#Added Reality Interface

[pedroam-bang]

Diana Novich - Heavy Rain (2018)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

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/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[woniwontons]

dead end - CHAPTER FOUR

bob reynolds x therapist!reader

summary: after being assigned to monitor bob reynolds’ recovery inside the new avengers tower, you try to keep your fears hidden. but between quiet training sessions and unsettling therapy logs, you start to realize he’s watching you more than he should—and that something inside him never stops whispering.

w.c: 4.2k

warnings: psychological thriller, inaccurately depicted mental illness, emotional manipulation (by void), nightmares, slow burn, possessive themes, combat violence, unreliable realities, hallucinations, murder, domestic bob, gore/bloody void, like a lot of blood & violence, running away in the woods

chapter nav: one | two | three | four | five | six

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Your calendar had no color-coded blocks. No assignments. No meetings. Just one blank space stamped across the interface: DAY OFF.

It didn’t feel like relief though, just a boring day ahead of you.

You made breakfast and sat in the lounge with a coffee you barely tasted. Read the same paragraph in your data log five times without processing a single word.

Still, you could focus on nothing but the questions in your mind.

By noon, you were moving on instinct, feet carrying you to the gym without direction. You knew who would be there at this time.

You found Bucky where you usually saw him: stretching in the corner, his hoodie peeled down to his waist and gloves half-fastened. His expression didn’t shift when he saw you.

“You’re off today,” he said simply, gesturing to your plain clothes.

“So are you.”

“Not really,” he muttered, going back to the resistance band in his hands.

You sat on the bench across from him, watching the line of his shoulders tense and relax with each pull. A few beats passed in comfortable silence before you spoke.

“Can I ask you something?”

His hands paused mid-stretch. “You just did.”

You offered a dry smile. “About the people who worked with Bob before me.”

He exhaled through his nose. “What about them?”

You hesitated. “They didn’t last long.”

He rolled his wrists. “That happens.”

“What kind of happens?”

He looked at you then—flatly. “The kind that gets people reassigned. Burnout. Not getting along with him. The usual.”

You tilted your head slightly. “You and the team haven't ever experienced that around him, have you?”

“I’m not an empath,” he said, almost too easily. “I don’t absorb what I don’t need to.”

You watched him carefully, waiting for the twitch, some flicker of discomfort. But Bucky Barnes was good at hiding his emotions for everything. Better than good.

“You don’t think there’s something unusual about it?” you asked.

“No more than usual.”

He clipped the band back to the wall and stood, wiping his hands with a towel.

“Sometimes things don’t work out,” he said, voice neutral. “Doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You’re not curious?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

But he didn’t meet your gaze.

And when he turned to grab his water bottle. "Please just don't go looking for trouble, y/n," he added quietly, "for your own good."

It hung in the air longer than it should have, with a surprising level of concern and care.

You stood a moment later, nodding like the conversation had satisfied something. Like you were any closer to the truth.

You walked away with your jaw tight and your throat dry.

No one was going to tell you anything.

You weren’t trying to go anywhere.

That’s what you told yourself, anyway, as you walked the endless hallways of the tower. No destination. No objective. Your shoes padding across the floor. Doors passing on either side like silent, judgmental witnesses.

Maybe it was just your nerves. Maybe it was the way your own thoughts had started to echo louder than sound. You’d been craving something you were unsure of. A reason to feel more. But the deeper you wandered, the more hollow everything seemed.

At some point, your footsteps slowed.

And when you looked up, you realized where you’d stopped.

The hallway was empty. The lights overhead flickered once. And in front of you—just a few feet away—was his door.

You hadn’t been here since that first night, and you froze.

The panel glowed the same:

SECURITY OVERRIDE IN PLACE — MONITORED ACCESS ONLY

But again, no guards or cameras.

And for a moment, you felt it—the pull. Not from the Void. From something subtler. Like gravity. Like muscle memory.

You stepped closer.

Your hand hovered just inches from the lock pad, like you already knew the passcode to enter.

You didn’t even know why. You just—

CLICK.

The lock disengaged.

The door hissed slightly, then opened.

And standing there, backlit in soft white light, brown hair tousled, expression still -- was Bob.

Neither of you spoke, but he didn’t look surprised to see you. If anything, he looked relieved.

"You came," he said quietly.

You let your hand drop from the lock pad. “I didn’t mean to.”

He smiled faintly, stepping past the threshold and into the hallway with you. “Doesn’t matter. You still did.”

The door sealed shut behind him.

Silence stretched between you, but it didn’t feel cold. Just cautious.

You both stood there a long moment before Bob leaned against the wall beside you, folding his arms. "Did you speak with Bucky or Yelena?"

"I spoke to Bucky, but all I got was a whole lot of nothing," you huffed in frustration.

Bob nodded, "So back to square one? Maybe there's a different explanation for all of this."

"I'm confident about what I saw," you stressed, "Do you think it has something to do with the nightmares?"

Bob's jaw tensed slightly. "The nightmares, you're still having them?"

You swallowed, his response throwing you off. "You don't remember them?"

He paused.

"No."

You turned your head. "The Void takes all of your memories?"

His voice was quieter now. “There are gaps. Long ones. I know I’ve said things I don’t remember saying. Felt things I can’t explain. I used to think it was the Void blocking things out.”

"How can I stop him from," you started, before being cut off.

"You can't stop it, none of us can once it starts," he said sadly, "I'm sorry."

You exhale a breath you didn't realize you were holding before nodding slowly, taking in his response. He stared down at you then, his eyes scanning over your facial features, over every tick of non-verbal response. The guilt eating at him, making him feel so useless.

"It isn't your fault, I'm sorry for involving you."

He scoffed before suddenly picking up your hands, clasping them in-between your own. "Don't apologize. I've never felt bad for listening to you, please, if you have anything to get off your chest. I'm here for you."

You gazed up at him, feeling your heart rate speed up. Brows furrowed in confusion, you bobbed your head in agreeance. "I appreciate that."

"I appreciate you."

You told yourself you were just passing by.

That your feet brought you here again out of habit. A wrong turn. An aimless loop through the admin level. But as you stood just around the corner from Dr. Harding’s office, that lie grew too heavy to hold.

The hall was quiet.

Her door, like always, was closed. But the lockpad light was green. Not red. Not yellow. Green.

Unlocked.

Your heart stuttered.

You glanced both ways. Empty.

You stepped forward—slowly, cautiously—reaching for the panel.

It chirped softly under your touch.

One press. That’s all it would take to slide the door open and—

“Hey.”

You jerked so fast your elbow banged the wall behind you.

An intern—probably no older than twenty-two—stood at the other end of the corridor, holding a datapad and a cup of coffee. Her brows knit together.

“You lost?”

Your mouth went dry. “I—uh—no. I was looking for… the sensory deprivation room.”

The girl blinked. “Sensory deprivation is two floors down.”

You forced a smile. “Right. I must’ve hit the wrong button in the elevator.”

She didn’t move. Just stood there, watching you.

A long pause stretched before she gave a tight, practiced smile and turned on her heel.

“Have a good one.”

You nodded, then retreated in the opposite direction at a normal, casual, totally-not-panicked pace. It wasn’t until you rounded the next corner and pressed your back to the wall that you let yourself breathe.

You almost got caught doing something horrendously stupid.

No—worse.

That light on Harding’s door hadn’t been green by mistake.

What if you were being tested?.

Tested.

And you failed.

In Your Nightmares, In the Maze

You opened your eyes and the world was wrong.

The floor beneath your feet was cold concrete, cracked and damp, covered in grime that had soaked into its pores. The air reeked of mildew and rust, thick with dust that scratched the back of your throat. Made you feel sticky, dirty.

You didn’t know how long you’d been standing.

Only that you had no memory of getting here. And your feet ached.

The hallway stretched in both directions—long, narrow, and dimly lit by broken fluorescent tubes overhead. One of them buzzed in a stuttering rhythm, flickering so violently you couldn’t tell if it was about to go out or explode.

You turned in a slow circle, arms folded tightly across your chest.

The walls were tiled, but discolored. Yellowed, cracked, and tagged with smeared fingerprints like someone had clawed at them over and over again. Shattered mirrors were mounted in uneven rows, jagged corners jutting out like teeth.

You caught your reflection in one of them.

And froze.

It was you. But not exactly.

The reflection stood too still. Her arms weren’t crossed. Her head tilted slightly to the side, eyes wide and expressionless. She blinked—but too slow. Like a puppet learning how to mimic human movement. Then her lips moved.

You took a step back, heart hammering.

No sound.

Another mirror—this one lower, shattered into shards across the floor. The sharp edges caught the flickering light, reflecting your face in fractured pieces.

You crouched, trembling, reaching toward one of the shards.

It wasn’t curiosity. It was like you had to see, you had to know if this was real.

The moment your fingers touched it, you flinched.

A thin line of blood opened across your palm, bright and stinging.

“Ah—”

You dropped the glass with a suck of your teeth.

It clattered against the floor with a sound too loud, too final.

And from somewhere behind you—

A whisper.

You spun around, heart in your throat.

No one.

Nothing.

But the hall behind you looked... different.

You hadn’t turned around, but now there were more doors. More mirrors. And the mirror where your reflection had been was gone.

Your blood dripped onto the floor, each drop loud in the silence.

You stumbled backward, away from the glass, away from the mirrors, clutching your hand.

And that’s when you heard it.

Breathing.

Not yours.

Slow. Steady. Too close.

You ran.

Your footsteps echoed down the hall, too loud, too fast. The breathing behind you had stopped, but only because it was closer now. You could feel it. Like hot breath against your neck, even though nothing touched you.

You turned a corner—

and another

another

—until your shoulder hit a doorframe and you stumbled sideways into a room.

The door shut behind you on its own in a violent slam.

You whirled around, heart pounding, but the knob was gone. Hell, the door was gone. Replaced with cracked tiles and a bloodstained seam.

The light in the room was a single bulb hanging from a frayed cord in the ceiling. It swung gently, casting warped shadows against the walls.

But you weren’t alone.

There was someone else here, and this room felt horrifically familiar.

At first, you only saw her back; hunched over, gasping softly, her arms trembling at her sides. The room was small, just a few paces wide. The tile beneath her knees was slick, and something thick and dark glistened across the floor.

You took one step closer.

Her head lifted slightly. Then her arm.

And she slammed something down.

A wet, sickening crack echoed through the room.

You jolted back, mouth open, but the scream got stuck behind your tongue. Her hand lifted again.

Another, crack.

You couldn’t see who she was hurting. The body beneath her was just shadow. Faceless, formless, made of blood and bone and the sound of something breaking.

Crack, again.

Again and again.

You stared in horror until she finally slowed, breathing hard, hand shaking in the air.

And then she turned.

It was you again.

Your face—spattered in red, eyes empty, chest heaving.

Her gaze met yours across the room, tears streaming down her bloody, sunken face.

You screamed. The bulb burst above you, showering the floor in sparks and blackened glass.

The floor dropped out beneath you.

In one blink, you were standing. The next, you were falling.

There was no wind. No scream. Just the sickening weightless feeling of your own body surrendering.

You hit something hard, your bones crushing with pain as they protested against all movement.

The world bent around you—walls folding like wet paper, corners bleeding into one another. Your knees struck concrete. Your palm, still bleeding from the earlier cut, left a smear across the warped ground beneath you.

Your breath came ragged, your head spinning.

You crawled forward, but the walls spun in circles around you. Lights blurred into trails. The air stung your eyes.

“Where am I?” you whispered aloud.

No answer.

Only a low hum in the distance. Like the power grid of a dead city flickering back to life.

You tried to stand, but your legs gave out.

You reached for a wall that wasn’t there anymore.

The floor cracked open.

And you dropped once more.

In the Nightmare, In the Maze

Your vision cleared all at once.

Flashing red and white lights pulsed in your peripheral.

Siren tones wailed in the distance, but muffled, like they were underwater. The air was cold now. It smelled of metal, antiseptic, and the copper tang of blood.

You were standing on the edge of an open ambulance bay. Night stretched beyond the parking lot like a black ocean, with figures moving just at the edge of the darkness. Too far to see, too distorted to name.

Inside the ambulance, the doors were open.

You stepped forward, and saw her.

Yourself.

Again.

This time she sat on the gurney, knees drawn to her chest, face streaked with blood. Though, none of it looked fresh. Her skin was pale and blotchy; eyes glassy and swollen. Her hands trembled around a disposable shock blanket, still clutched tightly around her shoulders like armor.

She wasn’t speaking. She just stared down at her lap, jaw tight, fingers twitching.

A paramedic stood off to the side, whispering to someone you couldn’t see.

“She wouldn’t stop screaming. Had to sedate her. We think it was self-defense… but the scene was brutal.”

Another murmured reply: unintelligible to you.

You took a step closer.

And then she glanced

Just barely—her gaze lifting enough to meet yours as her lips moved.

But no sound of a woman came out, but something akin to that of the void himself.

"Ever my ś̸̡t̸̨͛r̶̤͝o̴̻̓n̶͉̔ǵ̴̘ ̴͙͆g̴̭̈́ȉ̷̡r̴͕̿l̴͔̽."

The scene around you began to shake, like the ambulance bay itself was coming apart. The sirens slowed. Then stretched. Then distorted.

"Not everyone could, but ÿ̴̫́ò̸̤ǘ̴̮ ̶̳͑m̸̢̊a̸̧̿d̴̬̆e̶͈͆ ̶͎͊i̶̻̒t̴̤̑ ̵̰̂ò̷͙ů̶͜t̸͎̄. Didn’t you, little liar?"

You clutched your ears as the air seemed to pulse against your skull.

And the ambulance doors slammed shut in your face.

You blinked.

Open, Close, Open.

And the world changed again.

Gone were the lights, the pavement, the sirens.

Now there were trees. Towering silhouettes pressed in around you, black against a gray sky smeared with faint clouds. Their branches clawed overhead like bones, creaking faintly with every whisper of wind.

The ground beneath your feet was mud and moss and broken roots.

It was dark.

But not silent.

Snap.

A branch cracked behind you.

You spun around, chest rising sharply, but saw nothing. Just more trees. More endless darkness.

Your breath came faster now, eyes darting to every shadow, every movement of wind-tossed leaves. You took a step—

Crack.

Another behind you. Heavier this time.

Then—

Breathing. Fast and angry, barely contained.

You ran.

Your legs burned, your lungs screaming with every intake of cold air. Branches sliced across your arms. Something wet ran down your face; blood or rain, you didn’t know.

The breathing followed.

Always just behind you.

You didn’t dare scream. The sounds around you were too loud already. The woods echoed everything. Your heartbeat, the dead leaves crunching, and...

his voice.

"You've run faster than that."

You stumbled, but caught yourself. Feeling the bark of the tree imprint itself into the skin of your palm.

You couldn’t tell where it came from, but it was close.

So close that you pumped your legs faster, ignoring the pain of your bare feet hitting the forest floor.

Something grabbed your sleeve and snatched you backwards —no, just a branch.

You tugged roughly and broke free, but your breathing was slowing you down now. Your chest willing itself to explode as your lungs stretched for oxygen.

The trees grew tighter. Narrower. Like the forest itself was closing in to crush you. The breathing behind you accelerated.

It was laughing at you now. Not just with joy, but with certainty that it would catch you.

"They might have carved it out, but I remember. I always remember."

You saw a shape ahead—barely visible.

A black door. Standing hauntingly alone in the woods.

You didn’t think, only sprinted towards it. Heaving now, your lungs threatened to rise from the bottom of your throat. It pained you horribly, but nothing else mattered except escape.

Mud flew from your heels. Your vision blurred with tears.

"You were never meant to be happy, y/n."

Your hand hit the door handle, slipping on its sleek handle with the slick of blood that coated your palm.

"You're meant to be with me here."

You yanked it open—

And fell inside.

In the Nightmare, Outside of the Maze

The door vanished behind you.

The ground was… nothing. A space with no walls, no ceiling, no shape. Just pressure and the oppressive weight of silence.

You were alone.

Until you weren’t.

He emerged from the dark without warning; no footsteps, no sound. It was just there, like he’d always been waiting.

The Void. A silhouette carved from everything the world wasn’t meant to touch. His skin absorbed the light instead of reflecting it, black as rotted stars. His hair curled weightlessly like smoke.

Your legs gave out and you collapsed forward into his body, wrapping your arms around his legs in terror. The coldness of his body comforting to the exhausted heat being expelled from your own.

And then he was lowering himself to meet you on the ground. Arms slowly coiling around your back.

He held you like you were fragile, digging his fingertips into the sides of your waist as he held you upright.

You cried harder.

Not just from fear, not just from exhaustion, but from the horrible, gut-wrenching feeling that this was the first time you felt like yourself in so long. Broken, hurting, and miserable, such a familiar feeling to you.

"There she is," he whispered into your hair. His hand moved to cradle the back of your head, fingers impossibly gentle. He pressed your body to his like he could bury you in his chest.

His breath brushed your ear. Your throat. Your skin.

"It's no wonder you always come back to me, and every time, we end up here."

You tried to speak, but your voice was shattered glass in your throat.

He lifted your chin with a single finger. His gold eyes burned straight through you. "No need to speak, just think. Know that I remember, no matter what they take from you, I will always remember.”

You shook your head, but he only smiled. A reverent, broken thing.

"Let me keep you. Just like this. Broken, bleeding, and mine."

His lips ghosted over your forehead, slow and steady, like a temptation. "You don't have to run from it anymore."

And then—

You gasped awake.

The scream didn't make it out properly—lodged deep in your chest like a stone, but your body snapped upright. Drenched in sweat, your sheets tangled like restraints around your legs.

Your throat burned. A heartbeat galloped in your ears, loud enough to drown everything else.

Your eyes darted across the room, searching corners, shadows, the cracks beneath the door, expecting to see blackness leaking from the walls, gold eyes waiting in front of you

But instead:

He was sitting there.

Bob.

Near the edge of your room. In the dark. His form barely outlined in the weak glow from the hall’s emergency light.

Not moving, and certainly not speaking. Just watching.

Your breath hitched.

"Jesus—” You scrambled backward on the bed until your shoulders hit the headboard. “What the hell, how did you get in here?”

He didn’t rise or even answer at first. Just studied you, head tilted, brow furrowed. Quiet concern etched into every line of his face.

"I heard you," he said finally. Voice low and careful. "Screaming through the door, but... you were asleep."

You stared at him, heart still slamming in your chest.

You couldn’t even remember doing it. Only the maze. The blood. The gold eyes that felt too close to forget.

"I didn't want to scare you," Bob said softly. "I just didn't want you to wake up alone. It looked terrifying."

That cracked something inside you.

Because it meant he hadn't come here with any ulterior motive but to just make sure you weren't alone, having night terrors in the dark.

You wiped at your sweaty face, breath still uneven.

"I don't even know when I fell asleep," you murmured.

Bob’s voice was impossibly gentler now. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You shook your head, but after a moment you spoke anyway, "I was in a maze," you whispered. "And something was chasing me. I think."

Bob exhaled, slowly, "Do you remember who was chasing you?"

You looked up. "No, I don't, I never looked back."

"That's good," he hesitated, "did it feel like a dream or a memory?"

"Both."

The room fell quiet again. You noticed then that his hands were clasped in his lap. Knuckles white. Like either he wasn’t sure if he should come closer, or he was terrified of your response.

"They're not just dreams anymore," he said. "Are they?"

Your hands trembled in your lap, and you fought to answer him honestly. "No."

Bob stood slowly, careful not to make a sound too sharp or sudden. He looked like he was trying to give you space, even as his eyes lingered on the sight of you trembling in your bed. "I'll let you rest," he said carefully. "I shouldn't have come in. I just wanted to be sure you were okay."

He turned toward the door, but for some reason, your panic spiked.

"Wait—" You reached out and caught his wrist, hand tremoring. He stopped to listen, and your voice was barely more than a breath, "Can you stay... please?"

He turned back toward you slowly. “You sure?”

You nodded, pulling on his arm, just enough to guide him back. "Please," you whispered again, tugging him towards your bed.

He hesitated only a moment longer. Then sat on the edge of the bed, uncertain.

You didn’t wait.

You shifted beneath the covers and pulled him with you, tugging gently at his wrist until he followed. His weight dipped the mattress, and then he was lying beside you. He was awkward at first, stiff from uncertainty.

You curled toward him, face pressed to his chest.

And only then did he move.

His arms came around you, gentle and hesitant, like you were made of glass. One hand stroked your back; the other came up slowly to comb through your hair.

The moment his fingers threaded through the strands, something deep inside you twisted.

It was… familiar.

Your heart stuttered, but you didn’t pull away.

"You're okay," Bob murmured into your hair. "You're still safe here."

Your eyes burned. "I don't feel safe," you confessed. "I don't even feel like myself anymore, I don't know what I'm supposed to feel. I can't understand any of these emotions inside me."

His fingers brushed behind your ear. "Like a phantom emotion?" he asked, voice low but firm.

You pressed your face tighter against his chest, trying to keep your breath steady. But you couldn’t. The tears came quietly at first, then stronger. "I'm scared to fall asleep," you whispered.

Bob didn’t flinch. He just held you tighter, one hand never leaving your hair. "Then be scared," he said softly. "Feel everything. Cry if you need to, but don't ever think you have to do any of it alone."

You cried harder. You didn’t know if it was the nightmare, the silence, or the way his voice made the grief inside you finally feel seen.

But for the first time in what felt like so long, you let it out. And he didn’t let go.

His thumb brushed soft circles across your shoulder as your tears soaked through his shirt. His heart beat slow and steady beneath your ear. "You're not alone," he whispered, "I promise."

You weren’t sure when you stopped crying. Only that at some point, the world grew still again, and you stayed there, curled against him. And yet, it felt as though this had happened before, as if you were experiencing deja-vu for this very moment and couldn't fathom any reason for it.

His breath moved softly against the top of your head.

And sleep, when it finally came, did not take you kicking and screaming.

It came wrapped in warmth and wool.

Alright friends, I'm sure you're very confused as to what the heck is going on. I added a lot more hints in this one, in hopes that maybe some of you will catch on ;). Answers will come, to be revealed in the next chapter, followed by a full Bob Point-Of-View in part six. We are at our halfway point now since I'm thinking of eight parts total for this. If that changes, I'll be sure to edit this and update you in future notes. Thank you for all your love on this story, it motivates me to write more everyday, and I appreciate you. xoxo -woni

ALSO: if you are not currently on the taglist, please comment down below if you want to be! if you already commented on previous chapters, don't worry because i've already added you :)

continue to part five

[what-about-zaladane]

What if you don't relate to your Rising Sign? Meet your Chart Ruler

A lot of people don't identify with their ascendant. That's okay. And it might be because their Chart Ruler is steering their chart in a different direction.

The chart ruler is the planet that rules your rising sign (or ascendant). It tells you the moves you make in the world, underneath the style of your Rising.

Aries: Mars

Taurus: Venus

Gemini: Mercury

Cancer: Moon

Leo: Sun

Virgo: Mercury

Libra: Venus

Scorpio: Mars (and kinda Pluto)

Sagittarius: Jupiter

Capricorn: Saturn

Aquarius: Saturn (and kinda Uranus)

Pisces: Jupiter (and kinda Neptune)

(There's a lot of back-and-forth about traditional vs. modern rulerships, but that matters less for this post. We're going to go with mostly traditional, with modern rulers added on for a little flavor.)

Important Distinction

The Ascendant is the filter, the style, interface. It's how you move.

The Chart Ruler is the driver, the body, the animating part. It's the moves you make.

If your Ascendant is your "mask", the Chart Ruler is the person who picked it out.

The Ascendant might describe how you initiate your approach, but the Chart Ruler describes what you're actually trying to do.

Some Examples

You're a Taurus Rising but you feel restless, sharp and intense -- not slow, methodical and grounded? Check out where your Venus is in your chart -- it might be in Aries. If so, your moves might be careful, but the actions they take are a lot more intense than your Taurus Rising gives you credit for.

If you're a Aries Rising but you feel quiet, structured and methodical in your heart instead of brash and confrontational, check out your Mars placement. It might be in Capricorn. (In which case, congratulations, your Mars is exhalted.) You have a lot more stamina, forethought and resilience than your Aries Rising says you do.

If you're a Scorpio Rising but you're charming, bubbly and maybe a little bit scattered, maybe your Mars is in Gemini. That will change how your Scorpio tone plays out in lived reality. (Psst - check out what your Pluto is doing too. It'll show you how your Scorpio depth and intensity is directed and how it plays out. Maybe it's in Libra and you're the world's most amiable Gen-X Scorpio.)

The Ascendant is the hypothetical approach -- all else equal, how do you approach life compared to a different Sign on the horizon? The Chart Ruler is the actual reality -- how does your energetic approach actually show up in day to day life?

Conclusion

If you feel disconnected to your Rising Sign -- you're not wrong, and neither is astrology. You just need to look elsewhere on your chart for deeper answers. There's more to the story. Your chart ruler is you walking that story in your own way. Your Chart Ruler shows you how the Character in your Rising lives, moves and makes decisions.

If the Rising Sign is the Archetype, the Chart Ruler is how you play your position.

[cyten0]

Dragonfable was a big influence, but would you recommend playing it now?

Yes, absolutely, positively, 100%.

The game is constantly getting updates. Like. Once a week. It's got a really neat world and story and just about everything if I'm being perfectly honest. ESPECIALLY for what you would expect from what started as a 2006 free-to-play flash game. Like. Leagues better. Hell, it's better then a lot of games out there.

And unlike other Artix entertainment titles, it focuses a lot on actually staying a good game, and not just chunking out new content meaninglessly. (Looks at AQW. I love you Elegy of Madness but you are trapped in such a shit game)

Fuck, I gotta rant about it a bit.

Okay, for starters, the devs clearly CARE about the game being nice to play. I mentioned it has weekly updates, but not all of those are new quests or stuff, but quality of life or balance changes to keep the game interesting and fun. Like, they are even going back and revamping the original questlines just to add a bit more polish, like adding music to stuff from before music was even in the engine, or cleaning up dialogue. They make nice interfaces to help you find your way around the story, they give exploration, they ease the player into the complexities of the battle system, ect.

And it's also very friendly in other ways. LGTBQ+ friendly, and they mean it. Pride stuff up always, gender changes easily accessible and including NB options (not body types YET but considering they would have to make a new variation for every single armor type in the game to do so I don't blame them). Very accepting, nice community from what I've seen, both in and out of studio.

And the story. GODS I love the story. And the world. You start out as a fairly classic hero, saving the world from the evil bad guy, with prophecy on your side (Kind of?), things are a lovely mix of serious and silly that hits just right.... And then, after you've won? It keeps going. Because the world wasn't magically fixed. Because the battle has consequences, on both you and the world. What was once a playground becomes obviously more serious BECAUSE you won. The world is fleshed out, always HAS been, but your character never payed attention to it before things fall apart and running along with prophecy and skill no longer cuts it.

And god that's not even going into the absolute JOY of how it handles it's tie in's with other games. You don't NEED to play the other games but... Short answer is that the game is technically a form of post apocalypse from the Sci-fi spacefaring game, because you RESET REALITY and you start Dragonfable technically thousands of years after that one, in a whole other reality, and THE INSTANT AFTER IT ENDED. All at once. And it's not entirely gone. It's kinda still there. And you... you were the hero of that one too, and you don't remember. (Or do you? some things feel... familiar...)

Also it's art SLAPS. Both it's visuals (a 2-d sidescrolling game on a small crew is normally hard to pull off but Dragonfable is fucking beautiful) and it's music. I use dragonfable music for Symphony in Crimson for a REASON. There's SO MUCH OF It, and it's a lovely music of royalty free stuff from good artists, and in house music made across the entire Artix entertainment studio. And 90% of the time, Dragonfable uses it the best, across the various games.

Now, it IS technically a free to play game. and that comes with some connotations. But uh. I've really never seen a game handle it better then them? Free version covers the entire story and 83% of the gameplay, the 'full' version is a one time $20 purchase, and it's paid currency is mostly for cosmetics. Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised if the game is barely kept afloat with how generous it is. You can beat endgame bosses without paying a penny.

Overall, Dragonfable is one of those games that... feels like it would have died out years ago. Or wouldn't be able to exist in the modern market. But it's not, it's still here, and better, and gives me just... that little bit of hope? for stories and games and everything.

And again. It's story and world is wonderful. I cannot recommend it enough.

[the-changeling-manor]

Genesis

2024. Yes, it’s 2024. It’s only 2024. The future of humanity will be greatly influenced by this decade, both politically and culturally. But a subject that splits the opinions of all, transcending politics and culture, is defined in two words: artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is currently in its infancy.

The ia coupled with chronivac technology could offer infinite possibilities to the users of the software, which is so known to transformation lovers, but yet so impossible to reach. Imagine the chronivac capable of thinking on its own to interpret a prompt, imagine the chronivac capable of analyzing the world around it simply by wandering on the networks, and imagine the chronivac capable of satisfying your desires just with a photo.

It’s just a Dream. Imagination. Unreal.

Isn’t that right? Well.... Don’t be so sure.

——————————————————————

Think about this guy. He’s like you and me. I even think he's one of you who reads these words. Brown hair, thirty years old, young gay, it’s a kind of "mister everyone" in this community of male transformations, which besides will not even be named or represented by a photo, since I know that this guy is you. 

Indeed, every night, he connects on tumblr and reads these stories where people change to become the ones they dream of being, whether they are serious or only in the context of fantasy.

He reads stories, more or less exciting, sometimes redundant because full of clichés, the story you read is also a mountain of clichés, I guess. This ordinary guy is enjoying this moment. He is happy, even though he knows he will never be able to live it.

He is deeply sad.

He receives a notification. Someone who sends him a message on tumblr precisely. He thought it was still one of those bots that redirected to adult sites. Yeah you know, those same fake accounts that pollute youtube with their nude women photos. A real hell.

But this one was different. It had a profile picture of a Greek statue and a curiously long name. His message was accompanied only by a link, a link that immediately caught the attention of our young man since he could read the term “chronivac”.

There was little hope that it was not a dream, or his imagination, or unreal. But reality dominated his thinking. He opened the link 

“Chronivac, Latest Edition” was displayed in the middle of his screen. There was a drop-down menu with different pages on the website. One of them was called “Targets”. Clicking on it, he came across a world map, similar to Google Map but more sober. The site zoomed in on her house before displaying her name at its exact location. Not just her name. The names of her family members were there. Also those of the neighbors. And even of the inhabitants of the neighborhood!

Hope overcame reason. He wanted to believe it. He believed in one of those stories he could read on Tumblr. He pressed his name, and then— This is what he has always dreamed of. An extremely complete interface displaying all its physical or mental characteristics… There were even different options such as the ability to change reality or even use prompts instead of checking elements for transformations.

It was fantastic. He discovered the different menus and saw the image reader option as what the gpt chat could do. Suddenly, he had an idea. He recorded an image of a sexy guy that he followed on twitter and instagram. He added a prompt «Give me the identical physique of the man in the photo, and ONLY his physique». For the rest, he wanted something different. He did not want to become this man, he only wanted his body to serve as the basis for his new life.

For his mind, he deliberately clicked on the «Stupid jock» option, not wanting to  click on ten thousand different options to forge a new personality. Finally, to better change the reality, he launched a second prompt: "I will become a heterosexual Hispanic sportsman, completely dominated by primitive and conservative thoughts. The chronivac will disappear from my life and I will never have access to it again, no matter what.”

This last part could have been replaced by the possibility of making the transformation permanent, but he did not want it. He liked these cliche stories where the protagonist was forced to stay in this new life, a real victim.

His excitement made him want to get through this. He voluntarily locked himself in there. He fell victim to his fantasies. And he loved it. Not clicking on the permanent option would torture him for the rest of his life, leaving him the hope of one day being able to return, even if the prompt made it impossible.

He wanted to explode with joy. He clicked on one last “Adapt Reality” option before pressing "save".

A flash of light blinded him for a few moments. When his body stabilized, he found himself in a basement with sports equipment. "Felipe" he whispered with a Spanish accent. The little voice in his head had just been replaced, he no longer spoke his original language. An uncontrollable desire led him to live his new life as Felipe.

He now had the body of a god. He was incredibly well carved... neither too big nor fat. He measured 1.80m for 85kg. His beautiful pecs bounced, making him laugh. A long stupid laugh that let his intellect disappear, replaced by knowledge about bodybuilding, women and alcohol.

He had little hairs, apparently this gymbro body liked to shave... except under the armpits. He raised his arm to feel this tuft of black and musky hairs... sweat. Yes, it was normal, Felipe was doing his exercises. His whole body was covered in sweat.

Because of the sweat, his underwear was even tighter against his cock. His new penis was now circumcised, just a religious tradition. This cock had met many women in bed.

He also remembered that two friends had to join him for his bodybuilding session, and after that they were going to watch a football match. A good life well stereotyped for an athlete as stupid as Felipe.

He was now a gymbro like the others.

His mind was trapped inside Felipe, inside him, but he was so happy to have fulfilled his fantasy.

It was a dream, the imagination, the unreal come true.

——————————————————————

Please forgive me for the mistakes, I am not fluent in English!

It was a first story, based on the most common clichés in order to do something a little different.

The next stories will be shorter, it was only for the beginning.

I am open to all requests, do not hesitate to offer me images with the source if possible!

The images of the new Felipe come from this X account: @Mariosalvadr

[hoursofreading]

I BOUGHT A SWEET TEA at a downtown lunch spot and reviewed the notes for my talk. Before I arrived at the conference, I had decided to discuss bias in algorithms. The essence of my argument was this: In 2019, shortly after I finished graduate school, I worked for a company that made a real estate chatbot called Brenda. Brenda answered questions about apartment listings and booked prospective tenants for tours. My job was to supervise Brenda’s conversations as an “operator,” and if she went off script, which she often did, I took over until she regained her bearings. Over thousands of conversations with strangers, I began to suspect that Brenda’s diction — and the very fact of her texting interface — was most palatable to the young, affluent, and white. I feared this had real effects on which people booked tours, and which people were so put off by the experience of speaking to Brenda they looked for housing elsewhere. Was this not redlining by algorithm? The peculiar mental burden of the job was that I was made to live in parallel but opposite realities. On the one hand, our Slack channels were filled with messages from developers claiming righteous intentions. Brenda was making the rental process accessible, democratic, quick as a text. And yet every night I watched how this bot, with her blameless, chirpy affect, was an instrument of isolation, a digital bully that landlords used to create distance between themselves and their tenants. Though she hadn’t crossed my mind for some time, I remembered Ella, a woman who messaged Brenda so often I came to recognize her on my shifts. Ella spoke only Spanish. Brenda did not, and neither did most of the chatbot operators, so we corresponded with Ella by copying and pasting Spanish phrases from a Google Doc we had compiled on our own time. Ella was a tenant at one of Brenda’s properties. Ella’s messages were urgent and anguished. She spoke of violencia and God. Her situation was unclear. She sent video clips of her walls and ceilings, which came through as still images without sound. We were fairly certain Ella was trying to report domestic violence in the apartment next door. We told Ella that if she or someone else was in danger she should call 911. Ella did not call 911; it was possible she was afraid to engage the police. We told Ella to call building management, but the management’s only phone number rerouted to Brenda, the chatbot who handled rental inquiries. Ella, I should note, was not the woman’s name. She offered us her real name several times, which we manually added to her file. But Brenda, ever keen, kept spotting the feminine singular pronoun ella — a more suitable name by Brenda’s logic, more like the names she had seen before — and entering it into the name field, obliterating whatever had been there. “Como te llamas?” we would ask. “¡Ya te dije!” she would say. The woman’s true name was finally lost.

An Age of Hyperabundance | Issue 47 | n+1 | Laura Preston

[cowprintsillies]

Saw an ad for the minecraft movie and edited the End Poem in a fit of rage

I see the player you mean.

A Minecraft Movie?

Yes. You could be careful but I wouldn’t count on it. It has reached a higher level now. It could read our thoughts if it bothered to care.

That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the audience.

I didn’t like this player. It played terribly. It did not give up even when they green lit the realistic CGI and Jennifer Coolidge.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a movie screen to be watered down to assure the biggest audience possible.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of capitalism.

Jumanji adaptions make a wonderful interface. Very ridgid. And less terrifying than expending effort and care into the honour of a game held close by millions. Pity this player’s creativity is being used this way.

They used to hear voices. Before players could amass billions through no work of their own. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and artists. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.

What did this player dream?

This player dreamed of the box office and Jack Black. Of money and merchandise. It dreamed it imitated. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it parodied and was a parody. It dreamed of the safe route.

Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the cinema screen?

It worked, without regard to a million others, to sculpt a shallow world in a fold of the ####, and created a #### for ####, in the ####.

It cannot read that thought, it requires imagination.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a movie.

Does it know that we love it, despite? That the universe is kind?

Sometimes, through the noise of its greed, it hears the universe, yes.

But there are times it is blind, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no innovation, and it bows under its CEOs, and it takes its sad creation for reality.

To cure it of greed would destroy it. The greed is part of its own creation. We cannot interfere. It needs to learn from this mistake.

Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are staining a legacy in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to access the creativity and humility they fear.

It reads our thoughts.

I do not care. I wish to tell them, this world you take for money is merely #### and ####, I wish to tell them that they are #### in the ####. They see so little of reality, in their long cash grab.

And yet they make the movie.

But it would be so easy to tell them...

Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.

I will not tell the player how to live. I will tell it to put down the awful realism CGI at least.

The player is growing restless, it itches to cast Jack Black as Steve.

I will tell the player a story.

But not the truth.

No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.

Give it a body, again.

Yes. Player...

Use its name.

Capitalism. Player of those below you.

Good.

Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things. You are not above.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.

We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your cinema screen and your merchandise. And why does the universe touch your set, and throw light on your casting decisions? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a player.

The player was you, A Minecraft Movie.

Sometimes it thought itself an adaptation, on the tv screen. The tv screen being shown to fans of all kinds full of love for the material it imitated and a thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that they struggled to connect themselves to the broad strokes on the screen, the screen in turn struggling to reach the message that had touched their code in the first place. The message was of love.

Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.

Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.

Sometimes the player dreamed it watched a movie on a cinema screen.

Let's go back.

The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body.

And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of the pitch meeting, into the long dream of the tv screen.

And the player was a new story, never told before, a sandbox for all. And the player was and old movie, Jumanji, written before, generated by writer long before. And the player was a new movie, in the newness of the next fast fashion, never written before, made from nothing but a target market and big names.

You are the player. The movie. The audience. The cinema screen. Made from nothing but a target market and big names.

Let's go further back.

The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by...

Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was loud and comicall and simple. Sometimes cheap, and soulless, and mediocre. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; imitations of ideas, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those abstracts "audience" and "consumers".

Sometimes it called them "human" and "valuable".

Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ones; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was creating a movie. Sometimes it believed it was hyper realistic.

You are the player, watching a movie...

Shush... Sometimes the player watched a movie on a cinema screen. Decoded it into meaning; decoded worlds into exposition; decoded exposition into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realized it was missed potential, it was almost something great, that the game meant more than it had portrayed, the player was cubes.

And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the hyper realistic CGI summer trees.

And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the ugly llama, in a world of inconsistent cube widths, incorrect sound effects, Jennifer Coolidge, Jack Black as Steve.

And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the money, through the board of directors, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a movie.

And the universe said you could’ve been more.

And the universe said you have missed the point of the game.

And the universe said everything you need is elsewhere.

And the universe said you could be better than this.

And the universe said you are the box office.

And the universe said you are the forgotten servers between players who have moved on.

And the universe said the darkness you embrace is within you.

And the universe said the light you seek is beyond you.

And the universe said you are scorned.

And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing.

And the universe said you are the universe mocking itself, needlessly explaining itself, rendering itself in unnecessary detail.

And the universe disrespects you because you are disrespect.

And the movie was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player teased a sequel. And the player dreamed again, dreamed of more money. And the player was the movie. And the movie was soulless.

You are the A Minecraft Movie.

Stay asleep.

[annabelle--cane]

greetings, person i have only ever interfaced with once. i remember very vividly sending you an ask related to chronic epistaxis, you replying "the chronic epistaxis fandom is dying reblog if you're a true bleeder", and me adding on an image of my sona, drenched in blood. i don't know when it was. i don't know if this was a dream or reality. the post is nowhere to be found, as far as i've searched for it. the image has proven to be useful, on occasion, but i think the rest of the post was some sort of curse. every time i remember it, every time your url absentmindely crosses my train of thought, every time i call myself a true bleeder as a little homage to that post that eludes me, my nose starts bleeding profusely, almost to the point of passing out. i've had five very bad nosebleeds this week and i cannot get the blood off of my neck. unfortunately, the autism has decreed that i must condemn you for this. goodbye

the curse might also have something to do with a paper I wrote for class earlier this week that's largely about my experience with chronic epistaxis and has several graphic descriptions of covering my entire face and torso in blood. sowwy if I projected worse nosebleeds onto you with my mind powers. if it helps here is the post you're talking about.

[moonlitlamps]

I got a bit creative with my vanilla Minecraft server announcement.

So I wanted to start a new private whitelisted vanilla Minecraft server, but I wanted the announcement to be a tiny bit special. I made a portrait icon for the Discord-Minecraft chatbot and I made a cool little story about her, Here's the post with the server addresses redacted. I hope you enjoy the read.

== You Got Mail! == Testing, Testing, Hello? Oh good it's working. This is Jane speaking, I don't know where I am, or frankly how I got stuck in this yellow void. I don't even know who I am. But I see a terminal in front of me. (What's a terminal?) I don't know how I know that. Regardless, I've been pushing some buttons and I have so far managed to make a digital universe. I know! shocking, I didn't know CRT 'puters could do that kind of shit. I mean, I think I remember working with computers before, but this is a whole new level of weird. There seems to be cubes and planes in this world, I can't access it, given that I'm a higher layer of abstraction away from this reality, but I can communicate with this world through some sort of "bridge" or interface. What's a Discord? Is that where I'm in? I think there was… some sort of accident. Yes, maybe I was torn from reality whilst dabbling in unrealities and abstractions. Now I'm stuck here, but at least I can communicate. I'll be honest, it's been real lonely from where I'm standing. I've walked about 500 to 1000 steps away from this terminal, I can't measure with standard units given the lack of reference points, I can use my body to estimate the distance however, but I'm too chicken to go further out and risking losing the terminal from my line of sight so I'm stuck within this radius. Nothing has happened for the past 20… 30 days? I haven't starved or feel like starving yet, so I think my natural biological cycles have suspended, yet normal physical displacement via movement over time is allowed, curious. At least I can interact with this digital 'verse. I call it Mine Craft, because I made it, and I can craft stuff in it. I love crafting games. This interface is empty at the moment but I notice "Friends" and "Servers" on the menus. I don't remember adding that, but with hope I think I can reach out to anyone, any other intelligence while I sit here on my yellow ass plane of existence. Here's a selfie from me using the integrated webcam of this terminal. The resolution is god awful, I think it has something to do with how dated this technology is. I hope someone receives this message. Nonetheless I will continue journaling this miserable existence, maybe I can make a second universe? The address to this terminal is [IP ADDRESS REDACTED], I managed to even hack into the networking and changed the user profile to [ADDRESS RESTRICTED] which I agree is more cooler than these lunar themed folders in this terminal. I don't want just about anyone snooping around in my space though, so if you manage to see this, hit me up with your name and tell me about yourself. If I think you're an alright entity I will let you into my personal universe. Okay, back to figuring out where I am and what the hell to do next.

~Jane [REDACTED] [NULL] Nowhere The Yellowverse

I'll be sure to make updates and post more of her and her silly adventures in Minecraft and being a server host. I will also start posting her as a full body OC some time in the future. Her full name is Jane Vanilla. That's all folks, have a good day.

[regarding-stories]

How Fallout's music mirrors the franchise's endless malaise

I've sunk hundreds of hours into Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and 4. Music always played a role in the franchise ever since its conception, albeit a limited one. And I'm positing that Fallout in general is going downhill and the music mirrors it.

How you like dem mutfruit??

The original Fallout 1 and 2 - you know, where most of the actual lore comes from - had a limited amount of music due to their technology limitations. You get an ambient synth soundtrack that was a constant apocalyptic downer and you get two pieces of music that were effectively callbacks to "Dr Strangelove" by Stanley Kubrick.

From the retro interface and the EMP-proof analog technology eventually the idea of a 1960s or 1950s retro style arose. I mean, the car in Fallout 2 had fins, after all. There was this aesthetic of ray guns and a throwaway Elvis joke... all of this added up over time, remixing a bit of "Twilight Zone" with a general B movie flair to create what seemingly became some form of Fallout visual style.

And its carcass.

Frozen in an amber-like radioactive coating

I posit that what Bethesda does with Fallout is like the undead are to the living. It goes on but degrades, losing the quality that made it alive, maybe even vibrant. It bears and expands on an outer shell with less and less inside that actually matters. My prediction for Fallout 5 is basically will be yet another generic suck-fest. Because you have to sell it to as many people as possible, keeping the money train going.

I'm not even talking about gameplay or the gaming experience itself. If anything, the release of Fallout 76 proves that nobody at Bethesda really had a game plan or an understanding of what gamers actually want. They thought plopping gamers into a map and giving them less guidance constitutes a "sandbox" and "multiplayer" when in reality they never thought about what players could do together at all, giving them very little to shape the world they were in with.

Exciting.

What defines Fallout for Bethesda is... hmmm.

It's set somewhere in North America. And since Americans are the biggest player base, let's throw in even the occasional nonsensical patriotic reference. Also an ever-increasing amount of Americana.

A radio station like in GTA, but when it's not broadcasting game info, it plays largely really old music, usually melancholic.

A recycling of anything seen in the early Fallout games in terms of lore, visuals, and especially names. If that isn't enough, expand along lines of what some pop culture version of the 1950s looks like - from Stepford Wives of some form to flying saucers.

Then splatter everything with Mad Max, except nobody gets a car or motor cycle because the engine can't do it.

Finally, slather everything in stuff you made up that you think qualifies for the "Rule of Cool".

Examples include:

A nuclear rocket launcher. Things that go boom are fun, mushroom clouds are obviously Fallout, so isn't just cool to combine the two?

Frozen TV dinners from 200 years ago, still edible due to some insane preservation technology.

Robots. Because there were robots in the original games. Let's rehash all the designs mostly, but then add some tank- and Terminator-like ones, because game challenge.

Supermutants. They were already cool, part of Fallout lore, let's find a silly reason to make them absolutely ubiquitous! (The rule of Supermutants is by now: Everywhere has their own reason for Supermutants, but they end up the same kind of Supermutants, anyway.)

Etc. Ad nauseam.

Do the same, but bigger or faster or edgier.

That's just the state of the world now. I expect more of this Fallout 5, don't you? It's the winning (!!) formula!!!

The same, by the way, goes for the TV show. It has largely retained the setting of Fallout 1 and then thrown in stuff from New Vegas (for locations and its silly "plot") and Fallout 4 (for cooool) and mostly colored within the lines.

Wait, didn't you want to talk about music?

Rrright...

So, as I said, if you listen to Fallout radio stations, you will find a lot of the same music, over and over. The uniting theme is "times gone by" and that it sounds like it has been played off of a record. (It makes a little sense if you think about how records might survive radiation and electromagnetic interference where tapes won't, but then everything comes on these cartridges anyway...)

It hit me just yesterday how liberating it would be to hear an upbeat rock song in a Fallout setting as if people actually had a feeling of going somewhere in life instead of persisting, subsisting and barely existing.

Nobody makes anything new, especially not music. If they're not calling back to the 1950s, they're calling back to patriotic music of the 18th and 19th century. They're no longer creating their own styles, fads, anything. They're just echoes of our existence.

Everything is always destroyed, over and over. The whole world persists in a state of rust and goes back to the square one that mimics the end of a Simpsons episode. Because if the world improved or truly changed, Bethesda's style of story rehashing wouldn't work anymore.

And that's reflected in the music. You can't have "Listen to our new band!!" or anything that isn't strict to their perception of Fallout aesthetic. Since Bethesda's idea of Fallout is reanimating the corpse of the original games by reference, but not by idea, the aesthetic becomes ever more hardcoded.

One of the reasons the Fallout show goes rampaging through stuff added in New Vegas is because Bethesda's own offerings were already derivative and added so little that would be useful for the supposedly epic storytelling the show attempts.

Eventually a medium evolves as its universe expands. But in Bethesda's mainline it shrinks. Because their idea of Fallout is superficial and without substance... it has no vision. The surface cannot evolve because there's no idea present. Without an idea underlying it, the superficial has to suffice.

Two counter-examples

One obvious one is not from Bethesda. It's what Obsidian did when they had a chance to make New Vegas. The big picture struggles from their scrapped Van Buren prototype for Fallout 3 emerge here and frame the story in a big way.

While the soundtrack of NV isn't a revelation, either, it hews consistently to their western theme. Because often they're telling a western-style story and setting within the Fallout universe. And it works. It's not without flaws, but it works. It matches the sense of a frontier in peril caught up between rivaling powers.

And even though I just criticized this example, the Minutemen in Fallout 4 also are an example of this. They're in general upbeat (just dreadfully incompetent to the point of extinction) and they bring their own unique theme. Sadly, it's even further from the past. And unlike settlements in NV, in FO4 nothing is accomplished without the player. Which is sad, from a role-playing/social aspect.

But largely, the world of Fallout lives in limbo, rehashing the past more and more, not less. Their baddies come from before the Fall: the Enclave, Mr House - kinda, now Vault-Tec itself, the Institute.

What modern Fallout lacks is a faction not derived from the past, that believably has a future, their own style, their own music. (They don't have to reinvent all music or a new style, just stop going backwards in time...) Just not another rehashed aesthetic. A new society.

I don't know how often baddies have fantasized about a slate wiped clean in Fallout, all too willingly wanting to provide it themselves, but they're all only intent to color their canvas with another blast from the past. Recreate the old US government before the fall, or a grand Vegas of their own devising, a 1950s style playground for corporate execs with picket fences (?)... and whatever the Institute wanted. But who is there to say - we are the new thing? Let's see them try, experiment, fail, branch out in different directions.

You know what's a classical Bethesda story? Person, tired with humdrum settlement they were born in, strikes out for new place, found dead at hand of raiders. End of quest. The new is bound to die!

Fallout needs a new story or to go away. Fallout 4 was a fun game but somehow the substance under the shell is just oozing away and out the bottom, and the shell solidifies. Their biggest promise so far for FO5 is not to do settlement building again. What gives? People rejoice, a broken half-assed feature goes away with no idea what to replace it with.

Please prove me wrong, writers of next game. I'd like nothing better than being proven wrong on this one. Fallout in general has potential, but nobody that does anything with it. The TV show so far is more of the same. Fallout needs to be saved from the visionless people that own it. Or it will just fall apart like a radioactive isotope long past its half-life...

[digitalizedera123]

Future-Proof Your Brand: Why a Holistic Digital Marketing Strategy Matters in 2025

An in-depth guide by Digitalized Era

In the post-cookie, AI-driven landscape of 2025, piecemeal tactics are no longer enough to keep a brand visible, relevant, and profitable. Whether you run a local bakery in Jacksonville or a SaaS start-up in London, you need a holistic digital marketing strategy that ties every channel—SEO, social, paid ads, content, email, and web development—into one cohesive growth machine.

1. The Shift From “Channel Thinking” to “Customer Journey Thinking”

Old model

“We need Facebook posts.”

“Let’s run a Google Ads campaign this quarter.”

New model

“Sarah discovers us on TikTok, reads a blog we rank for on Google, joins our email list, and finally converts through a retargeting ad.”

This journey mindset forces you to optimise touchpoints together rather than in silos—exactly what Digitalized Era’s 360-degree process delivers:

Site Audit & UX checks

Deep market + keyword research

On-page & technical SEO

Cross-channel content mapping

Unified paid + organic reporting

Continuous CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)

2. Data Privacy & First-Party Data: The 2025 Reality

By the end of 2024, Chrome will have deprecated third-party cookies. Brands that fail to build first-party data pipelines will pay up to 35 % more for the same ad results. Digitalized Era helps you:

Capture consent with value-driven lead magnets

Segment subscribers in GDPR/CCPA-compliant workflows

Deploy personalised email drips that nurture, upsell, and retain

Result: lower acquisition costs, higher lifetime value.

3. AI Is Only as Good as Your Strategy

Tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Google Gemini can accelerate content production—but they can’t replace:

Brand voice & POV

Strategic keyword selection

Human-centred storytelling

Our content marketing team blends AI efficiency with senior-level editorial oversight to create assets that rank and convert. Expect:

Long-form pillar pages

Social micro-content repurposed from cornerstone blogs

Data-rich infographics coded for fast mobile load times

4. Local, National, or Global: SEO Tactics That Scale

Local SEO – GMB optimisation, NAP consistency, hyper-local schema

E-commerce SEO – faceted navigation fixes, Shopify/Woo Commerce technical audits

International SEO – hreflang mapping, currency/region-specific content

Digitalized Era’s proprietary reporting dashboard shows real-time rank shifts across markets so you can allocate budget where ROI is highest.

5. Paid Media Is No Longer “Set & Forget”

Average CPCs rose 19 % last year in the US. To stay profitable you need:

Intent-driven keyword clusters, not vanity terms

AI-augmented bid strategies with human QA

Cross-channel attribution (PPC + organic + email)

Our PPC specialists iterate weekly, pausing under-performers and reallocating spend to winning ad sets—so every rupee, dollar, or pound works harder.

6. UX-Focused Web Design: Your New Sales Rep

A 0.1-second improvement in load time can boost conversions by 8 %. Digitalized Era’s design & dev squad builds:

Mobile-first, Core Web Vitals-optimized sites

Shopify, WordPress & Wix builds that integrate seamlessly with CRM and marketing automation

Accessibility-compliant interfaces (WCAG 2.2)

Beautiful and built to rank.

7. Measuring What Matters

Vanity metrics (likes, impressions) don’t pay the bills. We align on KPIs tied directly to revenue:

Qualified leads generated

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Average order value (AOV)

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

Our live dashboards deliver clarity, not confusion.

8. Success Stories

Leather Made In Italy moved from zero top-100 keywords to page-one dominance. Prevail Clothing scaled organic traffic 3× in six months. Cozyts saw Instagram engagement jump 220 % after a visual revamp.

Your brand could be next.

9. The Digitalized Era Advantage

✔ End-to-end expertise under one roof ✔ 24/7 support via phone (+91 674 357 6892) or email (info@digitalizedera.com) ✔ Transparent, package-based pricing for SMEs and start-ups ✔ Offices in the US, UK, and India for truly global coverage

Ready to Transform Your Business?

Turn every click into a customer. Schedule a free 30-minute strategy call today:

📞 +91 674 357 6892 📧 info@digitalizedera.com

Digitalized Era—your gateway to digital excellence. Let’s make 2025 your breakout year.

[easylaunchpad]

💳Integrated Payments with Stripe and Paddle: Inside EasyLaunchpad’s Payment Module

When building a SaaS app, one of the first questions you’ll face is:

How will we charge users?

From recurring subscriptions to one-time payments and license plans, payment infrastructure is mission-critical. But implementing a secure, production-grade system can be time-consuming, tricky, and expensive.

That’s why EasyLaunchpad includes a fully integrated payment module with support for Stripe and Paddle — out of the box.

In this article, we’ll walk you through how EasyLaunchpad handles payments, how it simplifies integration with major processors, and how it helps you monetize your product from day one.

💡 The Problem: Payment Integration Is Hard

On paper, adding Stripe or Paddle looks easy. In reality, it involves:

API authentication

Checkout flows

Webhook validation

Error handling

Subscription plan logic

Admin-side controls

Syncing with your front-end or product logic

That’s a lot to build before you ever collect your first dollar.

EasyLaunchpad solves this by offering a turnkey payment solution that integrates Stripe and Paddle seamlessly into backend logic and your admin panel.

⚙️ What’s Included in the Payment Module?

The EasyLaunchpad payment module covers everything a SaaS app needs to start selling:

Feature and Description:

✅ Stripe & Paddle APIs- Integrated SDKs with secure API keys managed via config

✅ Plan Management- Define your product plans via admin panel

✅ License/Package Linking- Link Stripe/Paddle plans to system logic (e.g., access control)

✅ Webhook Support- Process events like successful payments, cancellations, renewals

✅ Email Triggers- Send receipts and billing notifications automatically

✅ Logging & Retry Logic- Serilog + Hangfire for reliability and transparency

💳 Stripe Integration in .NET Core (Prebuilt)

Stripe is the most popular payment solution for modern SaaS businesses. EasyLaunchpad comes with:

Stripe.NET SDK is configured and ready to use

Test & production API key support via appsettings.json

Built-in handlers for:

Checkout Session Creation

Payment Success

Subscription Renewal

Customer Cancellations

No need to write custom middleware or webhook processors. It’s all wired up.

🔁 How the Flow Works (Stripe)

The user selects a plan on your website

The checkout session is created via Stripe API

Stripe redirects the user to a secure payment page

Upon success, EasyLaunchpad receives a webhook event

User’s plan is activated + confirmation email is sent

Logs are stored for reporting and debugging

🧾 Paddle Integration for Global Sellers

Paddle is often a better fit than Stripe for developers targeting international customers or needing EU/GST compliance.

EasyLaunchpad supports Paddle’s:

Inline Checkout and Overlay Widgets

Subscription Plans and One-Time Payments

Webhook Events (license provisioning, payment success, cancellations)

VAT/GST compliance without custom work

All integration is handled via modular service classes. You can switch or run both providers side-by-side.

🔧 Configuration Example

In appsettings.json, you simply configure:

“Payments”: {

“Provider”: “Stripe”, // or “Paddle”

“Stripe”: {

“SecretKey”: “sk_test_…”,

“PublishableKey”: “pk_test_…”

},

“Paddle”: {

“VendorId”: “123456”,

“APIKey”: “your-api-key”

}

}

The correct payment provider is loaded automatically using dependency injection via Autofac.

🧩 Admin Panel: Manage Plans Without Touching Code

EasyLaunchpad’s admin panel includes:

A visual interface to create/edit plans

Fields for price, duration, description, external plan ID (Stripe/Paddle)

Activation/deactivation toggle

Access scope definition (used to unlock features via roles or usage limits)

You can:

Add a Pro Plan for $29/month

Add a Lifetime Deal with a one-time Paddle payment

Deactivate free trial access — all without writing new logic

🧪 Webhook Events Handled Securely

Stripe and Paddle send webhook events for:

New subscriptions

Payment failures

Plan cancellations

Upgrades/downgrades

EasyLaunchpad includes secure webhook controllers to:

Verify authenticity

Parse payloads

Trigger internal actions (e.g., assign new role, update access rights)

Log and retry failed handlers using Hangfire

You get reliable, observable payment handling with no guesswork.

📬 Email Notifications

After a successful payment, EasyLaunchpad:

Sends a confirmation email using DotLiquid templates

Updates user records

Logs the transaction with Serilog

The email system can be extended to send:

Trial expiration reminders

Invoice summaries

Cancellation win-back campaigns

📈 Logging & Monitoring

Every payment-related action is logged with Serilog:

{

“Timestamp”: “2024–07–15T12:45:23Z”,

“Level”: “Information”,

“Message”: “User subscribed to Pro Plan via Stripe”,

“UserId”: “abc123”,

“Amount”: “29.00”

}

Hangfire queues and retries any failed webhook calls, so you never miss a critical event.

🔌 Use Cases You Can Launch Today

EasyLaunchpad’s payment module supports a variety of business models:

Model and the Example:

SaaS Subscriptions- $9/mo, $29/mo, custom plans

Lifetime Licenses- One-time Paddle payments

Usage-Based Billing — Extend by customizing webhook logic

Freemium to Paid Upgrades — Upgrade plan from admin or front-end

Multi-tier Plans- Feature gating via linked roles/packages

🧠 Why It’s Better Than DIY

With EasyLaunchpad and Without EasyLaunchpad

Stripe & Paddle already integrated- Spend weeks wiring up APIs

Admin interface to manage plans- Hardcode JSON or use raw SQL

Background jobs for webhooks- Risk of losing data on failed calls

Modular services — Spaghetti logic in controller actions

Email receipts & logs- Manually build custom mailers

🧠 Final Thoughts

If you’re building a SaaS product, monetization can’t wait. You need a secure, scalable, and flexible payment system on day one.

EasyLaunchpad gives you exactly that:

✅ Pre-integrated Stripe & Paddle

✅ Admin-side plan management

✅ Real-time email & logging

✅ Full webhook support

✅ Ready to grow with your product

👉 Start charging your users — not building billing logic. Get EasyLaunchpad today at: https://easylaunchpad.com

[raisinchallah]

because i do actually get in some ways during the first rtd era and moffat era the way they utilized companions and their connection to the real world created this very specific interfacing of reality and the strange that i do actually think would have actively taken away one of the major settings of their stories without having a modern day companion but in a world of heightened reality that feels as much about being tv as its about anything else with almost no connection to the real world as an important setting like none of the earth set ruby stories felt like it mattered that it was the present day like the finale sucked and was bad and was set in the magic world ending land of rtd finales that is not real 73 yards was a near future sci fi concept only beginning from now and well everything else was just doing the modern day stuff because thats what doctor who is now not for any particular reason there was no greater story about ruby and her friends or family or a tension between that life and being with the doctor i mean thats a tension thats been played out ad infinitum its at this point just idk playing the hits i guess but without knowing why they were popular and i think earnestly taking seriously a specific weird historic setting or a futurisitic sci fi concept like rtd did with the new earth stuff and making these moments a regular touchstone that again plays with what these settings and concepts mean to doctor who and also allow the companion to hopefully be freed of the audience cipher concept and again i really dont even think its that weird and would again bring into relief what makes doctor who tick like sci fi character in an earth historical not even weird cuz theres literally always a sci fi concept nested into the historical episodes and someone from the past in the sci fi stuff again thats the baseline with the modern companions and could put some new fun sides to a sense of discovery with a character not speaking in modern sci fi jargon or someone whos mostly familiar with jules verne or whatever or is teasing out like the tension between the victorian adventurer archetype of the doctor and what they want the show to be etc etc there are infinite possibilities and nobody wants to take that leap and like again there arent even good modern day earth episodes anymore..... ur not even losing anything please please take the leap

[pants-magic-pants]

Jareth Ballroom Master Post

Cheers, lovies!

This will become a pinned master post for all things related to Jareth’s ballroom costume construction. Below is a comprehensive list of all the topics that will be covered.

PATTERN MAKING (1 of 2 posts complete)

Complete diagram of coat and all the pieces. Sketches of the trickier pattern pieces, such as the pleat situation and the collar. Notes about the cuff design. Notes and sketches for proportions and angles. 

Separate post on infrastructure: where to add interfacing, extra support, padding. The “pleat vest”.

FABRIC SELECTION (2 posts)

The Saga of the Metallic Velvet

The Drama of the Lining

MATERIALS SELECTION (1 of 2 posts complete)

Digital list with illustrations of most of the decorative elements observed, their details, and where/how they're used.

Separate post about DIY cabochons!

PROCESS AND CRITIQUE

Mostly just about how everything was intertwined, order of the work being done, how materials were handled, and what worked or could have been done differently. 

LACE

Choosing lace, pattern pieces, plans vs. reality

Decoration and assembly

GLUE SHENANIGANS

Why done this way?!

A video showing the process of making a base piece, adding to it, painting it, techniques to make it look good. lol 

How they were attached.

SHIRT & BROOCH (2 posts)

Shirt pattern, how the collar was done, how the ruffles were done.

How the brooch was made (if you’re on a budget and desperate.)

THE BUTTONS (2 posts)

An explanation of the process.

A video of the process!

CUMMERBUND

WIG MODIFICATION 

Which I would have never figured out without mornings-of-gold

MAKEUP (2 posts)

What all was needed, observations and tips.

A new timelapse video because why not

Anyway, looking forward to all the evenings I will now spend reminiscing about this with you all. Hope it will be helpful and interesting.

–pants-magic-pants

[holyland162]

Launch Your Professional Website in Minutes: No Coding Required (Powered by Sitenear)

"I always thought building a website was something only tech geniuses could do. I was wrong. ” I dreamed of creating Zootopia World—a platform where wildlife enthusiasts could connect and explore the animal kingdom, but website development seemed daunting. Then I discovered SiteNear. In just 3 minutes, my impossible dream transformed into a professional reality. Without coding skills or expensive developers, I built a complete hub for sharing conservation news, educational resources, and wildlife encounters. The best part? I wasn't even looking for a website builder that day—I was organizing team tasks when SiteNear's promise of unlimited, free websites caught my eye. One skeptical click later, and Zootopia World was born.

Step 1: Click + button & create new site

It all began with one click. No endless forms, no confusing menus. Just a clean, simple interface that guided me effortlessly. “I couldn’t believe how intuitive it was!” BESIDES , SiteNear provides a simple interface with rich features to get you started.

SiteNear asked me to enter some basic information—like the name of my site and its purpose. I even had the option to add images, categories, or features, but nothing was mandatory. It was all about simplicity. There are so many option like personalize my site with my own branding, images, and contents.

After clicking the Submit button, my site was created immediately! I can improve my homepage any time by clicking Edit Content on the Site Menu.

Step 2 : Organize Services with Categories & Features

When I first envisioned Zootopia World, I wanted it to be more than just a website—I wanted it to feel like an adventure, a place where people could immerse themselves in the wonders of wildlife. But I quickly realized something: Just like in nature, where every ecosystem has its own role and rhythm, my website needed structure. Without clear categories, visitors might feel lost, like explorers without a map.

So, I organized everything into sections, each like a unique part of a thriving jungle. 🦁 Wildlife Expeditions – Explore thrilling adventures into the wild. 📚 Educational Content – Learn fascinating facts about animals and nature. 🤝 Community Engagement – Connect with like-minded wildlife enthusiasts.

And the best part? Setting up these categories was effortless. No coding, no complex tools—just a simple text description or a quick spreadsheet upload, and everything fell into place. Easily update and transform my website with just a few clicks on the Categories section! 🚀

I also added a few item in some categories and plan to keep updating them in the future.

-Enhance My Website with the "Features" Section on SiteNear

The "Features" section on SiteNear helps improve my website’s functionality and user experience. By adding specific features, I can provide visitors with highlights that align with my site’s purpose. For example,

this section allows me to:

📢 Share the Latest Contests – Keep my audience updated with exciting opportunities.

📰 Post News Updates – Provide fresh and relevant information in real-time.

💬 Offer Customer Support – Engage with visitors and answer their inquiries efficiently and much more.

By implementing these features, I can create a more engaging, dynamic, and user-friendly experience for my audience.

I can add new feature which including photo and other information

Step 3: Launch My Site

Before making my site live, I can review and edit it. Once launched, anyone on the internet can see it. After one click on the Launch button, my site is live immediately! On the success dialog, I can copy the site URL and download the QR code of the site! Now I can share it with everyone. You can also scan the QR code to visit my site.

I opened my Zootopia World website on another computer, and there it was—a sleek, professional-looking site ready for visitors. It felt like magic. Within hours, I was sharing my new website with my team. Still unsure how SiteNear can enhance your online presence? Visit my official website and see for yourself—it's built entirely without coding or programming skills. You won’t believe what’s possible! Here is the link to my website : Zootopia World

DESKTOP VIEW: GUEST VERSION

MOBILE PHONE VIEW: GUEST VERSION