#just to cover my bases tbh

[containatrocity]

the prodigial son and only heir to the Chiyoda tech fortune, some claim Silas Chiyoda is something of a messiah, beckoning in a new era of tech advancement and a future something like a utopia- the Japan-Born Silicon Valley transplant claims he's a herald- but not of a golden age.

Cover Story By Milena Corbin, November 2018

It's a clean white mansion that greets the taxi that drops me off, modern and sleek with a family crest emblazoned on the gates. It's one of the many summer homes of Aoi Chiyoda, the owner and figurehead of tech powerhouse Chi-Hyu Technology, but it's not the 48 year old CEO and mastermind that I'm here to meet, and that much is made clear when my interviewee steps out of the house. He is asynchronous to the house that built him, dressed in black from head to toe with long dark hair pulled into a bun, struck through with pins bearing the visages of Japanese fox spirits, matching the dragons and koi swirling across his arms. Where Aoi demanded sleek, clean, chrome lines and white, granite blocks, his son perhaps has embraced the visual context of being a black sheep- something that tabloids have painted his history with since the now 22 year old was little more than a child.

A recluse of few words outside of parties and public appearances, Silas Chiyoda's position as a 'nepotism baby' is one he's acknowledged time and again, his vehement refusal to be someone people look up to often punctuated by lengthy, angry tirades on twitter- and typically- refusal to speak with the press. But today, he motions for me to follow him inside, past perfect marble floors and gold-inlaid furniture, to something that more correctly fits the man himself.

He makes himself at home in a beanbag chair under blacklight and neon, a bay of computers and monitors spread across one wall- a pile of schematics that he quickly hides on an opposite desk. It's only after the mouthpiece of a hookah pipe is hooked into the corner of his mouth that he allows me to speak to him at all, motioning one ring clad, dark-painted set of fingers as if to encourage me to 'get on with it'.

"I'd like to thank you, Mr. Chiyoda for taking the time out of your day to speak with us, from what I understand, you don't tend to like to speak to the press."

"I don't like to talk to tabloids. Given that you're here to talk about my work, I can make exceptions- I'm only 'famous' because of who my mother is, only rich because of my father. This focuses on the things I do that I actually care about."

"Yes, you and your father recently collaborated on an updated chipset for phones and computers that allows for more seamless communication between multiple devices, was this something important for you to achieve within the current space for smart devices?"

"Collaborated is quite the word for it- but yes, the chip I designed and we're seeking production on is intended to be upgradable for several years, eliminating a substantial amount of tech-waste in the industry, and allowing for less incidents with the strangely... quick obsolescence that comes from a lot of companies today- iPhone, Android, Windows- they'll all be using some form of our architecture, which will allow repair shops to work in a more comfortable, less proprietary space. A phone a year isn't sustainable for most people- this slows down the feeling that one has to update the moment a new piece of hardware releases, and simply requires a replacement chip."

"You seem very passionate about this, was it your father who got you invested in technology?"

"My father named me after his first ever operating system, the NEON. It was less that he shared an interest with me, and more that it was the one way to get him to pay any attention to me- now, of course, the eyes on me tend to be pretty set on watching me fuck up, including my father's- but I'm still rich, I'm still a genius, and most of my detractors will die drowning in student loan debt or forgotten by the annuls of time. Bad press is press nonetheless, and in some part I'm thankful for the distraction from my actual work, it's allowed me to kinda, control where my ideas and innovation go without people trying to throw money to me to make it theirs and theirs alone."

"So you want this to be available to as many people as possible?"

"I want my work to bury the bullshit that society's been barreling toward. Planned obsolescence, government surveillance, copyright claims burying hobbyists alive. I want to do one thing that slows the cogs down before the teeth tear themselves off and leave us grinding to a halt. Innovating only for the sake of money is destroying the planet, our rights to privacy, our ability to create- People insist that what my father does is the future, the way he pushes out the next big thing every quarter for another drop in the billion dollar bucket. I want it slowed down. We should perfect what we understand before inviting more ghosts into the system."

"So this isn't about reaching for the future for you, but suspending things in the now a little longer?"

"Think about it this way. Everyone who's ever lined up to kiss my ass on social media thinks I'm some kind of wizard, some cave-dweller with a thousand-point IQ and the ability to grant their wishes, but these assholes don't need an AI girlfriend who can interface with their smart kitchen, they need to get off their asses and learn a fucking skill for once in their lives. We are so hell bent on getting to the 'utopian future' that we've been promised we're ignoring the way we're sliding toward the other option. There are weaknesses in every system, and the more we try to make new systems, the more gaping holes are left behind- this is a bandaid on the hull of a sinking ship, and as soon as it comes crumbling down, the only people who are gonna take the blame are the people who don't deserve it. So let me state this simply: when we hit the point that makes Y2K's fearmongering look pitiful in comparison, it'll be on the head of my contemporaries, my father, and his boardroom of yes men. But not me. And not the people who inevitably work out how to hack your car, when you buy the Night Rider the second she rolls off the lot."

He's harsh and set in his ways, and the way he talks about technology, not like a blessing but a devil deal he's made and is now struggling to understand, is commonplace in his few public speaking appearances- something that's likely led to his father keeping his connection to Chi-Hyu rather hush hush- or his volatile public image, fraught with arrests, addiction, cycles in rehab, and highly publicized feuds with former girlfriends- many of them famous in their own regard, most recently seen paired off with the lead actress of Blood Ties- only to be arrested at her LA apartment after a domestic dispute ended in shots fired- Keeping him behind the scenes of a company reliant on the clinical white image of the mansion he's chosen to take this interview in. His stipulations for agreeing, of course, that I couldn't ask about the cycle of arrests and bail outs, about the girlfriends met in rehab easily twice his age- about his public fight with his father, the purple-gray scar on the side of his neck already covered up with a new tattoo of Eve's hands reaching for the apple of knowledge.

"Many people have stated that your father is going to usher in a golden era, technology pushed to its limits, it sounds a lot like you aren't in agreement."

"What good's a golden era for only the 1%? I could press a button and have a german sports car delivered to my garage. There are people on the sidewalks outside the high-end clothing stores I buy my wardrobe from begging for change to afford dinner, much less a house. We revolutionize. Fine. Surveillance will go to the richest. Corrupt industries will corrupt further, squeeze tighter for another drop of blood from a stone. My Father's a herald of something, but it's not a promised land. I'm a horseman of the apocalypse, a trumpeter signaling the end times, and nobody'll heed those warnings until it's too late- because for now I'm flashy and exciting, and my hard work gets you into a game of candy crush sooner. The future is now, you know? But it's gonna be a lot more Hal 9000 than people are willing to accept- my greatest sin is being honest about what me and all these other tech bro douchebags are up to- and being too smart for them to force me out of their boys clubs."

[elmocult]

baby's first ship art. you guys can also have this. as a treat. pray for his knees

[spookythesillyfella]

this is probably one of the most wonderful videos ive made using capcut

★ feat : @chamom1le-t3a . @thecultoflove nd @jumjum-crafts 's tonys

[fiapple]

i'm getting towards the end of the skypeia arc, & i'd like to say just how much i adore the way the female strawhats have been treated.

just... every aspect of how the way their characters have been previously contextualized influences the story-line is treated with a masterful amount of consideration. we're given so many layers to both of them that enrich not only their characters specifically, but the arc, and the one piece world as a whole. without nami & robin having their specific skills, and their specific values, without those being built upon, the story would have come to a halt.

you could not have skypeia without nami & robin being who they are as individuals. not just because they never would've gotten there without nami, but also because the way these women think is itself foundational to the machinations of the arc as a whole.

to be totally upfront, if you think any other strawhats were more central to the skypeia arc than nami & robin were you are full-on fucking lying to yourself.

[doriansbutt]

loved actually getting to see my guardian’s face in cutscenes 💜 it’s been so long since we got this much face action lol

[maulfucker]

a handful of oc concepts

[perkeleen-lavellan]

I've been looking for a better way to articulate this and I don't have one so here goes.

I don't even care if a BioWare game has shitty roleplaying dialogue. It's happened before, it's not really a big deal. I don't play BioWare games because I want an RPG, (I mean I do want RPGs omg I fucken love RPGs, but) I play a BioWare game for the romance sim disguised as an RPG experience. And if the romance is stub and lackluster....

[seventh-district]

i’ve just finished season one of TMA, and being someone who’s okay with spoilers is fun because it means i can peruse the wiki and scroll through the tag and i get to become privy to all sorts of weird, wonderful, halfway-out-of-context information that i get to look forward to understanding in the future

like. what do you mean Leitner’s in the tunnels?

what do you mean Jon eats the extinguished sun??

what do you mean it’s spelled Gerard Keay???

[newvegascowboy]

death shroud got me nostalgic for my "inappropriate workplace relationship" couple

[theshebinator]

Hey real quick since I've been getting into Adventure Time / F&C, if you run into anyone who goes by "kittiwintr" and/or "Ess" you should block them. If you're friends with this person, block me.

More info here:

[lalas181]

Random brain thought, but like. It is frankly unreal how much The Magnus Archives has genuinely helped me deal with being afraid of things. I may still have run away from the almost-entirely-windows fourth(?) floor of a convention center that one time but oh boy did I ever own those way too tall escalators with my epic Vast-based coping mechanisms!! When I get scared I can do one of the things I like best- this being ascribing things to arbitrary categories that matter to and are usually decipherable by Exclusively Me™ -and just kind of solve it a teeny tiny bit more than I used to be able to. If kid-me had somehow managed to acquire time-travelling Internet and listened to the whole podcast I would not have been phased at ALL by any of the uncanny images I managed to be scared of. Uncanny face in my Encyclopedia of Immaturity book?? Not a thing. Uncanny images can't do shit to me, I am a once and future ✨Actor✨ who is made of bendy straws and actually enjoys clowns. I am heavily Stranger-coded. The face in that one optical illusion where it's a normal face upside down but incredibly jarring and scary right side up cannot get me, not because it is an image in a book for children and not real but because friendly fire is not a thing I have observed things linked to The Stranger as being able to do.

This sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I swear to you I am not. I genuinely have a little Vast-based mantra for when I'm on particularly bad escalators and elevators, and the other day I identified the kind of fear I was feeling very quickly once I started thinking in TMA terms and was able to discern how to address and ride it out based largely on that information. I am. Very glad for this podcast being a thing I listened to. Genuinely so.

[waywardsalt]

Hey, thanks for the response on the post where I asked about what people dislike ab totk! I genuinely appreciate it a lot, and you summarized most of my thoughts about this beautifully!

Here's something you might find interesting: something about this game's pacing REALLY bothered me from the start, and I think I know what it is. Totk, despite being an open world game that you can pour a ton of time into, feels short. It's a really weird feeling, and I think it can be explained in that Nintendo is trying to use the linear storytelling format for a nonlinear game, which is also why the ability to see the tears in a random order was disorienting, and why the stories from the ancient sages felt so repetitive.

The gameplay is long, but the story isn't! If you compare it to Skyward Sword, for example! In sksw, you go through each of the areas once, and then again with some changes, and then again with more. There's several clear acts, and even if the game is super super linear and recieves criticism for that, it works really well in that context. Additionally, the characters more than make up for the linearity of the story. Totk tries to take that same format, but doesn't seem to understand that this format is for a linear story. It only has a very brief story, and the story to gameplay ratio is so dragged out that unless you get invested in the world, it all starts to feel really stupid and pointless. Unfortunately, totk fails at getting us invested, too.

I really hope this made ANY sense at all, ty again for the input!! I love the responses I'm getting on that post djbdjsndns :D

Hi, you're welcome for my uh... totk rant, I guess? I covered a lot of stuff in it but I wouldn't say I covered everything bc there is... a lot abt that game that rubs me the wrong way in one way or another.

totk is definitely an odd case, it being an open world game that does try to adhere to linear game rules, you’re right- and i’d say the story is severely kneecapped by that attempt on the game’s part to have its cake and eat it too. it tries to mix what botw brought to the table with what was done in the past, but because botw is vastly different in what it does than past zelda games, the result is a messily paced, poorly-told, gameplay-focused with piss-easy mandatory puzzle segments result, failing to capture the advantages of linear games and instead making those specific parts considerably weaker.

people give linear games shit for… honestly, im not totally sure, as someone who really enjoys linear games. they allow for a good focus on story and character, mostly because you can have a set pace and passing of time and order of events. totk tries to implement linear style elements into a game where you can do anything out of order, so in the end the story is surprisingly brief but slow paced because you have to travel so far for everything and they have to account for you doing everything in any order, hence... repeating the same fucking information as a reward for four of the dungeons (which, i don't care how you feel about this game, is an awful fucking choice i mean holy SHIT), and is probably why the interactions with the new sages include very brief character arcs or something, they wanted to include some kind of linear character stories but it all just got stuffed in between a bunch of mini-main quests.

the fact that effectively half of the main story happens ages in the past and is communicated through brief cutscenes that can easily be encountered out of order, too, is kind of a pitiful way to tell the story. they're all basically glorified exposition dumps since nothing about them will change, they're all events that have already happened and have nothing to do with the player except hyping them up i guess.

the dungeons themselves are awkwardly transposed from a more linear game style with them relying on a specific skill to some degree, but they just fall so flat compared to past linear zelda dungeons. in botw the divine beasts honestly worked because the mechanic of manipulating the beasts themselves and the activating of switches fit perfectly with the setup of the dungeons being huge machines, while there isn't as good of a story example as to why totk's dungeons have the same switch mechanic. botw's divine beasts work pretty well in an open world setting. totk's just fall to pieces in an open with setting, even discounting how ascend could just snap them in half entirely. you just... can't have the same kind of dungeons as past zelda games in an open world format. once you take out the array of specific-use progressively-earned items, you're just left with this tiny little gmod ass toolbox to do what felt like baby's first loz-style dungeon. go to the clearly marked waypoint, do one (1) simple puzzle, get reward.

i miss mini bosses, rooms with puzzles that had to be solved to unlock a door or a doorkey, and even the experience of wandering around just trying to figure out what to do next. honestly, the first half of the lightning temple was the best part of all of the dungeons put together, and then we're back to 'go to four different rooms to do four different easy puzzles'. linear games have genuine advantages over open world games, and open world games have their own advantages. in the story segments, totk just ignores the advantages inherent to it's game's basic style in favor of trying and failing to emulate the advantages of a very different game style.

totk is so paradoxically unable to tear itself away from the series' past while at the same time disregarding series staples and even big parts of its own goddamn prequel.

in my experience with the game, as far as i can remember, i believe i went around and opened all of the towers, did some shrines and the depths, got the master sword, did the main quests with some side quests, then sped through getting all of the memories in order, then did the final boss. in between all of that, i managed to get all of the armor, do every single shrine, and open the entirety of the depths. i did not give a single damn about the story by the end. for me, with my playstyle, everything was just... spread out over such a long period of time so there was barely any urgency at all, i experienced the memories all in quick succession while already knowing the big twist (which. btw. i didnt care about. i wasnt really endeared to zelda and link's lack of visual interest during cutscenes just brought up the question of if he doesnt care why should i), and since this game's story is more linear, it just felt so disjointed and strange and... not important.

with botw it makes pretty good sense why link may take ages, why you could get the memories however you want, all of that. zelda is keeping things with ganon on pause for you. all of the big stuff happened in the past. you are here in the present, in the ruins of the past, a blank slate come to eventually complete the mission that you had failed, at the same time discovering this new world and becoming re-acquainted to it with this strange second chance you've been given. totk doesn't have this excuse. at least in past zelda games, you did things in a specific order, so when you wanted to fuck around, it was usually something related to or based on your progress. if you want to fuck around in oot what you can do is based on where you are in the game and even then it all ends up wrapping back around to bolstering link for the end. getting hearts, better items... like every side quest in every other loz game did. in totk you can do a sidequest for like. one flower. and what does that even do for you. it doesn't have the excuse of the honestly pretty well crafted setup and world state of botw.

i really don't know what happened during the development of totk, and i can't imagine it was the smoothest thing in the world, esp considering the pandemic hitting in the middle of it. but just... it just feels like it failed in so many regards and was just... so disappointing, and yet people are heralding it as the best zelda game and- this is not what i want a zelda game to be! i want a zelda game to have those wonderful puzzle-filled dungeons with well-written main characters and music that fits the setting and feels supported by the game's events and a unique setting with unique little nooks and crannies and good pacing and act structure and like. some kind of heart to it. not just another big open-world game created to be the big open world game where you can do this one amazing specific cool thing that TOTALLY is worth the $70 or whatever else it may be priced around the world.

idk. to me what makes zelda games zelda games is the linear storytelling and those complex dungeons and specific method of progression, and botw's new open-world emulation of the sense that loz 1 gave does not and probably will not ever be able to mix with that linear style unless you have massive in game game style shifts to allow for it. either return to the old format or just commit to the series becoming Triple A Open World Game Series Number 34

[nelyoslegalteam]

Hi hello, here have an excuse to talk about murdoc harfoot-brandybuck of the easterly inn <3

jaz i love you so much you KNOW i have been waiting for someone to send me this EXACT ask. how the FUCK do i explain the character i have been playing for three years now.

so murdoc harfoot brandybuck of the easterly inn is my player character from my friend group's adventures in middle earth campaign (loving referred to as the mirkwood campaign), gmed by the absolutely wonderful @potatoobsessed999. he's very much still evolving, even as we get closer to the campaign's conclusion, as he absolutely has been over the last three years, but i will attempt to describe him, is he is my absolute favorite of my (like two) tolkien ocs, and may very well be my favorite oc of mine of all time at this point.

murdoc, as his name makes apparent, is a hobbit. he has been raised by his uncles and aunt, a family of upper-class inkeepers, as the heir apparent of the family inn. before i knew anything else about who i wanted him to be, or who he was going to become, murdoc was meant to embody the idea of home. he's creature-comfort, he's hospitality in its purest form, he's the maker of stews and the finder of comfortable places to sleep and the brewer of teas. this is the absolute core of who murdoc is: where he is is his home, and who he's with are his people, and he will do absolutely anything and everything to keep it all safe.

when murdoc was about the hobbit equivalent of a teenager, his more adventurous uncle got it into his head that he too should have a great big adventure just like his drinking buddy and idol bilbo baggins, and up and moved the family inn out of the shire and to a northern corner of mirkwood.

when murdoc was about the hobbit equivalent of, say, a human eighteen-year-old, he began to have extremely disturbing prophetic dreams.

so what do you do when you're a foresighted hobbit in the middle of a famously dangerous forest whose aforementioned foresight has every last bit of you screaming that it is now your responsibility to keep this place and everyone in it safe? you join an adventuring party, serve as an emissary of radagast the brown, have a sort of falling out with radagast the brown over realizing that his boss is evil and nobody believes you yet, adopt the ghost of actual maedhros feanorion (who is possessing your best friend's sword, as one does) as your new dad, and do a bunch of arson and protective rage murder as you develop greater and greater paranoia about whether you will be able to see coming the threats you will need to see in order to keep the people you care about alive!!!!!!

some more fun things about murdoc, in no particular order:

yes the fact that his name is Like That is on purpose. he's a pretentious piece of shit who named himself. his name is extremely reflective of the fact that he is just Like That. (also his partner is a huge nerd who got way into hobbit history around the time murdoc was picking his name and it is just as cute as it is stupid)

languages that murdoc speaks, in the order in which he learned them, include: westron, fucking spider, quenya, and sindarin. he has the most perfect most annoying feanorian accent when speaking in quenya. yes, i rolled to determine this.

(in murdoc's defense, he learned quenya because he wanted maedhros to be able to speak his first language with someone, and it was something to bond over.)

maedhros helped a very afraid and traumatized murdoc begin to interface with his foresight by acting as an anchor point for him while dreaming, to help him develop greater control over what he sees in them and to use his foresight on purpose.

murdoc did use the realization that this meant that he can see maedhros in his dreams as an immediate opportunity to hug him ;w;

murdoc's foresight cannot see nazgûl. anna, my beloved gm, has used this for effect emotional and horrific.

murdoc harfoot brandybuck of the easterly inn does in fact introduce himself to everyone he meets as "murdoc harfoot brandybuck of the easterly inn"

this resulted in murdoc being put on the entire-ass council of mirkwood because everyone assumed that this was an important title and the easterly inn must be a small fiefdom

murdoc did not correct anyone about the fact that the easterly inn is very much not a small fiefdom

murdoc has a +13 intimidation, making it his highest stat. i'm not sure what stats our gm gave to @jaz-the-bard for maedhros, but we have talked about it at some point and murdoc's is apparently higher

murdoc has a feat that lets him vanish into thin air. it's not magic or anything. he's extremely not a ringbearer. he's just That sneaky.

has a rivalry with one of The Eagles^tm. over hospitality.

fire motif fire motif fire motif

his primary weapon is an enchanted dwarven bow. he shoots flaming arrows.

lover of a good molotov cocktail to solve all his problems very fast

special interests include teas, cooking, and linguistics!! likes to research all the local plants and come up with tea brews that remind him of people or places, or pair well with certain things. came up with a brew for himself that he only shares with people he trusts and cares deeply for. i do in fact have little snippets for points at which he has shared it with each member of the party.

i did once storyboard an edgy animatic for him to the killers' jenny was a friend of mine. i am still very proud of it, and lament that i cannot animate. or do art at all.

i have been playing this character through a literal global pandemic, the completion of two entire degrees, my first adult job, and literally so much other life stuff. sometimes i think about how long i've had him for and how much he's changed, very organically, in that time, and get entirely too emotional about him tbh.

murdoc operates, i would say, from a very genuine sense of care for others, eclipsed by a rather marked lack of estel. for about the whole three years i've had him, i would say i've felt genuinely none from him, and i did not think it was there.

the last time i played him however, i did.

anyhow!!!!! this post would not be complete without this lovely art of our party - i don't know that the artist we commissioned is on tumblr, but "hey can i share this?" was met with an enthusiastic "go for it!" so!! on top is my boy, and left to right down are the bearer (@thymo-leonta), déorwyn (@shadowkat2000), ríros (@jaz-the-bard, who also plays maedhros), and ioreth (not canon ioreth jdjdndn, whose player is definitely not on tumblr).

anyhow i love my party and this game and my friends and my stupid murder arson hobbit inkeeper boy so so very much <33333

and thank you jaz for literally just giving me an opportunity to talk about him lmao, get you friends who send you asks about your ocs even though they literally know so much about your ocs >:p <33

[stitchthesewords]

I don't know either of them so I was waiting for someone to persuade me. I'll take this opportunity,,, Skizzpulse if you don't mind we're dying out here in this desert /hj /lh

We do in fact be dying out here in this desert o7 Luckily, I'm dying while watching Skyblock 2.0 [I AM NOT CAUGHT UP SO. ITS NOT. ABOUT THE ENDING. ITS JUST CUTE WHATS BELOW THE CUT I SWEAR.]

---

"We should push our beds together!" Skizz said, hands on his hips as he looked over the storage living area. Impulse looked up from the chest he was rifling through and scoffed light-heartedly.

"Not happy enough with seeing my face every time we wake up?" he asked, and then looked to the little floating camera by his head. "Are you hearing this chat?"

Skizz made a noise and rubbed his face. "Dippledop!" he whinede, sticking his tongue out at Impulse. Impulse laughed. "I just think, you know, it gets really cold at night and it would get less cold if our beds were, you know, together! Sharing warmth and all that."

"Oh I see. You don't actually care about cuddling or any of that other nonsense, you just want to leech body heat off me," he said, shutting the chest and standing up, having clearly not found what he was looking for.

Skizz nodded his head with a smug look on his face. "Exactly! You don't even need all that heat, dude, you're like. Made of lava."

Impulse laughed at that and patted Skizz's cheek as he walked past. "Uh huh. And are you going to tell me you're made of ice?"

"Yep!" Skizz picked through his inventory and then looked to the bed. "Anyway, I think we should do it."

He turned to look and see what Impulse thought about it and was surprised by the other man waiting for him so he could quickly kiss him. "I don't feel like resetting my spawn point." Impulse had a wide grin on his face as a whined 'Dippledooop' rung out in the empty air of their skyblock world.

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

hey why is trying to book a flight so weird and anxiety-inducing. couldn't they think of my poor nerves.