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jinjeriffic · 3 months

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DCxDP Prophecy Universe Part 2

Part 1

Damian glared at the envelope. He and Father were in the process of analysing the letter for any signs of toxins, explosives or other traps. Obviously he wasn’t fool enough to open a missive from a questionable source without taking precautions. So far, all their scans had come up empty. Literally. The letter was defying all their attempts at chemical or spectroscopic testing, x-ray and magnetic resonance scans were inconclusive, it defied all properties of ordinary matter. It was frustrating. It was vexing. He was blaming magic.

For all intents and purposes, the letter looked like ordinary paper, with an ordinary wax seal, bearing the initials CW. The looping handwriting addressing it to Damian was precise and neat. Swiping the surface of the letter for chemical traces yielded no results. When Damian had tried to cut off a corner of the paper for analysis it had resisted all attempts, including a laser and a diamond headed cutting tool. Damian’s only satisfaction was that when Father had grunted and taken over the task from Damian, he had no more success than his son. As if Damian didn’t know how to perform the standard array of tests!

It certainly didn’t help that his siblings wouldn’t stop their incessant chattering!

“I’m just saying, ghosts wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve encountered, Red. I’m not sure it would even make my personal Top 5.”

It seemed gossip among heroes travelled faster than the speed of light.

“Really, Nightwing? Ghosts? It’s far more likely to be a meta with something to hide. Or a few screws loose.” Damian could practically hear the eyeroll in Drake’s voice “And since when do ghosts act as glorified mailmen?”

“I don’t know Red, since when do aliens pretend to be Kansas farmboys? C’mon, we deal with magic users all the time!”

“And lets not forget people coming back from the dead” Red Hood interjected over the open comm line.

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet. Any sufficiently analysed magic becomes indistinguishable from science!”

“B, a little help here?”

“Hn” Father straightened up from his position at the lab table “Oracle, any progress on clearing up the footage from Robin’s mask?”

Grayson threw up his hands with a frustrated huff while Drake smirked.

“The program is almost finished rendering. Whatever scrambler they used did a real number on the video quality. I’m surprised the audio is as clear as it is.” Oracle replied.

“Hn. And the isotope tracer on the money?”

“Sorry B, no hits on the local sensors. Wherever the guy went it’s either outside Gotham or shielded somehow.” she said, mildly frustrated.

“Maybe it’s ghost magiiiiic” Drake sing-songed. Grayson lightly cuffed the back of his head, to which the former Robin responded with a firm shove. Their interaction quickly devolved into a childish tussle.

Damian gave an annoyed huff. “Don’t you two imbeciles have anything better to do?”

“Aww, we’re just here to look out for our baby brother!” Nightwing teased.

“Yeah, we gotta make sure your ghost encounter didn’t leave any lasting psychological damage!” Red Robin added.

Before Damian could retaliate for their needling, Oracle chimed in. “Uh, guys? You’re going to want to see this. Most of the footage was corrupted beyond repair, but I was able to pull some partial stills and, well…” she threw a handful of pictures up on the screen. There was artifacting marring them, but parts of the stranger were visible in each of them. Oracle magnified one that had a pretty good view of his face.

“Holy shit” Drake whispered.

Damian frowned. “What?”

“Dami, he looks like you. Just… older.” Grayson said softly.

“What are you talking about?” Damian snapped.

“Disregard the pale colouring for a second. The nose, the chin… he looks like you if you had a growth spurt,” Drake wrinkled his nose “and went through puberty.”

The commlines erupted into chaos.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Spoiler exclaimed “are you telling me there’s an older version of Robin running around Gotham?!”

“Copy?” Batgirl inquired.

“Don’t tell me Talia cooked up Demon Brat 2.0!”

“Given that he looks older it’s more likely version 0.1 if anything,” Drake snarked, “though there’s the possibility of artificially accelerated growth rates…”

Damian had had enough. “Tt. You are ignoring the obvious - if this is some kind of supernatural entity it likely copied aspects of my appearance in an attempt to engender feelings of familiarity.” he said haughtily, pushing down the uncomfortable churning in his stomach. There was no way Mother would replace him with a cheap copy. She couldn’t! “Besides, the creature has obvious powers and neither of my bloodlines has any trace of the meta gene.”

“That’s ignoring the ghostly elephant in the room.” Grayson chimed in, “Maybe it’s a dead ancestor?”

Drake gave their older brother an annoyed look “Even a time travelling descendant from the future is more likely than that. And delivering a ‘prophecy’ to boot?”

Oracle pulled up an aged up picture of Damian next to the stranger’s, highlighting several reference points. “On closer inspection, there’s a couple of discrepancies. The cheekbones for one - Robin definitely takes after his mother, while our mystery meta looks more like… well… Robin’s grandmother on the paternal side.” she finished hesitantly. “B?”

They turned to look at Batman, who had remained silent during the whole exchange. If they hadn’t known him so well they would have thought him unaffected, but the tightening around his mouth betrayed his agitation.

“There’s no use in pointless speculation until we have more data to work from,” he growled, “Oracle, look for any reports of a meta matching the target. Since our regular methods have failed to yield results, I will contact the JLD about running tests on the letter.” He turned to Drake, “Red Robin, see what you can find on recent League activities. If this is another scheme by Ra’s or Talia we need to know about it.”

“The last thing we need is more demon spawn running around!” Red Hood groaned over the comms.

Damian was furious. This was absurd! To even indulge the possibility that that creature was in any way related to him was making him feel like he had swallowed battery acid. He was the Demon’s Heir! He was not replaceable! There was only one thing to do.

“Robin? Stop!”

He ignored his Father’s shout. He stomped over to the lab table, snatched up the envelope and broke the seal.

Nothing happened.

He unfolded the paper and saw the same handwriting that had been on the outside.

Brother of blood, brother of soul

Never buried but already mourned

In lightning and ice the scorned child returned

To strike down the Demon’s Head

With all that Death earned

Damian’s hand shook. He reread the lines over and over again, refusing to comprehend. He could feel his Father standing behind him, scrutinising the letter as well.

“Son…”

Suddenly, the paper burst into green flames, going up into smoke that dissipated unnaturally quickly.

Silence reigned for a few moments. Then…

“Well that was needlessly melodramatic” Nightwing remarked.

Part 3

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #danny phantom #batman #dc domics #batfamily #no beta we die like danny phantom #prophecy universe #the one where clockwork uses prophecies to mess things up (and set things right)#fanfic #congrats bruce it's a boy #clockwork loves melodrama

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empty-movement · 6 months

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May I ask what scanners / equipment / software you're using in the utena art book project? I'm an artist and half the reason I rarely do traditional art is because I'm never happy with the artwork after it's scanned in. But the level of detail even in the blacks of Utena's uniform were all captured so beautifully! And even the very light colors are showing up so well! I'd love to know how you manage!

You know what's really fun? This used to be something you put in your site information section, the software and tools used! Not something that's as normal anymore, but let's give it a go, sorry it's long because I don't know what's new information and what's not! Herein: VANNA'S 'THIS IS AS SPECIFIC AS MY BREAK IS LONG' GUIDE/AIMLESS UNEDITED RAMBLE ABOUT SCANNING IMAGES

Scanning: Modern scanners, by and large, are shit for this. The audience for scanning has narrowed to business and work from home applications that favor text OCR, speed, and efficiency over archiving and scanning of photos and other such visual media. It makes sense--there was a time when scanning your family photographs and such was a popular expected use of a scanner, but these days, the presumption is anything like that is already digital--what would you need the scanner to do that for? The scanner I used for this project is the same one I have been using for *checks notes* a decade now. I use an Epson Perfection V500. Because it is explicitly intended to be a photo scanner, it does threebthings that at this point, you will pay a niche user premium for in a scanner: extremely high DPI (dots per inch), extremely wide color range, and true lossless raws (BMP/TIFF.) I scan low quality print media at 600dpi, high quality print media at 1200 dpi, and this artbook I scanned at 2400 dpi. This is obscene and results in files that are entire GB in size, but for my purposes and my approach, the largest, clearest, rawest copy of whatever I'm scanning is my goal. I don't rely on the scanner to do any post-processing. (At these sizes, the post-processing capacity of the scanner is rendered moot, anyway.) I will replace this scanner when it breaks by buying another identical one if I can find it. I have dropped, disassembled to clean, and abused this thing for a decade and I can't believe it still tolerates my shit. The trade off? Only a couple of my computers will run the ancient capture software right. LMAO. I spent a good week investigating scanners because of the insane Newtype project on my backburner, and the quality available to me now in a scanner is so depleted without spending over a thousand on one, that I'd probably just spin up a computer with Windows 7 on it just to use this one. That's how much of a difference the decade has made in what scanners do and why. (Enshittification attacks! Yes, there are multiple consumer computer products that have actually declined in quality over the last decade.)

Post-processing: Photoshop. Sorry. I have been using Photoshop for literally decades now, it's the demon I know. While CSP is absolutely probably the better piece of software for most uses (art,) Photoshop is...well it's in the name. In all likelihood though, CSP can do all these things, and is a better product to give money to. I just don't know how. NOTENOTENOTE: Anywhere I discuss descreening and print moire I am specifically talking about how to clean up *printed media.* If you are scanning your own painting, this will not be a problem, but everything else about this advice will stand! The first thing you do with a 2400 dpi scan of Utena and Anthy hugging? Well, you open it in Photoshop, which you may or may not have paid for. Then you use a third party developer's plug-in to Descreen the image. I use Sattva. Now this may or may not be what you want in archiving!!! If fidelity to the original scan is the point, you may pass on this part--you are trying to preserve the print screen, moire, half-tones, and other ways print media tricks the eye. If you're me, this tool helps translate the raw scan of the printed dots on the page into the smooth color image you see in person. From there, the vast majority of your efforts will boil down to the following Photoshop tools: Levels/Curves, Color Balance, and Selective Color. Dust and Scratches, Median, Blur, and Remove Noise will also be close friends of the printed page to digital format archiver. Once you're happy with the broad strokes, you can start cropping and sizing it down to something reasonable. If you are dealing with lots of images with the same needs, like when I've scanned doujinshi pages, you can often streamline a lot of this using Photoshop Actions.

My blacks and whites are coming out so vivid this time because I do all color post-processing in Photoshop after the fact, after a descreen tool has been used to translate the dot matrix colors to solids they're intended to portray--in my experience trying to color correct for dark and light colors is a hot mess until that process is done, because Photoshop sees the full range of the dots on the image and the colors they comprise, instead of actually blending them into their intended shades. I don't correct the levels until I've descreened to some extent.

As you can see, the print pattern contains the information of the original painting, but if you try to correct the blacks and whites, you'll get a janky mess. *Then* you change the Levels:

If you've ever edited audio, then dealing with photo Levels and Curves will be familiar to you! A well cut and cleaned piece of audio will not cut off the highs and lows, but also will make sure it uses the full range available to it. Modern scanners are trying to do this all for you, so they blow out the colors and increase the brightness and contrast significantly, because solid blacks and solid whites are often the entire thing you're aiming for--document scanning, basically. This is like when audio is made so loud details at the high and low get cut off. Boo.

What I get instead is as much detail as possible, but also at a volume that needs correcting:

Cutting off the unused color ranges (in this case it's all dark), you get the best chance of capturing the original black and white range:

In some cases, I edit beyond this--for doujinshi scans, I aim for solid blacks and whites, because I need the file sizes to be normal and can't spend gigs of space on dust. For accuracy though, this is where I'd generally stop.

For scanning artwork, the major factor here that may be fucking up your game? Yep. The scanner. Modern scanners are like cheap microphones that blow out the audio, when what you want is the ancient microphone that captures your cat farting in the next room over. While you can compensate A LOT in Photoshop and bring out blacks and whites that scanners fuck up, at the end of the day, what's probably stopping you up is that you want to use your scanner for something scanners are no longer designed to do well. If you aren't crazy like me and likely to get a vintage scanner for this purpose, keep in mind that what you are looking for is specifically *a photo scanner.* These are the ones designed to capture the most range, and at the highest DPI. It will be a flatbed. Don't waste your time with anything else.

Hot tip: if you aren't scanning often, look into your local library or photo processing store. They will have access to modern scanners that specialize in the same priorities I've listed here, and many will scan to your specifications (high dpi, lossless.)

Ahem. I hope that helps, and or was interesting to someone!!!

#utena #image archiving #scanning #archiving #revolutionary girl utena #digitizing #photo scanner #art scanning

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

#pluralistic #alexa #ifttt #criptech #disability #drm #revocation #nothing about us without us #futureproofing #graceful failure #darth vader MBA #enshittification

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fayes-fics · 10 months

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Canvas

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Summary: An art lesson with a different kind of canvas

Warnings: 18+ smut, minors DNI, body painting, oral sex (m to f), cunnilingus, vaginal sex, edging.

Word Count: 5.0k

Authors note: Sequel to Inspiration, but not necessary to have read before this. Unbetaed. This is a double request fill for @oureternalbond HERE and anon HERE. I decided to combine these requests as they were so similar (in essence, Benedict uses his wife as his canvas then smut ensues). I hope you enjoy <3

You find him in his studio, a glass conservatory he has co-opted for his artistic endeavours. He is barefoot and dressed only in black trousers and a white shirt, his braces hanging loosely around his hips, looking handsomely casual as he paints by candlelight, dusk settling in. It's then you spy his subject, the lovely arrangement of flowers you received from his family for your birthday last week. You wondered where the bouquet had disappeared to just now as you had wandered through your home—they previously had pride of place in your hallway.

“Stealing my birthday presents, husband?” you jest airily, leaning on the doorframe with crossed arms.

Benedict twists around and shoots you an apologetic smile. “Only the artistically meritorious ones, my love,” he responds, amusement laced into his tone. “Join me?” he suggests, waving his brush towards the empty easel beside him.

“I'm not certain I have anything close to the requisite skills,” you hedge. You have only ever attended his painting sessions as his subject or simply as a companion, mostly reading quietly nearby as he works—one memorable time, sitting naked upon his cock to provide the requisite inspiration. Your blood runs a little warm just at the mere memory of it.

“Art does not always need to be about skill. Enjoyment of the process is just as important, perhaps more so. Besides, I can teach you,” he smiles, the corners of his eyes wrinkling beguilingly. He never fails to convince you with that look.

“Alright,” you sigh fondly, straightening up and uncrossing your arms, “but you are not allowed to ridicule my attempt,” you argue, waggling a finger as you walk over.

He laughs and leans in to drop a kiss on your cheek as you draw up next to him. “I would never!” he promises in a bemused tone. “Everything you need is right there,” he nods to the supplies, “you have watched me paint enough times to know how to set up.”

His confidence in your ability seemed a little unwarranted, but you’ll give it a try.

___

“I cannot do this,” you lament about ten minutes later, looking forlornly between the canvas and the spray of flowers, disappointed in your less-than-accurate rendering. All you have managed is some stems and a vague version of the vase, which looks uneven.

“Nonsense,” he dismisses, “you are doing wonderfully for your first time, my love,” he adds patiently.

You twist around with a knitted brow to look at him. “Benedict, please… your flattery is obsequious. This is… not good,” you sigh, scratching your chin with the wooden end of your brush.

“Perhaps I can assist your efforts?” he offers, putting down his brush into a jar of water and placing his palette aside.

“Please…” you request gratefully.

A smile ghosts your lips as he rounds behind you, pushing you closer to the canvas, a hand landing on your hip under the arm you balance the palette upon, and the other curling around yours, holding the brush. His fingers are warm and soft.

“Now then,” his voice is rich and rumbles right next to your ear, “the first thing is to start with the colour there is the most of on the object, and then you can start to add in light and shade… are you quite alright?” he interrupts himself as you fidget slightly.

“All is well,” you reassure.

But it's a lie. The moment he stands close behind you, your traitorous body decides this is not an art lesson at all. No, it’s something quite different. Readying itself for him with quite remarkable speed and absolutely no effort on his part. Quite astonishing, really. You attempt to listen as he sonorously explains the method involved and makes your selection on the palette and brushstrokes over the canvas. But you are half-listening and half-participating at best.

His breath tickles the wisps of hair around your ears as he seems to lean in closer until he surrounds you with his long arms and body heat. He smells of his woodsy soap, and you have to tamp down the urge to twist your nose into his strong neck and inhale deeply. For a few minutes, he guides your hand, and you relax into the motion, enjoying the sensation of being so utterly engulfed by him much more than the act.

“Now, how about you try?” he voices, gently removing his hand from yours.

You stutter, realising you were not taking on board what he was saying, distracted by the striking mental image of him painting a glistening line across your collarbone, a bright golden streak over your bare flesh. You try to remember what he said and make a hesitant dab on the canvas, but there is a disapproving noise against your temple.

“That is not what I told you to do, now, is it?” he teases lowly.

“I do not know how to do it…” you confess in a breathy whisper. “Please guide me for a little longer, Benedict,” you implore.

“Were you listening to a word I said?” he asks, but it's not a disapproving tone. Not remotely. It’s a liting rumble, his face turning into yours so the tip of his nose nuzzles your earlobe, his breath hot on your jaw.

You suspect your lack of attention to his instruction may have been found out.

“People pay good money for me to teach them how to paint,” he breathes into your ear, both hands now on your hips, fingers circling over the diaphanous layers of your thin, silk gown. “And yet here is my wife, not even listening to her expert teacher.”

“I am… I…” you give up, knowing it's a pointless lie. You try a different tack. “I should hope you do not treat your other students in this manner?” you throw back, rocking onto your heels so the press of your bodies is greater.

“Indeed I do not,” he murmurs, and you inhale sharply as his teeth graze the shell of your ear.

“So perhaps this is somewhat unfair to me,” you posit, pouting your lips, knowing his eyes are watching you side on.

He chuckles richly. “Perhaps,” and he gently slides the paintbrush from between your fingers. “There is another method by which I can teach you all about the pleasures of painting.”

“Oh, and what is that?” you breathe, closing your eyes as warm lips land on your neck, that weak spot which makes you completely pliant.

“It requires a different canvas,” he whispers, his lips catching on your skin.

For a fleeting moment, you consider if he could read where your thoughts had skated only minutes earlier; again, you think of golden paint on your flesh. There is a faint ting as he drops the brush into a glass jar of water and eases the palette from where it is hooked around your thumb, and you do not fight it; just stand still and attempt to regulate your breathing, eagerly awaiting what he will do next.

Your heart rate spikes as deft fingers undo the buttons between your shoulder blades.

“You have such beautiful skin,” he sighs, his lips dropping warm onto the top of your shoulder as your dress relents and falls in a pool around you. “I want to paint you.”

Your breath hitches as he runs a knuckle down the notches of your spine; glad you didn’t bother with a chemise. Your eyes fall closed as he kisses your skin again and plucks open the laces of your stays. When the material slackens, he pulls the structured fabric away from your body and tosses it aside, his hands instantly cupping your breasts and pulling you back into him.

Your moan is wanton as you writhe, his fingers snagging your nipples as they pebble against his palm. One hand sweeps down to the little buttons on your silk underwear and deftly flicks them open as his other hand is busy, making your nipple into a stiff peak.

“Lay down, darling wife,” he murmurs, the tone laden, as your underwear slips around your ankles.

He gestures to the oversized double chaise conveniently covered in a heavy canvas drop cloth. It’s almost as if he planned for this. You hold his hand delicately as he assists you into a reclined position.

“Will you not be getting naked too, husband?” you coo, watching as he returns for a palette and brush.

“It would certainly make clean-up easier,” he smirks and rips off his shirt, tossing it aside.

Then he walks back to you, a slight swagger in his gait, knowing he has your undivided, breathy attention as your eyes covetously drink in his torso.

“Gold…” escapes your lips unbidden and stops him in his tracks as he towers above you.

“Gold, what?” his query warm, but puzzled as he places the art supplies on the floor next to the chaise.

“When I dream of you painting me, my body,” you confess, “it’s always gold.”

He leans over, his face etched with desire. “You dream of me doing this?”

“Yes,” you murmur, “Your cool, wet brush swirling over my heated skin….” you close your eyes and bite your lip, lost in the reverie of it.

“Tell me more,” he implores, his breath hot on your cheek, the chaise squeezing as he sits beside you. “Keep your eyes closed if it helps,” he adds, moving back; it sounds like he is fiddling with the supplies.

“You start at my neck….” you sigh, inhaling sharply when a wet ticklish brush lands right on the left side of your neck, then holds still.

“And then?” he prompts gently.

“Then… you do a swooping line over my chin to my other ear,” you breathe, gasping as he does exactly as you describe, the smell of fresh paint filling your nostrils, the feel of it wet and heavy.

“What is next?” his voice is dark and sweet now, goading you into more detail.

“Then you paint a line down the side of my neck, over here…” you gesture at your collarbone, “...then lower,” you end in a whisper, almost reluctant to admit how erotic your fantasies of him can be.

Nothing, however, can prepare you for those errant thoughts becoming a reality—the drag of cold buttery substance, each bristle a damp tickle as he smears a line to the swell of your breast, your eyes flying open to see his gaze heavy and intense on the task in hand. Your nipple pebbles almost painfully, even though he does not stray close to it, surrounding your breast with a golden loop, his pupils dilating, his breath hot on your skin, leaning close.

“Does that feel good?” he practically purrs.

You nod, feeling the wetness blotting across your neck at your movement.

Without asking you what happens next in your dream, he takes the initiative and traces a line around your other breast, the brush dipping into the valley of your breastbone before continuing. When you tip your head to see his handiwork, the metallic hue shines bright in the candlelight.

“May I use other colours on you too, my love?” his question is almost reverential in tone.

“I am yours, Benedict,” you sigh honestly, “do with me as you wish.”

Those words light an artistic and sensual fire in his eyes; he pushes up to kiss you, plundering your mouth with a possessive kiss. When he pulls away, you feel dazed, desperate for more, but you watch patiently as he reaches for another clean brush on the floor by his feet and selects a new choice from the palette.

“Close your eyes,” he murmurs.

You do as he asks, aching to know what hue it is. You gasp as a broader brush runs across your skin, starting at your neck and sweeping down, shadowing the path of the other line already drying on your skin.

“What colour?” your curiosity getting the better of you.

��What is your favourite on me?” he teases gently, his strokes seeming to concentrate most on the sensitive skin under your breast, making your thoughts fuzzy, distracted—you know it's intentional.

“You look good in so many colours,” you offer; it's the truth. “I love your light gold cravat,” you add with a sigh, knowing he has already used that shade at your request.

“You are stalling, my love,” he points out with a bemused tone, teasingly flicking the ends of his brush in the spot closest to your underarm.

“Blue? You always look so handsome in every shade of blue, from navy to sky,” you guess.

“Oh, then that shall have to be next,” he lilts, telling you that you have guessed incorrectly.

You mentally flick through some of your favourite of his outfits, squirming slightly at the images you see, his brush still teasing. Then there is a lightbulb moment.

“Burgundy red!” you exclaim, remembering the waistcoat he wore on the day you met, the one that made you lose the power of speech, temporarily tongue-tied, never having seen a man wear such fine silks before.

“Well done, darling,” he compliments.

You open your eyes to see he has interwoven the harmonious shades in an exquisite arching design, truly using your skin as a canvas.

“Now lay still; there is much work still to do,” he instructs softly.

You settle into the chaise, your belly fluttering as he slips lower, daubing your diaphragm in intricate loops, trying to keep your breaths shallow for a still surface. He swaps brush again, back to gold, holding the other in his knuckle, the rich red loaded tip contrasting his pale skin.

When he sinks below your ribs onto your belly, you bite your lip, the light touch tickling you to the point of giggling. You try your best not to move, but when he glides over a sensitive patch, it bubbles out of you on reflex.

His gaze pings up to your face, a lopsided grin claiming his features. “Does that tickle?” he mocks gently. You can only giggle more in reply as he teases even lighter over that weak spot.

“Stop it,” you whisper, knowing how much he enjoys the tease.

“Never,” he responds lightly, lowering his face; you jolt as he lightly bites your bare nipple, and you cry out. “I veritably exist to tease you; you are so beautiful like this,” he whispers, pausing in his artistry, pressing you into the chaise with his body weight.

“Look at you,” you giggle as he pulls away again, seeing smears of pain across his chest.

“That is nothing. I expect both of our bodies will be a riot of colours by the time I am done with you, wife.” His tone is simultaneously light with mirth and dark with promise.

“Perhaps you should speed up,” you answer playfully; it may dry before you have the opportunity.” He laughs, teething your other nipple before refreshing the line.

“Not a chance.”

Just as your stomach clenches at the idea he will move lower, he grabs your right arm and concentrates his efforts there as if to elongate the burn of anticipation you feel. It's less ticklish until he swipes the crook of your elbow over your veins, making you giggle again, meeting his hazy blue eyes with an intense stare. Wordlessly he kisses your hand before swapping to your left arm, creating free-hand a mirror image of the pattern on your right. It's striking, and somewhat ironically, you wish there was a portrait of you looking like this, covered in his design.

As you are lost in your reverie of that thought, he slips lower on the chaise, and you gasp as he restarts the line at your middle and swirls down all over your belly. He employs a heavier stroke so as not to tickle as much, alternating the two, holding both brushes with ease between his long artistic fingers. You have to bite back a moan when one swoop goes lower, skating along the top of your pubic hair.

“Open your legs,” his voice low and decadent. Feeling a burning low in your gut, you draw up your knees a few inches and part your legs a fraction, keeping your feet together. “I said…” he grabs your ankle and plants it at the edge of the chaise, out wide, “...open your legs,” his voice dark, making you flush hot.

You meekly move your other foot to match the stance, now lewdly spread before him.

“Much better,” his voice rough as his gaze is heavy on your core. “Do not move,” he commands.

You pant lightly as he resumes, leaning in so close you can feel his breath on your inner thighs. He paints a line from your belly down over your hip and up your thigh. It's the longest he has done, ending with a flourish at your kneecap. Then he swaps the brushes and traces along the same path in the dark red.

“What of the navy blue husband?” you murmur, trying to keep your voice even, even though you feel a slight tremble in your body at the contrast of the cool liquid and the warm flush of arousal.

“All in good time. You should not rush an artist at work, darling,” he replies playfully.

“What if your canvas is in need?” you inquire quietly.

“Where does my darling canvas have a need, hmm?” he asks duskily, intentionally acting obtuse even as his breath puffs close to the place you want him the most.

He runs a line achingly slow down your inner thigh, looping under into the crease where your buttock meets your thigh, the odd feeling making goose bumps break out across your surrounding skin, the tilt of his face right above where you burn so hot.

“Here, perhaps?” he whispers, and you cry out as his warm wet mouth opens wide on your folds.

One of your hands shoots down to grasp his hair as he unfurls his tongue, swiping deep into your folds, lapping the overflowing well of moisture there. You stare down the plane of your body, watching the colour on your inner thigh streak across his clavicle and shoulder as he drinks from your body, pulling your pearl between his lips and sucking so hard you see stars. His eyes fly open and hold yours; his gaze is fiery as he swipes under your clitoral hood. His tongue dabs the most sensitive spot, the one that makes your leg want to kick out and go rigid from the intense sensation. Just as you start to writhe and moan, he pulls back. You pout in disbelief as he calmly returns to painting.

“How can you tease me so?!” you lament, chest heaving, hand falling from its grip on his chestnut locks.

He laughs and continues with his art, your concentration barely registering it, your heartbeat throbbing in your abandoned, swollen clit.

“Please, Benedict,” you appeal, absentmindedly watching him switch to the other shade.

It seems he is ignoring you as his brow knits in concentration, glancing at your other leg to ensure, as with your arms, it is an exact mirror. It's undoubtedly stunning, but somehow your interest in it has waned, all of your thoughts of needing his mouth back where it was.

You plead again and almost want to cry in relief as he seems to huff sympathetically and move so his face is again a fraction from where you want him. After one long, indulgent swipe through your soaked folds that has you gasping loudly, he stops, rears up and quickly climbs over your body, his lips landing on yours, damp and tangy with your desire. Shaking with unsated need, you whimper against his musky tongue as he kisses you deeply.

“Please,” your voice has a tremulant quality betraying your need, he has taken you to the edge, and the denial makes you prickle hot all over.

“Soon,” it’s a whispered promise, “your skin is too arresting of a sight flushed like this. I need to paint more upon this gorgeous canvas,” he sighs, leaning over to scoop up his brushes again.

“Benedict, please,” you writhe, letting your legs fall closed, hoping to rub against your clit, eager for stimulation.

“Open your legs,” he tuts as he returns his attention to you, parting your knees carefully with his hands, avoiding his handiwork. “If you keep misbehaving, darling, I shall not let you come,” he warns with an arched brow.

“Then I shall have to touch myself,” you sass, squaring your jaw in defiant playfulness.

“We shall see about that,” he challenges. “Give me your fingers.” Hazy, you allow him to encircle your wrist, only startling when large beads of wetness daub your fingertips. “There we go, navy blue,” he smirks, grabbing your other hand and repeating the action.

You stare at him dumbfounded, realising you cannot touch yourself now without a mess. That smug crooked smile is still there as you watch him crawl slowly between your legs before diving facefirst into you again, making you scream. You want to grip his hair, but with your fingers now dripping with navy, you feel you should refrain. However, when he loops his arms around your hips, you grab his wrists instead as they frame your thighs. Slathering streaks of dark blue on his pale forearms as he lashes you with his tongue, you calling his name.

He is ravenous, using his whole face to arouse your senses, the stubble of his chin abraiding your labia as he once again teases you, suckling your clit into his mouth, circling his tongue in firm strokes, undulating and spearing it just where you need, as if intuiting what you need at any moment, The tip of his nose is burrowed into your patch of hair, inhaling your scent as if he cannot get enough of your taste and smell, his primal behaviour just making your more wanton for him.

He moans, muffled encouragements into your cunt, the cadence vibrating up into your pubic bone. You stare transfixed at him, decadent, delicious, filthy, a debauched and erotic tableau, the skin pulling taunt over his high cheekbones as he consumes you. Just as your pussy starts to flutter, he pulls up and teases you, pursing his lips and blowing a slow puff of air over your overheated pearl. It's not enough and too much all at once, such a different sensation from his lathing tongue. He chuckles as you groan in frustration and grasp his wrists tightly, fingernails digging blue crescents into his flesh, hoping to incite him back into action.

Instead, he shakes off your grip and swiftly stands up and roughly tugs at the buttons on his trousers, smirking down at you as you turn breathless again with desire, holding your painted fingers on either side of your head as he drops the fabric. As ever, he is without underwear, and even though his straining cock is a familiar sight, every time, it steals your breath and makes you pulse deep inside, just for him.

He prowls over your prone body, almost cat-like, admiring his handiwork. “You are my masterpiece,” the awed but somehow still achingly seductive tone he employs makes your hips cant up towards him, a reflex, your body seeking his.

Uncaring of the mess it will leave, you run your navy fingertips from his chest to his pelvis, curling a little to scrape your nails into the paint trails. It looks like animal claws—as if you are marking him, possessive. His response is a growl at you, hoisting your legs into the crook of his elbow and with a flash of something primal in his eyes, he surges into your weeping body with one swift thrust.

It makes you call his name. So loudly that you know the staff will hear it throughout the house. You don’t care—don’t care if they come running to check on your welfare and find you naked and decorated, pinned under your husband as he begins to fuck into you, so roughly the whole chaise squeaks and moves across the tiled floor. His body curled over yours, his large hand above your head gripping the raised chaise end for leverage.

Lost in the carnality of how he is taking you, your walls clinging to his plunging cock, you band your arms around him, smearing long finger trails down the contours of his back until you reach his buttocks and squeeze them covetously, encouraging him to push deeper, go harder, and make it hurt. The glorious, intricate pattern on your skin still tacky, causing your flesh to cling to his and smudge together, the blue on him with the gold and burgundy from you. Blotches and smears that look so vibrant on his pale skin.

“Are you close again, my love?” his question, a touch breathless as he thrusts into you.

You hiss your confirmation, eyes rolling as you grasp his cheeks again and force your legs wider, greedy for him, for more. For him to push so far into your body, it will feel like he’s always there, even when he’s not, like some internal tattoo of him carved into your being.

“More Benedict… please,” urgent now. It feels like all you’ve done for hours is plead with him, needing to release so badly your mind feels akin to madness, an itch in your brain that needs to be scratched.

But he slows, and you want to scream in frustration, his movements shallow, delicate, not the onslaught you need to take you over the precipice he has dangled you over what feels like countless times.

“I love to see this,” his voice husky, breath puffing hot on your face, “when you are so unbridled with need, darling. I cannot resist taking you so close and denying you: the wild look, your untamed desire. All for me.”

You move your hands from his behind and grab his jaw, uncaring that you plaster his face with blue fingermarks. “It's always for you, just you, Benedict, my love, my life,” you affirm, hoping that is what he needs to hear to finally release you from this heightened state of near delirium.

His responding grin is breathtaking, and he begins to plough into you in earnest, his gaze never leaving yours, eyes burning to witness the moment you break for him. The chaise protests loudly, the wooden feet scraping hard on the floor under his unforgiving pace.

You bite your lip and plead with your eyes, wanting his expert touch to push you over.

“Your fingers, please,” you implore, and suddenly three are shoved between your lips, traces of the bitter taste of paint there, along with the tang of sweat and the flavour that is all him.

“Get them nice and wet, darling,” he lectures, not slowing his pace. You greedily wrap your tongue around his invading digits and slather them in your saliva, drooling around him as his thrusts jolt your entire body. “Yes darling, that's it,” he encourages, and he snarls as you run an edge of teeth over his cuticles, goading him, loving to see him as lost in the potency of the moment as you.

Then with a look that always makes you breathless, he slides the fingers out of your mouth, and they snake between your bodies, finding your engorged clit with ease. You scream his name, and a few harsh flicks are all you need to tip over, clenching so hard around his cock that his hips stutter and he roars into your ear as you fracture around him. Waves of pleasure ripple across your body, almost violent, your muscles spasming, your limbs shaking uncontrollably after being denied.

Distantly, as if through cotton wool, you hear him cursing and growling your name, teeth pressing into the cord of your neck as he curls around you with one final jerk and a loud, guttural groan, he stills, his body stiff, a vein pulsing heavily in his neck and forehead as he empties into you, warmth blooming deep inside you as he spills. Shortly after, he collapses onto his forearms, bracketing your body, mindful not to squash you under his weight as he pants, heaving breaths, his chest bumping yours with each ragged inhale.

You don't say words; just trail the remaining blue paint on your fingers across the skin of his shoulders, connecting the collage of freckles there into a slanted star-like shape. Below a certain point, your bodies resemble a rainbow; the detail he built so carefully now merely a smudge of lively streaks.

“Did you enjoy your painting lesson, my love?” his tone whimsical as his breathing returns to normal.

You giggle and push up to plant a kiss on his smiling lips. “You know I did, Mr Bridgerton; you are a wonderful teacher,” you wink; his responding laugh makes your whole body jiggle under him.

“Now to get clean,” he hums drolly, his grin lopsided and winsome. “I believe we may need to share a bath.”

“Or swim in the lake,” you posit jokingly, rolling your head to look out of the large glass panes, down across the moonlit grass to the water beyond. When you tilt your head back, his look is priceless. His eyebrows shoot up, and that grin grows wider.

“I love how you think,” he gusts, and you squeal as he scoops you in his arms bridal style, and before you know it, he has elbowed open the French doors and is carrying you to the water’s edge.

Benedict taglist: @makaylan @foreverlonginguniverse @iboopedyournose @colettebronte @aintnuthinbutahounddog @severewobblerlightdragon @margofiore @writergirl-2001 @heeyyyou @enichole445 @enchantedbytomandhenry @ambitionspassionscoffee @chaoticcalzoneranchsports @nikaprincessofkattegat @baebee35 @crowleysqueenofhell @bridgertontess @fiction-is-life @lilacbeesworld @angels17324 @broooookiecrisp @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @eleanor-bradstreet @divaanya @musicismyoxygen84 @benedictspaintbrush @miindfucked @sorryallonsy @lilithseve @cayt0123 @hottytoddyhistory @truly-dionysus @fictionalmenloversblog @zinzysstuff @malpalgalz @panhoeofmanyfandoms @kinokomoonshine @causeimissu @delehosies @Mlovesbridgerton @m-rae23 @last-sheep @kmc1989 @desert-fern @starkeylover @corpseoftrees-queen @jeanfreau

#benedict bridgerton fanfiction #benedict bridgerton smut #benedict bridgerton #benedict bridgerton x reader #benedict bridgerton x female reader #benedict bridgerton x you #benedict bridgerton x y/n #benedict bridgerton imagine #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton #bridgerton smut #bridgerton imagine #bridgerton x reader #bridgerton x female reader

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tomieafterdark · 1 year

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neow... im gonna need a p 2 of this cuzzzz...

pairing: fem!reader x bully!Eren

cw: use of brat, good girl and princess, fingering (anal and vaginal), exhibitionism (did I even spell that right..).

part one 🍧

masterlist 🍒

…part two 💌

You were just staring at the floor. That idiot Eren really went and got a janitor when he could’ve pulled you out himself, you are sure you flashed the janitor a few times wile they were getting you out…“And why isn’t me leaving you alone, I’m out now he can leave…” you thought to yourself.

Eren was enjoying the shame and shock on your face, the look of trying to process what had just happened and simultaneously wanting to run away and never think about what happened. He wanted more, what had happened didn’t satisfy him it just awakened something more terrible and sadistic in him.

The janitor looks at Eren with a concerned look. “Is she okay now..?”

Eren puts on his nice fellow student mask and it has the janitor so fooled. “Yeah, I think she will be okay but I should probably drive her home.”

“Yes you do that, you’re such a good classmate looking out for her. We need more students like you” the janitor says and smiles at Eren.

“Come on y/n. I’ll drive you home. You can’t walk home like this, you’re a mess.” He coos at you with his gross fake concern that somehow has the whole world fooled. If they only knew..

Somehow Eren and the Janitor force you to go home with Eren. It’s so uncomfortable to walk with him especially because it got so windy suddenly, fuck even the wind gods seem to be on his side today because sometimes the wind blows too hard lifting your skirt up giving Eren a perfect view as he walks behind you.

“Alright Eren which one is your dumb car?” You say as you glare at him.

He just smirks in return, walks up to his car and opens the door for you. “Get in princess.”

Eren calling you princess makes you want to squeeze your legs together, it makes you want to grind on something or someone..

“Y/n how long do you want me to hold this fucking door for you? Get in brat.”

You quickly get in and put on your seatbelt, his car is nice inside and out you gotta give him that.

“You like?” Eren smirks at you.

“Guess it’s okay” you reply in an uninterested tone.

“Such a brat, is it not expensive enough for you? Want me to drive home and pick another car?”

You had almost forgotten how rich this asshole was thanks to his dads medicine company, he bought cars like they were cheap toys. After driving out of the college parking lot and general town area, he drives off to the highway. You’re kind of panicked because you really want to go home. “Eren what the fuck I live 10 mins from the college why are we on the highway?”

“Y/n I had so much fun with you today, I just didn’t want our day to end so soon. We should seriously get to know each other more..” that last bit of his sentence sent chills down your spine. It made you feel hazy but remembering how deep his fingers reached earlier and the orgasm you had makes you squeeze your legs again.

Before you can think any further, he speeds up to 125 miles per hour, with cars everywhere on the highway rendering you quite speechless. You’re grasping onto anything in the car at this point, Eren is anything but a safe driver. You shoot him a worried look, but in return he just gives you a cold look and drives faster.

“Eren!” You finally get out. “You’re gonna get us in an accident what the fuck, and stop slaloming between the cars at such a high speed!! Are you trying to die today and bring me with you??”

“Relax y/n. I’d never put you in any danger..” he replies in a cold tone as he puts a hand on your knee while continuing to drive faster and faster. That hand on your knee has your bare pussy clenching and dripping. You remember that idiot took your thong earlier and pray to whoever is listening that you don’t drip all over the seat.

Eren knows exactly what you’re feeling, he’s done this with plenty of girls before. He knows for a fact you’ll drip all over the place, it’s exactly what he wants.

You both suddenly hear police sirens, Eren’s wild ride seems to end here. You’re so relieved, maybe they’ll offer to drive you home since Eren broke so many traffic rules on the highway alone..

He drives off to the side of the road as the police car follows. You feel so relieved and happy when you see the officer get out and come up to Eren’s window.

“Oh Mr.Yeager..how are you doing on this lovely evening?” The officer says, completely dismissing what Eren just did. You wait and see, maybe he is just being nice before the big blow?

“I’m good, we’re both good actually he says and gives a nod to your direction. I’m just driving my friend here to the Taco Bell outside of town, they have the new wild cherry slush and she really wants it.” You want to scream and yell, tell them it’s not true and point out the obvious: he can’t fucking drive safely.. but you just stare at the road ahead of in shock you because you can’t believe how everyone is so up Eren’s ass.

“Alright, just drive safely there Mr.Yeager.” The officer smiles.

Eren hands him an envelope, and the officers face lights up. “Yeah I’ll drive slowly, thank you officer. Have a good evening.”

“You too, say hello to your dad from me!” Is the last thing the officer says as he walks back to his car and soon drives off into the distance. Eren just looks at you with a sadistic look, like he knows he has power over everyone, like he knows you’ve realised that by now.

He essentially drives off the highway, and intentionally picks the worst road to your destination. It’s an old road with lots of bumps and not a car in sight. He drives slow at first but speeds up little by little, every bump causing you to jump in your seat. The bumping turns constant and you start to feel strange sensations from it, you almost let a moan out.

Eren is liking this way too much, the way your beautiful tits jiggle with each bump, the look on your face when the bumping starts to feel a little too good.

You try to keep quiet and pretend you’re not getting more wet as every second passes, pretending you’re not longing for his fingers stretching you out with every bump. You see the Taco Bell logo in the distance. It’s over soon, you push back all the desires and pent up energy. You’d be home soon, you just get that stupid slush with Eren and then this would be over.

The line in the driveway is long. It must be all those new products, this is the only Taco Bell in the area that has gotten them so far. While you wait in line, Eren tells you to unbuckle your seatbelt and sit on his thigh. You’re so tired you just do as you’re told, what else could you even do now?

When you get up to sit on him he glances at your seat, it’s glistening. You really were dripping. He gladly guides your hips back and forth as you’re on his thigh, causing you to moan out. You’re so frustrated, he can feel your pussy clenching on his thigh.

Eren is not nice enough to let you cum yet, not like this. He keeps teasing you on his thighs, with you whimpering and letting out small pleads and begging for him to let you cum. He just keeps toying with you. But when it’s your turn to order, he has you pushing your head out the car window telling you to order two wild cherry slushes and whatever else you want.

“Welcome to Taco Bell what can I get you?”

Just as you’re about to reply, he sticks two fingers in your wet dripping cunt causing you to moan in reply.

“I didn’t quite get that! What would you guys like to order??”

Eren is playing with your clit while stretching your cunt out with his two long and big fingers. You’re clenching on his fingers, with legs shaking. You can barely keep your balance at this point, you feel close to having the same orgasm as you had earlier in the locker. But he stops and lets you order, not because he is nice but this wouldn’t be embarrassing enough.

“T-two wild cherry slushes please.”

“Will that be all then?”

“Uhm, yes.”

“Alright head on over to the next window then!”

Eren hands you his card and tells you to pay and get the slushes, in the same exact position you’re in right now. Your heart drops, surely he couldn’t have planned to make you cum in front of the Taco Bell workers?? You feel his fingers digging deep inside you again as his other fingers work your clit. You just want to sink down on his fingers, they feel so fucking good.

“E-eren” you whimper.

“Focus on the order princess you can cry out for me later.” He says coldly.

And now you’re at the next window, just as you’re about to hand them Eren’s card you have a clitoral orgasm causing you to tremble and almost drop the card. The workers are not blind or stupid they know exactly what he is doing to you, they just roll their eyes and focus on the task. You’re so fucking embarrassed, but as they take time with the order your attention is back fully on Eren.

“I can’t take this- Eren please!” You cry out silently so no one can hear you.

Eren slaps your ass really hard in return. “Focus on the order and stop being a brat or I’ll make this even harder for you.” He shoves a finger in your ass while continuing to dig in your cunt.

You feel so close, you can hear your own cunt and the squelching sounds. What really does it is when he shoves a third finger in, stretching you out so good you nearly lost your mind. When the Taco Bell worker hands you Eren’s card and your order you gush all over Eren. You can’t hold it in.

“Aa-h! T-thank you- aah!” You say pretending nothing is going on even though the worker can clearly hear what Eren is doing. To make it worse he slaps your ass hard one last time before driving off causing you to moan and cuss. “Such a goor girl, handling the order all by yourself.” He smirks. You’re still shaking from the orgasm you just had, brain so empty you barely hear what else he is saying to you. You just want to sit down.

Before you do anything Eren cleans you and the seat up as much as he can, and hands you a slush. The slush was perfect after what just happened, it’s calm cold and relaxing.

You didn’t even notice how late it was, how dark it was outside. Your mother must be so worried.

“I have to call my mom..Eren where did you put my bag??”

“Don’t worry princess I told her you’ll be staying over at my place for the night” he smirks.

“So where’s my phone?? Can I have it??”

“Enjoy your slush y/n, stop stressing about your phone.”

You end up just enjoying the ride, you had a long day and this slush was really good. Nice job Taco Bell you think to yourself as you start to relax and just enjoy the moment.

#eren smut #aot smut #eren x y/n #Eren Yeager smut #eren jaeger smut #eren jeager x you #eren jeager x reader #💌: answered ask

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pallisia · 4 months

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I was so busy this weekend that I didn't get to play your game until today, because I really wanted to give it my full attention! And I'm so glad I did because every moment was so amazing. In general I feel like I learn something new anytime I look at your art but your artwork in the game especially so! It was so cool seeing what parts you decided to render and what details you decided to hold back and keep ambiguous. I'm curious, for a lot of the more 'sketchy' cg moments, did you always intend for that to be the form those images would take, or was there any point where they were more or less detailed before you settled on a look for them? I love how warm and alive every image looks and I think that style is a big part of it.

Sorry, I'm going on and on about the art but as usual your writing was lovely too! There were so many really cool lines and I loved the lore, and it was neat being able to see the rhythm/speed of the dialogue as it appeared.

Thanks for showing us something so cool! I can't wait to read the full thing!

thanks so much. the sketchier style started mostly for efficiency. originally, i did want to do more fully-rendered art, but i thought that setting the bar for "finish" relatively low early on would help me in the long run, both in actually getting all the art assets done and in making the bigger moments stand out. i'm glad it was successful!

thanks for your comments on the writing too. i always appreciate dialogue-heavy games that include conversational pauses when printing text, even if it's just after every comma or period. it makes it a lot easier to process, at least for me.

#txt

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thecreaturecodex · 9 months

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Protean, Yexhul

[This monster is picking up a plot thread I laid down years ago: how to introduce slaadi into the Pathfinder cosmology. It also continues me use of anagrams as the namesakes of proteans. This one is fairly short, so I suspect it's going to be one of the more solvable ones.]

Protean, Yexhul CR 16 CN Outsider (extraplanar) This serpentine creature has four arms, each ending in a clawed hand. Instead of a single head, a riot of dozens of small necks and heads grow from its shoulders like the branches of a great tree. The scales of its chest have eyespots, like the feathers of a peacock.

Yexhuls are the proteans that observe and meddle with animal evolution. Yexhuls push animals in new directions, both by introducing organisms into new habitats and by physically altering organisms, taking what is typically a slow and orderly process and interjecting sometimes bizarre flights of fancy. The touch of a yexhil can alter the abilities of an organism permanently, and the transformations they imbue are heritable. A number of the magical beasts found on Material worlds, especially those that are incongruous hybrids of two animals, are yexhul creations.

No two fights with a yexhul are likely to progress the same way, as these creatures can alter their bodies on the fly. They also have an experimental approach to violence, changing their abilities in different ways for different fights, and summoning different animals to assist them in combat. Although they have many heads, a yexhul can only bite a single target at once, striking with all of their jaws simultaneously (unless it gives itself more bite attacks with its acclimation ability). If their enemies are gaining the upper hand, a yexhul will turn them into something harmless with baleful polymorph, or use primal regression to disable their ability to cast spells.

Most other types of proteans distrust yexhuls, as they were the creators of the Spawning Stone. That continent-sized chunk of reality brought to the Maelstrom was an enormous experiment in the survival of the fittest, and its “fittest”, the slaadi, swiftly escaped the Spawning Stone and eventually the Maelstrom entirely, running amok through the planes. Yexhuls, for their part, consider the slaadi a resounding success, and they are among the proteans more likely to work with slaadi than against them. Annunaki are a species that have a great dislike for yexhuls, and try to exterminate them when their paths cross.

One of the great philosophical debates among yexhuls concerns domestication. Some yexhuls consider it a natural outgrowth of evolution, and use their abilities to make unusual species more likely to associate with humanoids and start the process of becoming domesticated. Other yexhuls consider artificial selection by any hands other than their own to be a grave insult. Some even “un-domesticate” animals, rendering livestock and pets aggressive and uncontrollable or helping feral populations adapt better to the wild. Other proteans encourage this infighting, as it keeps the yexhuls from conducting any more experiments as far-reaching as the Spawning Stone.

Yexhul CR 16 XP 76,800 CN Large outsider (chaos, extraplanar, protean) Init +10; Senses all-around vision, blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +26

Defense AC 31, touch 15, flat-footed 25 (-1 size, +6 Dex, +16 natural) hp 241 (21d10+126) Fort +15, Ref +18, Will +17 DR 15/lawful; Immune acid, electricity, sonic; Resist cold 10; SR 27 Defensive Abilities amorphous anatomy, freedom of movement

Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect) Melee bite +27 (3d8+10 plus 1d6 cold), 4 claws +27 (1d6+7 plus 1d6 cold), tail slap +22 (1d12+3 plus 1d6 cold and grab) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (15 ft. with tail) Special Attacks constrict (1d12+7),powerful blows (bite), probing bite, rend (2 claws, 1d6+10), specialization, trample (DC 27, 1d8+10) Spell-like Abilities CL 16th, concentration +22 (+26 casting defensively) Constant—speak with animals At will—atavism (DC 20), hold animal (DC 18), magic circle vs. law (DC 19), pup shape (DC 19) 3/day—animal growth, baleful polymorph (DC 21), quickened chaos hammer (DC 20), summon nature’s ally VII (animals only) 1/day—animal shapes, plane shift (DC 23), polymorph any object (DC 24), primeval regression (DC 23)

Statistics Str 25, Dex 23, Con 23, Int 24, Wis20, Cha 22 Base Atk +21; CMB +29 (+33 grappling); CMD 46 Feats Combat Casting,Dodge,Flyby Attack, Great Fortitude,Greater Vital Strike, Improved Initiative,Improved Vital Strike, Mobility, Power Attack, Quicken SLA (chaos hammer), Vital Strike Skills Acrobatics +24, Bluff +27, Climb +25, Fly +18, Handle Animal +27, Intimidate +27, Knowledge (arcana, religion) +25, Knowledge (nature, planes) +28, Perception +26, Spellcraft +25, Stealth +26, Survival +26, Swim +25 Languages Abyssal, Protean, speak with animals SQ acclimation (7 points, energy attacks (cold), reach (tail), rend, trample) change shape (animal or magical beast, beast shape IV), wild empathy +27

Ecology Environment any (Maelstrom) Organization solitary, pair or council (3-6) Treasure standard

Special Abilities Acclimation (Su) A yexhul can alter its physical traits on the fly. It has a number of evolution points equal to 1/3 its Hit Dice, which it can spend on any evolution as if it were a summoner’s eidolon. It may take any evolution legal for a serpentine shape, and treats its Hit Dice as its summoner level for the purpose of qualifying for evolutions. A yexhul can change its acclimations by taking 1 full round, and can carry them over into its alternate forms with change shape if it so desires. Change Shape (Su) A yexhul may change shape at will, but does not heal when it reverts to its normal form. Probing Bite (Ex) The many heads of a yexhul strike simultaneously, but reach around obstacles. A yexhul’s bite ignores any cover short of total cover, as well as ignoring shield bonuses to Armor Class. Specialization (Su) As a standard action, a yexhul may touch a creature to alter its ability scores. An unwilling creature can resist this with a DC 26 Fortitude save. The creature touched gains a +6 bonus to one of its ability scores, but a -2 penalty to two of its other ability scores, as chosen by the yexhul. This is an instantaneous effect, and can only be removed with a break enchantment, limited wish, wish or miracle spell. This bonus is passed on to this creature’s offspring. If a creature’s Intelligence is raised above 3, it gains the ability to speak and understand one language of the yexhul’s choice (typically Protean). These penalties cannot lower a creature’s ability scores below 1. A creature that successfully saves is immune to the specialization of that yexhul for the next 24 hours. No creature can be specialized in this way more than once simultaneously. This is a polymorph effect, and the save DC is Charisma based. Wild Empathy (Ex) A yexhul can use wild empathy as a druid with a level equal to its Hit Dice.

#protean #yexhul #pathfinder rpg #pathfinder 1e #slaad #evolution

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niqhtlord01 · 1 year

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Humans are weird: The Lone Road

The transport hit another bump and Zempet was thrown from his seat in the transport. He landed hard on the metal floor as the rest of the passengers laughed.

“You can always tell who the rookie is by how they use the seatbelt.” One of them chuckled as Zempet pulled himself back into his seat. “I had the belt firmly locked.” Zempet countered, but this made them laugh even more.

“Exactly; your first mistake was thinking these old things work at all.”

With that they laughed even louder and went back to talking amongst themselves. Zempet grumbled and went back to looking out the window. The landscape alternated between lush jungle and barren crater as the mining operations on Lun II moved from deposit to deposit. In several locations the ravenous jungle was already reclaiming spent dig sites and returning them to their natural splendor. It was because of these same overgrowing fields of green that Zempet now found himself confided to an armored convoy.

The vegetation on Lun II was unlike any seen before. You could burn the plants to ash, yet if even a single root was left untouched it would begin growing once more and by dawn of the next day already begin sprouting. This made mining the rich ores beneath the planet’s surface taxing as not only was the mining operations themselves a race against time, any infrastructure built that could speed up the process was likewise rendered obsolete.

Everything from landing pads to train systems had been tried and each attempt had resulted in failure. Plants would overgrow the structure in a matter of days with roots digging into their foundations until the entire structure simply shattered under the strain of the choking vines. This left the company only one option if they wished to proceed with mining operations.

Zempet had heard it called “The lone Road” by some of the transport staff as he had exited the work shuttle that morning for his first day. A patch of jungle was carved up each morning from the refinery facilities and landing pads through the dense jungle to the next mining site. Miners would travel along this lone road to and from the new site, carrying freshly pulled ores or new equipment, and by nightfall return to the refineries lest they be lost to the jungles green grasp.

This solution was almost childlike in its simplicity, but Zempet had expected nothing less from the human run mining company. Were it not for his recent need of new funding he doubted he would ever stooped so low as to work for humans, but they were the largest hiring body in the sector and the hazard pay they offered meant that after a month or so he would be set for the next three stellar cycles.

He chuckled to himself as the jungle continued to rush by the window. If driving through dense jungle was what humans considered “Hazardous” then he would be living like a ki-

Suddenly a loud siren blared and red warning lights began flashing in the compartment breaking Zempet from his daydreams of grandeur. The other human workers in the compartment stopped laughing and crammed their eyes out the nearest window.

“Aw shit,” one of them muttered, “I was hoping they’d have left us alone by now.” The human next to him shook his head as he wiped the bands of sweat now crossing their brow.

“You know they hate it when we cross their territory,” the other replied, “and corporate refuses to take a detour around them so we’re fucked either way.”

“What are you talking about?” Zempet asked. The loudspeaker stopped blaring before one of them could respond and the driver’s voice from the front sounded off.

“Good morning passengers. As you have no doubt guessed things are about to get rather bumpy so please remain in your seats, tuck in your tray tables, and start praying to whatever god you believe in because we’re going to need the extra help.”

The announcement ended with a loud click and Zempet had only more questions as the vehicle began speeding up. Looking out the window again the blur of the jungle was even more intense. The loudspeaker came on again as blurted “Contact left!” and in a flash a stretch of the jungle Zempet had been looking at suddenly lit up with a series of explosions.

Zempet recoiled in shock as the explosions continued, showering the vehicle in a shrapnel storm of splintered wood and plant life. He had not been aware that there were weapons onboard their transport, and was more worried why they were needed at all. A question he would soon find the answer for in a violent manner.

Through the exploding trees came a massive shadow easily twice the size of their current vehicle. Its full shape mixed with the jungle but Zempet could make out two things. The first that it was a creature of some sort covered from head to toe in thick scales that to his horror were deflecting several explosions as easily as a stone bouncing off a pond, and the second and far more frightening was the row upon row of sharpened teeth filling a maw so large it could swallow Zempet whole in a single bite.

The creature had no eyes and yet Zempet could feel as if it was looking right at him as it dashed towards the vehicle. From the window he could see the other vehicles in the convoy had released similar weapons and were likewise firing everything they had at it.

Letting out a roar that cracked the window the nightmare pressed on through the withering stream of munitions, pushing ever closer to the convoy. Just as it reached out with a clawed hand that looked like it could carve through steel the creature took several nasty hits to the head and stumbled. It lost pace with the running convoy and slowly fell behind as it shook its head and continued to endure the lethal barrage. This lasted for another minute; though to Zempet it felt like a lifetime, before the creature decided it had had enough and fled back into the jungle.

“What the frak was that!?” Zempet shouted as the creature’s shadow finally vanished into the tree line and the cannon fire ceased.

The worker at the front of the cabin who had mocked him earlier turned back to him. “They got some technical science name, but we just call them-“

“RIGHT SIDE!” the loud speaker cut in again.

Zempet watched from his window as the lead vehicle was struck and thrown like a rag doll off the road by a pair of creatures. The transport rolled several times before coming to a stop against a large tree as the monstrous creatures circled the downed vehicle. He had expected the convoy to slow down so they could rescue the workers still trapped inside it but to his horror the convoy instead sped up even faster and pulled away.

“Why aren’t we helping them??!” Zempet shouted as the last thing he saw the downed vehicle was the underbelly being ripped open and the creatures smashing their heads inside like it was a can of recycled animal food.

The other workers just shook their heads. “If we stopped for them we’d end up just like them.” The other worker nodded at his comrade’s remark and pulled out a ligo stick and began smoking.

“They look like stupid b list critters but they’re smart. They distracted us on the left while the rest of the pack smashed into us from the right; if we’d stop to help them they’d be all over us in seconds.”

He passed the stick to his comrade who took it and took a deep drag from it before blowing a cloud of smoke. “Out here you got three options. Discourage them, outrun them, or get eaten by them.” To Zempet’s surprise he then leaned over and held out the ligo stick for Zempet.

“Welcome to the jungle kid.” ( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #story #original writing #writing #niqhtlord01 #Deviantart Dreamup #ai generated art

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gay-dorito-dust · 1 year

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Deadweight pt 5 (this maybe a long one)

Unfortunately for Vax and fortunately for you, the events of last night were never given time to be brought up again as you were all preoccupied in catching up with Keyleth who was heading towards Pyrah in her eagle form.

By the time you arrived the home of the fire Ashari was the spitting imagine of the vision you received from the Matron of Ravens. However it still rendered you speechless at the unfathomable amount of death and fire that laid in the ruins before you.

“You saw this didn’t you? Why didn’t you tell us? Tell me?” Vax asked when he saw that you had a look of recognition within your eyes.

“As if any of you would’ve believed me.” You scoffed as you bypass him, shoulder checking him in the process.

“I would’ve.” The rouge half elf tried to convince you but was greeted by the unimpressed look upon your face. In that moment you looked dead to Vax just as how he and the rest of vox machina were dead to you.

“That might’ve been the most hilarious thing you have said in a long while but please, spare your falsities for a rainier day.” You retorted, not wanting to get into it with Vax when there was more pressing matters to address. Such as helping Keyleth in helping fend off the weird fiery creatures that were coming out of a portal.

Vax’s frustration towards your innate need to push everyone away seemed to grow daily but he couldn’t blame you. You were right in your anger, in your hurt because he, alongside vox machina did unintentionally ostracised you from everything. Hell they even planned on leaving you stranded in the next town they come across but after everything you’ve been through together, they couldn’t help but get attached to you.

It seemed that it was far too late to make amends on their part, seeing as how you refused even the slightest of help from any of them in favour of sneering at them before walking away from them to sit in the shadows of the nearby trees.

Yes, they were hurt at your actions but your hurt weighed heavier then theirs did and you weren’t willing to compromise in ignoring the long days where you were left in the shadows of their plans because they didn’t trust you enough to not fuck up.

To Vax and to everyone, it seemed that whatever the Matron of Ravens promised you after you defeated the dragons, it was more tempting then anything they could offer in hopes of changing your view on them. The matron took advantage of your need to belong in means of getting herself a new champion, which in turn only made Vax more mad at the deity on your behalf.

“This discussion isn’t over.” He told you just as you were about to split off from the group. Again.

“For you that maybe true but for me it was over before the morning dew settled.” You told him coldly before dashing into Pyrah to aid the scrambling civilians with sound barrier breaking speed.

Vex could tell her brother was distraught and worried sick over you. Why? Because she just as worried for you as he was, Pike, Scanlan, Keyleth and Grog were too. They all were.

You were going down a path they couldn’t follow and that scared them. They couldn’t protect you from the danger if you always kept running head into it. “Give then time brother, death changes a person.” She told Vax but it only made him more frustrated. “We’re loosing them.” He croaked, “they’re slipping away from me like sand grains in a clenched fist and I’m too helpless to stop it.”

Vex wished she could continue to console her brother but the situation in Pyrah was getting worse by the second as they, along with you and the rest of vox machina were summoned to the catalyst of where the fiery demonic looking monsters were oozing out from.

Things only went from bad to worse as the first attempt to closing the portal didn’t work as more monsters came through, Keyleth’s father got hurt as a result of it. But soon enough fate decided to take pity on you and offer a little ray of hope as Keyleth pushed her way through into the fire realm that laid on the other side of the of the portal before managing to save Pyrah.

You stayed yourself away from the group as they talked with Keyleth’s father and began to think of the possible locations of the remaining vestiges were. Tal’dorei was massive and it could take more time then you were given to find them all before the entire land were to be reduced to ash, fire and death.

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techav · 7 days

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More Speed, More Power, Pretty Pictures

I added some crude functions to the ROM monitor on my Wrap030 project to read the root directory of a FAT16-fomatted disk and load binary files into memory to execute. This opens up a new option for developing programs and running them on the computer, and makes it easier to keep programs on-hand for loading when I demonstrate the computer.

So what new program do I build first for running from disk? The same Mandelbrot renderer I've been using all along, of course! All I needed to do to get it running from disk was adjust a few load instructions to use PC-relative addressing and then change the vasm output to raw binary.

It ran without issue ... mostly. I had been noticing some instability with the system in general. It's not really related to the programming work I've been doing, it just tended to show itself more when doing the kind of FPU-intensive processing required for the Mandelbrot program. Sometimes the system wouldn't boot at all, sometimes it would continually reset. Other times it would run fine for a while, but randomly throw a coprocessor protocol exception (especially when using double- or extended-precision floating point values).

I had a pretty good idea of where this instability was coming from ...

As someone on Discord put it, that's a pretty little antenna I've got there.

High speed computers don't like excessively-long wiring between components. I made the ribbon cables long because there were other boards I developed for this system. But, I'm only using the CPU board, the FPU + IDE mezzanine board, and the video generator board. All that extra wire is just making things more difficult.

A year ago, when I first put these three boards together, I had to bump the bus speed down to 25MHz to get it to run. I could run the CPU board up to 56MHz by itself, and I could get it to run with one expansion board or the other up to 40MHz, but with all three boards, 25MHz was the best I could do (out of the oscillators I had on hand). I have some 33MHz oscillators now, and while I could get it to run sometimes, it was obviously far more unstable.

It was time to trim those pretty little antennas.

I left room for one more card, in case I can get my DRAM card working later, but trimmed a few inches off. The result? Rock solid at 25MHz now.

... and at 32MHz.

... but 40MHz still doesn't run.

I am quite pleased with that result. My target for this system in the beginning was 25MHz. That extra 30% speed increase is very noticeable, especially when running a program like the Mandelbrot renderer.

But I had a thought.

My FPU is rated for 25MHz, and here it's running solid at 32MHz along with the rest of the system. But my FPU board was designed to support the FPU running at a separate clock speed from the rest of the system (the 68881/68882 FPU is actually designed to support this, so I implemented it when I built my mezzanine board).

What would happen if I tried running the FPU even faster? Perhaps using that 40MHz oscillator that I couldn't use for the complete system?

Surprisingly, not a problem running the CPU at 32MHz and the FPU at 40MHz.

... or 50MHz

... or 55MHz

... or 67MHz!

Once again, I've run out of faster oscillators. This computer is running stable with its FPU clocked at over two and a half times its rated speed.

The video above is a real-time capture of the VGA output of this machine running that Mandelbrot renderer (now modified to use 96-bit extended-precision floating-point arithmetic!) with the CPU & main bus clocked at 32MHz and the FPU clocked at 67MHz. Some frames take minutes to render. Some complete in as little as seven seconds.

I am in awe. While I had big dreams when I first started working on this project six years ago, I never could have imagined it running this well at that kind of speed. I am very happy with how this project has turned out so far, and can't quite believe I actually built something like this.

I typically wrap up these posts with a plan of where to take the project next, but the project has already exceeded my expectations. There is so much it is already capable of now that I have a permanent storage option available. I guess I could try getting that DRAM card running to expand the main memory beyond 2MB, or try adding a keyboard and some text routines to complement the video card. Both are good options towards getting a proper operating system running, which has always been a goal of the project.

Either way, I'm sure I'll have fun with it.

#wrap030 #mc68030 #homebrew computing #retrocomputing #mandelbrot #motorola 68k #motorola 68030 #homebrew computer #assembly programming #motorola 68882

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neurosiscocktail · 6 months

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Finale Spoilers ahead-

Processing a lot of emotions about the season finale, and I unfortunately just didn’t like a lot of aspects about it. A lot of which is about Izzy’s death, but some of it is about Ed and Stede, and some of it is about the lack of resolution.

Izzy’s death really felt like the “we ‘redeemed’ the antagonist and now we don’t know what to do with his character so we give him a gut wrenching death” troupe. That may not have been the intent, because the writers of this show are great, and because they’re great I really expected someone to say “hey does this feel like we’re writing a troupe that hasn’t been meaningful since 1980” and no one did.

I really don’t feel like Izzy’s death was necessary or even necessarily meaningful. That being said, I’m not really that upset that he died beyond he was my favorite character and that is a bummer and a half. It has more to do with the situation-

1) why do muppet rules apply to everyone but Izzy? Like, yeah the “he’s the only real human in a show full of muppets” joke is funny, but Ed got bludgeoned with a cannonball and he is completely fine. Several members of the crew have survived and recovered from cartoonish injuries, but a gunshot wound takes out Izzy?

2) There was plenty of time in that scene for Izzy to get out of the way. Or take out the prince with him. I don’t really like the take that he didn’t because he was resigned or wanted to die. I feel like it takes away from the episodes we just had of him finding his place in the crew. Maybe that’s what the writers were going for, but it doesn’t sit right with me.

3) his death speech didn’t add much for me. There’s a saying that funerals are for the living, not the dead and in media I think death speeches often reflect that. They’re not usually about the person dying, but instead it’s about giving something to the protagonist. I don’t really think it did that. It felt like Izzy continued to take accountability for both his and Ed’s actions, which doesn’t actually help Ed grow from what happened. The speech pulled at my heart strings and I think I’m a lot of ways that had more to do with Con and Taika being phenomenal actors than it did with the writing itself.

4) his death speech kind of was rendered meaningless and doesn’t really add anything to the story. He uses his dying words to tell Ed that he can move on because he has a new family that loves him and then Ed and Stede stay on shore totally alone, so either Ed didn’t hear him, or what he said doesn’t have any relevance to protagonist decision and again, not my favorite writing choice.

5) Some people have brought up a very good point that if you stick with a popular interpretation of season 1, that Izzy was a representation of Ed’s old life and that the first season was about Ed needing to choose between the relative safety of Izzy- brutal, emotionally devastating Blackbeard or the unknown that is Stede- the chance for love, trying something new, etc, then it makes sense that Izzy had to die for that to happen. For Ed to really move on. However, and don’t get me wrong, I love my toxic codependent pirates, burying Izzy on land and then living on that land doesn’t really feel like letting go to me. It feels like an extension of their codependency

6) budget cuts meant less episodes. Which is a bummer and not the writers fault. However, it kind of felt like instead of cutting things they wanted to include, they tried to speed run a 10 episode season into 8 and the pacing felt very off.

7) I am including what I personally disliked here. Everything above was sort of issues I had with narration and writing, and this point is just kind of complaining about stuff I personally don’t like in writing. I am so tired of watching shows where they kill off queer characters who have a difficult time with self acceptance and opening themself up to love. I see it so often and find it exhausting. The death was painful and on purpose to be painful. His arc didn’t have to end with him dying. No one else’s , except arguably Buttons, did. And that doesn’t mean he NEEDED to live either, but it felt less like “this is what is best for Izzy’s arc” and more like “this will hurt the audience immensely and we want the finale to pack a big emotional punch” and to me that’s just… not a good enough reason. I know a lot of people don’t feel that way, and arguably the point of writing is to make your audience feel something, but it felt like it was there specifically to garner an emotional response, rather than any real necessity to the story. And I think I feel more strongly about it because again, whether intentional or not, I hate the killing your redeemed antagonists troupe. I guess they did succeed in making me feel something, so if the writers view that as the point of writing, they did what they meant to do and that’s a well written ending. To me, while Izzy’s death didn’t make a bad story out of his arc, I would argue it prevented it from being a great one and that’s kind of a bummer. I also think I unintentionally set the bar higher for the OFMD writers because they have shown better, and that may not be fair.

All that being said, I overall really enjoyed this season, and will watch season 3 if they get a third season. My opinions might change on my third, fourth, or fifth watch when I’m not feeling a lot of emotions about it. I think everyone should be kind to each other, the writers, and the actors in the show. I think sometimes we forget that when something like a season finale is polarizing.

#izzy hands #our flag means death #spoilers #ofmd spoilers #ofmd season 2 #edward teach #stede bonnet #israel hands #ofmd

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zytes · 1 month

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I know that the average person’s opinion of AI is in a very tumultuous spot right now - partly due to misinformation and misrepresentation of how AI systems actually function, and partly because of the genuine risk of abuse that comes with powerful new technologies being thrust into the public sector before we’ve had a chance to understand the effects; and I’m not necessarily talking about generative AI and data-scraping, although I think that conversation is also important to have right now. Additionally, the blanket term of “AI” is really very insufficient and only vaguely serves to ballpark a topic which includes many diverse areas of research - many of these developments are quite beneficial for human life, such as potentially designing new antibodies or determining where cancer cells originated within a patient that presents complications. When you hear about artificial intelligence, don’t let your mind instantly gravitate towards a specific application or interpretation of the tech - you’ll miss the most important and impactful developments.

Notably, NVIDIA is holding a keynote presentation from March 18-21st to talk about their recent developments in the field of AI - a 16 minute video summarizing the “everything-so-far” detailed in that keynote can be found here - or in the full 2 hour format here. It’s very, very jargon-y, but includes information spanning a wide range of topics: healthcare, human-like robotics, “digital-twin” simulations that mirror real-world physics and allow robots to virtually train to interact and navigate particular environments — these simulated environments are built on a system called the Omniverse, and can also be displayed to Apple Vision Pro, allowing designers to interact and navigate the virtual environments as though standing within them. Notably, they’ve also created a digital sim of our entire planet for the purpose of advanced weather forecasting. It almost feels like the plot of a science-fiction novel, and seems like a great way to get more data pertinent to the effects of global warming.

It was only a few years ago that NVIDIA pivoted from being a “GPU company” to putting a focus on developing AI-forward features and technology. A few very short years; showing accelerating rates of progress. This is whenever we began seeing things like DLSS and ray-tracing/path-tracing make their way onto NVIDIA GPUs; which all use AI-driven features in some form or another. DLSS, or Deep-Learning Super Sampling, is used to generate and interpolate between frames in a game to boost framerate, performance, visual detail, etc - basically, your system only has to actually render a handful of frames and AI generates everything between those traditionally-rendered frames, freeing up resources in your system. Many game developers are making use of DLSS to essentially bypass optimization to an increasing degree; see Remnant II as a great example of this - runs beautifully on a range of machines with DLSS on, but it runs like shit on even the beefiest machines with DLSS off; though there are some wonky cloth physics, clipping issues, and objects or textures “ghosting” whenever you’re not in-motion; all seem to be a side effect of AI-generation as the effect is visible in other games which make use of DLSS or the AMD-equivalent, FSR.

Now, NVIDIA wants to redefine what the average data center consists of internally, showing how Blackwell GPUs can be combined into racks that process information at exascale speeds — which is very, very fucking fast — speeds like that have only ever actually been achieved on some 4 or 5 machines on the planet, and I think they’ve all been quantum-based machines until now; not totally certain. The first exascale computer came into existence in 2022, called Frontier, it was deemed the fastest supercomputer in existence in June 2023 - operating at some 1.19 exaFLOPS. Notably, this computer is around 7,300 sq ft in size; reminding me of the space-race era supercomputers which were entire rooms. NVIDIA’s Blackwell DGX SuperPOD consists of around 576 GPUs and operates at 11.5 exaFLOPS, and is about the size of standard row of server racks - much smaller than an entire room, but still quite large. NVIDIA is also working with AWS to produce Project Ceiba, another supercomputer consisting of some 20,000GPUs, promising 400 exaFLOPS of AI-driven computation - it doesn’t exist yet.

To make my point, things are probably only going to get weirder from here. It may feel somewhat like living in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, only with fewer years in between each new step. Advances in generative-AI are only a very, very small part of that — and many people have already begun to bury their heads in the sand as a response to this emerging technology - citing the death of authenticity and skill among artists who choose to engage with new and emerging means of creation. Interestingly, the Industrial Revolution is what gave birth to modernism, and modern art, as well as photography, and many of the concerns around the quality of art in this coming age-of-AI and in the post-industrial 1800s largely consist of the same talking points — history is a fucking circle, etc — but historians largely agree that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was remarkably positive for art and culture; even though it took 100 years and a world war for the changes to really become really accepted among the artists of that era. The Industrial Revolution allowed art to become detached from the aristocratic class and indirectly made art accessible for people who weren’t filthy rich or affluent - new technologies and industrialization widened the horizons for new artistic movements and cultural exchanges to occur. It also allowed capitalist exploitation to ingratiate itself into the western model of society and paved the way for destructive levels of globalization, so: win some, lose some.

It isn’t a stretch to think that AI is going to touch upon nearly every existing industry and change it in some significant way, and the events that are happening right now are the basis of those sweeping changes, and it’s all clearly moving very fast - the next level of individual creative freedom is probably only a few years away. I tend to like the idea that it may soon be possible for an individual or small team to create compelling artistic works and experiences without being at the mercy of an idiot investor or a studio or a clump of illiterate shareholders who have no real interest in the development of compelling and engaging art outside of the perceived financial value that it has once it exists.

If you’re of voting age and not paying very much attention to the climate of technology, I really recommend you start keeping an eye on the news for how these advancements are altering existing industries and systems. It’s probably going to affect everyone, and we have the ability to remain uniquely informed about the world through our existing connection with technology; something the last Industrial Revolution did not have the benefit of. If anything, you should be worried about KOSA, a proposed bill you may have heard about which would limit what you can access on the internet under the guise of making the internet more “kid-friendly and safe”, but will more than likely be used to limit what information can be accessed to only pre-approved sources - limiting access to resources for LGBTQ+ and trans youth. It will be hard to stay reliably informed in a world where any system of authority or government gets to spoon-feed you their version of world events.

#I may have to rewrite/reword stuff later - rough line of thinking on display #or add more context idk #misc #long post #technology #AI

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