#The Exploding Digital Inevitable

[lokisgoodgirl]

Deep in the Forest [Loki x Reader]

A link to my Masterlist is HERE Summary: Just a short, smutty, imagine. You and Loki in a tent having feelings. Warnings: 18+ only. Smut. Mild angst. (w/c 750)

Loki’s lips brush down the delicate skin of your throat; kissing slowly in time with his thrusts. You can feel your pulse inside his breath, flooding the sliver of space between you as his mouth comes to rest on your shoulder with a whisper of praise.

Quiet. You have to be quiet.

The way he moves inside you, the muted whimpers he stifles with every drag of his cock to the tip—if you could absorb a moment, wrap yourself in it forever, it would be this one.

Moments ago, his fingers burst through the thin bottom of your tent. He was willing himself not to explode, or moan so loudly the foxes would begin to howl. Either way, it amounts to the same.

They curl deep in the earth as he roots himself: his digits in soil, his cock in your cunt. The other hand plays with your breast, thumbing the nipple, and his sighs grow heavy while the humidity rises. “Darling,” he murmurs, and you comb damp straggles of hair from his face. His sapphire eyes find yours in the gloom of smothered torchlight; hooded, fogged with a desire he can never name. But you can: ‘love’—and so will he…eventually. The others are in tents dotted around yours.

Cap said, explicitly, ‘no, late night shenanigans’ while looking directly at Loki. And Loki had smiled, innocence swelling in his eyes as he pressed a palm to his chest: wounded. But he came, like he always does, because he can’t resist what you are together. He never can. “Darling,” he chokes again, as another liquid rock of his hips makes you forget your own name. Your legs tighten around him, pushing him deeper, and the torch rolls from its forgotten nest in the sleeping bag. “Shit, Loki…” you hiss, fumbling a hand towards the traitorous torch. Cap'll be all over that like nettle burn. He snorts against your hair, and in a flash, the clunky object vanishes. And with it—the sniff of light. “Hush,” he soothes, making you clench around the root of his cock. For some fucking reason his voice is even more devastating when you can’t see his face. “You wouldn’t want me to be discovered, would you? Deep inside you; deep in the forest of a strange land.” A shiver wrenches down your spine and makes your hips jolt.

Loki groans, stifled by a well-timed kiss. His tongue nudges deeper, a contented sigh rumbling in his chest as you arch into him and his palm slides under your head. Slowly, slowly, he rolls upwards, tugging your clit with his pelvis. It’s inevitable, now.

Climax sparks and begins to blossom outwards, licking between your thighs, tightening every muscle beneath your waist with pure pleasure. It’s inevitable, you think—as he pants quietly in time with your quickening breaths, as he smothers the need to spur you on with loud, filthy commands. A short whine slips between his teeth, and his back muscles tense. “Cum with me, Loki,” you whisper, and his heartbeat hammers against your chest. Long curls pool in your collarbone as his lips find yours in the darkness and Loki of Asgard groans his orgasm deep into your throat.

It’s inevitable, you think again, as your hand slides down his damp back, over the curve of his unbearably hard ass, clutching the twisted sleeping bag in a fist. The two of your are right together, and the world makes sense. He kisses the side of your nose as your silent gasps of orgasm ebb; the tip of your cheekbone, the shell of your ear. Loki's nostrils puff quietly in the humid silence. A droplet from the tent fabric drips onto your leg as you unwind from his body and he shifts to the side. He slips from inside you, seed hot on your inner thigh, and you miss him immediately: a particular kind of emptiness. You wonder if he feels it, too.   “I should go,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t want to. Resistance strings through the syllables like dew on spiderweb. You wait, just in case there’s something else he wants to add to that statement. A confession of love, perhaps. But in the pitch black, the only thing that follows is the trail of a long finger down your cheek, and a brush of his thumb over your lips. And then, his breath hitches. “I…” he starts, and then the words are eaten by the darkness in which they find themselves.

“Go,” you whisper. He leans forward, catching your lips like he’ll never leave. But he does, leaving a gap in the tent flap so you can see the stars. The tent smells of him. “I love you,” you whisper into the pillow with a smile, imagining Loki doing the same four tents over. You’ll say it soon enough. And so will he. It’s inevitable.

Tags in comments❤️x

[daddyricsdoll]

@d3kstar @fakehappy27

Thank you so much 💗1k ✭ Celebration!!

🤎⋆｡°✩

“Oh carino…” Carlos whispers in my ear, nose dragging along my hot skin. “You make me so insane.” His big hands grabbed my hips and pushed me further against the wall, taking away all my power and leaving me vulnerable to him.

Carlos’s mood already on a high since achieving a podium on the first race. Which left me with a need to give him a more intimate celebration. Going beyond the heated make outs and fingering. And venturing toward the only thing we haven’t achieved. 

I hadn’t even told Carlos what I hoped he’d do, but yet he showed a hunger for me that couldn’t be healed with a touch of fingers, but instead, his little virgins tight hole. 

A moan escaping my swollen lips and encouraging a groan to leave the Spaniards mouth. 

“Let me take your innocence hermosa.” Carlos grabs a hold of the end of my short dress, waiting for me to nod before he starts pulling the flimsy fabric up. Lifting my arms up and hearing the groan that flees between his plump lips. The cool air of the room brushes against my nearly bare body. Now only wearing light pink lace. 

Carlos does an easy job of ripping my lingerie, now revealing my pebbled nipples and core that gradually gets wetter and wetter by the second. “I don’t know how I held back so long.”

He takes a deep breath, holding my face and indulging both of us in such a love and lust inducing kiss. Only breaking the kiss to spread my legs and start rushing to undo his belt. Sliding it between each hole and throwing it to the floor before unbuttoning his trousers and leaving them to lay beside his belt. Leaving me with the outline of his dick through his boxers. My mouth opened and pussy throbbed at the thought of his size. Watching his hands pull the waistband down and expose his cock. Bobbing up and hitting his toned stomach. 

I didn’t know if he could fit, his fingers already being a stretch I’m not fully accustomed to. 

Carlos clearly ignores the worry on my face as he lifts one of my legs and pulls my body closer to his.

Holding his dick by my entrance and mixing his precum with my arousal to make it an easier job. My fingers make bruises into his shoulders as I grip him tightly, waiting for his inevitable push. “Fuck, don’t worry carino, I’ll make it fit.” Pushing himself in, inch by inch. Both of our breathing, uneasy and heavy. Pain sears through me, and just as a broken scream tries to leave my mouth, Carlos forces two of his fingers between my lips. Allowing my teeth to bite into them as he tries to distract the pain with pleasure. Other hand, rubbing my clit. 

I try to moan out his name, but it comes out muffled as Carlos gags me with his digits. Cock nearly bottoming out and already hitting my g-spot. 

“Te voy a abrir con mi verga.” (Gonna open you with my cock) Carlos starts moving again. Making small thrusts that eventually get bigger, and bring tears to my eyes. Finally managing to hold himself back as I endlessly clench around his dick. Carlos’s thrusts become rams and he treats me with only petite sprinkles of care. Just the way I would’ve begged him for. Satisfaction sparking through me at each rough snap of his hips. Hair perfectly falling and sitting in front of his mesmerising eyes. His stare not the usual one I’d disintegrate into, but grow more flammable. Turning the heat inside of me enough to make us both burn. 

The feeling of his cock, such a sensual ache. And as Carlos moves in and out I can only imagine how my slick covers his shaft. How tight I must be and how close he is to exploding. 

Bringing me back to the tight feeling in my stomach. A knot that just needs to be solved. And just as Carlos hits my g-spot with precision I ultimately let go. 

Digging my nails into his tan skin and creating crescent like shapes. My climax topping every other one that he’s brought me to. But my body doesn’t relax yet, still clenching and throbbing just waiting for Carlos to release. Hearing the way his grunts sound closer to moans and his dick starts spasming. 

Exploding and covering my walls with his cum. Marking me from the inside and out.

“Fuck Carino… I need more.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[the-s1lly-corner]

can you make headcanons for all the tadc cast with a reckless reader?

also, have a good day :)

-daz

TADC cast x reckless! reader!

last post for this batch! ill get right back to answering stuff soon! my cinnamon roll dough is almost done with its first rise and ill have to shape them soon! also gotta make the frosting..! short post since the base of one of my thumbs is getting a lil sore idk if its because ive been typing so much these past few days or if i just slept on my hand wrong; maybe both

CAINE:

youre in luck reader! you cant really get hurt in the digital world...! well, not... traditionally.. you can definitely still feel pain, thats for sure, but i dont think your digital body has any bones to break or skin to scrape..! so hey at least you can kind of be as reckless as you want without consequence...! except, there are consequences. caine is not at all happy at your recklessness.. i mean sure yeah some of his IHAs can be more... intense, i mean zooble almost got turned into a gloink, but..! i think he tones down his adventures just so you wont throw yourself into the danger

POMNI:

tries to stop you but her words fall short as you run in yelling into whatever the threat is without a second thought. "i- wait- er..." and youre gone, leaving pomni to hurry and try to catch up with you. she probably has to drag you to safety, assuming this isnt a case where you got all glitched up by an abstracted circus member.. shes gonna have to work herself up to get you to chill out; perhaps ending in a whole emotional thing where she just. explodes? perhaps

RAGATHA:

just because you cant get hurt doesnt mean shes not going to fuss over you. if there were a need for it i think she would keep a pack of Band-Aids on her. however, because you guys cant get hurt in that way, she tries to keep you in bed when you inevitably get knocked a little too hard and need to rest it off. dont even think about trying to get up out of bed, shes going to give you this stern look that only a few percentage of people can muster.

you know the look

the stern one

scolds you too if you get caught up in something real dangerous

only really softens up if you threw yourself in danger for the sake of another person, because i think ragatha would do the same

JAX:

"bet you cant make that jump"

"bet i <> can!"

que you absolutely eating shit after you fail to make that jump, comically flipping over yourself and face planting. you probably have cartoon birds circling around your head. jax laughs at you before eventually coming over to help you up. he will not let you live this kind of stuff, down

KINGER:

he gets so so scared when youre not in his sight, i think if he knew you were willingly throwing yourself into harms way? this man would have a heart attack! like really, or he would if he still had his organs and stuff...if he could he would keep you in his pillow fort with him forever... but he cant, so he has to settle with following you around with meek attempts to try to stop you

ZOOBLE:

zooble would do similar stuff as jax, but when you actually. go to do the dangerous thing they just pull you back. "dude. i wasnt being serious"

bro has to keep you on one of those kid leashes because your first instinct someone says "bet" or "no balls" or anything in that vein, you need to prove yourself

GANGLE:

her comedy mask probably falls off from the sheer shock from how easily you just. launch yourself into things. on one hand she worries for you, but on the other hand she cant help but feel a little jealous; i mean shes just ribbon and a mask, shes not really... tough... strong.. durable... she wants to be able to run around and do the things you do but theres that fear of being immediately broken down or overpowered, you know? didnt mean to get silly there; anyways i think she would try to keep in you bed to sleep off the soreness, like ragatha

[drstanfordpines]

barfing very incomplete stanford thoughts here bc i need to get them out of my brain or i’ll actually explode

hypervigilance headcanon go brrrrr (this one prob isn’t new to y’all; it’s practically canon with how he acts & seems to be popular in the ford fan community from what i’ve seen, i just want to amp it up some more. turn up that there angst dial babey!). more to this: jumpy at many things including but not limited to fast/unexpected movements, loud/unexpected sounds, etcetera.

gets really annoyed when people pronounce et cetera “exetra”.

studied latin in college. like a fucking nerd

paranoia but what if we added More. i said TURN THE DIAL UPPPPPPPPPPP

journal 3 says he is excited to hear newest eurythmics chart topper so i’m assuming he’s a fan. i want mabel to show him new music. i’m definitely going to project my music taste onto mabel. i also want him to hear WAP for the first time. i think it would be funny.

he’s either aroace or bi all around or some combination of those thangs, ie he has the same amount of attraction to all genders which is either a “normal” amount or possibly less or none (yes i am projecting. it’s called being valid and sexy). in other words: he doesn’t really understand romantic or sexual attraction and tbh he doesn’t care to. he has more nerdy important things to do. that being said he has def dated fiddleford and had a thing with bill (i feel like “dated” definitely isn’t the right term for the relationship of ford and bill. idk man i’m having thoughts at a million miles per hour rn i’ll explain later or whatever)

legitimately believed for a large portion of his life that anyone who gets close to him is either a) evil and wants to hurt him/the people he cares about OR b) inevitably going to get hurt/killed (or worse) because of what he called “the stanford effect”; basically the thought that he is Cursed™️ so he must isolate himself to save others from the effects of the curse or whatever the fuck

despite all the shit he’s been through, he does not identify as superstitious. he is first and foremost a scientist babey.

during his time in the portal, he clung onto his identity as a scientist desperately. i hc that he had to do some really fucked up shit to survive out there, and that he kept a series of field journals (or just one digital field journal would be easier probably) documenting his experiences as a way to keep himself sane (or as sane as he could be given the situation).

[denny-artsss]

I'd like to request for some Ragapom , please ... Specifically Nurse!Ragatha X Sick!Pomni :))

Pomni: wow..*sniffles* I never felt so awful before- I feel like my head is gonna explode .. how is this even possible-

Ragatha: oh- you must've gotten the digital flu! Don't you worry sweetheart I'll help you trough it!

Pomni: digital fl- what the actual #%@% is the point of its existence?

Ragatha: well- it's more like a bug in the system I thi-

Kinger: BUG?

Ragatha: no kinger. No bugs- *grabs pomnis hand and leads her into her room* here! Caine should leave you alone while you rest in my room! Don't you worry about a thing you can stay here for as long as you need!

Pomni: wow um- thanks Ragatha- but- why are you always so quick to help me?

Ragatha: oh you know- *puts a thermometer in her mouth* I think we're very alike in the way we fear our inevitable demise that is getting closer and closer with every passing digital day in this GOD FORSAKEN HEL-

*thermometer beeps*

Ragatha: *checks it* oh- poor thing- you're burning-

Pomni: *looks at her terrified*

Ragatha: but don't you worry your little head for a second! I'll be here for as long as you need me! *pushes her head onto her lap as she applies an ice bag on her head to reduce the temperature*

Pomni: *blushes slightly* uh- is there- any OTHER reason you're so nice to me?

Ragatha: well- I always have to fake being mentally stable with everyone so I don't make them panic but- I feel like I can be myself around you and- it's like a breath of fresh air-

Pomni: *smiles feeling comforted* im glad I can be that for you- you seemed to need it-

[ehc-on-ao3]

Catch My Good Side - a weird Wednesday AU idea

(This idea came about when perusing bondage photography online. Consider that warning enough.)

Wednesday Addams is a fetish model with a focus on bondage who's known for her goth appearance, serious mien, and oft-times caustic personality. She doesn't suffer fools who assume that because she's a model, she's an idiot. Her main problem starting off was she tended to know more about photography than many of "professionals" she interviewed. Fortunately, it only took three tries before she located one who not only knew his stuff but could also match her vision for a set practically shot for shot and didn't shy away from the subject matter. Finding a competent rigger took a while longer (too many times she worked with handsy amateurs who thought that just because she was bound meant she was helpless against "accidental" touches) but after sending a number of them to the emergency room suffering from various stab wounds, she finally found an expert who knew her way around a wide range of bondage materials and could easily match Wednesday's wit.

Though well-established in her field and highly satisfied with her work, Wednesday begrudgingly agreed that Xavier had a point about potentially branching out a bit to prevent stagnation, both in herself and her audience. During the meeting, Yoko suggested a collaboration with another bondage model, both to kick things up a notch and also not to stray too far from Wednesday's niche. Wednesday agreed the idea had merit but was uncertain who would be willing to work with her (her reputation, good and bad, had spread throughout the industry and nearly everyone wanted absolutely nothing to do with her). Yoko asked Wednesday to trust her, as she had someone perfect in mind.

Enter Enid Sinclair. Fellow bondage model with a sunny personality, love of color, and was the absolute polar opposite of the dark, brooding Wednesday. When the two first met, they immediately began butting heads about everything from tech (Wednesday enjoyed analog photography, Enid preferred digital), to settings (dimly lit dungeons and abandoned asylums versus brightly lit forests and comfortable bedrooms), to overall aesthetics (grim inevitability; playful beauty). Neither had any hopes of this collaboration working out but considering the time and effort both teams took to make the meeting happen in the first place, the models agreed to work together for two sets, then go their separate ways.

Something that Divina, Enid's photographer, noticed was that despite the fact that Wednesday and Enid argued nearly non-stop during the entire lunch meeting, neither ignored the other girl. They disagreed, yes, but they were engaged with one another nonetheless. Yoko found it fascinating that there was a model out there that matched Wednesday tit for tat when it came to verbal sparring, refusing to back down. Bianca, Enid's rigger, had zero hope of the collaboration working but figured if she walked away with Xavier's number, then the trip wasn't a total waste.

To the shock of everyone involved, those two sets exploded in popularity. Placing Wednesday into Enid's more pastoral settings was precisely the kick her work needed to avoid stagnation. And having the vastly more colorful Enid bound in a foreboding environment was a perfect contrast to her regular work and granted her a serious boost in exposure. Of course, the audiences of both models absolutely loved the pair bound together in their respective environs and demanded more. And so, the pair reluctantly opted to continue their collaboration for the foreseeable future.

Wednesday and Enid. A study in contrasts. A pair who work extremely well with one another. Everything says they shouldn't, but they do. It was some weird, collaborative anomaly. And even stranger was when they fell for one another. Though, perhaps it wasn't so strange. Opposites attract, after all.

[felicitywilds]

A preview of my piece for the @ineffableeraszine! My piece is titled even the stars, they burn, and an extended look at the first 500 words is included below the cut!

For the full fic, you can grab your own copy of the zine right here (the digital copy comes with a beautiful podfic of my piece read by @inhonoredglory!!)! Be sure to do so before the shop closes on July 29th!!

Everything burns.

It’s not a concept he was familiar with before-- that is, he knows what burning is. Stars burn, obviously. Angels burning, though-- he didn't know that was even on the table. Actually, he hadn't known exactly how much wasn't on the table, and therein laid his problem.

But he’s struggling to wrap his head around it all at the moment. The burning hurts too much to try and think about anything else.

It’s everywhere.

A stinging pain in his eyes that turns everything into smoky shapes swimming before him; a sharp pressure in his skull that sends shockwaves down his spine every time he shifts in an attempt to ease it; a ringing ache from every single bone in his corporation, screaming that he's falling apart, everything’s falling apart. He’s melting, exploding, crumbling, combusting–

And the worst of it: two white-hot daggers at the base of his shoulders where he’s sure his wings should be but aren't anymore.

Outside his shell of agony, he can sense a clamor– innumerable bodies moving over him in a thick haze that settles over him like a blanket. Or a vice? 

The noise feels sudden and endless all at once– it had been quiet a second ago, hadn’t it? When he was up among his creations, basking in their newborn radiance? Or had it always been there? Building in the periphery of existence, like a storm brewing. The inevitable fallout as he and his fellow angels outgrew the universe they were building.

He’s not sure how long he lays there, boiling, his skin so hot he can feel it flake. When he rubs his arm to try and soothe it, he finds only hard, smooth plates that dig into him. It could be minutes. It could be eons. It could be his whole life– eternity. Had he started here, been like this the whole time? Or had he been destined for this torturous fate since his creation? Snuffed out before his prime, just like his stars? 

He tries to remember something, anything, about where that first shattering blow had come from. But recalling the first chip is almost impossible when it feels like his grasp of reality is fracturing.

It takes all his remaining willpower and focus not to succumb to the heavy, downwards pull he feels, to sink beneath the clouds into the unknown and let pain and confusion swallow him whole. To keep a tight grasp on his faculties, center himself with what he does know.

Feeling hurt means there’s enough left of him that can be hurt. The thought momentarily grounds him.

He’s an angel. An architect. A starmaker. He’s–

He can’t remember his name. And what little he had left of himself starts slipping like stardust through his fingers.

His throat tightens. His head swims. That downward pull grows exponentially stronger.

Who– what is he?

Buy a copy of the Ineffable Eras Zine to read the full piece!

[bubster3020]

ALBUM REVIEW #2 - Frailty - Jane Remover

This album was really cool, and I'm really happy I got to listen to it the way it was intended. I went into this album completely blind, not even knowing what genre it would be. While hyperpop was the last thing on my list of expectations, the record did not disappoint. It boasts awesomely creative instrumentals, quality vocals, and some really neat writing that at some points hit closer to home than I ever anticipated. The project dives into themes of being lost in the world, particularly after graduating high school, unsure about your life's trajectory and your identity. All of this culminates into an album that feels like you're partaking in the most fun and inspired downward spiral you've even encountered.

The opening track, "Goldfish," is one of the record's most relaxed songs, which both prepares you for it's lyrical contents and lulls you into thinking the rest of the album will keep the same pace. This was consciously done by Jane to cause uncertainty on what the rest of the project would sound like. It perfectly puts you in the headspace the album was written with, that being one of confusion. To contrast this, "Your Clothes" explodes with energy right from the get go, which truly sets the tone, being fast, loud, and distorted. As much as I love the idea of the first song being a bait and switch for this one, it doesn't quite stick the landing. The energy is great, but there were some odd mixing and writing choices that made me question how I would feel about the rest of the songs. The opening's guitars were too drowned out and felt quiet in comparison to the rest of the sound. This was coupled with some lyrics that felt out of place like "you're picking your berries, revenge is so sweet," which feels strangely childish compared to the rest of the record. Luckily, its only a small blemish.

Frailty is one of the most creative and innovative albums I've heard in a long time. The risks it takes are things I wouldn't even dream of doing, owing to Jane Remover's resourcefulness as an artist. This is no better demonstrated by the fact that no matter how distorted, loud, and aggressive the guitars sound, its all acoustic. Just because she didn't own an electric guitar while recording the album, Jane comes up with some of the coolest guitar tones I've ever heard on this. Songs like "Pretender" sound exactly like a heavily pitched down telecaster, yet it's just a humble acoustic and a boatload of talent. Another strong musical aspect is its usage of digital sound effects and 16-bit chiptune. Computer bleep bloops are all over the record, which aside from blending really well with the hyperactive synths and drums, creates a sense of feeling like a kid again. It feels like you're being brought back to a simpler time that you never wanted to leave, which does wonders in communicating its themes of growing up and discovering oneself.

This album keeps its themes very tight, with a clear focus on discovering your own identity and how turbulent the last few years of school can be, especially during a pandemic. Feeling like you're developmentally stunted, especially compared to your peers is a common topic, and one I personally relate to. Songs like "Champ" explore how the chaos of growth can often lead to depression because of hard it is to cope with change. The second half of the record especially feels like Jane is spiraling out of control, letting herself rot in bed as a means to cling on to whatever childhood she has left before realizing that it's not healthy to be stuck in the past. Halfway through "Eyes Off The Wheel, I'm A Star," there's an epiphany that while change is inevitable, it's not something that is inherently bad and it only hurts worse if you deny it. The album is very well balanced between both overbearing and fun songs, with the lighter and cleaner songs such as "Kodak Moment" feeling like a beacon of hope in the ocean of sadness. Despite how hopeless this project may come off as, it's ultimately a work of euphoria.

On top of everything else, this album is very well sampled and inspired, its soundscape reminding me of some Beach House records and at times even UNDERTALE's soundtrack. Even though it wears a lot of its inspiration on its sleeve, literally sampling songs from Pokémon and 3DS menu screens, it transforms them in so many unconventional ways that I am consistently blown away. There were multiple moments where I would recognize a style of music or sample and just sit there stunned because of what was going on around it. While sampling is pretty common practice in the world of EDM and hyperpop, I think Frailty not only pushes its boundaries, but smashes right through them. This record has an overabundance of creative decisions with only the odd misstep when it comes to mixing, and I think the record will only grow on me as time goes on. It beautifully explores topics of how hard life can be on the cusp of adulthood and the struggle is only worsened by both other people and yourself. The album ends with the idea that despite everything going on around you, life will work out and it will get better. No matter what, at the end of the day you're still you, and you're still living.

Favourite song: Pretender

Least favourite: Your Clothes

Score: 8/10

[ceekbee]

(An editorial I wrote on the Trump election for Policy Magazine)

Orwell Redux: 1984 has Arrived, Just a Little Late

It took 40 years, but 1984 has finally arrived, with red MAGA hats replacing Orwell’s drab, totalitarian grey. But make no mistake, Donald Trump’s massive win was a Triumph of Orwellian slogans over democratic engagement. It was driven by an apparent longing for manipulative simplicity in the face of complex global realities.

Having grown up in the 1980s, I thought I knew something about Orwell’s 1984 vision of a future of mass surveillance and strongman control. But Big Tech promised to liberate us from this nightmare future. What was clear on election night, however, is that Big Tech money and technology toxified democratic engagement and drove the agenda of a faux-populist grifter.

Are you old enough to remember that night in January, 1984, when a small-time California computer company called Apple went all-in with a Super Bowl ad directed by Ridley Scott? The ad brilliantly played on our 1984 fears with a crowd of shorn cyberslaves mesmerized by Big Brother brainwashing them on a jumbotron. The defining moment comes when a female athlete appears in vivid colour and hurls a sledgehammer at the screen, shutting down the propaganda feed amid a shower of sparks.

And then the punch line, “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

We were sold. I know I was. The dystopian future could be beaten. Silicon Valley promised a future of connectivity, individual autonomy and freedom. All we had to do was buy the gadgets.

And then more gadgets. And then more.

In the 80s, 90s and for good parts of the 2000s I was one of the many believers in the premise that if people had the power to do their own research, create networks of increasingly large groups who only knew each other through their digital IP address it would inevitably lead to spreading creativity and democracy. How could it not make people smarter and more engaged?

The Silicon Valley pioneers presented themselves as idealistic mavericks willing to move fast and break the stodgy political, economic structures holding us back. But that wasn’t the real story of the Big Tech revolution. It was born as a project of the US military. And from the beginning, the digital revolution was driven by a culture of toxic alpha-male libertarianism. By the time it exploded onto the world stage in the mid 1980s, author Max Fisher writes in The Chaos Machine that it was deeply rooted, in “the unashamed capitalism of the Reagan ’80s.” These “mavericks” believed that they had the right to arbitrarily rewire democracy and society.

What could possibly go wrong?

The 1984 Mac ad promised individual autonomy in the face of looming mass conformity and state surveillance. What we failed to grasp is the cost that came from allowing a few tech giants to rewire everything from democracy to our personal relationships. We paid little attention as our every online move was tracked by ever more-powerful machine-driven AI. Few noticed when our online “experiences” were siloed into increasingly isolated chambers of information. And only the tech giants knew that the secret sauce of the digital revolution was that disinformation and rage was the most powerful driver to keep our eyes locked on our screens.

I write this as a recovering digital utopian. Our global economies have been rewired to the benefit of libertarian capitalists and our addiction to gadgets has led to measurable breakdowns in social trust and rising online hate.

My Facebook feed has become a swamp of ugly and vicious memes generated by AI and Bot farms attacking the prime minister, climate action and “woke” individuals who dare express concern for environment or minority rights. As an elected official who has dealt with relentless harassment, I just recently received my first AI-generated death threat. It is such a far cry from those idealistic, Google “Don’t be evil” days when we believed internet interactions would inevitably build community, not tear them down. For a few years, it worked.

We looked to defy an Orwellian future defined by lies. But what we learned is that in a 140 (or even 280)-character world, slogans move quicker than truth. And what has driven the right-wing power of Trump, Bolsanaro and other propaganda actors is the exploitation of the immediacy and seduction of the internet to weaponize thought in the form of slogans that tap into a proud, defiant, terrified vulnerability.

How does democracy compete with that?

The connection between Trump and Silicon Valley goes deeper than how the Steve Bannons of the world broke the political code on rage algorithms. Huge amounts of money were used to ensure Trump’s election because right-wing tech billionaires understood the irresistible connection between the rise of AI, profits and undemocratic government power. Ben Tarnoff, writing in the New York Review of Books, states that Silicon Valley venture capitalists see Trump as key to the “linkages between the public and private sectors…in which tech companies would partner with the state to strengthen its coercive capacities at home and abroad.”

It took four decades, but 1984 finally arrived. It isn’t the grey world of military strongmen but an ugly marriage of toxic AI, billionaire capitalists and grifter politicians. What is perhaps the most dystopian factor of all, is just how cynical and mean it is.

I know that there are other lessons from the 80s to show us a better way. They are the pre-millennial memories that can help unwire our lives into a more sustainable future.

Policy Contributing Writer Charlie Angus is the MP for Timmins-James Bay and frontman for the band Grievous Angels. His new book Dangerous Memory Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed is published by House of Anansi Press

[junowritings]

Baldur gate matchups :0000000000

Cool nouns: he/she

Gender pref: no pref :0

Zodiac: Aries sun, Leo moon, libra rising

MBTI: intj-a

How I describe myself: huge nerd, collector of stupid shit, I am both the golden retriever boyfriend and goth girlfriend in one genderless human shaped mass. Girl kisser and dilf enjoyer (deadass men my age freak me out a little but…. dilfs….. explodes)

Hobbies: Digital art, web design, cooking, video games, reading,

How other people describe me (/pos):

- “you feel act like the embodiment of a mango monster”

- “The fact that of all of us (in reference to the polycule) you don’t have an autisim diagnosis is more of a jumpscare than you being ginger”

- “You could tell me the sky is hot pink and if you said it with the same conviction you say most things I’d trust you completely on it.”

Character flaws? Idk how to phrase this without it reading as self deprecating- issues I know I have that would inevitably be relevant to knowing me.

- I lack both empathy and sympathy almost completely, which makes me absolutely horrid at comforting people unless they want practical, logic driven solutions.

- I have a bad habit of seeing my solutions as the only viable solution, even if it’s been proven to be wrong/ineffective

- I can be incredibly arrogant (bordering on elitist) about the topics I am passionate about

- I form strong opinions of people quickly, and they are extremely difficult to shake (a bad first impression with me usually ends in a distain so strong I inconvenience myself to avoid said person, and it’s just as hard to convince me someone I like has done something wrong without extremely concrete proof, and even then I’m inclined to forgive them.)

Love language: gifts!! Usually art, or trinkets and cooking.

Miscellaneous and potentially unnecessary facts about me:

- I really like terraria

- I’m allergic to sunlight (literally)

- My bed is more categorically akin to a nest

- I’m completely nocturnal (re: sunlight)

- I’m also allergic to gluten, milk, eggs, pollen, grass, mold, citrus, red meat, cats, and dogs.

- My cats name is Fortnite Battlepass

- One of the name ideas for him was Dollarama

- I own a student grade microscope

- My favourite passtime is drawing pathetic men happy and in love

- I have Gale’s orb scar as a tattoo

Uhhhhh that’s it :0 if there’s anything specific you wanna know (or if you want pictures of my cat and/or tattoo) you’re more than welcome to ask!!

Match up time! Gotta say Fortnite Battlepass is adorable and only cemented who I decided to go with in the end! Which is,,,

So get this, two nerdy golden retriever partners walk into a tavern-

Okay but seriously, is it any wonder that Gale ends up so absolutely taken with you? 

The moment he sees your collection Gale wants to hear about it. There’s nothing quite like amassing a collection of things that bring you joy and make you happy, and he’ll gladly listen to you ramble about it if you’re comfortable to - where you got them, how long you’ve been collecting, what’s the most treasured part of your collection. These are just some of the things he’d query you on, all the while taking the time to admire your collection if you have it on display or bring it out to show him. 

He's actually got a fair collection himself, though his penchant for magical item consumption may have dwindled his display far more than he would have liked - alas desperate times had called for desperate measures back then. It’s honestly very validating to have someone show that kind of interest; though thanks to his curious nature you two may be stuck in this discussion for a couple of hours. It’s fascinating though! So who can really blame the guy? 

Will actively add to the stuff you collect so get ready to expand the space for them; one of his love languages is gift giving - so if that means getting you some of the weirdest stuff you’ve ever seen for your collection just to make you smile? By the gods he’d gift you something every other day if he could - thankfully Tara’s quick to curb that before he gets over excited and offers to refurbish an entire room in his tower back home for your stuff.

I don’t know if Gale would technically count as a dilf, being on the middle/younger side of the dilf scale (I hc like mid 30’s.) BUT he’s got the soft dad bod, bad puns, a couple grey streaks AND Tara so in my heart I would say this man is on the road to qualify.

Gale would be fascinated to see you at your computer, be it creating art or working on the code for your web pages. You’re practically working a magic of your own on your computer screen, confident in your ability to create and finishing off every piece you create with a level of detail and care that he’s sure very few people can even begin to replicate. And gods if there isn’t anything more attractive to him than someone who knows their craft and is passionate about it.

I hope you’re prepared for an audience because Gale will watch you work, leaning against the back of your chair with his head upon yours or your shoulder the whole time. You’ll have to warn him a couple times not to get too close to the screen because if he gets any closer you’re gonna struggle to see what you’re doing. When it comes to your web page designing, he would try and take up learning from you if you ever offer to teach him some basics - Gale would jump at the chance, actually. The guy’s a dream to teach, but also has a tendency to ramble as he tries to figure out whatever you’re trying to teach him. He also has a bad habit of getting overconfident, which when it comes to coding with him is a surefire way for the thing to blow up in his face (thankfully not literally.)

He absolutely LOVES cooking together. This man spent months being one of the only relatively decent cooks in the tadpole party so he’s got a decent list of recipes under his belt for each of their dietary requirements. Give him a couple times, let him learn what you can and can’t have and what foods you prefer, and he’ll make something pleasantly edible - not always perfect, but damn if it isn’t tasty. May or may not have a mental list of your favourite meals that he’d remembered from passing conversations. He certainly doesn’t use this as a means to surprise you or impress you whenever he invites you over (of course he does). The pair of you might occasionally butt heads over who cooks since he has a tendency to hover around in the kitchen trying to do stuff even if he’s not the one cooking that time.

It’s no secret that Gale’s bread and butter is books and tomes of all design and creed - hells he has an entire section of his home dedicated to his collection. He’ll happily give you recommendations and gift you books that you’ve expressed interest in without a second thought; he’s just chuffed to have someone who shares in this kind of pastime! If you guys are together around the time he does return home, he’ll ask for your company to sort through all of his books together. Sure it may not be the most riveting activity unless you’re really interested in what secret books he’s had stashed in his shelves all of these years; but it means a lot to him to have you there with him the whole time as he (quite literally) rearranges his life now that he’s home. There are some books that while he’ll still keep, they’re better off somewhere else than the main room - like the tomes and scrolls and forgotten texts once dredged up in desperate pursuits better left in the past. He’ll gladly let you fill in those gaps with books of your own, to create a space in his home that’s full of you - he can think of nothing better that would occupy that space than you.

Okay, so that one comment about the sky? Yeah, that’s Gale. While Gale’s not the kind of person to go blindly trusting everything someone says, there’s that conviction in the way that you say things that somehow makes him fall for it every time. If you ever did turn around and tell him that the sky was hot pink it’d earn you an amused snort and a sarcastic ‘haha very funny’ as he looks up from whatever he’s doing. But you’re the one who gets the last laugh because he’s the one casting a ‘subtle’ glance towards the window not even a minute later, only to be met with your knowing grin the moment he turns back. Just don’t let the others know that you’ve got that kinda one up on him, because I’m telling you now - Astarion and Shadowheart? Yeah they’ll be insisting to know how you get that kinda conviction to use on the poor man later.

While I can see Gale as the comforting type when the circumstances require, I also believe that having a partner like you who can ground him back to reality with logical solutions and practical reasoning is exactly what he needs. It’s so easy for him to get lost within the confines of his own thoughts, to allow things to become too much of a mess for him to pick apart and deal with on his own. But you’re a welcome hand, there to unravel the threads pulling taught on his mind with discussions of solutions and things that he can put into action in the here and now. That is comfort in its own way, even if you may not realise it.

As previously stated gift giving is one of Gale’s love languages, so given that you’re very much the same, that idea of making a room in his house just for you may not be such a far fetched idea anymore. His gifts centre around your current interests and fixations - he’s got a good ear for listening out to find what you need and get what makes you happiest. Expect more than a few magical items though - protective accessories for when he’s not at your side, or even items with silly magical effects that he knows will get a chuckle out of you once you realise what they do. Gets flustered under the same treatment however - your gifts are precious, and he feels like no matter where he puts them there’s not a good enough place to show them off and admire them. Always gets this lovestruck little look on his face each time he passes by one of your gifts in the day to day, running his hands along them like the mere touch of them is enough to brighten his very soul.

Hope there’s room enough in that nest for two because Gale doesn’t mind in the slightest. But he will help you to make it more comfortable - comfier blankets, softer pillows for extra cushion; this man spent at least a couple years falling asleep in places around his home that weren’t his bed so he knows the importance of making it as comfortable a place as possible for you (and his joints).

Comes as no surprise that he LOVES your cat, and it’s also no surprise that he’ll spoil the guy as much as humanly possible. Fortnite Battlepass quickly becomes one of the most pampered cats this side of Faerun, not just because of all the treats Gale likes to think he’s being sneaky about giving him, but because of the fact his tower is a cat paradise. Not to mention that cats usually warm up to Gale very quickly - guy’s a magnet because more often than not you’ll find Gale in the middle of work with Fortnite Battlepass flopped across his lap or desk, or lounging over his shoulder like a purring slinky.

The first time he sees your tattoo you can see several stages of panic go through his face in an attempt to remain calm about the situation. He visibly relaxes when you explain, no, it’s not actually an orb scar but a tattoo. Very much a ‘same hat’ moment for your tattoo and his own scar. Depending on where the tattoo is and if you’re comfortable with it, you may find him occasionally brushing his fingers over your tattoo, calloused fingertips following the inky tendrils that curl away from the main circle in the centre. Please do the same with his scar, you’ll basically turn the man to mush in your hands seeing you pay any kind of love and attention to a mark which once caused him such pain.

[jowhale]

The Journey in Entrepreneurial Mind : Political Science Edition

Hello, everyone! and every two! and every three!

The Final Pitching: Our OMNIHUB Innovation Takes Pride

After months of hard work, countless brainstorming, conducting several surveys, and more than a few late nights, the day finally arrived for us to pitch our innovative new service application “OMNIHUB '' to the panels. The atmosphere was electric as we took in commencing to pitch, presented a demo of the seamless user experience, and articulated our vision for creating a revolutionary platform to make people’s lives more convenient and open up new opportunities especially to the students. 

Moreover, there were certainly some nerves, months of preparation carried us through. We highlighted OMNIHUB’s unique ability to seamlessly connect users to local services, from transportation to grocery to dog walking and more remotely. I guess, the panel’s eyes lit up as they saw and witnessed just how great and intuitive the app made accessing these modern conveniences. When we revealed our expansive partner network of service, and assuming the presence of developers and partner providers, I believe they will be on board, and expecting that we could feel the rising excitement. 

As the pitch encapsulates, we feel the exploding applause coming from our adviser and the panel. Months of doubt, fatigue and challenges melted away in that moment of validation and promise for our startup’s future. Thus, there is still a long road ahead, pitching OMNIHUB was an incredible milestone and motivating start to our entrepreneurial journey. 

The Entrepreneurial Mind Lecture Series 2024

Credits: Mr. Reymark Menguito Facebook Post after the lecture series photo opt.

With the high pitch still fresh, we were fortunate to attend the Entrepreneurial Mind Lecture Series and gain invaluable insights about critical legal and business considerations for startup founders. The discussions around data privacy regulations, intellectual property protection and nurturing a healthy startup ecosystem were not only fascinating but immensely practical. 

One speaker’s cautionary tales about the risks of neglecting data privacy best practices clearly outlined the need to bake those considerations into our respective innovation’s infrastructure from day one. However, sometimes seen as a hindrance, we recognized robust data privacy as an opportunity to build user trust and position our brand as an advocate on valuing digital rights and freedoms. 

The intellectual property talks were another highlight, detailing strategies for safeguarding our core innovations while still encouraging productive partnerships and integrations within the broader ecosystem we aim to facilitate. It was a masterclass in walking the tightrope of protecting our interest while still boldly collaborating. 

Moreover, as we put the context to our innovation, while the OMNIHUB pitch was the dramatic crescendo, lectures like these represent the foundational learnings that will allow us to transform our plucky startup into an enduring, ethical and impactful enterprise. The insights gained will undoubtedly help steer us clear of many potential pitfalls. 

The Entrepreneurial Mind Experience: A Rewarding Whirlwind

The AB Political Science 3 in one frame with Sir Reymark Menguito.

Reflecting on the entire semester with “Entrepreneurial Mind” experience, it was truly a roller coaster in the best way possible. POwered by passion yet anchored in practicality and preparation, we weathered the inevitable storms of self-doubt, fatigue, and creative differences to bring “OMNIHUB” to this exciting inflection point. 

There were countless lows along the way - those nights where it felt like we never made a dent, or disagreements that threatened to derail everything. But each time we hit a roadblock, our resilience, openness to constructive feedback, and sheer belief in our vision pulled us through. We’ll carry the lessons of perseverance, resourcefulness, and teamwork with us forever. 

Of course, the highs were just as intense as the lows - those electrifying moments where everything clicked into place, or a conversation with a subject matter expert unlocked a powerful new idea we’d been stubbornly missing. Celebrating small wins with the team, whether a UI breakthrough or a new partnership commitment, recharged our momentum. 

Nevertheless, the future is unwritten, one thing is certain: we will always be visionary entrepreneurs at heart, capable of pouring out all into pursuing an ambitious idea and weathering any storm required to try and make an impact. OMNIHUB was the catalyst, but the Entrepreneurial MInd experience awakened something deeper- a mindset geared for constant evolution, lifelong learning and solving problems in unconventional ways. 

Moreover, this could not be possible without the ever-dynamic instructor of ours, Sir Reymark Menguito who made our journey in this course become extraordinary, through his expertise, motivation and passion to fuel our vehicles in entrepreneurship. I, myself, am beyond grateful for having Sir Reymark Menguito with us throughout the semester.

The abovementioned, the pitch, lecture series, and complete experience represented not just an academic exercise, but moreover the start of our entrepreneurial voyage. We have been equipped with tools, passion, memories and the hunger to continually innovate for a better world. After this rewarding whirlwind, we are eager to see what ambitious idea captures our “Entrepreneurial Mind” next. 

"Could have been me" a song of Halsey that pertains to someone or something that's holding oneself to be fearless, to do things scared and feel every emotions without restrictions in everything. To have some fun and enjoy things which talks to self indirectly that it could be me if I do it without anything is hampering me. And this is me.

[j-1980]

(THE GIRL WAS DEAD.

Cut in half by a cyborgs laser.

Brail had walked into his neutronic time machine by mistake during the dimension rupture that had reversed fifteen billion years of established time and threw the universe into chaos.He'd kept her alive until finally the planet Nefarious got too thirsty and decided to drink her blood.The struggle for the lobsters gun was too close to the cliffside and they both went over into hell.

Turns out that the vampire planet would only enjoy lobster today; Krushtayshus had landed on the rocks a hundred feet below and got splattered.Captain Space was only knocked unconscious and woke up inside Zorikk's duplicate time machine,the Osirus.

After being tortured horribly by the madman,the Roman -Telemartian halfbreed was able to escape the space ship by melting through the deadly neutronic energy force that made the Osirus into a living pyramid traveling through time and dimension.

Turns out the universe wasn't big enough for the two of them!

Wandering through the desolate waste of a planet once green with forests,the scientist headed for the distant mountain where the shaft of light burned into the purple sun overhead.

Voltek's Peak.

The peculiar red Orb he and Brail had first encountered when they first crashed here a day before was back.

Instead of killing him,the entity re-energized his dying body and then disappeared.

And then one of the boulders began to move and it was the Carnosaur from Zorikk's little Roman arena of butchery.

But again fortune smiled on him.

Bolgeron was really a double agent working for the Galactic Council!

The UFO came back and revealed an ancient rocket ship left over from the days before everything turned to static and hope went out the window.

It was still in working mode and they covered the last hundred miles in a cramped science rocket.)

This is where our story begins.

"RAGNAROK"

They had lost the element of surprise but Zorrik was expecting him anyways.

Voltek's Peak was in fact a broad plateau at the top of the mountain, miraculously cut out of the rock in the beginning of time.Voltek himself must have been part of the primordial elements to have achieved this!

The first thing that caught his eye was a huge digital clock on the perimeter.It was frozen at 30.

The legendary Time Crystal was set up on an ancient stone altar,emitting that mysterious shaft of energy they had seen for the past few days.

A Galactic Council rocket ship was not far away,very much out of place among criminals.

They must have stolen it after the massacre at the Citadel.

Lance Morgan would have been beside himself with rage,but the policeman had died in the girls arms only minutes before....

The memory of Brail Collingsworth in her last moments assaulted him and he quickly crushed it.

She knew that death was inevitable but chose her own time,she even died with a smile on her face.

Brail had been cut in half by a laser burst but she cheated them of the fate they had in store for her.

The girl from California was victorious in death and the twisted neurons of Nefarious cried out in rage.

They could see Zorrik,Gargan and two others loading boxes into the rocket.There was no evidence of the little cyborg guards.

"It's a trap,"Captain Space said."The son of a bitch is just letting us walk in there.This is too easy."

A sudden tremor shook the ground and they steadied themselves by clutching the boulders.

"Regardless, something is imminent,"the dinosaur said."We can't afford to wait."

The Roman looked up at the purple sun overhead.

It was beginning to shake visibly in its axis.

Then it dawned on him why the Time Crystal was feeding into the Sun.

"My God, it's going to explode!"

Zorrik wasn't trying to conquer the universe,he was trying to destroy it!

"We haven't any weapons against them,"he observed,"there were none on the rocket."

"From what I know they only carry standard issue lasers.It would take an atomic disruptor to penetrate my armor.Keep behind me as we approach."

Zorrik noticed them coming and gave a friendly wave.It was as though they had come for tea,and not to stop him from unleashing the apocalypse!

"Gentlemen,now that you've arrived we can start the party,"he joyfully called out.

He went to a control box and began turning knobs.The thing looked like something out of a bad Fifties movie.

Immediately the shaft of energy turned from white to a sickly green color.

You could almost hear reality itself screaming.

"Of course you know Insecesoid,"Zorikk said.

The alien cockroach didn't bother to turn around.He was still angry about his lover, Krushtayshus.

"And you've met the Quasar Man, I believe."

The mysterious figure glanced briefly at Captain Space with his eye slits.The conical metal head gave no indication of his mood.But it was apparent.

"Why don't you just kill the motherfucker, Zorikk? Let's get the hell out of here."

"Patience,my friend,"Zorikk laughed."All in good time."

Then he pretended to finally notice the nine foot dinosaur standing there.

"Bolgeron! I didn't see you!A pity about your home planet.I had to erase Sauros before we destroyed the Citadel.You understand, don't you?"

An audible groan rose from the throat of the galactic saurian.

"You see, gentlemen, there's no one to help you.I made sure of that early on.Once I learned how to master the Time Crystal the rest was easy.Billions of people gone in an instant.Poof! Like they had never even existed."

"You're insane, Zorikk!"the Roman accused.

He looked at Insecesoid and the Quasar Man.

"You do realize that you can't outrun a star explosion in a rocket ship?"

"Huh?" the monster cockroach seemed genuinely baffled.

The Quasar Man looked at Zorrik.

"What's he talking about,boss?"

"I will delay the countdown until you're far enough away,guys,"he said."Hell, you've got enough tirillium to last ten life times.What are you griping about?"

Ominously,the numbers on the clock started to go down.

30

Click

29

"I'm going to end this,"the time traveler said.

As he approached the Time Crystal he felt his skin start to blister.

He ignored the pain although it was bordering on agony.

If he could just knock it off its pedestal.

As he reached for it-

ZZZZZZZZZZZT

He fell to the ground paralyzed.

"Any ordinary man would be dead,"Zorikk said grimly."But we both know you're not any ordinary man.Next time I will fry you to cinders, Captain.Come over where I can watch you.NOW!"

"You maniac!"the Roman screamed.

Painfully he got to his feet and went back to stand with Bolgeron.

Zorrik looked at the both of them and pushed a button on his iron breast plate.

He smiled ,knowing something they didn't.

Suddenly Captain Space was shoved aside by some tremendous force and then he saw what had done it.

A dimension portal shimmer'ed in the air and Bolgeron was wrestling with two exact clones of himself!

"Take him outside the perimeter!"Zorikk screamed.

"You idiots!"

As they struggled to drag him to his death the dinosaur managed to cast one last glance at his ally.

"Kill him if you must!Only stop him!"

Then the Council agent threw one of the clones off of him and ferociously went for the others throat.They tumbled down the hill and were lost from sight.

The cyclopes had only stood there the entire time,watching everything with it's huge glassy eye.

Now it stared directly at Captain Space.

The two criminals suddenly pulled their weapons.

Zorrik looked at them and sighed.

"Oh come on you two, don't do this,"he said wearily.

"We're serious,man,turn that thing off,"the Quasar Man threatened.

Click

23

"You have no idea of what you're up against,"Zorikk said softly.

"Kill him! Before he destroys this entire system!"

Captain Space urged.

"It's not only this little corner of space, Captain,"he chuckled."When this baby goes, it's going to start a chain reaction all through existence.After it's done there won't be a star left alive.Fifteen billion years down the drain."

"You're nutts!"Insecesoid hissed.

"Kill him!"

ZZZZZZZZZZZT

Both of them fired at Zorrik full strength.

But instead of turning him to cinders...

"I warned you, I'm protected by the Time Crystal,"he said.

Insecesoid got it first.The laser ray took off part of his head and he staggered back a few steps before collapsing to the ground dead.

The Quasar Man tried to run but Zorrik put a hole right through his back.He screamed and fell.

"And then there were three,"Zorikk said."I was quoting Agatha Christie.I enjoyed the movie more than the book."

Click

15

There were perhaps ten steps between himself and his deadly adversary.He took a step forward and felt something hard beneath his foot.A rock buried in the sand.

Zorrik and Gargan watched him strangely.

"Once upon a time you sent two people to their death,"Zorikk said."It was for the greater good.Thier deaths saved millions.They were just clones after all.And then you and Holly just forgot all about us."

"What are you talking about?"the scientist said in growing horror.

"We died, Captain,but the Helios mistakenly thought we were the real deal.You never even realized that it can think for itself.It reached into sub-space and reassembled our atoms.It brought us back from atomic space..It even made a duplicate of itself,yes,the Osirus !...That's all death is,you know, floating around as an atomic particle wishing you were yourself again.Holly isn't like us.She devolved into a monster.I vowed that someday I would make you pay for what you did to her.And guess what,now it's payback time!"

"She's not Holly,you fiend.Holly died in 1935 on earth!"

"Oh,but she is Holly,"Zorikk said."Or what's left of her.Look into her eye, Captain.Look into the Eye of Gargan.Look,you bastard!"

Gargan's eye began to suck him into it's depths.The world around him melted and a young girl of about twenty was standing in front of him,staring him in reproach.

It was the clone of Holly Ryder,dead for a century.

Then the vision faded and it was just the three of them on the plateau.

Click

7

"Oh my God....Holly, don't let him destroy Time. Remember who you were!"

The Sun of Nefarious began to erupt with solar flares that ripped apart the heavens.Lightning streaked between the stars and static choked the air.

Click

5

"It's far too late, Captain,she hates you as much as I do.I would see you in hell but of course there won't even be atoms for another four hundred thousand years.Maybe the next time around we won't fuck things up so bad."

Click

1

"Goodbye, Roman.Thanks for nothing."

He pointed the laser dead at him and pulled the trigger.

ZZZZZZZZZZZT

Captain Space moved in a slow motion dream.The rock was in his grip and a shadow moved between him and Zorikk.

Strange how the laser blast didn't even hurt him.

And then he saw why.

Gargan had taken the laser blast!

She was sprawled on the ground a smoking heap.

Zorrik stared in shocked disbelief.

"Holly,why did you protect him?"

He never even saw the rock coming until it smashed into his scull.He screamed and lunged at the Roman like a savage dog,fixing his teeth into his throat and ripping out a huge chunk.

For a moment they were locked into a macrabe dance;atomic energy poured out of their wounds and they resembled something out of a comic strip.

Then the Captain smashed him on the scull again and this time Zorikk collapsed dead.

He didn't have the strength to cover the distance between him and the altar holding the Time Crystal,his life was pouring out of his torn throat and in seconds he would be dead.

Suddenly there was a pair of hands on his shoulders and he felt strength pouring into him.

Even so he had to crawl the whole way.

The radiation burned the flesh from his bones and he was a living skeleton,no longer human and now just a thing barely held together by atomic energy starting to disapate.

With the last ounce of energy he was able to knock the Time Crystal from its pedastal and it tumbled to the sand a spent gem.

He collapsed and waited to die for the second time in two thousand years.

There was a commotion in the air not far away and to his horror the pyramid shape of the Osirus materialized.

The evil Eye fixed on its master and shot out a black energy beam into the corpse.

As he watched, Zorikk started to writhe.

And then he sat up.

The Osirus was resurrecting him!

Suddenly something materialized behind the infernal machine and started attacking it with a laser burst.

The Osirus screamed and attempted to turn around to face it's attacker.

It was too late,it was enveloped in a brilliant white light and began to disintegrate into neutrinos.A trillion black hornets were sucked into a vortex and the Osirus was dead.

And then the dust cleared and he could see his benefactor.

Once the Time Crystal was deactivated its hold on atomic space was lifted.

The Helios was free of its constraints and had come back to fix something it had broken a long time ago.

-

The figure of a young woman stood watching him.

She was beautiful and held the now defunct Time Crystal in the crook of her arm.

"You look terrible, Lucien,"the girl laughed."You deserve it after all the trouble you caused.However, it's not your time yet."

She stretched out her hand towards him and shot a lightning bolt into his brittle skeleton.

Reincarnation only took a few seconds and then he realized who she was;what that UFO had been.

"Kylee..."

"Shhhh! You still have a lot to do,my love, before we can finally be together and join the stars.I'll be watching you from the firmament."

She began to fade and he could only watch helplessly.

"When you look at the heavens, I will be looking back," she said faintly,as though from some inexplicable distance."I love you, Lucian."

And then she was gone for the second time in two thousand years.

Through the tears obscuring his vision he thought he saw movement.

It was the corpse of Gargan the Cyclopes.

In death she was reverting back into the clone of Holly Ryder!

"Holly,you saved us,"he said gently, holding her mutating hand.

"I do remember what I was,"she said."I couldn't let him do it after all."

"I'm sorry for what I did to you, I had no idea..."

"It's alright, Captain.You couldin't have known it...I wanted to have your child ,you know.Well,the real Holly did."

She smiled her familiar pretty smile and his heart lurched in his new chest

"You are the real Holly,"he told her.

He never knew if she heard it or not.

Holly Ryder had died again for the fourth and final time and nothing would ever be the same again.

A glance over the hill told him that Bolgeron was dead.The undercover agent had managed to kill his attackers but he died in the aftermath.

And then he saw something in the desolation of the dying planet that made him smile.

-

Epilogue

1880 London England

She was due to be married in just a few hours.

Holly didn't even know the man,her domineering mother had forced her into marriage just to save her family's name.

The scandal of her vanishing one day with a ships Captain for three months and then suddenly returning with no explanation was too much to bear.

"You're lucky he'll have you,Holly,"her mother told her."He doesn't care if you're a tainted woman!"

That's the problem,the Captain had never touched her.He was still faithful to some woman from thousands of ago.

She had enough diamonds from the mines of Gazorius to last three lifetimes,if only she had the courage to book passage to Argentina...

There was a pounding at the door and she could hear her mother talking to a man down the hall.

".......have to see about a dog...."

The rest was indiscernible.

Her bedroom door opened and her mother walked in carrying some kind of strange plant.

"There's a young man at the door,Holly.He said to give you this.The fool cut himself on the thorns.I will go find something to bandage his finger."

It was some kind of hybrid rose bush, completely black and adorned with vicious spikes.Blood dripped from one of them.At first she couldn't remember where she had seen it before...."it contains strange alien enzymes,Holly;if you were to touch it you would become impregnated regardless of whether or not you engaged in copulation.It's a scientific wonder,found only here on Nefarious...."

Holly burst out of her room and ran down the hall to the open door and into the street outside.

The Helios was just de-materialising as she got there and then it was gone forever.

She pushed aside her mother in the hall and slammed the door behind her.

The venom of the thorns entered her bloodstream and the pain was excruciating,but that's not why she was crying.

"Holly, whatever has gotten into you?"

"Tell Mr. Weatherby that I can't marry him,mother,"she called out fiercely."I'm carrying another man's child and whether you like it or not I'm taking a ship to Argentina!"

She was forced to sit down heavily in a chair because her blood seemed to be on fire but she closed her eyes and welcomed the pain.

Somehow,she knew, somewhere else,she had suffered much worse than this ....

The Hollywood hills, California

A man and his dog walked behind the HOLLYWOOD sign in the middle of the night and the skyline beckoned in the distance.

She had made him promise to take care of Pup if she didn't make it back.

"I'll get you home,Brail,"he had told her.

"No,this planet won't let me leave,"she said,seeming to listen to something that only she could hear.

"I'm cool with it.But promise you'll take care of my dog,Mr Piddy .He's all alone against the world."

"It's just the effects of space,Brail.Nefarius isn't talking to you."

"You don't have a woman's intuition,"she said darkly. "But I'll be godamned if I let them win.I'll choose my own way.Just like Strelky did."

It turned out that she was right.Nefarius did hunger for her blood and she fed it.

But she managed to cheat Zorikk of his plans for her and that was a victory.

The dog was waiting for him in the apartment just like she said he would be.

The new body would take some getting used to.Anytime he saw his reflection he saw a strange young man with dark hair and handsome features staring back at him.

He allowed the dog to sniff at the contents of the box and it's whining was heartbreaking.

They stood beneath the huge "H" and poured the ashes onto the ground.

"I promised to bring you back,"he said softly."Welcome home,Brail."

The purple Sun of Sector 9 didn't survive either.The leeching of the Time Crystal was too much for it and Nefarious and twelve other planets in the system all died when it exploded.

He could only watch as billions died from the safety of the Helios and deep down he knew he had killed them all.

He had meant to save a planet not realizing that much later it would have disastrous consequences...

Once you cross the line there's no going back and no matter how you try to justify it you can't change what you did.Zorrik had said that he would die a thousand deaths and he had kept the time machine well lit because in the darkness the ghosts came back to haunt him.

The rest of the universe would survive.It would never be the same again,ever,but it would survive.

The death of a star in the Triangle System near the Big Dipper in 2011 made the Scientific journals but no one knew what really happened and never would.

Except for the man who caused it.

Pup strained at the leash,looking back at him.

The Helios waited.

So did the things waiting in the loneliness.

It was a beautiful night.

"You know what,Pup,"he said,"there's no reason to go back just yet.Lets keep walking."

-

[augment-techs]

See position prompt. Scoop me up. Drakkon/Coinless Jason or Tommy/Jason

"I think this is called Two Dead Cows on the Side of the Road."

Also known as the laziest position on earth. "Mm, don't care." Jason supposed it was nice that the bastard had the ability to do literally anything vanilla at all in his life. And if it meant that he wasn't being violent and wasn't likely to take out his anger for Jason on either Adam or Skull, then so much the better. The Red Ranger would have just liked for it to have been on a night that wasn't pushing into triple digits three hours past nightfall and made it so Adam would inevitably have to remove the red sheets and covers for being soaking wet the next morning.

Trying to push the thought out of his head and into a back corner to press and poke at later, pluck out of space time and wonder where his common sense was in all of this, Jason sighed into the back of Drakkon's neck, long and deep so the brush of air left goosebumps roving up and over beads of sweat. He started playing with a nipple, circled by the thickened veins that had been amassing more and more as time marched on and Drakkon refused to Power Down more and more; the touch of his fingers that hadn't known true hard work in years since he'd been made a house pet were like the grain of silk and made Drakkon's moaning hitch. His legs squeezed a little closer together, the wet heat of the lube making a sucking sound as Jason continued to pump in and out between his thighs, smoothing the underside of cock and balls. This was such a lazy position that Jason hadn't even needed to take anything, just had to focus on the touch and taste, the heat of hard muscle and the brush of soft skin as Drakkon continued to squish Jason's ass with the hand trying to pull him closer, the other one holding onto the headboard so they didn't roll over and off the side of the bed with all the sweating and bumping together. Humming and feeling the soft tingle of his upcoming orgasm, Jason bit down into the tyrant's shoulder, other hand leaving his hip to pull a reach around and start thumbing at the head that was swollen for lack of attention but still seemed to make them both nervous even as Jason collected the pre and "threaded the needle" like a pro. (Seventeen times Drakkon had lost his erection because of any kind of returned affections since Jason and he had come to an agreement about orgasms for food and being allowed out into the palace with a chaperone or some kind of tether. Not all of the reactions had been violent. Some of them had simply required Drakkon not looking down, meeting Jason's beautiful brown eyes and not seeing shock or nerves or fear, bending down to stick his tongue in the Ranger's mouth as deep as he could until they were both choking and the head filled with blood and let Jason jerk it to release. There were the tears, of course. Frustration and self-disgust, all winding up into Drakkon's face going red and taut with something inside of him turning over like sour milk that made him grab and pillow or pull his knees up to his face, voice hoarse with the order, "Leave me," where Jason would find his feet and going into what approximated to the library room that held books given by Drakkon himself or Jason's watchers; some little red stones in a gold bowl or atop a silver plate providing him with stimming and possible defense if Drakkon exploded. But he usually just remained in the bed for ten minutes before getting dressed and stomping out the door. When he was having a bad day, the kind that Jason dreaded with hissing and Drakkon calling him a whore or a failure, then he was violent with dishes, or bowls, or tearing pages out of those precious books. Usually he'd storm around like a rabid dog for a little bit, ignoring Jason's efforts to call him back into bed, to offer another chance; he'd pull his clothes on and keep hurling roars of frustration into the air down the tower steps--two, three, four levels--before the noise cut off and Jason dreaded the sounds of different footfalls and another door slamming that wasn't as special as the one keeping him locked in.)

[doerot]

also my nana was gonna be my co-signer so when I inevitably kill myself to get out of my student loans I wouldn't be dragging anyone else down with me bc she gonna die in like 5-10 years but nooo bc she doesn't use a credit card and a kohls card doesn't fucking count so was denied so my mom had to co-sign and I don't want to put the fucking 6 digit debt im going under on to her but I have no other options I want to explode everything

[futuristicpaintercat]

The Explosive Growth of the eSports Industry: The Rise of Competitive Gaming

Over the past decade, the eSports industry has seen immense growth in popularity and viewership. What started as a niche hobby for hardcore gamers has exploded into a billion-dollar global industry. Major tournament championships now attract millions of viewers online and thousands of LAN attendees. Tournament prize pools rival and sometimes surpass traditional sports events. In 2020 alone, global revenues reached over $1 billion for the first time. This growth shows no signs of slowing down as gaming and it continue penetrating mainstream culture. The Rising Star Players and Teams At the center of competitive gaming are the star players and elite professional teams. Those at the top can now make millions of dollars per year through salaries, tournament winnings, sponsorships and endorsements. Just like traditional sports superstars, the best Esports athletes achieve celebrity status with huge social media followings. Leading teams like Team Liquid, T1, and G2 Esports have valuations exceeding $200 million as major brands back top rosters. Its players are now viewed as serious athletes who train for countless hours perfecting their skills. The commitment levels of pros are on par with other competitive disciplines. Increasing Corporate Sponsorships and Events As it gain wider recognition, blue-chip companies are investing heavily through sponsorships and partnership deals. Major tournaments now feature activations from Fortune 500 brands. For example, at League of Legends Worlds 2020, sponsors featured household names like Mastercard, Alienware and State Farm. They see its marketing as an effective youth-oriented channel. Live event spectacles are also rising as companies leverage it to engage audiences. Intel sponsors premier stadium event Extreme Masters with tens of thousands of LAN attendees. Similarly, League of Legends Champions Korea averages over 10,000 live viewers per match at Seoul's Jamsil Stadium. Esports' affinity with online and digital lifestyle also meshes well with technology sponsors. Automakers are also entering the space seeing parallels with motorsports audiences. Future: Continued Expansion and Evolution All forecasts point to sustained long-term growth of competitive gaming. The arrival of PlayStation, Xbox and Switch consoles in living rooms fueled explosive casual play. Those players are now the core demographic driving esports interest and viewership. By 2023, global revenues could near $3 billion according to some estimates as broadcast deals and sponsorship rise. Existing franchised leagues like the LEC and LCS will continue minting millions of fans. Meanwhile, new titles like Fortnite and Valorant also cultivate sizable infrastructures that could rival current giants like League and Overwatch. Audience demand is spurring investment as the industry creates structured ecosystems bringing amateur and pro levels closer together. With esports firmly entrenched in youth culture, its continued evolution of tournaments, teams and careers seems inevitable. After over 20 years of grassroots progress, competitive gaming has solidified as an integral part of modern entertainment.

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About Author:

Ravina Pandya, Content Writer, has a strong foothold in the market research industry. She specializes in writing well-researched articles from different industries, including food and beverages, information and technology, healthcare, chemical and materials, etc. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravina-pandya-1a3984191)