#and they look largely the same which is perfect for ambiguity

[pencilofawesomeness]

Red, the color of life—in the beginning, the end, and blurred space in-between.

-

for @theguildawards Discord Server Event: Colors of the Sky

I was assigned "red" which was super exciting because of all of the implications I could make with it. (*insert evil sad boi stick loving laughter here*) I had to go with Erza Scarlet and commit to the bit. Also I finished this a month+ ago and I am super hyped to finally post~

[fleuryuns]

presenting a fic by @FLEURYUNS

as the earth burns to the ground,

lay here with me

IN WHICH it takes an asteroid hurdling toward earth for you and jay to be pulled apart, and then brought back together—but it's worth it

PAIRING ⟡ wealthy (ex)bf!jay x scientist!femreader

UNIVERSE ⨯ end of the world au

WARNINGS ⟡ inspired by as the world caves in by matt maltese, exes to lovers, arguments, some platonic!jake thrown in there, ambiguous ending, elements from the movie don't look up, inaccurate portrayal of astrophysics and high school debate clubs

WORD COUNT ⨯ 4.5k

AUTHOR'S NOTE . . . starting again with the first fic i ever posted!!

"It's a silly rumour!" he said, exasperatedly.

You told him, "A rumour?! We've estimated its trajectory, analyzed dozens of possible routes, calculated probabilities... You can't deny the research, Jay!"

It was hard to believe that your relationship had come down to this. Had come down because of this.

You and Jay met during a high school debate tournament. His school had been reigning champions for years, until you joined your school's team and beat them. Jay was both annoyed, but impressed by your quips and arguments. He caught up with you after the match, and the rest is history.

High school sweethearts from rivalling schools, a true Romeo and Juliet reenactment.

The two of you went on to attend the same university in different programs. You—garnering a PhD in mathematics and physics, in order to pursue your lifelong dream of becoming an astrophysicist. Meanwhile, Jay went into marketing to one day take on the family business.

Although pursuing very different paths, you always came together at the end of the day. You'd often stay over at his apartment, large as it was, and watch movies together, cook new recipes he thought you'd like, whatever it is you both wanted to do, as a pair. Soon after graduation, you officially moved in with him.

Of course, you weren't perfect. You argued, you disagreed. There were a few significant arguments that led to you slamming the door on your way out.

But it always came down to how you first met. A good debate, a good argument, happens only when both sides respect each other, and don't let their emotions take on the best of them.

So, after every argument, you or he would call the other to apologize. Or, you'd wake up the next morning with a bouquet of roses with a handwritten note attached to it. Or, instead, you'd walk over to his place in the pouring rain, asking for forgiveness.

What brought you two together, however, eventually became what tore you apart.

During debates, Jay prioritized feelings over facts, in the sense that he would take on logical, everyday thinking to tackle the problem, usually winning over his opponents because they often lacked realism. You, on the other hand, gathered the facts and tackled the issue head on. In that way, you balanced each other out.

In another way, neither of you truly ever saw eye to eye.

You just didn't see it until word of an asteroid heading toward Earth came around.

You were ecstatic to be the one to discover the asteroid. At the time, its trajectory seemed to be close enough to Earth that it would be seen by an average telescope on the night it passes by.

"And my name will be on every article talking about it," you told him, wearing a proud smile.

Jay looked at you sweetly as you went into depth, ways that he certainly didn't understand fully, but he still listened intently because he knew it mattered to you.

Then, with further research, you discovered that you wouldn't even need any equipment to see the asteroid fly by.

"We could make a date out of it," he suggested. "When is it passing Earth?"

You continued to stir the pasta, humming at his words. "In about three months," you clarified.

You yelped when you suddenly felt his arms wrap around you. Leaning your head back comfortably onto his shoulder, you let him give you a short kiss. "Maybe we could invite the gang and set up a get together on the building's roof?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Within weeks, the morning tabloids were filled with new information revealed about the asteroid that you and your team discovered. Threads of information were shared on social media, and your name was attached to it everywhere. You felt a sense of pride whenever you checked your phone in the morning, scrolling through dozens to hundreds of comments congratulating you on your discoveries.

One morning, you woke up to a new headline greeting you:

Asteroid Heading Toward Earth: Here Is How To Prepare.

"Huh," you asked yourself, sitting up on your elbow to scroll through the article. You read some more and discovered there were more calculations done overnight by the rest of the team after you left earlier the night before, calculations proving a change in direction.

It was then that you noticed the seven missed calls from your team members. You mentally cursed yourself for being a heavy sleeper.

You quickly called the team leader first, and they barely greeted you before asking you to come to the lab.

"What's the hurry?" Jay asked from the kitchen. You rushed behind him to place a chaste kiss to his cheek, heading to the door to slip on your shoes, with your bag almost falling from your shoulder in the process. "I'm making pancakes."

"Check the tabloids. It's bad."

He frowned. "Yeah, I saw," he said with an unreadable expression. For a situation so serious, his voice seemed to toe the line of mockery too closely. "There's no way it's real, love, don't worry about it."

You stopped in your tracks with your hand still on the handle. "Sorry?"

"Are you serious? An asteroid heading toward Earth?" He raised his eyebrows. "C'mon, we're not in a movie."

"This is serious..." you told him slowly. "Just 'cause it's the first time something like this has happened, doesn't mean it's not real—" You shook your head. "—Look, I have to go. I can tell you about it tonight."

And, sure enough, you spent the day proving the team's theories from the evening. The asteroid was surely coming toward Earth, in approximately nine weeks. At that moment, you weren't able to estimate the true extent of the damage that it would bring, but it would be bad, you knew that well enough.

Jay didn't.

"Don't be ridiculous, Y/N," he said.

You had to take a step back, close your eyes and take a deep breath to make sure you didn't scream. "You don't trust me." The statement was short, but garnered a large reaction.

"Excuse me?"

"That's what you're saying," you explained. "You don't believe my research. I can show you my notes, I can call the team leader for confirmation. Yet, you don't believe me."

He scoffed at you. Looking around, Jay sputtered out half-finished words, taken aback by your confrontation. "I trust you, Y/N, I just—"

"Just what?!" you interrupt, throwing your hands in frustration.

"Park Enterprises has already disproved it."

You wait for him to continue, but he looks at you as if that was enough explanation.

Out of pure disbelief, you let out a half-breathed laugh. "No, this is ridiculous," you throw his own statement back at him. Classically using his own words to turn the tables.

"My father's team has been tracking that exact same comet you're all after, and their studies show that it won't be coming near Earth, not by ages." It was unbelievable the absolute lack of hesitance in his voice. The confidence, which used to draw you into his arguments, repulsed you. "They have better funds for their research, it's much more developed."

This had you looking around for an audience, waiting to hear the laugh track in the background because his speech was straight out of a comedy. "You rather believe people who are solely in it for the money, people who completely disgrace their PhDs and the professors who taught them. Jay, we've laughed at them together because we both agreed they'd agree the Earth was flat if they were offered a large enough check!"

"Well, at least what they're saying now is much more realistic! Your studies don't even make sense."

"So, the date?" you ask him. "What–What was that about?"

He laughed. Laughed. "Obviously I'd take any excuse to spend time with you, love. Sure, you'd be disappointed that we didn't see anything, but I figured the night itself would've gone so well that it wouldn't have even mattered." He shrugged at the end of the words, clearly thinking that it was a given.

"I need you to leave," you told him slowly. You no longer had the energy to deal with a baseless argument. Surely you could get to him, just not then. "I need to be alone. Please."

And with that, he left.

Only a few text conversations were shared after your argument. Neither of you came forward to settle what had happened, talk it out.

Two months went by. Not seeing each other again, nor speaking in all the time that passed by.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

You look over your notes again, brows furrowed in concentration. Trying not to get distracted by the ticking of the clock, or your desk-neighbour sighing every few minutes, you scramble to find a sheet of paper you surely misplaced—because there's no way, no way that this is all you have. If it is....

Jake leans back in his chair and exhales loudly, and suddenly all hell breaks loose. "No way, no way..." you mumble over and over. "Shit! This can't be happening!"

He looks over at you in concern. You also start to hear the other scientists pushing back their own chairs, some turning around to look at what you're seeing. "Y/N? Everything okay?"

Wordlessly, or rather without any intelligible words shared, you turn your computer screen to his direction and hand him your papers.

Jake studies the notes quietly, looking up every once in a while to analyze the images and graphs from the screen to compare. Your hand instinctively comes up to your chest, trying to settle your heartbeat, if it's even possible. "Is this...." He doesn't finish. He understands.

You nod at him. Tears well up in your eyes.

"We'll send them up to Dr. Lee, and get his team to confirm everything," he eventually responds. His voice is clear, despite his own tears spilling. The other scientists come closer, leaning over Jake's shoulder, all reading until everyone is in the loop of what's going on—what's going to happen. He turns to them too. "In the meantime, we'll all go home. Spend time with your loved ones." It goes without saying that this is the last time everyone will be seeing each other.

Saying goodbye to the members of your research team is bittersweet, you learn.

Despite the pride you feel looking at them, considering everything you've learned and discovered together, it pulls at your heartstrings for it to come down to this. You almost wish you had never pursued this career path, wish you weren't even smart enough to come to these conclusions.

You hug Jake tightly at last. He's the one you've always been closest to, after all. "Thank you," he tells you, your face buried in his shoulder and finally letting the tears fall freely, since everyone else is gone. "For everything."

"You too," is all you say.

You hold onto each other for a few moments more when a pit forms in your stomach. Something different than the gnawing fear of knowing the end is near.

No, this is different.

Regret, you realize. Regret, with a mix of guilt.

You pull away from your coworker, a shaky smile on your lips that can't quite reach your eyes. "I have to go." And despite the ache of never seeing him again, you turn away from Jake for the last time and rush out of the building to your car.

As you're pulling out of the parking lot, soft melodies play from the speakers. You recognize the beat instantly.

My feet are aching and your back is pretty tired;

You resist the urge to pull to a stop and just let your eyes shut as you listen to the familiar tune. It'd be nice, but no. You know you have somewhere to be, and the radio coincidentally playing your—and his—song is only more proof that you need to do this.

And we've drunk a couple bottles, babe, and set our grief aside;

Driving down a road you've been through dozens of times brings up many old memories. You remember the first time Jay brought you to his parents' house, nervously fidgeting with your dress from the passenger's seat. He noticed immediately and placed his hand reassuringly on your thigh, risking taking his eyes off the road for a moment to meet with your eyes and ask silently: "Are you okay?"

You told him you were just fine, and that wasn't a lie.

The papers say it's doomsday, the button has been pressed;

Your phone buzzes from the compartment. Sparing a glance, you notice an alert glaring back at you, probably something along the lines of "Take immediate cover. Do not go outside. Protect yourselves."

The radio cuts out, nearly at the same time. The same announcement rings in your ears, so you swiftly turn down the volume and lean back into your seat.

You look through your blind spot for clear roads, and press the pedal harder.

We're gonna nuke each other up, boys, till old Satan stands impressed;

The nerves that have settled in the pit of your stomach ironically dissipate into a new wave of nostalgia instead as you pull onto the street, seeing the grand Park household in the distance.

Happy memories, although bittersweet, flood your mind, and you realize how grateful you are for having them.

At last, you make it to their driveway, relief washing over you when you see Jay's car parked right in front of yours. Clearly, he hasn't been staying at the apartment with you over the past couple months, so you just assumed he'd been staying at his parents' house during your time apart.

You know him well.

Walking up to the doorstep brings back a tremble to your limbs. You reach out with a shaky hand to the doorbell, ringing it once. Twice. And thrice—Like you always have.

It takes all but a moment for the door to open, when your eyes meet for the first time in forever.

"Y/N..."

And here it is, our final night alive;

It's been so long.

You could never forget what he looked like, not with his face still waking you up every morning on your phone screen. But still, seeing him in person again leaves you stunned.

"Hi." You hate the way your voice shakes on the syllable, but you conceal it with a nervous smile.

He doesn't look angry. If anything, he's surprised. Maybe even happy, if the way the corners of his mouth come up when you greet him says anything.

"Y/N," he repeats, disbelief leaking from his tone. "You're... here."

"I missed you," you say at the same time.

You share a quiet laugh before he steps aside and motions for you to come in. You follow him without hesitation.

Taking in his comfortably familiar scent that filters the air, you instinctively close your eyes when you make your way into the living room. You notice Jay doesn't sit down next to you on the couch immediately, so you awkwardly open one eye in a squint to find him standing across from you, with a small smile on his lips.

"What're you looking at?" you ask him with a teasing lilt.

"What are you doing here?"

"Have you checked the news?" Technically, you haven't either. But you know by now, from the announcement on your phone and the radio, it'll be all over every channel.

You watch Jay frown curiously and turn on the television. You're both welcomed with a pre-recorded video—as stated in the top right corner—of a newscaster anxiously fidgeting with her cue cards.

"—comet found and followed by a local research team associated with the Seoul National University is indeed heading toward Earth at a concerningly rapid rate." She pauses, looking over her notes and taking a breath. You can't imagine how it is to hear this news when you've been falsely led by the media for so long. "Park Entreprises have released a statement confirming their calculations."

You watch the colour drain from Jay's face.

"We have approximately seven hours before the asteroid collides with Earth, and causes severe to irreparable damage to the planet and all living organisms." A tear rolls down her cheek, she can no longer hold character. You notice the clip cut, before coming back, with the woman looking significantly more distraught; red in the face, tears staining her cheeks. "Please, everyone, spend this time with your loved ones. Stay safe. This has been Channel—"

Click. Jay shuts it off.

He stands in silence, staring at the blank screen. You watch him run his hand over his mouth anxiously, resisting the urge to get up and hold him.

"So... What—What does this mean?"

"The asteroid is much larger than we predicted, which means we gravely underestimated its speed." You keep your head down and voice low. You've been in this situation before and although you hate to admit it, you're afraid it won't be any different from the last time. "We thought we had at least another week before it came within radar, and with the size we had believed it was, it would've done damage, but nothing too extreme. We were wrong."

"And now we have roughly, what, seven hours before we..." He doesn't need to finish. You nod.

He runs a hand through his hair.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" You think you misheard him.

Jay makes his way toward you, situating himself comfortably on the couch and turning to take your hands in his own. "I said some pretty messed up things that I no longer stand by. I should've let you talk, and I should've had the decency to listen and, at the very least, try to understand."

It's nice, you discern. Hearing what you've been wanting to hear for months. "Thank you," is all you can think to say because, well, what else is there to say?

"I think I've known that my dad's team was hiding something, or purposefully miscalculating, but I chose to ignore it," he admits. "I was scared. Fuck, I'm still scared."

"Understandably, there's a literal asteroid headed towards Earth!"

You both laugh in agreement.

"I know it's probably way too late to ask you this considering we won't be alive by tomorrow, but can we please spend these last hours together as a couple?"

"Are you asking me to be your girlfriend," you tease. "Again?"

"Yes, Y/N." He rolls his eyes, but he isn't annoyed. You feel your heart pull at its strings when you see the familiar smile spread across his face again, something you haven't seen in a long time. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

"Of course."

You spend the first few hours helping him out in the kitchen. Jay explains that he's been there all day preparing a big meal for the family, as a surprise because they hadn't spent much time together as of late. It's much clearer to him why.

Together, you make a mess of the place. Not much with Jay's help, no. He's always been the better cook of the relationship. Clearly everyone has their specialities. You—in astrophysics and having the balls in the relationship, and him in the kitchen and being utterly stupid sometimes.

"So, is your dad coming over?" You toss a grape into your mouth, sitting on the counter top after giving up on actually helping. "He probably has some kind of vendetta against me, or something. At least I do."

Jay gives you a look.

"What," you draw out exaggeratedly. "We're scientific enemies. It's textbook betrayal."

"No, he won't be," Jay assures you. "I was hoping to make a meal for him and Mom, but one of their messengers told me they were leaving for a business trip tonight. Looks like that isn't gonna end well."

You frown. "I'm sorry..."

He shrugs it off and waves his hand. "No, no, don't be. I think I'd flip at him if I saw him, and I'd rather not spend my last moments in a screaming match with my father." He quickly washes his hands in the sink before wiping them against his apron to dry them off. "Besides, I'm here with you, and that's all that matters."

If you let a smile escape you, that's for no one to know.

The oven makes a ding! which prompts you to hop off the counter, Jay swiftly catching your movement and letting you fall into his arms. You laugh as you notice his dirty hand hovering over your body to not touch your clothes.

"Do you want to help me plate this?"

As expected, the meal is delicious. Even the burnt edges caused by your excess lathering of butter were more than salvageable. It's nothing like a grand meal at a three Michelin star restaurant, but it's damn near close enough.

You furrow your brows as you take another bite—you can't help looking angry when the food tastes good!

Jay notices. "You like it?" he asks, but not genuinely. His smile hints that he already knows.

You simply hum in response.

The rest of the meal passes by in comfortable silence. Comfortable as either of you can be.

There's some tension in the air. A mix of fear, worry, maybe even curiosity.

How else are you meant to feel on your final night alive?

Once both your plates are cleared, Jay's quick to reach and grab the dishes. You follow him to the sink with whatever else he couldn't hold and help him wash them.

You watch him thoroughly scrub at a plate that's already spotless. You don't interrupt him.

In the meantime, you clear the table. Push the chairs. Rearrange the center piece. Even take out the broom and start sweeping the main floor.

You're not sure why. It's not like it really matters. All of this will be whipped out in a few hours.

A shiver runs down your back, and you decide that you're finished cleaning.

"You wanna watch a movie?"

You settle yourselves in his bed once the dishes are done. Jay toys around with the projector before turning back to you, his face twisting in an unserious grimace.

"Oh, right," he says pointedly. "I forgot you only started dating me for my projector."

"What can I say, the richer the man, the more attractive he is." Yet, even if he didn't have a dime to his name, you would still find Jay to be the most handsome man on this dying Earth. "Come here."

Normally, he'd probably tease you for your clinginess. He'd say something along the lines of your hands being covered in glue, or make a dumb joke about magnets.

Today, though, he doesn't hesitate for a second before diving under the covers next to you, wrapping his arm over your shoulders and pulling you even closer.

It feels good, but also makes reality set in.

He feels you let out a shaky breath. "It'll be okay, love," he whispers before placing a long kiss on top of your head.

The opening credits start to roll. You try to take note of all the actors you recognize, try to remember in what movies and series you've seen them in. It calms you down. Then your mind drifts, and you start to worry about what those actors might be doing right now.

Do they know the world is ending in less than four hours? Do they know that no matter where they hide, there's no way to protect themselves?

Jay runs a finger through your hair. Your thoughts hush.

As the camera pans to the main character wiping the back counter at the diner she works at, you look up at your boyfriend. His eyes are fixed on the screen, but you can tell he's not entirely paying attention either.

You shift your position to face him better, still lying comfortably on his arm. "Why didn't you go to culinary school?" The question's been on your mind since he told you about applying for business, but you never had the guts to ask him, already being able to guess the answer.

It's always been known that Jay loves to cook. He's always found experimenting, stepping outside of the box (or the cookbook) to try new things to suit his palette. It was one of the first things you two bonded over when you started dating way back then.

You remember the first time you went to his apartment. Already from the entrance, your senses were filled with the sweet smell of pastries and fresh meat. A combination that wasn't too shabby at all.

He'd been cooking and baking all afternoon, not sure what to focus on because he wasn't familiar with your preferences yet. "Just to be safe," he had specified.

Now, his brows furrowed in thought.

"It wouldn't have worked out," he says finally.

He lightly butts his head into yours. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"

Your eyes drift down from his eyes, to his lips, to the birthmark on his neck, to your hands fidgeting with the blanket. "This is really it," you whisper into the air.

"This really is it," Jay repeats.

To think, you had planned a night with your friends for this exact event. You'd be all gathered on the rooftop, set up on lawn chairs and the terrace sofas, with an abundance of snacks, music from your shared playlist, laughter and cheer filling the air as you all watch the sky, waiting for a star, that isn't really a star, to run through the blankness, just a little brighter than everything else.

And then you would go about your lives.

Heeseung and his girlfriend would celebrate their two year anniversary.

Maybe Jake would finally gain the courage to ask the barista out on a date.

Everyone would say goodbye to Sunghoon again as he'd head off on another skating tour—or whatever the athlete does.

Jay would eventually inherit his father's business. But out of everything, that would probably take the longest. Mr. Park wasn't planning on going anywhere any time soon. Clearly he was hoping so, too.

You.... You're not so sure about yourself.

After discovering one major comet, you'd move onto the next, you supposed.

People don't ever really stop discovering things about the universe. So much of the planet you live on has gone undiscovered, let alone the infinite plane of space and time.

You bite the inside of your cheek at the thought of the millions of things that will forever be left undiscovered, until another species comes to life and starts all the way from the beginning. You realize that maybe that's the point of it all; No one is ever meant to see the end of it.

Maybe it's the moments in between that matter the most.

So, you wrap your arm around Jay's waist a little tighter. You let the voices on the screen fade away as you take in his scent, the movement of his chest as he breathes in and out, and the soft way he strokes your hair.

You tell him I love you without words, hoping he hears it, and fall asleep before you can hear him say, "I love you too."

And as the Earth burns to the ground, it's you that I lie with—It's you I welcome death with.

[whereserpentswalk]

Choose a slightly diffrent version of our world to escape to

Weather you're transferring yourself to another dimension or you’re retroactively changing our world is a matter of perspective. Either way, only you will remember the change, and all your loved ones will still exist with as minimal a change to everyone's lives as possible. Transplaner security does not allow the finer details of this process to be understood by mortals.

1- ritual magic and deities are scientifically proven to exist. The exact details on it all are still ambiguous but people know for a fact that these things work and are true. Religious conflict is down, and it's a fact that there's something out there to answer your prayers.

2- the earth is flat and infinite. The seven continents we know are lit by the sun (which is small and goes out at night) which rotates over the equator (the north pole is the center of this map projection). But there are other suns beyond Antarctica, and 21st century civilization is working to contact these other continents. We will never be done expanding our trades routes and exploring for better or for worse.

3- dragons exist. They split off from a difftent fish than other land vertebrates hence the six limbs. There are all different kinds of dragons, living throughout the world. There's nothing magical about them, they just exist.

4- the six continents we know of with humans are just six islands in a vast ocean. Most of human history is the same or similar, just much higher density, thought the same cultures and civilizations developed. Because the population is the same human territory is a single massive city, using unquine technology to harvest food. What exists on the rest of the earth is just starting to be known.

5- necromancers exist as a valid field of art and science. Zombies, ghosts, vampires, liches, shades and other such creatures all exist as functioning members of society. Everyone accepts this as good and normal.

6- humans are capable of using willpower to change their physical sex after completing puberty. The process takes about six months to complete, and is mostly painless. Alongside swapping your sex it's also possible to mix and match traits or completely get rid of the traits of either sex. There is stigma around this, but it's slowly gaining more acceptance as time goes on. Body type and eye color can also be changed similarly, and how old you look is somewhat fluid based on your desires.

7- every rocky planet in our solar system and most large moons have sentient life. We are slowly making further and further contact with those civilizations.

8- the world is slightly more progressive on basically every issue. It's far from perfect but our world looks like an exacerbated parody of their world's political and social problems.

9- humans don't make contact when they mate, like fish or scorpians. Nobody has sex or desires sex in any way, and human bodies have a lot less sexual dimorphism. Gender is more fluid, sexual assault and harassment can't happen, and physical affection is way more common.

10- humans live longer (the oldest people are in their 900s) and resist illness much better. They have stronger mote athletic bodies, and have appearances that resemble closer what they individually think is pretty. They also need to sleep a lot less and have higher pain tolerance.

11- gender as a concept doesn't exist. People are biologically the same, they just don't have any social construct of male and female. People generally dress similarly to what we'd consider masculine, and he is the default pronoun, but feminine things aren't rejected, or even categorized as feminine. Relationships also aren't considered platonic romantic or family, people are just close to eachother and there's no special word for certain kind of close relationship that's different from others in a socially enforced way.

12- there's a whole new complex set of social constructs that didn't exist in the world you know. This is bad mabye.

Reblog to begin the transportation. Like to awake one of your freinds to the reality of the changes.

[thoughtlessthinkythoughts]

Look, I would love to believe that Gerry is having a perfect time in an alternate universe, but I can’t. Something is up. Note: I’m using some info from the arg spreadsheet for this.

Cw for unethical psychology experiments and harm to children.

He claims to have been too young to remember, but according to the spreadsheet he is two years older than Sam. Of course they probably weren’t tested at the same time, but his development level indicates he was school-aged.

He says he just remembers filling out forms and answering questions. The spreadsheet indicates that they put the kids through the Milgram experiment (you know, the giving electric shocks to people one)

He is happy to invite strangers in first thing in the morning and offer them anything- food, a large painting, etc. This goes beyond typical hospitality/generosity.

He even thinks the landlord is lovely. And yes I think this is a hint considering TMA’s politics.

Gerry immediately considers strangers old friends.

I may be reading the spreadsheet wrong because it is ambiguous. But if I am correct, when tested Gerry was ranked very prosocial, but also wasn’t compliant with the Milgram test or a test of social conformity (the one where a bunch of people lie about the length of a line to see if the person being tested will agree with something obviously wrong). The Gerry we met seems very compliant.

Gertrude is eager to get rid of Sam and Celia, which is completely understandable, but I think there is more to it. She knows something and wants this away from Gerry.

The little “I like them” “of course you do” exchange. It isn’t much on it’s own, but altogether…I don’t think Gerry has a choice. Not in liking them or being generous. I think Gerry was so close to being what they wanted, but he wouldn’t comply with some things, so they…somehow made him compliant.

According to the spreadsheet, Gerry had the second highest empathy index. The only individual higher was Sam. And I think we can assume Sam’s results are significant, considering he is a main character. Sam’s results were similar to Gerry’s in almost every way…except that Sam was given opposite results in the social conformity and obedience measures. In general, as empathy, moral development, and prosocial behavior increased in the kids, milgram and asch scores were lower, which is why I believe low=not going along with them.

So, the institute was looking for kids who were highly empathetic but also easy to control. Until they found Sam, Gerry was the closest, so they tried to control him. And ended up damaging him badly and messing with his memory of what happened.

[darlingpwease]

Yandere omega Hualian who keep get rejected by they alpha but still made they nest just for them to comfortable

fanciful

it depends enough on how dark the world of omegaverse is, especially at that time, but we will go for now with the most innocent without forced rituals and the like

♡ unhealthy behaviour, animalistic behaviour, dommale elements, mention of forced relationship if you squint

when you reject them, XIE LIAN and HUA CHENG are not very... happy. of course, alphas have the right to decide for themselves who they want and all that, but isn't it obvious that they will be the best options? one of them is the Supreme rank ghost, the other is one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) God — even if it's a little difficult for them to have a baby, it doesn't mean they can't, and your instincts know it. when you have two strong and healthy omegas who are equally obsessive interested in you and are willing to put up with each other's existence as long as you don't forget about them, paying attention to everyone and not behaving with irrational favoritism towards only one.

HUA CHENG has a strong instinct to nest. maybe this is due to an anxious childhood, where the nest was the only place where he felt safe, but for him to nest regularly and create large nests is natural for all three, — especially considering that XIE LIAN has not shown such an active interest in building a nest since childhood, although after he was banned from Heaven the first time, he began actively making them in an attempt to recreate the same feeling as in his parents' nest.

moreover, your smells are mutually attractive, XIE LIAN has a pronounced parental instinct, HUA CHENG knows that even if you consider him unattractive, from a biological point of view, he can easily change his appearance and some shades of smell for greater attractiveness, they have many nests and beautiful things for you, while your personalities are compatible and your temperaments are in harmony — you have no reason to refuse them, but you do it anyway, behaving senselessly and mercilessly.

you deny them but they make a nest for you

... when they build a nests for you, it's more like an olive branch that they hold out to you, the denial of which has ambiguous but definitely very unpleasant consequences for you and for them (as if they care if they can't be your omegas) — a soft, large, fluffy, warm nest with a predominantly neutral smell but with inclusions their fragrances so that you know for sure that it was built by them. you know that they are watching your interaction and research, memorizing your reactions and behavior so that if you deny this nest, they will build a new and more suitable one.

if you deny the nest, making it clear that you did not like it, then next time you will get a more perfect and suitable one for you — and so it will be until you have nothing to complain about, looking at the perfect nest, and, in the end, giving up and settling in it. this will lead to the fact that they will create more such nests, using more and more of their clothes with a smell so that you have suitable associations, until, eventually, you begin to agree to make out with them in the nest.

if you continue to deny all the nests out of stubborn principle, or, even more so, try to break them, then, well, you knew what you were doing, doing this in front of the omegas who adored you, who could spend hours just to do it for you, — and the fact that they are both potentially stronger than you and definitely the two of them are stronger than one of you makes the situation even worse just for you...

you deny them but make a nest for them

XIE LIAN looks on, thinking before nodding. of course, it is — why would you build a nest for them if you don't make it clear that you think they are good enough, but just want more time to get used to them? this is logical and makes sense.

they sit in the nest, surrounded by your scent, and look at you with incomprehensible interest if you stay outside the nest instead of leaving them for a while, doing your business without their participation. your mixed signals are very confusing — do you refuse them, but at the same time build a nest? what's the point of that? — but then they get it while they're curled up.

... they're just courting, aren't they? — HUA CHENG is the first to raise this thought, and XIE LIAN looks at him with interest, finally finding the reason for your behavior. — they're just shy, but they're not really against us, since they build a nest for us and let us be in it. they just need time.

and they don't mind giving you that time — behaving even more gently and affectionately, trying to look like respectful and good omegas as your husbands. they become even more persistent, but in a gentle way, actively taking care of the house and about you, showing that choosing them would not be a bad step and that they are ready to do anything to be your omegas, since they adore you and you are the only one for them.

do you need time? they are ready to give as much as they want! after all, you are in any case already their alpha, who can only be with them and has already chosen them, so nothing else matters; they have been waiting for you for a long time, a couple more days or months do not matter as long as they can be near you...

[justforbooks]

Alain Delon

One of the most popular male stars of French cinema who often played tough guys and calculated killers

The actor Alain Delon, with his finely chiselled features and glacial gaze, was known as the “ice cold angel”. As a young man, his handsome, impassive face was a blank page on which apparently any emotion could be written. This served to cover the passion or perversity beneath, a trait used effectively by such directors as Luchino Visconti, Louis Malle, Joseph Losey, Jean-Pierre Melville and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Delon’s best work was done in the 1960s and 70s, the first two decades of a career spanning half a century. After this exciting initial period, he settled down, with occasional exceptions, to consolidating his tough-guy persona, becoming one of the most popular male stars in French cinema.

In the light of his unpromising background, Delon, who has died aged 88, deserved the success he achieved. Born in Sceaux, a large suburb in the south of Paris, he was the son of Edith (nee Arnold) and Fabien Delon. They divorced when Alain was four, and he was brought up by foster parents until they died in a car accident. He then moved back to live with his mother and her new husband, Paul Boulogne, a butcher, to whom Delon was unhappily apprenticed when he was 14.

This was soon after he completed his sporadic education, having been expelled from several schools for bad behaviour. At 17, he joined the French navy, serving in Indochina as a parachutist during the siege of Dien Bien Phu.

Out of his four years in the military, Delon spent 11 months in prison for being “undisciplined”. In 1956, after being dishonourably discharged, he returned to civilian life, working as a porter, a waiter and a salesman. During this time he became friends with the actors Brigitte Auber and Jean-Claude Brialy, and went with them to the 1957 Cannes film festival.

There, his looks attracted attention, especially from a talent scout for the producer David O Selznick, who offered him a Hollywood contract, provided that he learned English. But after Auber persuaded the director Yves Allégret to cast the young would-be actor in Quand la Femme s’en Mêle (When a Woman Meddles, 1957), Delon decided to start acting in France.

Surrounded by such veterans as Edwige Feuillère, Jean Servais and Bernard Blier, Delon, looking much younger than 22, made an impression as a hitman, the sort of role he perfected in later films. Despite being touted as France’s answer to James Dean, Delon was closer to the young Alan Ladd.

In Sois Belle Et Tais-Toi (Be Beautiful But Shut Up, 1958), directed by Marc Allégret, Yves’s older brother, Delon was cast as a petty crook, partnered by Jean-Paul Belmondo, who was to equal Delon in popularity in the 60s and 70s. They were later to appear together again in Borsalino (1970), Borsalino and Co (1974) and as sexagenarian action heroes in Une Chance sur Deux (Half a Chance, 1998).

Christine (1958), a love story set in Vienna at the turn of the century, gave Delon his first major role as a romantic lead, opposite Romy Schneider. During the shooting of the film – a remake of Max Ophüls’ Liebelei (1932) – the couple fell in love and became engaged soon afterwards. The romance lasted four years, and Delon and Schneider remained close until her death in 1982. They appeared together on stage in 1961 in a Parisian production of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, directed by Visconti, as well as in the films La Piscine (The Swimming Pool, 1969) and Losey’s The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).

It was in 1960 that Delon became an international star with his portrayal of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley in René Clément’s Plein Soleil (Purple Noon). With his pretty-boy looks, Delon perfectly reflected the calculated charm, indolence and coldness of the ambiguous character, who schemes to take his friend’s clothes, yacht, girlfriend and life.

In contrast, in the same year, Visconti cast him as a “wise fool” in Rocco and His Brothers, an epic three-hour neorealist drama. To save his poverty-stricken family, who have immigrated to Milan from southern Italy, Rocco (Delon) takes up boxing, a sport he detests. Dubbed into Italian, Delon does his best to convince as a saintly character, though it is doubtful whether any boxer could be so gentle and yet so successful.

Dubbed again into Italian, Delon was superb as an arrogant and materialistic stockbroker who has an affair with a translator (Monica Vitti) in L’Eclisse (Eclipse, 1962), the third in Antonioni’s trilogy of alienation. Delon’s third notable Italian film was Visconti’s The Leopard (1963), in which he played the dashing and cynical young revolutionary Tancredi. As a hotheaded opportunist who represents the future of Italy, Delon’s performance is in sharp contrast to Burt Lancaster’s contemplative one as his aristocratic uncle, who represents the past.

Back in France, Delon began to take on less challenging roles, mostly in swashbucklers and thrillers. The main interest of the conventional heist movie, Mélodie en Sous-Sol (Any Number Can Win, 1963), was the coming together of the biggest French star of the 30s, Jean Gabin, and the rising star of the 60s. As interesting was his pairing with Simone Signoret, 14 years his senior, in The Widow Couderc (1971).

Delon also appeared in several English-language films at the time, including The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964), in which he was an Italian photographer cum gigolo making a play for a gangster’s moll (Shirley MacLaine), and a Spanish aristocrat in the comedy-western Texas Across the River (1966). At the time, Delon could claim to be an equal in fame to any movie star in large-budget films such as Once a Thief (1965), opposite Ann-Margret and Jack Palance; Lost Command (1966), a war film with Anthony Quinn and George Segal; and Red Sun (1971) with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune, cashing in on Delon’s huge popularity in Japan.

In the artily erotic The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), directed and photographed by Jack Cardiff, Delon played Marianne Faithfull’s lover, unzipping her leather gear with his teeth and murmuring: “Your toes are like tombstones.”

In 1964 Delon married Nathalie Barthélémy, who made her screen acting debut opposite him in Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), the first of three ritualistic and atmospheric crime thrillers directed by Melville and starring Delon. In Le Samouraï, he was an expressionless hired killer; in Le Cercle Rouge (1970), he was a cool ex-con; and in Un Flic (Dirty Money, 1972), Melville’s final film, he was equally effective as a bitter cop.

Delon’s standing as a screen tough guy was enhanced when, in 1968, he and his wife, whom he was about to divorce, were implicated in a sensational political scandal. The discovery of the corpse of his bodyguard Stevan Marković in a rubbish dump – he had been shot in the head – led to revelations of drug and sex orgies involving a host of personalities from the world of politics and show business, including the wife of the president, Georges Pompidou.

Delon’s friend, the Corsican gangster François Marcantoni, was charged as an accessory to murder but was later released due to lack of evidence. Both Alain and Nathalie were held for questioning, but were not accused. What had alerted police was a letter Marković sent to his brother in which he wrote: “If I get killed, it’s 100% the fault of Alain Delon and his godfather François Marcantoni.”

In the same year, Delon began a 15-year relationship with the actor Mireille Darc, with whom he co-starred in Jeff (1969), the first film made by his own company, Adel, and a few other pictures.

During the same period, under Malle’s direction, he portrayed William Wilson, an Austrian officer and gambler, who murders his doppelganger, in one of three segments based on Edgar Allan Poe stories in Spirits of the Dead (1968).

Another of his outstanding performances was the title role of Losey’s Mr Klein (1976), as a French-Catholic art dealer who is mistaken for a Jew of the same name during the occupation in 1942. Unable to convince the Gestapo of the mistaken identity, he is deported.

Many years later, Delon claimed to be a supporter of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. “He is dangerous for the political set because he’s the only one who’s sincere,” Delon declared. “He says out loud what many people think, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own.”

In the 80s, Delon, already a producer of a dozen movies, tried his hand at directing. His two films, Pour la Peau d’un Flic (For a Cop’s Hide, 1981) and Le Battant (The Fighter, 1983), were pale imitations of Melville. But, in 1984, Delon was given two of his last chances to display his acting talents. In Bertrand Blier’s Notre Histoire (Our Story), he was a morose alcoholic, and, in one of the most surprising casting decisions, he played the decadent gay dandy Baron de Charlus in Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love, based on the first volume of Marcel Proust’s novel.

Following his dual role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague (1990), and a number of poorly received films, Delon announced his decision to retire from acting in 1997, although he did star in a television cop series, Frank Riva (2003-04), and made an unexpected appearance as Julius Caesar in Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008). A final TV role came in the drama Une Journée Ordinaire (2011), and he appeared as himself in S Novym Godom, Mamy! (2012), the story of a Russian New Year’s Eve, and Disclaimer (2019), as a talkshow guest.

An honorary Palme d’Or in 2019 provoked complaints against Delon’s history of misogynistic comments and support for the far right. The Cannes festival responded that its concern lay with achievement in cinema: “We’re not going to give (him) the Nobel peace prize.” Also that year came the video release of the song, Paroles, Paroles, that had given the singer Dalida and him a hit in 1973.

Delon, who became a Swiss citizen after many years’ residence in Geneva, with a second home in Douchy, south of Paris, spent most of his later years as president of a company that produced a variety of products such as perfume, wristwatches, clothing and sunglasses, all with the label AD.

The Velvet Underground singer Nico said that Delon was the father of her son Ari, though he denied it – the boy was adopted by Delon’s mother and stepfather, and took their surname, Boulogne; he died in 2023. Delon is survived by his son, Anthony, from his first marriage, and his children, Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, from his second marriage, to Rosalie van Breemen, which ended in divorce in 2002.

🔔 Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon, actor and producer, born 8 November 1935; died 18 August 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[adobe-outdesign]

Shelmet/karrablast lines review?

I'm going to preface this review by stating that I HATE trade-only evolutions. I'll spare you all from an extensive ramble, but the tl;dr is that they're obnoxious, counter-productive, and ultimately only serve to make it harder to get certain Pokemon.

HOWEVER, with that said, these two lines are the only time the idea of a trade-evo actually seems justified due to the way the two interact with each other. It's still not my favorite thing in the world (I feel like they could just evolve by being placed next to each other in one's party), but at least there's a rationale behind it instead of just abritrary decisions on the part of GameFreak.

Anyway, all that aside, I really like Shelmet here, and it's probably my favorite out of these four. The snail combined with a knight theme is super simple but reads really clearly, and the droopy eye and silly mouth give it a lot of personality. The colors are also nice, with the pinks and greens popping nicely against the neutral gray shell.

My only nitpick is related to the typing—this should've been bug/steel, for reasons we'll get into later.

Accelgor has a completely different, more ninja-esc theme, but this makes sense due to the loss of its shell, which was where all the knight theming came from in the first place.

This design is also good—the lines on the head accent the swirled shape nicely, which is also fairly accurate to how a shell-less snail looks. The pinks and greens once again draw attention to the head, and the brooding expression is great.

I'll admit though, something about the lower body throws me a bit. The body being bandaged to make up for the lack of a shell is great, but the actual shape of the body is so... flat and rigid compared to the nice curves of its head. Maybe if it curled a bit at the bottom too it would have a better flow. The bandages are also a bit too dark in color, loosing some of the contrast Shelmet's lighter gray had. Still, it's decent and gets the idea across well enough.

Gotta admit, I'm not a big fan of Karrablast. The idea of a beetle Pokemon makes perfect sense because it's based off of various kinds of beetles that eat snails and/or pupate in their shells, but Karrablast is just so amorphous and generic that you'd be hard pressed to even recognize it as a beetle, which really makes the theme fall apart a bit. Maybe it's just a me thing, as I'm not big on Pokemon with more "ambiguous" body shapes like this.

I also think it should've had more to do with Accelgor thematically. Escavalier "steals" Shelmet's knight theme, so I feel like Karrablast should've also had a ninja-ish theme to match Accelgor.

All that aside, it's okay. The expression is at least a lot of fun with its little fangs, and the colors contrast nicely compared to the Shelmet line's, but the light blue triangle on the head feels out of place and I'm not a big fan of the weird head-pincers. At the end of the day, it's not terrible, but it does feel like the weak link in this line.

Escavalier, however, is pretty fun. Expanding on Shelmet's knight theme, it now has a pair of lances and a large area on top of the helmet somewhat evocative of a feathered headpiece. The shape of this headpiece also helps match with the bottom half of the shell with its curved shape. Overall, a fun execution.

I do think it could've been a bit stronger conceptually though. For one, Shelmet mostly keeps the same palette as it evolves, so it feels like the red accents on Escavalier should've been blue to match its pre-evo; it would also simplify the palette, seeing as it already has Karrablast's blues and yellows on its body.

And secondly, the typing. It definitely feels like the steel-type comes out of nowhere when Shelmet is only bug-type. I think it would've been much better if Shelmet was bug/steel and Karrablast was bug/dark; then when they evolve, it flips, so Accelgor would've been bug/dark and Escavalier's bug/steel now fits with the concept. Minor thing obviously, but it's always bugged me (no pun intended). I still enjoy Escavalier overall regardless though.

As a whole, it's nice to see a line (or lines, in this case) that finally puts the trade evo idea to good use. I think the concept could've been stronger in a few spots, but it's still a fun theme and obvious enough to figure out through the visuals alone.

[doctorstrangereview]

0013: Strange Tales #123

Cover Date: August 1964 On-Sale Date: May 12, 1964

Doc once again interacts with the Marvel Universe at-large. He faces a new-to-him, but not new foe. The Mighty Thor's sparring partner, Loki, visits our master sorcerer with evil intentions. Doc shares half the cover this round! His popularity must be growing. He's also got something weird going on with his hands that may be the colorist's bad decision. Doc's hands are flesh colored but his wrists are orange like his gloves. It's almost like the gloves are in multiple parts and Doc chose to wear only the gauntlet parts. However, no line creates a clear delineation between hands and possible gauntlets. The masterworks recoloring respects this odd choice. The Pocket Books reprints from 1978 did not and made them appear as regular gloves. The bottom of the splash page promises Thor putting in an appearance "drawn in the somewhat different Ditko style." Ditko is better at Kirby characters than Kirby is with Ditko characters.

Doc, enjoying a casual day (sans big cloak,) floats in his study attempting to master the art of levitation, while he is being spied on by Loki, Asgardian god of evil. At this point, Loki is pure evil and not the ambiguous, non-binary imp of today. As we've seen multiple times before, Doc isn't so hot on the security thing, mystic or physical so any magic user can peek on what's going on inside the Sanctum Sanctorum. Doc may be in the same study we've seen before, but the Sanctum's depiction has always been really inconsistent so who knows?

Loki spends several panels in long-winded exposition for the audience's sake which boils down to "I will trick Doctor Strange into stealing Thor's hammer for me!" He conjures a cool looking insect type sigil above his cauldron (which is really just a hole in the ground) and pops into Doc's Sanctum delivering Doc quite a surprise! He even dressed in odd chains for the occasion and blaming the "evil" Thor for his predicament!

Now, the Avengers have been around nearly as long as Doc has at this point and Loki has been annoying Thor for longer than that. Doc is also a highly skilled and well informed magic user. It seems to be stretching suspension of disbelief to think Doc is completely unaware of who Loki is. Yet, he seems to have never heard of Loki here. I guess no one had answered that Village Voice ad for continuity coordinator yet.

Doc's All-Purpose Amulet probes Loki's chains not suspecting that the evil he senses is Loki, not the fake Thor chains. "Dude! Only Thor's gnarly hammer can free me!" "Okay dude, but I need a piece of the hammer to cast the proper spell!" "What a coincidence! I have this little sliver of leather from the handle that I've been carrying around since the beginning of time!" "Perfect! Let's go!"

Doc throws the sliver into his own cauldron, mumbles some mumbo-jumbo and viola, a metal hand rises from the cauldron, flies off and grabs Thor's hammer. He's in mid-flight so he's got no where to go but down. Loki is able to see this and then imagines a giant version of himself standing on the earth with a giant version of the hammer, apparently unaware of the massive gravity disruption giant Loki with giant Mjolnir would cause.

Doc, using his own investigative skills and the All-Purpose Amulet sees there is no evil in that little, tiny bit of leather and realizes "It was Loki all along!" He might have been smart enough to deduce this, but not smart enough to not say it out loud. Loki's sharp ears (even though covered by his costume) catch this and he attacks Doc. Doc threatens to stop the spell which has stolen the hammer, which is probably something he should have done at that moment.

What follows is a visually spectacular battle between the two. Doc is severely outmatched by Loki, but soldiers on. There's some back and forth where Doc imprisons Loki who shrugs it off and Loki imprisons Doc who has a much more difficult time escaping. Using illusion images of himself, Doc hides in the next room, changes to his spirit form, sneaks up on Loki and cancels his "steal Thor's hammer spell."

The hand disappears and the caption reads that "time spins back, back... until, before Thor's fall finished..." Does this mean that Thor went splat? Did the spell rewind the world, like Superman in the first Christopher Reeve movie? The world may never know.

"Oh, hell!" thinks Loki, "I really need to hurry things along." Doc attempts to entrap Loki in the Purple Dimension, but that doesn't work. Doc uses the All-Purpose Amulet to throw up a shield as a last resort. Loki crouches like a monkey and uses what looks like a floppy lightning bolt to pummel Doc. It's quite a ridiculous panel! I love it!

Thor flies toward the Sanctum as Loki prepares to administer the coup-de-grace. "Damn it! Gotta go, Doc!" Loki's spirit form returns to Asgard as Thor flies by the Sanctum. We get a close-up look at Ditko's Thor. It's definitely different from the Kirby rendition, but it certainly isn't bad. In fact it's slightly more realistic.

Just wait until Kirby draws Doc again in a couple of months!

Thor's hammer stops tingling so he doesn't visit Doc but flies by the big, round Vishanti window as Doc looks out. Doc says some platitudes on how good must always triumph over evil out loud to himself and our story ends.

Well that was exciting! We get a truly one-sided battle where Doc is really overwhelmed by his foe. As a bonus, we get an Avenger guest starring. But that's really a cock-tease since he's more plot device than character. I really wish I could ask Lee and Ditko if Thor actually died in this story and was magically un-splatted. Visually, the battle between Loki and Doc is great. Ditko is getting more and more imaginative depicting magic. He is also getting lazier when it comes to backgrounds and they're mostly negative space. I suppose it helps when the funky chairs don't distract from the bolts of bedevilment. Overall, it was nice to have Doc interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe again, especially in his own series.

[the-epic-hiram-lows]

i would LOVE director's commentary on your favorite moodboard(s)

OMG, you just gave me license to be so pretentious, anon. Thank you. I will try to make this DVD commentary as entertaining and insightful as possible.

These will be very long, so I will do one per post. Let's go in chronological order.

Penelope Blossom

For clarity, I will go L-R from each row, starting at the top.

I had about 5-6 glove options, but they all came off too garish. I mostly settled on this one because of the unsettling normalcy of the backdrop. While Penelope is a gothic heroine, her type of evil lurks in the most mundane of places.

I swear I have a clear image of Penelope playing a piano. If not canon, it feels right. That was the cherry on top of this sundae. I searched far and wide for the right traumacore image with this theme. Lots of options were too specific. I am so happy I found this one, which is nearly the exact quote I searched for, and had a red theme.

I hate that I chose this, and keep kicking myself for doing two wardrobe-based pictures in the same row, though a good 45% of me thinks that their existing on the same row evokes a story, and makes it look intentional. Also, this is Dolce.

This one came up while searching for an entirely different Penelope-related picture. I think it is the first one I found. It felt like such a happy coincidence I didn't bother searching for anything similar. The shoe was already red, which really makes it seem fated that it showed up in a completely unrelated search. I love that it feels distinctly 80s. Not only is that the era of Penelope's origin story, but it shows Penelope's range. Who else can effortlessly flow from 80s pulp to gothic Victorian?

I spent at least a full hour trying to find the perfect photo of old Hollywood hair to crop. It didn't even have to be red. Nothing worked. I must have searched 10 terms. I even resorted to Google. Finally, I just searched 'hair extension' in hopes of an extreme close up. I ended up falling in love with the simplicity of this image. It really enhanced the 'fox in the snow' color palette I wanted- more on that later. I'm not thrilled with the color job (it was a warm blonde originally. I just enhanced the reds to the nth degree) but it'll do. I had to put red hair in the center because it defined her entire path. Had her genes been slightly different, the Blossoms would not have adopted her with nefarious intent.

This is as literal as it is metaphorical. On a metaphorical level, the keys reflect that she is a captor (and, within that, another metaphor- most of the captivity she causes is psychological.) The keys also serve as a literal encapsulation of the aesthetic she curated. Of course, that aesthetic also largely informs the genres of her story lines. The aesthetic also shows a deep attachment to the past. She chooses nostalgia over convenience (keys over doors that lock themselves,) but not because she enjoys reminiscing. Speaking of the past, though she is a captor now, she was a captive in the past she clings to.

Probably too on-the-nose. I debated this, then told myself any other representation of her poison plants would either be too ambiguous or not aesthetically cohesive.

I love this next to the previous picture. A two frame story. What really made me go 'JACKPOT' was the layers upon layers of Penelope's story it applies to. Firstly, it's a goblet. This is an obvious nod to G&G- the blue juice, the aesthetics of her campaign and the game as a whole, and the scene with Alice in the bathroom. It also echoes of the poison challenge she made Veronica and Betty complete. That brings me to the next element- the fact the photo is a representation of being poisoned. Due to cropping, I'm not 100% sure it comes through, but the photo is someone collapsed on the floor with a spilling goblet. It's a trope we've seen a million times. We know that poison is one of Penelope's signature weapons of choice. Through which medium? Gardening. And what is spilling out of that goblet? Rose petals. Specifically, red roses. It is as if Penelope left a kiss of death for someone as a calling card (fitting, given her former profession.) The flowers are as delicate as they are unassuming, like any good femme fatale. It also serves as a stealthy nod to The Flowers in the Attic.

This is what she wants most, is it not? In some ways, she reminds me of one scene in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (if you haven't seen it, please do,) where the antagonist tells his ambiguously deserving victim "I don't know if what is happening is fair, but it's the only thing I can think of that's close to justice." Penelope, pathologically stuck on the past, can only focus on vengeance. It is not fair that she suffered, so she must make others suffer. There is no changing the past, so the people who caused her suffering must pay for it. However, Penelope is lawful evil. She does not act out of apathy or a pure love for depravity. She has a code. See: the challenges she forced the core four to do. If Penelope wanted to, she had ample opportunity to simply murder them. She didn't need to provide an antidote for the poison at the end of the game, either, but Penelope has a love for the game. While you could (and maybe should) argue this is also plot armor in action, I think it shows that Penelope has some sort of internal moral code that informs her villainous logic. Sure, Hal died, but that's because someone had to pay... and Hal committed the worse sin of all: failing to deliver what Penelope needed of him. So, yes, there is some 'honor' in her evil... but, more importantly, honor is what she hopes to achieve through the vengeance. Who will give a little orphan girl the honor she deserved? Nobody did, so she must retroactively honor that girl's suffering with revenge.

Miscellaneous/broad notes now! The second I was tasked with doing a Penelope mood board, I had an immediate color scheme in mind. I wanted a pale, fiery, striking palette that still had a dark gothic feel. Looking back, I wish I toyed with it more, but I stayed true to the image of greys, whites and reds cloaked in darkness.

I also immediately knew at least 4 of the 9 image concepts I wanted. All of the mood boards were difficult for their own reasons- for Penelope, it was narrowing down options, which is a good problem, all things considered.

I decided very early on that I wanted my mood boards to be a psychological study. They must treat every delusion as reality, because they are firmly grounded in the subjects' mind set and self image. For instance, I would not put something like 'shut up you smarmy bastard' on a Bret board. That is exterior perception. I would love to do more broad mood boards later on, where I tackle the character design, including fan reception and/or in-universe reception to the character, but I nixed that for my first round of mood boards. Instead, I told myself I need to tap into every ounce of empathy in my body and tell the story Penelope tells herself. Some things, like the set of keys, do double as an Easter egg of sorts. They apply to Penelope as both a victim and a perpetrator, but I don't think that is something Penelope is exceptionally ignorant to (see: Alice Cooper.)

I originally wanted an extreme close-up of baroque applique detailing as homage to her fashion sense (baroque, Victorian, the occasional military and circus reference.) I have no real reason for nixing this, but it was one of the first images I knew I wanted.

The reason I went with Penelope for my first mood board was: I got an ask requesting a mood board, but didn't want to decide who its subject would be. I went into the Riverdale chat and said "name a character." The first response was @serialkillerbettycooper saying Penelope. One of the intriguing early replies was Caramel the Cat, which I am high key considering.

The end! I will come back with Jughead commentary next time. If you've made it this far, I am seriously impressed and love you very much. Also, I didn't proofread this, so if you see errors/repetition... no you don't, actually!

[applin-bottom-jeans]

trying to reorganize my life for new years

through the power of agile brainrot i'm doing a new thing for time tracking and i kind of want to share it here (especially since i don't have a real update for pigeon-splice like i wanted)

so last year i tried to figure out organizational methods for the stuff i had in my life because my current system - writing down weekly todos and then breaking those into daily tasks - wasn't really working, both in the short term (large tasks that need to be done during the day get kicked, forever) and long term (no tracking for long term projects with deadlines)

but then two things happened

i read up on agile stuff

i got put on a better release type of my meds and holy shit i am less wiaefrjueiwahjfdeioswAFHeouihf (and then got put back on the old version because of a miscommunication between docs and then put back on the new version, more on that later)

I'm not a big fan of kanban because i feel like in card form seeing all of the cards you have in your queue gets extremely overwhelming, especially if you dont have a good way of organizing them by tag (so really, i just hate trello).

but scrum. im in a deep love-hate relationship with scrum. Here's my understanding of scrum, which may not be entirely accurate, with commentary -

Sprint - a length of time where work is measured, usually 2 weeks - no comment, perfect length of time, love that

scrum points - how much work you think a task will take, which will help determine the amount of work you have planned for a sprint - this can get ambiguous depending on the work you do. What happens if something goes wrong? What happens if you need more information and need more time? I understand that there are many tasks that you can learn to estimate well, but at what point is a bad estimation due to your performance or outside factors?

burndown chart - how many scrum points you estimated vs how many you've actually done - this helps with the issue with points and i think its good in theory but also i really don't want a chart of how poorly im doing thats easily accessible by someone higher up in the food chain who might want to decide who to lay off

Sprint planning - a meeting where you plan what will be in a sprint - great. no commentary.

standup - a meeting with your team every day to discuss what you're working on - introspection is good but why do i have to tell my entire team this information every single day. i have an anxiety disorder

sprint review - discussing how the sprint went and how much you got done - good, great

sprint retrospective - basically the same as the review but with vibes - not sure why this is a different meeting but ok

Basically i like the idea of scrum and i really like the philosophy of its work tracking but i feel like the implementation of it in a team turns it into glorified micromanagement. But this is for personal use? Seems good, lets try it out

This still doesn't really help solve the long term project problem but for that i organized the year into financial quarters, like a completely normal person.

So for every quarter this year, i'm planning on having a set of quarter wide goals (duration measured in a month or more), a sprint level goal (duration of days - weekish), and a daily goal (should be as simple as possible).

My general goals for the year is get better at art to the point where i'm finally happy with it, get through all the craft supplies i've accumulated through the years, do big stupid projects, and get healthier i guess. This quarter I'm working on a big BD2 project, a couple of sweaters, a few art challenges, and cleaning my apartment. In the end, my breakdown for this looks like this:

Q1:

Quarter-wide

* BD2 Project

* Two sweaters

* 3 art challenges

* Deep Clean apartment

* Ramp up back to exercising regularly

* Get 6 pages into the pokemon cross stitch project

* Get 2 haircuts (usually i get 1.5 every 3 months...)

Every sprint

* Run 4 times

* Make 1 good painting

* Make 1 practice painting (Q1 emphasis on portraits)

* Make 1 jewelry set (necklace, or earrings, or whatever)

* Buy food

* Clean out previously cleaned parts of the apartment

Every day

* Draw a bird (practice painting)

For this sprint I'm about to start, Bidoof (I named my sprints after dinky pokemon), I have the following specific goals which may intersect with the list above:

Ooblets Painting

Carpenters Close To You Practice Painting

Ahmed Aldoori's 100 head challenge

Clear out my closets

Make a fish pendant and lil anchor earrings

Page 2 of the pokemon cross stitch

Make squares for the current sweater i'm making

"Wtf is LSDJ" and beg people to listen to what i come up with

Get the music plan into LSDJ

And for any tasks that I didn't finish, they either

get kicked to the next sprint, in this case Carbink

get obliterated to hell

so i have the flexibility sometimes to push things off if they're not working out. i have already kicked out a lot of the LSDJ stuff because last week i had to go back on my old meds so i had to transition to old antidepressants and then transition back again to the new antipressants and my brain didn't like that. but its fine, we're fine. help

I then have a todo list i make for the day in the morning and i try to grab whatever i can from the goals list.

and yeah. i hope this helps getting my stuff together for this year. i already feel more on top of things but that might just be the antidepressants so

[badedramay]

can i say that i really don't understand why everyone is so vehemently intent to criticize the fact that kim calls elders by their name? i understand it's not really a thing but isn't the entire point that kim has grown largely removed from any kind of pakistani community, so she's adopted the practices of those around her instead? it's incredibly common for americans here to refer to adults by name once they're adults themselves. and even then if it still isn't believable i think it's absolutely ridiculous people are eager to write off the whole drama merely bc kim is unconventional when it comes to a few things. we're so obsessed with maintaining this "ideal" diaspora image that we can't even invest in a drama for more than two episodes to see what it has to say. not to mention diaspora pakistanis are hardly a monolith. i'm not an ideal diaspora pakistani myself. i'm not a pti supporter, i don't really hold a lot of nationalist sentiment, i talk freely with and openly challenge my parents. if i wrote a story about myself would that be unrealistic too? people have got to start questioning the things that make them stop watching dramas and the things that don't. they're more willing to field abuse narratives bc at the least it's "realistic" and familiar than they are willing to field anything out of the ordinary simply bc it doesn't speak to their direct experiences. what a load of nonsense

gaah i wish i had better technical knowledge to name the right terms and not just the concept which would give my answer brevity but alas, i am forever cursed to type in long winded paragraphs so pls bear with me here T_T

i just feel that the Pakistani desi audience, diaspora and non, have a very..strenuous relationship with identity. we don't HAVE an identity. in the larger global political landscape, Pakistan doesn't really stand apart. not our food, not our clothing, not the cultures of our country; there's nothing that can be credited to being solely originated from here. the food we take pride in on the global level is attributed to India. same goes for our clothing. when we try to own something as our own, there's someone else standing up to take claim ke jee actuallyyyyy this is originated from our land so please back off. there's a reason why Ertrugrul, a Turkish dizi about a historical figure of the Ottomon Empire's time, became a rage in Pakistan to the point of being promoted by our then-PM because Pakistan, a country that supposedly got its freedom on the basis of the religion Islam, doesn't even have one single "perfect" Muslim figure that they can own. we are constitutionally an Islamic country but the state of the religion and its interpretation in the country is pathetic to say the least.

hum kaun hain? humein nahin pata. we are something else in our heads and completely something different in reality. and the two versions don't match. this conflict becomes most apparent when interpreting the stories of our dramas. the good, perfect, ideal mashriqi character satisfy the perfect version in our heads. the modern, flawed character is seen as an attack on our "values" and hence banned. ironically BOTH these kind of characters are defended as "aise log hote hain dunya mein! Maine khud dekhe hain!" so what's the reality here?

and because we don't even HAVE an identity to speak of so we have yet to ACCEPT the fact that yes, people are different. and because people are different, CHARACTERS will be different too. just because these characters don't look and sound like ME doesn't mean they are a bad representation or unrealistic characters. they are not my mirror, doesn't mean they don't reflect anyone. have you noticed how in Pakistani media we don't really get characters that are defined by their background? like their cities are almost always deliberately kept ambiguous? at most you'll get the Karachi vs Lahore vs Islamabad debate and the characters hailing from only these particular backgrounds will have any kind of obviously noticed traits. but what about countless other areas of the country?

In Indian media you'll see characters being known by their cities and immediately all of their idiosyncrasies are accepted ke haan, they are from this particular area toh they gonna be different. yes, this gives rise to stereotypes BUT there's also an acceptance of the characters as they are hence, allowing them to be explored as individuals and not just a perfect representation of whatever place they hail from. in Pakistani media you don't have that. because our media, in dramas specifically, EMPHASIZES on the entire culture and identity of our country as BEING homogeneous. and anyone who is even remotely related to this identity HAS to act in accordance of the rules and mores of this society or be rejected.

which brings us to Kim. Kim hasn't been accepted by the audience because of her father's Pakistani origins. Kim herself is a true American, she never set foot in Pakistan before the start of the drama. in fact if not for her mother's upbringing, Kim wouldn't even have learned her parents' mother tongue. the tragedy with Kim is that the writer couldn't give her either accurate American traits not accurate Pakistani traits so she's stuck in between. Pakistani audience cannot accept her as their own, the diaspora audience cannot accept her as their own. everything else becomes secondary because Kim DARES to have an IDENTITY that cannot be neatly boxed. She's just Kaneez "Kim" Fatima.

the failure to understand that for the story of Yunhi to work, Kim HAD to have selective traits from the liberal west and the conservative east is really most because Kim serves as a reminder of our own lack of solid identity. the fact that if she tried to she could fit in either of these opposing societies is what baffles people. how could she? you are either east or west. you cannot be separated from either of these like Kim.

on one hand social media is exposing us to inter-racial relationships or transnational relationships (yes, even amongst Muslims) making us aware of how people can choose to make their own world that combines the two worlds from which they belong. on the other hand we as a society are still having generational fights over "ji hamare yahan toh yeh ritual aisa hota hai hum aapke tareeqe ko nahin maante". the little bit of sense of identity that we do have, we cling to it desperately and want to defend it from inauthentic people like Kim in media that challenge our notions of identity. Kim can say a 10000 right things but because one of the most prominent feature of our society is that we always address all elders with a title of respect, Kim not doing that makes her an outsider. but she's worse than an outsider, she's a traitor to her Pakistani identity. which...she never claimed to be in the first place??

I can bet if Maya had perfected the New York accent and that reflected even in her Urdu dialogues, the criticism about her calling the elders by the name wouldn't have been that much. it'd have been "cute" then kyunke identity toh hamari hai nahin, complexes toh MaShaAllah bohat zyada hai. angrezi ke talway chaatna toh hum lagta hai Ammi ke pait se seekh ke aate hain. khair. Kim doesn't attach respect to titles but to people. sure, she calls her MiL by her first name but has she ever disrespected her. I thought that was one of the POINTS™ the show was making that just being ADDRESSED with a title of respect is not enough when our individual identity is denied and disrespected on every chance. is it really that deep jo samajh mein nahin araha hai ab tak?

urrgh this is running long and I think i lost the thread of sense long ago but just one last thing! it's been 30 episodes now, right? and until now Kim hasn't CHANGED in appearance. and the desi diaspora is OBSESSED with appearances. sahi dikho, sahi bolo; dil bhale jaisa bhi ho. be politically correct, be diplomatic. make your intentions as crude as possible but never let your language reflect that. cuz that is all we have to offer. the Pakistani diaspora, in all these years, hasn't produced much of progressive mindsets or done anything to own their identity. toh sabko chupa lo carpet ke neeche..keep your head down, say the right things, and just hope we'll be ignored. apni dunya mein mast raho bass.

[queersatanic]

Now, that second one in Matthew 19 is a lot more interesting, and it is surprisingly ambiguous, just not in the way Christians think.

Again, non sequitur from what came before but this time the lead is important thematically rather than narratively.

Jesus Blesses Little Children 13 Then children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them, 14 but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” 15 And he laid his hands on them and went on his way. The Rich Young Man 16 Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. 19 Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20 The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” 27 Then Peter said in reply, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” 28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

If you follow the link to the whole chapter, you see that this section has a ton of small variants connected to it of a missing or replaced words, which definitely gives the impression people were tinkering with this one a lot.

It's extremely provocative, hence conservative Christians saying, "Well yeah, but there was a certain gate in Jerusalem called needle, and you see a camel could only just fit through there" or the idea that there was some kind of misunderstanding, and Jesus said the word for "a thick cable of rope", which in Greek (kamilon) sounds sort of like the word for "camel" (kamelon).

This is bullshit.

There is no good evidence that, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle” was anything but a hyperbole referencing a very large animal and a teeny-tiny space, and there’s quite a bit of evidence that it meant exactly that.

First, we have the plain reading of the text and its context, which is fundamentally the same in every version (except that Luke turns the man into a "ruler".

Mark

Luke

Matthew

The people who hear the phrase don’t shrug and go, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” They’re baffled, and they’re baffled because, in the context of the time, rich people are supposed to be most blessed. If that’s what a teacher is saying about the most blessed people in society, what does it mean for the rest of us? Hence the punchline, “Through God, all things are possible.”

2. But if that’s not convincing, we have other examples from further east where a similar phrase is used that would be appropriate there: an elephant through the eye of a needle.

So within the Babylonian Talmud, you have these references

Rabbi Yonatan said...How will you know the thoughts of your heart? By their being revealed to you in a dream. Rava said: Know that this is the case, for one is neither shown a golden palm tree nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle in a dream. In other words, dreams only contain images that enter a person’s mind. Rav Sheshet said mockingly to him, employing a similar style: Perhaps you are from Pumbedita, where people pass an elephant through the eye of a needle, i.e., they engage in specious reasoning.

If you’re someone in Judea, probably the biggest animal you’ll have seen will have been a camel, thus the literal image of an impossibility is still what you’re supposed to have in your mind. That’s why it’s a big deal that Jesus is saying, “That’s how hard it is for rich people to get to heaven.”

3. Maybe the best evidence comes from one of the non-canonical books, “The Acts of Peter and Andrew”. In Christian “Expanded Universe” text, everything gets dialed up a bit more.

Here, Peter uses magic or a literal miracle to make the eye of the needle big enough to fit a camel through:

13 There was a rich man named Onesiphorus who said: If I believe, shall I be able to do wonders Andrew said: Yes, if you forsake your wife and all your possessions. He was angry and put his garment about Andrew’s neck and began to beat him, saying: You are a wizard, why should I do so. 14 Peter saw it and told him to leave off. He said: I see you are wiser than he. What do you say? Peter said: I tell you this: it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

... [The rich dude gets mad, so Peter needs to prove it]. ...

There was a huckster in the town who had been converted by Philip; and he heard of it, and looked for a needle with a large eye, but Peter said: Nothing is impossible with God rather bring a needle with a small eye. 17 When it was brought, Peter saw a camel coming and stuck the needle in the ground and cried: In the name of Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate I command thee, camel, to go through the eye of the needle. The eye opened like a gate and the camel passed through; and yet again, at Peter’s bidding.

That telling seems to be a fair bit later, but very clearly, that’s how the statement was received by the people reading the gospels originally: something necessitating fucking magic to resolve.

So it's not debatable that "it's a "it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to pass through heaven" is supposed to be an impossible.

What is debatable is whether the meaning is that rich people are worse than regular people and this is an example of "the last will be first and the first will be last" sort of talk or if it’s playing on the idea that the rich are indeed especially blessed — and not even they can manage it, which is why people need God.

Now, to the original point: every biblical literalist is going to make exceptions because they are certainly not ripping their eye out when it caused them to sin, they aren't calling for society to follow the Hebrew Bible when it talks about things like debt cancellation, and they aren't living like the original Christians when it comes to selling all they own to share in common and take care of the poor. The original tweet is not off base with that.

However, the original example is hurt deeply by ignoring that sex workers are placed in the exact same category as imperial tax farmers, and by doing the liberal/leftist Christian thing of reading the Bible as if it is secretly always radical and supportive of human liberty rather than a confusing centuries-spanning argument between dozens or hundreds of minds, all with completely different ways of looking at the world and different agendas for readers, with authors and copyists who edited and struck things from the traditions and writings as they went creating contradictions everywhere among the texts what we have in front of us now.

Thee bad news is that these contradictions are not easily or finally resolvable by anyone, but the good news is that that's what makes it interesting, and the best news is that there is no one to resolve these things but us.

[rightserve]

Why BIM Is Essential for Construction Projects?

Building Information Modelling, or BIM for short, is quickly becoming the foundation of modern construction and is not just another tech trend. It makes project planning, management, and delivery easier. And as we look toward 2025, its advantages are undeniable, regardless of whether you are dealing with a small housing development or a skyscraper.

Collaboration Made Simple

Construction projects can make you feel like you're herding cats because there are so many people, so much information, and so much room for mistakes. BIM helps to control that chaos. It makes the same model available to everyone, so whether you're the architect, contractor, or engineer, you can all use the same tune. What's better? Without the need for incessant phone calls or emails, it keeps everyone on the same page. Less anxiety and fewer errors.

Tech That Actually Makes Life Easier

Every day, the tools that support BIM become more sophisticated. AI can handle repetitive design decisions (say goodbye to time-consuming alterations), and augmented reality enables teams to visualize projects long before construction begins. Digital twins, or having a virtual version of your building that displays its performance in real time, are another option. It's clever stuff, but its main goal is to help you make better decisions and avoid problems in the future.

A Greener Way to Build

Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword. Businesses are aware that it is the right thing to do, regulators insist on it, and clients want it. By enabling teams to digitally test designs, materials, and energy-saving features before laying a single brick, BIM makes sustainability more attainable. This method saves money, reduces emissions, and reduces waste. Who doesn't like a win-win situation?

Perfect for Global Teams

 Things can quickly become complicated when projects involve teams spread across countries or even continents. With global standards, BIM eliminates these obstacles and makes it simpler for everyone to share models and collaborate. Regardless of where your teams are based, there will be no more ambiguity caused by disparate tools or measurements.

Not Just for Mega Projects

Think again if you think that BIM is only for large-scale projects and skyscrapers. It works just as well for smaller construction projects like remodeling offices or homes. Do you have to stick to a limited budget? BIM can assist. Are you concerned about running into issues midway through? BIM finds problems early, which saves you time and money. It works for any project, no matter how big or small.

[govindhtech]

NL2SQL With Gemini And BigQuery: A Step-by-Step Guide

Conversion of natural language to SQL

Beginning to use Gemini and BigQuery for NL2SQL (natural language to SQL)

The intriguing new technology known as Natural Language to SQL, or NL2SQL, was created by combining the classic Structured Query Language (SQL) with Natural Language Processing (NLP). It converts inquiries written in common human language into structured SQL queries.

The technology has enormous potential to change how we engage with data, which is not surprising.

With the help of NL2SQL, non-technical users like marketers, business analysts, and other subject matter experts can engage with databases, examine data, and obtain insights independently without requiring specific SQL expertise. Even SQL experts can save time by using NL2SQL to create sophisticated queries, which allows them to devote more time to strategic analysis and decision-making.

On the ground, how does that appear? Imagine having instant access to a chat interface where you can ask inquiries and receive real-time replies, or

“How many units were sold overall this month?”

“What are the main factors influencing the shift in APAC sales when comparing Q1 and Q2 sales?”

In the past, this would have required an expert to extract information from databases and turn it into business insights. By lowering obstacles to data access, it can democratize analytics by utilizing NL2SQL.

However, a number of obstacles prevent NL2SQL from being extensively used. We’ll look at NL2SQL solutions on Google Cloud and implementation best practices in this blog.

Data quality issues in practical applications

Let us first examine some of the factors that contribute to the difficulty of implementing NL2SQL.

Real-world production data poses a number of difficulties, even if NL2SQL performs best in controlled settings and straightforward queries. These difficulties include:

Data formatting variations: The same information can be expressed in a variety of ways, such as “Male,” “male,” or “M” for gender, or “1000,” “1k,” or “1000.0” for monetary amounts. Additionally, many organizations use poorly defined acronyms of their own.

Semantic ambiguity: Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently lack domain-specific schema comprehension, which results in semantic ambiguity. This can cause user queries to be misinterpreted, for example, when the same column name has many meanings.

Syntactic rigidity: If semantically correct queries don’t follow SQL’s stringent syntax, they may fail.

Unique business metrics: NL2SQL must manage intricate business computations and comprehend table relationships via foreign keys. To translate the question effectively, one must have a sophisticated understanding of the tables that need to be connected and modeled together. Additionally, there is no one standard approach to determine the business KPIs that each corporation should use in the final narrative report.

Client difficulties

Users’ questions are frequently unclear or complicated, so it’s not only the data that can be unclear or poorly formatted. These three frequent issues with user inquiries may make NL2SQL implementation challenging.

Ambiguous questions: Even questions that appear to be clear-cut can be unclear. For example, a query looking for the “total number of sold units month to date” may need to specify which date field to use and whether to use average_total_unit or running_total_unit, etc. The perfect NL2SQL solution will actively ask the user to select the correct column and use their input when creating the SQL query.

Underspecified questions: Another issue is queries that are not detailed enough. For example, a user’s question concerning “the return rate of all products under my team in Q4” does not provide enough details, such as which team should fully grasp the question. An optimal NL2SQL solution should identify areas of ambiguity in the initial input and ask follow-up questions to obtain a comprehensive representation of the query.

Complex queries that require a multi-step analysis: Numerous questions require several stages of analysis. Consider figuring out the main causes of variations in sales from quarter to quarter, for instance: A good NL2SQL solution should be able to deconstruct the study into digestible parts, produce interim summaries, and then create a thorough final report that answers the user’s question.

Dealing with the difficulties

In order to address these issues, Google designed Gemini Flash 1.5 as a routing agent that can categorize queries according to their level of complexity. It can enhance its results by applying methods like contribution analysis models, ambiguity checks, vector embeddings, and semantic searches after the question has been classified.

It reacts to instructions in a JSON format using Gemini. Gemini can act as a routing agent, for instance, by responding to the few-shot prompt.

Direct inquiries

The right column names in scope can be clarified for direct inquiries by utilizing in-context learning, draft SQL ambiguity checks, and user feedback loops. Additionally, simple questions can be guaranteed to generate SQL that is clear.

For straightforward inquiries, its method does the following:

Gathers quality question/SQL pairings.

Keeps samples in BigQuery rows.

Enables the question to have vector embeddings

Leverages BigQuery vector search to extract related examples based on the user’s query.

Adds the table structure, question, and example as the LLM context.

Produces a draft SQL

Executes a loop that includes a SQL ambiguity check, user feedback, refinement, and syntax validation.

Performs the SQL

Uses natural language to summarize the data.

Gemini appears to perform well on tasks that check for SQL ambiguity, according to its heuristic testing. Google started by creating a draft SQL model that had all of the table structure and context-related questions. This allowed Gemini to ask the user follow-up questions to get clarification.

Key driver analysis

Key driver analysis is another name for multi-step reasoning-based data analysis in which analysts must separate and organize data according to every possible combination of attributes (e.g., product categories, distribution channels, and geographies). Google suggests combining Gemini and BigQuery contribution analysis for this use case.

Key driver analysis adds the following steps to the ones done with direct questions:

The routing agent refers users to a key driver analysis special handling page when they ask a query about it.

From ground truth stored in a BigQuery vector database, the agent retrieves similar question/SQL embedding pairings using BigQuery ML vector search.

After that, it creates and verifies the CREATE MODEL statement in order to construct a report on contribution analysis.

Lastly, the SQL that follows is executed in order to obtain the contribution analysis report:

The final report appears as follows:

With Gemini, you can further condense the report in natural language:

Implementing NL2SQL on Google Cloud

Even though this can sound difficult, Google Cloud provides a comprehensive set of tools to assist you in putting an effective NL2SQL solution into place. Let’s examine it.

BigQuery vector search is used for embedding and retrieval

By using BigQuery for embedding storage and retrieval, it is possible to quickly find instances and context that are semantically meaningful for better SQL production. Vertex AI’s text embedding API or BigQuery’s ML.GENERATE_EMBEDDING function can be used to create embeddings. It is simple to match user queries and SQL pairs when BigQuery is used as a vector database because of its inherent vector search.

Contribution analysis using BigQuery

Contribution analysis modeling can find statistically significant differences throughout a dataset, including test and control data, to identify areas of the data that are producing unanticipated changes. A section of the data based on a combination of dimension values is called a region.

To help answer “why?” questions, the recently unveiled contribution analysis preview from BigQuery ML enables automated explanations and insight development of multi-dimensional data at scale. Regarding your data, “What happened?” and “What’s changed?”

The contribution analysis models in BigQuery, in summary, facilitate the generation of many queries using NL2SQL, hence increasing overall efficiency.

Ambiguity checks with Gemini 

The process of translating natural language inquiries into structured SQL queries is known as NL2SQL, and it is often unidirectional. Gemini can assist in lowering ambiguity and enhancing the output statements in order to boost performance.

When a question, table, or column schema is unclear, you may utilize Gemini 1.5 Flash to get user input by asking clarifying questions. This will help you improve and refine the SQL query that is produced. Additionally, Gemini and in-context learning can be used to expedite the creation of SQL queries and results summaries in natural language.

Top NL2SQL techniques

For an advantage in your own NL2SQL endeavor, take a look at the following advice.

Start by determining which questions require attention: Depending on the final report’s goal, answering a question may seem straightforward, but getting the intended response and storyline frequently requires several steps of reasoning. Before your experiment, gather the expected natural language ground truth, SQL, and your query.

Data purification and preparation are essential, and using LLMs does not replace them. As needed, establish new table views and make sure that useful descriptions or metadata are used in place of business domain acronyms. Before going on to more complicated join-required questions, start with straightforward ones that just need one table.

Practice iteration and SQL refinement with user feedback: Google’s heuristic experiment demonstrates that iteration with feedback is more effective following the creation of an initial draft of your SQL.

For queries with multiple steps, use a custom flow: Multi-dimensional data explanations and automated insight development can be made possible by BigQuery contribution analysis models.

Next up?

A big step toward making data more accessible and useful for everyone is the combination of NL2SQL, LLMs, and data analytic methods. Enabling users to communicate with databases through natural language can democratize data access and analysis, opening up improved decision-making to a larger group of people in every company.

Data, size, and value can now be rationalized more easily than ever thanks to exciting new innovations like BigQuery contribution analysis and Gemini.

Read more on govindhtech.com

[fettesans]

Top, screen capture from The Hands of Orlac, directed by Robert Wiene, 1924. Via. Bottom, Christian Kölbl, Wer wird Millionär, 2022. Via.

--

But the disorder is only a semblance of disorder. It looks like a verbal torrent, the delirium of a madman, which of course it is meant to resemble in some superficial and theatrical sense, a deranged dramatic monologue (of thought), when in fact it is also artfully controlled, patterned and symmetrical (right down to the substandard Ehrbar piano the narrator plays as a child which returns at the end of the novel as the rented, “horribly untuned” Ehrbar Wertheimer plays for his travesty concert), art as symptom or symptom as art (repetition is a pattern of art and also of dream and neurosis), super-controlled (such an Austrian trait) and at the same time in tension with its own apparent haphazardness and compulsivity.

Hyperbole and absurdity subvert every aspect of Bernhard's novel; hyperbole is the constant marker for irony, the double sign that destroys the fictional facade of plausibility and univocal meaning and points to a second meaning that is absent in the text. This is the ultimate moment of ambiguity and difficulty, the text announcing that it doesn't mean what it says it means. (...)

The Loser fictionalizes the European version of nostalgia for Being (the American version is a retreat to fundamentalist Christianity) and a sense of living in a fallen existential world. It presents three men whose goal is to become transcendent artists; one succeeds, the other two fail, and their psychomachia is rather a soul-unmaking or disintegration leading to paralysis and the one authentic act left, suicide. Glenn Gould is the virtuoso, the genius, the perfect instrument. Albeit, he is also unconsciously cruel and a buffoon. But there are passages in The Loser where the irony seems to lift and some deeper reality is revealed.

The second he [Gould] sat down at the piano he sank into himself, I thought, he looked like an animal then, on closer inspection like a cripple, on even closer inspection like the sharp-witted, beautiful man that he was.

Douglas Glover, from A Scrupulous Fidelity - On Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser, for The Brooklyn Rail, February 2012.

--

(The Albertina's spokesperson Nina) Eisterer said she and her colleagues in The Albertina’s marketing division were Swifties themselves, with several people planning to go to the concerts and personally devastated by the news of the cancellations. After the idea for waived entry fees was approved, the art museum’s security and ticketing teams were informed on August 6 that additional staff would be needed.

The Albertina’s line for Swifties was so long that some fans stood outside in the sun and 91°F heat for approximately 20 minutes. “But there was no fuss about it,” Eisterer said. “People were super nice.”

The museum also switched the soundtracks playing its in 20 historical staterooms from classical music to Taylor Swift albums, prompting several large singalongs that went viral on TikTok.

“I love classical music, I love Mozart, I love Beethoven, I love all these classical artists, but it was really nice to have a Taylor Swift singalong more or less in the state rooms that normally stand for something else,” Eisterer said, noting she had worked for The Albertina for eight years.

Karen K. Ho, from Thousands of Taylor Swift Fans Flood Museums In Vienna After Concerts Cancelled Due to Security Threats, for ARTnews, August 13, 2024.

[dashiellsoren]

Dashiell Soren - AEC Business Management LTD Maverick: Insights on Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0

Dashiell Soren is renowned as a legendary figure in the world of trading, known for founding theAlpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management and spearheading the Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0. In this article, we’ll delve into Dashiell Soren’s trading career, his remarkable achievements in the trading domain, and a detailed analysis of the Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 strategy. Finally, we’ll explore some precious trading wisdom and thought-provoking quotes from Dashiell Soren, insights that hold significant implications for present and future traders.

Who is Dashiell Soren?

Dashiell Soren was born May 20, 1978 in Portland, Oregon.

His family has business acumen that has been passed down through generations and is committed to continually seeking opportunities for advancement and innovation. From an early age, he demonstrated a keen interest in business and investing. Through hard work and study, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management while in college. This schooling experience gave him an in-depth knowledge of the economic and financial fields and provided him with a solid foundation for his future investment path.

In 2019, Dashiell Soren founded Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management, which after years of hard work has gained a reputation in the industry for producing a large number of talented financial practitioners and surpassing 100,000 students by 2022.

At the same time, Dashiell Soren and EIF Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management capitalized on the cryptocurrency market’s ICO opportunity and successfully issued AEC tokens, the success of which was crucial to the improvement of the Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 investment system. The success of the AEC tokens has been instrumental in the development of the Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 investment system.

Dashiell Soren and the Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0

Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 investment system is an artificial intelligence trading system that Dashiell Soren started to perfect in 2019 based on quantitative trading.

After the joining of many experts, scholars, and technological talents, under the leadership of Dashiell Soren, Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management has developed ‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI1.0 Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI1.0’, which improves on the shortcomings of quantitative trading models by making them more efficient, faster and smarter.

‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI1.0’ is mainly based on rules and pattern matching, including knowledge-based reasoning and expert systems. However, AI1.0 has some limitations in dealing with complex and ambiguous problems. To overcome these limitations a team of experts from AEC Business School started looking for new ways to develop more advanced AI systems.

‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI 2.0’ refers to the introduction of machine learning techniques to the 1.0 version.

Machine learning allows AI systems to learn and improve their performance through large amounts of data. This approach is represented by deep learning techniques, which have made many important breakthroughs by building multi-layer neural networks that allow AI systems to extract more advanced features from data.

Based on version 2.0, ‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI3.0’ introduces more perceptual and adaptive capabilities.The AI system can collect data from the environment through data sensors and adjust its behavior and decision-making based on this data. This ability makes the AI system more adaptable to different environments and tasks, becoming an intelligent assistant in the real world.

‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI 4.0’ is currently the latest stage of development, which focuses on the market-wide application of AI in the financial industry.Version 4.0 emphasizes combining AI with technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing, and Big Data to build intelligent solutions.

Alpha Artificial Intelligence Does AI 4.0 work? Why does it work?

Quotes from Dashiell Soren： 1. “The metrics you track today pave the path to tomorrow’s success. Measure wisely; manage astutely.”

2. “Trading isn’t just a career; it’s an unyielding passion that fuels my existence — a love affair with the markets.”

3. “In the battle between high-frequency trading and rising transaction costs, sustained Profitability often favors the latter.”

4. “As a trader, self-education is my constant companion — I learn not just from others, but from the evolving landscape of my own trades.”

5. “The gut has its say in trading. Listen to its whispers, for they may hold the untold nuances of the market’s story.”

6. “Meditate on instincts; reflections reveal the hidden truths behind the intuition that shapes our trades.”

7. “A trader’s success hinges not just on the market’s data but on the relentless study of oneself.”

8. “Where numbers fail to tread, control escapes. Measure meticulously to master the markets.”

9. “Trading isn’t just about logic; it’s about deciphering the emotions coloring our decisions and harnessing their power.”

10. “The relentless pursuit of understanding oneself and the markets births the wisdom that defines a successful trader.”

FAQ:

1. What is Dashiell Soren’s educational background?

Dashiell Soren received his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from the University and became involved in the stock and futures markets while attending Stanford University.

2. When did Dashiell Soren found Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management?

He and his friends founded Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management in 2019.

3. What does Dashiell Soren’s investor experience consist of?

Dashiell Soren has had success in the stock and futures markets while at Stanford University, built a programmatic trading model while pursuing a master’s degree in computer science, and led the Templeton Fund to be named the “World’s Best Emerging Markets Fund”.

4. How did Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management get involved in the AI trading space?

Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management made the leap from quantitative trading to artificial intelligence trading by creating ‘Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0’, an innovation in quantitative trading through the application of artificial intelligence technology.

5. How has the success of Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management influenced Dashiell Soren’s career?

The success of Alpha Elite Capital (AEC) Business Management and the emergence of Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 has led to the rise of Dashiell Soren’s profile, and he is committed to making Alpha Artificial Intelligence AI4.0 a reality. Intelligence AI4.0 a tool to disrupt the investment world and bring new heights to his career.