#full of these huge technological booms

[kn-1013]

i know i've been on my anti-modern AU propaganda lately and it's just because i've been delving deeper into the sally face ao3 tags and i just keep finding them over and over. it's frustrating because there are a lot of really interesting concepts out there that would fit really well and make for a genuinely really interesting story in the 90s, but they get thrown off because the author doesn't know enough about the 90s to write for that time period, so they make it into a modern au instead. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and i think there's room for modern aus to be done well here, i even have my own half-serious modern au, but i do think you often lose part of what makes sally face special when you turn the story into any other kind of contemporary love story/horror story/etc where all the characters just have ~iphones~ and use ~snapchat~ and all these things.

like, the 90s was not some kind of alien planet, and a vast number of the problems that you're solving with smartphones can be worked around very easily with just a bit of research or thought. long distance walkie-talkies, pagers, and PDAs were all (though sometimes expensive) perfectly capable contemporary technologies for talking to people when you are not physically with them. in fact, a lot of the abbreviations and slang we use over text right now was developed by young people in the 90s using pagers to talk to their friends. PDAs were a bit more out there in the 90s than they were in the aughts, but it's still completely plausible for henry in particular to have one, considering he already owns a home computer, which was not at all ubiquitous in the 90s. considering the apparent financial limitations that he and sal live under (it's never stated explicitly, but i mean, they live at addison's, they can't be in a great financial situation) and how insanely expensive computers were back then, it's more than likely that henry's job requires a home computer of some sort, meaning that a PDA would probably be incredibly useful to him if he were away from it, because there's no way in hell he's getting himself a luggable or another kind of early laptop to bring with him, that would've been too expensive.

and that's ignoring the fact that so many situations where two characters are apart form each other but need to communicate could just be fixed by rewriting the plot so that they can meet in person. i know that's not what people wanna hear because rewriting sucks, but you can find a lot of reasons for characters to meet each other randomly or to have reasons to meet up later if you give it a bit of problem-solving. part of what makes the pre-smartphone era interesting to write for and so optimized for horror, and probably a big reason that gabry chose this time period for the story in the first place, is the level of disconnection between each character in the story BECAUSE they don't have things like smartphones. having to work around this technological limitation is part of the fun, because you get a very enjoyable push and pull of closeness vs. disconnection between each character.

this is great for alienating ash, the only one who doesn't live in the apartments (except for neil), and causing her internal conflict about her relationships with the rest of her friends, especially as the story progresses and they start discovering more shit about the cult, and her instincts are to call the cops because she's a lot more normal than her friends are. or, it's good for alienating travis, who also doesn't live there and is far more isolated than everyone else (more on that next), or for creating an unhealthy and codependent relationship between sal and larry, who, with the walkies, are the only two in the friend group who DO have semi-instant access to each other all the time--all of which are plot points i put into my writing.

and if that's not enough, think about the implications for travis's character in particular. his father is a preacher, and a huge talking point of christian extremists in the 90s was that things like television were evil and demonic in some way. they campaigned against these things heavily. with the kind of person that we know kenneth phelps to be and the way many technologies we take for granted today, including TVs, were still being adopted by older generations, it's not out of the question at all that travis doesn't own something like a TV or a VCR, putting him even more out of the loop with what other people his age are doing than he already would be, having approximately 0 friends. he doesn't know what DND is, and he doesn't know how to look it up because he's not familiar with computers or the internet, he just knows his dad thinks it's demonic, so he steers clear of it.

the intention of cult leaders like kenneth is to keep their victims as isolated as possible, and not owning a TV, VCR, home computer, etc, is a great way to keep travis and his sisters isolated and disconnected from their peers, and therefore more connected to the cult, and it's a lot easier to justify not owning these things in the 90s, where the story already takes place, than it is if you're writing a modern au. a modern au for this situation would require all kinds of technological workarounds to make sure that travis owned a phone but couldn't do anything his father didn't want him doing on it. he's the kind of father who would go through and monitor his kid's texts, he wouldn't just let travis have snapchat or whatever, but i digress.

i know i'm just doing my petty bitching and people can do whatever they want however they want to, but i really do feel like there's a huge piece of the story that is lost in turning the sally face story as it is into some kind of modern au, and it's pretty unfortunate to me that people seem to think that the 90s was such a primitive alien world of incomprehensible technology that they don't want to write for that time period at all. it's really not as terrifying as it seems, genuinely. a surface level understanding of the era's technologies would be straightforward enough for anyone who wasn't there to write something perfectly coherent, if lacking in specific cultural/technological details that nobody but me cares about because i have autism.

if you're a sally face fan reading this and you struggle with writing for the american 90s because you weren't there, go look up pagers (also called beepers) and PDAs (which are basically early pocket computers) and how they work. ask older family members if or how they used them. go look at the different kinds of home computers of the era from companies like packard-bell and IBM. learn what a pentium III is/was, or what it means to be X86 compatible. look at the history of the CD-ROM, and how when it was invented, it could contain so much data that consumers had absolutely no idea what to do with them until people started putting video games on them. go watch cathode ray dude, LGR or techmoan on youtube.

go learn things about this era, it's good for you and you will have a lot of fun, even if you're not like me, i promise, and your fanfiction will be better for it. please learn about this era. take my hand. we can go to beautiful places together.

[teastyun]

༻ pound town

arcane sevika x female reader (nsfw)

a/n: i'm going to war (exam phase is about to start), therefore i must make haste (my hiatus starts again). also, i got a new job so i'm not sure when my hiatus will end :(

pt. 1 ; masterlist

grabbing the broom from the back of your mechanics shop, you start you usual closing routine as the streets of Zaun more active as the day ends. growing up in Zaun, you appreciate the livelihood of the people, but grew wary of the criminality rising abruptly at the end of each day. enforcers started to patrol the quiet streets of Zaun and hang up missing posters of Jinx, who you've been visited by for several occasions over the last few months for tech equipment she required. you grew fond of the girl and would occasionally even slip a few extra pieces, and she would thank you proudly by telling you about her latest new technological improvements.

one time, she told you about a prosthesis as her newest invention. Sevika immediately came to your mind and the way she held your cheek the last and first time you saw her. or the way her bionic arm held your hips so strongly as you rode her strap. shit, you really are down bad for this woman who doesn't even know your name.

as several months gone by since then, you managed to gather your savings and invest it into your shop for new techs and products to sell. you were finally able to call your shop your full time job and scrap your shifts at the brothel completely. Sevika didn't only save your shop, but she saved you from drowning in exhaustion as the only thing you ever did was work day and night.

you hoped to see her again, but your hope was slowly scarped as each month passed by.

after sweeping the last corner of your shop, you only had to rearrange your products before you could finally leave to go home. as you tidied the screws collection, the door to your shop opened audibly by your crystals dangling from the person entering.

"we're closed-" you start, but stop as you see the person at the entrance.

there she was, standing in her usual cloak and a hood that hid her face, but you recognised her nonetheless. she took her hood off with a smile as she looked at you. "good to see you again."

suddenly, you felt naked again. although she knew your identity (prolly even the whole time), the mask would hide your facial expressions and reactions. now, you are standing there with a shocked impression written on your face, unsure of how to react to the person that is the reason for your shop to still be alive.

"i see you created something out of this shop since the last time I've seen you," she speaks with a soft smile on her lips as she takes a look around in your shop. "thank you. you were actually a huge help last time we've seen each other," you respond, your hands linked together behind your back as you turn to look around your shop.

honestly, your shop is quite shady from outside with its half-broken broken neon sign spelling the name mechs n' treasures. but once you enter, you quickly realise that it's a one man's business by it's intricate appearance. it has so much personality now that you have as much time as you'd like to spent in it, decorating it with your favourite things you've collected over the years that weren't too precious to be displayed in your small flat above your shop. a few colourful crystals dangle around your entrance and the door to your flat, reflecting the neon lights from the streets of Zaun onto the mechanic pieces you sell. tidiness is your top priority, since it's hard to keep such an old shop neat and clean. you love your old and shady, but precious personal shop and wouldn't wish it to be any different. business seemed to be booming recently, too. you had no idea why, but Zaun is a quick and fast learning city with its advantages and disadvantages, resulting in people visiting your shop to buy the pieces they require for their newest project.

now, Sevika is standing in the centre of your shop, taking one of the mechanical pieces into her hands and looking at it in detail.

"can i help you with something?" you ask, looking at her with curiosity. after she puts the mechanic piece back into its tray, she says "I was hoping you could me out with this."

she reveals her bionic arm, where you see the its shimmer capsules completely shattered. surprised, you walk towards her and take her bionic arm into her hand to have a closer look. you inhale her smoky scent and suddenly were confronted with a vivid memory of the first night you guys met at the brothel, as you sat in her lap writhing under her touch. focus. you twisted a few pieces to inspect the reachability of the broken capsules. "I assume you won't be able to take it off?" you ask her, your eyes still fixed on an odd piece you've found.

she shakes her head, "it would be a hazard trying to put it on afterwards. do you think you'll still manage to repair, though?"

after twisting the last few pieces for inspection, you leave her arm. "shouldn't be no issue," you take a look at your wristwatch and notice how late it already is. a few extra minutes won't hurt, you decide.

you nod towards the counter, "take a seat, i'll be right with you."

entering the back of your shop and take a big breath. fuck, this intimidating woman still effects you after several months. at this point, you were sure you even forgot about her.

you grab your toolbox and head to Sevika, who is waiting for you behind your counter on a chair. her cloak is thrown over your register's desk, revealing a similar outfit you saw at the brothel. only now you realise how muscular this woman actually is. her arm is almost fully exposed by her sleeveless top and a choker around her neck makes you shake off your dirty thoughts.

you place the toolbox on the counter before you take a seat next to it. Sevika watches every move of yours, making you even more nervous than you already are.

grabbing your first tool, you lay her arm in you lap and start unscrewing the plates that cover the isolation of the shimmer capsules. her arm felt heavy, but oddly warm in your lap for the fact that it's broken. you remember how the same arm pinned you down on her strap a few months ago.

your brain is almost about to malfunction if Sevika wouldn't have interrupted your thoughts, "so, how is your shop going?" she asks as she leans the side of her upper body on the counter. when you look down at her, she's only mere centimetres away from your face. her grey eyes digging into yours. your pussy clenches as your breathing stops at the sight of her. you quickly look away and focus on her arm again. "it's going well," you start and grab for another tool to remove the shattered pipes. "sometimes it's exhausting to handle a shop alone, but you get used to it, you know."

her eyes follow your movements on her arm while she hums as an indication for you to continue. "once, a dude i recognised from the brothel came to pick up a few things and i couldn't help but wonder what his day job is. he was a sex worker as well, so he probably even recognised me," you tell her. it's unusual for you to share thoughts and memories of your old job. you weren't ashamed of it, but you much happier spending your time in your own shop and not thinking back to your old routine.

she shifts in her seat to look up at you, "i'm glad you were able to escape that shit hole, beautiful," she says quietly, careful of the words she chooses, "do you still remember that night?"

your movements halt immediately at her questions and you felt her eyes laying heavily on you, watching every single movement. the way you took a deep breath, trying not to appear nervous around her. the mere thought of that night made you feel butterflies in your stomach and wetness in your core.

"i do," you confess. without meeting her eyes, you continue your maintenance on her bionic arm in your lap, trying to suppress the urge of jumping into her lap and kissing her senseless. "do you?" you ask in almost a whisper, unsure if you even wanted to know the answer.

when she didn't, your eyes travelled to hers in question. she seemed to be in deep thoughts as well before she asked "how couldn't i?"

her eyes finally meet yours and you recognise such sincerity and trust in them, you couldn't help the soft smile that sneaks onto your lips.

"you were the only thing on my mind in this cruel world," she continues, making you feel several things at once. "and i don't even know your name."

you chuckled and referred your eyes back to your almost finished work, concentrating on exchanging the pipes.

"so, you're not even going to tell me?" she asks amused.

"what, my name?" you act oblivious, knowing exactly what she wanted. now it was her turn to chuckle at your teasing. "you can be a pain in the ass, you know that?"

you shake your head in disbelief with a smile on your lips as you screw on the last iron plate on her arm.

"move it," you command and she obliges. she moves her joints, making the shimmer that was left in her tank fuel her new pipe, while moving it a few more times in several directions. you've never seen machinery working with shimmer so closely. you wonder how the metal felt like against your skin.

ripping you out of your trance, she stands up. right in front you, almost between your legs, which you desperately wanted to close at the sight as you felt your pussy clench.

"thank you," she looks at you, her eyes wandering from your neck down to the rest of your body. it's like she can't help herself, checking you out as you sit on her cloak next to your work instruments.

"you even look beautiful in your casual attire," she whispers as her eyes meet yours again.

"so," you wrap your index finger through her choker, "how about taking it off and see what's hidden underneath?" you cock your head before you pull her closer. your legs are opened by her thighs between them as she looks down at you, clearly surprised by your boldness. "i don't fuck nameless girls," she says in an equal tone to her low chuckle.

you take a quick look at her lips, wondering what they would feel like on yours. "didn't seem so last time we've seen each other."

your finger is still wrapped around her chocker as you grin. she didn't answer. she knows you're messing with her.

she places her arms on each of your sides, the sounds of her bionic arm moving leaving a shudder throughout your body. she's dangerously close.

"if i remember correctly, last time you've fucked yourself, princess."

shocked by her comment, your grin fades as you suddenly remember how you rode her in that brothel, eagerly chasing your orgasm as she guided you through it.

you let go of her choker and rest your hand at the back of her neck instead, caressing the soft strands of brunette hair as you try to maintain yourself.

"y/n," you whisper. Sevika's eyes widen at first, but a slight grin sets on her lips at the sound of your name.

"beautiful name, princess," she whispers back and you feel her breath on your lips with each sound she speaks.

you close your eyes as you feel her full lips grazing yours. "y/n," she whispers repeatedly. her lips finally touch yours, first cautiously but confident after a few seconds of lingering. you copy her motions and gasp when her tongue grazes your lower lip.

pressing her more firmly against yourself, you part your lips for her tongue to enter. she faintly tastes like cigarettes, but more of a harsh liquor you can't really pinpoint. your arms cling desperately around her neck, feeling her torso pressed around yours in your heated kiss. you lock her against your core with your legs around her hips, moaning as she leaves your lips to leave kisses on your neck. "you have no idea how often i thought of kissing you," she whispers before she trails down kisses to your exposed shoulder and collarbone, licking the line of it and pressing soft bites against your sweet spots.

instead of responding, you pull her up again and lock your lips together. you press your lower body against her in search of the friction you desperately seek, but with no success. her lips form into a smirk against your lips as she realises what you're seeking.

frustrated, you separate yourself from her and motion for her to step aside, so you could jump of the counter. "i have a bed upstairs," you tell her. Sevika stands there confused, but god does she look hot. her lips are glazed from your spit and her hair looks slightly tousled from your hand that clung to it.

she doesn't let you move, though. instead, her hands are pressed firmly on your side as she still stand between your legs. "i thought that might be more comfortable..." you say, unsure of the current situation. she shifts in her stance to let you stand up.

"fuck, yes. i mean, yes, let's go upstairs," she chuckles after stumbling over her own words and her bionic arm moves to gesture you to lead the way. you laugh at her sudden awkwardness but go ahead to lock up your shop.

walking up the stairs, you fumble for your home's keys. Sevika followed you closely behind, touching your waist and kissing your neck as you try to unlock the door, a sigh escapes your lips as you try to unlock your door.

as the door closes behind you, she pins you against it. her hand holds your wrist against the door as she kisses you feverishly. her bionic arm slips beneath your ass to lift you up, so you could wrap your legs around her hips. you press your breasts against her, trying to seek for any further touches. "the bed, Sev," you say between kisses, too occupied to actually resist her touch.

she ignores your words and losses her grip on your wrists instead to wander to the buttons of your shirt, never breaking the kiss. "patience, beautiful," she whispers as her lips leave yours to press a kiss on your cheek. "we have all night, right?"

your arms find their way back around her neck, playing with her loose hair. "please," you respond, your eyes making contact with hers. you peck her lips before you say, "i want to touch you, too."

her head falls onto your shoulder as she groans, "you make me loose my composure so easily," before looking back into your eyes with need and desperation "do you realise that?"

you grin at her confession and kiss her hot and wet, moaning into the kiss as she continues to unbutton your shirt until your bra is exposed to her hand. she grazes the outlines with her fingertips, making a shudder run through your body as you gasp. you press your chest into her touch and she gladly responds with cupping your breast while biting your lower lip.

her index finger grazes your puffy nipple through your bra and you can't help the moan that escapes your lips.

she pecks you one last time with a smile, before looking around your small flat, seemingly inspecting your small setup where your bedroom and living room are combined to your cozy grove.

her hand moves to your back, stabilising you in her arms before she finally heads to your bed to lay you down on it, watching you as you lay there with your undone shirt and the few strands that escaped your hairstyle completely wordless.

similar to her, you exhale at the sight in front of you. Sevika is still fully clothed, so you pull her down by her collar to kiss her hard, wrapping your legs around her waist to pull her body on top of you. "take this off," she whispers against your lips, her bionic hand gripping your shirt as her hand sneaks behind your neck to tilt your head for her to suck.

she kisses and bites your sweet spot, disrupting your motion of pulling your shirt off and making your eyes roll back in pleasure. you moan her name in frustration before she finally let's go.

"this too," she tells you as she eyes every little detail on your torso. when you take your bra off, her bionic hand cups your breast. the sharp and cold details of her metallic hand exposed on one of your most sensitive parts of your body leave you breathing hard, moaning as her pointy fingers pinch and twist your nipple. "you have no idea how often i thought of touching them since that night," her eyes are not leaving your chest as she confesses.

"you could've touched them that night," you respond, your hand finding the back of her head as you play with her small ponytail. after hearing your words she looks at you, almost with a shocked expression on her face. "there's no way i would have touched you without your consent," she tells you. surprised by this sudden turn, you move up to rest your weight on your elbows, looking at her in disbelief. "but you payed for that night with me," you state, still confused by what she just said.

she's just as surprised as you, cupping your cheek softly as she spoke, "y/n, i would never do anything to you without your consent. do you know that?" she asks you, her eyes never leaving yours as she spoke. you've never experienced any sex partner expressing their respect to you verbally. and fuck, this is probably the moment you realise you have feelings for this woman in front of you. you nod in response, still overwhelmed from your thoughts and feelings. she smiles at you as she says, "good girl."

your soaking pussy almost purred at that nickname. kissing her quick but softly, you grind your clothed hips against hers as you kiss a trail down her neck to her exposed collarbone.

she exhales heavily at your motions before saying, "tell me what you want, beautiful."

"i want you to fuck me," you respond after hesitating, still nibbling at her collarbone as a soft moan escapes her.

"with this," you continue as you grind stronger onto her clothed cunt than before.

her bionic arm holds herself on the bed as her fingers trace your curves. "with my fingers?" she teases as she opens your trousers with her other hand slowly.

your lips move up to her ear, licking and biting her soft skin. "no," you whisper, "with this."

you press the seam of her jeans with your fingers against her clit, making her grip your hips hard from your sudden touch. "fuck," she mutters in response, clearly trying to compose herself before she continues to fully undress you.

"under one condition," she starts as she takes in your naked body with hungry eyes, "i'll have a taste before i fuck you," she unbuttons her shirt, revealing a dark bandeau bra beneath. she's in a hurry, so she won't bother to take off her unbuttoned shirt, but moves on by removing her jeans as well as underwear in one go.

you try to take a peek at her body, but she immediately kneels between your legs to kiss the soft skin of your thighs, dragging her motions slowly to your soaking pussy as her hands hold you firm beneath her touch. feeling her breath on your clit, you whine from sensitivity, gripping the sheets beneath you as she finally tastes you for the first time.

both of you moan from the touch, your hips stutter beneath her strong hands. she eats you out like a starving woman, humming at the sounds you're making. your clit is circled by her tongue as she softly bites and sucks before your legs start shaking from the pleasure that builds up in your lower belly.

she moves her arm from your thigh to press softly against it, realising how close you are. "come on my tongue," she tells you, intensifying her motions as you come hard. the way you moan her name sounds similar to a scream, your thighs pressing against her head as you throw your head back in pleasure.

she gently guides you through it by licking in decreasing motions, careful of your sensitivity. as your calming down, she kisses your clit one last time before she straightens herself to watch you after your first high.

her lips and chin are glistening from her pussy and strands that were originally framing her face now hang loosely. "you did so well, beautiful," she whispers, climbing on top of you to press kisses into your face. "fuck, you really sent me to another dimension," you confess, laughing a litte at the absurdity. she chuckles at your words, grinning as she examines your face.

"are you still down for another round?" she asks carefully, giving you the space you might need, but you nod as you smile at her. she kisses you before she straightens again to manhandle your legs, placing one on her shoulder as she moves her own over your other to align with your pussy, not starting just yet. she caresses the long on her shoulder as she presses kisses along with it.

she looks absolutely breathtaking while doing it. you feel her pussy kissing yours, and fuck, she's driving you crazy. the unbuttoned shirt exposes the abs you eyed earlier through the tightness of her shirt. her v-line is deeply defined, even more when she starts to slowly grind against you. her pointy bionic fingers suddenly press into your thigh as she gasps from the pleasure she suddenly receives. her grey eyes watch you heavily, making sure you're alright with her pace as she slowly picks it up.

"you feel so good," you whimper as you meet her motions by copying hers, crying from the sensitivity from your earlier orgasm. "fuck- i'm close again."

she grins at your confession, pushing herself harder on your clit as you cry out from the friction. she's mostly quiet, but a gasp escapes her lips anytime you improve your speed.

"come with me, y/n" she leans down, kissing you with so much passion as her eyebrows furrow in pleasure. you moan into the kiss, your breasts moving with each thrust as your nipples graze against the cotton of her bandeau. you felt your orgasm creeping, but you weren't ready for the intensity it comes with. you cry out against her lips, holding her against you as you feel her groaning from her own orgasm. both your hips stutter in your motions before you stop to look at her.

her head rests in the nape of your neck and the only thing you feel is her hot breath against your skin. as you untangle your legs, you kiss on the side of her head. "are you alright?" you ask after several seconds of silence.

she vaguely nods, still maintaining her breath before she answers "you have no idea what you're doing to me."

you smile as you caress her hair through your fingers. "i'd love to figure it out in the future," you continue, making space between your faces so you could look at her as you speak. "this idea you've just mentioned," you clarify as she looks at you speechless.

she kisses you passionately after a few seconds, smiling as she realises what you were suggesting.

"let me take you to dinner after your shift tomorrow?" she asks as her thumb trails your cheekbone. you nod, kissing her on the cheeks before you answer "gladly."

you both fall asleep, and sooner or later date nights with Sevika become your favourite traditions as you two engage in a passionate, but intimate relationship with each other.

tags: @sevsbaby @womenathleteshaveme @macaroni676

masterlist

[centrally-unplanned]

Japanese website Forest Page is shutting down ~today, a tragic loss of "Heisei otaku memories", as so many are calling it. Launched in 2003, Forest Page was a "Geocities for mobile", a site that hosted user-created websites and gave them tools to allow non-coders to make them. In practice, it became one of the premiere places for fanfiction in Japan, with the stories hosted on author-created sites.

It wasn't quite the Fanfic.net of Japan, as for one the Japanese fandom just never centralized quite the way the 2000's western one did, instead being spread out over a half dozen or so sites. But additionally, it wasn't initially popular for fanfic so much as cell phone fanfiction, because in 2000's Japan the "cell phone novel" was a specific thing. These websites were being made for flip phones, not smartphones, and not only would people read them on those phones, they would often write them. None of that was very conducive to the creation and consumption of a "traditional" novel; so starting in the 2000's Japanese writers started making stories fit for the medium, namely:

Very short

A huge focus on dialogue and inner thoughts, with no/minimal description or scene detail

Using a limited POV of a specific character

Often employing the medium-as-message, like using emojis, structuring the story as IM's or emails, etc.

Also they all had huge gaps between lines, I'm not really sure what that is about:

Probably for readability on the phone given the small screen size? But it was absolutely part of the genre. A few of these novels actually made it big, got movie adaptations, people wrote articles about the "cultural phenomenon", it was the 2000's so Hiroki Azuma had a take on it of course, and so on. It slotted neatly into the vibe of the time of technology changing culture, paralleling discourse around otaku in the same era.

In fanfic those trends met up, and anyone familiar with fanfiction probably read that list of traits of the cellphone novel and thought "oh, this is perfect for fanfiction". Skipping out on description? I don't need it, I know what they look like already. Focus on conversation and POV? Perfect for shipping fics. Short lengths? Yeah, we are shortcutting to the good stuff, that is the point. Mirroring trends in the west, Forest Page's userbase was ~95% female, and the most common content on the site was romantic or edgy-dramatic stories in the franchises you'd expect. The closure page linked above actually summarizes the site's history by year, and lists the biggest fandoms:

Which is exactly what I would expect from a female otaku fanfiction website. Congrats to Pirates of the Caribbean for making it though, freeaboo's represent.

I do think the fact that the site was a website hoster as opposed to a fic hoster did align with the way the Japanese fandom was more "creator focused" and embraced the media mix more. There were "fic circles" a la doujin circles who made their own pages, people would make fanart, fan video games, and so own to host alongside it, and all of it was centralized to the creator; it made following them-as-a-person just a little bit easier. Most websites were simple text, but others did have the full Geocities experience:

Something that was somewhat common were basic visual novel concepts where the reader could make choices, or even insert their own name so they would be the "MC" of the story:

(Dream novels are in fact their own thing in Japan) My understanding is the site was quite popular through the 2000's and into the 2010's, though over time the "cellphone novel" as a concept fizzled out. People got smartphones, more people got PCs, and the constraints didn't make sense anymore - you can read ebooks and normal websites on your phone now after all. You can probably draw a line between these kind of stories and the webfiction/light novel boom of the late 2000's/2010's, something that was equally born on the internet, that streamlines the novel to "shortcut to the good stuff" but without the need to fit on a flip phone's screen. Though I will admit my own understanding of their histories shows them more as two sides of the same "youth demand for new literature" coin.

In 2017 Forest Page launched Forest Page Plus, a new service fully optimized for the smartphone era; but it did not transfer over all the old content, starting the clock ticking on the original Forest Page. My understanding is that in June they announced Forest Page was officially closing down; and from what I have gathered from reminiscing writers on twitter, they did not provide any easy, one-touch way to save any of the content, so people are archiving Wayback Machine links or sharing tips on how screenshot-save stories (I think the rub is they gave people a way to transfer content to FP+, but most don't want to do that, as places like Twitter & Pixiv are the content kings of this era).

As of tomorrow I would bet the large majority of the content will be gone; quite sad given both the quantity of stories there and how many got sometimes millions of readers. I am sure most of the biggest stories are archived at least, but particularly the early stuff was a very ephemeral genre, one that doesn't make sense to revisit once you aren't a 16 year old teen writing and reading fics on a flip phone in between classes. Which means another legion of the ghosts of the Wired is being born today. May we pour one out for a fellow online community that lived and died!

[chaoticyumelikes]

Sweet!! I have a request..fanfic! I wasn’t sure which character you write for but I’m leaning towards redson from lmk ( love me a tsundere ) who has a fem partner who’s very shy yet cuddly and wants affection from him since he’s busy with his machines but of course this is making the fire prince flustered since he’s never seen her that way and it gets worse when she says with a cute sad doe eyes “ please kiss me ” and boom. The rest is up to you! Hopefully this was okay!

Alright!!

Redson x shy!reader

Weeeeeellll opposites do attract but oh boy.

To have fallen in love with you was not easy on the flaming prince. He was of royal status. He couldn't waste his time with peasants much less so when he has the duty to build and conquer to gain the favor of his own parents. But then he meets you, a shy little mortal peasant and he scowls. When he isn't able to hear you he is LOUD and curt.

"SPEAK UP PEASANT!"

Your hurt expression does give him pause and he readjusts his temper slightly. A veeeeery tiny fraction. At first.

He does begin to like your presence though. You actually listen to him to all his ramblings, you grow fascinated at his technology and even though you don't understand his more technical terms you edge him on. So he begins to search for you when he has brilliant ideas for new mech. If he has your phone number expect him to call you at odd hours and rant to you about his latest invention and plans all the while on his bed kicking his legs with a huge smile on his face. If you complain about the hour he will get a bit snappy after all why should he respect your weak sleeping schedule. He does take note of it and kiiiinda tries to respect it. When he remembers that is. This man/demon is full of work so he's going to forget what hour and what day it even is. But he does feel fortunate to have you. While his parents treated him as a disappointment you were there fascinated and loving his every invention.

As time passes he drops the "peasant" around you.

MK tired: Stop calling us peasants...

Redson with a greatly offended expression: Excuuuuuse you Noodle Boy! I called you all peasants! *points at you with his hand* They are superior to you. In fact! *he shoos away MK from around you with a disgusted look on his face while gently dusting you off the Noodle Boy's germs off you* Stay away from them, don't bother them, don't look at them, don't infect them with your very presence. Come along dear let's go enjoy civilised company together.

Yeah... He is trying... If you point out he was rude to MK be prepared to chase a flaming Redson after MK on accounts on trying to poison you against him.

You: Please stop trying to hurt MK.

Redson smiling after a while of this repeated topic of conversation: I wouldn't dream of it *secretly presses a button to deploy several robots and weapons to carry out the job*

Invitations to his home and workshop, feel pride my shy human mortal, for you get to see the genious at work! You even try to help out when he vehemently prohibits so. You are his guest and his workshop isn't exactly... Mortal friendly. He will treat you like royalty in return for you caring about him all the while denying it. Point out his blush and he will snap that it's just the heat from the lava. And speaking of this, he will sometimes work without a shirt on and then it's your turn to blame your rosy cheeks on the general heat.

Redson: Excuse me, they asked for no pickles *now threatening the clerk* IS THAT SO HARD FOR YOUR PUNY MORTAL PEASANT BRAIN TO COMPREHEND?!

Yeeeeah he has a temper and it causes problems in his everyday life including you. He will not apologise.... By words I mean. He will leave you trinkets and acts of service. Builds you a robot for protection or build you a super cool (and deadly) vehicle.

Now about trying to show this man physical affection... Will be hard. Redson's not a very touchy person as he is deeply indoctrinated into his noble ways. And nobles do not touch unless a specific protocol is followed. So it has to be introduced in small baby steps.... You know.... Gently.... Like trying to disable a bomb.

He won't hurt you but he will flinch away and give you a look of discomfort and suspicion. Insist and be prepared for a lecture on proper etiquette.

When he FINALLY gets that he loves you... Well his world shatters. He starts to overthink and have panic attacks. How would his parents react (they have known for the longest time)? How would he court you? Should he stick to ancient demon ways to court a human? By formal kidnapping? Should he learn the human peasant ways? Eugh! But should he? Etc, etc.

He begins to shower you in gifts made by him. Super cool armor to protect you that ends up with so many functions and customization that you can't move at how heavy it is. Like I mentioned before a robot buttler, a robot bodyguard, a robot cook.... You know what? Just move in the mansion and you get a robot army. You think he is kidding... He is definitely not. The mansion has room and protection and he will make sure to attend to your every need plus you will stay close to your one only genius. Deny him and he will do as he always does..... Makes even more effort that ends in new explosive failures. One time the Monkey Crew even asked him if he was trying to actively kill you.

When you two finally get together.... You're not able to touch him, even get near him thanks to his fire powers go out of control at how happy he is. Even his parents thought for a second that he had the Samadi fire back.

He is a demon while you're human so it is a relationship that has a learning curve on the both of you. Most intimacy happens behind closed doors. On one hand you have to initiate by verbal statements.... Which due to your shy nature it's hard. Plus he is more often working than not and so you don't want to bother him. But once you do say your piece he will finish his project fast to give you the cuddles you crave.... Well almost, as he is still stiff trying to engage in less formal ways. So be prepared for him to be like a stiff manequin as you're the one that have to whether tell him or put his arms around you to what you find acceptable. Say you want kisses and I hope you're wearing layers of non-inflamable cloth or you may get burned by his embarrassment or even eagerness. He controls it with time thanks to "training" (constant cuddles and kisses). Nonetheless you'll sometimes look like a freaking forge master as he tries to reign in his flames while you try anything new. Every Winter is a blessing, 10 out of 10 cuddles, while every Summer you'll need to crank up the AC or you will die (and yes you are forbidden to deny him affection. It is LAW).

Either way once he gets the hang of it..... Be prepared to have a very clingy boyfriend as he is extremely touch starved. He, formal and set in his ways as he is, WILL include in the daily schedule hours for cuddles and other forms of affection... If you get yourself a minute or micro second late you WILL be scolded. Initiate your best affection or you'll never hear the end of it.

[edutainer2022]

In commemoration of that time, recently, when I delivered a conference keynote in a ridiculous o'clock timezone, after having been up and neck deep in other energy draining university commitments for three days straight on four hours of sleep at best, here's a little thing. I couldn't remember what I was talking about the minute the presentation ended. Scott Tracy is a public speaker extraordinaire on bingo sleep and adrenaline overdose. His brothers are worried and have to think on their feet. Special thanks to @astranite for nudging my muse in this direction.

AUTOPILOT

The trick was to get him off the stage. Scott Tracy, the Tracy Industries CEO, giving an opening keynote at the New Frontiers Expo had been scheduled a year in advance (involving the program committee begging on hands and knees for a year prior, Scott's annual commitments shuffling, some major security concessions, up to and including Kayo's team practically taking over the venue security altogether, as well as meeting a hard line of excluding any tech associated with Langstrom Fischler from the exhibits or conference talks).

Nobody could predict a mine collapse and Scott Tracy, the Commander of IR and Thunderbird One, being involved on site for the past thirty six hours (a good portion of that time spent underground without sleep).

The family medics' quorum, in full agreement with the family extended quorum, voted for canceling his public appearance and putting him on mandated rest. For a week. But Scott Tracy gave his word. So Scott Tracy gave his talk.

As keynotes go it was a huge success. Scott was passionate, funny and inspired, engaging the audience with dimples, moving personal touches and heartfelt convictions. The listeners were just about ready to "boldly go" wherever Scott would lead the way to a better, technologically enhanced and kinder tomorrow.

They divided forces in case the predictable worse actually came to pass. Virgil was behind the podium with a med kit and med scanner at hand. Gordon unironically got a tranq gun, which earned him a side-eye, but knowing Scott it might as well come handy.

John was in the audience, vigilant and listening to the keynote (and rather enjoying biggest brother public speaking prowess - seriously, how did Scott do it, half-dead on his feet?), ready to step up and take over if need be. That wouldn't be what the hundreds of Expo attendees payed and donated to R&D funds for, but they'd be getting A Dr. Tracy, at least, if The Mr. Tracy collapsed mid-sentence.

That was just the problem at the moment. Scott didn't. He concluded the speech, got a standing ovation, and was now just sort of hanging out on stage, swaying slightly. It was obvious he was running on dregs of fumes of an adrenaline high, refusing to crash on sheer willpower. It was also obvious Scott was completely unfocused and unaware where he was and what he'd been doing the minutes prior. The brilliant blue eyes were getting telltale glassy.

John had a FRANTIC Virgil booming in his earpiece. The public spotlight made the logistics of what needed to happen next tricky: they couldn't just drag him off the podium in a firefighter hold or tranq him - and spoil the profound impression of the speech; they also couldn't wait much longer till Scott fainted in front of everyone (and possibly injured himself by the fall). John was half on his way up to try and steer Scott bodily off the stage. Gordon would have been a better man for the job - dressing the thing up with a quip and some theatrics, but the Fish was still in uniform. IR on site, crashing the keynote, might have set off unwelcome panic, dangerous in a crowded space.

In the end, it was still Gordon's out-of-the-box thinking that saved the situation. They could all hear a boy's voice through their earpieces - Alan went for the highest littlest-brother-in-distress pitch he could master:

"Scotty, could you come here? I'm right behind you! Scotty, please!"

Scott could hear it too. A less exhausted brain would have remembered Allie was on the island still. They agreed Scott would take him the next day on a tour around the Expo and to several talks the kid wanted to attend.

But Scott's bandwidth capacity at the moment was reduced to the most rudimentary parent-brain instincts. So he started slightly, turned on his heel and marched backstage. It took a bit of flailing to placate a wild-eyed Scott that a) Allie wasn't in danger; b) Allie wasn't there immediately available for inspection and protecting from danger.

It came as close as Gordon clicking the safety off the tranq gun. But finally, the blue eyes stopped searching the perimeter behind Virgil's shoulder and rolled back. Scott slumped as a ragdoll in Virgil's hold.

John rushed to join the brothers the moment he heard Alan on comms. In between the three of them they settled the Commander on a hoverstrecher. Virgil insisted on a quick scan on the spot. Nothing more serious beyond bruises, exhaustion, stress and dehydration. Small mercies. Every single one of them had a private itemized inventory of possible injuries Scott might have "forgotten" to mention in order to be cleared for the keynote commitment.

Kayo's security team were clearing the path for them, off the Expo busy routes, to leave for Thunderbird Two discretely.

John lingered to brush the fringe off Scott's now noticeably pale forehead. His original intent was to go straight back to orbit after the biggest brother was sorted out. But now, there was no way Grandma or Virgil would let Scott out of the infirmary for the next forty eight hours at least. Nor would Virgil let biggest brother out of his sight for at least twice as long after. So it would fall to John to take Alan to the Expo and show the boy around.

John didn't favor crowded bustling places on a good day, but it was crucial not to disappoint or worry the kid. Scotty unconscious, sedated and grounded would have him anxious enough. It was also a great bonding opportunity with the baby-brother and a way to lift a bit of weight off Scott's shoulders. John knew biggest brother enough to foresee he'd beat himself up for succumbing to weakness and letting Alan down. John couldn't have that. So he landed a hand for support on Gordon's shoulder and all together they started the way home.

[myloudintrerestsandthought]

How do politics affect fashion? Blog #1

HI! You can call me AverageOverlord! lol I'm deeply sorry. This is my first post! Each week I'm going to try to do one post about pop culture and one about my interest. And if you have ideas lmk (if anyone actually reads this XD)!

Lots of people are thinking about the election, so I started thinking how does politics impact fashion? After thinking for a while I started to notice a pattern. When the country (America) was more conservative, people dressed more modestly and used trends from other conservative decades. When we were more democratic, our fashion would be looser, shorter and more freeing. For example during the 1920s, woman's clothing took a drastic turn compared to the previous decades. The 1910s had a more natural silhouette, woman had long sleeves and the dresses were below the ankles. The 1920s were dresses were shorter and boxier. Woman even started to cut their hair into bob which was extremely rare. It was a time were the woman's suffrage movement flourished and a good number of woman started to not dress according to men's standards. Credit had become immensely popular during the 20's. This was heavily directed in the fashion. Flappers were covered head to toe with glitz and glam. I've also noticed that when consumerism is bigger the fashion is more bold and extravagant. In the 20s, people had more free time so they started to buy more things. In the 1950s, after the war American's turned to a more conservative lifestyle. The Nuclear family was heavily marketed and the suburbs grew. The 50s fashion was heavily inspired by the late 1940s. Which was a was a very patriotic decade because of WW2. The fashion was modest and extremely feminine. It was a comfort for people who just wanted the normal life before the war back. The president for most of the 50s, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a Republican. All these things influenced the reclamation of conservative fashion and values. 1960s and 70s fashion was very free and bold. Big hair, bright makeup and bold clothing. Disco-esque and Hippy/Bohemian clothing were extremely popular. Hippy and bohemian clothing were made up of elements taken from other cultures (that were often viewed as inferior). The Romani people is where this 'trend' originally started from. (so please if you want to dress Bohemian and you can afford it, don't buy from fast fashion brands, buy from local and small businesses, that are run by and supported by Romani people. They deserve the credit for THEIR clothing. THAT is cultural appreciation vs appropriation.) Also the civil rights movement was growing during this time. So people of color started to straighten and perm their natural hair less, It was a protest and a statement. This was called the Afro Hair Movement, It challenged Eurocentric beauty standards and celebrated Black people's natural hair and ethnicity. So as we can see the 60s and 70s were leaning towards liberalism. The 1980s was HEAVILY inspired by the 50s. It was after the Vietnam war and consumerism was booming. During the 70s bold colors were popular, But in the 80s that only increased! Neons, loud makeup, hair and bold layered fashion. Ronald Regan was the president for a majority of the 80s and he was VERY republican. Poodles skirts from the 50s came back and Polka dots were popular in both decades. They also had bright colors and cinched waists in common. I also noticed how in the 60s and 70s wedding dresses were getting shorter and less traditional. But in the 50s and 80s, the wedding dresses were huge ball gowns with long sleeves, The 80s was definitely a consumerist decade, it was full of game consoles, new technology, shopping malls and movies. I would say the 80s was one of if not the most consumerist decade in the 20th century. The 2000s was full of metallics and iridescence makeup and fashion. We had LOW cut jeans (yes lower than your mid rise lol). And red carpet fashion that was mostly street wear. (lol idk if you can feel by tone but I'm very salty about that XD). The 2000s were inspired by a revival of the 70s and 80s. The late 2000s had to stock market crash of 2008. After this fashion was never the same. We started to lean heavily on fast fashion because people couldn't afford anything else. I hope you liked this! ;)

[alfredosauce50]

Avatar 08

Wordcount: 8, 616 Disclaimer: This is a crossover with the film “Avatar” (2009). Content warning: Major character death. A/N: Spoken Na’vi that is translated into English in dialogue will be indicated with “italics”. Allen’s name will be unchanged for clarity, but his name and yours are meant to be of a Na’vi derivative.

Avatar - finale I see you

“Everyone on this base. Every one of you--”

All personnel was crowded in the dining hall.

“--is fighting for survival. That’s a fact.”

Quaritch stood perfectly still as the shutters closed behind him, plunging the room into darkness.

Then, a projector turned on, silhouetting his form in the glaring screen. It displayed an aerial view of The Tree of Souls, and in the center was a bright yellow cluster, the warmth reading of Na’Vi warriors.

“There’s an aboriginal horde out there massing for an attack. Now, the orbital images tell me that the hostiles’ numbers have gone from a few hundred to well over two thousand in one day.” He boomed.

He clicked his pointer, and the yellow cluster grew with each slide, now speckled with orange and red. Everyone watched on in dead silence, heeding the cautionary tone of their colonel.

“And more are pouring in.” Quaritch glanced back at the screen, his lips pursed in thought. “In a week’s time, there could be twenty-thousand of them. At that point, they will overrun our perimeter--”

He turned to the crowd, eyes burning with certainty.

“--well, that’s not gonna happen.”

The atmosphere changed from fear to hatred.

“Our only security lies in preemptive attack. We will fight terror with terror.” He clicked the pointer again, revealing the rib-like rock formations that encased the ancient tree. “Now, the hostiles believe that this mountain stronghold of theirs is protected by their--”

He paused again.

“--their deity.”

A few chuckles went around the room.

“And when we destroy it, we will blast a crater in their racial memory so deep that they won’t come within a thousand klicks of this place ever again,” Quaritch nodded smugly. “And that, too, is a fact.”

The dining hall erupted with cheers, spurred on by a battle they had already won. Some hooted, others shouted, all sharing the same arrogant disdain for the Indigenous. With so much firepower and technology at their disposal, victory was guaranteed over the Na’Vi who fought with sticks and stones.

“Alfred, it’s crazy here. It’s full mobilization--they’re rigging the shuttle as a bomber.” Kiku spoke in a quick hush. Other scientists stayed in the back, listening into the call and watching out for troopers. “They’ve got these huge pallets of mine explosives for some kind of--kind of shock-and-awe campaign.”

“Frickin’ daisy-cutters.” Trudy frowned. Everyone was gathered in the shack with a machine gun at their side, faces hollow. What meant to be an exchange of intel became a sure reminder of their demise.

“Quaritch has taken over, and there’s no stopping him. He’s hitting the tree with everything he’s got.”

“When?” Alfred asked, expression heavy.

“0600 tomorrow.”

“Keeks. Keeks!” A woman’s voice interrupted Kiku, getting him to glance at her. When he turned back to the camera, it was only to turn it off. “I have to go.”

The call ended, plunging the shack into a sobering silence. When Arthur broke it, he voiced the very thought that plagued everyone’s minds.

“We’re screwed!” He shook his hands nervously.

“And I was hoping for some kind of tactical plan that didn’t involve martyrdom,” Trudy laughed dryly, raising her brows at their bleak reality. “We’re going up against gunships with bows and arrows.”

Alfred fell silent, eyes downcast. It felt like they’d already lost, going up against the military might of the distant future: fighter planes, exoskeletons, and more firepower than they could ever imagine.

But it was a war he would see to the very end.

“I have fifteen clans out there.”

Without missing a beat, he added this.

“That’s over two-thousand warriors. We know these mountains. We fly them. You fly them.” He pointed at Trudy, then outside. “They don’t. Their instruments won’t work up here. Missile tracking. Won’t work.”

He pointed a finger from his eyes.

“They’ll have to fire at line of sight. If they bring the fight to us, then we have the home-field advantage.”

“You know he’s gonna commit that bomber straight to the Tree of Souls,” Trudy muttered, unconvinced.

“I know.” Alfred’s gaze didn’t waver.

“They get to the Tree of Souls, it’s over. That’s their direct line to Eywa. Their ancestors.” Arthur stared straight at his friend, who shared the same dread as him. “It’ll destroy them.”

“That’s why we have to stop him.”

Alfred returned to his Avatar body. Standing before him was the Tree of Souls, its ethereal, purple tendrils glowing in the night. He walked up to it slowly, head tilted back to take in its ancient beauty. Once he was shaded by the tree, he got on his knees.

This was his last resort. And whether he succeeded or not, he couldn’t stop what was fated for Pandora.

“I’m probably just talking to a tree right now,” Alfred began hesitantly. He sighed, shaking his head at how stupid he sounded. Only he went ahead anyway, reaching around for his plait. “But if you’re there--”

He connected his queue with the tendril in front of him. The pink strands of his tsaheylu curled around it, making it glow brighter in response. A whisper of voices filled his mind.

“--I need to give you a heads-up. If Grace is with you, look into her memories.” He glanced up at the tree, heart racing as he felt a rush of emotions. “See the world we come from. There’s no green there.”

His ears went back as he spat this out.

“They killed their Mother.”

He hung his head, screwing his eyes shut.

“And they’re gonna do the same here. More sky people are gonna come--they’re gonna come like a rain that never ends.” He let out. Pandora was so far from Earth, and so much richer, yet its destruction was closer than anyone could’ve imagined. But when he glanced up, listening to the warm whispers of the ancestors, hope gleamed in his eyes. “Unless we stop them.”

There was something out there, far more powerful than any army.

“Look. You chose me for something.”

His face contorted with anguish, and it wasn’t long before he lowered his head again in prayer.

“But I need a little help here.”

You approached him from behind, watching him speak to Eywa with a gentle expression. When Alfred felt your hands on his shoulder, he was brought back instantly. So, he stood up.

“Our Great Mother does not take sides, Alfred.” You caressed his face. It was naïve to believe otherwise, but he always had so much faith in everything around him. And that faith was what always got him so far. “She protects only the balance of life.”

He glanced up to watch the atokerina drift above. Their small and delicate bodies pulsed soundlessly through the air, a testament to everything you said. Eywa may have been sentient, but she existed only as a silent guardian of the natural order.

“It was worth a try.” He sighed, looking in your eyes.

Without another word, you took his shoulders and pressed your forehead to his. He pressed back with equal force, closing his eyes. As comforting as his presence was, it was only temporary. Like Hometree, and everyone you ever loved, you could lose him.

Alfred breathed you in, holding you in this last moment of peace. Tonight, he would keep you close.

Tomorrow, he would fight alongside you, not knowing what would be his last—or yours.

The sharp whine of gunship turbines pierced the air. As their propellers sped up, they took off from the ground in a swarm. In the center was their queen, the Dragon, a gargantuan shuttle rigged for warfare.

Behind it were two bigger shuttles, Valkyries, packed with troopers, amp suits, and explosives. As they left base, onlookers in the communication tower cheered them on with great gusto. Traffic controllers threw their fists up, and armed guards, their machine guns.

“Yeah! Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Selfridge turned his back to the window, arms folded and sighing. Things had taken a turn for the worst after setting up this company, but he was powerless to stop what was put in motion. Na’vi insurgency called for an emergency change of leadership, putting their colonel’s authority above his.

Lightyears away from Earth and its jurisdiction, going against him was like a death wish.

As the sun rose behind them, the swarm of gunships flew into the Hallelujah mountains.

“This is group leader. We’re entering the flux vortex,” A male voice spoke on the radio. Quaritch stood next to the pilot of the Dragon, listening to it chatter with a mug in hand. “Switch to manual flight mode.”

“Copy. Manual flight mode.” Another replied.

On the other side was a flock of Na’Vi warriors, their bright blue bodies perched on the backs of ikran. As they flapped through the air, cawing at each other, they were led by Toruk and its rider, Toruk Makto.

The wind blew his braids back as he stared dead into the horizon. Sitting over his cold eyes was his crown. Blue and yellow war paint was streaked over his face, and in one hand, he clutched a machine gun.

He turned to his Olo’eyktan, who flanked his left.

Allen nodded and raised his bow at him in solidarity. He wore a similar warpaint, neon yellow and blue V’s going from his eyes to his nose. Hugged around his neck was a traditional choker, and under that were coils of feathers and elaborate necklaces, a symbol of his chiefly status.

He turned to you, who flanked his right.

You stared right back, your eyes bright and attentive. Beautiful lines of cyan, gold and blue were streaked all over your face and body. But your most formidable attribute would always remain your father’s bow.

Alfred faced the front again, eyes narrowing.

“This is papa dragon. I want this mission high and tight. I wanna be home for dinner,” Quaritch noted.

Samson gunships thundered over the forest floor, blasting away at ferns. Before they touched down, troopers poured out from the sides, oxygen masks on and machine guns cocked. “--suit team, go.”

“Alright, ladies. Let’s bring the pain.” Wainfleet said. The bottom of a Valkyrie opened, and men in amp suits zipped down on a cable. They dropped to the ground in heavy thumps, exoskeletal limbs whining as they charged into the deep Pandoran brush.

“Go! Go! Go!”

The second Valkyrie lowered its ramp.

“Move! Move! Move!”

Troopers and more amp suit-users marched down the slope, machine guns in hand. As the human and robot army stalked the forest floor, senses peeled for any signs of Na’Vi, Samsons hovered protectively overhead. It was dead silent, not a peep from nature.

“Bravo 1-1, move left.”

“Bravo 1-1 moving left. Watch flank.”

“Watch formation. Keep moving.”

“Charlie 2-1, watch your spacing.

“Copy that. Over.”

“Eyes up. Check that overhead,” Wainfleet scanned his surroundings behind the glass of his amp suit. Glitching heat signatures appeared on his cockpit screens. “And check those thermal scans.”

The dragon flew between the mountains, guarded by dozens of smaller, agile Samsons—scorpions.

“All call signs, papa has lead. Pushing to target. Escorts, stay close on my shuttle.” Quaritch said.

Sitting on top of the Valkyries were make-shift barriers. Gunmen stood behind them, heads tilted back in search of the elusive Na’Vi they hadn’t seen a trace of.

“Gun crews, keep your head on a swivel.”

The Hallelujah mountains floated around them like a still picture, silent, unmoving, and without a single animal—or person—in sight.

“Make no mistake, people. They’re out there.”

The rib-like formations came closer and closer.

“Alright, people, target in sight. Range, four klicks. Valkyrie 1-6, get your payload ready.” Quaritch said.

“Copy. Prepare to offload.” The pilots of the Valkyrie responded. “Staff Sergeant, stage the weapon.”

“Roll it to the ramp. Let’s go!” A voice barked in the back. Two men ran behind a massive pallet of mine explosives. They strained to push it, rolling it to the edge to be dropped off the shuttle. “Hold!”

Miles above the gunship armada camped the flock of Na’Vi warriors. They were so high up, the thunder of turbines was nothing but a hum from underneath. As they clung to the sides of two neighboring islands, hidden in a shadow, they watched the unsuspecting aircraft pass under them--and waited for their signal.

“Charlie 2-1, got big movement.”

“Hold position.” Wainfleet stopped and held up a fist. Surrounding troopers and amp suit users came to a stop, faces tense as the ground began to rumble. “We got movement out there. Five-hundred meters.”

It was the gallop of hundreds of horses.

“Sir, ground has movement!” A pilot of the dragon exclaimed. Quaritch came over and watched the heat signatures on his screen—a yellow wave coming toward their ground forces. “Fast approaching.”

“Firing line!” Wainfleet ordered. Everyone assembled into a horizontal formation and trained their guns at the dense brush in front of them, stares focused. “Targets closing. Range, four-hundred meters.”

Back on the dragon, Quaritch kept a watchful eye on the ground readings that glitched uncontrollably.

“Can’t you clean it up?” He asked.

“No, sir. It’s the flux.” The pilot tapped away.

A clan leader astride his horse held up his bow. Letting out a chilling war cry, he set off a chain of hooting and shouting from his warriors that rode beside. Arthur charged in with them, hoisting up his gun and screaming in the spur of the moment.

Voices came from all directions in the forest, the sound of a supernatural force closing in on its enemy. The troopers glanced around, spooked, not knowing where to look. But they felt it, the ground shaking.

They gripped their weapons, bracing themselves as Na’Vi horsemen burst through the brush.

Alfred flew between the two islands, gliding past the camping Na’Vi on his great leonopteryx. Its massive crimson body shot ahead of them, closely tailed by you and Allen.

“Attack! Attack! Attack!” Allen shouted over his shoulder.

“Ayeyeyeyeyeyeya!” Another clan leader dove off the side of the island—a woman with her whole body painted in solid red. She jetted down on her ikran, and others followed suit, dropping off the sides.

“Ayeyeyeyeyeyeya!” You shouted back.

“Brother, I’m gonna punch a hole,” Alfred spoke into his radio, glancing at Allen. “You follow me through.”

“Let’s ride.” He grinned.

Alfred dove downwards on his great leonopteryx, heading straight for the gunship armada below.

Allen shot after him, and you followed behind.

“Raaaaa!” Alfred’s ears went back, canines bared. He swooped down like an eagle, talons out, and latched onto a gunship by its tail rotor. Swinging it like a pendulum—“yiiarrgh!”—he tossed it into a nearby island. It exploded upon impact, going up in flames.

Allen descended from the sky and pulled an arrow back, his glare fiercer than a tiger. Once he came face-to-face with a gunship, he let it fly. In such close proximity, it shot right through the cockpit glass and pierced into the pilot’s chest.

You dove down on Tseze, eyes wide with primal ferocity as you held back your arrow. Releasing it at another gunship—“ha!”—you punctured the windshield and skewered the pilot inside.

More warriors on their ikran shot down like colorful meteors. And it was a sight to behold. Gunships began dropping out of the sky, hunted like prey by a greater predator. Nature was fighting back, and the Na’Vi were the harbingers of the revolution.

Samsons spun like rogue helicopters, their pilots dead behind the wheel, and crashed into surrounding islands in fiery explosions. Other warriors clung onto remaining aircraft, sinking them like boats.

“All aircraft, weapons free! Weapons free!” Quaritch yelled in the dragon. “Break right, come around.”

The Na’Vi horsemen splashed through a creek.

Now that they were in range, everyone opened fire.

“Light em’ up!” Wainfleet shouted.

A blinding hail of bullets shot at them from afar. Na’Vi warriors began falling off the backs of horses, some never even managing to draw their arrows before hitting the ground. Arthur raised his machine gun to his eyes and fired relentlessly back at them.

“Break formation, engage all hostiles!”

The remaining Samsons broke out of formation, engaging in dozens of dog fights in the air.

Gunships chased after warriors on ikran, shooting at them until they dropped out of the sky.

“Yeah! Get some!” Wainfleet jeered, machine gun pulsing back and forth in his exoskeletal arms.

A horse flipped over and crushed its rider. Another warrior on horseback leaped over their bodies, arrow drawn back. The second he released it, he was shot and killed. But that same arrow made it to the other side, nailing a trooper to the side of a log.

Alfred latched onto another Samson gunship. He could feel everything Toruk felt, the mighty thump of her wings, her giant body twirling through the air, and her strong talons on the tail rotor as he swung it into an unsuspecting ship passing by.

“Yaaaah—!”

The trooper inside it screamed and tried scrambling away from the still-spinning helicopter blades that came barreling into the side of his aircraft. They crashed mid-air, and Alfred flew off to shoot at other gunships, hailing bullets on their windshields.

You flew around the side of a Valkyrie.

Gunmen fired away on the ramp, guarding numerous pallets of mine explosives behind them.

“Ha!” You released an arrow. It pierced through the stomach of one man, the sheer speed and force of it pushing him to the ground.

Arthur was flung off his horse, falling forward and rolling on the ground. “Agh—!”

The warrior beside him pulled a fallen Na’Vi onto their horse, which reared back and turned around. Once he got up again, he could only fire back for a few seconds before retreating. There, they fled the bullets that shot relentlessly from the other side.

“Scorpions, pursue and destroy.” Quaritch ordered.

Samsons in the mountains began firing their missiles, blasting away at ikran, one by one. And their riders fell off, one by one. Samsons in the forest rained missiles on the horsemen. Upon impact, explosions went off everywhere, and dirt sprayed upwards. Arthur kept running. Another missile exploded behind him, throwing him forward to the ground. Then another, and another.

“Augh—!” Once he scrambled onto his feet again, he pressed his radio. “Alfred, Alfred, you copy?”

He fled alongside other warriors, splashing through a deep creek. Some turned back to release a single arrow, an effort that proved in vain. No matter how valiantly they fought, their bows were no match for the firepower dispersed so abundantly at them.

“We’re falling back! We’re getting hammered!”

“Copy. Get out of there.” Alfred replied from high up in the mountains. He didn’t even get to think before the Dragon suddenly appeared in front of him—the colonel’s ship. He clenched his teeth and swerved to hide behind an island.

But it was too late.

“That’s him. Get after him!” Quaritch leaned forward with a shout, pointing at him. Toruk’s giant, crimson body was too cumbersome to be missed. And so, the dragon chased after him, firing missiles that he dodged by the skin of his teeth.

A Samson shot at you from behind, forcing you to dive towards the forest below. While you flew in a sharp zig-zag to avoid the stream of bullets, you glanced back, heart pounding and fear racing in your eyes.

Alfred kept fleeing. Explosions went off behind him, and missiles shot over and under him. If he kept going at this rate, one of them was bound to be a direct hit.

“Take him out!” Quaritch roared.

A Samson—with blue and white lines painted around the sides—flew over the dragon and rained bullets on it. The pilot of the rogue ship was none other than your own Trudy Chacon, who had blue warpaint going from ear to ear and a clan feather tucked in her hair.

“Oops.” She mused, giving her gum a few chews.

Her ship stopped directly in the dragon’s line of sight to initiate some kind of standoff, and a standoff it became.

“Light her up!” Quaritch barked.

The dragon fired missiles at her ship, which she expertly dodged by swerving behind an island. Once she made it to the other side, she fired back, landing multiple hits on the cockpit.

“Right there!” Bullets ricocheted off the glass, forcing Quaritch to shield his face. “–agh!”

“You’re not the only one with a gun, bitch.”

“Keep her in your sights! Arming all pods.”

The dragon released more missiles at her.

Trudy kept banking right, but one eventually exploded beside her, shattering the cockpit glass.

“That’s it!” Quaritch exclaimed.

Machine gunfire rained over her ship. Her engine took direct hits and exploded. She winced and shut off some of her controls as she started free drifting.

The Samson chased you all the way into the forest. While it was hot on your tail, it hailed bullets from above. You kept fleeing. When it stopped firing, you glanced over your shoulder, mouth agape. Just as you thought, it pulled upwards to avoid the trees.

But that brief moment of distraction ended up fatal.

When you turned to the front again, you were met with human troops on the ground. Before you could even react, an amp suit user fired at you from below.

Hot bullets pierced into Tzese’s body.

She gave a sharp screech and you screamed, grasping at your stomach—the same place she was hit. You had no time to process the pain as she rapidly descended, crashing through some vines before hitting the ground.

You fell off and rolled across the dirt.

Scrapes stung your forehead and shoulders.

But when you got up with a hiss, they were the last on your mind once it hit you.

“Tzese!” You cried. As horses and warriors fled the other way, you ran back into the gunfire to her body. When a bullet chipped off the bark of a tree, you merely shielded your face to keep going. When you got to her side, she gave one gentle croon before dying.

You stroked her snout, then looked up fearfully.

Human soldiers on the other side kept advancing, an unstoppable force that destroyed everything in its path.

Every part of you wanted to be angry, but the rage was gone, replaced by a despair that grew with every explosion. You held onto a log, bracing yourself as the world kept shaking. A horse reared back before being killed by a blast. A warrior was shot off the back of another. Another explosion flipped over two horses.

And you watched it all happen, powerless to help them.

Allen soared into the back of the Valkyrie, eyes narrowed with purpose. He could see them—the explosives they were planning to drop. If just one were dropped, it would be the end of his people as he knew it. And he didn’t have anything else to lose. So he did the unthinkable, making a leap of faith and jumping onto the ramp guarded by an entire gun crew.

“Heyaaah!”

Allen fired an arrow mid-air, killing one man before he even landed. Then, he started throwing people overboard, tossing their tiny bodies off the ship. For those he couldn’t reach, he slammed his bow into them, knocking them out. He fought with the hatred he harbored for years, from years of senseless violence, killing, and occupation.

He shouted angrily as he practically decimated the whole crew, and he would’ve if it weren’t for the last man—they aimed their gun just in time to shoot him.

Strong blasts rattled his body as he took several bullets to the chest.

Allen cried out in pain and fell backward off the ship. Then, he dropped hundreds of feet into the forests below.

“Rogue one is hit. I’m going in,” Trudy spoke on the radio. Her smoking ship continued to drift and lose altitude. She had lost all control, and the only thing left to do was wait for certain death. “Sorry, Alfred.”

Arthur kept firing his machine gun on foot.

Not a moment passed before he was shot in the chest, falling onto his back. “Argh—!”

“Fire.” Quaritch ordered.

Trudy’s Samson shook violently as it descended. As she sat in the cockpit, dread crossed her face for the last time as a missile flew straight at her. It blew up the ship and her along with it.

You kept panting by the log as the forest went up in flames. As the swirling heat surrounded you in all directions, you looked around for someone, anyone. All you saw was a horse run by, on fire from mane to tail. You hung your head in defeat, then sorrow.

Everyone had perished, leaving you behind.

“Allen! Brother, do you read?” Alfred shouted into the channel. When he heard no response, he tried again. “Rogue One, you copy? Trudy!”

Silence.

Arthur lifted the hatch of his link unit, hyperventilating. As he struggled out of the machine and onto the floor, he clutched at his chest, choking on his own breath. The pain still lingered, but he would never forget how it was to die.

“Time to target, two minutes.” A pilot said.

“Valkyrie 1-6, you are cleared and hot,” Quaritch replied beside them.

“Copy, Dragon. We are starting our bomb run.” The Valkyrie flew dangerously close to the rib-like formations, and thus, the tree. Troopers in the back clamored around to prepare the explosives.

“Arm number one!” A man grabbed his colleague by the shoulder.

They activated the first bomb in the lineup, turning on the detonator.

“Number one armed!”

“Ma Alfred!” You cried, running behind a tree.

Bullets spat around you, chipping off the sides.

“I read you.” He replied. The relief of hearing your voice was short-lived, overwhelmed by an urge to find you. But he could only do so much without your help.

You glanced around the side of the tree, eyes wide and ears turned back. Dozens of troopers and men in amp suits marched on just several feet behind you. Some even had flame flowers, spitting out projectiles of fire to burn away the thick forest in front of them.

“(F/N)!”

“Tzese’s dead.” You breathed, sliding your back down the tree. “They are very close. There are many.”

“Do not attack.” Alfred immediately said, raising his voice as he continued. “Do you read me, (F/N)?”

Only you did exactly that, pulling an arrow from your quiver. Your chest heaved as you gathered the courage to shoot, glancing over the side of the tree with your teeth clenched.

The soldiers marched closer.

You could hear the hydraulic whine of amp suit limbs, the heavy stomps where they stepped.

“Do not attack! Fall back now. Get out of there! That’s an order!” He shouted, feeling a swift wave of panic when you didn’t answer. “(F/N)!”

You pulled back your arrow and leaned over the side of the tree. You hesitated some. But once you found your edge, you raised the bow to your eye, ready to fire.

“I got movement. I got movement.” One of the commanders said, bringing the entire platoon to a stop.

“Hold position!” Wainfleet replied, glancing from side to side. “Something’s coming.”

“Bravo 1-1, I got a big seating. Turn screens over.”

“Hold your formation.”

“We got movement two-hundred meters.” A heat signature in the shape of a wave appeared on his screen and was advancing quickly toward them. It must’ve been reinforcements. He raised his machine gun, bracing for their arrival. “Be ready.”

Your eyes fell, sensing a rumbling at your feet. Then, your ears pricked up to the distant cracking of trees.

The thundering came from behind, and what felt like an earthquake turned out to be the heavy gallops of hammerhead titanotheres—the giant Pandoran rhinoceroses Alfred ran into on his first day.

They burst out of the brush and charged right past you.

You gasped and watched them around the side of the tree. They just went straight for the platoon, disregarding you. Soldiers shot at them in frantic terror, screaming as the giant beasts barrelled right into them. Their bullets bounced off their thick armor, and with nothing to stop their advance, the rhinos rammed into their robotic suits. Then, they flipped them over like they didn’t weigh a thing. Others swung their heads sideways, smashing into them like cardboard.

“We gotta get out of here!”

“Fall back! Fall back!”

Everyone began retreating, but could only get so far before being trampled.

Wainfleet stayed back and kept firing at the rhino before him, unbelieving of what he saw. But the faith in his weapon was misplaced, and the creature charged forward.

It rammed into him, flipped him over, and got onto his hind legs.

As its front legs came down, he let out a high-pitched scream before being crushed in his suit.

The rest of the herd charged past you, heading for the troops ahead in a premeditated stampede. It couldn’t be denied. That sure feeling in your chest, what you just witnessed.

“Alfred—” You breathed. “—Eywa has heard you.”

The distant screech of ikran alerted Alfred to turn his head. Behind him, rivers upon rivers of colorful ikran poured into the mountains. They flew in by the hundreds, going straight for the remaining aircraft.

“Eywa has heard you!” You screamed, raising your bow. The biggest smile plastered across your face as the last rhinos ran past. It wasn’t every day that a God answered prayers, let alone on such a grand scale. To see Pandora come together as one—from creatures big to small—and fight the invasion enraptured you with faith.

Wild ikran clung onto Samsons, sinking them like boats. When Alfred witnessed the natural phenomenon, which was nothing short of divine intervention, he felt a rush of adrenaline and the return of his edge.

“Come on!” He roared, making a sharp turn.

Ikran swooped in and perched on gunships, snapping their jaws at the troopers inside. They bit their heads before tossing them overboard.

Viper wolves and their cubs, nantangs, raced through the forest floor. They leaped on the faces of fleeing troopers, who fell to the ground screaming.

You ran alongside the wolves, firing an arrow.

“Ha!”

The second you let it fly, you heard a roar at your side. It startled you to a stop, and when you turned to see what it was, you let out a shaky gasp. A thanator, a black, panther-like beast all Na’Vi knew to fear. But it didn’t come here to prey on you.

Instead, it lowered its head and trilled, a universal sign of submission—and friendship.

You smiled, bowing your head in response.

“Sir! All escorts are down or falling back,” A pilot of the dragon informed.

Their colonel stared contemptuously at the shitshow that unfolded out of nowhere—banshees sinking gunships, mammals mowing down ground forces—a testament to that observation. Reinforcements pulled from the asscrack of Pandora’s ecosystem. But the odds didn’t shake him.

He only bit back harder.

“Let’s get this done.” His eyes darkened. “Valkyrie 1-6, this is dragon. Press to target.”

An ikran landed on the windshield of the Valkyrie, scraping its talons on the glass. But the ship was too large to be taken down by weight alone.

“Copy. Pressing to target. Stand by to drop, thirty seconds,” A pilot of the Valkyrie responded.

Mo’at stayed with the tree all along. Here, she remained safe from the heat of the battle. It wasn’t until now that she was interrupted by the thundering of a monstrous ship above. The Valkyrie was getting into range of the sacred site.

Little did its pilots know, it was being tailed by a mythological beast.

Alfred glided over the ship on Toruk, his gaze focused. When he got low enough, he jumped off and rolled across the top. The gun crew behind the barrier immediately swiveled to fire at him. He jumped over them and fired into the barricade, killing the entire company.

“On my mark. Two, one, mark.” The pilot said.

“Drop! Drop! Drop! Go, go, go, go, go!” A man in the cargo hold yelled.

Four others began rolling the explosives to the ramp.

Alfred ran across the top of the Valkyrie, ripping off the safety pins of a grenade. He tossed it into one of the front engines, then jumped ship—and onto Toruk—moments before it exploded.

With one faulty engine, the ship tilted to one side. The pallet of explosives rolled backward into the cargo. A man fell behind it, then got crushed between that and another pallet.

The Valkyrie eventually crashed into the side of a rock formation, scraping off its massive wing. Then, it made a slow nose-dive into the forest below, just missing the Tree of Souls. It collided with the ground and went up in fireworks.

The blast was so powerful that it rattled the dragon’s cockpit as it soared above.

“Brace!” Quaritch grabbed the pilot’s chair.

But not a minute passed before he faced another threat, this one greater than the last.

Alfred glided over the ship, leaped off, and rolled across the top. As he made a beeline to the engines, this leonopteryx shot over the cockpit, alerting Quaritch of their uninvited passenger.

“It’s Jones.” He remarked.

Alfred’s towering blue figure could be seen from the inside. He pulled out a grenade, bit off the safety pins, and tossed the rest with a sharp ‘clink.’

Quaritch lunged forward and yanked the yoke to one side, getting the ship to bank.

As the ground beneath him tilted, Alfred fell on his side and dropped his grenade. Just as he was about to roll off the ship, he caught onto a missile hanging on the side.

While he dangled on it, his grenade exploded in a random groove it fell in. A huge hole was blasted into the ship, contaminating the air inside.

“Mask on!” Quaritch took a deep inhale from the emergency oxygen tube.

“Breach alarm!”

As Alfred struggled to pull himself up, he accidentally ripped off the missile. He dropped back down, but didn’t let go. Instead, he climbed up with the missile in hand, intending to throw it into an engine.

Quaritch watched him from the cockpit, anticipating exactly that. After taking one last breath, he darted into the cargo hold. He made a quick climb onto an amp suit. Not to use it, but to reach the hatch above.

Ripping it off, he rose out of it with a gun.

Lo and behold, Alfred was in front of him, about to let go of his missile. Quaritch fired at him as he tossed it into the engine. Bullets ricocheted off a protruding rod, missing his body as—BOOM!

The powerful blast threw the colonel to the side.

Alfred dropped off the ship back-first, watching it explode into flames. Then, he fell into the forest below, plunging through the canopy. After snapping through several vines and giant leaves, he hit the ground.

As he gritted his teeth from the pain, he got on his back again to watch the sky. Just as he hoped, the dragon was finally going down. But he couldn’t say the same for its relentless captain.

Quaritch dropped back into the cargo hold. He fell into the amp suit cockpit, then rushed to activate it. If he wasn’t fast enough, this entire ship would blow up and him along with it. And he wasn’t planning on getting his ticket punched before Alfred did.

He slipped the control gloves on and booted up the suit. Just as the cargo hold began to explode, he grabbed a machine gun off the wall and dropped through the ship’s bottom hatch. Plunging a hundred feet to the ground below, he landed with a heavy stomp.

The ship crashed just behind him as smoking debris.

Quaritch glanced over his shoulder, face bloodied and eyes burning in hatred. If he couldn’t take on Alfred in his Avatar body, he would his human one. And he had just the idea where he was.

You sped through the forest on the back of the thanator. Her strong, lithe body darted across the floor, ducking under fallen logs and leaping over roots. You had an inexplicable urge to get to Alfred, wherever he may be, and if you knew any better, you would trust it with everything you had. Something was coming for him.

Quaritch stalked deep into the Pandoran brush. It was silent, save for the mechanic whining of his exoskeletal limbs. When he came across a net of vines, it didn’t take long for him to notice the mobile shack hiding behind it—a remote link site.

Inside it lay Alfred’s body, human, frail, and most importantly, unconscious. His sleeping face showed on the vitals screen above his link unit, a testament to his vulnerability.

And Quaritch would take full advantage of it.

He raised his machine gun with an evil smile, training it at the shack. Just as he was about to blow it to hell, he saw something in his rearview mirror—a panther-like beast galloping up at him, and on its back, a Na’Vi rider.

He spun around, only to be pounced on.

As you leaped through the air, you gave a fierce scream that synchronized with the thanator’s roar. You went straight for Quaritch’s head before landing on the other side. Your feet skidded against the dirt, and you turned back around, roaring at him.

When you jumped on him, he swung his fist at you, shouting.

“Gargh—!”

You hopped off his arm and landed on the other side.

You leaped on Quaritch again.

He raised his gun and fired at you, but the bullets rippled off the thanator’s stomach.

“Ha!” You shoved him to the ground. As you stood over his amp suit, the immense weight of the panther cracked his cockpit glass—three tonnes of it. While you had him pinned, you grabbed his machine gun with your front talons. Then, you got back on your hind legs and slammed it down on a boulder repeatedly—BAM! BAM! BAM!— reducing it to spare parts.

Quaritch shoved you off and stood up. He punched the thanator in the head, then swung his other arm around.

You ducked under it before he could grab you. You jumped on him again, but he threw you to a tree. As you hung off the sides, the thanator hissed at him like a snake. Antennae sprung out from her neck like rattles.

Quaritch pulled out a dagger and grinned manically.

“Come on. Come to papa.”

You pounced on him one last time. With the thanator’s stomach exposed, he plunged the blade into it. You gasped as a sharp pain pierced through you, and the creature cried in the same agony.

Quaritch then held her up by the neck, stabbing her numerous times in the same spot. As she dangled over the ground, she could only writhe as the dagger plunged into her again and again. Once he was satisfied, he tossed her to the ground, you along with it.

The thanator’s body fell over yours, crushing you under it. Before she could get up, Quaritch leaped onto her and plunged the blade deep into ribs. He gave the dagger a twist, delivering a cruel but killing blow.

She trilled weakly before dying.

He lifted his soulless eyes to you, prepared to take you out next. Even with his dagger raised, you weren’t afraid. Your ferocity was primal, your will unshaken in the face of death—you gave a feral hiss, then strained to push yourself out from underneath the dead beast.

Just as he was about to bring his blade down, Alfred jumped in from above. His long braids swung forward from the momentum, and he rose from the ground.

“Give it up, Quaritch!” He began. Raising his arms, he shook his head as an ultimatum. “It’s all over.”

“Nothing’s over while I’m breathing.” The colonel spat, flipping the dagger in his exoskeletal hand.

“I kinda hoped you’d say that.” Alfred glared.

He ran forward and picked up a stray blade off the ground. He lifted it just in time, defending himself against Quaritch who struck down with his dagger.

A heavy clank was heard.

That was followed by the mechanical whir of the ampsuit’s arm as it swung at him.

Alfred ducked.

Quaritch swung him again, only for his dagger to slam against his makeshift one. Sparks flew.

They went at it for several minutes, and his colonel fought so aggressively, he could barely keep up. The man just kept swinging, and he kept blocking. But the odds would shift the moment Quaritch thrust his dagger at him instead. It lodged into Alfred’s blade handle, and all it took was a sharp twist to break it.

Without anything to fight with, the colonel tried to grab at him. Alfred lunged backward to avoid him. Then, he lunged forward to shatter his cockpit glass. Now that it was weakened, he leaped on him—

“Yaaaargh!”

—and plunged the blade deep into the cockpit. It burst through the glass and nearly skewered into the colonel’s chest. Seeing that he failed, Alfred leaped off him and to a safe distance.

Quaritch took a deep breath before ripping the blade out. Toxic air hissed inside, depressurizing the cockpit. But that didn’t stop him from tossing the blade at the shack, cracking one of the windows.

You kept straining to free yourself, grunting as you pulled your body out with all your might.

When Alfred returned, Quaritch gave a few weak swings before stopping. The oxygen alarm in his amp suit wouldn’t cease its beeping, and he could barely see out of his cracked windshield.

“Come on!” Alfred roared.

So he did the next best thing—deactivating the suit and ejecting the cockpit glass altogether. He sat exposed to the toxic Pandoran air for a few moments before sliding on an oxygen mask. After taking a few deep breaths, he activated the amp suit again.

As it booted up, Alfred pulled out a smaller dagger from his vest, tail lashing and teeth bared.

His scornful colonel stood watch, disbelieving of what he saw. The marine he took under his wing was unrecognizable, dressed in tribal garb, feathers, and hair beads. But more notably, he was an alien.

Tall, blue, feline, and with a sweeping tail.

“Hey, Jones.” Quaritch looked down at him, eyes burning. “How’s it feel to betray your own race?”

Alfred only gave a feral hiss, his ears going back.

Quaritch shook his head with a mocking smile.

“You think you’re one of them?” He asked, pausing briefly. “Time to wake up.”

He turned to the shack and marched to it.

“Oh, no.” Alfred’s heart sank.

Quaritch smashed the window. The Pandoran air burst into the shack with a hiss, setting off the oxygen alarm. He slammed his fist down on a link unit. When he lifted the hatch, there was nobody inside—it was the wrong one. So he stomped down the length of the shack, in a fervent search for his body.

Before he could get any further, Alfred jumped on him.

Quaritch reached over his head and tried to grab him, but to no avail—he was too agile. Alfred’s tail swayed as he balanced on his amp suit like a cat. Then, he screamed ferociously, stabbing at his head to kill him once and for all. But with a quick jerk of the colonel’s neck, the dagger sunk into the headrest instead.

In the brief lapse of his attention, Quaritch grabbed him by the plait and threw him to the ground.

“Augh—!” Alfred rolled across the dirt.

Back in the shack, the oxygen alarm kept ringing.

He started coughing in his sleep in the link unit.

When Alfred tried to get up again, he stopped, feeling a sharp pain in his chest. He clutched at it and cried out in agony. He could feel it—his human form suffocating. As he gasped for air in his avatar form, desperate to override that somehow, Quaritch stomped over.

Alfred coughed awake in his link unit.

His avatar form dropped dead outside.

He shut his eyes and reconnected to it again. Once he did, he continued hyperventilating on the ground. But he could only feel the grass under him for so long.

Quaritch leaned over and picked him up by the plait.

He screamed and kicked around in pure agony as the colonel dangled him over the ground. His nerves were getting stretched, his spine broken, again and again.

You strained even harder, your breath quickening at what you saw. The demon had picked up Alfred by his tsaheylu, holding him close to his leering face. It gave you the last push you needed to pull your leg from underneath the thanator, finally freeing yourself.

“Agh!” Alfred kicked around again, watching helplessly as Quaritch plucked the dagger from his headrest—and in a tantalizing slow manner.

You leaped over the thanator, reaching for your bow.

Quaritch pressed the dagger to his neck.

Alfred glared at him in his last moments, never backing down as the blade sunk deeper into his flesh—

You rose from the ground, eyes wide with ferocity as you drew an arrow back. You aimed it at the colonel.

Then, you let it fly. The arrow shot into Quaritch’s chest, getting him to drop Alfred with a sharp gasp.

You ran to the side, pulled back another arrow, then released it. The second arrow plunged in an inch away from the first, piercing into his heart.

Quaritch grasped at them, mouth agape and eyes wide.

You ran to Alfred’s unconscious body, crouching over him protectively. You craned your head to the side, hissing at the colonel as he finally met his demise. He made a few shallow breaths, his irises dilating as he collapsed. His amp suit did the same, buckling at the knees before falling to the ground.

Only then did you return to Alfred, who lay on the ground, unmoving.

“Alfred—” You sank down to him.

He lifted the hatch of his link unit, back in his human form. He was so deprived of oxygen, his head had started to spin. And his vision, slowly departing. That left him no choice but to suck in deep breaths of the poisonous air.

But the more he inhaled, the weaker he became.

With the last of his strength, he reached up to the storage box on the wall. Oxygen masks. And to get to them, he propped himself up on his wheelchair beside.

He rolled it away by accident.

He tried reaching forward without it, but leaned too far and slid off his unit. Alfred fell to the ground in a thud.

“Alfred,” You let out, craning his unconscious face.

He resorted to dragging himself along the floor. And his atrophied legs, pulling against the ground. Once he got under the box, he reached up to grab a mask. But while he pulled on it, it got caught in the safety flap.

He struggled for one last minute before he finally gave up, rolling onto his back. He closed his eyes, making quick short breaths as he drifted out of consciousness.

“Alfred,” You cried again. Then, it hit you—the feeling of his presence, the unshakeable sense of his peril. His true body was nearby, only you didn’t know where. But your bond to him decided otherwise.

You darted your head to the shack.

When Alfred opened his eyes again, he let out one last breath before passing out, pupils dilated.

You ran to it, slamming your hands on the window. Then, you glanced around the side of the shack to find another way in—the window Quaritch smashed. Jumping through the frame, you moved your giant body through the tiny shack and to the link unit at the end.

Lying on the ground was a stranger.

A human.

A man you’d never seen before. He had pale skin, blonde hair, and a face you couldn’t recognize.

But you knew in your heart who it was.

You picked up his small, frail body in your arms and shook him. “Alfred! Ma Alfred!”

When he didn’t respond, mouth agape and eyes glazed over, you reached out to one of the oxygen masks beside. You fixed it onto his face in a panic. Air hissed weakly, flowing automatically into his nose and lungs.

His eyes flickered.

His consciousness returned.

Then, he reached to the bottom of the mask and released the oxygen. It poured into the mask, letting him take his first real breath in what felt like ages.

He panted under you, and once he regained his senses, he stared up at you with the most tender gaze. It looked like he was on the verge of tears, and only the bittersweet kind. Everything was finally over.

He was safe, and you finally saw him as his true self.

Yet, you still loved him for everything he was.

As he basked in this moment of joy, of a peace he never knew, Alfred reached up to your face. He caressed it with his tiny hand. You covered it with your giant one, peering down at him with loving eyes.

“I see you,” He smiled.

“I see you.” You smiled back.

Alfred (V.O)

|

The aliens went back to their dying world.

|

Back on base, a long line of RDA staff filed into a shuttle. Every last one of them would depart Pandora and head back to Earth, never to return.

As they walked with their heads down, some pushing gurneys of injured troopers, they were guarded by Na’Vi warriors and Avatar users—all of them armed with bows and guns.

Alfred stood alongside you, Arthur, and Kiku, the last of his friends who survived the war.

|

Only a few were chosen to stay.

|

His great leonopteryx flew back into the sky, letting out one last mighty roar as it flapped its wings.

|

The time of great sorrow was ending.

Toruk Makto was no longer needed.

|

Alfred returned to the old link room.

The lights were dimmed, the place left unused for weeks. As he sat in his wheelchair next to his old link unit, he stroked the top to reminisce the first time he connected to his avatar. The first time he felt his legs again, the first time he ran barefooted on the dirt.

|

Well, uh, I guess this is my last video log.

‘Cause whatever happens tonight, I’m not gonna be coming back to this place.

|

Alfred appeared in front of the camera again.

“Well, I guess I better go,” He said, falling deep into thought. Only he looked perfectly content, smiling as he said this. “I don’t wanna be late for my own party. It’s my birthday after all.”

|

This is Alfred Jones signing off.

|

The entire clan gathered at the Tree of souls.

At night, the purple tendrils glowed the most potently.

Everyone had their tsaheylu connected to the ground, lighting it up in bright pulses as they swayed together. Your mother stood on the dais, dancing to lead the ritual. Alfred’s bodies—human and Avatar—were laid out together, heads touching. A cloud of atokerina drifted around him as he slept.

You crouched over his human one, watching him intently as his soul departed it.

“Mother,”

“Stop!” She held up a hand, stopping the ritual.

You removed Alfred’s oxygen mask for a gentle hiss. Peering down at his small face with bright, loving eyes, you leaned down to kiss him on both of his. The cloud of atokerina drifted slowly over to his avatar, and you followed. Placing a hand on his cheek, you waited for him to awaken. Then, he opened his eyes.

Avatar

Fin

Taglist: @sunnysssol @javelintine @chicha027

[tumovs]

Goldman Sachs’ foray into consumer #banking in 2016 was quickly heralded as (and seemed to be) a great success. A few days ago, the bank announced an almost $3 billion loss from that business. Let’s take a look.

Despite the initial skepticism, Marcus proved a huge success: by 2020, Marcus was one of the fastest-growing #digital #banks in the US with more than $80 billion in deposits and $5 billion in loans.

Aggressive pricing, state-of-the-art #technology, reliable customer service and a well-known brand name count among the reasons for the rise. Markus’ success was twice important because - on top of commercial reasons - it exemplified one thing: how traditional financial institutions (Goldman was founded in 1869) can adapt to the #digital age and compete with #fintech players.

Several things have gone wrong:

1) Goldman’s overly aggressive pricing (to gain market share) during the boom years

2) Poor risk #management with more than 25% of card loans going to financially weak customers and a provision rate at subprime levels

3) Expanding defaults as a result of the deteriorating macro environment

4) Bad management decisions such as the one to merge (previously independent) Marcus with the wealth management segment

5) Service quality (i.e. disputes over chargebacks) not being able to keep up with an increasing customer base.

The credit card business is traditionally a hard one to crack, more so for newcomers even if they are called #Goldman_Sachs. And there seems to be no way back for what was once hailed as one the company’s biggest successes. Timing and bad management decisions have proven – once more – an unbeatable combination.

Reawd more, the full article at: 👉

Opinions: my own, Graphic sources: #Goldman Sachs, Roel Wieringa

____________________________

Please leave comments, subscribe and follow my news on my official social media pages: Telegram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Gettr, Reddit, and Tumblr.

🤝 𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬 𝐓𝐔𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐒. @reinis_tumovs

#tumovs #reinis #reinis_tumovs #rtumovs #rtgroup #тумовс #banker #neobanker #тумовс_банкир #tumovs_banker

[tarantasina]

Leedie life update: I'm thinking about doing something to get Air (I don't open windows almost at all and the construction on this building implies you either have do that or you should have old wood windows with fractures in the wood that let the Air in. In the last ~25 years everyone upgraded to Windows That Keep You Warm/Without Holes In Them, and now stuck with the need to open them 1 time a day at minimum (documentation says ideal would be once every 3 hours for 15 minutes, but no one has time for that)

So I've been looking into options! First glance told me that it's:

1) (relatively) Cheap option - you make a hole in your room, put a Small Box that has fan+heater+filters on it and call it a day

Good: very clean Air in, no need to touch windows

Bad: even the quietest models go wrroom wrroom, so if you have trouble sleeping (like me), sucks to be you

2) Man Oh Man You Are Made Of Money option - put a Big Box in another room that has one of the walls looking at the street (usually balcony), put a bunch of ventilation shafts from it to adjascent rooms you need air in, get electric cables to feed the Big Box - boom! Many airs, quiet, no need to do anything! Maybe change filters once in 6-12 months

Good: VERY many good Airs, very quiet

Bad: PRICE IS BIG OW. Requiers a little renovation to put holes and shafts (hehe) where they need to be and to put energy lines down to feed the hungry box. Also if the rooms you need air in are not adjascent to the Big Box room, it becomes 10x harder to do it properly

3) Did You Inherit The Emerald Mine Or Something option - go all in. Big box go in one room, shafts to getting the air in and then getting it out. Electricity costs to feed Big Box go way down, requires Big Renovation of the entire flat, absolute air control, can put Big Box anywhere since you are making all these shafts anyway

Good: Many Airs. All the Airs. Control over all the Airs. Price to feed Big Box goes way down

Bad: YOU CAN BUY NEW (small) HOME FOR THIS PRICE

I very much wanted option 1 to work, but looking at how I disable all the quiet devices every night I realized it was a path to sadness and plugging an extra hole later (not even in a sexy way)

So! Option 2. There's several models of the Big Boxes and I did not want to spend Many Moneys on something bad so I went into a rabbit hole of research crying over the fact that you can't trust reviews on product pages AND normal people dont buy Costy Big Boxes much, so there was little to no reviews anyway

AND THEN. SALVATION.

Apparently there's a forum of Geeky Manly Mans who discuss technology. And in there there's a section for discussing household appliances

7 ENOURMOUS THREADS FULL OF WAYS TO GET MANY AIRS TO YOUR HOME. 7 (SEVEN)!!! Because they talked so much previous 6 threads ran into post limits

I did not go through them all (the old ones are like 10 years old and so may be out of date), but I've read every message written in the last year and searched for the models. Learned a lot about different Small Boxes! Actually found out option 2 in here, because apparently "I don't want to use Small Box for Any Reason and Biggest Box costs more than I ever held or would have in my life" is a popular problem, and this forum is inhabited by industry professionals or experienced hands-on enthusiasts who dispense free advice , and it is acceptable and encouraged to ask for help

So I looked through a couple (a lot) of "need advice" posts, saw what information the Knowledge People ask for and put down HUGE post with all the information, my flat plan, what Small Boxes I looked into and why they are not for me and what Big Boxes I looked into and what questions/concerns I have on that, and the amount of moneys I am ready to spend on this

Look at the plan btw I had to spend like half an hour to google what the flats in my type of apartment building look like (I could spend 4$ to get High Quality Plans of my actual flat but who has this kind of money in this economy)

SO, I POSTED MY QUESTION YESTERDAY AND GOT 2 VERY IN-DEPTH ANSWERS ALREADY!!1!

First one listed a couple of options on how to get Airs:

1) Very cheap - dont buy the complete Big Box, get the fan, heater, filters I fancy and all the nitty bits on my own and then put the stuff together. He put it all in listed order with links and approximate prices, I was very impressed

Good: Cheapest option. As many Airs as a proper Big Box can give

Bad: Need to find someone who can put all this stuff together - and boy did he link details that needed some work, because the separate parts were not designed to fit together. I know that would be hard because a couple of companies, when I was searching for cheaper Big Boxes, flat-out told me they only work with stuff you buy from them (even if you got the same model, they wont touch it). Also, as with regular Big Box, this set-up needs you to put cables down to feed it. Also no remote control - you need to go there push buttons with your own hands like in Ye Olde Times if you need to change speed/heat

2) Costier but doable, basically: "Hey the room you want to put it in has old leaky wood windows, right? Change them to good windows so that the air wouldn't leak, put holes to your bedroom and the other room you go to, and put a Small Box there. Small Box will get Airs into that room and then through the holes to the places you actually need, no ventilation shafts required. Since Small Box will be considerable distance away and through the wall the noise shouldn't be an issue"

Option 1 is interesting if I ever do some renovation (I would be able to get cables there to feed the handmade Big Box Ensemble), but Option 2 is doable right now!! Small Box can just be fee through a regular socket!

Second answer tweaked the handmade ensemble a little and answered lots of other questions I had, and gave advice on Small Boxes

I probably won't be doing it for a while (I need my room without holes for the next 4-5 months), but I just wanted to share the story of how I went to Scary Forum With Many Dudes and got Good Advice

[202247256caic2223]

The Twitter fairytale of 2022 - Elon Musk’s upcoming to a true community sweet heart. 

Once Upon a Time…

… there was a little boy named Elon Reeve, growing up with his mother Maye, and father Errol in Pretoria, South Africa. With his little brother Kimbal and his younger sister Tosca, they built the Musk family: a wealthy, publicly-known, and soon shuttered home. When Elon was only 9-years-young, his parents got divorced and the little boy decided to live with his father. Soon after the divorce, Elon became interested in video games, computers, and programming, as his own little escape from reality which will lead him to great success in life. At age of 12, he even sold his first game to the magazine PC and Office Technology earning himself his first $500 bucks. But this is only the beginning… 

Elon Reeve was not only smart and clever in the context of computers and science, but he was also a sneaky and sophisticated child when it came to finding his way to the United States of America. He dreamed of living in the US rather than staying in South Africa. One could say he never felt like a South African but more so an American, indicating early higher wishes and dreams to create his persona around him. 

So, young Elon decided to move to Canada after finishing his education in Pretoria and even visiting University for a couple of months. His move to Canada as a South African was possible due to his mother being Canadian-born enabling Elon an entry ticket to apply for a Canadian passport. Even though Musk preferred to live with his father Errol during high school, he sure preferred his mother’s citizenship. #sneakyboy Together with his mother Faye and his siblings, Elon Reeve moved to Canada… leaving behind their father. 

One thing we can acknowledge: Elon Reeve Musk always had his own will, plan, and look out for success. Once he arrived in Canada, he started working on farms before attending universities in Canada and the US. During his studies at the UoP, Elon held large parties to pay tuition fees, worked on business plans, and sold these. He surely is brilliant when making plans to earn money and climb up the ladder…

In combination with his brother Kimbal, a well-known “party animal” but also a “social entrepreneur”, they created Zip2, a company supported by numerous Silicon Valley investors. While leading the company to its success, Musk showered at a local YMCA and slept in his office. 

In Zip2, a company providing and licensing online city guide software to newspapers, the Musk brothers invested around $28,000 in funding and working night shifts coding the website. In February 1999, Zip2 was sold to Compaq for $307 million in cash and stock, leaving Musk with earnings of $22 million. After co-founding and selling Zip2, Musk launched a financial service called X.com, better known as Paypal now. Like, wow. I love PayPal! 

Not everything is full of glitter and sparkles when speaking of fairytales: in 2000, Musk, former CEO of Paypal, was fired due to disagreements between the co-founders. While on a trip to Australia, Elon was fired by the board of PayPal, making Peter “Thiel the new CEO”. But fairytales, most of the time, end in a happy end: In 2002,  PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion turning Musk into a now-wealthy, bald-ish bachelor and investor. Even though he got fired in 2000, Musk as the biggest shareholder netted around $180 million with this deal. I guess I should start arguments with co-founders, get fired while on vacay, and still earn a huge wad-o-dough in the end…  

Besides his booming career ladder, Musk experienced many ups and downs in his private life: In 2000, before he got kicked out by Paypal, Musk tied the knot with his college sweetheart Justine Wilson. Together they moved to LA where Musk was able to be closer to the space industry to create business relationships. In May 2002, his first son named Nevada was born but soon after died due to SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome. This tragedy happened after Musk founded SpaceX, an “American aerospace company […] that helped usher in the era of commercial spaceflight [being] the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from Earth orbit and the first to launch a crewed spacecraft and dock it with the ISS”. To push SpaceX, Musk used $100 million of the money he netted from the PayPal deal in addition to his money he invested before. With this investment, Musk was finally able to shift his focus toward aerospace. The 31-year-old dreamed of traveling and colonizing Mars, expressing his idea of Mars being “the only place in the solar system where life can become multi-planetarian”.

With SpaceX, Musk entered the world of space and vehicle engineering, investing around $70 million in total in Tesla, an electric company focusing on clean energy. Tesla was first developed by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning until Elon Musk invested and, therefore, involved himself in further expansion and development. In 2004, Musk took a leading part in developing the first car, the Roadster. After debuting the Roaster, Musk became the majority shareholder and joined the board as one active chairman. Eventually, he became CEO in 2008,  after disagreements and changes took over the Tesla board resulting in a complete change of staff. After Musk upgraded to CEO, he “fired 25% of the company’s staff”. Hmmm, this sounds familiar when I think of Musk’s leadership style in present time. But we will come to that soon enough… 

While investing and owning several companies, Musk and Justine expanded their family after the tragic loss of their firstborn Nevada. In 2004, their twins were born through IVF, in vitro fertilization. Only two years later, in 2006, their triplet sons were born through IVF as well. When thinking of the loss of Nevada and the need for IVF insemination, you can only imagine how Musk and his wife Justine must have struggled on a  mental health basis. It is even more surprising then that Musk kept up with his career, making smart investments and expanding his wealth. When Musk became CEO of Tesla, Inc. in 2008, he and Justine Wilson split up and got divorced. 

Skipping through Musk’s business and private life timeline, Musk almost experienced bankruptcy with Tesla and SpaceX but got saved by funding, investors, loans, and by debuting the first Tesla Model S in 2009. In addition, he married Talulah Riley in 2010 and in 2013. Yep, you heard right. They married twice. But nope, not because they did a second fun wedding in Vegas… Elon and Talulah were married the first time between 2010 and 2012, the second time between 2013 an 2016. Therefore, a total of two weddings and two divorces upgrading Riley to “the Two-Time Ex-Wife of Elon Musk”. 

In the meantime, Musk invested more, founded more, and dated more: he invented the so-called Hyperloop, which theoretically transports passengers from LA to SanFran in half an hour, started The Boring Company, a network of tunnels under and around cities for fast commerce, and cofounded Opan AI, a nonprofit company researching artificial intelligence and founded Neuralink. In addition, he dated actress Amber Heard, went through a painful breakup describing his feeling later as “I was really in love, and it hurt bad.” But only two years later, Musk met the Canadian musician Claire Boucher, publicly known as Grimes, through Twitter. Yep, you heard right: TWITTER! They both welcomed their first child in 2020 but split up in September 2021. Eventually, they welcomed another child via surrogate in December 2021 implying a love comeback. But after revealing the news of a second baby in 2022, Grimes tweeted that they broke up again. But before that debacle, Musk also welcomed twins with Shivon Zilis in November 2021, with whom he was working at Neuralink. They conceived through IVF as well, indicating a planned wish for children together. In total, Musk is a father of ten children with three different women so far. In an interview in October 2022, he states that he is “pretty sure there are no other babies [are] looming”. 

So far the fairytale appears full of hard work, both in business and private life with a twist of love, numerous kids, and galactic dreams. But the best is yet to come: the acquisition of the bluebird. 

Elon Musk has always been a fan and user of Twitter, a social media and social networking service where users publish and respond in 280-character-long messages called “tweets”, by the launch of Twitter in 2006 only 140 characters were allowed. Twitter is either accessible via mobile phone or web browser and was created by Jock Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of the same year, while Musk was freshly involved in Tesla and still married to Justine Wilson. Twitter is a place for people to joke around, to express themselves, as a news outlet for organizations, sports, politics, tech, or finance. Through funds, promotions, and public talk show visits, Twitter became more and more popular and a “mainstream phenomenon”, as an example: on their 6th birthday Twitter stated that “there are more than 140 million active users […] and […] 340 million tweets a day”. By 2019, the number of active users increased to a total number of more than 330 million monthly active users.

But with growing popularity, its controversies also increased: fake profiles, manipulating and spreading misinformation, or hacking. Especially political topics and events become more popular and the focus of Twitter users moving the platform from a humorous place to a minefield. Apropos minefield, in October 2022 SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter after a whirlwind of confrontations and debates for around $44 billion. He initially expressed interest in buying Twitter in early 2022, when he felt like Twitter was limiting free speech and undermining democracy when former US president Donald Trump was banned due to his violation of “the glorification of violence policy” in early 2021. 

By Musk’s take-over, he fired Twitter Chief Executive,Chief Financial Officer, and Legal Affairs and Policy Chief right away. Even before his successfull purchase, Musk expressed his plan of completely reversing Twitter: a new verification system, where verified users need to pay $8 for their verification, justifying that decision due to missing profit and fake profiles. In addition, Musk fires half of the 7,500 Twitter employees via e-mail. He explains these notices with a decreasing number of advertising partners and the long-term financial difficulties that Twitter was facing even before he took over the company. While advertisement is the main source of income, with the takeover of Musk, many companies and advertisement partners fear the increase of hate speech and the spread of misinformation with new CEO Elon Musk. By unbanning former US president Trump and spreading conspiracy theories, Musk fueled these fears by partners even further. Additionally, users and spectators question Musk’s decision of firing half of his team while promising to keep up high standards in presentation and moderation. 

While the CEO tries to portray himself as an absolute fan of freedom of speech, he lays off approximately 20 employees for expressing negative and critical opinions about Musk via a private slack channel. In November 2022, Musks asked his Twitter employees to either commit to tough working conditions or to leave while earning a three months severance pay. Once the deadline was reached, most of the staff members decided to leave and discontinue working for Elon Musk. So apparently Musk behaves in the complete opposite of what he is trying to accomplish with Twitter: spreading misinformation and uncensored content by allowing his so-called unlimited “free speech” which was GrEatLy impacted before he took over Twitter. But interestingly enough: more users from resign using Twitter now after Musk’s leadership than before. The Guardian predicts Twitter “to lose 32m users in two years after Elon Musk takeover”  implying a growing dispute and disinterest by the users toward Elon Musk and his lack of punishment, control of hate speech and false content, and technical problems. But when we ask Musk about the current number of Twitter users he tweeted this: 

Fairytale-like: a mixture of blended reality and unknown future predictions while everyone involved is entertained. The known altruistic Elon Reeve Musk put his fate into the Twitter user’s hand. In December 2022, he published a Twitter poll regarding his fate as the CEO of Twitter. He asked the users to vote either in favor or against him being the CEO. In addition, he made sure that he would accept that result either way and show respect toward the Twitter users. Being said, over 17.5 million users interacted with the questionnaire by the end while 57% voted for him to resign and 43% to stay. Right after he tweeted his answer:

As we know him: relaxed and insightful. Oh no, I think I mixed something up… It was not as simple as that: After an institute called HarrisX posted investigations regarding the poll results, Musk jumped on the train and questioned the results. He linked the problem of bots and fake profiles Twitter is facing to the results. Without these bots, the result would have been in favor of Musk, according to himself. Since it has become pretty quiet around Musk and the actual resignation from working as the CEO. No one, yet, has been confirmed as his follower. Let alone the question of whether Musk is going to follow the user’s will or remain without the wish of the majority. 

But what we know for sure: Musk and his leadership style is one of a kind. It was not the first time that he laid off hundreds of employees right after he got the power to do so: SpaceX and Twitter staff both had to get to know his style firsthand. No surprise that he does not appear to be a community and employee favorite. He is and, when looking through his career ladder, has always been a hard worker who does everything to accomplish his dreams. But this work enthusiasm is also expected by his employees: either they follow his long-hour work plan or they can leave. Some describe his leadership style and personality as him showing “a robotic lack of empathy and odd interpersonal mannerism”. When looking at his private life, the women, and the numerous of kids, we are not surprised that Musk must have issues when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I do not want to judge, but the questionnaire result, the huge backlash, and his private life only supportsthe whole controversy around his persona: he is for sure an interesting, successful individuum one could write a real fairytale about. He for sure offers enough tweets, meme material, and inspirational quotes for that…

But for now, we need to follow his tale to find out what will happen to Twitter and whether or not we might be able to travel to Mars soon. 

[mariacallous]

A staggering sell-off of the stocks of Indian conglomerate Adani Group was sparked last week by a report released by Hindenburg Research that raised questions about the group’s debt levels and use of tax havens. The Adani Group’s stocks declined more than 50 percent in the aftermath of the report’s publication, and those declines have had a massive effect on the wealth of the company’s namesake, Gautam Adani, who had previously been the world’s third-richest person and Asia’s richest overall. The Adani Group has denied the allegations, saying they have “no basis.” But the controversy has focused attention on the group’s central role in the Indian economy and its founder’s close relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

What accounts for Adani’s rise in the first place? What is the basis for his close relationship with Modi? And what role does the Adani Group play in the Indian economy? Those are a few of the questions that came up in my recent conversation with FP economics columnist Adam Tooze on the podcast we co-host, Ones and Tooze. What follows is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity.

For the full conversation, look for Ones and Tooze wherever you get your podcasts.

Cameron Abadi: Adani has a pretty impressive rags-to-riches story. What were the key turning points on his path to great wealth?

Adam Tooze: It’s a fascinating story. He’s born in 1962, as India’s demographic boom is cresting. And not in a poor family by any means but to a small businessman, a small trading family. He initially embarked on an undistinguished career in school and then headed to commercial college but then dropped out. And in 1978, he entered the diamond trade, which is large in the province of Gujarat, and then sets himself up as a sort of export-import trader. And from the ‘90s onwards, he embarks on the infrastructure projects— management of ports, the construction of railway systems—which will make him famous, indeed legendary. So it’s the story not really of a kind of business genius who has some technological, gee-whiz idea that conquers the world. It isn’t a story of the magnificent technical excellence of Indian IT services, for instance. It’s a more classic story of the accumulation of capital by means of trade, trading on margins, basically, and then a shift into infrastructure.

And this is where the key element in the Adani story comes in, which is politics and the politics of connections and clientelism. And that’s really the decisive moment in his career where, you know, after the ghastly pogroms against the Muslim population of Gujarat in 2002, when Modi is under massive pressure, Adani solidarizes himself with Modi against, at the time, the prevailing mood of Indian business opinion. He in fact breaks ranks and forms his own industrial association, or business association, and on that basis really forms this lasting connection to Modi that is really the distinguishing feature of his business enterprise.

And that’s what has enabled this utterly explosive growth. I mean, this was a still moderately sized business in the ‘90s and the early 2000s, which has now become absolutely a globally scaled enterprise and the foundation for huge wealth for Adani and his family.

CA: What exactly links Adani and Modi’s [Bharatiya Janata Party] BJP party on an ideological level? Do they share a vision for what kind of country India should be? Or is this relationship an expression of a kind of material division of labor—Adani as the economic arm of the Indian state under the BJP in service of further economic development?

AT: I think the key phrase is nation-building—both words in that hyphenated term. So national projects aiming for truly comprehensive scale, which—when you’re dealing with a subcontinental state like India with a population that India has—is a gigantic undertaking.

So for the Adani Group to establish itself the way it has as the key power producer in the private sector, absolutely key player in port infrastructure on the national scale, and absolutely key player in airports—air mobility being key in a country the size of India—now moving into a new position in cement, this is creating a national economy out of the relatively decentralized provincial structures, which until a remarkably recent date dominated the Indian economy. And for the second element—the building part of nation-building—delivery is the absolutely key thing because if there’s one problem the Indian state machine has, it is the capacity to deliver. They have a chronic problem. There is no shortage of brilliant minds that can conceive of wonderful plans but actually implementing policy down to the village level and across the entirety of this vast country, that’s a huge challenge.

And I think it’s the combination of those two elements that really has forged the almost mythic relationship between Modi on the one hand and these two big business groups: [Indian businessman Mukesh] Ambani on the one hand and Adani on the other—both from Gujarat. And I think that’s another element that you could say was also a kind of ideological narrative, which is the talk of the Gujarat model. To put it crudely, you might say it was a sort of Indian Thatcherism or an Indian neoliberalism. It was a break, as in the case of [former British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, driven from within the government machine, in this case in the province of Gujarat, against the rather top-down, state-directed model inherited from the Nehruvian period of early independence, the 1940s to 1950s, where India toyed with socialist, social-democratic planning models. And this is replaced in the ‘90s and the 2000s by this Gujarat model, which is a kind of open embrace of a productive powerhouse relationship between big business interests and government.

CA: Could you summarize the allegations against Adani from Hindenburg Research—and what does this episode reveals about the role played by short sellers like Hindenburg Research in the global capitalist economy?

AT: First, we can’t stress strongly enough, the Adani Group vigorously disputes the allegations. But the allegation is that through a network of essentially family-linked holding companies held to a considerable extent outside India, the Adani Group dramatically inflated the value of its stock. So around about 75 percent of Adani shares are held by other businesses, according to Hindenburg Group, which are in a sense simply postbox entities situated in offshore places like Mauritius, for instance, which drive up the stock value of the Adani Group. And the significance of that is not only that it brings paper gains for the holdings of the key members of the family, but much more importantly, what it enables them to do is to leverage those high stock values, to get bank loans and to get credit, which then turns into real purchasing power with which you can then launch large investment projects, buy out rivals, and actually reshape India’s political economy.

Now the Hindenburg group in pursuing this case is, in a sense, involved in playing a game in India that it has played elsewhere. They’re an interesting, very small research outfit that specializes in doing—I’m not sure I would call them regulators. It’s a little bit more like private investigator kind of work. They seize on a cause. They then decide that a company is massively overvalued. They do their homework. They then take short positions and through the force of their research attempt, as it were, to drive the value of the firm down, which generates large profits on their short positions.

The sophisticated Indian response, I think, is that there’s really an element of culture clash here. There aren’t many players in the Indian financial markets who imagine that the value of the Adani Group is determined in a conventionally free and fair way because people aren’t naive about the way in which India’s political economy operates. And so the sophisticated rationale for what’s going on in India is that Indian financial investors know that this is part of the Adani Group’s business plan. And with the backing that they enjoy in political circles, they are not just too big to fail but essentially identified with the Modi-ite project. So long as that is hegemonic in Indian politics, these businesses cannot fail. So there is in fact very little risk that you won’t get paid back. And to that extent, no harm, no foul.

But what actually is happening is that India’s economy is becoming progressively more and more distorted by this self-sustaining linkage between high market valuations, large credit, and deep political connections constituting a too-big-to-fail kind of juggernaut that can’t be stopped. And the negative consequence of that is not in terms of an investor protection case—if you’re on this train, you’re probably going to be fine. The real issue is what it does to the Indian economy and what it does, by implication, also to Indian society.

CA: What does Adani reveal about the role of the super wealthy in countries at India’s stage of development? Does Adani act as an engine of domestic development through reinvestments in the country or through philanthropy? Or is it instead that he takes his money out of the country and insulates himself from the Indian economy?

AT: What’s really interesting is that this is not, I think, as far as we’re able to assess anyway, a Russian-style model. I mean, this is an immensely wealthy family. They will have property in many parts of the world. But this is not a model like the Russian oligarch one, where you pump oil and gas in Russia, you sell it for dollars, and then you stash those dollars in a Swiss bank account. That is the kind of classic model of truly offshore oligarchic finance that is draining resources from a country. And as far as we’re able to assess, the Adani Group is using offshore money to sustain and double down on their positions in India. The purpose is to raise more credit so as to be able to do more investment in India. So this is not an instance, I think, of a group that is operating primarily in an extractive mode.

The Adanis have also become very heavily involved in philanthropy. For the occasion of Gautam’s 60th birthday, they launched one of the largest philanthropic initiatives that India has seen since the glory days of the Tata family. They pledged $7.7 billion in 2022—so very considerable amounts of money in the kind of league of [billionaire] Bill Gates at that stage.

CA: What does Adani’s career and his wealth tell us about the Indian economy in general? What kind of capitalist country is India exactly?

AT: If you go to Delhi and you speak to economists, that’s the question that preoccupies them. And the upside story, the one that the proponents of this system favor, is that it’s a South Korean-style, chaebol-type system where you have these very, very powerful conglomerate families like the Samsung Group. So that’s the most favorable vision, that these powerhouse private, public-private partnerships will be the drivers of an Indian industrial development or modernization like that of South Korea.

And on the darker end of the spectrum, the fear is that you could see the development of a crony capitalism that shifts ever more towards the more ominous sort of Russian development where you have quite fundamental erosion of the rule of law. The real worry, I think, is that you could see a much more fundamental degeneration of competition, of civil society control, and that is why many people regard the acquisitions by these big groups in the media space as being so worrying because one of the consequences of that is that freedom of speech is increasingly curtailed and even tenure in universities becomes problematic.

But setting all of these big sort of historical analogies aside, ultimately, the rationale and the acid test of this system will be what political scientists call output legitimacy. Can they get the job done? Are they actually going to be able to deliver on a raft of big infrastructural projects that India needs over the next decades—notably, for instance, in the renewable energy and the sustainable energy space? In the end, these corporate stories have to translate into the infrastructure that enables that more broadly based macroeconomic growth.

[strawberryboyhimself]

Something I think that’s really interesting is the context of these two eras and the landscape around storytelling at the time. In the past stories were told mostly through word of mouth, you’d tell stories while you worked or relaxed in the pub or simply gossiped because that was what you did for fun. Life was simply slower and less full so you had the time to tell long-winded tales about the goings on around you. Think about it, the story of Scrooge could easily be something told by workers talking about their boss or Pride and Prejudice the local drama at the time or Wuthering Heights a real story built up by the locals over the years. We can also see this in the formatting of these works, how all of Dracula is told through letters and diary entries, Frankenstein begins with letters or again, Wuthing Heights is almost entirely told through word of mouth between a few characters. In the time these books were written, stories were a way of passing time and sharing news without the need for arcs or themes or anything like that because everyone told stories all the time. It was very much a time before show don’t tell because every story was passed down through being told so writers matched this method and spent their time setting scenes and creating characters who were terrible and writing their stories like everyone around them told them, the only difference was theirs were written so it would reach a wider audience. They were storytellers before they were writers.

Now, cut ahead to the boom in technological advancement, especially the invention of film and suddenly everything changes. Life is moving faster now, people don’t have the same amount of time to tell these long, winding tales, they have too much work and business and excitement in their lives. My English teacher pointed out Gatsby as a great show of this, the way it’s written in a way that is far more familiar to us, more like a movie. There’s no time wasted on these long paragraphs with little information or minor characters just to pass information or anything like that, it’s quick and snappy and rather than telling it like a story passed down from word of mouth, it cuts around like movie scenes and really wastes no time because now there is none to waste. Now films are able to tell stories that would have taken an audience days, maybe even weeks to read in mere hours, all that longwinded information can be told in a second with image and sound. The time of telling stories around a fire or while you do your long, slow work are over now it’s all efficancy and excitement and the rush of this new urban life.

Finally, not even that long after we reach today where life is faster than ever. Not only do we have movies now, we have streaming and social media and an endless stream of information that we can plug into and absorb for the rest of our lives and never even scratch the surface of it all. You have more to consume and less time to do so than ever before so there is no way you can go through all that time and energy of lengthy and longwinded writing every single time you want a story when you have all this content you could get so much more stimulation from so much quicker. It’s no longer about just telling a story anymore, it’s about selling a product, making something that stands out in this constant stream. There’s no time for the old style anymore, you gotta trim the fat and perfect your product to give it a fighting chance to survive.

Granted, that is a huge generalisation and books will always exist and be needed and cherished and one of the greatest inventions humans ever made but it’s undeniable that so much of the great literature we admire these days would never be found if it were written today, the style just would not be able to compete and books themselves are becoming more and more neglected or having to change to become more like the other, less time consuming content to be able to get any attention. It’s more a weakness of time than art itself and I am in no position to make such grand statements as this rant has become but my history lover brain simply found it interesting to look at the context and patterns of these eras and how the lives we live define the art we create and vice versa in that beautiful relationship between humanity and art.

Every 21st century piece of writing advice: Make us CARE about the character from page 1! Make us empathize with them! Make them interesting and different but still relatable and likable!

Every piece of classic literature: Hi. It's me. The bland everyman whose only purpose is to tell you this story. I have no actual personality. Here's the story of the time I encountered the worst people I ever met in my life. But first, ten pages of description about the place in which I met them.

[iicecomputereducation]

Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla-Gateway to a Successful Career in Tech

Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla-Gateway to a Successful Career in Tech

Web development has emerged as one of the most critical skills for any aspiring tech professional in the fast-changing world of digital facts. Whether it is career shifting or upskilling, a Full Stack Web Development Course is the best option to provide a solid foundation in web development. In the town popularly known as Shimla, the state capital, full of peace, beauty, and emerging ecosystems for tech, full stack web development course will offer you a complete skill set on the road to becoming an efficient career web developer.

What is Full Stack Web Development?

Now, before discussing the Full Stack Web Development Course, it is important  to know what full stack development is. A Full Stack Web Developer is that person who has knowledge regarding both front-end and back-end, which allows him to develop the whole web application from scratch. It includes,

Front-End Development:

This refers to the client’s side of the web application, meaning what he can see and interact.

Back-end development: That server-side aspect of how an application might work behind the scenes; databases, server logic, APIs. All these aspects come together in a Full Stack Web Development Course and brings all around knowledge about how web applications may be designed, developed, and deployed.

Why to prefer full stack web development course Shimla?

With the beauty and amazing view to those across this globe, Shimla is slowly emerging as the educational and tech hotspot in India. A growing population  of the boom regarding the startup concerning the tech environment and the work-from-home culture raises its need for specially higher number of aspiring learners or working professionals wanting full-stack web development courses in Shimla.

Here is why Shimla is your dream destination for a full stack web development course:

1.  Developing Tech Hubs

In the last few years, digital startups, tech firms, and institutes that impart the latest technology courses have been on an upward scale in Shimla. You will be one among the appear in digital horizons when you take the Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla.

2. Tailor-made Learning Experience

Unlike the big metros, Shimla offers a class room size that is smaller, meaning that there will be individual care offered to the student from the instructors. The course in Full Stack Web Development in Shimla is therefore very practical and hands on, as students have all the suitable times to work in real-word projects. Therefore, students catch the skills associated with front end and back-end development while getting at least one-on one attention.

3. Low costs of living

Compared to the experience one would have in cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, or Mumbai, the living costs in Shimla are relatively cheap. For most students who enrolled in the Full Stack Web Development Course, this has been creating an opportunity to concentrate on study without huge pressures from significant living expenses.

4. Growing Job Markets Closely Around It

Although Shimla is a small town, the place is quite connected with the other main hubs of technology around, such as Chandigarh, Delhi, and Bengaluru. The demand for full-stack developers is slowly going up across India, so, having a course in Shimla means you are ready for the job opportunities available, ranging from local, to all over India while working remotely.

What Do You Expect in a Full Stack Web Development Course?

1. Front-End Development

HTML5: It acts like a basic building block used to create the structure of web pages along with web content.

CSS3: All about making sites beautiful: styling HTML elements.

JavaScript: Adds interactivity to websites. It could be said that it is probably the core language in full stack development.

Frameworks: You will be using React.js, Angular, or Vue.js in creating dynamic and responsive user interfaces.

Responsive Design: This refers to a design that works on the type of device it’s being accessed on: whether a desktop or mobile.

2. Back-End Development

Node.js: it is the popular JavaScript runtime where you write server-side applications

Express.js: a web app framework for Node.js; this is what you will use for routing and middleware

Databases: relational (MySQl, PostgreSQL), and NoSQL databases like MongoDB

APIs: building and consuming RESTful APIs that allow client-server communication

Authentication & Authorization: Implementing Secure Login & User Management on the Web

3. Version Control & Collaboration

Git & GitHub: Here you will learn all the necessary tools connected to version control and collaboration that you may use in real-world project work.

4. Deployment and Cloud Hosting

Deployment Platforms: Heroku, AWS, or Digital Ocean-deployment for web application;

continuous Integration/ continuous Deployment (CI/CD): This is a new concept of automated testing and also of automated delivery in the DevOps practice 5. Project Development & Portfolio Building

You would have some full-stack web applications that would make it a fantastic portfolio at the end of this course. That is what you should be thinking of when you try to find a job as a web developer.

Charges for Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla

The most frequently asked question by students interested in Full Stack Web Development in Shimla is the fee for the course. In most cases, the rates for courses vary from institutes; however, I may be able to give an estimate of what you’ll find here.

Basic Course: If you are thinking about short-term or introductory-type courses, then the charge could be between ₹ 20,000 to ₹50,000.

Advanced Courses: ₹60,000 to ₹1,00,000. There would be training with high-end projects of industries and internships.

Online Courses: There are various institutes located in Shimla where one can take full stack development courses. It is going to be very cost-effective. The charges start from as low as ₹15,000 to ₹40,000 for a relatively shorter period.

The Charges of a Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla usually include the following

Course Material

Lab or hand-on session charges

Experts from industries mentor

placements are there in some centers

After completion of course, the certificate is issued

Do remember that for a full stack web developer course the return is usually good because there has always been huge requirement of skilled full stack developer in job world

Jobs After Training with Full Stack Web Development Course

These are full stack web developers in very high demand. With every business trying to go digital, there is a huge demand for developers who could handle both the front end and the back end of web applications.

Some Popular Jobs for Full Stack Developers are listed below:

Full Stack Web Developer

Front-End Developer

Back-End Developer

Software Engineer

Web Application Developer

UI/UX Developer

API Developer

Some of the best sectors where the demand can be seen for Full Stack Developers are as follows, 

IT Companies and Tech Startups

E-commerce Platforms

Digital Marketing Agencies

Financial Institutions

Healthcare Technology

Government Projects

Salary Expectations

Salaries of Full Stack Developers will depend upon the place, but almost in the near range of the following number:- 

Entry Level: ₹4,00,000 to ₹6,00,000 every year 

Mid-Level ₹6,00,000 to ₹10,00,000 every year.

Senior-Level: ₹ 10,00,000 – ₹ 20,00,000 per year or more based on the company and location

You will be one of the most demanded developers with a full-fledged competitive salary and job security after training in this Full Stack Web Development Course in Shimla.

 Why IICE Institute for Full Stack Web Development?

You get a complete full stack web development course in Shimla from the IICE Institute that gives you front-end and back-end technology. Your field instructors will accompany you to learnings which include practicals and real examples and projects.

Benefits that make you choose IICE Institute :

Experienced instructors: Learning is from the industry’s expert people having decades of practical hand-on experience.

Hands-on projects: We enable you to create a portfolio with real projects developed by yourself.

Flexible Timings: You can learn on full-time and part-time classes available for you.

Placement Assistance: We will offer you exclusive career counseling and placement assistance so that you may get placed in top tech companies.

conclusion

All the tools that will make you a successful Full Stack Web Developer and get you a dream job

Therefore, the Full Stack Web Development course in Shimla is one of the best entry platforms into the web development world with the combination of front-end and back-end technologies along with hand-on learning. This promises promising growth prospects regarding job opportunities and provide a student with the experience of a rich career within one of the most rapidly changing fields of the technical world. You may be a student, fresh graduate, or even an already working professional who would want to change your career, and you can begin with Full Stack Web Development Course.

So, come on and join IICE Institute’s Full Stack Web Development Course today, so your potential can touch the sky and reach for stars in web development!

[tandooriwala1]

Why Online Kebab Franchises Are the Next Big Opportunity in Food Service

The habits of consumers, technologies, and changes in dining have shaped the development of food services. One major trend over the years has been the ordering and delivery of food online. Among those franchises that benefit from the trend, kebab franchises are an emerging opportunity for most people. As demand for tasty and convenient meals continues to rise globally, kebab Indian restaurant franchise growth is well anticipated. Here are ten reasons why they set to be the next big wave in food service.

Increasing Demand and Acceptance of Kebabs

From doner kebab, and shawarma, to döner kebab, kebabs have gained quite a popularity worldwide depending on the taste of every person. They are not limited only to a particular region but offer a blend of old and modern fashions appealing to any food-loving person. The option for customization lets kebabs appeal to various cultures hence the multiplied popularity in foreign markets. That makes them perfect for franchise expansion.

Boom of Online Food Ordering and Delivery

With the services available, food ordering online has brushed aside its immediate concerns in cities much faster than previously expected. The transition speed was phenomenal, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This sudden change opened an almost unending opportunity for kebab franchises to access a huge number of consumers currently willing to experiment with home delivery of fast, delicious foods. This change is promising for online eateries as most consumers become comfortable ordering food through the internet. This development opens a sustainable model for kebab franchises even now in the digital age.

Low Overhead Costs

Online Kebab franchises neither need a dining area nor waitstaff to herald a high volume of foot traffic characteristic of traditional restaurants. Hence, investments for franchise owners can be focused on quality input, marketing, and scaling the business. Where running a lean and focused business for delivery purposes rather than simplifying daily operations, enhances management efficiency. Lower expenses lead to higher profitability and long-term success. This cost-effective model enhances the potential for returns.

Flexible Business Model.

Online kebab franchises allow flexibility in operating a single outlet--either by owning a full-time working kitchen, food truck, or hybrid--delivering or having an established restaurant. This situates the business model for even more varied places, from the absolute metropolis to the purest suburbs. Franchisees can test the waters to find new markets and adapt accordingly, all while keeping up with demand and aligning with various local preferences. This, in turn, gives the franchisee that competitive edge of staying abreast with market shifts. It fast-tracks the process of scaling up.

Strong Customer Loyalty

Kebabs deliver an appetising, enriching experience and are a source of sustenance with repeated purchases essential to the site. The online kebab franchise will gain as it is likely to reap from the customers who loved trying out and end up repeatedly purchasing, thereby creating that long-term relationship that is characteristically spellbound and very reliable when it comes to revenues. By keeping quality service and products constant, franchisees can boost retention levels from loyal customers who naturally build a consumer for the long haul. These same customers also work as brand promoters within the organization, maximizing organic growth. Customer loyalty plays a great part in long-term success.

Customization and Menu Innovation

Kebabs provide great versatility owing to the different types of meats and combinations that can be segregated to meet the specific needs even of healthy diets. Further, franchisees can offer personalized meals with their seasonal rotation menus so that many customers may be engaged and excited. Additionally, since the menu can be modified by the trends prevalent in a season or by what is mostly enjoyed by the locality, it adds a more distinct experience for customers. If the menu is constantly innovated, then the offering will always be fresh and attractive as well. Such flexibility defines a broader customer range.

Social Media and Marketing

Kebabs are favoured for social media marketing because they look very appealing to the eyes. They aesthetically look nice on social sites. A company can build its brand value through making interesting, visualized online content. A strong presence in social media would then build a connectedness to the community around the brand, as well as deeper connections with customers. The very visual nature of kebabs makes them more viral than many products. Indeed, with the power of these platforms, it is possible to reach an audience of millions.

Scalable Expansion Potential

An instant-scalable online kebab franchise with central kitchens will do delivery-only services without the overwhelming cost of conventional real estate. Such scalability is very attractive to investors, allowing them to quantify returns on investment on a scale much bigger than normal for such a start-up dollar investment. This will also enable the franchise owner to optimize operations across locations, increasing efficiency and profitability in the long run. The scalability of this model offers very good growth possibilities for entrepreneurs.

Diverse Target Market

Kebabs tempt and attract potential customers from office goers to late-night snackers with a wide net. The catchment and casualness of kebabs make online franchises an attractive method to rope in different types of consumers all day long. Be it family, professional, or students, barely there's a setting where kebabs cannot be enjoyed which further adds to the potential for targeting such customers. This further strengthens the number of loyal customers who visit the franchise and allows for several opportunities for personalized marketing.

Strong Profit Margins

Kebabs are cheap to produce, yet they can be sold at quite a high price, considering the quality of the ingredients. The cost and the efficient operations that the online kebab franchise offers could put an end to the oohing of great profits. This makes it easy for all markets with low overhead but high operating efficiency to be able to bring in maximum profit. All ends are tied up by the current movement towards quick, quality meals, which brings in further sales opportunities, improving revenue potential at many sites. The profit margins are healthy, making the franchise model attractive to investors.

The online kebab franchise is a growing opportunity in the food industry that will grow as people demand that their meals be conveniently delivered to them, in very high quality, but with popular appeal, low-cost operation, and scalability. All these factors go together to make a very strong business model for today's market. Seeing how such things are increasingly changing consumer preferences for taking food, online kebab franchises with brands like Tandooriwala are primed to make the most of them. The online kebab franchise is the next big opportunity in the food service industry for entrepreneurs and investors looking for a business model that won't make anyone high-strung but still generates money.

[cellardoorp]

Music Video Studio in Delhi: A Creative Haven at Cellar Door Studio

Music Video Studio in Delhi: A Creative Haven at Cellar Door Studio

In the heart of Delhi, where culture meets creativity, the demand for professional music video production has exponentially increased. Aspiring artists, established musicians, and creative filmmakers are all looking for the perfect space to bring their vision to life. Among the many options available, one name stands out: Cellar Door Studio. This premier music video studio  Delhi has redefined the standards of quality and innovation in the realm of video production.

Why Choose a Professional Music Video Studio?

A good quality music video can prove a powerful medium through which the artist expresses himself or herself and communicates with the viewer. The better a song is presented through music videos, the better will be the impression. Therefore, this is where a professional music video studio comes into the fray as it offers top-class equipment, skilled technicians, and inspiring surroundings to be creative in.

Delhi is an artist's and performer's hub, and the need for professional music video production facilities has seen a boom. Whether indie or big-label production, having access to a world-class music video studio makes all the difference. This is where Cellar Door Studio comes in.

Cellar Door Studio: A Game-Changer in Delhi’s Music Scene

Located in the lively lanes of Delhi, Cellar Door Studio is a lot more than just a music video studio  Delhi. It is a creative haven designed to cater to the different needs of artists and filmmakers. Here's what makes Cellar Door Studio the first choice for music video production in Delhi:

State-of-the-Art Equipment

At Cellar Door Studio, you’ll find cutting-edge technology that ensures every shot is crisp, vibrant, and of the highest quality. From advanced cameras to professional lighting setups, the studio is equipped with everything needed to create stunning visuals.

Acoustic Excellence

Sound is an integral part of a music video, and Cellar Door Studio pays it great attention. The studio designs acoustics very accurately to ensure perfect audio quality, be it recording live performance or syncing music with a video. The result has always been impeccable.

Creative Spaces

The ambiance of Cellar Door Studio is a perfect fusion of comfort and inspiration. With well-designed interiors, the studio leaves room for artists to let their creativity burst out in a conducive space. Every stage of brainstorming to final edits does not feel like a stage but is rather seamless fun.

Experienced Team

The success of the music video depends on the know-how of the people behind it. Cellar Door Studio has a team full of directors, cinematographers, and editors who have years and years of experience and passion going into every project. Because of this, their co-operative approach ensures that anything they do will exceed expectations.

The Growing Popularity of Music Video Studios in Delhi

The rise of digital platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify has changed the music industry. Artists are not only heard but also seen. Music videos are now an integral part of branding and storytelling. For artists in Delhi, access to a professional music video studio like Cellar Door Studio will allow them to compete at a global level.

With that, the affordability and access to such studios have democratized the production process. The independent artists and upcoming filmmakers can now produce quality videos without going bankrupt. It has, in a huge way, contributed to the thriving music culture in Delhi.

Why Artists Love Cellar Door Studio

From top-class facilities to the artist-friendly approach, Cellar Door Studio has carved a niche for itself as the go-to music video studio  Delhi. The clients are always appreciative of how the studio is able to bring their vision to life and still manage to maintain a professional yet welcoming atmosphere.

Additionally, Cellar Door Studio is versatile. Whether it's a high-energy dance video, an intimate acoustic session, or an experimental short film, the studio adapts to the unique requirements of each project.

Conclusion

If a person looks to find a professional, inspirational music video studio  Delhi, then Cellar Door Studio will be the answer to the all questions. Combining sophisticated technology, creative space and an expert team is ensured that every project stands to be a masterpiece. This ever-growing music scenario of Delhi, Cellar Door Studio happens to be in front to ensure a voice for those telling the same stories through this universal language of music and visions.

[xploreitcorp]

How Do Java Certifications Impact Your Career Prospects?

Today, in a competitive job market, a good understanding of Java is quite good to enhance your career prospects. Java is one of the most popular programming languages currently in use around the globe. It is designed with flexibility and robustness. In this context, if you want to enhance your skills or be a winner in front of the potential employers, then enrolling into a Java training in Coimbatore would prove to be an excellent move. There is an enormous call for professionals who can work with Java. Proper training will teach you how to master the language and provide the requisite skills. Java training in Coimbatore not only prepares you for different job roles but also makes it possible for you to pursue invaluable Java certifications that will create some incredible career paths for you.

Understanding the Importance of Java Certifications

Certifications in Java are more than paper proof; they demonstrate your mastery and want to acquire excellence in the language. Available from recognized organizations like Oracle, certifications range from the most basic level for beginners to advanced ones for professional developers. Qualifying in a Java certification mainly requires deep study and, most of all, practical implementation to ensure that the person understands the basics of Java. It means that you have a solid base in Java and are committed to continuing learning whenever a certification is mentioned on your resume from potential employers.

Boost to Employability through Java Training in Coimbatore

The primary motivation to undertake a Java training course in Coimbatore is to gain an improvement in your employability. Conversely, you would be filled with adequate knowledge and skills needed to succeed in Java development, and your proficiency is testified through your certification. From many employers' preferences, certified professionals are generally preferred to the non-certified individuals, since it gives a sense of their professional training and assessment. Therefore, the chances of being selected for jobs such as Java Developer, Software Engineer, and Full Stack Developer increase.

In fact, Coimbatore's Java training is getting its trainees ready to receive some of the most prestigious certificates issued directly by Oracle - OCA and OCP. In the recent boom of the technology sector in Coimbatore, there has already been a great interest in recruiting competent professionals in this field. Certification is a surety of your skills; it can easily place you above the rest.

Why Select the Best Software Training Institute in Coimbatore with Placement?

A reputed training center is essential to attain the appropriate skills and industry know-how. The Best Software Training Institute in Coimbatore with Placement can help a student secure the right job immediately after his or her course completion. Such institutions, rather than serving theoretical education, give a lot of importance to hands-on practice through practical projects and assignments. This is an extremely practical experience during the processes of getting certified in Java, as it helps you have knowledge applicable to real applications.

Likewise, premier training institutes offer tie-ups with the industry's top companies to help students through placement assistance. This may be a huge savior for freshers who could have procured jobs through the tie-up with the training institute. With a reputation-based institute, you are availing of expert trainers, an industry-oriented curriculum, and professionals for helping you with career growth in every respect.

How Java Certifications Can Act as a Catalyst to Career Growth

Java certifications have as many effects on the career ladder in as many ways as follows:

Jobs with Higher Salaries: Certified candidates are paid higher than the non-certified ones. Java certification proves that one is skilled advanced in the field, enabling them to take better pay packages as employers are willing to invest in certified candidates who will contribute to the organization's success with their expertise.

Better Job Opportunities: A certification in Java opens doors to a more numerous number of job opportunities. Organizations which rely immensely on Java-based applications prefer developers with certifications over hired candidates for positions within their network for critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Certification puts one in a queue to take up such roles like Java Developer, Senior Software Engineer, Java Consultant, and much more.

Professional Reputation: A Java certification brings an advancement in professional reputation. You demonstrate dedication and commitment to continuous improvement and mastering the language, making you better positioned for job roles or opportunities within your company. The perception of certification as evidence of professionalism sets up a good name with people you work with as a knowledgeable, reliable developer and might more easily find yourself better positioned for additional responsibilities and career advancement.

Due to the dynamics of Java, you'll be constantly updated on the latest technologies, as they are constantly being developed with new features and updates being added. Java certifications enable you to remain updated with the latest trends, frameworks, and tools within the Java ecosystem. This would make you very relevant to any company in the face of a rapidly changing industry.

 Popular Java Certifications and Their Benefits

There are Java certifications of several types and different levels that can help one align with one's level of skills. Some of the most popular ones are mentioned below:

Oracle Certified Associate (OCA) Java Programmer: This is perfect for those coming into this for the first time. It teaches ground concepts in Java programming such as Java syntax, data types, loops, and object-oriented programming. The OCA Java Programmer is often the first step to becoming an expert Java developer.

Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) Java Programmer: The OCP is designed for experienced developers who want to get deeper knowledge in Java programming, covering multicore, concurrency, JDBC, and much more. By earning an OCP certification, you show that you really understand Java inside out, able to tackle complex development work.

Oracle Certified Master (OCM) Java Developer: This is one of the most premium Java certifications that can be attempted by senior developers and architects. It involves a pretty aggressive examination process for your ability to design and develop complex Java applications. The OCM certification generally brings a great deal of respect from the industry, and having this certification has led to several individuals taking up leadership positions and their salaries at a much higher level.

Java SE 11 Developer Certification: The latest certifications linked with Java were Java SE 11 Developer Certifications. This deals with features of Java SE 11, which is beneficial for developers to keep them within the latest Java version.

How to prepare for Java Certifications

Java certifications can be prepared systematically along with proper dedication. Here are the preparation tips to obtain success in exams.

Proper training program: Participate in a comprehensive Java course at Coimbatore that covers all topics required to sit for the certification exam. A good coaching institute will give you a study material, practice tests and proper guides by experienced trainers.

Practice Coding frequently: Practice coding frequently is also one of the requirements often asked while offering Java certifications. By practicing coding regularly, you can succeed in practical coding tests presented during Java certification tests. To improve your skills, solve coding challenges, work on small projects, and participate in online coding contests.

Use Official Study Guides : Oracle and other certification bodies also provide official study guides and practice exams. These are specifically made to help you prepare for the exam format and types of questions that could be thrown at you. Make sure you get these resources integrated into your preparation.

The preparation of certification can be accompanied and aided significantly by participation in online forums and study groups. One can get in touch with fellow learners, share tips on study material, and clarify doubts. How about Stack Overflow and Reddit? I'm sure each and every one of those communities will help you discover the right persons to ask if you're facing a problem when writing Java code.

Real-Life Cases of Success for Certified Java Experts

Many certified professionals have shared how their career progression changed after they acquired a Java certification. Fresh graduates who followed the route of certifications generally found it easier to get jobs in reputed firms. Similarly, the professionals who acquired advanced certifications, in most instances, were able to get Senior Developer or Technical Lead positions within a short period of time.

These success stories give readers an idea of some realistic Java certification benefits and involvement in career development. They become inspirational tools for people who intend to be Java developers by investing in their certification programs and continuously upgrading their skills.

Role of Java Certifications in Career Transition

Another significant role Java certifications can also play is for transitioners who are making a move from non-technical to technical positions. For instance, for an IT support guy who wants to become a Java developer, they may be able to use the certification as proof of their technical skills in order to make the transition easier and more credible to employers.

By obtaining certification, individuals can demonstrate the fact of having the required skills for employment in a technical role notwithstanding no degree in computer science. This openness adds appeal to Java certifications for career change-seekers.

Detailed Explanation of How Java Certification Impacts Each Level of Career

Java certifications impact professionals, either novice or professionally experienced, at different levels of their careers. Be you a beginner stepping into the world of programming or on a quest to rise up the corporate ladder, the said certifications can be very helpful to you. Let's now dive into the details of how Java certifications will be able to benefit beginner, mid-level, and senior-level experts.

Advantages for Beginners

For students fresh from school or those who newly joined the software development field, a Java certification is simply fantastic to start with. Here's how:

Building a Good Foundation: The training by Java certifications is systematic and deals thoroughly with the basis. For freshmen, it becomes a guarantee for them to strengthen their understanding of Java syntax, object-oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms. With this good foundation, they can then confidently apply for junior developer roles.

Competitive Advantage in the Job Market: Flashes of newness tend to be challenging as it is difficult to stand out with employers when there are so many choices. Java certification offers fresh hire evidence of an interest in learning and a pro-active attitude toward skills acquisition of any relevance to industry. That can do it for many hiring managers when it comes to entry-level developers.

Training and Placement: In order to provide students with Java certification, most the training institutes combine internships along with the curriculum. Internships would provide hands-on experience for working on actual projects, hence making it easier to move from a student to a professional. In addition, an employer stamps the certified person as job ready, which makes them more likely to land their first job.

Benefits to Mid-Level Professionals

For mid-level developers, who, as a general approximation, have experience of around a few years in Java, the certifications will take them to the next level. Here's how it helps:

Specializing in Advanced Java Concepts. As a career advances, professionals may need to specialize in areas of specialization: web development, microservices, or enterprise applications. Advanced Java certifications like Oracle Certified Professional, which tends to focus more on these topics, make it easier for developers to pivot into a new role or new projects.

Faster Career Advancement: A mid-career professional seeks promotions to positions like Senior Developer, Team Lead, or even architect. The process would be less time consuming due to Java certifications in proving expertise in areas like multithreading, Java EE, or microservices architecture-in short, in-depth technical knowledge for any position of leadership.

More Job Security: The nature of the high-tech industry means that it never stands still. People within this sector cannot take job security as a given. Java certifications demonstrate that they are an asset for organizations. At every slight change in the emergence of new technology, certified professionals are better prepared to adjust thus making them relevant to work and less susceptible to layoff at the slightest sign of economic downturn.

Advantages to Senior-Level Experts

For those at the top of their game, certification can be a much more useful tool. Senior developers, architects, and consultants stand to gain in the following ways:

Becoming a SME. Only senior-level professionals with high Java certification, such as Oracle Certified Master, can become subject matter experts in their respective organizations. This ability enables them to take on consultancy roles, mentor junior developers, and lead big projects.

Greater Pay Scale and Consulting: With such advanced knowledge, a senior professional can command greater pay scales than at lower levels. Furthermore, she can look out for consulting opportunities wherein clients pay a premium for the expert advice they get about Java-based solutions. It is an outcome of expertise quite relevant in the freelance and consultancy markets.

Maintaining a person updated about the latest trends in emerging technologies: For veterans as well, updating knowledge from time to time is required. Now, with an increasing number of clouds and cloud-based business applications, there is a profile now emerging in seeking professionals who are knowledgeable regarding Java integration with the platform on either AWS or Google Cloud. The certifications regarding such integration help the elderly keep up with the demands of their profession and become leaders rather than being a development expert.

Industry Demand for Java Certifications:

 A Closer Look The demand for Java certifications is well connected to the industry's need for skilled Java developers. Java is still a strong leader in the tech world as it continues to power enterprise applications, Android development, web services, and many more. Here's how the concepts link to industry needs in some of the sectors, such as:

Java in Enterprise Development

Large companies mostly have legacy systems and other backend services developed in Java since it is reliable, scalable, and secure. Companies belonging to various sectors like banking, insurance, and healthcare continue using Java for their backend services. In most of these organizations, certification in Java is the preferred qualification because:

Compliance and Security. The best practices of certified professionals include writing secure code, especially in industries which keep vital data. Java certification ensures that a developer knows how to implement security measures, handles transactions, and maintains data integrity.

Scalability and Performance: Enterprise level applications require a huge number of transactions. Java is always the preference for building scalable solutions. A certified Java developer is thus required to optimize the code and improve the performance of the enterprise application, making him valuable to major organizations.

Java for Mobile Development

Java provides the foundation under which Android development has powered billions of devices on this earth. This has led to constant demand for Java developers in the mobile development space. Following are some of the ways with which Java certifications may be able to benefit mobile app developers:

Master core java concepts: Core concepts of Java can be mastered pretty well by every Android developer. Now, for mastering those concepts, certification is one thing that really helps out the developers to write bug-free and efficient mobile application code.

Building Multifaceted Applications. Java certified developers, through object-oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms, are fully equipped to build flexible and robust Android applications. This makes them a little more competitive than others in the job market and more likely to be in demand by other app development companies.

Java and Cloud Computing and Microservices

Cloud computing has given new opportunities to Java developers along with microservices architecture. Thus, the certifications in Java are directed toward these areas so that it enables the developer to work with applications native to a cloud and scalable microservices. It is precisely where certifications fit into this trend:

Cloud Integration Skills: The concepts of Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 11 Developer make the holder better suitable for deployment of Java applications on cloud-based services, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

Microservices Architecture: Java's Spring Boot framework is greatly used while developing the application as a microservice, because of its light nature and modularity. Training on frameworks such as Spring Boot in Java certifications will help a developer in the designing and implementing microservices-based architectures, which is very crucial for modern applications at scale.

Financial Benefits of Java Certifications

Much of the time and money spent would go into Java certifications, and that could eventually lead to a pretty handsome amount of financial gains in terms of better offers for jobs, promotions, or even hikes in salaries. The following are some insights into how certified Java professionals tend to do better financially:

Certified Freshers can Draw Better Beginning Salaries: Newly hired Java certified employee has more respectable starting salary as compared to his non-certified counterpart. From the viewpoint of the employer, the certificate is really a sign that the candidate is job ready and there to get things started from day one as well. It saves some of the extratraining and productivity cost at the same time.

Salary Incentive Tool for Mid-Level and Senior Software Developers: Java certifications are a negotiating chip in a salary increase by experienced developers. The certification puts professionals in an excellent position to appeal for a salary increase supported by a host of arguments that include complex project management, training the next generation of developers, and "best practices.".

More global job opportunities and remote work: Due to remote jobs on the increase, Java-certified professionals are not confined to the job markets of localities in which they live anymore. Instead, they can apply for remote jobs in another city or country where there is a greater demand for certified Java developers. Thus, they have the opportunity to receive remuneration in foreign currency, which may be much higher than the prevailing remunerations in the country.

Why Java Certifications Are an Long-Term Investment

Unlike other technologies that continually become outdated, Java is timeless; it has been for over two decades. With this, Java certifications would be an investment in your career for a long time. Here's why:

Java Longevity as a Language Java is widely used in web, mobile application development, enterprise systems, and even new areas like IoT (Internet of Things). Therefore, investing in certification implies investment in the long term of a linguistic platform.

Adaptability to New Frameworks: Certification in Java does not simply focus on the language itself, rather it allows a person to work with several frameworks and libraries built on Java. This helps him adapt to new technologies and frameworks once they are in place, and thus, keeps his skills current.

Continuous Learning Opportunities: The Java certifications have an upward staircase wherein you constantly have something more challenging to target at all times. Completion of the OCA will bring you to OCP, then to OCM, and so on. This structured learning path encourages continuous improvement, making you more adaptable to changes in the tech landscape.

Conclusion 

The Justification for Java Certifications Any person would do right to choose invitation "Investment in Java Certifications". Not only it gives an edge in a competitive job market, but it also validates your skills and keeps you abreast with the developments happening in Java. Be it a fresher or an experienced professional, certifications eventually open new doors and lead to more earning. It is at xplore it corp that one would find the right training program to set a difference in being on the path of success. Xplore It Corp brings industry-related training, expert mentoring, and placement assistance to ensure one is fully armed to reach their career goals. And so if you are really looking to give a boost to your career with an excellent certification, now's just the right time to begin your journey in Java.