "dio the invader" so frequently I'm surprised the spine of my jojonium copy isn't cracked at the exact endpoint of it. I just adore him interacting with Jonathan so much it's hard to remove him from that… that's his FOIL... all the stories (some "AUs") I make with Dio involve the way he and Jonathan gravitate each other to some degree. we get the clearest view of who he is in the face of someone who is the polar opposite of himself. 🤯

2) This iteration of him is the closest degree of separation he has from his "humanity" (childhood), thus

3) I find him to be the most interesting, endearing, etc., version of him walking around, given that... well. behaviors stem from somewhere... the thematic & active severance of himself from a species he is fundamentally incapable of connecting with due to the way he adapted to help him tolerate his childhood... from his point of view I can't imagine that there is one convincing reason for him to continue being human after given the opportunity to deviate from it (despite likely still being inebriated when he vamped himself — very much an impulsive decision since he had, what, an hour or two to think that through? drunk?). If everyone's underneath him, yes, after the fact the choice seems extremely fitting. Maybe he'll cultivate a vast swathe of worshippers and disciples that obey his every command. Maybe he'll rule the world. And then, maybe, he will start to feel genuinely content for the first time in his life. But probably not. That's the drawback of having something fundamentally missing from within you.

4) He lacks a certain type of introspective awareness that 100 years alone in a box might enable him to develop... he's very animalistic to me and possesses a precarious/immature/nonexistent grasp on his emotions just given the fact that he exhibits enraged outbursts from perceived ego wounds (in both childhood and adulthood) + struggles with alcoholism due to an incapacity to self-soothe any sort of negative emotion that makes it past the self-aggrandizing filter he can't help but see life through; he really isn't in conscious control of anything happening inside of him despite needing control over everything and everyone so he can get exactly what he wants, and deserves, always. PB paints a very dim and pathetic view of his character by allowing us to see when he's most "vulnerable", which is the thing he likely hates being the most, so getting to see scenes where he's walking around publicly intoxicated and disparaging himself for acting like his father (implied: again), who he hates, and attacking men with a wine bottle for evoking the concept of his mother, who he also kind of hates but lacks the cognizant cogency to dissolve whatever cognitive dissonance is causing this mental incongruence, rules. he rules

tl;dr SDC dio is "iconic" but I feel like he misses a lot of the charm he had in part one, removed from the context of the society that had such rigid social boundaries and rules of decorum, in addition to his maladaptive approach to interpersonal relationships, his substance abuse issues, his humbling foil... he's too "cool" for me. In the end SDC dio is simply not my Dio... he is someone else's Dio. And that's okay.

#lucy art #dio brando #ask #jjba #I've said this elsewhere but somewhere out there exists my dio-obsessed doppelganger who only likes him in parts 3/6 and dislikes PB dio +#how he looks in the first part too and if we ever made physical contact the universe would implode like matter on antimatter #though I haven't actually read sdc in many years. which may be part of the problem. but also... I don't need it... jonathan isn't there...!#I did however reread the ending the other day and I forgot that jotaro gives him brain damage so bad he couldn't walk. I almost cried #soooo cute... I wish something similar happened when he was shot in the head before being burned alive #well no I don't because the narrative point was to showcase wow oohhh wow vampire powers wowwww and it worked very well #but araki retconned this in the best way possible so basically life is perfect #(acting really approachable as I dip my toe into a fandom of something I've cherished for years) have you considered dio getting more TBIs?

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noodyl-blasstal · 5 months

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Riddle me what now?

Coming in just under the wire for @taznovembercelebration - today's prompt card was "missing piece" and it's short and silly.

Read below or on Ao3

"Hey, Krav, the guy came back in." Says Barry, like they don't work in a shop, like they don't see literally every guy in the world all day long every single day.

"Oh, okay, the guy, sure." Kravitz rolls his eyes to make sure Barry is aware he's taking the piss.

"You know the one, The Guy, not A Guy."

Kravitz looks at Barry as blankly as that statement deserves.

Barry huffs and adds, "the one with the hair!" As if that's a helpful fact, something useful to really help Kravitz nail down the mysterious guy's identity.

"Did he also have a face?" Kravitz asks sweetly.

"Fuck off, I'm trying to help you. He was the one you liked, with the stupid name."

Oh. It was Taako. Taako came back?

"He asked for you. Well, he asked for 'the goth hottie' so I'm making some assumptions, but you know." Barry gestures to himself and his work juniform. Kravitz still has no idea how Barry conned Kravitz into agreeing to the japron. "I'm assuming it wasn't me."

Kravitz finishes retying his sensible, stylish, black apron and picks up his black gouge. Out of the two of them there was no competition as to who fit the description. Kravitz, gothily, hotly (according to Taako), examines the train he's working on so he can concentrate on something that isn't this conversation. If he's busy then Barry won't be able to tell exactly how interested he is to hear that Taako thinks he's attractive.

"Oh?" Says Kravitz, all cool and unbothered, giving nothing away.

"And I know you thought he was really hot too, you know, with all the staring you did, and the thing your face is doing right now."

Fuck.

"Er... I... Nuh uh!" Kravitz says, seamlessly refuting Barry's wild accusations.

"So I got his number for you." He says brightly. A small ball of paper bounces off the side of Kravitz's head and lands next to his tools. "There you go!"

"You got his number for me for...?" Kravitz peters out before he can say anything he can't live down, finishing the sentence with 'sex purposes' is exactly what his brain wants him to do and is therefore likely to be a terrible idea.

"What do you mean?" Barry's doing his smug voice which means he knows exactly what Kravitz means and he's torturing him.

"For... You know... Business purposes?" There he did it.

"What else would it be for, bud?" Barry asks sweetly, flipping his conversational trap card. "You said you didn't find him attractive so I assume you wouldn't want it for anything but business reasons."

Was Barry actually going to make him say it with his actual mouth? Kravitz chanced a look over to Barry's work station, he was working intently on the 3d fire puzzle commission, pretending he wasn't invested in getting himself knee deep in Kravitz's love life.

Kravitz unscrumpled the paper on his desk.

"Text me maybe?" Was scrawled next to a number, underneath was Kravitz favourite part "Taako xoxo." That surely couldn't be business kissed, Kravitz read it twice and it definitely wasn't purely professional.

"I'm going to text him." Announces Kravitz.

"Great!" Barry says too quickly. "Just, er, just as an aside, totally separate to whether you and Taako should be dating or not, here." Barry leans over and drops something onto Kravitz's desk. "This is the missing piece of the puzzle he's looking for."

"Barry!"

"Well you were both clearly into each other and neither of you were going to do anything about it. I fixed it." He sounds unnecessarily pleased with himself.

"You took a piece from a finished product so that I'd be better able to hit on a customer?"

"Well when you put it like that it sounds bad..." Barry sounds genuinely upset.

Kravitz sighs. "You can never pull this stunt again, it'll tank our reviews."

"Aye aye cap'n." Barry salutes happily.

Kravitz starts drafting an apology text.

I hope you enjoyed! You can catch the next prompt here.

#Sorry for the formatting i did this on mobile while half asleep.#taznc #taz November celebration #taakitz #Noodyl Writes #taz fic

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booleanean · 7 months

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Day 9 - Aphrodisiacs - Robots with Dicks

"Oh fuck, yes, yes," Carla panted.

She heard Felix scribble something on his clipboard. For an AI postdoc, he was oddly attached to pen and paper.

The Mk1's chassis had been completed weeks ago. Carla had stared at it, stood in the corner of their basement workshop, waiting for Felix to finish training the AI, until finally she couldn't take it anymore.

"Yes, harder, faster." Carla moaned as the robot's control loop interpreted the commands and thrust into her with greater intensity.

Every inch of it was as good as she could make it, artificial filament muscles covered in variably translucent silicone to visually measure performance, hydraulic actuators in the torso visible behind 3D printed transparent aluminium. Strength was about twice what the strongest human could achieve without modification or drugs, dexterity on par with the best industrial robots from ten years ago, but on a fully mobile base. It was the peak of humanoid robotics, right at the very bleeding edge of technology. Their research paper was going to omit certain additions she'd made to it, though she had been half tempted to see if they could win a Nobel and Ig Nobel for the same project.

Felix looked up long enough from his clipboard to stroke her hair.

"Feel good?"

"Oh fuck yes, I'm close."

Even the penis attachments were works of art. Integrated in a special modular pelvis, she'd created two prototypes. The one that was rocking her world right now was a basic steel shaft with an internal set of ducting keeping it at body temperature, and a separate network of microtubules dispensing lubrication along the entire length. Pressure transducers and temperature sensors fed back into the control loop, letting the robot respond to her physiological responses as well as her voice commands.

She was saving the other prototype for the full AI integration test. The basic functionality worked the same as a mammalian penis. Silicone stood in for flesh, with a body safe hydraulic fluid for blood, filling corpora cavernosa made of custom designed aerogel. It even had realistic skin that slid along the basic structure. The sensors were also inspired by biological systems, with increased density in the tip. The piece de resistance was a realistic set of testicles, weighted properly, that contained most of the operating mechanics and a fully functional ejaculation system tuned to mimic anything from a pathetic little dribble to a pressure and volume any porn star would sign away their immortal soul for.

She already had plans for another, more futuristic attachment with a direct magnetic nerve stimulator for the clit and g-spot.

"Fuck YES!" Carla screamed as she came.

The sensors in the robot's dick tripped the control loop into a new regime, keeping the same pace perfectly, matching her thrashing movements, letting her focus on nothing but her own pleasure. The impassive face, silicon lips pressed tightly together, eyes scanning her face mechanically, pulled her out of the moment a little but the perfect fucking it was delivering got her close to the edge again right on the heels of her first orgasm. Just before her pleasure peaked, the robot pulled back out of her completely and sat back on its heels between her legs.

"CONTROL LOOP FAILURE, SAFETY MODE ENGAGED."

She screamed her frustration at the abrupt feeling of emptiness and ruined orgasm so tight on the heels of such a good one.

"Fuck, that sucked." Carla tried to catch her breath. "Mk1, go stand in the corner."

"COMMAND UNCLEAR, PLEASE RESTATE."

She pushed it off the bed with her foot, the basic inverse kinematics keeping it stable as it shifted to the floor. At least that was still working.

"Walk forward four paces, turn forty-five degrees clockwise, walk two more paces, then go into standby mode."

Carla pulled at Felix's shirt, trying to get it off over his head while he tried to hold on to his clipboard.

"Are you going to take notes, or are you going to fuck me? The Mk1 clearly isn't up to the task yet."

He froze, then tossed his clipboard aside. They kissed as he fumbled his pants off. He was inside of her seconds later, rock hard. They'd fantasized together about being with other people, but never wanted to make it a reality. The fantasy was hot, real people was too far for both of them. When they'd been working on the Mk1 together, Carla had suggested a little side project. Felix clearly really got off on seeing her with it, he was rock hard.

"Yes, fuck me, fuck me." Carla rocked her hips against him, meeting him thrust for thrust. She held his gaze, urging him on. Within minutes, he had her back at the edge, years of being together had taught him exactly what she liked. She held herself there, holding back, waiting for him.

"Cum in me, fill me, yes, YES!" Carla felt Felix stiffen inside of her and then warmth flooded her. She let go and screamed his name as she came, "Felix, Felix, Felix!"

When he collapsed on top of her, she stroked his back. He was still inside of her, and she could still feel the occasional twitch of his cock.

"Of course! There was no path from the 'partner orgasm occurring' state into the 'partner orgasm starting' state! God damnit, I forgot to account for multiple orgasms in quick succession. Fuck."

Felix kissed her, muffling her last word. He pushed up on his hands, hovering over her, still inside. "The tensor farm should be done testing the latest model by 8pm. If this one is all green, we can probably have it installed by 10 and give it another shot with the AI this time."

"I'll rewire the state machine for the control loop in case there's any red tests still."

This had been their sex life for the last couple of months, since they started the project to build the ultimate sex bot. After, often with Felix still inside of her, they'd discuss ideas about what they could change, or features they had to have. This was the first time after a field test though.

"Did you like watching me with it?"

"Oh yes. God damn, that was hot."

"Would you ever want to try it? Both cocks are self lubricating, you know."

"Mmm, maybe. I want to see if we can get a threesome mode working first though."

After dinner they guided the bot back onto its stand in the basement workshop with a dozen cables leading to various parts to extract telemetry, recharge, and provide data connections for reprogramming. Carla was getting distracted trying to rewire the state machine, each possible transition suddenly causing both real and imagined sense memories. Felix looked tastier and tastier as she worked. He was futzing with parameters, rerunning partial tests on subsystems. The tests had all been green, but he'd had ideas to get everything optimized before their first live test.

By 2am, they had the first version of Felix's AI uploaded to the Mk1. She and Felix had curated a lot of videos from Pornhub over the last couple of months, finding performances they liked. Lots of hotwife scenes and threesomes, some bisexual stuff, but mostly relatively vanilla scenes. Carla had added some scenes where the male performer was a bit more rough than Felix was comfortable with doing himself, spanking and pinning wrists above heads. For vocal interactions, they'd retrained a large language model on erotica and textual descriptions of the scenes in the porn videos, generated by an off the shelf accessibility AI.

There wasn't any actual universal intelligence in the robot of course. This was a sexy version of an AI chat bot that most phones had built in now, combined with a convoluted control loop for its physical interactions. Simply a very clever way of giving the impression that something was smart, when really all it was doing was basic pattern recognition based on a predefined dataset.

"Want to give it a shot?" Felix asked, but Carla shook her head.

"I want you, not the bot."

Shutting the bot down for the night, Carla drew Felix upstairs back to their bedroom. As they made love, they teased each other with all the amazing things they'd do with the robot tomorrow and in the weeks to come.

The next weekend, Carla really had to admit Felix had been right. Her control loop version of the robot's software was good. It got her off just fine, but it was impersonal. As its designer, she had a hard time focusing on herself as she felt it roll into new control regimes. The AI felt much more human. He looked at you, used his hands for more than balance, and even showed some imperfections in his motions. He got (artificially) winded, slipped out, fell over, all the things a real human partner would do. The experience was so much more realistic, she sometimes forgot it was a robot fucking her if she couldn't see him.

She sat at her desk in their upstairs office now, working on the more serious portion of her research. They had run a series of strength and dexterity tests that afternoon, characterizing the robot's ability to maintain precision while assert force at different levels, and she was processing the data. Felix was downstairs in the lab, tinkering with parameters and adjusting the training data for the next version of the AI.

Carla heard the neighbor plug in his bass guitar, the amp turned way up. She muttered under her breath about people not respecting their tools. Didn't he know he could damage the speaker like that? The noise wasn't too bad, but listening to Seven Nation Army played by a spirited amateur over and over again didn't really appeal either. Her noise cancelling headphones were in the basement with Felix though, so for now she'd just suffer through.

Her phone beeped halfway through the neighbor's warmup.

Felix: Robot reacting to bass music. Carla: "music" Felix: He's getting better. Anyway:

The next message was the robot's dick, the biomorphic one, clearly at half mast.

Carla: Is he on? Felix: in standby Carla: Odd. Sensors recording? Felix: Yup, caught it before the buffer flushed. AI parameter log too. Carla: nice

Before she could really get back into her work, the neighbor finished Seven Nation Army. The next tune he played was the Pornhub sting. She almost spat out her drink. He did a pretty good version, though the lack of drums made it not quite perfect.

Before she could get back into her work, Felix yelled from down in the basement.

"Carla, come take a look at this!"

The Mk1 was standing in its alcove, still docked to all the various wires and cables. Felix was standing in front of it, studying the biomorphic cock. It was throbbing like a real one would.

"Remember how it was at half mast during the first song the neighbor was playing? Despite it being in standby? I think I figured out the reason."

The neighbor, who had just finished House of the Rising Sun, chose that moment to play another couple of Pornhub opening stingers. The Mk1 responded, humping the air slightly, his cock throbbing.

"You didn't cut out the intros on the training data so—"

"— now every time it hears bass music, and the Pornhub riff in particular, it gets aroused. It's still in standby, it's barely drawing current, but there's enough residual charge in the artificial muscle fibers for, well, this." He gestured at the robot's midsection, still rocking back and forth.

"Aren't the tensor cores supposed to be off?" Carla watched a slow drop of lubricant fall from the tip of the twitching robot cock.

Felix shook his head, "Some stay on to parse voice commands."

She reached out, touching the silicone cock. It was slick, the lubricant dispensers clearly activated. It was interesting to see that it was apparently simulating precum as well, despite that not necessarily being the focus of their training data. The artificial dick twitched at her touch, and she grasped it firmly, stroking up and down. A slow trickle of fake cum was leaking out the tip now, covering her hand.

"So we're thinking bass guitar is a robo-aphrodisiac then? Because you trained it on videos with Pornhub intros?"

"Mm-hmm."

"That's hilarious."

"And means I have to remove the intro from over fifteen hundred videos, and then retrain and retest the entire model." Felix sighed heavily. "Again."

"There's an ffmpeg command for that, surely."

"The trimming, sure."

Carla kept stroking the robot's cock, watching the artificial foreskin slide back and forth over the head.

"Seems like a shame to waste this though. It really shouldn't be erect out in the open air for too long, it's designed with the idea of at least some counter pressure. Also, it would be a shame to not gather some extra data. It might be interesting to have a robo-aphrodisiac function, though maybe something more specific that won't just trigger if someone forgets to unplug their Bluetooth speaker when they're going to rub one out."

Felix grinned at her, then nodded.

Carla pulled her sweat pants and top off, standing naked in front of the mechanical man. "Mk1, wake up."

The Mk1 went through his wakeup sequence, part mandated by technology, part for show because they were both massive nerds. The cables, mostly plugged in along his arms and back, ejected and retracted into the alcove like Neo waking up in the real world for the first time. The sound effect of Seven of Nine's alcove powering down at the end of her regeneration cycle played, and Mk1 took a single step forward.

"Hello Carla, nice to see you again. What would you like to do today?"

Felix had campaigned long and hard for the robot to say "Please state the nature of the sexual emergency" but eventually she had put her foot down. The chances of that ending up in a version they showed off at their defense were too high, and while Robert Picardo could get it, the Doctor was a bit too acerbic for her tastes.

She walked over to the mattress they kept in the basement for quick tests, standing at the foot. She was in the mood for something a bit more rough than just the vanilla stuff they'd tried with the bot so far, and this heightened state it was operating in seemed to be a perfect opportunity to try that out.

"Take me. Be a little rough."

Before, he'd always asked for confirmation before initiating anything sexual. It hadn't been hardwired, but the AI training data was heavily incentivized towards asking consent first. This time though, with three long, powerful strides he was inches away from her. The intensity of his movements were a little scary, but she had the utmost faith in her and Felix's work. Still, she took a half step back reflexively.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Felix asked.

Carla stood staring at the Mk1, transfixed by his gaze. She knew it was just servos and cameras and tensor cores running a neural network, there was nothing there, but she still couldn't look away.

"I need this," Carla whispered.

With that, Mk1 took one more step, pushing her over and onto the mattress. He guided her down as they tumbled, cushioning her fall a little and making sure her head didn't hit the ground, but it was still an intense experience.

Decided to fight a little, she tried to push him off. He gathered her wrists in one hand and effortlessly pinned her arms above her head.

"Pause," Carla said.

Immediately, the Mk1 froze. He still held her, but the pressure on her wrists was lower, and he held all his weight off of her.

"Good, that still works just fine. Resume."

The intensity the Mk1 showed was unreal. She'd enjoyed him before, but with this added level of robotic arousal added on top, she could finally completely lose herself in the act. There was no room for thinking about kinematics and control loops, muscle fiber force limits, defects, or additions to the training data. There was no worry about her partner's pleasure, no anxiety for her own performance. All that was there was her own pleasure, pure and uncomplicated.

She fantasized about a future where a Mk2 and Mk3 could join in with the Mk1, taking turns getting her off, letting them recharge and refuel in shifts as they spent an entire day teasing her from orgasm to orgasm.

Mk1's synthesized voice, indistinguishable from human despite being produced by a speaker rather than a voice box, let her know how good this felt for him. All artificial of course, but so necessary for a realistic experience. Soft moans, grunts, little gasps. Even simulated breathing growing shorter as he exerted himself. It had still sounded artificial to her previously, but now it just went straight to the pleasure center of her brain, letting her enjoy the moment even more. She came, crying out as he whispered her name in her ear.

Just as her wrists were beginning to hurt, he shifted, pulling her legs up against his chest. The new position let him reach new and interesting places inside of her, the intentional curve she'd put on his cock letting him hit her g-spot. As she approached her second orgasm of the afternoon, he started moaning louder, grunting. When she came, so did he. The twitching of his cock was entirely lifelike, his orgasm forceful enough she could feel it deep inside of her.

She lay there panting, and he emulated her, letting her bask in the moment. Felix had sat next to her on the mattress, watching her closely. She could see his erection clearly in his sweats.

"That looked intense," he said when she looked over to him.

"Oh yes. We definitely need this feature."

"Would you like to continue?" the Mk1 asked.

Carla flicked her gaze down to Felix's sweats then looked him in the eyes. "Join us?"

Felix grinned and started pulling his shirt off.

#krakentober #kinktober #robot smut #m/f #science fiction #ns/fw #abrupt ending #original smut #original fiction

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stardustshimmer · 6 months

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MY TIME HAS COME,YOU SAID YOU WANTED MARIO FACTS AND I AM HERE TO DELIVER (most of them are from the rpgs cause I’m kinda biased towards them lol)

Theres a game where Mario and Luigi team up with their baby selves to defeat an army of genocidal aliens (Mario and Luigi Partners in Time)

Princess Peach once used telekinesis with the help of a character named Starlow to fling Bowser out of her castle

In Super Paper Mario Mario,Luigi,and Bowser go to the paper mario’s version of hell

There are three old Mario tv shows:The Super Mario brothers Super Show,Super Mario bros 3,and Super Mario world

In one of my personal favorites Super Mario 3d world the final boss is Bowser using the cat bell aka the main power up for the game

Luigi and Bowser have a kaiju fight in the Dream World

There’s a bob-omb who’s wife died from sickness while he was away sailing and then swore to never sail again after the grief from his wife’s death until Mario convinces him to sail again

Mario fights a group of giant office supplies in Paper Mario:the origami king

In Super Mario Galaxy you can go to the library where it reveals Rosalina’s backstory which I’m not gonna spoil but it made me cry

Luigi crossdresses 3 separate times

A character named Fawful gives bowser a suspicious mushroom which causes him to suck up Mario,Luigi,Peach,and some of the other characters

Ok I’m straight up rambling at this point but I hope you like these :D

This sounds like my type of series

#stardust's mystical mailbox

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wfagamerants · 1 year

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When people talk about the Mario RPGs, the main talking point tends to be the unique settings, characters and ideas, separate from the usual Mario fare they provide. A very understandable thing to prioritize, but for this essay, I wanna give praise to something else.

To be precise, I wanna discuss why Paper Mario 64 is a genuinely beautiful example of how to translate Mario into the RPG world.

While not the first Mario RPG, PM64 is the first one to be released in the 3D era of the series and it takes advantage of that right away, by giving control to the player in a piece of recognizable iconography, Peach’s castle. The first floor, while not an exact replica, is styled to resemble its appearance in Super Mario 64, immediately hitting the player with a fuzzy sense of familiarity.

This feeling continues once Bowser arrives and the plot kicks in. It is a classic Mario vs Bowser tale, but adapted to suit the genre. Bowser has found a new source of power via the Star Rod, so Mario has to save the 7 Star Spirits spread across 7 different locations, to find a way to overcome Bowser’s new power.

The ‘’collect this many of this macguffin’’ set-up is very standard RPG stuff, but Mario by itself is no stranger to it either. Get the magic rods back from the Koopalings in SMB3, save all the Yoshi eggs in World and collect the six golden coins to face Wario in SML2. What really brings it together in Paper Mario’s case, is the Chapter set-up, which feels most inspired by SMB3, which is further supported by how the victory fanfare when saving a Star Spirit, is the same as when returning the kings back to normal in SMB3.

In SMB3, Mario and Luigi travel through 8 unique worlds, the final one being Bowser’s domain. Each of these worlds had a theme that would inform the gimmicks of the platforming challenges they face.

Paper Mario does something very similar with its 8 Chapters. All of them have a unique theme and task Mario to deal with whatever problems Bowser and his troops are causing in those locations. It is the same kind of set-up, except adapted to fit into a RPG. As if to drive that point home further, the game even starts off with a Grassland, while the second chapter is a desert, just like in SMB3 and something that, thanks to the New Super Mario Bros series, will ring even more familiar these days.

Chapter 1 in general takes what I said about the immediate familiarity of Peach’s Castle and does something very similar to it. You travel through a grassland, solving some light puzzles, visiting a Koopa Village and facing the more basic mooks of the game. This is capped off by you entering a large castle at the very end of the road and making your way through to that, until you face off against a Fake Bowser on a bridge, ala’ SMB1. Once he’s dealt with, you fight the Koopa Bros and the chapter is done.

This is the most blatant the game ever gets about it, the castle even has a multitude of SMB3 remixes to further emphasize it, but the basic idea remains. It does help that almost all the Chapters have something that could be considered the castle of the area, like the volcano in chapter 5.

Of course, when I say Chapter 1 is basically a Mario platformer World 1, adapted into the form of an RPG, I should clarify what I mean with ‘’adapted’’ on a greater scale.

Mario is no stranger to all kinds of genres and to me, one of the series’ strengths is its ability to have its elements worked into other kinds of games, in ways that make sense.

For instance: Mario Kart. Koopa shells, which you can kick to take out enemies in the platformers, are now the main type of projectile to toss at your opponents. Red and Green shells behave differently. because Red and Green Koopas behave differently in the platformers.

Similarly, Mario Party’s entire set-up of competitive star collecting, has its roots in hunting Power Stars in Super Mario 64, just now in the form of a board game, with the minigames providing bursts of action.

Paper Mario meanwhile, takes the basic structure of what would be a World in a Mario game and puts its spin on how that would look like as an RPG. The battle system with its Action Commands and small platformer obstacles and challenges, further compliment this approach, keeping the Mario factor fully in mind.

The big distinction here is that RPGs, unlike most other genres Mario has dabbled in, are by their nature, story driven, so the game has to tackle some unique questions in how to make that transition.

Instead of every world being framed as an obstacle course for Mario to traverse, they are now part of a grander world, with towns and people. Koopa Village in Chapter 1 to go back to that, is the home of two of your partners and even the Koopa Bros themselves.

This village and everything around it, give the Koopas a sense of place in this world, beyond just being mooks and not all of them work for Bowser. Many just want to live their lives normally and like Mario. It’s something you see through the entire game, with every new place having some different dominant species. It’s not just Toads everywhere, the many species found in Mario and the level themes become part of a world and not just elements of abstract platform obstacle courses.

You can see things like that even as recent as the new Mario movie. That one had to figure out how to convey the world of a platformer in movie form and still give off a sense of a proper world. A task that from everything we have seen so far, it greatly succeeds at in my eyes.

What also helps is how it works elements of other Mario games into these settings. The K64 that brings you to Dry Dry Desert, is modeled after the trains in Mario Kart 64’s Kalimari Desert and the theme while riding it is even a remix of the track’s theme from that game. Heck, Kalimari Desert (and Mario & Wario’s Karakara Sabaku too) even translates to Dry Dry Desert, so they may very well all be the same location.

Chapter 5 meanwhile takes the jungle island setting and makes it one big Yoshi’s Island love letter. You got Yoshi Village of course, but even Ravens are hanging out there and right before entering the volcano, even has you meet up with Raphael the Raven, a boss from Yoshi’s Island.

Moments like this are obviously nice fanservice, but they also do a lot to give the world a sense of history. I am firmly in the camp of ‘’No, Mario does not have consistent continuity '’’. the games are in a loose cartoon canon where things can be bent and twisted as needed, as long as it makes for a fun game. Personally, I think that approach is perfectly okay for Mario, since it isn’t a story centric series.

Even with that in mind though, those elements from other games, combined with how the game translates Mario platformer elements into the game, really make Mario feel like a proper, connected world. Luigi mentions Mario Golf, Tennis and Party in his diary and yeah, I can totally buy these games all happened in this world.

The Peach sections of the game, to me, also give some nice perspective on her side of things during an average Mario adventure, which is something we really don’t get in the platformers. It also allows her to have some welcome agency and ability to take part in Mario’s adventure, instead of being treated like more of a goal to reach.

These kinds of things don’t just adapt Mario’s world into the RPG genre, it inherently expands on it, in a way that fits the needs of the genre, while staying distinctly Mario. Another inherent part of that expansion is a particular can of worms, NPC variety.

Before getting into this I should stress I have no desire to get into Old vs New Paper Mario debates. I do think the first two games are the best ones, though I do consider Origami King the runner-up. At the same time, I consider them to be good at completely different things.

In most Mario media the different species have little variety in design and as with the continuity thing, I think that’s perfectly fine. There just usually isn’t really much that calls for differing designs because engaging with the NPCs and with a story isn’t a big part of the games, if a part of them at all.

Even then though, these other forms of media will go for unique designs if a prominent use for them comes up. Toadsworth and Toadette are both Nintendo EAD creations, we got King Boo instead of Big Boo in Luigi’s Mansion, Odyssey has a female Goomba for a set of returning missions and so on.

Heck, Mario Golf of all things created a unique Mr. Blizzard King character, instead of just a oversized generic one, for it’s story mode:

Mario does this stuff plenty and in an RPG, the need for it is much bigger, since you will interact with NPCs a ton and it does a lot for the world of the game. Mook Koopas being visually distinguished from the civilian ones is one of many small examples of this effort to give different parts of a species a distinct identity, that you wouldn’t really see in the platformers, since those have little use for that.

As a Toad fan of course, I am also gonna love the distinct Toad designs. Being able to visually identify traits like age, gender and even where they live like the Desert Toads in Chapter 2, not only makes for visual variety, but it also allows for different Toads to express different personalities. Something as simple as a Toad boy and girl looking at the water together and Goombario’s tattle giving you info on them, can give all the basis the game needs to establish character and what their personalities are, which is then reflected in their dialogue if you choose to talk to them.

I have seen some dismissiveness towards the Toads having basic male/female/child designs that are reused across NPCs and I mean yeah, welcome to RPGs, that’s a very normal practice. It’s not just in the designs, the Mario Movie Toads are also showing a surprising level of personality, despite being generic in design, while the generics in the new RPGs fail to win me over. It’s more nuanced than that.

Minh T. at her core is a basic female Toad, with an extra bit to her outfit to signify her being the flower girl. That theme alone though, along with some brief story relevance and her name in japanese (literally Lip) make her a walking Panel de Pon reference, with a simple, but defined character.

This is the same kind of reason Professor Toad and Captain T. Ode from Origami King work really well. Design-wise, they stick close to the standard Toad template, but what design they get informs their personalities and in T. Ode’s case, even his backstory. Those visual cues are what allows them to express character and set themselves apart from the flood of generic Toads in their game, who are extremely interchangable and samey in writing and looks.

To put things into perspective, my favorite character of the core Mario cast is Toad. Regular ol’ vanilla Toad. Being a fan of him can be an exercise in frustrations though, since Nintendo is pretty loose at times, so I gotta explain how he does indeed wear a red vest sometimes and is distinguished by other official materials:

Or how the claim him and Captain Toad are different characters has been contradicted in-game:

On top of them having way too many things in common. Prominent red Toads who throw turnips, give out stars, have Toadette as a partner, act as leaders to other Toads and have been depicted with fairy partners (though in Captain’s case only in concept art):

It’s a big reason Movie Toad is so exciting to me.

He’s got the backpack, his adventurous side as Captain, SMB2, Wario’s Woods and tons of 90s stuff, he is the only red spots/blue vest Toad in the movie and he is the only one voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. Toad is a composite of his whole history and for once, properly individualized from the rest of his species.

While me being a Toad fan obviously adds a lot to my excitement, I do really think this stuff matters, we cling to the concept of individual members of a species (Toad, Yoshi, Kamek, Birdo, Boom Boom) for a reason.

While some may say this is where the RPGs take strong liberties, I honestly think that limiting species to stick to the base design is a pretty shallow concept of being faithful, especially when seeing everything Paper Mario 64 does.

Every single party member is from an existing Mario species. Same with every chapter boss except for Ch6 and Ch7 (Tubba Blubba is a Clubba, who are a subspecies of Spike).

Mario’s main weapon of choice besides jumping, is a hammer, just like in Donkey Kong 1981 and Wrecking Crew.

The Toad Town Sewer areas are based on the classic underground levels, just given context as to what they are in this particular world. The blue Goombas you encounter, called Gloombas, even are a direct reference to how Goombas look in underground levels in SMB1.

The prologue, after the impossible to lose Jr Troopa battle, has you face nothing but various types of Goombas to teach you various aspects of the battle system. This is very reminiscent of how SMB1 World 1-1 has 16 Goombas and only a single Koopa, to ease new players into how to interact with mooks.

Lava Piranha and Kent C Koopa are both expies of Yoshi’s Island bosses. The game in general takes a lot from that game, including several mooks like Bandits, many flavors of Shy Guy and a personal favorite of mine, Crazee Dayzees.

It has Ninjis. Nuff said.

On top of everything I mentioned above already.

Paper Mario 64 is a game that is intimately familiar with Mario and does a beautiful job reimagining it into a new genre, while also knowing where to expand.

The latter is one that will be subjective and that is perfectly fine, but I see it in the same light as a lot of elements from say, Super Mario Odyssey.

Stuff like vocal themes, the many different outfits to unlock, fun world trip set-up or New Donk City getting the lore bomb of being the city from Donkey Kong 1981 are the kind of things that aren’t technically needed, as is often argued with say, the RPG NPCs of old, but few to none would argue they were needless additions.

You could remove the costumes and little would change, but not being able to dress up in nostalgic outfits, enjoy the new ones or do goofy things like Mario in boxers and with a top hat, biking around New Donk City, would take something away from the game.

These things were added for a reason, because they make the game more fun, compliment it’s ideas and are simply put very charming.

That’s the word that to me describes PM64 the best. Charming. It’s a take on Mario I am happy we got to experience and that to this day, remains one of my favorite interpretations of Mario as a world and my favorite Mario RPG.

#paper mario #super mario

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otherwurld · 1 year

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Reality Shifting to Kakegurui

soooo I didn’t actually document the full experience on this blog - here it is!

(thanks @nothingbutcloud for replying to the 1st post I made about it ^O^)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found myself having false awakenings, sleep paralysis, a time loop. In realising my environment, I went to my bedroom door in the astral and decided to make a portal.

The first try didn’t work, I opened the door and looked into my corridor, so, I tried again, FULL of intention. I screamed with the furious intent, as much as I could in the airless astral, breathless and roaring, holding up my arms like Eleven from Stranger Things. This seemed to work!

A bright white rim of light appeared bursting from the outline of the door.

I had one sentence appearing to me “where is Yumeko?” as I went through the portal, entering the new world.

I enter the front doors of the academy’s corridor, bustling with students. I feel thrilled about the experience already, keeping my cool as I budge through the busy academy’s corridors. I also felt a sense of confusion, and searching for Yumeko amongst the students.

I look down to my uniform briefly, noticing I feel a little shorter than usual. I see strands of styled black hair entering my peripheral.

To my right, an opening where students - some cartoon, some live-action looking - lounge on the floor. I notice one 2D girl with pink hair physically blush, I wave to her, continuing on my search for Yumeko.

Apparently I’d been frantically looking for her since I entered the reality consciously. I turned to a student, a live-action person, and asked, in Japanese, “doko desu ka Yumeko?” - the students spoke in a mixture of English and Japanese, the words fell out of my mouth so quicky, I only just realised I’d been speaking it. The student boy pointed over to the gambling hall.

The detail was incredible everywhere I looked. I was slightly nerved by the mixture of 2D/3D figures around me, along with live-action “real life” people… [the way I scripted it was a ‘hyperreality 3D sense”, not what I envisioned, but still fascinating] The gambling hall looked much different to the anime, coloured glass surrounded the walls. I took a second to glance around, then I found Yumeko, and I was delighted - she ignored me. She actually looked upset. I wondered why. A painful feeling went through my chest, rejection.

Ever since I’d entered this world consciously, I felt confused, excited, but.. mostly confused. I felt real, I felt visceral.

Itsuki, live-action, tall, Itsuki, who’d I previously scripted to be a ‘best friend’ in this reality, was … incredibly attractive to me in that moment [not anticipated]. She smiled, asked if I was okay.

Manyuda, even taller, and towering, came by me and striked up a small-talk conversation. What I remember is him reminiscing on the last few weeks or so - before I’d left the school to apparently be forcibly checked into a mental hospital?

He fills me in, saying something like “you ate those sweets and went crazy!”

I separated myself from the conversation, feeling unnerved, still embarrassed by Yumeko’s reaction in seeing me, and came to a realisation that she must’ve not known why I’d been away from school.

Memories now started to come in. I sat by Sarah Paulson (this wasn’t scripted lmfao), who was my teacher, and I received a memory of her smoking, seeing her drink in the gambling hall.

After watching a show for what felt like an hour or two (tedious, not worth mentioning), I came by an in-school shop that I actually did script, and received another memory of an inside joke between me, Itsuki and other friends - about a fabulous bong that never gets sold - and pointed out to Itsuki that it was finally gone.

I remembered that I’d scripted a ‘black card’ with infinity money, reaching into my back pocket, I found black paper money instead.

At this point, I prayed that I was simply just lucid dreaming, and really tried to make myself believe it, so that I could magic the black card I intended on by will - I tried to wish it into my pocket, trying to convince myself of being lucid in a dreamscape, but it didn’t work. I got angrier.

I came up to the cashier, who, this guy from memories was already done with my shit. Apparently I’m a real asshole (don’t script that you have an insanely rich mafia family/background oml - it was that experience I really learnt & FELT that insanely rich people SUCK & are ENTITLED) and straight up demanded he run and get me a ‘black card’.

He says, “I can’t do that”, I feel a flush of anger overtake me (based on what I scripted for my background/past, after coming out of this reality, it was clear I accidentally scripted some form of anger issues, or a stupid sense of entitlement) — I rage out on his register, shoving everything off the counter.

A student in the forming line beside me apologised to the cashier for me, I stroppily walked away and heard Sarah Paulson calling to me, to have a talk.

Aaaand that’s where the shift ended! I was heading to the corridor to my dorm, where Sarah Paulson, my teacher, in the Kakegurui reality, was calling out to me. Lol.

#reality shifting #reality shift experience #reality shifting stories #kakegurui DR #desired reality experience #♥️#afterthoughts:#I want to understand the nature of reality shifting through experience #I find it interesting that even when I literally wanted it to be a lucid dream #the lucid dream physics wouldn’t budge #maybe learn more about astral travel #kinda sad Yumeko ignored me 😵‍💫#Itsuki tho???? what the hell honestly did not anticipate but HEY

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molly0611 · 5 months

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Journal #8 - Rango, Ethics and Animation (Sean Cubitt)

“Rango, Ethics and Animation” is a paper about exactly that. Posing the question of where animation stands within morality and ethics, and how we might go about gaining an understanding about it through the study of the movie Rango. While this paper does largely concern itself with the ideas of 3D animation, vectors, bitmapping, etc… I do still believe its insight is welcome in all aspects of animation, if for nothing else than an interesting alternative look into the medium. Before I go any further, there are certainly aspects of this paper that might be reading overall too far into the ideas of autonomy in animation, but nevertheless I think it is as the paper itself states - an interesting and worthwhile avenue of discussion, not necessarily to solve the question posed but to simply pose it with enough information as to create discussion. Cubitt starts off by stating that it will for the sake of its argument, include anecdotal evidence to support its exploration. The reason it states for this is that “Ethics concerns not the general but the specific” and “If ethics is a matter of confrontation with demand… It stands between the partners in the encounter, rather than joining them.” All in all, it makes itself clear that the inspection of Rango is again only the start of the conversation, not the key to the end of it. The idea of anecdote is integral to the paper, as inspection of a single work if essentially reading the account of anecdote. The film is an anecdote, the convergent stories within are anecdotes and - most importantly to this paper because it is a main feature of the film - Rango himself is in essence an anecdote. His story is deeply intertwined with the nature of storytelling, beginning the film as barely anything more than a slate for storytelling even within his own terrarium enclosed world.

This idea of an anecdotal character then translates into the idea of ownership and autonomy. Simply put, who is Rango? Is he the designer or writer who created his character? Is he the modeler or animator who gave him life and movement? Is he the person who voiced him and acted out his lines for later reference? (Side note here but Cubitt does include a very funny quote from filmmaker Jean Renoir demolishing the “sub or dub” debate by suggesting that putting any voice over a film is comparable to heresy) And if the methods of 3D animation allow for characters to be animated in the sense of programs and set, repeatable cycles, is could there be an argument for the autonomy of Rango to be his own, separate from human hands? It is suggested then in the face of this dilemma, that he can be viewed as an animated artifact inhabited by multiple, disparate sources. Additionally and predictably, in the conversation of autonomy in today's age, we come eventually to the idea of corporate property, and the ethics within that as well. If Rango possesses in short the souls of all the previously described sources, what does it mean for him to be legally owned by a company who is free to do with him as they see fit, and even more so how does this relate to both his status as in some sense a celebrity and human celebrities who sign rights over to studios and corporations. Just because Rango is unable to sign papers in the real world does not mean there would be no complaints or repercussions from the sentient parts of his being or the dissonance of his character, should he appear tomorrow in a toothpaste commercial.

The real importance of talking about Rango specifically in this paper is the ways in which the movie talks about acts of performance, narrative and control within a story. Firstly, with performance, we come to the issue of viewership and what that means in context. Essentially all parts of the film are an act intended to be viewed. Even within the sense of turning vectors into flat bitmaps, feeding everything through a codec, in the same way that live film is captured and becomes flat images, so too does the final result of animation become only the memory of the original. This allows for an odd dissonance where as an audience we can view loneliness despite being in a theater full of people. The concept of suspending disbelief for the sake of story exists, but in the context of a character who does not know they are acting in a story viewed by millions, that suspension can lead us to different concepts than we would be usually accustomed to. Secondly, in the narrative we have the idea of a story written about a story. Rango is through and through an actor within the narrative. Even in the finale, where he accepts his role as sheriff, his role can still be read as playing a part, regardless of how fully he believes in it. Rango is, as Cubitt describes him, “...not just a specific performance of an object, but a representation of that performance.” Rango the character directly represents the performance he is unknowingly playing. Finally, the idea of control within the story. For this area Cubitt pulls back even farther, no longer examining only the character of Rango but of Beans as well as the animations of water present within the film. Beans functions as Rango’s antihero in many ways. Where Rango is trapped under layers of outside forces and metatextual ideas but still throughout it all retains an aspect of autonomy (if anything present in the visuals of the movie can be considered to truly have autonomy), Beans explicitly has that ability revoked, becoming catatonic at a moment’s notice. Even further, within that state her autonomy is moreso revoked by the ways in which Rango continues to come on to her. The narrative has for all intents and purposes abandoned her, left to the whims of morally questionable characters until, as the paper argues, she forces her will back on the story and regains consciousness, moving back from inanimate, objective fetish to character with control. Interestingly however, Cubitt also considers this idea in reverse, that the act of inanimation is - on a grander scale - an act of rebellion by a character so controlled by the narrative. The choice to refuse animation in an animated film, and then to choose her own time to reemerge from that is, in a way, a decrying of the external forces that move her along in her own story. In the complete reverse to this is the idea of water within the film. Water is explicitly uncontrollable, and to all best efforts is still never truly controlled even in the case of Rango, where it is all computer generated. In a completely different act of rebellion, but rebellion nevertheless, water demands everything of its creators and holds nothing back, if they want to have an end result that at all resembles the real thing.

Overall this paper presents a very interesting way of viewing animation. While there was no particular reason as to why I picked this paper over any other besides my preexistent fascination with Rango, I am very glad I did. As stated by Cubitt, there are the beginnings to a very interesting conversation within, certainly it is something I will consider moving forwards. To say I was surprised by this paper would be an understatement. Cubitt clearly has a very well articulated and thought out stance on this question and he is able to explain it in an incredibly interesting and compelling way. There are many points within this paper that have certainly crossed my mind before and will undoubtedly come up even more now that I have read this. As such I do believe this is a good read for anyone interested in the idea of ethics in animation, if only for the thought of hearing more people’s opinions on it. I think this concept is very applicable to many aspects of animation, the places to do so becoming even more common at the introduction of video games into the conversation. A medium within animation that features not only control from the craters but from the creators but from the viewer themself is practically begging for this conversation (and in many ways has already had it, but it is a fascinating subset of this conversation nonetheless that should continue to be developed). Overall I believe this paper was a worthwhile read and the very well spoken beginnings of a conversation I hope to have more of in the future.

SOURCES

(both are the same source but given that this is posted on a public blog I am including both in case one is inaccessible)

#Rango #animation history

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cyberart1a · 6 months

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How did the cyberart changed, beside the art world, the economy

Ana Lívia

We all know that art is a part of the human species. Art definitely has changed and continues to change nowadays. But firstly, what is art? As the book “O sentido da arte'' by Herbert Read approaches : “The simple word "art" is most often associated with the arts that are distinguished as"plastic " or "visual ", but, more precisely speaking, it should also include the arts of speech and music”, art is most related to visual or plastic work, like sculptures or painting, although art is music, interventions and as the same way even a simple drawing. In addition to this, the text “What is art and /or What is beauty?” by the article “Philosophy now” also talks about the definition of art: “Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it’s about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent.”, here art carries the meaning of a way of expression, any person can make art, in our way to express your thoughts and emotions that sometimes can't be expressed in words. Consequently, the ways to express yourself have changed together with our societies. For some time now, the cybeart has emerged. Cyberart can be defined by art produced with the help of technology, often carrying an interactive or multimedia aspect.

The path to reach cyberart was long and complex, without a doubt humanity has gone through different historical moments and remarkable artistic movements, for this reason, it is almost impossible to discuss every type of art and the history. So, It’s more practical if we take a look at the emergence of cyberart until today. In first place, the name “cyberart" was created at the beginning of the 21st century, to conceptualize those arts that are made technologically, often related to interactivity between the appreciator and the artist. But, since the mid-20th century, especially when this cultural relationship with digital technologies was established, Cyberculture has redefined the limits that separated the fields of communication, culture and technology. And just like all other types of art, cyberart has changed due to changes in techniques and artistic values. The first real digital art experience was around the 80s. At this time one of the first was the paint program named AARON, a robotic machine to make large drawings on the sheet of paper placed on the floor. Even though the creator of AARON considered the machine just as a tool for his own expression, his program can be considered as what we know today as Artificial Intelligence. In the 1990s with the introduction of the personal computer, improvements in digital technology and of course, the emergence of the internet, digital art production has only evolved more and more. Currently, cyberart differentiates itself in several completely different ways.

Obviously there are many different types of cyberart. Some examples are holographic art, animation, digital 2D or 3D painting and last but not least, the Internet itself. In this case, holographic art consists of recording and projecting images that reconstruct scenes that, when rendered and projected, provide the observer with a spatial vision that promotes the visual experience of depth from multiple angles, similar to observing real objects. Differing from animations, that are basically different images or drawings that are used as frames, and form animation, often making some type of progressive movement. And finally the digital painting, that is nothing less than conventional paintings but using brushes and digital tools, this productions can even be 3D, and often printed, forming physical sculptures. And these different types can be used in many other ways.

Probably the most famous, the digital painting, has diverse uses, including in medicine and making up much of the NFT market. Using 3D formatting and printing technologies, soon the CAT Scan and MRI data can be translated directly into 3D prints. As a result that means that doctors can generate accurate, immediately scaled down models of tumors and bone tissue previous to surgery. They can have contact with something physical before they open the patient up. And secondly in the economy, they are part of the NFTs market. .

Contextualizing, Nft is an acronym for “Non-fungible Token”. These are digital contents that can be exchanged or sold using virtual currencies, called bitcoins. These contents can represent anything, a work of art, a song or even a post on some social network. And these virtual currencies have their own values, being like dollars or euros, which are exchanged for money based on the value they represent at the moment, often being highly valued or falling. This system also happens with NFT's, being some more highly valued at the moment and others with a low market value.

So, it should be noticed that cyberart changed, beside the art world, the economy. Digital art has and continues to revolutionize the world of art. New artistic movements, new ways of making art, accessibility to art. All of this was made possible by cyberart. Furthermore, being part of changes in medicine and architecture, for example, it built a whole new market. The creation of NFTs caused a revolution in the digital economy and, every day, it is transforming it even more. They have been driving the market and allowing new types of negotiations. Therefore, it is noticeable that NFTs are moving a lot of money around the world and it is expected that they will make a real revolution in the way we buy and consume.

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solfirafira · 1 year

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💛

OOH thank you for the ask <3!!!

I think my best skill lies within calligraphy and lettering!! I developed the interest back in design college and really fell into a love for typography and letterforms. I’ve always dreamed of working to improve myself as a type designer and hope to open up a type foundry of my own someday and pour over the intricate details of letterforms and publish my own typefaces :>

A Quick Lesson in Typography

Here’s a way to flex your design knowledge on twitter and elsewhere. Y’know that thing that people call “fonts”? Well, if you wanna get technical, designers actually categorize them with terms like type families, type faces, type weights, etc.

“What’s the difference?!” you may ask. I’m here to tell ya :D

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A type family refers to the style (Arial) and all of its weights (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black) and sizes (12pt, 15pt, etc.).

A typeface (or font family) is similar to font, but only pertains to weight and style. → Arial Regular is a typeface. Arial Bold is a different typeface.

In the digital world, a font pertains to the software we install and use.

So when someone says they’re using the Arial font or the Times New Roman font, technically they’re actually using a typeface, not a font. It’s become such common usage though that when we hear it, we more or less know what you mean :)

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Another detail that can help separate you from the masses is understanding kerning and tracking. Moreso the first one as opposed to the latter.

Kerning is the spacing between each letter.

Tracking is the spacing between each word.

If you are dealing with a paragraph, you’re working with its tracking. If it’s one line, presumably a header of some sort, you’re kerning it. The best way I can explain it is essentially designers will invert the text in their brain (aka look at the negative space) and adjust the text letter by letter (or line by line) until it looks right.

For your purposes, I’d say focus on learning how to kern your headers. Most people aren’t working in book publishing so you don’t need to worry about tracking.

Here’s a fun visual way to try it out yourself!!

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For me, my nerdiness doesn’t stop there. Oh no. There’s a whole dictionary list of specific terms that I love to scrutinize and dig deep into.

Now THIS is my jam. This is the stuff I spend my spare time diving into, and it’s the nitty gritty of what makes up a letter. Letters are beautiful, and the people who work on them spend a lot of time perfecting them until you get timeless typefaces like Helvetica and Garamond. I won’t spend too much time on these, but this is a great place to start if you ever wanted to make your very own typeface. There’s also so many little tricks that designers have made to make a letter look just right and it’s just so cool !!!!

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Anyhow, so little rabbithole led me into exploring calligraphy (yes, I have quite a number of fountain pens and inks) and the lettering community on instagram. Combined with paperquilling (another little hobby of mine, maybe I’ll talk about it if someone sends me another of the 💛 in my ask), the work that I’m most proud of is this one!

I think taking something made digitally and in 2D and bringing it into a 3D environment is an interesting culmination of everything we’ve learned so far. This whole thing started with calligraphy and typesetting on paper way back when, and now everything’s gone digital, it just feels right to combine the paper and typography medium and bring them to life in a new and different way!

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Also this too! Yes it's a Harry Potter themed series (fuck JK Rowling). Custom typeface, loosely based on Abril Fatface and Playfair Display for an elegant yet magical vibe!

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This one that I made for a friend a hekkin long while back and is more along the lines of the “classic” paperquilled lettering works that you see on instagram.

I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a while since I’ve made something like this but at some point I was working on an unfinished piece for Kiryu Coco when she left Hololive. Maybe I should finish that.. 😂

In any case, hope you enjoyed my little ramble! I also hope I didn’t bore you to death with my meanderings haha

Thanks again for the ask!!

#design #typography #paperquilling #lettering #calligraphy #graphic design #fira tips

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pansexualkiba · 8 months

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@panda-monium64 REJOICE! OCS BE UPON YE!

This is part 6.5 of a series (and the current most recent one!)

TOUHOU SANJYUUEI ~ TRIPLE FEATURE

Plot: Aya, Hatate, and Sumireko are taking pictures :)

Yeah it's a photography game! "But Sumireko doesn't have this power in canon!" you're right! She doesn't! She has the "3D-Printed Tengu's Camera", which can take one big picture before it just fucking shatters. It's basically a bomb. What it is is Aya and Hatate have their regular mechanics, and then Sumireko is just playing a regular bullet hell, essentially doing ISC without cheats (which is a real run category btw). Because it's just an anthology of every single other character I've posted, there's no real need to show a new character, but here's two of them.

JIANDING LILING Third Mercenary Evil Species: Deer Youkai Ability: Capable of ignoring attacks The third in the mercenary group of herself, Fennu Xue, and Tanlan Daiyu. Whereas they made up the power and speed, she's their tank. Prior to the Zodiac Incident, Liling had been hired as a bodyguard. She's not particularly used to the surprisingly-pacifistic lifestyle of guarding someone, however, and has clearly gotten bored of it. When she heard that Xue and Daiyu had been hired by Tatsuko, she itched to run to them and act as their shield. Between Xue making people too angry to think, Liling stopping them in their tracks, and Daiyu returning fire with the mark's own ability, the three are a particularly good match with each other. Of course, these random girls snapping pictures of her... There's nothing she can really do about that.

It's the unnamed deer youkai that's Xue and Daiyu's third in the polycule! Liling is so cool and I love her so much. Kinda makes it so Sumireko's route is essentially just her timing out all of Liling's spellcards, though... But who is Liling guarding?

KUNIKAYA TOYOKUMONO God of Seclusion and Gathering Species: God Ability: Capable of separating and bringing people together A primordial god who oversees group dynamics. Of course, being a reclusive-type, she's more than happy to let people gel together and drift away as they please. Of course, Gensokyo is a land of busybodies, so it always pays to have at least one bodyguard at a time. To this end, she's had a long line of people coming into her employ as what amounts to being her errand-runner. Of course, if they end up leaving, that's fine too. Kunikaya never had much faith to begin with, so just sitting around waiting for another person to discover her well-worn shrine is always just enough to wake her up and sucker the poor sap into being her gopher, and the cycle continues. Liling had been a bit of an accident - Kunikaya had decided to put out a wanted ad in the paper this time around, and Liling had been the first to answer. Liling's job is simple: keep away any unwanted solicitors, and let Kunikaya continue to isolate herself. Of course, Gensokyo's resident busybodies couldn't leave that alone.

So, there's a, um. God, named Toyokumono in the Kojiki. In the beginning of the entire Kojiki, Toyokumono is one of the first gods created, and they immediately seclude themself away from the world and is NEVER seen or heard from or even MENTIONED ever again. Kunikaya is just them. I essentially had to create Kunikaya from COMPLETE scratch and I'm happy with what I made - the ORIGINAL recluse god who was doing it BEFORE Amaterasu ever could, who just lives in a cave and suckers random people into being her bodyguard (basically, just keep people away and have them not ever involve her in situations). Fun fact, there's apparently a theory that "kumo" in Toyo-kumo-no is supposed to be similar to "secluding", as well as "assembling". So that's where the ability of "manipulating group dynamics" comes from.

That's the touhou ocs! There's no more! Do what you will now!

#touhou #touhou oc #Jianding Liling #Kunikaya Toyokumono

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 10 months

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Heat spots reveal growth rate of a galaxy 12 billion years ago An international team of astronomers has drawn a temperature map of the dust drifting within one of the oldest spiral galaxies of the Universe which provides new insights into how fast the galaxy is growing. Until now researchers have only been able to measure the temperature of most distant galaxies in broad terms, without showing how temperatures vary in individual areas. This research, described in a paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) shows unambiguous temperature variation within the distant galaxy indicating two distinct heat sources – a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and the heat generated by newly-formed stars in the surrounding rotating disk. “The temperature of a galaxy's dust can vary greatly according to which region it is in,” says of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, lead author of the paper. “But most of the measurements of dust temperature for distant galaxies in the past have been for the galaxy as a whole, due to limited instrument resolution. “We were able to measure the temperature by region to region that we could determine how much heat is coming from individual sources. Previously, such mapping has mostly been limited to nearby galaxies.” The research reveals a clear distinction between warm dust in the central region – where the heat is derived from the galaxy’s supermassive black hole – and colder dust in the outer region, which is likely being heated by star formation. Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the centre, which are thought to grow in mass with the galaxy. When the gas accretes to the black hole, it is heated up by collisions of the fast-moving particles in the vicinity of the black hole and sometimes shines brighter than the stellar body of the galaxy itself. “The heating energy from the black hole reflects the amount of the gas being fed into it and so the black hole growth rate, while the heating energy from star formation reflects the number of stars newly forming in the galaxy – the galaxy growth rate,” Dr Tsukui says. “This discovery provides a clearer picture of how galaxies and central massive black hole form and grow in the early Universe.” The current research was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. “This study demonstrates the detailed mapping ability of the ALMA telescope, operated by ESO,” Astro3D Director Professor Emma Ryan-Weber said. “ALMA is the most powerful array for measuring millimetre and submillimetre radiation. It’s incredible that ALMA can look at a 12-billion year old galaxy and separate the image into two components – one of dust heated from the central super massive hole, and the other from the dust in underlying host galaxy.” ALMA is a global collaboration and comprises 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 16 kilometres making it the world’s largest ground-based astronomical project. It is designed to detect faint light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe which have wavelengths of around a millimetre, somewhere between infrared light and radio waves. The $40 million ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and six collaborating Australian universities: The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne, Swinburne University of Technology, The University of Western Australia, and Curtin University. IMAGE....An optical image, left, of the galaxy captured by the Hubble Space Telescope with overlaid temperature contours as detected by ALMA. The image on the right shows the dust temperature map detailed in the study.

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #news #galactic evolution

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