#I have no idea how long this was iny inbox for

[kikker-oma]

For you :)

Based on this piece of art:

Time woke up with a jolt, peaceful sleep warping into panic. He didn’t know why he sat up, kicking off the comfortable in blankets until he saw the red looming over the room and illuminating it. The rest of the room was dark. It had to be nighttime. He looked behind him and the moon was blood red, flakes of malice visible in the air outside. He could feel his heart pound wildly, and flashes of a moon crashing down into the earth, and being too late, and running loop after loop came to his mind. He turned back around, facing the door and the wall, seeing the shadow of the full shape of the moon and he ran out of the room, finding the bathroom because he knew it didn’t have any windows.

He closed the door and slid against it, forcing his suddenly heavy breathing to die down. The sound of a gurgling roar shook the earth and he flinched. Then he made a split decision and carefully went outside the bathroom, stepping into the bare hallway and opened the door. He inhaled the malice and coughed miserably before looking up. He couldn’t see where exactly that thundering roar had come from but he could soon see monsters returning to flesh with a magenta glow, cheering obnoxiously.

He could almost make out a grin on the moon and his blood turned to ice as he saw all the monsters appearing. He clutched his head, hoping this was all a nightmare but it wasn’t. Link wanted to run back inside more than anything, escape the moon and Termina and stop rewinding time over and over but he was frozen in the crimson glare of the large, looming object in the equally as red sky. A sob wracked his body. “Navi! Please! Come back!”

Help me, he wanted to scream at the blue fairy, as tears streamed down on his face in a seemingly relentless flow. But she wasn’t there. Neither was Tatl, who would’ve darted to his side in an instant in a worry that she would easily deflect. He buried his face in his knees, clutching them to his chest tightly, like if he’d let go he’d unravel into the ground. Flashes of a dying Zora, a dead Goron, a grief-filled Princess of the Deku Scrubs and many long dead souls rising up from the ground, as Stalfos. Flashes of a woman in denial, willing to face the end of the world if her love wouldn’t find her. Flashes of so many unaware people that would be crushed by the falling moon. His wailing echoed loud in the air.

“WATCH OUT!”

Link looked up to see Wild there, holding up a broadsword, and standing over him. His cape flew in the wind. Time realized belatedly it was no longer red out. The moon was back to normal. There were monsters snarling and sniveling in front of them…and yet Time couldn’t find the strength to get up and help. He was still shaking, and sobbing. The champion launched into battle and he yelled, “Get inside, it’s not safe out here.”

“I-I’m not leaving you,” The old man drew in a trembling deep breath and summoned the courage to stand.

Wild hesitated but gave him a nod and plunged his sword into a Lizalfos’ shoulder. Time grabbed his sword and hacked at their foes alongside the champion, and there was actually something relieving about the thrill of battle, not having to worry about any other thing than winning this small fight. When the monsters had all vanished in a puff of purple smoke, with wounds dripping black blood, all Time had was a nick on the face and all Wild had was a small bruise on his head. The old man sheathed his weapon and gave a sigh, feeling awfully tired. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been paying attention to my surroundings, and it could’ve cost my life. That’s not a burden you should’ve had to deal with. You should’ve been able to get your rest.”

“I can never sleep during blood moons,” Wild said simply. “During my journey if I let myself sleep, even up in the trees, monsters would return and find me…and they are pretty terrible. I don’t blame you, and you shouldn’t either.”

It was his fault but he couldn’t burden the champion even more. He gave a nod, slipping on a mask of stoicism, and he dipped his head. “Thank you. I’ll be upstairs, but please get something for that bruise.”

“Get something for that cut,” Wild returned, but was frowning deeply.

He left and absently bandaged his cheek where a small amount of blood had been shed. He stared out the window and forced himself to breathe, remembering the red. The face—no that wasn’t right. There wasn’t really a face in this moon. Not like Termina’s at least. He went back to bed, covering himself with the blanket and putting his head on the pillow but no matter how much he tossed and turned, he couldn’t fall back into that peaceful sleep from before.

He heard the twist of the doorknob and his door was pushed open, as quietly as possible. He saw green and blonde and a familiar face enter the room, closing the door gently behind him. The captain came over and said softly, “You’re awake.”

“Can’t sleep,” He said truthfully. “But I’ll get over it.”

“You don’t have to hide around me, Mask.”

Time sucked in the icy air, turning away. Wars put a hand on his shoulder, eyes shining with nothing but warmth. “Answer me honestly, are you okay right now?”

He took a long moment to answer before he wordlessly shook his head. The captain made a soft noise and asked quietly if he could hug him and the old man let himself be wrapped in a hug, in the scarred yet warm and wrong arms of his brother. “You don’t have to tell me why, but I want you to know I’m here if you need anything. I’d go fight the moon for you.”

Time choked on wet laughter, knowing that Wars had no idea how much that would help him. He leaned into the captain’s embrace and the restless hours of the night caught up to him. He was safe. He wasn’t alone. He let warm tears fall as he closed his eyes and soon drifted into darkness.

IM SO SORRY I HAVENT LOOKED AT MY INBOX IN AGES☠️☠️☠️

This is LOVELY!!! I love that Time in his panic goes outside and is immediately surrounded by monsters while he's having PTSD flashbacks to termina! And wild and wars helping him fight and also comfort him is so sweet❤️❤️❤️

They're brothers!!

Thank you so much Uni🥰

[4noki-vns]

Consummation Proof of Concept: Fun Facts

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Time is nothing but an illusion… in many ways.

If you haven’t read the demo for Consummation ~wind above the dragon sea~ yet, then I recommend checking it out first! It’s a short hour long read introducing you to a much longer yuri chuunige that I’d like to make in the future.

Download @ https://4noki.itch.io/consummation-prototype

my childhood dreams

You may have seen me say that Consummation is a story that I’ve wanted to create for a very long time. How long; how long is very long?

To answer to that question: almost ten years.

I can’t quite remember when exactly this story entered my brain and decided not to leave, but I can vividly remember drawing the characters on notebook paper during my high school freshman year Biology class. (Consummation, by the same name, was probably conceptualized that year.)

The Four Gods, four territories.

A freelancer called Suzukaze, beloved by the wind.

An info broker called Qin, wearing a qipao.

And a beloved “Senpai” by the name of Kagura.

Those are the key factors that existed back then and still exist to this day.

Of course, since high school, lots of things have changed as Consummation sat around in the ideas document waiting for the light of day, being dusted off now and then in different forms.

For example:

The protagonist switched to Qin from Suzukaze for a period! (Although we’re back to my wind-blessed freelancer daughter)

Senpai (Kagura) was explicitly dead in most early iterations of the story, making it a revenge plot

Characters like Belka and Juhyeon were only created within the last two iterations of Consummation

I’m looking forward to seeing how Consummation evolves from now on, still so much the same yet so much changing.

But for now, I’m happy to ramble a bit about the parts that were exposed in the prototype demo!

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Q. world building?

First, let’s talk about the world building. Consummation is set in an unspecified era after the world as we know it was destroyed by a calamity that left the majority of the world uninhabitable and dangerous to return to.

We can consider the genre to be modern fantasy, the setting post-apocalyptic.

The plot takes place on an artificial island built in the Sea of Japan, a smattering of cities built upon the artificial land and manufacturing/infrastructure set below the earth in order to sustain an island that has no external trade. The level of technology is similar to ours but possibly slightly more advanced, even as the end of the world would have destroyed a lot of progress.

Whether or not there is any life beyond the island is unknown to the people living on the island; the belief is that they are the last humans on the face of the earth.

The island, which is usually referred to as just the island, is split into four territories in the four cardinal directions, each territory ruled by a group from each of the countries that helped create the island.

Fun fact: It used to be called the “Scrapyard.”

Should we call this a confederacy of dictatorships? Certainly, it wouldn’t exactly be false. (The island is not a democracy.)

For someone like our protagonist Suzukaze, the specifics of government and politics are beyond the scope of her focus, but you’ll see how the characters live on the island regardless.

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Q. What are the four territories?

In story, the countries that built up the island are Japan, Korea (unspecified), China, and Russia. As such, the territories are split between their groups and mostly run along their ethnic lines although movement between territories is not difficult.

There also exists a neutral city-territory, governed jointly by the four groups ruling over the territories, called Central, the location of the main story.

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Fun fact: While the Chinese territory and Japanese territory existed in the earliest iterations of Consummation, the other two territories were initially different groups (Italian and MENA).

However, taking into consideration the focus on East Asian mythology and the location of the island, I decided to go with countries from within the geographical region around the Sea of Japan that would be reasonably involved in the joint development of such an island.

(Maybe my Italian and MENA girls are somewhere out there in their own version of an island…)

Q. Who are the ruling groups of the four territories?

However, despite speaking in broad strokes of countries above, it quickly becomes clear that the ruling groups of the four territories are not quite the former state governments but rather families with the blessings of the Four Gods (the cardinal beasts, however you would like to call them).

The ruling groups can be considered powerful families that existed in their respective countries before the end of the world. They were able to gain positions overseeing the island before the collapse and then consolidated power as the de facto government after the collapse.

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In earlier iterations of Consummation, the story was also more focused on gangs and gang warfare (a mafia story?). However, for the sake of certain plot points, the four groups turned from their initial characterization as string-pullers influencing a weak government to the government themselves.

This is what we call the monopoly of legal violence.

Q. Cults?

Yes.

Q. language?

Given the four countries that led to the four territories, it would make sense that multiple languages should be spoken on the island.

At the very least, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), and Korean are spoken on the island. For the time being, I won’t specify if there’s a common language used for cross group communication or if everyone can just magically understand each other like Tekken characters. (o´▽`o)

Q. Senpai?

But you might notice that a very important character is referred to as “Senpai.”

Given the differences in types of relationships that exist across cultures (e.g,, there are so many ways to refer to various relatives in Chinese), I was unable to find a good word to describe the relationship between Suzukaze and Kagura aside from “Senpai.”

Perhaps if they were in school, then I’d call it something like “upperclassman” or “senior sister” (haha, no way), but it’s something that I can only describe as “Senpai.”

As such, you may see terms like “Senpai” used throughout the story for character relationships that are difficult to describe in English.

Q. What about honorifics?

However, I will refrain from using honorifics throughout the story. It would quickly become confusing with so many in-story languages, and my familiarity with Korean and Russian is relatively poor.

The lack of honorifics may be considered a loss of information, but as the story is originally written in English anyhow, I imagine that shouldn’t be a huge problem. Overall, I’d like to be consistent within the story.

Thus, no honorifics here!

Maybe next time.

misc

Q. Who are the heroines/love interests?

Given that Consummation is a yuri game, I figure that I should specify who the love interests are before I close off this ramble.

They are Qin, Kagura, Juhyeon!

My daughter Juhyeon will get revenge for her flirting being ignored…

(There is a minor chance of Belka having a route as well, but currently no plans are in place for a Belka route.)

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I hope I’ll be able to elevate Consummation to active project status soon. There is currently no timeline for that change, and I have at least one project queued up before Consummation.

So, for now, stay yuri!

shino

[hurunin]

A Poem I Can’t Respond

Piece of Mind

This time I want to post something that someone made for me long ago.

It’s actually a sad poem, a poem about admiring me from afar and couldn’t do something about it, hopeless.

What? Wait a sec, me? Oh my God. I know, hard to believe right? But this was someone’s feeling you know, we have to appreciate it! 

and the account name tho!

 It’s in Bahasa.

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                                                                        Yogyakarta, 1 Oktober 2011

Dalam Kubangan Rasa 

                                                                    Mawar itu terasa indah untuk di pandang

Berhias bingkai kaca yang tak mungkin aku menyentuhnya

Hanya mampu memandang itulah yang bisa aku lakukan

Kata-kata itu seakan mewaliki akan perasaan ini

Yang tengah berkecamuk karna rasa yang tak kunjung bertepuk

Hanya membuatku menjadi remuk dan makin terpuruk

Aku semakin tersiksa dalam kubangan rasa

Belumuran asmara yang kian menyiksa

Karna aku tiada punya kuasa untuk berdiri

Mencari kepercayaan diri untuk menyatakan sebuah rasa

Tiada bisa aku membayangkan

Apa lagi menuliskan perasaan ini

Jika rasa ini bertepuk

Tentu perasaanku menjadi majemuk

Namun itu hanyalah khayalanku

Yang tiada mampu untuk menyatakan perasaanku

Pada dirinya wahai wanita yang bernaung dalam hatiku

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

Look at the date of the making. Soo loong time agooo!

I don’t know who the writer is. That person wanted to tell his feelings to me, but he hid his identity, so his feelings actually couldn’t reach me. That’s sad. But it was even sadder that I didn’t even want to know at that time, I didn’t even care because I had someone I liked, and I doubted whether the sender was him.

When I saw it in my inbox that time, I just read it once, felt a little surprised, and that was it. I really don’t have an idea who he is. And I didn’t really give a d*mn. Oh how cruel I was, I know!

But why I bring this now? It’s because I’m feeling insecure and lonely now, so I need something to remind me that I was loved, even in the past.

Did you know the feeling of someone who had secret admirer? Not everyone has the luxury to feel that right?

I got the feeling to respond this properly too. But sadly I can’t. I tried to reply that email, but my message wasn't delivered, couldn't, because it’s not active anymore.

So I thought this is the only way I could respond, even though it’s way too late. I know I am very sorry. But there is no word ‘late’ for praying someone’s happiness right?

I just wanna say sorry and thank you to someone who wrote me a very sweet but sad email with the date and location are October 2nd, 2011, Yogyakarta. I am so sorry I couldn't reach you, but I wish I could.

Maybe you are married now, then I wish your marriage to be filled with delight and happy moment that could send you both to heaven later. But maybe you haven’t, then I wish you could meet your destiny soon, and live a happy married life, I really wish for your true happiness here in the world and the after world too. Whoever you are, thank you so much for loving me once in the past.

But your effort is not in vain you know. Because every time I read your poem, I feel loved. It gives a slightest hope that maybe, even if it’s small, there is still love out there even for someone like me.

I am forever grateful, thank you. :)

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

5 Jun 2017: Toys and pets, “cyclists will die”, machine learning email

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[Images: Van Dyck/Wikimedia, Otto Dicycle/Wikipedia]

#WeStandTogether, again

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. -- T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

It’s the General Election on Thursday - be sure to vote.

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Technology: from toy to...

Marc Andreessen, developer and venture capitalist: “The dot com crash hit in 2000 and then all the dot com ideas that were viewed as genius in 1998 were viewed as complete lunacy and idiocy in 2000 [...] All those ideas are working today. I can’t think of a single idea from that era that isn’t working today. The kicker to the Pets.com story is there is [a] company Chewy that sold for over $3 billion [...] like two weeks ago.” 15-odd years later, have these ideas started working because there are a thousand times more people online with internet connections a thousand times faster? Or did it take time for these ideas to make sense to users?

Many new ideas start off looking like nothing, like mere toys, or something for kids, or just broken. Most of them probably are nothing, but some go on to be something significant. Ben Evans’s long piece has a go at how you might evaluate new ideas. Instead of that “It’s a toy/it’s nothing” “Well, many things started off as toys” conversation, you might consider whether you can see a way to push it in a direction that (you reckon) will be forward - a roadmap. Secondly, you might look at the underlying capability rather than the current guesses about how it applies to user needs and desires.

That said, evaluating whether there is a roadmap at the time is harder than it will be in hindsight. And trying to explore future user needs and desires is still very useful: looking at capability rather than use/need has risks. Think about blockchain, a capability that promises distinctive benefits - such as distributed, tamper-proof auditability - but is it something that’ll transformative and ubiquitous, or is it merely the current excitement? Tim Bray looks for signs in its adoption today: “I’ve seen wave af­ter wave of landscape-shifting tech­nol­o­gy sweep through the IT space [... and] with­out ex­cep­tion, I ob­served that they were ini­tial­ly load­ed in the back door by geek­s, with­out ask­ing per­mis­sion, be­cause they got shit done and helped peo­ple with their job­s. That’s not hap­pen­ing with blockchain. Not in the slight­est. Which is why I don’t be­lieve in it.”

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Uber re-invents buses; Tesla - cyclists “will die”

Uber news catchup! Its multi-passenger UberPool service is becoming a dynamic-drop off constrained-location service, or what you might call “some bus routes”. Instead of running its own transit system, a Canadian town has contracted with Uber to subsidise journey prices. Uber has added a new dimension to its pricing rules - it has started charging users what it reckons they’re prepared to pay, but isn’t passing the additional margin onto drivers. Meanwhile, Uber has fired the engineer alleged to have taken trade secrets from former employer Google to his startup Otto, which Uber bought last year.

Two robotics engineers review Tesla Autopilot. “The Situation Awareness Display is great because it helps the driver understand shortcomings of the car, i.e., its perception sucks. Providing the driver an accurate mental model of the system probably saves lives, and robots in general would benefit from communicating their limitations to people.” Interesting: you can see how passionate Teslafans are by the grumpiness of their comments. Related: some ideas about making it clear when and how machines make decisions.

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Machine Learning but no love in your inbox

Google’s mobile Gmail app has a thing called SmartReply which reads the content of the email and suggests three responses that you might like to start your reply with. It saves you time. Some technical detail. “Another bizarre feature of our early prototype was its propensity to respond with “I love you” to seemingly anything” - it seems a shame that that was beaten out of it.

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Rebuild & Renew generation

A terrible experience sets your habits and behaviour for life. There’s a term in investing - “depression babies” - for the generation who were scarred by the stock market crash and never returned to investing in stocks. Consequently the stock market had to wait for a new investing generation before it recovered. Is the opposite true? Could working at the Co-op for a few years create a foundation that pushed your future career in the direction of social benefit? A generation of digital people biased to do good.

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!buy AAPL: investing and banks

“World’s first co-operative multi-player stock market game using real money”: an Amazon engineer is entrusting his $50,000 savings to an anonymous gaming community to invest as they wish.

Warrington council is investing £30m in Redwood Bank to boost business lending locally - “an experiment in banking that may provide a post-Brexit road map for cities struggling with twin declines in lending to small businesses and funding from the national government”. Bold, hopefully not risky.

Edinburgh credit unions merge to form Castle Community Bank - a financial co-op with a banking licence.

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Elsewhere

Tesco’s Now service is using Starship robots to one-hour deliver food from its stores to locations within 3 miles of stores. “Starship is running commercial delivery pilot programmes in the US, the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Estonia with partners like Just Eat, Hermes, Metro Group, Swiss Post, Wolt and others.” Previously.

Instagram is the most harmful social network for your mental health - but Youtube is a net positive (harder to Photoshop videos?)

Google Lens: a camera that knows what it’s seeing. Pinterest Lens: a camera that knows what meal it’s seeing.

Aviva has invested 5m in smart home insurance startup Neos - its connected devices will monitor the home for fire, water damage and theft.

“Marks & Spencer’s lack of digital urgency is costing it dearly”.

Amazon has patented a shipping label which includes a parachute for use in deliveries by flying drone. (Zipline already delivers blood by drone-and-parachute in Rwanda).  

Google-owned mapping app Waze is expanding its car pooling service to cover California, though it’s being careful not to tread on Uber and Lyft’s toes (yet?).

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CoopDigital news

What it’s like working in Digital Engineering.

How we’ve made release management quicker and simpler - making the right things visible to the right people at the right time.

Events

Food Leading the Way - Tue 6 Jun 11am at Federation House 6th floor.

Funeralcare - Tue 6 Jun 2.30pm at Angel Square 12th floor breakout.

Digital Product Research - Wed 7 Jun 10am at Federation House 6th floor.

Food Leading the Way - Tue 13 Jun 11am at Federation House 6th floor.

Location services - Wed 14 Jun 10.15am at Federation House 6th floor.

Membership - Thu 15 Jun 9.45am at 1 Angel Square 13th floor blue.

Funeralcare - Thu 15 Jun 2pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Fair Trade Digital - what would it take? - Tue 20 Jun 5pm at Federation House.

NHS hackday - 15-16 Jul at Federation House.

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