#i try but my audio processing works harder

[taylorswiftdebut]

wait the lyric is "in my dreams you're touching my face" NOT my bangs??? 🧍🏼‍♀️🧍🏼‍♀️🧍🏼‍♀️

[saturnsorbits]

Benefits Denied

Fandom: My Hero Academia, Warnings: Smut, Audio Voyeurism, Sero is a Whore with a jacob's ladder. Word Count: 1.8k.

Summary: Sero has fucked everyone, everyone except you.

A/N: Another thing I started, but I'll never finish...

You’re not curious.

You’re not.

Not even a little bit.

‘I’ll call you.’

Hanta's voice drifts into the living room from the hallway. It's low, gravelling in the back of his throat in the way it does when he hasn't had enough sleep. He's barely had a handful of hours, from what you can guess – the soft mewls and harsh grunts that seeped in through your wall only dying down around three in the morning. Humming low, you hear the tell-tale wetness of a kiss; the squeakiness of a parting giggle and then, the door closes.

When Hanta reappears, he's shirtless and sleepy. He scratches at his stomach, flaking black nails itching at the thick trail of black hair that slinks teasingly below the waistband of his loose sweatpants. He cocks an eyebrow while stifling a yawn with the back of his hand as he notices your staring.

No. You're definitely not curious.

Not at all...

You chew your lip, eyes dropping into your lap as you squirm under his gaze. After almost a year living together, you'd have thought you'd be used to it now: Used to him. And, yet, with every passing day there's less hope denying the way your stomach begins to burn when you catch him fresh out of the shower, or straight from his work outs. How something nestled deep inside of you seems to flutter whenever you lie awake listening to him rail the living daylights out of his chosen fancy for the night. ‘Hanta…’

‘Hmm.’ He hums, twisting at the waist to look at you.

'I...' You thought you'd be used to it, be over the butterflies by now; but you know what they say about curiosity.

His eyebrows scrunch as he crosses to the sofa, perching on its edge beside your feet. ‘What’s up…’

'Are you… Are you going to see her again?’ The words feel odd as they fall off your tongue, a thinly vailed question that disguises what you really want to ask.

Sero's eyebrows scrunch on his forehead as he processes your words. ‘Who? Mina?'

You widen your eyes and you shrug, pretending not to have learned her name from Hanta's own curled tongue. He's loud, something you've learned over the past year as his list of conquests has grown, unafraid of his own pleasure as it rolls from his mouth in a series of groans and graveled, whispered commands.

'Nah - she just needed to scratch an itch, y’know.’

Your stomach clenches. An itch. You could laugh. Living with Hanta has you feeling like you've got hives. ‘Oh.’

‘Why?' Flicking up his eyebrows, he twists more fully, laying his back against the arm of the sofa. Kicking one leg up, he wriggles it down between you and the back of the sofa and sinks deeper into the cushion.

‘Just asking…’ You swallow, trying not to focus on the way his hips jut out just enough for you to catch sight of a soft bulge below the grey of his sweatpants – or the way that, should you want to, you'd be able to crawl between those legs and nestle into his lap. 'Jirou hasn’t been around in a while either.’

Sero shrugs. ‘Started seeing some girl.’

‘And Kaminari?’

‘Going steady with Shinso.’

Your eyebrows furrow. Kaminari had been one of your favourites to listen to. His voice was low and sweet, a beautiful contrast to the ragged sounds he managed to pull from Hanta. You've never cum harder than when you've listened to Kaminari make Hanta beg for his cock. ‘Shinso?’

‘Yeah' He laughs, reaching up behind his head to grip the back of his own neck. The gesture makes the muscle of his bicep stretch, highlighting the purpling veins that pulse along its underside. 'That’s the face I pulled, but - they’re happy, y’know.' He pauses, debating. 'It's nice.’

Sinking deeper into the couch, you tilt your head and bite the inside of your cheek. ‘Yeah. Bet Monoma’s thrown a fit -.’

‘Nah. He’s doing alright.’ His tongue flicks out over his lips, doing a poor job of disguising the smirk that follows after.

‘You’re fucking Monoma?’

The muscle in his jaw ticks.

Something flares in your stomach, your mouth dropping open as you huff. This is the ugly bit. The rise of jealousy and insecurity that burns like a match in your chest, stealing your oxygen to fuel itself. ‘Is there anyone you aren’t fucking?’

Sero smirks, his eyebrows arching up on his forehead. ‘You?’

'Fuck off.’ Your glad your mouth manages to summon the insult instead of the filth playing out in your head. It's hard not to, imagine it, you mean. Sometimes you indulge, allow yourself to think of what it would be like...

How would his hands feel? His fingers, long and lithe – would he press gently inside you, or curl his fingers against the sponginess inside of you until you clenched around him and cried? Would he get lost between your thighs? His nose bumping against your clit as he licked inside of you, tongue twisting and flicking until you shook. You wonder if his cock is as big as you've heard. If the stretch would steal your breath, or have you feeling him for days afterwards.

You shift, trying to quell the heat burning between your thighs.

'Oh?' There's smoke in Sero's voice. It curls in the air and lingers, growing thicker by the second as he hitches himself a little more upright on the sofa.

'What?'

He licks his lips, wriggles until he's almost tipped over, his knees pulling up towards his chest. 'Oh...' Tilting his head, he smiles. It's large, still too large for his face despite that growth spurt back in his late teens. He wears it well now, uses it, much like he's doing now.

You try and push yourself further back into the arm of the sofa, arms crossing your chest even though you know it'll do nothing to disguise the beating of your hummingbird heart.

‘Are you -.'

'Fuck off, Hanta.' You stand, almost knocking yourself over in the process. You can't take his teasing, not now, not about this. There's only one person Sero Hanta hasn't fucked, and that speaks more volumes than you care to think about.

Storming into the kitchenette, you tip-toe to reach the tallest cupboard and pull down a cup. Your hands are shaking, a bubble swelling in your chest as you bite back the emotion threatening to swallow you whole.

'Hey...' Padding on bare feet, Hanta gives you until the kettle boils to approach. He's stooping, head tilted as he digs his hands into his pockets, pushing down until he can ball his fists against his thighs. He swallows. 'I didn't mean -.'

'It's alright.'

'It's not, I've upset you.'

You snort. 'No you haven't.'

Stepping closer, he leans against the counter besides you. 'I have...' He smiles, soft and real, the light glistening in his eyes. 'C'mon, I've known you long enough to know when I've fucked up. I didn't mean to tease, it was just banter - y'know.'

You clench your jaw. 'I know.'

Sero chews at his lip. 'Why do I feel like I'm not quite getting something?'

You shrug, but the string of your patience is already pulled taut and fraying, liable to snap at a moments notice.

'Hey...' Reaching out, he lets the pads of his fingers brush against the bone of your wrist. 'Talk to me.'

His softness hurts, causing you to flinch away. You huff, turning to face him as you let the question you've kept locked in your chest surface. 'Why haven't you fucked me?'

'What?'

'You've fucked all of our friends, you bring a new person home every week, but -.'

Sero steps back. 'Hold on, hold on... You want to -'

'Is there something wrong with me? Is it because we live together, or am I just not your type?' Now that you're talking you won't stop, it spills out of you, pooling in the air between you. 'What is it, because you haven't even made a pass at me Hanta and I'm starting to take it personally.'

Biting his tongue, he rolls his lip until he can catch hold of the black ring wrapping the plush bump. There's a spark in his eyes, one that vanquishes the slither of deep chocolate brown that is often dismissed by those less observant.

He's about to laugh, you can see it.

His eyes crinkle, mouth twisting, tongue darts out from behind his lips. He cocks his head.

You think you might slap him.

When his voice finally slips from his mouth, it's like liquid sin. 'I fucking knew it..'

Narrowing your eyes, you cross your arms across your chest; hackles risen. 'I already feel stupid there's no need to...'

Sero stalks closer. His shoulders roll, the muscles there tensing as a flash of vein glows from beneath his tanned skin. He doesn't stop until he has you boxed in against the kitchen counter, his arms bracketing you at either side even as the edge begins to dig into the middle of your back.

'Han -.'

'I knew I could hear you last night...' He smiles wicked and wide. 'How many times, huh? How many times have you fucked yourself listening to me? That is what you're doing, right?'

A shiver races up your spine forcing your straighter. There's a flood of embarrassment in your stomach, one that burns hot like bile forcing your to swallow to keep it down.

'Dirty bitch...'

You choke...

'Oh, c'mon. No point in being so shy now...' He chuckles. Lifting one hand, he strokes his knuckles down your arm and across your hip, until he can rest his hand just above your pubic bone. 'Not when I can see how wet you are for it.'

You want to deny it, but you can't. Your arousal drips from you, soaking into the old cotton underwear you wish you'd exchanged for something sexier this morning. You inhale, swallowing the shaky breath. Yeah, you'd spent the last three months listening to him rail everyone in the city, but seeing him like this first hand is enough to make your head spin.

'You know the only reason I've not had you tucked up under me is because I didn't think you wanted it, right?'

'What?'

He nods, some of his softness returning to him.

It makes your nerves settle, seeing the fracture in his persona as he returns, slowly, back to the goofy, laid back man you share an apartment with.

'Everyone I've ever slept with has chased me...' There's a blush colouring his cheeks. 'Never really done the asking out before.'

Summoning what little nerve you have left in your body, you straighten your spine and raise your eyes to meet his. You stretch, looping your arms around his neck and pulling him close until you can feel the thrum of his heartbreak through your chest. 'Hanta...'

'Mmm.' He hums, canting his hips back a touch to prevent the hardness of his cock from pressing into your stomach.

'... I'm asking.'

-> Masterlist

[otomehonyaku]

Diabolik Lovers Daylight Vol. 7 Ruki ☽ Animate Tokuten Drama CD ☽ Sleeping Together ★ With Vampire

Original title: 添い寝でおやすみ ★ ヴアンパイア Voiced by Sakurai Takahiro English translation by @otomehonyaku Click here for the audio, provided by @karleksmumskladdkaka!

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I figured it would be fun to try out a drama CD translation for once, and this was a nice short (but sweet) one! I have another tokuten audio + translation hopefully coming soon... Stay tuned ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡

Please do not reuse or post my translations elsewhere or translate my work into other languages without my permission.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

00:00 Hey, Livestock. What are you doing? That’s an awfully big box you’re holding.

[You’re glad to see him.]

You were looking for me? Why?

[You explain the situation.]

So Kou told you to give this box to me. I don’t remember sending him on an errand, though.

[You pass on Kou’s message to Ruki.]

“Just open it and have fun”? That sounds a lot like him, but he must be up to no good…  We should ask him what’s in the box first…

[You say you couldn’t find Kou anywhere.]

Ah, right, he said he had a film shoot today…  Oh, well. If the sender’s not here, we have no choice but to open it. Give me the box, Livestock. I was going to open it in my room, but if you’re curious what’s inside too, then come with me.

[You nod.]

Let’s go, then.

[The two of you go to his room.]

01:20 Sit over there.

[Ruki puts the box in front of you.]

Well, then. Let’s open it right away. For such a big box, it’s not very heavy. What could be inside? Wooden pieces of various sizes… and a lot of them, at that.  They look like they’re parts of something.

[You spot a letter inside the box.]

A letter? Kou must have put it in there. Let’s see.  “Here’s one of your beloved puzzles as a present. Have fun! Try assembling it together with her.” I see. So it’s a puzzle.

[You’re confused.]

Yeah, it looks different than a normal, flat puzzle.  Judging from the parts, the finished product must be three-dimensional. There’s no manual, either, but I wonder if it’s because Kou removed it, or there was no manual to begin with… Anyway, this may be just another of Kou’s whims, but we have the time.  Maybe I should assemble it.

[You say that you want to help.]

It does not look like I would need your help with it, but Kou said to do it together, so… If you’d like, you are welcome to try.

[The two of you start assembling the puzzle.]

03:03 Hm. My side looks like it’s coming together. How about yours?

[You tell him.]

Let me see it.

[You show him what you’ve got.]

That looks better than I expected.  If you’re worried about this part, I think it might fit here…

[Ruki helps you.]

You should try doing the rest yourself.

[You ask him whether he’s done this before.]

Not exactly. I have done a variety of 3D puzzles before, but this is the first time I’ve tried this type of puzzle. Not that I’m very particular about my puzzles, though…

[You ask him if he has a particular strategy.]

I have my strategies for each kind, but in the end, the process of putting parts together and aiming for the final product is the same for every puzzle.

[You say you have no idea what the puzzle is meant to look like.]

Right. I cannot picture what the final product is going to look like just yet, but if we just look at the parts even though we have no idea what to expect…

[You tell him that you should both try your best.]

04:20 Yeah.

[To himself] It would be a shame to spoil her fun by telling her the answer to the puzzle, but…

[You ask him if he said something.]

No, nothing. Besides, we won’t finish the puzzle at this pace. Less talking, more working.

[You agree enthusiastically.]

Heh. You’re curious about the final product, right? 

The harder you work, the sooner you’ll find out what it is.

[You tell him you’ll work harder.]

Yes, you should. I will try to increase my pace, too.

05:06 Ah, it’s finished. When I opened the box and saw the parts, I already had a hunch, but… It looks like a small castle you might find overseas. I think we happened to see it on TV around the time when Kou was featured on a programme.  He must have remembered that you and I talked about wanting to go and see it in person. That must also be why he told us in the letter that we should assemble it together. Whatever his reason was… heh. He probably wanted to make us happy.

[Ruki incorporates your part into the puzzle.]

Look, your work is now part of the castle, too. You did really well considering you had no idea what it was.

[You don’t respond.]

You were so excited to see the final product, but your response is a bit underwhelming, don’t you think?

[Ruki looks down at you, leaning against his shoulder and sleeping soundly.]

06:05 Heh, I see.  You have some nerve using someone’s shoulder as a pillow while you sleep, Livestock. Oh, well. It’s past your usual bedtime, so it’s fine. I must have been engrossed in the puzzle as well for me not to notice you nodding off.

[Ruki picks you up, bridal style.]

However, if you sleep here, you’ll regret it later. You should just sleep on the bed.

[He carries you to his bed.]

You should have just told me you were tired… You worked hard and stayed up just to finish the puzzle with me. You didn’t make it to the end, though…

07:05

[Ruki looks at his watch.]

It’s about time. I should tidy up and head to bed, too.

[Ruki walks back to the table.]

I should hide the puzzle under the table for now.  I want her to see it tomorrow. I wonder how she’ll react.

[Ruki walks back to the bed.]

Hey, Livestock. Move over a bit. I want to get under the covers too. She’s so far gone she doesn’t even hear me… 

[Ruki gets in bed anyway and squeezes himself beside you.]

What a foolish face. You must be tired from using your head so much.

[Ruki touches you.]

I wonder what kind of face you’ll make when you wake up tomorrow. Will you feel guilty for falling asleep before seeing the finished puzzle?  Or will you become shy when you wake up next to me? Anything is fine.  Your reactions are always something to look forward to. Ah, but when you see the finished puzzle, you’ll probably be ecstatic. You were looking forward to seeing it so much, after all. I want to see your happy face. I was having such a good time, uncharacteristically so. I might not be able to fall asleep like this. I’ll have to thank Kou later.

08:45 For tomorrow’s dinner, I’ll make him something he likes.

[You shift in your sleep.]

What, the mention of dinner does evoke a reaction from you? What a greedy little thing. Don’t worry. I’ll cook one of your favourites, too. You worked hard on the puzzle, after all. 

[Ruki settles in for sleep.]

I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction tomorrow.

[matan4il]

Can you explain what suicide drones are? I thought drones were unmanned, by definition. So no one piloting them is dying, unlike Kamikaze fighters. What makes them suicide drones?

Hi lovely!

I can try. So, military drones are indeed all unmanned, but most are meant to return at the end of a mission. For example, the 14 year old Jewish Israeli boy murdered by Palestinian terrorists, whose body was found on Saturday? even with thousands of people volunteering to look for him, they had to cover so much ground, that eventually the breakthrough came from an IDF drone that was sent out, did a scan with an attached camera, and returned to the base with the footage it filmed. This drone will be used again in future military missions. Military drones can also be armed, dropping a bomb or shooting at a dangerous target without soldiers having to be there, and risk their lives, too.

However, suicide drones carry substantial amounts of explosives with the explicit purpose of crashing themselves into the target. They're not going to drop bombs, they're not going to shoot at anything, they are programmed to intentionally collide with the target, setting the explosives off, and destroying said target, and themselves in the process. There is no intent for them to return from such a mission, or to ever use them for another one. So even though there's no people committing suicide, the drone itself is sacrificed. It's the same principle as Kamikaze fighters, and in fact one of the nicknames for suicide drones is Kamikaze drones.

Why would an army use a drone like this, instead of dropping bombs or firing at a target? Because the potential damage is greater, and also because it's harder for defence systems to stop a "herd" of suicide drones, than ones whose operators have to be careful with, because they want the drones back, and to fly more missions.

The following vid should show the damage caused by such an attack. I'm at work and can't turn the audio on to verify this, but starting at the 1:00 minute mark, there should be footage of the Iranian suicide drone attack against Saudi Arabia in 2019, which I've mentioned:

I hope this helps! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[dervampireprince]

I know this is sudden, but I've made the decision to close audio commissions.

I'm sorry if there was anyone who'd been waiting for a chance to commission me. I haven't made the decision lightly, but it's a mix of getting more commissions lately and having to turn more and more down for them making me uncomfortable and people not reading my rules before trying to commission or request things from me. But even if that hadn't been happening, the process of making the commissions has just been getting more and more stressful for me due to personal life stuff (for those who don't watch my Twitch streams I'm working hard on trying to move out and get my own place by July as fast as possible as I'm not in a good living situation at the moment), how busy I am with other things, and just recording in general has been feeling a more stressful and harder to get done lately. The best thing for me to do for my mental health at the moment is to close commissions. I don't plan to keep them closed for forever. In the future whenever I re-open them there'll probably be a limited amount of slots per month and Patreon members will likely get first dibs on any commission slots. I have no idea when the re-open will be, perhaps it won't be until after I move and I don't know when that will be. Everyone's still free to request things, and requests from Patrons still have a higher chance at getting picked. Sorry this is sudden but it's a decision I need to make, I hope you guys understand.

[fluffywolfboyy]

I guess this counts as a vent?

I wish I could explain to people that when I say I can't do phone calls I'm not being dramatic, its not something I can learn to deal with, I genuinely cannot hear people over the phone - I can barely make out friends and family on video calls where I can lipread for the most part.

There are so many time where me being HoH was like the direct source for a ton of anxiety and stress because turns out people are really impatient when they think your disability 'isn't that bad'.

Tired of having non-HoH people saying they know what it's like because they had an ear infection once and couldn't hear well - like, well done, you know the concept of not being able to hear stuff. Its kinda way more complicated than that. If I'm in a super loud area, or have to do loads of listening without long breaks, It's physically draining to try to follow what people are saying. Hearing fatigue hits you way sooner and way harder because your brain is overcompensating to fill in the gaps your ears aren't picking up.

And hearing aids don't fix much. They make things louder. Thats it. Does nothing to mitigate any processing issues (in this case audio processing). Does nothing to mitigate the fact that for the first 8 years of my life I didn't hear certain sounds. At all. Like yeah, me being 8 years old was ages ago, but there's no way that didn't have some kind of effect on how I process audio.

I'm constantly worried I'll offend people, because if I meet anyone who has an accent I'm not constantly exposed to (mostly black country) I genuinely cannot understand them no matter how many times they repeat themselves - kind of a massive issue with my Classics teacher who has a pretty thick Scottish accent (although I told him about this before I had my first lesson with him and he was really lovely about it -we love him frfr)

If i'm not looking at someone's mouth I will not understand them. If I know you I can get away with looking in your general direction. If I have hearing aids on, I can look away from you. If you are behind me I will not hear you. No matter how loud you speak. No matter how much you enunciate.

Speaking of enunciating, omgs, I'm so sick of people (mainly my family) speaking really slow and enunciating everything really exageratted, where theyre obviously taking the piss. First off, its just rude and insulting. Second, speaking really slow and with big mouth movements ACTIVELY MAKES IT HARDER TO UNDERSTAND YOU. I learnt lip reading by watching people speak candidly (?), when you change that it throws everything off whack.

I'm so sick of teachers, classmates, family members, being standoffish because I cant hear them or laughing at me when I tell them I can't do something. Like I can't do verbal presentations because I am HoH. It will not work. But people snicker about it and whisper about it and think I'm trying to slack off.

Its so grim.

When I was in high school, this girl I sat next to was always nice to me and I really liked her because she was known for being very kind and all around a good person. She was trying to tell me something (the teacher was checking if we had something signed) and I couldn't understand. I asked her to repeat herself. And again. And again. Normally at this point people roll their eyes, say youre playing it up, or get angry at you and start yelling. She didn't even look mildly irritated, she looked totally normal. She really quickly switched from trying to speak to me to miming signing a book. Thats all it took for me to understand. I almost cried. I didn't ask her to do that, she didn't have to do that, but she did. She was probably one of the only people at that school who didn't take the piss out of my disability.

I don't know why I'm writing this on tumblr and not in my notes app. I guess if anyone actually gets to the end, hi?

[mooestriovermind]

As someone who has Adhd I must say I found your post interesting. I’ve definitely had experience where some really definitely worked and some didn’t, and I guess because of the lacking similarity what I’d heard about for others I got demotivated.

Sometimes it was loosing focus in the middle of an audio file. Sometimes it was just the format of the intended induction too but. Some of them obviously worked, don’t get me wrong, I just could never get the same thing others talked about. By that I mean things you see in hypno related media, think triggers and being easily dropped in a matter of seconds for example.

For an example your post on the fractionation by attempted biting, something which appeals very much to me as people very much call me puppy, feels like an impossible thing to achieve. And despite this it’s something I very much wish I was able to do.

As someone who absolutely adores being hypnotized and has unmedicated ADHD, I can say that a lot of it for me personally is expectations and my perception of things. I used to think that I would never be able to be hypnotized very quickly, much less drop myself. And yet today, sometimes I can be hypnotized simply by somebody telling me that "you're just going to drop for me now, aren't you?" or something similar. This is because I better understand the context of the situation- not because I'm magically better at being hypnotized for any arbitrary reason.

When it comes to being hypnotized "effectively," you have to remember some foundational things (below). If I repeat things, it's probably because there's a lot of overlap, and also some things are just that important.

It can be hard to find out why hypnosis might not be working for you without help. You have to consider all the factors in play- What I mean to say is you have to consider all the things that may be affecting your trance, even things you may not realize are affecting your ability to be hypnotized. Second opinions are useful! (I am more than happy to help, hit me up)

Hypnosis is experienced differently for everyone. If it's not going the way you thought it might, consider how there really isn't a wrong way to be hypnotized, per se. The only "wrong" way to experience hypnosis is by giving up and deciding not to try anymore.

The more you know about the hypnotic process, the more effective it will be. That said, a lot of information on hypnosis is usually on the harder side to read. If you're finding it difficult to parse large amounts of academic information, I'm more than happy to parse some of that info down for you into more digestible chunks- or visit learnhypnokink.com! It's a very good resource for hypnotists AND subjects alike.

Hypnosis is all about your personal perception of things. If you believe something should go a certain way when being hypnotized, it could cause certain outcomes-depending on context. In this specific context, believing that you are "ADHD, and thus difficult to hypnotize," is likely something that is holding you back from experiencing full trance.

Hypnosis is best experienced in an intimate environment. Sure, some people practice tying themselves up with rope, but isn't it more fun and engaging when someone else is doing it? And wouldn't you want that person to be someone you love and trust? Hypnosis is exactly the same way, AND it's more effective if you are able to let go and trust your partner, like any other bdsm.

Practice, practice, practice. Feel it out and find out what works, and what doesn't. Why doesn't that thing work, then? Find out why. Experiment. I cannot stress enough that doing this with a partner is not only great for bonding with them and getting to know them better, but also the best possible way to practice as a subject or a hypnotist.

These are very important, but they don't cover absolutely everything. I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing as much as possible, and that you should always be asking questions to find out more. With hypnosis, you cannot always accept people at face value, as there are always so many misconceptions. Even if someone is 100% believable, always cross reference if possible!

Yes, this includes me! You should probably review the information I'm giving you here and consider its legitimacy- this comes from about 4-5 years of experience as both a subject and a hypnotist, and there's plenty of people out there who probably know more than me.

That said, there's probably a lot of conflicting information out there, considering that so much of hypnosis is done based on the subject, and subjects tend to be different in a variety of ways. So remember! Consider all the facts, all the information, all the things you know. And make your best guess! Gather data and infer what you can.

Closing / TL;DR

If you skipped that whole thing because of how long it was (mood), then I would ask that you go back and read the pink text, at least. I highlighted some of the main points with pink text, but I will give you a brief recap of some of the major main points.

There is no wrong way to be hypnotized

Learn all that you can about hypnosis

Hypnosis is about perception, not focus

Trusting your hypnotist (like actual trust) goes a long way

Practice and experiment and find what works best for you

There are a lot of misconceptions in hypnosis- some less commonly known than others

Additional points I did not cover in full:

Audio files are good for practicing, but only if you already have a good handle on how to be hypnotized. Otherwise, they can be a little bit discouraging.

Cut and paste inductions are inferior to a hypnotist who can react to you in real time. They observe what you do, and will apply what they know to hypnotizing you further.

Hypnosis doesn't require relaxation. While relaxing helps, a lot of people can enter trance states that feel more like excitement or hyperfixation rather than what would be considered to be the usual hypnotic state.

You will never stop thinking- but you can think about only one thing, which is very close to not thinking.

Please visit learnhypnokink.com!!! It's a very good resource and will not take you too long to read, and it can also link you to longer resources that go more in depth.

Remember that there's always more to learn- thanks for reading my long ass ask response, I hope it helped. And here, have a gold star!

⭐

[bg-brainrot]

Sooooo curious as to your writing process. What is it like ? How do you come up with plot points ? Or how do you decide one idea is better than another ? Where do you find inspiration ? Sorry for so many questions !

Hello Anon! No need to apologize, these are all awesome questions ✨✨ thanks for asking them!

This is going to be a long one, so a quick read more...

I'm actually going to answer them out of order, so I hope you don't mind!

A quick disclaimer: this is just how my brain approaches it, but everyone is different! Also I'm a fanfic writer doing this in my free time, none of this is professional advice or anything so take it with a grain of salt.

Where do you find inspiration?

I am one of those people who cannot stop reading, writing, watching, listening, etc. because if I'm left alone with my thoughts for too long nothing good will come of it lol. So I am constantly, constantly doing something, usually two things if I can (writing and listening to music, working out and reading webtoons, playing games and listening to audio books, playing D&D and doodling, embroidery and watching TV, the list goes on). So, to answer your question: everywhere!

Every thing I do, even if I ended up hated it, is such great inspiration to draw from. If I were to give a few things extra props, I would say D&D is phenomenal experience in putting yourself in various characters shoes and learning how to react, and webtoons are great for tropes/subverting them as well as pacing (both good and bad hah). Edit to add: Anime. I've mentioned I based my fic's arcs on anime arcs and completely forgot to list it-- very key to my inspiration!

Also lots and lots of hobbies and I will always try anything once. I've rock climbed, I've crocheted, I've done pottery, I've lockpicked (for real), I've danced, I've metal worked, I've done martial arts, etc. ADHD helps with this one 😅

Real life experiences are super helpful, but it's kind of harder to pinpoint how those are inspirational, they just kind of are.

How do you come up with plot points?

I think I once vaguely mentioned that writing BG3 fanfic feels like playing solo D&D. And that's basically how I approach plot points!

So rather than like, this happens then this happens, I look at it as if I have a framework of what I would like to happen, with certain beats that need to be met, but then I just kind of let the characters roleplay that out. Sometimes it leads to things I wasn't expecting, sometimes I need to pivot like a DM with an unruly party lol. But, since I'm working with a framework, it's usually really easy to write around the characters' choices.

For the framework itself, I usually just have a vague idea that I try to poke holes into until it turns into something bigger. So like, "reincarnation story" -> how long are they dead? Is that long enough to be impactful? Why do they care about their previous life? In what ways can they pick up from where they left off and in what ways can't they?

I do the same with one-shots to be honest: "proposing to Astarion" -> who would be involved and how? How would Tav's behavior change? How would Astarion interpret that? How would Tav react to him and pivot?

It's just a lot of questions 😂

How do you decide one idea is better than another?

This is kind of tough to do, and not always a conscious choice I'd say, but roughly two factors:

1. Is this true to the character? Which idea am I more likely to go 'oh yes, he would absolutely do that'? And if they both seem equally likely, which idea would lead to the character experiencing more growth or more actual challenge?

2. Do I like it? Honestly, the most important one for someone like me with ADHD. Because if I don't like it, it won't get written lol. If I like two ideas, but one of them is pulling me toward it with half written dialogue and full on scenes playing in my head, I know which one I'll pick every time.

What is your writing process like?

With all of the above said, my writing process is kind of all over the place. But a very, very rough outline, using one of the one-shots rotting in my drafts as an example...

First comes the idea. Ex: 'Tav and Astarion sparring early game'

Then comes a rough framework. Ex: you're sparring with a party member -> Astarion is watching, amused -> you convince him to spar you somehow -> sparring happens -> Astarion is impressed, intrigued

Then usually comes dialogue (though admittedly sometimes this comes first hah), because I like to build around the decisions they make. Ex: "Oh my dear, surely you can do better than that!" -> first thing I wrote for the fic. Kind of sets the mood, the tone.

Then I kind of write whichever scenes either need to be added to help me understand where the story is going or I add the scenes I want to write (knowing that's a dangerous game, since I might lose interest if all the fun is done upfront).

Once I'm done writing, I reread it once for typos, flow issues, inconsistencies and the like. If I read it too many times I start to overanalyze it, so I try to just release it into the world before that happens lol.

A few added steps that don't always happen:

If I get stuck on a scene: I read the sections leading up to it out loud, hoping my mouth will just fill in the rest (works out a lot of the time 😂)

If I don't like the way the dialogue sounds: I put on my best Astarion and Tav accents and act it out. Usually helps me figure it out or at least catch where it's snagging.

If I think something a character does just isn't making sense: 'ugh, that's ridiculous, why would you do that?' -> usually it means I either didn't set the scene up right, didn't give it enough background or context, or I'm not understanding the motivations enough-- all of which I need to go back and flesh out more.

If I don't like what I'm writing anymore: deadly for a brain like mine, really, but I've found ways around it pretty well. First, reread the fic! I usually want to know what happens next and my brain will kick back into high gear. Then listen to a song that evokes the feel I want from the fic. Sometimes I'll listen to it on repeat as I'm driving, doing dishes, playing a game. Like it's infusing into me lol. And if neither of those work, I try to give myself a challenge. Like, write a sentence and see if I can make it fit into the fic -- it doesn't actually need to go into the final version, but the challenge is what gets me up and going.

Anyway! That was a whole lot. I hope some of it was helpful, and most of it made sense hah. Again, thanks so much for the question anon! I love answering these ❤️

[many-but-one]

This is a poem written by Dorian nearly couple years ago now. He never ended up posting it because he intended to post the audio with it but we never finished captioning the audio. Going through our drafts, we found it. Since we’re on a poetry sharing kick tonight, I’ll post it now. This poem should probably be updated eventually since Dori knows more now, but we will keep it as-is for now.

Written by Dori:

I want to note that this poem is HEAVILY inspired by a slam poem by Patrick Roche. He came up with the idea of moving backwards in the timeline, which I felt was just...genius. Especially in the realm of DID, where if you know at the first age you have DID, you know it will only get progressively worse. And in my case, things do get worse, but then you get to see the real things that were believed back then. I discussed this poem with several parts in our system, not only asking for their help, but also asking if it was okay for me to share.

Lastly, here are the trigger warnings. This poem is HEAVY. It is graphic, it alludes and blatantly states some very disturbing things. I am tired of being silent.

TW: Alcohol, CSA, adulthood/teen SA, intense religious imagery, blasphemy, unalive attempt, drugs/pills, medical/hospital/doctors, self harm, domestic violence, parents, violence in general, car crashes, AFAB menstruation, neglect, death of a family member, a lot of cursing, BIG mentions of grooming from the POV of the child, brief mentions of abortions.

Haha. The gods really put every single TW they could think of in my life huh. Realizing that my entire life is essentially a trigger warning is 😅 Oof.

Anyway, here is the poem. Read with caution.

24 years and counting.

24, going on 25. I wake up each morning not knowing who I am and this is normal now. I have realized that this will be my normal forever, or at least until I process the layers upon layers of trauma, hidden underneath layers and layers of amnesia that I slowly peel back like onion skins, each layer getting more and more terrifying, more and more worrisome. The deeper I dig into this hole of unknown the harder my heart beats, and I realize my heart beats like a war drum. I have always been at war, with myself, with this body of mine. Of ours. 

Mid 24, I come to terms with a diagnosis called DID. I start to learn more about the different versions of myself, where they all intersect, where it melds together and where it stands apart. I think I know everything but 24 going on 25 version of me laughs at how naive I am. Perhaps 25 year old me will laugh at 24 going on 25 me. Maybe I’ll realize the depths of the hell I crawled out of called childhood was worse than I know even now. I don’t look forward to it. 

Early 24, I got married this year, my wife married three of me, three of me love her dearly. Things feel right and good again, I feel like I am on a happy path. My brain makes about as much sense at it always has, but at least I somewhat understand the pieces of the puzzle I’ve been given. Or at least, so I thought. 

23, this year is a blur, the only thing that stands out is that I quit my job I’ve had for five years. I loved that job. I quit that job because one of my past abusers walked in with no warning, and the sirens in my head went off like there was a nuclear bomb incoming. I still tell myself he didn’t see me but I know I’m lying to myself. I quit that very day and I realized that he still has control over me to this very day, 17 years after the trauma ended.

22, Two months before I am set to graduate college with my degree I get the diagnosis that changes my life. Not that my life is any different afterwards, at least not yet, so I try to continue forward regardless. How badly I wish to return to this moment and take my own face in my hands and look myself deep in the eyes and tell the 22 year old me that they have a storm coming. I think I already know, despite not really knowing, because I find myself getting drunk after work almost every night. I hide the bottles from my fiancée. I don’t want her to think I am my father.

21, I am old enough to drink! I barely drink. Every time I drink and it tastes too much like alcohol I am reminded of my father’s breath. I...don't know why. I stick to fruity drinks that taste good so that I can stop feeling things. Maybe I really am my father’s daughter. 

20, I finally start making friends in college, which is strange. Some people talk to me and I’ve never met them before, but they act like we’ve been friends since forever. Sometimes I attend lectures and I don’t remember what they are about. Sometimes I ask questions and I can hear my voice speaking and feel my mouth moving and I don’t know what I am saying. This is normal. The competent version of me sometimes does stuff when I get overwhelmed, that’s normal. That’s always happened! Everyone does that, right?

19, I wake up on the floor of my mother’s bathroom one afternoon, I smell my own stench I have been rotting in, I peek my eyes open and see pill bottles all around me, but no pills to be seen. The burn of bile on my throat and in my mouth makes me gag. I look in the toilet and see the pills. I won’t remember this moment until I am 24. I will learn it was not me that tried to kill themselves. I will also learn it was not me that saved me.

18, I have my first of many mental hospital stays. The doctors watch me stare at the other kids in the ward, nearly catatonic. They said they’d never seen a patient that never smiled. “Most kids get out of here within a couple of days!” They assured my mother and I. Two weeks later and I am still rotting on the plastic bedsheets. I lie and tell them I’m okay but I am not okay, I just want to live a life that involves shoelaces and doesn’t have nurses yelling at me to brush my teeth. I go back to school like nothing happened and almost all of my friends are gone. They never really cared.

18, pre-mental hospital, I am dating a boy that I don’t love. I am dating him because that’s what girls do even though I am not a girl. He is my best friend and it just seemed right. I really only dated him because sometimes I felt like I really loved him, but most of the time his lips on mine and his hands on my waist felt wrong. Something in my head feels like it’s buzzing like a beehive every time I go to his apartment. It’s almost like a spidey sense, except I ignore it and when I find myself back home, I don’t remember anything that happened at his house, nor how I ended up back home. I don’t think about it too hard. 

17, My dad punched a wall again. He screamed until I cried again. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t do this anymore. I hurt myself with sharp objects because it feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do. I never feel the pain, I only ever clean up the mess. I try to make myself as ugly as possible. To me(?) it makes sense. Obviously, if I am hideous, people will leave me alone. They won’t hurt me anymore, right? ...right? 

17, suddenly an angry version of myself appears and I realize I am SICK and TIRED of mistreatment. I fight back, I fight back with teeth and claws and words that are even sharper than both of those combined. I don’t remember these times very well. I certainly don’t remember the time this angry version of me YANKED the largest knife out of the butcher block and threatened the very man who ruined my life with it. I LOVE this version of myself. She’s intensity, with veins full of gasoline, ready and waiting for someone to ignite her. She bares her teeth in a grin and laughs, she says “I dare you, set me aflame, I will burn you with me.” Thanks, Alice. 

16, I nearly crash my car while I’m zoned out. Haha! I always zone out. Sometimes I zone out so hard that I forget big chunks of time, but everyone does that! 

15, my friend shows me his self harm scars and is trying to gain sympathy but I have none to give. I wonder if maybe doing the same will help me learn to have sympathy. Thus starts an addiction to pain that lasts for nearly a decade. 

14, I don’t remember this year very well but someone does. 

13, I started my period and I was told that I’m just a late bloomer. Everyone always said I was a late bloomer since forever. I didn’t hit my growth spurt until I was 14 either, and I didn’t stop wetting the bed until I was 9. Weird, but I didn’t put that much thought into it.

12, I wrote a detailed story that I no longer have a single copy of that talks about the structure of my inner world. Traces of the DID that I can actually remember. I don’t remember most of this year because I wasn’t the one who lived it.

11, My dad is neglecting me to party with his girlfriend. The one who lives some of next year lives this year too. Too much going on for fragile little me, someone stronger has to deal with this mess. She does. 

10, My brother died this year and this is the exact moment I stopped caring about God. Everything he ever gave to me he took away. I won’t understand the heaviness of such a statement for another decade and a half. This is when my depression started and when I lost my faith in humanity. I thought I gained it back for a while but I never did. I also stopped crying. Nobody heard me anyway. Someone in my head did it for me.

9, I don’t remember this year and I don’t want to.

8, I don’t remember this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to. 

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and it is the year that I well and truly shattered, the year I learned of the depravity of men, the year I learned that I was just holes to fuck, an actress in a sick film, a faerie, a demon, a screaming little cunt, and that’s all I would ever be seen as. This is the year I learned why I liked demons more than angels, and why God was my enemy. This is the year I realized for real that I was alone in this cruel fucking world and no amount of crying or talking or begging will ever make them hear me. They smile and laugh. They smile and laugh. They smile and laugh. :) 

6, late stages, My Sunday school teacher is so nice to me! He has a fun secret that only him and I share! I love him, he takes good care of me. He makes me feel good and special inside. I think deep down…I know it’s not okay. But I can’t help it. Actually, I am really scared because I see the way he looks at me and I feel queasy. I know this is wrong but I am scared he’ll hurt me if I say no. He said that God will tell him if I tell anyone what he does, and if God knows I am bad then I will go to hell. I don’t want to go to hell!! I’ll do whatever you say! I promise. I’m a good little girl. I’m an angel! 

6, early stages, my mommy and daddy broke up. They are fighting in court for me, and I don’t really know what that means. Mommy said the church is helping dad pay for good lawyers so she probably won’t get custody of me. I don’t know what that means. Mommy says daddy is bad and evil. Daddy says mommy is bad and evil. I don’t know who is telling the truth. Or maybe they both are. Or maybe I am the bad and evil one?

5, My dad visits me every night and calls me his little angel. :) I am his sweet angel! His breath smells funny though. And his fingers hurt me a lot, and I don’t like the way he tastes. But he said since I am a good angel it’s okay, so he must be right. 

4, Daddy and mommy fight a lot, my daddy has bottles in his hands a lot. He breaks them a lot. He hits mommy a lot. I am scared so I go hide. I am a being of terror. 

3, I am a toddler but there’s a version of me that remembers that he started existing at this age. He did everything he could to protect me. Even though he didn’t really know why. Thank you, Deimos.

2,

1,

0. I am just a twinkle in my mother’s eye, she’s just a teen and she’s scared out of her mind. This baby is saving her life, though. She didn’t want to keep going but now she has to. If only she knew that 25 years from now this baby would be a shattered and broken mess of themself, because of things desperately out of their control. They were just a baby. You failed them. They all failed them. They all failed US. Too bad you were a Christian. Maybe instead we could have been aborted. Or, rather, maybe we wouldn’t have step foot in that fucking church in the first place.

[argentumcor]

A flare-up of Arkham Trilogy fandom has been triggered, and so I spent entirely too much money on the Arkham Knight Genesis comic. Art is nice, writing is pretty good. I'm not a comic person, and find most comics to have ugly art these days, but this one (and Soulfinder from Iconic Comics) impressed me.

I always liked this version of Jason coming back best since I heard of the character. A plot device like a Lazarus Pit needs to be kept to a minimum because otherwise it just breaks everything and the Arkham version where the Pits are nearly exhausted and restricted to the Ra's plots is the best way to approach them. Jason being crazy because of torture and not mystical woo-woo side effects offers more interesting directions to go in to me, problems that can't be easily solved because they are choices he made while at least somewhat in possession of his faculties.

Man, I thought the backstory I cooked up for Arkham's Jason was dark but the canon one is darker. I had it where he never knew his dad and his mom was an addict who OD'd when he was young, but in the comic both parents are meth addicts who tried to sell him to the mob to pay their debts, which didn't work because that's nuts even in Gotham, and so abused him until he was thirteen, when Jason sold them out to the mob and watched them get killed in exchange for getting a small bit of turf where he was left alone to do small time crime.

I always liked the version of him meeting Batman by trying and semi-succeeding at stealing the wheels off the Batmobile, but the Arkham version where he saves Batman's life during a tussle with the Joker is a better fit for this universe.

There's conflict between the game City Stories version of how he got caught and the comic one. The game one is much darker, from what drove Jason after Joker (horrible murder and mutilation of children at a school in the game vs. pride I think in the comic) to the actual getting caught (Jason's hubris and sense of righteousness making him very stupid in the game vs. purely a trap the Joker laid in the comic). The game lore version of events is better, though harder to depict I think in the pages the comic had for various reasons.

One thing stands out about Arkham Jason: everyone in his life had given up on him from the moment he was born...except Bruce and the family. Bruce met him for only a few minutes at most and saw that Jason could be more than just another doomed rat in the dirty alleys of the city, wanted in some way to be more (Arkham Knight Jason disputes this in narration but it's clear from what happened that's the case). But a lifetime of being given up on doesn't just vanish in a year-ish of being really valued- and Joker brilliantly weaponized it against Jason and in doing so against Batman.

The comic is from Jason's bitter angry broken pre-Arkham Knight POV but there are hints that the darkness hasn't consumed him. I think Dick naming Tim as his brother in a fight hurt him- because I think they would have had that bond before Jason was taken and 'Tim as my replacement' is a big thing for Jason. He's ruthless, yes, and apathetic to the world around him but he sees that Bruce has a memorial to him in the Batcave and it triggers really intense emotions- anger because that's almost all he has anymore and then something else he can't and refuses to even try to process.

That's why, I think, Bruce extending a hand to Jason at the end of the boss fight destroyed the Arkham Knight. I also think that getting Gotham to evacuate civilians was Jason's idea. There's no logic to it from Scarecrow's POV; more people in the city would mean more fear to, uh, imbibe. It's not that Jason is worried about collateral damage, exactly, it's that he isn't totally gone. You can see that in the game audio logs. I wish we would have gotten an encounter with him and Dick, either as the Knight or as Red Hood. I think the rivalry there with Tim is built in as a matter of history and personality but with Dick there's a brotherhood that got broken through no fault of their own.

The Red Hood smart-assery is also present in the narration in the comic. I think it was there with the Arkham Knight, too, here and there, but he's on the furious hunt in most of what you hear from him so there isn't a lot of room for it.

[the-jellyfish-graves]

Ohhhhh audio ideas. For NSFW… maybe instructions for edging or teasing with explicit instructions to cum (or not, domme’s choice). Or since you said you like the idea of teaching a sub to tie you up, maybe some praise of that imagined scenario?

SFW: hmmm. Okay I have less ideas here but praise for a sub who thinks they messed up but didn’t. Cute little soft cuddling moment talk.

Honestly you could talk through a recipe or read a passage from a book you like or a poem and I’d still listen more than once.

-enby sub

I've done instructions for good boys... I could try out more general instructions or for girls. I always feel like I have to make varieties of instructions because keeping things body neutral can be a bit harder.

The tying up one could be fun, and it does have my mind racing. That one could be a really fun switch audio if I do it right. But I'd need more time to work on it because I will absolutely get obsessed with thinking about my options, using the right terminology, and I would probably try to actually tie myself up in the process.

Aww, the SFW one would be cute!

And thank you, that's very sweet.

[sibyl-of-space]

I'm writing the narrative + dialogue for my team's game for the Mystery Game Jam, and it's finally getting to the point where I'm having a lot of fun.

I've done a shitload of game jams before, but always as an audio person, and always on those shorter weekend-long jams. This is my first time doing a month-long jam, and my first time taking on a narrative + project management role. I specifically chose that role because I want more experience doing these things (Amadeus is my only experience doing these things, and I literally just wrote a long sappy devlog last month about how much it has helped me to have done a lot of other random fun stuff for experience).

Up until pretty much yesterday I was regretting this. Writing is harder for me than audio because I have significantly less experience in it, and I've spent over a year working on a single huge narrative that I will be working on for the next ~5 years, so I don't really know what my own process is for starting from scratch. I was trying to force myself to plan out all of the pieces of the big puzzle before writing actual dialogue, but that task was so daunting and hard to whittle down into something concrete that I procrastinated on it so hard this week I ended up almost finishing my Ghost Trick ROMhack instead of working on it.

But yesterday I decided to write the intro scene at least, and that turned into also writing the tutorial scene, and that turned into also writing the parts of the finale scene that I can write with what's been decided so far, and then at the end of it I had banged out 12 hours of dialogue and narrative text, and I was having SO MUCH fun.

So I got exactly what I wanted out of this game jam! I learned about my own narrative process.

I am not a writer who can map out all the pieces of a mystery puzzle meticulously and then flesh out the dialogue after the fact. I am the kind of writer who needs to really understand the characters I'm working with who are engaging with the mystery, and use those as the driving forces of the mystery. That kind of writing flows easily for me and is much more fun. I still have to come back to the mystery puzzle, but it's easier to finish the puzzle once I have all the characters as the biggest pieces.

I still need to write the meat of the investigation portion, but it's going so much more smoothly now that I have characters and not placeholder [WITNESS 1] cardboard cut-outs. I'm having a ton of fun writing this and getting invested. I didn't really expect to become invested! Certain dynamics between characters emerged as I was writing and now these feel like characters I care about and am rooting for. That actually shocked me. I didn't set out to write a game I was invested in, I set out to write a silly game jam mystery. But now I'm like, oh dang, I'm accidentally putting real emotions into our game. Whoops!

It's definitely not a Serious Game. It is a pretty silly game. But I am also putting a lot more actual heart into it than I expected to given our concept? It's very Ace Attorney vibes I think.

(Ace Attorney but written in a month so set your expectations accordingly.)

[oviraptoridae]

have you talked about the ai music sampling workflow anywhere? that sounds really cool :O

i haven't, as it's a much harder process to document-- it produces a lot of unlistenable noise, and since i run all this stuff locally on my own gpu instead of giving google my money, a batch of 8 60-second samples takes about 6 hours. i can give it a try though!

the basic process: while i was working on albedo, i'd take a 10-second snippet of a song i was working on, "prime" jukebox with that sample and tell it a genre (i left "artist" and "lyrics" blank, but it still tried generating vocals sometimes, which i loved). then i'd go to bed. the next morning, if the program hadn't crashed or run out of vram, i'd listen through the audio clips it spat out. most of them were garbage, but a few of them had some really interesting moments...

first 10 seconds are what i primed the generator with. a lot of these sounds ended up in "abyssopelagic".

after that, i went through the same process i do with any sample i use-- chop out the parts i like and edit them to fit the song or use them as a base for more involved sound design.

jukebox, to me, is a tool that's great for making material that can be transformed into otherworldly/dreamlike soundscapes. the vocals are especially good, if you don't give it lyrics and ask it to generate vocals you get the language that things in dreams are written in. the radio chatter at the beginning of "lighthouse" was another jukebox sample...

the sort of thing that scans as speech but is completely incomprehensible when you listen closer. (side note, i think it's neat how my brain latches onto some of the phonemes to try and categorize this as a language i've heard people speak before, but it's just nothing)

most of the ai stuff in albedo is used atmospherically except for the little "guitar riff" here-- i liked it so much it became the hook for a segment of "phthalo". the stuff it generates is pretty noisy and only in mono, so it can't really take center stage without a lot of work. i just heavily bandpassed everything and added reverb and delay to give it some space and smooth out some of the ai jank (you can also go in and edit the waveform in your sample editor or audacity to get rid of the weird sounds of, like, large objects hitting the floor that it loves to jumpscare you with)

the inspiration to use this came from albums by oneohtrix point never and em essex, both very cool electronic musicians who you should check out if you like my music, since they do the things i do but better!

[d0nutzgg]

Analyzing An Ataxic Dysarthria Patient's Speech with Computer Vision and Audio Processing

Hey everyone, so as you know I have been doing research on patients like myself who have Ataxic Dysarthria and other neurological speech disorders related to diseases and conditions that affect the brain. I was analyzing this file

with a few programs that I have written.

The findings are very informative and I am excited that I am able to explain this to my Tumblr following as I feel it not only promotes awareness but provides an understanding of what we go through with Ataxic Dysarthria.

Analysis of the audio file with an Intonation Visualizer I built

As you can tell this uses a heatmap to visualize loudness and softness of a speaker's voice. I used it to analyze the file and I found some really interesting and telling signs of Ataxic Dysarthria

At 0-1 seconds it is mostly pretty quiet (which is normal because it is harder for patients with AD to start their speaking off. You can notice that around 1-3 seconds it gets louder, and then when she speaks its clearer and louder than the patients voice. However the AD makes the patients speech constantly rise and fall in loudness from around -3 to 0 decibels most of the audio when the patient is speaking. The variation though between 0 and -3 varies quickly though which is a common characteristic in AD

The combination of the constant rising and falling in loudness and intonation as well as problems getting sentences started is one of the things that makes it so hard for people to understand those with Ataxic Dysarthria.

The second method I used is using a line graph (plotted) that gives an example of the rate of speech and elongated syllables of the patient.

As you can see I primarily used the Google Speech Recognition library to transcribe and count the syllables using Pyphen via "hyphenated" (elongated) words in the speech of the patient. This isn't the most effective method but it worked well for this example and here is the results plotted out using Matplotlib:

As you can see when they started talking at first there was a rise from the softer speech, as the voice of the patient got louder, they were speaking faster (common for those with AD / and HD) my hypothesis (and personal experience) is that this is how we try to get our words out where we can be understood by "forcing" out words resulting in a rise and fall of syllables / rate of speech that we see at the first part. The other spikes typically happen when she speaks but there is another spike at the end which you can see as well when the patient tries to force more words out.

This research already indicates a pretty clear pattern what is going on in the patients speech. As they try to force out words, their speech gets faster and thus gets louder as they try to communicate.

I hope this has been informative for those who don't know much about speech pathology or neurological diseases. I know it's already showing a lot of exciting progress and I am continuing to develop scripts to further research on this subject so maybe we can all understand neurological speech disorders better.

As I said, I will be posting my research and findings as I go. Thank you for following me and keeping up with my posts!

[rigelmejo]

I'm going to make a comprehensible input resources guide, these are some long winded notes on the process.

For the purposes of this guide, by "comprehensible input" I mean language learning materials that are specifically made for you to be able to understand the meaning simply by engaging with the learning material. Learning materials designed to teach you the target language IN the target language. The hope is that after learning around 3000 words and main grammar concepts through comprehensible input, along with some basic listening and reading skills, you have learned enough to move on to watching/reading things in the language made for that language's speakers. At which point you should comprehend enough of what's going on (the overall main idea of most scenes/paragraphs) that you can continue learning from what you can comprehend alone. You can of course speed up how fast you learn new things at that point by looking up unknown things (the same way that in my native language I looked up "opaque, morose, grievious, mahogany" when reading to learn their meanings quicker growing up compared to the vague understanding I had of the words from what I comprehended and guessed from context alone). But at bare minimum, the goal is to get a foundation in the language through learning material you understand the main idea of, and get to a point where you can continue to learn using material for native speakers and just engaging with it.

An example of a (mostly) comprehensible input study plan:

1. Start with comprehensible input video series on youtube that is made for total beginners (examples: Dreaming Spanish, Learn Korean in Korean, Comprehensible Input French, Comprehensible Chinese, Comprehensible Chinese, Ayan Academy videos of Direct Method textbooks in various languages). You may watch these videos only once, once with target language subtitles (to practice reading) and once with no subtitles, or rewatch/relisten often if repetition is something you like to do when studying. An alternative to a comprehensible input youtube channel could include: audio flashcards (since they're "comprehensible" since you hear the target language, then english, then the target language again) examples of this include Glossika Audio Files and Spoonfed Chinese Anki deck Audio Files, and also any textbook/course audio or sentence flashcard audio files (like Clozemaster Radio Mode) you can find that repeat sentences in target language/english and go through a SIGNIFICANT amount of vocabulary and grammar. Tips: Explore the learning material options because some teachers, presentation styles, materials will click better with you than others (for example I hate anki and can't focus but sentence flashcards with audio would ultimately work fine for this if you can focus on flashcards 30 minutes - 1 hour a day, I love Comprehensible Chinese youtube channel but the ambiguity and struggling to understand may make some people dislike the lesson style). I strongly urge you to pick learning materials that teach a LOT OF VOCABULARY ASAP. I can't insist on this enough. Try to get exposed to 1000 common words ASAP (within a few months), and try to find various learning materials that will ultimately teach you 3000 common words or more (because you'll want to know at least 2000-3000 common words before engaging with material for native speakers comfortably). This is harder than you think, for example Duolingo only teaches 3000 words if you do the entire course, so unless you're cramming through Duolingo in 6 months (and I spend 4 years on it so I sure wasn't) then it's way slower paced than you need. Glossika is a good option, IF you intend to get through the whole 3000-6000 sentences in a year. If you use a youtube channel you'll want to look for courses that go into B1-B2 lessons and aim to get to the B level lessons by the end of a year or sooner. If a youtube channel only teaches colors, numbers, my name is? It has way too few words to teach you and while you can use it to start, you'll need another course with more material later. Good textbooks/audio courses will have 2000 words in them (at least) and if they have less I recommend either skipping them or cramming them quickly then moving on. If a lesson is 10 minutes long and you aren't exposed to at least 5 new words, the course might be going too slow. (I found an audiobook in my library for basic japanese that taught about 40 japanese words in 2.5 hours... that is WAY too slow of a rate to introduce new words). If the course is more than 50% english, it may be moving slower than you need (and in a comprehensible input material like 90% or more should be in the target language unless you're using sentence flashcard audio where 50% will be english). TLDR: find learning materials that teach in a way you can easily engage with regularly and focus on, and find various learning materials to work through that will eventually teach you 2000-3000 words. I will give examples below.

2. Once you have a few hundred hours studied (100-800, it really depends on how soon you want to jump into doing more) find Graded Reading materials in your target language. The goal here is to start graded readers once you know the amount of words the graded reader you pick recommends you know when starting. So for example, Mandarin Companion books have some graded readers for near-total beginners, and you could start the Mandarin Companion books quite early after starting to watch Comprehensible Chinese. French by the Nature Method textbook is made to be used by total beginners, and teaches roughly 3000 words, so you could start that graded reader immediately upon starting french and read it alongside listening to Comprehensible Input French youtube videos. Things to look for in graded readers: they will tell you how many words you should know when starting (say 500 words) and the book will be easier to read if you don't try to read it until you get close to the recommended words (like say knowing 350-400 words when you start reading). Check how many words the graded reader contains: if you know 200 words and the book teaches 200 words, you may only learn 20 new words that didn't happen to overlap words you already knew. It would be good practice for learning to read better, but that particular graded reader will NOT teach you many new words. So if your goal is to continue increasing vocabulary at a fast pace, you may pick a graded reader with 100-500 more words than you currently know. It may be a slog at first to look up the new words, to reread sections, and to try to follow whats going on, but by the end of the book your vocabulary will have grown a lot. How many new words per book you can tolerate will greatly depend on you. When I knew only 500 chinese words, I picked graded readers with 300-800 unique words. 300 unique word graded readers helped me improve reading skills, and 800 unique word graded readers gave me roughly 300 new words to learn which was the upper limit of what I could handle. Once I knew 1000 words, I'd pick 1500 word graded readers with 500 new words for me to learn. Now that I know 3000+ words, most novels have at least 500-2000 unknown words for me and I just pick based on how it feels to read and how much I want to look words up (I usually go by 20 or less new words per page, 30 or less new words per chapter, when I want to pick novels where I don't have to look any words up if I don't want to...5 words you don't know out of every 100 words you see is usually the limit to where people still feel comfortable reading without looking anything up. If there's more unknown words than that ratio, people usually start feeling frustrated unless they look words up). TLDR: basically look for "beginner graded readers" for your target language, and keep pushing yourself to pick graded readers with more words for the next one. You will eventually push your vocabulary up to 2000-3000 in this way after reading several graded readers, in combination with watching/listening to some Comprehensible Input learner material.

3. Immersion "the fun stuff." You've studied for 1-2 years now and learned 3000 words. Or, like me, you are impatient and comfortable with ambiguity and have studied 4-6 months and have at least vague familiarity with 1000 words. You have at least some familiarity with common grammar, and pronunciation (from those comprehensible input learning materials with audio, and graded readers). You can now learn by immersing with materials for native speakers! If you have a high tolerance for difficulty, you can start immersing as SOON as you can bear it. I've seen some people start immersing knowing 500 words, basic grammar, and 3 months of study. I personally can tolerate learning from immersion at around 6 months of study and 1000 words learned. For some people with lower tolerance for ambiguity, they are really going to want to know 3000 words before starting to immerse. However, IMMERSING IS ALWAYS HARD AT THE START. You are not bad at the language, you are not dumb, you CAN do this! Everyone eventually has to "immerse" because even if you study to B2 in classrooms, having a real conversation in the country or trying to read a new novel in the language will BE HARD if you never practiced that particular activity before. Half of immersing is continuing to learn new things, but the other half is LEARNING to understand what you already studied. That part is HARD when you start, because it's the first time you're trying. So if when immersion starts, it feels difficult, I urge you to continue trying to immerse for at least 3 months anyway

Try to immerse 10 minutes daily at first. Basically try to immerse "until it feels too draining." Build up to 20 minutes daily, 30 minutes, until you can actually tolerate 1 hour blocks at a time. I also recommend picking the EASIEST STUFF POSSIBLE when you start immersing, since you're learning to understand what you've studied... you may not want to also get a ton of brand new words shoved at you simultaneously. Good options for initial immersion may be: watching a show you've seen before in english, watching a slice of life/romance/action show where often what people are Doing Visually is related to what they're saying, playing a video game you're really familiar with (so you can guess the words easily), reading the kids form of a novel you're familiar with (so if say you know The Monkey King story then finding a chinese kids novel of The Monkey King may be approachable), finding books and shows with low unique word counts (Heavenly Path's site has a lot of good recommendations that list word count, you'll want to aim for 1000-3000 unique words when you start and the lower the better). My personal rule for immersion has always been: I must at LEAST understand the main idea of each scene (or be able to look up only 1 key word every 5 minutes to get enough information to grasp that main idea) in order to immerse with it. If I watch a show and I can't follow the main idea of the scene, even if I look up 1-2 keywords? Then that show is too difficult for me to learn from. And as I learned more words, much of my immersion material became "I can understand the main idea of scenes without any word lookups, and optional word lookups are only needed if I wish to understand some specific details I cannot figure out from the context I understand." Once you've learned 3000 words, you SHOULD know enough to grasp the main idea of your average slice of life romance show or a kids show you've seen before in english. If you're watching a slice of life romance and have no fucking idea what's going on, and you know 3000 words? I urge you to re-watch the episode 2-3 times. Because the problem is likely that you're struggling to understand words you DO already know. If you watch something with target language subtitles, you can pause and read subtitles at first until you get better at understanding what you know at speaking speed. You can also use the subtitles to see if the thing you didn't understand was Actually a new word, or if you just didn't catch/recognize a word you've studied before.

In my experience, immersion progress went through stages. I imagine that if you start immersion after already knowing 3000 words, the beginning stages will be shorter and less draining.

Stage 1: immersion feels exhausting, you only tolerate 10-20 minutes of immersion before feeling fried trying to pay attention, you are pausing constantly to read target language subtitles, you are replaying sentences frequently to hear things multiple times until you clearly hear it, you may do immersion on and off with several days break in between each attempt, and do easier less draining graded readers and comprehensible input learning materials between attempts. Over time the learning materials start feeling way easier than they used to be, and the immersion material feels like you can tolerate immersing a bit longer. Note: if you start immersion after already studying ~3000 words, then you should know enough words that any word lookup should be completely optional during immersion... as word lookup would mostly be review of stuff you studied, rather than learning new words, and new words should be surrounded by enough stuff you know to simply learn the new words from context alone. This applies to all stages: if you have enough vocabulary to understand without looking up any keywords, its excellent 'easier' immersion material for you and you can continue to immerse without looking up anything.

Stage 2: you can watch 20 minutes to 1 hour of immersion material at a time before feeling drained, you may be looking up key words once every 1-3 minutes (or else feeling confused a lot), you are starting to reliably follow the main idea of scenes as long as you look up a few key words, and you're getting a better idea of what words will help you understand what's going on. You are getting better at "understanding things you already know" and no longer need to pause as frequently when words you've studied before are said or when grammar you've seen before is used. You are getting somewhat better at comprehending speaking speed.

Stage 3: You have gotten much better at "understanding things you already know" and now only pause once in a while when words/grammar you've studied is used, most of your pausing and looking words/grammar up is happening when you see something new to learn. You may replay lines to catch more detail, but you do not need to replay lines constantly simply to understand them. You can look up 1 keyword every 5 minutes and follow the main idea, or even look up no keywords (if the immersion material is easier) and comprehend the main idea.

Stage 4: for easier immersion materials, you are now comprehending the main idea of scenes without much effort, watching 40 minute shows is no longer extremely draining on your focus, and you now notice DETAILS you are not understanding. A lot more of the new words you look up relate to DETAILS in scenes. While you may still want to replay lines to catch more details or double check that you understood a main idea correct, you could go through a whole episode without ever replaying and still follow the main story. You could go through a whole episode with no word lookups and still follow the main story.

Stage 5: for easier immersion materials, you no longer feel it takes intense focus to follow the main idea. Following the main idea may feel almost as easy as in your native language. Most of your focus/feeling drained is happening with details and the words that now stick out to you as words/phrases you don't know. If you decide to look up unknown words at this point, you can look up more than just keywords because there are few enough unknown words it is not extremely time draining to look up most unknown words. At this stage, depending on how easy the immersion material is, you can simply watch for pleasure and pick up words from context, without feeling drained.

Stage 6: You start picking harder immersion material, and repeating various stages 1-5 with it. The harder immersion material gives you more new words to learn per minute, since the easier immersion material was no longer providing you as much. Again, you do not strictly need to look up any keywords when watching. If you choose to look up keywords, you can pick "more difficult" immersion material since you'll have word lookups to help you comprehend it. But if you choose to look up keywords or not, as LONG AS you understand the main idea of scenes you WILL understand enough to learn some new words from context alone. If you would like to learn primarily from just DOING aka watching/reading in the language, not looking things up, aim to pick easier materials where you understand the main idea of scenes without any word lookups. If you enjoy looking words up, you can dive into immersing in fairly difficult materials quickly since the main barrier will just be "words you need to look up to comprehend what's going on." I would recommend though, even if you like looking words up, to do the first few immersion months with "easier material." Because the first hardest part of immersion is learning to understand things you've already studied. That will feel very difficult at first, so picking things that mainly comprise of what you already studied will give you time to practice That Skill without overwhelming you with other new things. Likewise, the first few times you do listening-only practice... it may be a good idea to practice listening to stuff you've watched before or read before, so you know the words and the difficulty is mainly in just understanding listening to things you already know. That way, when you improve, it is obvious to you.

(In reality, my actual study plans consist of: some comprehensible input, some watching shows/playing video games and looking up new "key" words for meaning with Google Translate, a lot of reading graded readers extensively, a lot of reading novels and looking up words either just key words or every single unknown word depending on how I feel, reading along to novels/transcript while listening to an audiobook/audio drama, chatting with people on Hellotalk* I need a better strategy for output practice though, reading grammar guide summaries and grammar book portions when I want, and in the first 6 months of new language study I usually do 2000 flashcards crammed in 2-4 weeks in anki/memrise and read through a grammar guide summary in 2 weeks and cram study radicals/letters/building blocks in a few weeks along with cramming through a pronunciation guide in a few weeks. Those first 6 months I learn very little *well* but I get a vague familiarity with a lot of Common Words and Common Grammar and pronunciation and features, so when I start studying more in depth by like reading novels and listening to audio and looking up lots of unknown things... I have this 6-month basic foundation to attach my newly learned memories to. All that said... after the initial 6 months, a majority of my study is either comprehensible input or doing things in the language while looking up unknown words/grammar.

[shinsua]

I mentioned it briefly when I finished my last stream, but now that I've beaten my first major game, I'm going to spend some time to figure out my comfort zone and update my physical setup!

I've been annoyed with my audio and visuals for awhile, but just toughed it out because I wasn't super invested in my stream at the time. That will change. It's all just a matter of putting the actual work in.

Ignoring the technical stuff,

I want to figure out why exactly it is that I like streaming. Why it's something I want to pursue again. Why does time—so abundant in those moments—feel so well spent?

I've been around online for nearly 20 years, spinning my little web. Talking, in some manner, to people all over.

As time goes on, I find it harder and harder to keep in contact with everyone.

Sites fall apart, people fall off, so on.

And it only gets harder for some of us to cut away at the awkwardness that builds up over time.

No matter how much I don't want to let people slip through, I cannot focus all of my efforts on socializing that way.

I stream to grow and to reach out…

As a means to get better at conversing, opening up.

To share with my close friends.

A way to stay in contact with old friends, and to meet new ones.

But also as a motivator to do things for myself, even when no one's around. To not dawdle and lose track of time.

I feel like I haven't grown much lately—and I won't let that continue.

I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head that I've never properly fleshed out.

One of those is Shinsua, my little phantom boy.

A character I've been toying around with for as long as I can remember.

I use his namesake often, so I figure I may as well use him as a mascot!

Even if he's a character for stories and games I haven't fully developed; why not put him up on screen?

Using Shinsua as a mouthpiece feels right to me.

I have big dumb goals in mind, a collection of characters and stories that need homes.

I also know creation is a process, to be taken step by step, and those goals won't feel any closer if the journey never starts.

I hope that everything I gain by streaming, I can pour into other pursuits I also love.

There's so much to do, but it'll never be more than scribbles on paper if I don't actually try.





I want to share so much of it in any way I can…

So thank you for reading this out of no where spilling of my guts.

It means a lot to me that anyone wants to hear the nonsense carried by my voice.