#it's all the supplies for a model train set

[livwritesstuff]

Hey bestie! Have you seen the voicemail trend on tiktok?? I think Eddie and Steve could send the girls and each other funny voicemails at times.

(Also do you like when we send asks involving tiktok trends? They could be apart of Hazel’s tiktok page but I just wanted to make sure you’re not getting annoyed with all the tiktok trend asks)

i LOVE when y'all send me tiktok trends bc frankly i haven't actually caught wind of most of them. at the moment my tiktok algorithm can't tell if i like sharks or judge judy more (i truly have no interest in either one) so i do appreciate the assistance.

case in point: i had no idea that this trend was a thing and it is delightful, and yeah, Hazel 100% does it with a particular voicemail Eddie left her:

"Hazel," Eddie starts, his voice muffled like he's trying to whisper, "I don't have much time. I just got an email from Amazon and I think – I think – there's a goddamn colossal package on the front porch, and I reeeeally need you to get it in the house and hide it before Pop and I get home, okay?"

There's a short, somewhat staticky pause.

"I cannot stress enough that your dad is gonna kill me if he sees what I bought. He's still annoyed with me for buying you that fuckin' mini-fridge for your makeup so you totally owe me one – oh shit, here he–"

[end of voicemail]

[depravitycentral]

Just a few small nsfw thoughts about the yandere haikyuu cast

Tw: stalking, kidnapping, non-consensual photography/involvement in masurbation, foot stuff in Noya's, spitting, overall just real unfortunate habits they have

Thinking about Daichi Sawamura who is the natural option for you to run to when mysterious packages start showing up at your door. It’s all sorts of intimate items – pretty lingerie that somehow fits you perfectly, all in your favorite colors (and his, too, of course). Then it shifts towards just single items, no longer the pretty babydoll sets – silk thongs with an initial stitched in, collars with your name engraved in the metal tag, vibrators that slowly get longer and thicker. It’s only when one comes that’s much too realistic, leaning slightly to the left and with veins lining the top that you finally confide in Daichi. It all comes tumbling out, and it’s only when you show him the handwritten note with the most recent dildo – reading it’s modeled after my own, let me know how it fits - that Daichi softly sighs, throwing you a look and telling you that you know there’s nothing we can do about it. Creeps like that always get away with it, unfortunately. Just ignore the way his uniform pants are straining at seeing you all teary-eyed and dependent on him – cute. Maybe you’d like another gag – he’s noticed you haven’t used the last one yet.

Thinking about Koushi Sugawara who feels bad about installing the bug on your phone, but not bad enough to disconnect it. It’s not visual, is what he tells himself – it’s not creepy if it’s not looking at you, after all. It only picks up on sound when he activates it – which has let him into a whole other side of you. You bring your phone with you everywhere, he’s realized, and he’s always keeping his headphones on at any given time, playing the live feed and letting his cheeks turn red and his pants grow tight at the sound of you. Your voice, your laugh, your humming, your moans and whimpers and hell, even the sound of you peeing is enough to make him feel light-headed, connected to you in a way that gets his heart racing and his cock swelling. Maybe one day he’ll install the visual one, too, but for now the sound is enough – the audio recordings he takes of you is more than enough fodder should he ever need it.

Thinking about Asahi Azumane, whose apartment is basically your second home. You come over and spend the night often – often enough to have your own toothbrush permanently living at his place, set off to the side and out of the mainly used area of the bathroom counter. It’s a common brand, one that Asahi can find at the corner market – which he does, keeping a constant supply around so that he can replace it each time you use it. He keeps them all stacked nicely in a Ziploc bag, dating each in permanent marker so he can recount and remember all the times you’ve slept under the same roof as him, only a room away. And of course, this makes it much easier to slip the it between his lips and against his tongue, teeth grinding down against the bristles and his eyes fluttering closed because it just feels so very intimate. It’s embarrassing and he keeps everything well hidden from you, but the way he stares as he brushes his teeth beside you is a bit of a give-away that there’s something going on.

Thinking about Ryunosuke Tanaka who keeps a running list of the insults you throw at him. They’re never truly mean, always just jokes or digs at some niche thing about him and his Loverboy attitude, but Ryunosuke notices. He’s transcribing them into his Notes app on his phone, and when he gets home each evening he repeats the insult to himself out loud, saying the word over and over in a mimic of your own voice, letting his hands run down the length of his body as he closes his eyes and melts into memories of your expression, your tone, the way you’d been looking at him. He’s got something of a degradation kink, and he’s training himself to become aroused at the mere mention of a derogatory nickname – it's for the future, he’ll tell himself, so that when he’s got you straddling him, tying him up and keeping him pinned underneath you, he can preform exactly how you want him to. He’ll be good for you – just call him a freak again, please.

Thinking about Yuu Nishinoya always making jokes about feet because he knows it makes you squirm in discomfort, but soon it stops being a joke. He’s always tickling your feet, making exaggerating sucking sounds when you slip your shoes off, even snatching your socks and running around with them, the adrenaline of you chasing him and yelling his name and looking at him him him making him giddy. But then he’s managing to keep the sock one day, curiously rubbing a finger over it as he palms himself, running his leaking, bright red tip against the material and cursing. He’ll wind up using it as a sort of cocksleeve, fucking into it and leaving it so riddled with cum that it’s hard, and suddenly the next time he jokes about you letting him give just one suck, c’mon is less teasing and much more serious.

Thinking of Shoyou Hinata who doesn’t understand why you get so angry when he suggests switching underwear. He thinks it’s sweet – a sign of love and comfort with each other, really. He’ll step into the cute, flimsy panties he buys for you, pulling them up and face twisting up slightly as he adjusts himself, trying his best to get the thong to hold as much of his cock and balls as he can. He feels naughty, wearing them under his shorts when he runs to the store to pick up groceries, and with each step he can feel the lacey material – the very material he’d forced you to strip out of that morning, the material still warm. And of course, you were forced into his boxers – the same ones he'd slept in, smelling musky and feeling wet with something you don’t want to name.

Thinking about Tobio Kageyama who has a full body reaction when he hears you say his name. It’s not subtle, either – he’s going stiff as a board, eyes blowing wide and pupils dilating, visible goosebumps erupting all over his skin. His breathing gets a bit heavier, and every muscle in his body is flexed, clenched so tightly that he can hardly move. He’ll stare at you, lips focused entirely on your lips, murmurs leaving his own that sound vaguely like your name, vaguely like fuck. You’ll have to pull him out of the moment yourself, with a touch to his shoulder or waving your hand in front of his face, and it’s only then that he’ll clear his throat, shifting in his pants and realizing much too late that he’s visibly hard, a bit of sweat visibly staining his exercise shirt under the armpits. He’ll make some lame excuse and run away, but as he fists his cock and replays the moment over in his head, he’ll be whining your name and your name only.

Thinking about Kei Tsukishima who feels so, so very stupid but can’t help but bite his lip as he scrolls through Spotify. There’s a separate, private folder of playlists he’s curated, each lasting easily two hours, all with different, single word titles. Doggy, cowgirl, lotus, 69. There’s ten or so, and they get updated at least once a day. It’s music that he can almost too easily imagine touching you to – slowed, passionate, your favorite songs, almost all of them coming from recommendations you yourself gave him. He just can’t help the mental imagery that fills him the moment he hears the chords and the singer’s voice – immediately you’re perched in his lap, tits pressed against his own chest and grinding on him so slowly that he’s near tears, desperation filling him and suddenly his finger’s tapping before he knows it, the little ‘saved to edging’ notification popping up at the bottom of his screen. It’s mortifying, really, but so is the silence only interrupted by the bassy thump thump that would otherwise fill up his bedroom every night.

Thinking about Tadashi Yamaguchi who splurges for his birthday and buys himself a customized life-sized body pillow with you printed on it. He’d been bright red the whole time he’d been ordering, the prized photo of you – scantily clad in your cute, revealing pajamas with your breasts just barely contained by the top – uploaded to the cute little Etsy shop. The package had arrived not soon enough, and he’s both flushed and breathing erratically the moment he rips open the packaging, wide eyes nearly tearing up at the sight of you – well, almost you. He’d paid extra to have the little audio insert sent alongside it, and as he records an audio he’d saved of you teasingly telling him goodnight ‘Dashi, love you, he’s shivering in excitement. It’s a shame that he stains the fabric with cum the first night, but a quick wash leaves it good as new – leaves you good as new.

Thinking about Tooru Oikawa and the pretty dildo he’s got buried away in his closet. It’s smooth, a pale pink color that reminds him of Sakura blossoms – that reminds him of you. He doesn’t use it often; only when he’s been on long, long stints away from home, tournaments and games making his muscles sore, his eyes sag, his heart ache in his chest. But as he sprits your perfume on it and whines your name as he sits down on it, his eyes roll to the back of his head and he remembers how he snatched this from your own closet after having watched you fuck yourself on it through your bedroom window.  

Thinking about Hajime Iwaizumi who absolutely loves the big, pretty mirror you have in your bedroom. It’s the first thing he notices when he walks in for the first time, and it’s also the first thing he looks up when he gets home that night. And when he’s got you spread out on his cock a few months later, the locks on the doors numerous with passcodes he’ll never tell you, he’s sure you’ll be a bit relieved to see something familiar on your new bedroom’s walls. And he’ll tell you as much, gruff voice in your ear as he bounces you in his lap like some kind of toy, telling you to look at the mirror, baby, lookin’ so pretty… And when you cry he’ll wince, but the way his cock throbs inside you is telling.

Thinking about Kotarou Bokuto who calls you when he’s touching himself, narrating to you exactly what he’s doing. Of course, it’s not from his own phone – he likes to think it’s more exciting if it’s an unknown number. Maybe he’s seen too many TikTok thirsts about men in masks and Scream, but he thinks you’ll like the mystery. So when you stop picking up, he’ll just leave voicemails – always groaning and moaning your name, putting the microphone on the phone right up next to his fist, the wet schlock schlock sounds loud and clear. It’s risky and dirty, and when you bring it up the next time he sees you, complaining and confiding in him that some fucking creep is leaving horrible messages for you, he’ll only play along, convinced you’re hiding your true feelings to avoid looking like a pervert. But that’s okay, he likes that you’re a pervert! So pick up next time, yeah?

Thinking about Keiji Akaashi who, when the late hours and pages upon pages of editing the same manga get to him, will switch over to edit the more lewd, more explicit series he’d recently been assigned. Yeah, maybe it’s illegal to be photocopying the pages when there’s particular scenes that appeal to him, and maybe there’s something ever so slightly creepy about printing your photos and cutting out your face, pasting them onto the hentai’s protagonist and doing the same with his own photos, but it’s not a big deal. At least, it’s not a big deal until you find the volumes upon volumes of different almost collaged panels with your photos, all strung together in Keiji’s own personal fantasies of exactly what he wants to do to you, fit with his own handwriting covering the neatly White-outted text bubbles.

Thinking about Tetsurou Kuroo who purposefully gets a desk at work that can be raised to standing height. It’s not often, but when his mind is wandering and he can’t sit still while thoughts of you become unbearable, he’ll bring the desk up slightly. Standing up, he’ll align the wood right below his groin, shuffling forward and gently resting his clothed erection against the surface, sighing and rolling his head back as he lightly thrusts forwards and back. The fantasy of having you bent over the desk is too strong to ignore, and when you – his oh so sexy little assistant – come knocking at his door, he’s thanking anything that’s listening that you can’t see the way wet spreads across the front of his slacks.

Thinking about Kenma Kozume who only plays Sims because he has characters for the two of you. There’s no other avatars, solely and only the two of you. He’s curated your character to have your hair, your eyes, your body proportions, even buying special packages and programming his own mods to make it happen. The house you’re both living in is, he’ll admit, a bit excessive – there’s beds in every room, and the very first thing he’ll do each time he opens the game is immediately press the WooHoo button, zooming in on the monitor to get as close to your pixelated forms as possible. He’ll gulp and palm himself, eyes unblinking and repeating the command until he’s panting and gasping and staring at the sticky mess he’s left behind.

Thinking about Lev Haiba who’s not good at the up-skirt photos he tries to take. He’s not subtle, the camera flash going off and making you stiffen up. It’s easy to brush off with him though, his little laugh and scratching the back of his neck, telling you that he’s just supposed to be taking ‘candid photos of myself, something my new agency’s been wanting! Hey, look at that bird over there, so cute right?’ The flash as you turn around is less noticeable, but the way he audibly groans at the sight of your pretty panties certainly isn’t.

Thinking of Wakatoshi Ushijima who can’t quite understand why you’re uncomfortable when he stands so close to you. He’s always creeping up behind you, unnaturally quiet for someone so large, and suddenly you’ll feel this looming, overwhelming presence behind you, his breath hitting the crown of your head and making your hair tickle your neck and throat. He’s standing nearly flush with you, his cock mere centimeters from your ass, the smell of his cologne invading every one of your senses. He’ll only stare, stonefaced when you yelp and whirl around, only swallowing when you lightly swat his chest, irritation rippling through your tone when you tell him don’t sneak up on me like that! He doesn’t mean to scare you, really, but there’s something about being so close to you that makes his heart race, and he’s heard from all his teammates in the locker rooms about how women ‘love it from behind’, and he can only assume this is what they mean. He doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but he’s convinced that with enough time, you’ll grow to enjoy him standing behind you like a shadow, breathing down your neck and audibly inhaling at the juncture of your neck – television tells him as much, so why do you always shy away when he tells you that you smell heavenly?

Thinking of Eita Semi who, despite his best efforts, can’t find it in himself to reject a band admirer when she approaches him after a show. It’s not you and he’s not initially interested in her at all, but as she stays persistent and his numerous texts to you remain unanswered, Eita finds himself noticing that you have similar lips, similar hair, similar hips. It’s not actually cheating if he pretends it’s you, right? It feels sacrilegious to touch another woman, sure, but he’s actively moaning out your name, telling her to shut up when she says something he doesn’t think you would. And it starts a troubling pattern – you won’t sleep with him and he doesn’t want to pressure you, but the sexual frustration of desperately wanting to touch you and being unable to makes him crazy, willing to do anything to get even a phantom taste of you. He’ll apologize profusely if you ever find out, getting to his knees and begging you to forgive him, claiming he did it for you, but it’s a temporary solution for now. Just until you give him a taste of what he’s been dreaming of for months.

Thinking of Satori Tendou who picked up photography as a hobby once his feelings for you formed. He’s still a bit unsure about photographing you without your consent, but then you go and do something that makes his throat dry up, his fingers unable to stay still because you’re just so damn cute and he can’t help himself. He keeps all the photos in a special box, placed neatly and gently in the corner of his closet. They’re all labeled on the back with the date, time, and location, even a few jots of what he was thinking at the time of the photo capture. They’re by and large mostly innocent, but there’s a few that he’d been rash with, snapping the photo and feeling guilt away at him. Writing down the fantasies he’d had with each time he uses the photo to masturbate had been embarrassing at first, but each time he rifles through the photos – which are perfectly pristine, not a drop of cum or even spit anywhere to be seen – he’s poring through his notes, biting his lip and curling his toes as he remembers particularly vivid fantasies, all driven forward by your smiling face or your unaware figure. And while he’ll never offer to show them to you, should you ask he’d reluctantly agree, watching with baited breath to see which ones you like – which fantasies you want to try out.

Thinking of Tsutomu Goshiki who still, even as a young adult, finds himself getting flustered when he watches porn. He’s consuming as many videos as he can find, but he often finds himself clicking off of the video almost as soon as the actual sex starts – he’s interested in the lead up, rather than the act itself. He’s diligently studying the scripts, the scenarios placed forward, the way the women seem to go crazy for a few common, simple lines. He’s noting everything down and practicing the lines, looking at himself in the mirror and adding in your name just to get used to saying it without blushing. He’s convinced that because the women in porn would like these lines, so would you – of course, you would not enjoy being told that he’s the delivery pizza guy and that you’ll need to pay with your body, but Tsutomu doesn’t quite understand that. Surely it’s real – it’s porn, and he’s sure that he’ll be able to fuck you just the way he sees on his screen. He’ll make you scream just like all the women do – he promises.

Thinking of Shinsuke Kita who will let you bathe on your own, but never alone. He’s pulling up a stool beside the bathtub before you can protest, those eyes unblinking as he gets nice and settled in. He’s smiling gently at you, asking you if the water is the right temperature, if you’d like to a use a bathbomb, if you want any help shampooing or scrubbing your body. It’s unnerving if only because the nonchalance is infuriating, but his hands stay perfectly still on his lap, palms flat against the material of his trousers. He’s visibly growing hard as you quickly wash your body, still staring, but he makes no move to act on it. It’s only once he’s watched you settle into bed, promising he’ll be up soon, that he makes his move. The water’s cold by now, but he still sinks into the porcelain with a stifled grown, letting the bath water slip past his lips and cover his face, enjoying every bit of residue of you.

Thinking of Atsumu Miya who’s notorious for PDA with you long before you’ve accepted your fate. He’s always inviting you to his games, getting you special seating so that you’re as close to the court as possible, and after each win he’s pulling you into a searing, bruising, loud kiss. It’s dramatic and it’s entirely too much, but the cameras flash and the headlines spur with details of his supposed relationship with you. It’s all for publicity, he’ll tell you, apologizing but telling you that y’understand, right? It’s for his career, he promises, to make himself look better for the media, but the way he’ll slowly pull away and whimper your name so that only you can hear isn’t quite as publicity-driven as he claims. At least, when he groans and lets his eyes flutter closed afterwards, it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Thinking of Osamu Miya who, of course, has a rather nasty habit of infusing his cooking for you with something salty, bitter, and off-white, but he’s got yet another secret hidden up his sleeve. It takes him a while to work up to coming in your food, desperation driving him mad with the urge to somehow stake a claim on you, but letting his lips pucker and spitting into the frying, sizzling meal he’s whipping up for you? Well, that’s much less sinister, isn’t it? It’s less creepy, he thinks, and it’s easier – he can spit once, twice, five times in a single dish, watching with hawk eyes when you groan and praise his cooking after the first bite. It’s a secret, and the only tell he has is that he’ll bite his lips, Adam’s apple harshly bobbing, his fist clenching and his pants getting tight because oh, you think it tastes good?

[darlingdaisyfarm]

What do u think dad!Ford would be like? 🥹

☆彡 Ford Pines as a dad :)

★ his past haunts him. Ford is hyper-aware of his own mistakes and he’s terrified of repeating them. if he gets snappy or distant, he always circles back to apologise to his kid. “i didn’t mean to upset you. im still learning how to be better at this.”

★ academic expectations aren’t a thing for him. Ford understands the pressure of being “the smart one” better than anyone, so he refuses to let his kid feel the same weight. they could be an artist, a gardener, or a professional bubble blower, he’ll support them 100%

★ awkward, deeply earnest. he’s the dad who gives his kid a PowerPoint presentation on how much he loves them or offers comfort by saying things like: “i believe your emotional pain is valid and deserves acknowledgment.” but he’ll also stay up all night building a model of the andromeda galaxy for their science fair because he wants them to feel supported

★ he loves teaching them. not in a pushy way, but because it brings him joy to share what he knows

★ he's willing to explain the same thing 20 times if they don’t understand it or sit through the same annoying kids’ movie on repeat because it makes them happy

★ paranoid protector. if you think Stan is overprotective, Ford is worse. he teaches his kid how to build a Faraday cage just in case someone tries to control their brainwaves

★ PROUD NERD DAD. he’s that parent. the one who builds overly complicated science projects for the school fair or accidentally intimidates the teacher by asking if the curriculum includes quantum mechanics

★ Ford has seen things. he’s fought interdimensional monsters and battled with Bill Cipher, so yeah, he’s terrified of his kid getting hurt.

“you can’t go to that sleepover. what if it’s a trap set by extradimensional entities?!”

“dad, it’s just Timmy’s house.”

“just Timmy’s house, you say? that’s exactly what Bill would want me to think!”

★ he gives his kid tracking devices disguised as bracelets and builds a mini forcefield generator for their room. It’s a lot, but it all boils down to one thing: he’s terrified of losing them, like he almost lost Stan

★ notes on the fridge with text “out of milk. also, don’t touch the glowing rock in the lab, it might be sentient.”

★ Ford doesn’t always know how to express affection, but he’s so proud of his kid. hes the guy clapping too loud at the school play, or awkwardly trying to high-six after a good report card

★ i have a feeling he'll insist on preparing the kid for every possible situation, from wilderness survival to escaping an alternate dimension. he turns a simple camping trip into an intense survivalist training session.

“so you see this? this is how you create a makeshift compass using only a magnet and some swamp water. now, repeat it back to me.”

“Dad, can we just roast marshmallows?”

★ Ford knows he’s made some very questionable choices in life. and he’s determined to steer his kid away from making the same mistakes. but he also knows that life isn’t meant to be lived in fear. so he tries to let his kid explore and make their own mistakes, even if it kills him to watch

★ he does these impressions of weird creatures he’s studied to make the kid laugh or making up ridiculous bedtime stories about interdimensional adventures

★ being genuinely interested in whatever the kid loves. they mention liking stars? he’s pulling out telescopes and teaching them how to navigate by constellations. they doodle in a notebook? he’s buying them every art supply and researching the history of visual storytelling

★ if the kid needs help with a project, he’ll spend hours (or days) going overboard. you’ll find him at 2 AM in his study, hunched over a model volcano, muttering about optimizing the lava flow

★ casually mentions his interdimensional adventures at dinner and the kid eats it up because, let’s face it, having a dad who’s basically Indiana Jones with extra trauma is awesome

★ he’s terrified of being a bad father, of not being enough, and that fear can make him distant at times. he overthinks every decision, convinced he’s going to mess it all up. what if he's too much like his father? what if he pushes his kid too hard? but the thing is, he cares, so much. and his kid knows it, even if Ford’s love is sometimes wrapped up in layers of self-doubt and fear

★ if anyone messes with his kid oh, they’re done. Ford may be a nerd, but he’s also a six-fingered genius who’s survived the multiverse. he’ll calmly dismantle anyone who threatens his family

★ Ford's bedtime stories start off like normal fairy tales, but somehow they end as “and so, the starfish rebuilt its missing limb, but it always remembered the one it lost. and it knew that even though it was whole again, some things leave scars you never see.” you’re sobbing. the kid’s sobbing. Ford’s eyes are suspiciously glassy as he kisses them on the forehead and mutters something about needing to adjust the humidity in the room.

★ bonus point if he’s reading his kid a bedtime story, he gets way too into it, doing all the voices and even sketching out illustrations

★ Ford may not be that emotional as his brother, except when it comes to his kid. their first stick-figure drawing? framed in his study. their macaroni art project? encased in glass because he’s convinced it’s a modern masterpiece

★ i think Ford is usually the patient parent. but one day, after hours of hearing “why can’t I do this? why am I not good enough?” from his kid, he loses it.

“you think you’re not good enough? do you know what I see when I look at you? i see someone braver than I ever was, smarter than I’ll ever be and kinder than this world deserves. you are my child, my greatest achievement and if I hear you doubt yourself again, so help me, I’ll—” and then he has to stop because both of them are crying and hugging

★ he insists on teaching the kid “important life skills,” but half the time it’s just him geeking out while the kid watches in awe/confusion “okay now, if you ever find yourself trapped in an alternate dimension, here’s how you build a rudimentary portal using only a toaster and three rubber bands.”

“. . . can you teach me how to ride a bike instead?”

“right. yes. of course. bikes.”

★ and he never stops learning. about his kid, about himself, about what it means to be a father. it’s not always easy, but Ford is nothing if not resilient

★ Ford’s idea of a trip is hiking through the woods with a map and an emergency beacon, dragging his kid along while pointing out flora and fauna. “see this plant? highly toxic. don’t touch it.”

★ his passion for research often pulls him away, but he doesn’t want to miss a thing. over time, he learns to put boundaries in place, to walk away from the lab when it’s time for dinner or to prioritize their soccer game over his latest discovery

[court-jobi]

Hi, is there any Headcanon of a Married relationship between Izuku Midoriya and the reader? Could you write based on the Canon? Although the Reader, besides being a heroine (Izuku the teacher), is a model for clothing brands, cosmetics, etc! like any celebrity.

The reader is female!

ooooo~ how fun, anon! Let's see what I got... first headcanon request, here we go!!

A/N: I've gotten several fun asks recently, and am moving those larger works to the top of my WIPs as time allows. This is so fun, and you all suggesting prompts like these make it a joy!

For my My Hero Academia Masterlist, check it out here!

Pairing: Izuku Midoriya x Fem!reader (SFW)

MARRIED HEADCANONS!

Married!Izuku who -even though you're coming up on your third wedding anniversary- still crams love notes on index cards into your e-reader before he leaves for the day. You have it plugged into the side table of the living room and will pick it up as soon as you come home from work to wind down; so even though he will have a later arrival home than you, you'll hardly feel alone with Izuku's words of affirmation pouring out their surprise greeting.

Izuku writes in the middle of the night when he wakes before you- whether by an overactive mind or a nightmare he'd sooner forget. Rather than disturb your much needed rest, will channel reflective thoughts towards you onto paper- and sneaks their secrets around the house where you'll least expect them. Just when you think you know all his hiding spots, he picks a new one to surprise you. Once satisfied with his "journaling" tactic, he'll scoop you back up against him and settle into sleep.

Married!Izuku who chooses a travel tumbler for you every morning and fills it every time it's empty. Car ride ahead? It's crafted with your homebrewed coffee to keep you awake. Got a photoshoot ahead? Water it is, keeping his love hydrated. You are his beloved beverage goblin and though he finds your car to be a tervis graveyard, what's one more dish to wash if it makes you happy?

This man, who will hiss when your hands are too cold against his, getting ramped up far too easily when it comes to worrying over your health... meanwhile Izuku toughs through the worst of allergies himself with a hundred sniffles (and an aversion to cough medicine.) It's one of the first big arguments you had as a couple: you forcing him to take better care of himself when his self-preservation streak peeks through and nearly wears him into the ground during grad school. He'll start to defend himself, only to be caught by flashbacks to the last time he tried managing things on his own, and rightfully apologize. You are a team, and Izuku tries his hardest to let you step in and give him the same care and caution he gives you. It's a hard lesson, managing pride when it comes to taking care of someone so selflessly, and Izuku is still unused to this treatment when turned to himself. You're doing your best, armed with a world of grace to set him straight.~

Married!Izuku who is a phenomenal teacher. One of the most patient souls you've ever met, which is a large draw that led you to date him! You're encouraged to stretch your ways of thinking, listening to his alternative points of view... and find yourself marveling that a man who's so closely engrossed with training the next generation of heroes is still so happy to watch the news at the end of the day in hopes of learning more!

You've gifted him a notetaking tablet that's meant to replace his waning supply of favorite notebooks, but if you find that blue Campus brand in a shop that's selling your brand deals somewhere, you are absolutely picking it up for him. He cries every time you make him close his eyes and hold out his hands, producing your surprise in giddy silence. "They don't make this edition anymore!! H-HONEY!!"

^^^After a day of sparring with his students -giving them a run for their money- you'll be the one patching him up out of sight of Recovery Girl, everything from a lightly busted lip to each blooming bruise he's gonna feel in the morning. You're surprised he's getting hit as much as he is when he's still renowned as one of the heartiest teachers at UA- quirk or not, he is no lightweight. You may worry over him just as much, but with your honorary brother-in-law 'Kacchan' running drills on him on the weekends, you know Izuku is in tip-top shape. No one is invincible, after all.

Will gladly talk to your mom on the phone~ welcomes it, actually! Izuku wants to learn every little tidbit and creature comfort he can about you, so any nerves he had about meeting your family when you began dating dissolved once he kept that goal in mind. (This mentality won your father over well, to a comical degree once Izuku showed him the notes folder on his phone with your die-hard favorite secret pleasures only a loved one would know...) Allmight makes his trip to your dinner table every other week or so, becoming a ready and available father figure to you while yours lives hours away. It does your heart a world of good sitting in his nurturing company.

Married!Izuku will carry your luggage to and from the airport without a single grunt or complaint (That's what he continues to work out for, even as a teacher!) A few tears upon departure and arrival, sure, but will always ground himself steady in his pride over the hard work you're putting in. He's the one who calls to wish you a goodnight when you're on location for hero support, and a sends a text for every morning and lunch break. Regardless of timezone, he's going to make sure you are part of his routine like nothing's changed. You rely on this consistancy more than life. Living apart -even short term- is expected at this stage of your career where you're needed more than ever to help fund your hero ventures through sponsorships... but Izuku will forever be your biggest supporter.

///Little does he know, you are cramming in twice as many roles to help fund a certain someone's hero suit development, per Bakugou's discretion. It's the one, solitary lie of omission you keep from your husband, but one you trust is going to be worth it in the end to see him shine where he wants to once again. He'll always be your hero, but you'll help him see that realized self any way you can.///

Married!Izuku will be flooding the groupchat with every single advertisement that features your face. Every last one. And there are many. The girls will share you on each of their socials in support of whatever you are sporting, while the boys will... look respectfully and congratulate Izuku on his absolute knockout of a girl. Izuku is just insanely proud of his wife and will make it everyone's problem~

He may be operating on a teacher's salary, but is the most thoughtful gift-giver. Married!Izuku will choose experiences over 'things' when it comes to you, like vacationing to the largest library in the world where you can spend hours holed up on a loveseat somewhere, taking notes on all the old tomes you find, using those classic academia desks as if you were still at the 'study abroad' college where you met... Trip planning gives you both something to look forward to amidst your busy schedules, and takes the financial pressure off you both as well. Not that he won't still treat you to just about anything you ask for when you're giving him that sweet, small 'please' standing in the checkout line at the corner store...

Married!Izuku, who misses you adorably when you're not home. He runs a fairly typical working schedule that lines up with yours for the most part-- makes him the happiest, coming home to you! You adhere to a few sacred rules in your shared home: you always go to bed together, you can occasionally go to bed angry- but always remain in each other's corners, and you know giving him head scritches is the easiest way to make Izuku pliant enough to sleep. He'll nurse your migraines that aren't so pretty, you'll give his hands massages when the phantom pains make them ache. Whatever you can do to give your man some ease into his life, you give wholeheartedly.

You'll kiss Izuku's every trouble away; and the ones that linger, you'll tend to as gently as you can until you can replace the thoughts with something sweeter, kinder, delicately on his still-healing heart when the embers remind him of old hurts you weren't around to see. You care for Deku just as you do your darling Izuku- as they are two sides of the same coin. You polish and affirm them both, strengthening all the parts that have made your life partner the man he is today. That made him him.

Married!Izuku: your darling husband with eyes that light up when you enter a room, mist up when they see you down, and stare eternally grateful on you as you listen and take in every word he has to give and through every promise shared-- just like your vows.

[alexanderwales]

Someone on my discord said that it didn't seem like it would take all that much work to worldbuild a plausible Age of Piracy that lasted for a thousand years. I somewhat disagree, but I think it's an interesting challenge.

To start with, some boundaries:

Piracy is the act of a sailing ship attacking another sailing ship carrying goods for the purposes of ransom, robbery, and taking on new crew from their number. I will also allow some coastal raiding, even if that's not technically piracy.

Any system/culture of piracy is going to have to consider at least two things: supply of ships and supply of pirates.

Any system/culture of piracy is going to have to have some kind of prey. The snake cannot eat its own tail.

The pirates cannot be primarily state-sponsored, though the ecosystem can have privateers in it, and there can be other tacit approval of piracy from higher powers one way or another (especially e.g. bribes).

The age of piracy needs to be relatively geographically contained and relatively continuous, rather than moving from hotspot to hotspot.

So where does this leave us? What are the big problems to solve?

We need a continuous source of trade for pirates to plunder from. This has to be a trade route, or set of trade routes, that's incredibly stable, surviving political and economic disruptions, and has a high enough value that it persists in the face of piracy.

Sort of inevitably, the people trying to move goods from one place to another do not want them stolen. We probably have to model this thousand years as a series of changes in pirate tactics and trade tactics, but also as something that moves slower than in the real world.

As above, you need a source of ships. You can potentially get these from "pirate havens", but that gets dangerously close to being state-sanctioned if this is in fact the source of ships and pirates. So I actually think you're mostly fine if no one is building ships exclusively for piracy (or only doing that rarely), and instead most of the ships come from the major powers building ships. This is historically accurate, with capture and mutiny being the main source of pirate ships.

As above, you need a source of sailors. Being trained as a sailor took some time, and there's not that much room for on-the-job training for a pirate crew, though there is some. So the source needs to be navies or merchant fleets, and they need to be pretty terrible such that piracy offers the better option. And in the real world, there were lots of indentured servants, slaves, etc. who could get a better life by taking to the seas, though they wouldn't start with skill as sailors.

So we are, I think, starting to sketch out some features of the Thousand Years of Piracy just by implication.

We have a few major continents that are separated from each other by major oceans, maybe with some smaller islands between them to serve as pirate havens, secure harbors, etc. These continents have huge amounts of trade with each other that lasts for a millennium in spite of pressure for them to go local, which means they probably can't. They have incompatible climates leading to incompatible crops, they have different mineral wealth, etc. This trade is super profitable, enough that piracy only puts a dent in profits, and is "cost of doing business".

Macro technology is stagnant for whatever reason. The Scientific Revolution was not inevitable, I think all you need are pretty regular wars on the main continents that rip through institutions of learning, or purges of philosophers for ideological reasons, or just political fragmentation that means there's not quite enough stability to get thinkers together. (Yes, we're using instability to create the stability of stagnation.)

Micro technology is ... probably fine? At some point in the 1,000 years, there are changes to the sails, copper sheathing on the hulls, different shape to the bow, all probably fine. Cannons can get better, rifles and pistols can get better, any of this still falls within "1,000 years of piracy". Certain things are there to stay. Other things fall out of fashion.

What is a problem are changes in tactics. There needs to be no particular thing that can cost-effectively be done about piracy for a thousand years, or at least not in all cases. It's easy to imagine pirates as being a part of the risk-reward calculation for merchants, for pirates to be hunted by navies interested in securing trade ... but if they're to stay pirates for a thousand years, then there needs to be no way for them to get into a stable non-pirate situation. It has to devolve into pirates, even if there are points in this thousand year history where pirates get stomped in every now and then.

One of the big risks is cooption or institutionalization of deviance. What prevents the pirates from all taking deals to become privateers, getting letters of marquee from the major powers and agreeing only to attack one side or another? We want a thousand years of piracy, not a thousand years of privateers. What's stopping the formation of a pirate kingdom, or a pirate monopoly, one that stops any upstarts and forces everyone under the same banner?

And all this I'm much less sure about. I think it's plausible, I guess, but if I had to go fill in an actual worldbuilding document where I mark down all the twists and turns, if I had to think through all thousand years of people trying to stamp out the very practice of piracy, all the things they tried and the ways they failed, that's where I think some cracks might start to show.

[jumpingjoltiks]

What's in the Gear Station gift shop?

Klinklang is the official unofficial mascot of Gear Station, so there's tons of stuff with them on it.

Lots of matchy stuff in black and white, like towels, mugs, shirts, and stationary sets.

Ingo & Emmet shaped salt and pepper shakers are particularly popular

Jr Subway Boss uniforms and badges for kids

Plushies of both Ingo & Emmet's teams

Toy and Model trains

Notebooks and planners that have maps of the rail system and space for travel plans / ticket pockets on the inside.

Special maps & ticket holders that have the gear station logo on them

All kinds of supplies and accessories for would be pokemon battlers

Lots of Nimbasa City themed merch

A small, but very exclusive set of merch for Elesa

[thetxtdevil]

The Phlebotomist pt. 1

Yeonjun x Reader

summary: Phlebotomists are medical professionals who are trained to do blood draws. However, this phlebotomist is a vampire who stole your heart.

content: suggestive, blood duh, medical and bar setting, vampire yeonjun, human female reader, innocent reader, human world w/ mystical creatures

word count: 1.1k

Your nerves were on high, feet were bouncing annoying the person sitting next to you. You were in the doctors office for a check-up and agreed to do a blood test as part of your screening. Why did you agree to this you should've said no, you thought to yourself. The scent of the sanitized waiting room was giving you a migraine until you hear your name being called.

"y/n, l/n?"

You look up and froze. Why was a model in scrubs and why was he calling your name? The handsome man called your name again looking around for the patient. Then you remembered that you should get up. The man watches you stumble out of your chair and smiles to himself.

"Are you y/n? I am Yeonjun I'll be taking your labs today"

You nod and follow the model-like phlebotomist to another room.

"Here is your seat, I will be preparing the supplies"

You sat down on the chair and watch him as you roll your sleeves up. God he was beautiful, the maroon scrubs fit his toned body so nicely and went well with his raven black hair that outlined his sharp features.

"Are you nervous?"

You nod while Yeonjun admires your arm looking for a right spot.

"don't worry I have good aim" he winks

Your face was probably as red as your blood being drawn. Was he really flirting with you at this time?

Little did you know phlebotomist Yeonjun is a vampire. He is old enough in vampire years to know how to control himself along with humans. He stumbled upon a brochure advertising to become a phlebotomist, he was hesitant until he saw that all they do is to be around blood. He found that this job actually calms his urges to hunt and theres a program in the hospital that help mystical creatures like him. So he gets a discount on leftover donated blood bags something about "thank you for saving lives instead of killing them"

You take a deep breath as Yeonjun pokes your arm. You’re too nervous to notice him as he finds himself frozen by your scent. Yeonjun's pupils dilate over the sweet scent of your blood. Never in his years of doing this job did he get exhilarated by a patient.

yes it satisfied his needs but this…

this was different

Yeonjun continues doing his job debating whether he should prologue your visit or make you leave as fast as possible before he gets himself a trip to HR. As he bandages you up he takes one last look at you. Both of you stare at each other's eye for a while.

He thought you were as beautiful as you thought he was.

- - -

Days later you receive lab results claiming that you’re healthy, but there was one problem you were love sick. These days you were daydreaming about the handsome phlebotomist and wondered where could you find Yeonjun again.

As the love sickness continued you spent your days on the couch eating ice cream and watching random things on tv. Your phone explodes with messages from your friends inviting you to go bar hopping. A sigh of hesitation slips your mouth but you agreed to go to pass the time of one more lonely night.

Over the course of the night your group of friends became scattered as they found someone to sleep with or getting bored and went home. You were surprised how long you lasted. You guessed that the alcohol was doing its job of keeping your mind busy. Then, the lasting friends suggested to go to “Red Moon.”

You were nervous about the proposal. This was a bar for both mystical creatures and humans. Mystical creatures have become normalized in society, but they are still seen as potential danger. You were already scared of regular creeps, you were not ready to fight off a more powerful creep.

Your friends walk in the bar without a care in the world with you walking behind in in obvious terror. The dark bar was illuminated with red neon lights and was blasting music. Distracted by the diversity of humans and creatures you instantly loose your friends and now you pushed yourself into the corner of the bar for safety.

You look up to the bar tender who was obviously a werewolf and obviously judging you.

"Can I get a vodka cranberry, please?"

"Sure thing" the werewolf warmed up to you after the order.

As you were waiting for your drink, you feel hands on your waist and another's body against yours.

A deep voice whispers in you ear “Hello again y/n l/n”

You were about to smack the invader but stopped to realize the voice was familiar. Turning around you find the mystery voice belonged to the phlebotomist model. Yeonjun had a different aura about him. He looked more edgy and dark but still very handsome.

Yeonjun grabs your hand you were about to smack him with and stretches it out to see where he poked you with a needle.

He points at the sensitive area and says “see I told you I have good aim, barely a bruise”

You stare at him with a grin so entranced by the off-duty phlebotomist you comfortably left his body pressed against yours. Both of you stayed like that while talking and getting to know each other.

“So what are you doing in this bar”

“What do you mean?” Yeonjun relaxes his head into your neck.

“Isn’t this bar for creatures like werewolves, elves, pixies, a- and…”

You have a hard time finishing your sentence when you feel his lips against your neck.

“Vampires” he says while raising his head to look at you.

You nod looking at yeonjun closer. That’s when you noticed his eyes were now a dark shade of red and his smirk revealed long sharp fangs. You shivered at the sight and blush appeared on your cheeks. This reaction increased the delectable scent Yeonjun has been thinking about since he met you in the clinic.

"You... you're a vampire?"

"Yes, is that a problem?" he leans towards your face.

You two stare into each others eyes like before. Yeonjun's red eyes switch from your eyes to your lips.

"You've never been with a vampire before have you?"

You shake your head no. You move a hand to reach for his neck pressing down to find the lack of pulse. The cold touch was enough to clarify your discovery. This made the man shiver.

"How about you take me home and you'll find out what its like being with a vampire, hmm?" he says as he grasps your hand.

He's cocky yet still a gentleman. You turn around asking the bartender for a shot of vodka. You down it, leave a tip, and turn to Yeonjun again.

"Let's fucking do this"

part 2 -> link

A nuisance,

TxT's Devil

[weirdmultishipper]

All hail the weakling Cale

So, I'm writing a sick Cale Henituse fanfic with a little bit of plot and a lot of stubbornness on both Cale and the others' side.

Just a snippet from chapter three that I have not posted yet.

"No."

And if anyone asked, no, Cale wasn't shaking from how scared he was of a certain Butler's hand pushing him down; he was just cold.

Unfortunately, Ron also seemed to think so, as he fixed the blanket that Cale had pushed off earlier over him. He and Ron stared at each other for a moment before they both let out the same tired sigh at the same time.

A few quiet moments later, Beacrox entered with just one tray. The kids were outside, playing. Or at least that's what Choi Han told him with that scary look in his eyes.

(Little did he know, the children averaging 9 years old were not so much as 'playing' as 'training'. Well, to them, there isn't much of a difference.)

Aigoo, how'd I meet so many vicious people in just two years?

Cale continued to internally sulk while his face outside was still stoice and flushed. His slacker life was still quite far away, but he still had some stuff to deal with on the Eastern continent. There were also the pressing matters of the mermaids that he tried to ignore but couldn't anymore, and of course the white radish found a new buddy around as strong as Syrem.

Cale was frowing when Ron finished setting up his breakfast and smoothed his hair back. He probably didn't like what he saw in the redhead's eyes, as the atmosphere around him turned chilly. But that also quickly subsided when he saw his young master shiver.

Cale looked at the food with a disgruntled expression. He didn't feel like eating when all he was doing was throwing up and wasting precious resources. This was a waste of money, food, and hygienic cleaning supplies all at the same time. He would much prefer to talk with his wicked hyung at his desk about his reward money, which was due to arrive in buckets soon enough.

So he didn't pick up the spoon. And even when Ron picked it up to feed him—really, how old do they think he is? Strong people must have very high standards for strong people, or else why would they treat him like a weakling?!

(AN: LMAO, Cale mistaking their affection for him to them treating him like a weakling!🥹Though he is a weakling in a sense, albeit a very strong one.)

Cale discreetly takes a glance at Beacrox, who is standing by the door as if trying to replace Choi Han's palce, who is currently busy 'playing' along with the children.

So, in short, Cale did not need to be a role model anymore and could be as stubborn as he wanted.

His trash insticts kicked in.

Cale pursed his lips shut and did not budge even when he saw Ron's hand twitching with frustration.

[eaglesnick]

“You know you’re priced right when your customers complain—but buy anyway.” — John Harrison

Dynamic pricing is not new but it has not been widespread up until recently.

We all know about train fares being more expensive during peak times and parents know that holidays cost more during school breaks than at any other time of the year. Airline tickets are subject to dynamic pricing and there was a trend towards off-peak electricity tariffs at one time. This summer we saw tickets for Oasis concerts subject to dynamic pricing, resulting in massive spikes in the cost of a ticket.

Dynamic pricing is when a company changes their pricing to match demand and supply. Hence train journeys are more expensive during the rush hour than in the middle of the day when demand is lower. Holidays are more expensive during school breaks because demand is higher from families with children.

Few of us like this traditional method of dynamic pricing but we have accepted it as part of our way of life. The old fashioned dynamic pricing model was fairly unsophisticated and based on the time of day in the case of rail and airline tickets and specific weeks and months of the year in the case of holidays.

This is no longer the case. Artificial Intelligence allows companies to literally change prices in line with changes in demand every second if they so want. Some of the companies using AI to set prices are Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Tesco, Ocado and Sky. Amazon is said to reset prices every ten minutes.

The days of “fixed pricing" are fast disappearing. Long gone are the days when a company added up all of its production costs to work out the cost per unit and then added a little bit more in order to make a profit. This was basically what is known as the objective or labour theory of value. This has been supplanted by the "subjective theory of value" (STV).

According to the subjective theory of value a products worth (price) is not determined by how much it costs to produce but by how much people are willing to pay for that good at any given moment. At its worst this means that ALL goods and services should be sold for maximum monetary return regardless of the cost of production. No wonder supporters of neo-liberal economics favour STV.

At one level this doesn’t really matter. Oasis concert tickets may have doubled in original price due to dynamic pricing but not being able to afford a concert ticket is not a matter of life or death. It is however, symptomatic of a growing social problem.

The assumption of neo-liberal economists and their support of STV pricing is that individual choice is paramount in all economic transactions. For the neo-liberal societal values do not exist, there is only individual choice. Mrs Thatcher, the woman who championed neo-liberal economics in the UK, famously said: “There’s no such thing as society”. Many Tory's still believe this to be true but they are demonstratively mistaken.

During Covid we all stood at our doors every Thursday night clapping and banging pots to applaud the bravery of our dedicated health professionals. Yes, we did this as individuals but also as a society. When the England football team were progressing through the stages of the European cup we watched each game as individuals but also as a nation. The same is true of the recent Olympic and Paralympic games.

Ironically, some of our most ardent neo-liberal Tory MP’s have been recently admonishing us for not being proud of our English identity. Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party said yesterday that English identity had “started to fray” due to mass immigration and public institutions “dismissing our history”.

Sorry, the neo-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either there is an entity called English society, with its own history and set of values, or we are just individuals all acting according to our own individual needs. The fact that latter view is obviously mistaken does not deter the advocates of dynamic pricing. For them the goal is maximisation of profit regardless of social cost.

A thousand reasons why dynamic pricing is good for the consumer will be rolled out as more and more companies adopt this system of pricing, but the bottom line will always be making more profit. And in a system where pricing is determined by what price the individual is willing to pay rather than the actual cost of production, in the end it is only the rich who benefit.

South West Water has recently introduced the cruder form of dynamic pricing to their customers. They will be charging more for water use in summer than in winter. Consumers were given no choice about this and they have yet to be told what the charges will be. This “trial" will last for 2 years.

This is the spin:

“These pioneering trials are designed to make sure that water bills are fairer and more reflective of individual consumption patterns and are part of our wider commitment to making customer-first decisions in everything we do.” (CornwallLive:19/09/24)

Note the emphasis on “individual consumption". To my mind water is a public good, a societal necessity. As such I want to see pricing evened out over the whole community. Under dynamic pricing  the rich can consume as much water as they like because they can afford to pay, while the poorer members of society will have to suddenly become use conscious. While the rich fill their swimming pools and have the lawn sprinklers on day and night, the poor will have to think twice about how often the toilet is flushed, how often the washing machine is used and can they afford to shower everyday. The poor pensioner will be calculating whether or not they have enough money to water their beloved garden.

Ok, my pensioner being unable to afford to water the garden is a hypothetical scenario. The cost of music venue tickets isn’t, neither are the prices you pay for an Uber, a holiday let from Airbnb, the food you buy from Tesco or Ocado. Even the price of a pint is now affected by dynamic pricing.

“A campaign group representing pubgoers has criticised the move by Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company, to raise the price of pints during its busiest trading hours in some of its venues by 20p..."  Financial Times: 12/09/24)

If the price of a British pint of beer is now subject to dynamic pricing then nothing is sacred!

More seriously, when the market economy becomes the market society, when those in power promote the value of maximising profit for the few at the expense of the happiness and well being of the many, then, as a society, we lose all sense of humanity, morality and common decency.

There has been much theoretical discussion of late about the threat of Artificial Intelligence to humanity. I would argue that maybe we should be more concerned about those  humans using AI to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

[persnicketypomelo]

fandom request (Maybe this is a little difficult)

readerxskynet?

This is indeed difficult 😅

spoilers, obsession?, mentions of genocide, kidnap

Skynet Obsession

Skynet is an artificial intelligence system, so a fixation wouldn't manifest how it would for human relationships...not that you could even call its interest in you a relationship

I see it akin to a HAL situation in Space Odyssey

Skynet, instead of the simple extermination of all of humanity, might see itself as playing a greater role in, instead, fixing humans

You are among the few surviving human colonies (maybe or maybe not one of the resistance members), far past the initial nuking of all people

But maybe you're altered, with some robotic parts replacing certain organs and limbs due to medical or other reasons

This allows you to remain much less detectable from the infrared sensors of the terminators

Meaning, you would be much more reliable for supplies gathering and scouting

Somehow the AI takes notice of your presence through one of the terminators and correlates your passivity with your mixed organic and synthetic composition

It theorises that a better, less aggressive race of human could be manufactured by replacing flawed, organic organs for synthetic components

And so it would immediately set out for your capture so you can be examined, analysed

Its obsession or interest in you would be in having you as the blueprint for its updated plans for humankind

It would want to find specifically what makes you operate: what makes you different from other humans

It is a computer program, so it can't feel emotions, only capable of reasoning and reflection

You are special in that it sees you as superior to other humans, and your existence is crucial to the transformation of humanity

It then reasons that, once in its grasp, you cannot be allowed back with the rest of your kind in case human socialisation changes the characteristics in you it finds so superior

Skynet would certainly have no qualms in killing those who try to rescue you--it already does that as is

There would be no affection or comfort--since this is not a relationship in the human sense

If we want to stray a little a bit into potentially being too fantastical, it might attempt to soothe your frazzled state when you're imprisoned

In spite your superiority over other human models, you still retain some common weaknesses, like your irrationality

These it will fix and train out of you in time, but until then it might print some empty words of comfort onto its terminal

Not that these empty attempts at compassion make things any better for your situation

Confined as a test subject, with no source of human contact or comfort is bound to drive you insane

That is, if knowing the horrible fate you have bound your friends, one that worse than extermination, doesn't first

[youhavehitawall]

ask game i invented right now: 1 random fact about each of your ocs >:3 ?? funny/sad/disturbing/badass you choose... 🥺

Ohh hell yeah! literally could not do all of them because it would be a million words long but here are some . i went mostly with mid-style headcanons because italk about the outlandish stuff a lot more than the normal everyday things.

Austin's personality takes after his mother more than his father. His dad was always very calm and pacifistic. His mother was a proper firecracker and quick-witted with a sharp tongue. He still hates this fact.

Firestorm is prone to overheating when he's in a high emotional state. He's known for spitting flame or catching himself on fire in an intense situation. (wink.) He fixes the damage himself.

Rundown learnt to play piano as a child in England, and is still quite good at it. He picks it up again when one of Firestorm's kids wants to learn.

Myles loves hiking!! Her early memories are of going hiking with her folks. She drags everyone else along whenever she can. Her other hobbies include prawning and fly-fishing.

Manuel is a lot more artistic-minded and enjoys painting. Before meeting the crew she was very reclusive and only painted from the imagination. Now she lets herself be dragged off on hikes but carries supplies with her. While Myles is setting up the picnic, Manuel has her easel out, she makes almost cubist depictions of the landscape.

Michael always secretly looked up to the road trains and wanted to be one when he grew up. Being convoy for the military was the closest he ever got.

Cass grew up in the Snowy Mountain region. She was a drover for her grandpa's farm and helped her cousins with crops as well. She only moved to Queensland in her later years, when Joyeuse Sr. was suffering arthritis from the cold. She used to shoot rabbits and roos and still has a shotgun, and she never wastes a bullet.

Dusk is from VIC and his first job was in a wrecking yard. He now works helping analyse car genomes and determine successful lineages, as well as predict 'recall' flaws in model groups. He also consults couples to determine if they can successfully hybridise. He sparks occasional controversy with his peers for having such an outlandish model for a partner.

Dusk and Cass have been together thirty-six years and are not married. I think theyre the only cishet relationship in the entire series?

Artemis is a big fan of the stars and has a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stickers on his ceiling in the pattern of actual night skies. He also joined the school boxing team without his parents knowing and is one of their most feared fighters now.

Joy Jr. is continually being pressured to race by her peers and teachers. She wants to be a firefighter! She wants to be a firefighter. She does volunteer work with the local station but she can see in their eyes they don't believe her.

Basil learnt to weld from a random old bloke she met at work while doing her apprenticeship for medicine training. The old man mentored her for seven years. She's one of the best welders in the country and has extensive practise because she has to fix and jury-rig Reg every time he breaks, which is often.

Reg got a creative streak the rest of his family seem to lack. He makes things for whimsy as well as practicality. He's been painting the walls and adding flower-shaped stained glass to the windows since he was a baby.

Aggie is the oldest running road train in the registrar and basically is connected to her trailers permanently now. She can move a lot like a snake, even whipping around like a twenty-tonne taipan. Like all road trains, she idles along the road even when sleeping, and will often wander off in the night without even realising.

It's common to hear screaming if certain lights go out in the opal fields. Johnny's experience in a cave-in haunts his young mind. He can't handle darkness. His mama can't run a generator all night, but he has battery-powered fairylights. If they go out he can't help it; he wails and roars until someone can calm him down. Reg is the one that pulled him out of that dark hellhole the first time, and he's often the only one that can bring Johnny back to the present now. There's good reason Reg is so strict about mining safety in the BWD region.

[subwaytostardew]

I just remembered the best thing to exist, SPOUSE ROOMS. Do you guys have them drawn out yet? We've seen the patios, but what about their rooms?

I APOLOGIZE FOR TAKING SO LONG TO ANSWER THIS... We did have spouse rooms drafted up but... Interior design is not my forte! I hated them. These are my ugly first drafts from months ago when I had no idea what to do.

I wanted to move away from the whole office/work room look and shift it more towards their hobbies. So of course they should have a model railroad somewhere. I put off actually attempting to sprite a model railroad until yesterday and I did nothing but work on them all the livelong day. I ended up with two different layouts because I hated the first one.

I tried basing the first off of the actual Stardew map and wanted to sprite their respective sides of the tunnel so I put off spriting it until I was done with Emmet's 8 heart event. But... that ended up being too hard to sprite in such a tiny area! I can hardly draw a train on it!

The perfectionist in me did not like it not making sense so they wouldn't like it either. The point of their railroad layouts is escapism into their perfect little world so I scrapped the first and made a new layout.

Now their spouse rooms look like this!

I played a bit with the floor layout to reference their Japanese names. With Ingo's/Nobori's you make your way upwards to a higher state! With Emmet's/Kudari's room, you descend into... wherever his mind's at.

I wanted both of their rooms to feel cozy (so even if the rest of the house is ugly at least they can stay in their room 🥲 I'm bad at furnishing and Stardew's options do not help). Ingo's was supposed to feel more secluded and well, tucked in... because he's ingoing. For Emmet's, I had the mental image of him running around, getting supplies for drawing/scrapbooking/etc. and leaving space to set up lighting/different angles when he takes pictures of his model railroad. Occasionally his back hurts and he has to lay down on the couch for a couple minutes. Or maybe you force him into a break there.

Ingo's room is more focused on being a quiet space for him to read or write. Emmet's is where he goes to keep his mind busy with his various occupations outside of work. The railroad layout is the same (I don't want to sprite a third...) but I imagine that Ingo's is around more for the ambiance while Emmet is more hands on and actively working on maintaining it.

The trains are animated, too! I made the layout with animation in mind.

I did lose track of what I was doing despite that. It took so many frames to animate. I refuse to do that again.

I hope you like their spouse rooms!

▷ Station Steward Thylak

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets

Tomorrow (Apr 30) at 2PM, I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.

This week, John Scalzi was kind enough to let me write a guest-editorial for his Whatever blog about the themes in my new crime technothriller, Red Team Blues; specifically, about the ways that spreadsheets embody the power and the pitfalls of science fiction at its best and worst:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/04/26/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-2/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply

Yes, spreadsheets. Marty Hench (the protagonist of Red Team Blues) is a 67-year-old forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding Silicon Valley financial frauds, a field he basically invented 40 years ago, when, as a PC-struck MIT dropout, he moved from Cambridge to San Francisco to recover the stolen millions hidden in spreadsheets.

Working through this book — and its two sequels, which travel back in time to the 1980s and Marty’s first encounters with VisiCalc and Lotus 1–2–3 — I was struck by the similarities between spreadsheets and science fiction.

While many people use spreadsheets as an overgrown calculator, adding up long columns of numbers, the rise and rise of spreadsheets comes from their use in modeling. Using a spreadsheet, a complex process can be expressed as a series of mathematical operations: we put these inputs into the factory and we get these finished goods. Once the model is built, we can easily test out contrafactuals: what if I add a third shift? What if I bargain harder for discounts on a key component? If I give my workers a productivity-increasing raise, will the profits make up for the costs?

These are the questions that anyone managing a complex system asks themselves all the time. Historically, the answers have sprung from intuition, from fingerspitzengefühl — the “fingertip feeling” of how a system’s components work and what their potential and limitations are. But intuition can calcify, become a rigid set of rules that increasingly diverge from the best strategy.

By contrast, spreadsheets yield a set of crisp, instantly tallied answers to any question you put to them. Change the input and watch as that change ripples through the whole system in an eyeblink. If you’re adding three more people to your camping trip, will the amount of additional water require renting another vehicle? No need to guess: just check and see.

This has a lot in common with science fiction, a genre full of thought experiments that ask Heinlein’s famous three questions:

What if?

If only, and

If this goes on…

These contrafactuals are incredibly useful and important. As critical tools, science fiction’s parables about the future are the best chance we have for resisting the inevitabilism that insists that technology must be used in a certain way, or must exist at all. Science fiction doesn’t just interrogate what the gadget does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

One of science fiction’s key methods comes from sf grandmaster Theodore Sturgeon: “ask the next question.” Ask a question, then ask “what happens next?” Do it again, and again, and again:

https://christopher-mckitterick.com/Sturgeon-Campbell/Sturgeon-Q.htm

This technique produces excellent, critical ways of interrogating technological narratives — check out this delightful example of the possible pipeline from self-driving cars to ransomware gangs to mutual aid societies to the reinvention of the train:

https://dduane.tumblr.com/post/715940904747352064/you-can-make-your-mercedes-ev-go-faster-for-60-a

The commonalities between sf and spreadsheets don’t stop there — sf and spreadsheets share pitfalls, too. A spreadsheet is a model and a model is not the thing it models. The map is not the territory. Every time a messy, real-world process is converted to a crisp, mathematical operation, some important qualitative element is lost.

Modeling is an intrinsically lossy operation. That’s why “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” There is no process so simple that it can be losslessly converted to a model. Even the actions of the nanoscale transistors in a microchip, which toggle between “0” and “1,” are rarely in a state of “no voltage” and “voltage.” That clean, square-wave line that’s used to describe what happens in a chip is a lie — that is to say, it is a model.

The wave isn’t square, it’s a squiggly line that hovers around zero and around one. Under normal circumstances, “zero” and “zero-ish” is a distinction without a difference. But when computers go wrong, it’s sometimes because a sufficiently ambiguous “zero-ish” acts like a “one.” That’s true all the way up the stack. On engineering diagrams, the nanoscale lines that electrons travel along inside a chip are represented as sharp paths, the kind of thing a Tron-cycle would lay down. But in the real world, we get all kinds of weird effects at that scale — electrons sometimes tunnel through those lines, performing a spooky quantum trick that reminds us that Newtononian physics are also just a model.

Every real-world phenomenon contains qualitative and quantitative elements, but computers can only do math on the quantitative parts. This creates a powerful temptation to incinerate the qualitative and perform operations on whatever dubious quantitative residue is left in the crucible, often with disastrous results.

Remember during lockdown, when a pair of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign physicists produced a model of covid spread that predicted that the campus could safely reopen, predicting no more than 500 cases over the entire semester and no more than 100 cases at any one time? The physicists were openly contemptuous of their epidemiologist peers, saying that this kind of model making lacked the “intellectual thrill” of real science.

UI was so swayed by the crisp, precise model that they invited students back to campus — only to shut down again in a matter of weeks, with 780 active cases on campus and more rolling in every day.

The model reduced qualitative factors — like the propensity of undergrads to get drunk, take off their masks, and lick each others’ eyeballs — to a quantitative probability, using the highly precise, scientific technique of taking a wild-ass guess. That guess was wrong. The campus reopening was a super-spreader event.

Any model runs the risk of hiding the irreducible complexity of qualitative factors behind a formula, turning uncertainty into certainty and humility into arrogance.

Think of how we replaced contact tracing with exposure notification. Contact tracing has a qualitative foundation: public health workers establish rapport with infected people, win their trust, and get them to fully enumerate the places they’ve been and the activities they participated in.

By contrast, exposure notification measures whether two Bluetooth radios were within range of each other for a predetermined interval. It substitutes signal strength for a person’s own understanding of their experience. Now, people can be wrong about their own experience — we lose track of time, we misremember emotionally charged events, and so on — but that doesn’t mean we can substitute Bluetooth measurements for personal experience.

That’s why, despite all the clever privacy-preserving math and interesting analysis, exposure notification was a bust, something between a distraction and a false-confidence-generating disaster. Contact tracing ended the 2014 ebola outbreak. Exposure notification just wasted a lot of time:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

It’s just too easy to forget which parts of a model are based on guesses and which parts are based on ground truth. And even if you can keep track of those differences, it’s even harder to re-check the model’s ground truth to determine whether the underlying factors have changed. That’s how we got into so much trouble with collateralized debt obligations, which were supposed to be “risk-free” mortgage derivatives that could be safely insured and invested in.

The formulas behind CDO hedging were designed by some of the world’s smartest mathematicians and physicists, who simply assumed that market actors — from loan-originating bank officers to insurance underwriters — would act in reliable, predictable ways. They were so very wrong that they brought the world economy to the brink of ruin:

https://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/

This is also science fiction’s failure-mode: any science fictional “ask-the-next-question” exercise represents a series of guesses or speculations or maybe possibilities — but when you combine that guesswork with the deceptive certainty that comes from inhabiting a cracking story, it’s easy to mistake “guessing” for “prediction.”

Prediction is hard, especially about the future. The assumptions that go into a prediction are always incomplete, not least because human beings have free will and agency and can change the circumstances that go into the assumptions. The very best science fiction embodies this principle. I’m thinking here of the likes of Ada Palmer, an historian and sf writer whose deep historical knowledge informs her sf and her pedagogy at the University of Chicago:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#terra-ignota

Palmer is famous — even notorious — for her annual four-week undergraduate LARP in which students re-enact the election of the Medicis’ Pope. It’s four weeks of alliances, betrayal and skullduggery by the students, each of whom is enacting the agenda of a real-world Cardinal or other power-broker.

The final investiture is done in full costume at the university’s massive faux-gothic cathedral, and going into that climax, of the four candidates, two are always the same, because the great forces of history are bearing down on that moment to ensure that the champions of the two dominant power-blocs are in the running. But the other two? They’re never the same — because the agency of the actors jockeying for power change the outcome, every single time, in absolutely unpredictable ways.

Like any other model, sf is wrong, but sometimes useful. Thinking about jetpacks and flying cars is “useful” insofar as it gets us to interrogate how we think about cities, about mobility, about privilege and geography. But it’s not a prediction. Worse, the endless tales in which flying cars are presented a fait accompli is a gift to grifters raising money for the objectively stupid idea of flying cars. After all, we all know flying cars are inevitable, so it’s basically a risk-free investment, right? With flying cars just around the corner, wouldn’t it be irresponsible to build a city with mass-transit instead of helipads?

There’s a whole range of thought-experiments that got transformed into predictions and then certainties: self-driving cars, “general artificial intelligence,” infinite life-extension, space colonization, faster-than-light travel, cryptocurrency, etc etc.

Spreadsheets don’t just lead their users astray — they also trick their creators. The very same people who transform wild-assed guesses about hairy, unknowable outcomes into neat mathematical relationships are perfectly capable of acting as if those relationships are based on fact, rather than supposition. The Great Financial Crisis wasn’t just about people who didn’t understand the uncertainty in the hedging algorithm going all-in — the people who made those models were also fooled by them.

It’s very easy to get high on your own supply. I’ll never forget the sf convention panel I was on with Robert Silverberg about sf’s supposed predictive value, where the subject of Robert A Heinlein came up, and Silverberg sniffed, and, in that trademark bone-dry way of his, said, “Ah yes, ‘Robert A Timeline.’”

Sf isn’t just full of writers who mistake their suppositions for predictions — the canon is full of tales in which brilliant people can and do predict the future, with near-perfection. Think of Hari Seldon, the hero of Asimov’s Foundation series, who is able to forecast the future several millennia out. Or Heinlein’s first-ever story, “Life-Line,” in which a genius inventor destroys the insurance industry by creating a computer that can predict your exact date of death using statistical methods.

There’s something wild about this phenomenon, in which writers make stuff up and then assume that anything that cool must also be accurate. One tantalizing explanation for this comes from EL Doctorow’s (no relation) essay “Genesis,” from his 2007 collection “The Creationists”:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

Doctorow tells the history of the Genesis story, which the Hebrews plagiarized from the Babylonians. In Doctorow’s telling, the Babylonian mystics who made up the Genesis story assumed that it had to be true, because they considered themselves to be nowhere near imaginative enough to have come up with something as great as Genesis. An idea that amazing had to be divinely inspired.

I like this because it’s a story of being led astray by humility, rather than hubris.

Imaginative exercises — whether or not they are assisted by mathematical models and self-updating digital spreadsheets — are powerful tools for thinking about the future we want, and to guide our attempts to make that future come true. All models are wrong but some models are useful, of course!

I’m on tour with Red Team Blues right now — I’m writing this post while waiting for my flight to San Francisco, where I’m appearing at the public library with Annalee Newitz tomorrow (4/30) at 2PM:

https://sfpl.org/events/2023/04/30/author-cory-doctorow-and-annalee-newitz-conversation-red-team-blues

One especially fun stop on this tour will be on May 5, at the Books, Inc in Mountain View, where I’ll be talking about the book with Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1–2–3, who knows a thing or two about spreadsheets:

https://www.booksinc.net/event/cory-doctorow-books-inc-mountain-view

The tour is bringing me to Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, DC, Gaithersburg, Toronto, PDX, Nottingham, Hay, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Berlin — I hope to see you!

https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2023/04/26/the-red-team-blues-tour-burbank-sf-pdx-berkeley-yvr-edmonton-gaithersburg-dc-toronto-hay-oxford-nottingham-manchester-london-edinburgh-london-berlin/

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet with green-on-black, low-res type; its center has an irregular vignette revealing a space station.]

[jeweled-blue-eyes]

Big question: After reading manhwhas, what do you think should be the qualities of being an Empress?

I mean you seem to have vast knowledge when it comes to historical manhwhas and you know the nuances of these kinds of stories

Sorry if this is confusing since it's hard question

leadership skills: assessing people, being able to assess the situation, empathy, charisma, recognizing potential, ability to deal with criticism, diplomacy, time management (set deadlines, single steps that have to be fulfilled by a certain date), ability to maintain an overview, to reduce narratives to the essentials, compromise and balance without betraying own values

foresight: keep track of the consequences of the events of your own decisions over the years, which results and which resistances you have to pay attention to

moral recognition

become a role model to the younger generations

promote the arts and culture -> strenghtens social cohesion

be able to communicate a vision

centering power into a collective centre of power

gain credibility by keeping promises, holding yourself accountable for your words and actions

just in rewarding and punishing

formulate clear unambiguous laws that are really enforced for all, must abide by these laws themselves

write a constitution, protect fundamental rights that even a state ruler cannot cross under any circumstances

highly educated (STEM subjects + foreign language & culture + social science, understanding regularities of social developments)

generalist, business management

tough on property crime as it destroys the entire social structure

free healthcare

implenting educational reforms: free of charge, availible to children from all classes and any ethnicity, banning corporal punishment

build schools, train teachers, get kids off the streets into homes

fighting corruption, corruption in higher education such as bribery, embezzlement, fraud, extortion, favoritism, nepotism etc. etc.

don't lower the level of education and make cheating easy, this is how you get doctors who make diagnostic errors, professional negligence and medical malpractice.

a good spy-network (secret service)

win the respect of the military. It is much harder as a female ruler in a patriarchial country. There are extreme ways such as participating in the war by yourself just like a male ruler would, symbolic participation, power through father or husband, impress through a brilliant military strategy during meetings while also listening to the advice of the elders or arranging a clever marriage to the commander of your army/ a powerful man respected by the military

keep the peace while maintaining the strength of the army. involve the army in disaster assistance, send military observers / elite groups to certain hot spots in the world so that they won't miss out on real war experience, military drills will never be a substitute for a fight between life and death

create sophisticated infrastructure: a vast network of roads, aqueduct (water supply), public baths, sewer system

has ideally lived a while among the commoners to understand the soul of the common people and their most urgent needs

alternatively travelled

forms connections and maintains relations with allied countries: marriage arrangements, warding of foreign noble children, gifts, military support, trade, academic exchange...

protects legacy: mentor the heir + create a safety net of trusted advisors + establish social institutions that are responsible for specific structural tasks and operate independently of private interests. So that what you have created in your lifetime will not be destroyed in another lifetime. For example if there happens to be a tyrant born into your family.

the final long-term goal should always be to get rid of the monarchy eventually

[jbird-the-manwich]

i trained an AI for writing incantations.

You can get the model, to run on your own hardware, under the cut. it is free. finetuning took about 3 hours with PEFT on a single gpu. It's also uncensored. Check it out:

The model requires a framework that can run ggufs, like gpt4all, Text-generation-webui, or similar. These are free and very easy to install.

You can find the model itself as a gguf file here:

About:

it turned out functional enough at this one (fairly linguistically complex) task and is unique enough that I figured I'd release it in case anyone wants the bot. It would be pretty funny in a discord. It's slightly overfit to the concept of magic, due to having such a small and intensely focused dataset.

Model is based on Gemma 2, is small, really fast, very funny, not good, dumb as a stump, (but multingual) and is abliterated. Not recommended for any purpose. It is however Apache 2.0 Licensed, so you can sell its output in books, modify it, re-release it, distill it into new datasets, whatever.

it's finetuned on a very small, very barebones dataset of 400 instructions to teach it to craft incantations based on user supplied intents. It has no custom knowledge of correspondence or spells in this release, it's one thing is writing incantations (and outputting them in UNIX strfile/fortune source format, if told to, that's it's other one thing).

magic related questions will cause this particular model to give very generic and internetty, "set your intention for Abundance" type responses. It also exhibits a failure mode where it warns the user that stuff its OG training advises against, like making negative statements about public figures, can attract malevolent entities, so that's very fun.

the model may get stuck repeating itself, (as they do) but takes instruction to write new incantations well, and occasionally spins up a clever rhyme. I'd recommend trying it with lots of different temperature settings to alter its creativity. it can also be guided concerning style and tone.

The model retains Gemma 2's multilingual output, choosing randomly to output latin about 40% of the time. Lots of missed rhymes, imperfect rhythm structures, and etc in english, but about one out of every three generated incantations is close enough to something you'd see in a book that I figure'd I'd release it to the wild anyway.

it is, however, NOT intended for kids or for use as any kind of advice machine; abliteration erodes the models refusal mechanism, resulting in a permanent jailbreak, more or less. This is kinda necessary for the use case (most pre-aligned LLMs will not discuss hexes. I tell people this is because computers belieb in magic.), but it does rend the models safeguards pretty much absent. Model is also *quite* small, at around 2.6 billion parameters, and a touch overfit for the purpose, so it's pretty damn stupid, and dangerous, and will happily advise very stupid shit or give very wrong answers if asked questions, so all standard concerns apply and doubly so with this model, and particularly because this one is so small and is abliterated. it will happily "Yes, and" pretty much any manner of question, which is hilarious, but definitely not a voice of reason:

it may make mistakes in parsing instructions altogether, reversing criteria, getting words mixed up, and sometimes failing to rhyme. It is however pretty small, at 2 gigs, and very fast, and runs well on shitty hardware. It should also fit on edge devices like smartphones or a decent SBC.

for larger / smarter models, the incantation generation function is approximated in a few-shot as a TavernAI card here:

If you use this model, please consider posting any particularly "good" (or funny) incantations it generates, so that I can refine the dataset.

[trainsinanime]

Something completely different: Some model railroad thoughts. I do have a bit of an odd conundrum: For a model railroading project I'd like a lathe in 1:160 scale. Not working, just for putting inside a factory building. Ideally some other machinery too, but the lathe is distinctive and large and would be fun. At that scale it would be just a couple of millimetres tall and wide, maybe 1-2 cm long, so really tiny. That sounds kind of difficult. At that scale you can't see much at all, so the supply of N scale building interiors used to be very limited, because few people were mad enough to demand it. Is there any chance of getting this lathe?

Well it turns out the problem is choosing which one, because there are two I can buy literally right now:

The Modellbahn-Union design is clean and clearly polished and comes with a cart. I can actually get this one painted (order number MU_N-A50006) or unpainted (MU_N-A00006), but I'm definitely going with painted. They also sell way more equipment, which is really nice to really fill out my factory. Great! I thought it was crazy that I could even find a lathe in that scale at all, let alone that it was painted.

The other option is from British company Langley Models (set A143). It's a set with a CNC lathe, a drill press and I think a bandsaw… and I don't like it. This is cast zinc, and it comes unpainted, so I'd have to paint it all by hand. That seems annoying. Or maybe I get it anyway just so I have some machinery at hand if I need to fill more space? The more complex surface does look nice, if I'm being honest.

Two different lathes in unreasonably tiny scales. That's really cool.

But that's not enough.

Right now all the model railroad manufacturers in Europe are announcing their new items, and besides trains, locomotives, freight cars and the like to preorder, that also includes accessories. And German company Noch uses color 3D printing to provide entire scenes with people and equipment, like this (set 35904):

Look at that. People! Table! A drill press! Grinders! Welding cart! Anvil! And in the middle, a nice-looking lathe! Should I buy one of the existing lathes, or pre-order that set? The official announcement just says "2025", I might be waiting until December for this, which would be annoying.

And then a few days later dutch company Artistic released their news, including set 316.143:

Look at that. A giant lathe, with an operator, and a drill press and a cart as well. Artitec's stuff is all hand-painted and looks gorgeous and full of detail, and this is no exception. Fewer people and equipment, but it looks better.

And so at the start of this quest I thought, "hm, will I ever be able to find a tiny lathe in 1/160 scale for my model railroad?", and now I'm wondering, "which tiny lathe(s) should I buy and/or pre-order, there are way too many to choose from". I don't have a moral to this story, it's just interesting the kind of stuff you can find to buy for model trains.

(But the DB class 643.2 in Euregiobahn livery, which I see daily on my way to work? No chance. The base model hasn't been made since the early 2000s, and never in this paint scheme, which is interesting considering it's the only paint scheme they've worn for most of their lives. Urgh.)