#this includes gv things

[criticalfai1ure]

alt verses, an incomplete list :

wyn.onna earp / wild west -> hugo, tangerine, jb & kiki, doc (alt revenant)

stranger th.ings -> hugo, thad, diego, max, roy,

te.d l.asso -> tange, jb & kiki, bernie, hugo, diego

supernatural beings -> hugo (werewolf), tange (vamp), thad (witch), jb (witch),

gri.shaverse -> hugo (inferni), tange (heartrender), jb (fabrikator), thad (1. healer/tailor; 2. sun summoner), max (1. sun summoner; 2. heartrender), henry (otkazat’sya amplifier), doc (durast), diego (durast), matthias (alt tidemaker), ivan (nichevo’ya possessed), jack (pirate, tidemaker?), bernie (oprichnik), gus (post-parem corporalnik), august (squaller),

modern catch-all -> jack (single dad), max (time rift), bernie (ren faire/roller derby), slightly (thief), matthias, baz,

historical catch-all -> hugo, jb & kiki, thad,

money heist -> jb (orléans), hugo (secaucus),

tua -> tange (assassin), thad, jb,

pkmn -> bernie, hugo, the gbs,

dnd -> bernie (fighter), diego (rogue), hugo (rogue),

kingsman -> tange,

p.jo -> hugo (son of hephaestus), bernie (daughter of athena?),

[mtkay13]

Lord Zhou and the Ghost Valley Master Cross-posting because i'm just that wild, hah! /jk More about the art below! --and a little talk about WenZhou and their relationship to power (+ some meta).

So hum, it is no secret that I enjoy a bit of "spice" in WenZhou's dynamic and at times am very prolific on my nsfw twitter account.

Collars and leash stuff have been on and off, and I was recently enabled for more of that by friends going wild about ZZS on a leash, etc, etc. LBR: I don't think you need any reason to go feral about that kind of stuff--but seeing how I myself seemed to regress to the state of a wild horny beast while making this painting, I felt like I may need to adress it a little. Here are some of my thoughts about WenZhou & power:

WKX and ZZS are both men who are/were in a position of extreme power. Both rose to that position of extreme power, but from very different starting points and motivations.

ZZS was, from what we know from how he describes himself in TYK and from how he behaves in QY, a very smart, cocky, ambitious kid, who probably deliberately sold his services to HLY to keep rising. There were probably ideals mixed in that, but point is, ZZS desired that power, that influence, and was encouraged to reach it. Becoming a sect leader so young was probably a shock, but nothing indicates that this position wasn't wanted. ZZS also mentioned not having a physique as advantageous as ZCL's when he was a child; so he probably had to work hard to reach his goals. Point is: the power was desired and strived for.

WKX has, without a doubt, needed the power, without ever really showing any pleasure nor satisfaction in having it. Surviving in the GV =/= reaching the top; if anything, becoming the GVM put the largest target on his head--but it is likely that reaching the position of GVM was necessary for him to execute his plan (find the key, pull the right strings, obtain his revenge). WKX was a little genius who didn't want to study, and probably wasn't dreaming/aiming for power. Conclusion: the power was a necessity and a tool. Many various characterisation points/analysis/dynamics can be pulled from this, and it is quite interesting to explore how, later, their relationship to power can evolve, both re:the rest of the world and each other. For the following personal analysis, I also worked with the following points from the book:

ZZS admires WKX's strength and power

WKX seems to have multiple fantasies of control and domination

ZZS seems receptive to many of them (including the biting, the somno stuff, and the cnc suggestions)

WKX admires/envies/resents ZZS' freedom

ZZS has fun becoming a subversion of his past self (swearing, being gross, being ridiculous, being openly cocky)

WKX is a control-freak and is very patient

ZZS is a bit conservative

WKX quite the opposite

Now how does that bring me to ZZS on a leash for the GVM?

(note that this is my current conclusion, not the conclusion)

I like to think that on the one hand, ZZS is that man who sees himself as a man and enjoys a lot of things about masculinity. The power that he likes for himself, he also enjoys seeing it in someone else's hands--he likes fighting for it, but (and this is a very personal interpretation) I like to believe he gets the most thrills from being overpowered; because it shows how strong the other is, bc it subverts whom he is himself. The power he's fought to get, has had all his life, but ended up leaving him alone at the top, feels good when taken from him--or when there's someone strong enough that he isn't alone up there anymore. On the other hand, I feel like although WKX would benefit from relinquishing some control and power, he does enjoy using it in a personal, pleasurable way, rather than by necessity. While he probably likes toying with presentations, with appearances, and doesn't mind being perceived as the wife, as the more submissive one in their fake-traditional relationship play of husband and wife, having the power, holding the leash---simply out of pleasure and mutual satisfaction is, I think very cathartic and arousing for him.

But then, why precanon? For the aesthetic bc I'm a simp for TC!era ZZS. And because showing him so strong, so powerful, yet leashed, is kind of a reminder that... It's not about real power. It's not about who, between them, is the strongest, the most powerful, the winner or whatever. It adds that thrill, the aknowledgement that this is out of freewill and choice and pleasure, I guess.

On top of that, man, I'm sorry, but peak TC!ZZS right post-QY canon after he's become the most powerful man in the country but is completely jaded by what happened in the end? On a leash? For a man he respects?? ugh

Anyway TLDR; I think it's hot and all of that gibberish barely has anything to do with my actual motivations to draw this.

[ask-a-vetblr]

is it effective to use Furosemide for post-spay seroma in dogs or cats?

GV here.

No. Furosemide is a powerful diuretic designed to reduce overall total blood volume and/or induce urine production in urgent or emergent scenarios such as congestive heart failure, certain types of shock including anaphylactic, certain severe edemas, and oliguric or anuric kidney failure. It's never the *only* thing you do, either. In each of those scenarios you would be throwing a book of treatments at the animal. Also, furosemide runs the risk of being quite damaging to the kidneys even when used properly and is not designed to be used to stop normal, non-life-threatening inflammatory processes. Just getting rid of the fluid in a post-spay/post-surgical seroma is not going to get rid of any specific discomfort and definitely not a life-threatening problem, nor will it address the underlying issue (typically a combination of the body's reaction to the suture + excessive movement +/- infection).

[mrxcreepypastamadness]

Y'all may be asking, "When are you gonna make some ref sheet for JB-BX or when are you gonna do any ref sheet for any other Sugar Rush Madness characters?"

First of all Sugar Rush Madness is an FNF thing, while House of Horrorbrews are just another story.

If you must know,

I have multiple character references to plan:

1. JB-BX will be it's first ref sheet

2. GV will be a second ref sheet.

3. And Ms. L will be the third ref sheet.

Other Ref sheets will be including the Wreck-It-Ralph, Skullgirls and Candy Land horrorbrews;

• Super Horror Vanellope / Ultra G

• Wazooigi.ZIP

• Ultra V (Ultra G retake)

• I HATE YOU Taffyta

• King Willy Apparition

• King Turmoil (The Candibal King retake) (Legacy)

• King Turmoil (Yokai version)

• Coronation Day Crumbilina

• The Italian Widow (Coronation Day Crumbilina retake)

• Trojan Vanellope

• Executable V

• The Hostess

• BJ Harpyboo

• King Virtual

• King Time Out (D-Side King Virtual )

• Virtuallope.ROM

• The Cherry Bombshell (serving as a retake for JB-BX.)

• Cherryamon

• Super Horror Wanellope (Wario varient of Super Horror Vanellope) (Exclusive to Sugar Rush Wadness)

• King WAHirtual (Exclusive Horrorbrew to Sugar Rush Wadness)

• Ms. £ (Waluigi varient of Ms. L) (Exclusive to Sugar Rush Wadness)

• WB-BX (Wario varient of Jubileena Bing-Bing.) (Exculsive to Sugar Rush Wadness)

• WC-CX (Alternative Wario varient related to D-Sides)

• VirusVirdem (VV)

• VVS75 (PS135 varient of Vanellope)

• Sarah Von Silverman (Majin equivalent)

• Empress V (based on a design from A Dark and Overused story comic by Daniel-Gleebits on DeviantArt.)

• Shelley

• Classified

• Toy Springtrap

• And much much more to come...

So if anyone asks anything else I won't do just Wreck-It-Ralph, Candy Land and Skullgirl Horrorbrews, but there's many Horrorbrews to come I might plan. So be sure to look forward to my character refs very soon. Thank you for your cooperation. ^^

[insomniac-jay]

GV | Kiko Morijunin

Full Name: Kiko Morijunin

Hero Alias: Vulpine Heroine: Kyubi

Age: 19

Gender: Female (Cis)

Nationality: Japan

Occupation: Student, Hero

Affiliation: Templar University

Design Notes:

Her ears are the same color as her hair. And I know the ears are incorrect but shush

Can def see the Shingen in her design

Messy hair queen

Description

Kiko is a young adult woman of average height with fair skin, orange hair, and bright yellow eyes. Much like Trickster (Shingen Itazura), Kiko has fox features such as ears, a tail, and claws. She has a fairly skinny build with more muscle on her arms and legs due to being a volleyball player.

Personality

Kiko is a bright, upbeat woman who likes to see the sunnier side of things. Full of high confidence and positivity, she's out to make a name for herself. Her positive attitude and outlook on things is good for heroics, especially since some of her peers have become disillusioned.

Given her nature as a fox, she's very active and playful-- her favorite activity being agility. Kiko herself seems to be very sporty and enjoys volleyball a lot. It's actually the only sport she likes.

Kiko doesn't like when people say she's more well behaved than her older brother Shingen when she's just as, if not more, chaotic than him. It makes her feel separated from him.

History

Kiko was born in Shirakawa, Japan 9 years after Shingen. Because their parents were already married by the time she was born, she got the last name Morijunin.

Kiko showed a strong desire to become a Hero at a young age and this desire grew even stronger after her and Shingen were rescued by one on their way back home from running errands. Her and Shingen came up with their own superhero duo Trickster and Foxy (she later changed it to Kyubi after her mom told her it sounded cooler) for each other to play with.

The siblings made a promise to one day make that duo a reality.

Kiko never gave up on her dream as she got older and Shingen left home-- even with people telling her that she could never be a Hero because of her status as a Mutant. She practiced her Gift tirelessly until she could fully master it.

At the end of her senior year of high school, Kiko applied for Templar University and was accepted after completing their entrance exams.

Gift(s)

Primary: Yoko's Flame - Kiko's primary Gift gives her the power to produce fire that can possess people and objects as well as shapeshift. These powers are similar in nature to Trickster's Fox Fire Gift.

Secondary: Fox - Kiko has all the abilities of a fox including enhanced speed, stamina, and more.

Relationships

Family:

Mr. & Mrs. Morijunin (nee Itazura) - Parents

Shingen Itazura | Trickster - Older brother

Hisaya Itazura (nee Kaiiu) | Phantomage - Sister-in-law

Asuka Itazura - Niece

@floof-ghostie @calciumcryptid @beyonettta @opalofoctober @elflynns-horde-of-stuff @pizzolisnacks @peachyblkdemonslayer @milf-percy

[laf-outloud]

Amazon's problem is that they pretty well bought into Kripke's franchise vision, including signing off on things where numbers might tank (Witness there's already a s2 GenV coming, even though numbers are below expectations) In the end,TB & GV will have a handful of eps and run a handful of seasons--adding up to one old school season in total, each. Add another show, even, and so what? Woohoo. All the money and that's all the impact they'll get for their dead doves. Hey, sell ur soul and run, IG

To be fair, I've seen a few people mentioning numbers being below expectations, but those streaming results aren't even out yet. Is this something that was mentioned in the trades somewhere?

Anyway, regardless, you are correct that however long each show runs (The Boys is looking at 5 seasons), once it's done, it's over. I'm not saying they're not good shows, but there won't be a cultural impact. They aren't going to have highly anticipated cast reunions 5, 10, 20 years down the line, they're not going to be quoted, or referenced, or imitated by other shows., they're one and dones (unless Kripke can come up with something truly remarkable that the general public isn't ashamed to watch.)

[yourusatoday]

Alphabet Inc: Strategic Deals and Financial Insights

Overview of Alphabet Inc

Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google, is a global technology leader headquartered in Mountain View, California. Founded in 2015 as part of a corporate restructuring of Google, Alphabet oversees a diverse portfolio of businesses spanning internet services, software, hardware, and biotechnology. Alphabet's extensive range of services includes Google Search, YouTube, Android, and Waymo, among others. The company consistently invests in innovation and strategic acquisitions to maintain its competitive edge.

Key Strategic Deals

Acquisitions

Alphabet Inc has executed numerous strategic acquisitions to expand its capabilities and market reach.

YouTube (2006): Acquired for $1.65 billion, YouTube has become the world's largest video-sharing platform, significantly boosting Alphabet's digital advertising revenue.

DoubleClick (2008): The $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick enhanced Google's ad management and ad serving technology, solidifying its dominance in digital advertising.

Nest Labs (2014): Purchased for $3.2 billion, Nest Labs specializes in smart home products, enabling Alphabet to enter the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) market.

Fitbit (2021): Acquired for $2.1 billion, Fitbit's fitness tracking technology complements Alphabet's health and wellness initiatives, particularly through its Google Health division.

Strategic Investments

Alphabet has also made strategic investments to support innovative technologies and startups.

Waymo: Alphabet has heavily invested in Waymo, its autonomous driving technology subsidiary, positioning it as a leader in the self-driving car industry.

DeepMind: Acquired in 2015 for approximately $500 million, DeepMind focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, contributing to advancements in healthcare, energy efficiency, and more.

GV and CapitalG: Alphabet’s venture capital arms, GV and CapitalG, invest in early-stage startups and growth-stage companies, respectively, across various sectors including life sciences, AI, and cybersecurity.

Partnerships

Strategic partnerships have been crucial in expanding Alphabet's ecosystem and enhancing its technological capabilities.

Samsung: Alphabet collaborates with Samsung to integrate Google services and Android OS into Samsung’s mobile devices, ensuring a broad user base for its software and services.

Salesforce: A strategic partnership with Salesforce integrates Google Cloud with Salesforce's CRM platform, enhancing enterprise cloud solutions.

Verily and Dexcom: Alphabet's life sciences subsidiary, Verily, partnered with Dexcom to develop continuous glucose monitoring systems, leveraging technology to improve diabetes management.

Financial Performance

Revenue Trends

Alphabet Inc has shown consistent revenue growth, driven by its diverse portfolio and strategic initiatives.

2019-2021: Revenue increased from $161.9 billion in 2019 to $257.6 billion in 2021, reflecting strong performance across Google Services, Google Cloud, and other bets.

Advertising Revenue: Digital advertising, primarily from Google Search and YouTube, remains the largest revenue source, accounting for over 80% of total revenue.

Profitability

Alphabet’s profitability is robust, with significant margins driven by its high-revenue businesses.

Operating Income: Operating income grew from $48.9 billion in 2019 to $78.7 billion in 2021, reflecting efficient cost management and revenue growth.

Net Income: Net income for 2021 was $76 billion, demonstrating strong overall profitability and financial health.

Cash Flow and Investments

Alphabet maintains a strong cash flow position, enabling continuous investment in growth and innovation.

Cash Reserves: As of 2021, Alphabet had cash reserves exceeding $140 billion, providing flexibility for acquisitions and strategic investments.

R&D Expenditure: Substantial investment in research and development, totaling $31.6 billion in 2021, underscores Alphabet’s commitment to innovation.

Strategic Initiatives

Innovation and R&D

Investing in cutting-edge research and development is at the core of Alphabet’s strategy.

Artificial Intelligence: Alphabet leads in AI research, integrating AI across its products to enhance user experience and operational efficiency.

Quantum Computing: Through Google Quantum AI, Alphabet is at the forefront of developing quantum computing technology, which has the potential to revolutionize various industries.

Expanding Market Reach

Alphabet continually seeks to expand its market presence and diversify its revenue streams.

Cloud Services: Google Cloud is a major growth area, with significant investments aimed at competing with AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Hardware Products: Expansion into hardware with products like Google Pixel phones, Nest smart home devices, and Google Home smart speakers.

Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility

Alphabet is committed to sustainability and corporate responsibility, aligning its business practices with environmental and social goals.

Carbon Neutrality: Alphabet has been carbon neutral since 2007 and aims to operate entirely on carbon-free energy by 2030.

Diversity and Inclusion: Initiatives to enhance diversity and inclusion within the company, fostering a more inclusive workplace culture.

Conclusion

Alphabet Inc's strategic deals, robust financial performance, and commitment to innovation position it as a leading technology company. By leveraging acquisitions, investments, and partnerships, Alphabet continues to expand its capabilities and market reach, ensuring sustained growth and industry leadership.

[madalynka22]

Buy Google Voice Accounts

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Google Voice number is a very constructive weapon for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancer to communicate with the peoples of different countries, and different cultures. It provides a professional way by offering a dedicated business number by which people can communicate with audio-visual call, voicemails and text messages. Buy aged GV account and secure your communication. I think you should buy google voice number from topusaseo.com. After set up the number with social platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp, skype and so on.

What is a Google Voice Number?

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Google Voice numbers are available in most of the countries, and enable local and international communication. If you want to buy GV accounts contact and place your order. By using google you can increase your communication skill, influence your potential audiences, can talk with the buyers and so many things.

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Firstly check the account is that active or not. If active, then change the password and recovery email.

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Google Voice integrates Google services, such as Gmail and Google Meet. Buy USA google voice account and use them to connect the audiences for business boosting and generating traffics in the USA. Users can initiate calls or send text messages directly from these platforms, enhancing productivity.

Our Google voice number selection and account set up policy-

Visit the Google Voice official website developed by google. Then sign in with our Google account (number verified) randomly. Then we choose a unique GV number based on the available options of our selected country. Sometimes, we search for specific area codes and select a number based on our preference.

Then verify our selected mobile number by following the required and supplied instructions on the screen. This allows calls to our Google Voice number to be forwarded to verified number. After completed the process our experts customize our Google Voice settings to suit preferences. Then fix and fit the setting the profile for using properly.

How to use GV properly?

Firstly users should have to visit the Google Voice website voice.google.com and create a voice account. Then set up an attractive profile and set up a strong password. Then fix a recovery email for better performance and security purpose.

After that, you should enter into the Google Voice settings to customize account construction and to fully verify the account profile. The customization process go through the options for call forwarding, voicemail greetings, notification settings and so on.

Then you have to ready the account for driving perfectly and get all the features for text messages, voicemails, audio-visual calls etc. After completing those procedure and starting the works by GV you should have to check your Google Voice settings regularly to ensure they meet your communication preferences.

[bonmonjour]

Spelling Reform VIII: More Vowels

As this is the post where I talk about the rest of the vowels, it's gonna be a long one. This one will have three parts: accents, digraphs, and rhotics.

I. Accents

Accent Aigu

The acute is used to mark traditional English "long vowels" i.e. the pronunciations that emerged out of the GVS. The example words given provide a good sense of how these 6 are used, along with the rule that since vowel "length" is now being marked with diacritics, the silent E does not need to be used and can be left out.

As for «ø», remember that this letter came into being to replace ⟨o⟩s that were pronounced like ⟨u⟩s. Unfortunately, the CMS keyboard I am using does not have a way to type barred O with an aigu, but luckily this usage pretty much only occurs root-finally (hence the #). You can see this long ø in words like «dø, whø, tuø» and a few more. One weird workaround I've had to implement is that the letter also makes a long sound before inflectional suffixes, as in «døing» and «whø's».

Accent Grave

The grave is used for "continental" long vowels, but this really only applies to the first three. Here too the rule is to delete an unnecessary silent E. This rule of accent + no silent E really helps clear up pronunciation, I've found. For example, until recently, I was pronouncing ⟨compline⟩ as /kɒm.plɪjn/, when in fact it's /kɒm.plɪn/; spelling it as «complin» would have left no ambiguity.

As for the last one, «ù», it doesn't exist in isolation, not really. It's an accepted variant of «ú» when the yod is dropped, but other than, its only role is to form digraphs used for French spellings, as I will elaborate on later. Finally, «ò» doesn't really exist either. There's no need to mark a continental long O since by chance, the current English long O already sounds near-identical. The only place where «ò» shows up is, again, in a digraph.

Accent Circonflex

The circumflex is one of two diacritics whose behaviors are lifted directly from French. Initially, I was struggling on how to represent French spellings in which several consonants are not pronounced. One one hand, I wanted to not change the spelling too much to the point of unrecognizability, but on the other, those consonants just aren't pronounced! The solution I settled on was to use an apostrophe to mark elision, along with the accent grave for the French vowels (or accent aigu for the continental long O).

But as I was typing and writing, this combination of grave+apostrophe, grave+apostrophe, just came up again and again. In my handwriting, I would often just combine the two into one as a ligature. So I eventually decided to formalize it in the "typed version."

The circumflex usually occurs at the end of words. It indicated two things: 1) a continental pronunciation of the vowel, and 2) that a consonant (or more) has been elided and that will impact how this word behaves in combination. For example, a hypothetical verb "to hale" would become "haled/haling," but «to balê» becomes «balêed/balêing».

I don't know if «û» needs to exist, I just have it on the chart for completion's sake I think.

Accent Trema

The diaeresis is the other diacritic lifted straight from French. It indicates that the vowels are to be pronounced separately, instead of as a digraph for a single vowel. For example, «*álien» would be pronounced like /ɛj.lɪjn/ on account of the ⟨ie⟩, but it's not. The proper spelling «áliën» includes the diaeresis and indicates that it is /i.ɛ/.

Often, because the diaeresis necessarily indicates a syllable boundary, one of the vowels will be an unchecked vowel, and therefore there is usually an unwritten accent. For example, that previous word should technically be «*álìën» but that's too many diacritics in succession for me. One notable digraph is «eä» which sounds like /ɪj.æ/ or unstressed /ɪj.ə/, in words like «theätrical» and «theätre». Here, the fully spelled out version is «*éä» but that's too many diacritics for me.

Another use of the diaeresis is in sequences like «güV», indicating that the ⟨u⟩ is to be pronounced as a vowel instead of acting as a fronting-blocker, i.e. cf. «güin» /gwɪn/ and «*guin» /gɪn/.

II. Digraphs

Aigu Digraphs

These few digraphs are one of the oldest parts of the spelling reform and genuinely one of my favorite bits. English digraphs have a ridiculously large number of pronunciations, but this simplifies that!

The vowel letters are left (almost) exactly as they are in English with the only difference being that the letter that sounds like the whole digraph gets an acute. Hence, in terms of pronunciation, «é = éa = éi», «í/ý = íe = eí/eý», and «ó = óa = óe = óu/ów».

And now for a few misc. observations: there are of course some digraphs that didn't make the cut. These are usually pronounced in a continental manner, with both vowels sounded out, like «daoism». Remember also that the rule is that ⟨eo⟩ → ⟨ea⟩ but ⟨oe⟩ → ⟨e⟩. So ⟨people⟩ becomes «péaple», but ⟨phoenix⟩ becomes «phénix». Here, too, the silent E is removed because the diacritic now does the job of distinguishing vowel "length."

Grave and Circonflex Digraphs

The other two main accents also have associated digraphs.

The grave digraphs with the diacritic on the first vowel are for English sounds. «àu» is like that of «à» in combination with L-vocalization, as can be seen in the example word. «èa» follows the principle of marking the pronounced vowel and is, predictably, used for ⟨ea⟩ when it sounds like /ɛj/, like in the example word. I'll get to the rhotics in a bit, but this allows the orthography to differentiate between «téar» (as in crying) and «tèar» (as in ripping). Finally, «òu» shows up only in -ough words with the THOUGHT vowel.

Now let's talk about the handful of digraphs (besides the aforementioned «eí») that are accented on the second letter. First up is «eà». This is used in two native English words, in conjunction with a rhotic, which are «heàrt» and «heàrth». The other usages come mainly from replacing French letter sequences. Namely, ⟨ça⟩ becomes «ceà», as in «faceàd» [façade] and ⟨en⟩ becomes «eàn», as in «eàncór» [encore].

After this, «où». As you can probably guess, it represents the sound /uw/ (as it is accented on the U) and the reason it's lumped here with the French-y sounds is because this is the sound that digraph makes in modern French and as such, many French loanwords into English.

From this point on, all our rules of accenting digraphs get thrown out the window: accents are placed on the second letter and, unfortunately, the accented letter does not hint at pronunciation. Rather, these are formed by taking pre-existing weird spellings and simply marking them to distinguish them as "weird."

The sequence «eù» occurs in a handful of German loans and represents the sound /oj/, as in the mathematician «Eùler».

The rest of these are all for French spellings that were carried directly into English unchanged. Thus, «aù, aû» sounds like the French ⟨au⟩ /ow/, «oî» like French ⟨oi⟩ /wɑ/, and «oû» like French ⟨ou⟩ /uw/. As with the explanation above, the circumflex simply points out that a consonant has been elided from the spelling.

III. Rhotics

As with the last post on vowels, I am not going to explain the rhotic vowels too much as their usage and sounds should be readily understandable from the explanation of non-rhotic vowels. In fact, there are so few of them that I don't feel that an explanation is even necessary.

The following are rhotic digraphs with aigu (keep in mind that the accented vowel here shows the pronunciation):

And these are the ones with grave accents:

There are no rhotic vowels with circumflexes, as is expected since the whole point of the circumflex diacritic is to indicate that the following consonant has disappeared which, in the case of a rhotic vowel, clearly hasn't.

Appendix: here's a table showing various words of French origin and their respective respellings.

[bootleg-ruto]

Alright here we go again

Ton is British (Bri-Ish) and here is his more specific personality and maybe a few powers but this time…by Ton himself so step up buddy:

If I were to describe myself it’d be very easily annoyed and dismissive of most things. This is what I’m like most of the time but there are times when I’m genuinely happy or sad such as when someone I care for an example being Alex is in trouble I tend to be angry or when she’s happy I’m happy. My opinions on my brothers or fathers or fusion partners. Galaxy is definitely where I get my caring side from and where I get my love for Alex from and while I sometimes find him extremely annoying I do still love him as if he’s my brother alright they’re my brothers. Void is where I get my anger and hatred from along with the destruction part of my powers also being why I’m impartial when it comes to Sabre. For GV and BN or Galactic Void and Black Nebula’s personality your gonna have to wait probably like a month unless Ruto decides to STOP BEING A LAZY BUM AND BE PRODUCTIVE

SHUT UP TON I’M WORKING ON IT

Lazy bum anyway my powers include that of a normal Steve so: Teleportation, lightning summoning, creation of a block, in my case Bedrock and deletion of any block. For powers specific to more powerful Steve’s there is dimensional travel, time travel, and time stopping starting slowing and speeding. For my specific powers there are only 2: Gravity and Singularity manipulation. Gravity manipulation is self explanatory but Singularity manipulation allows me to create black holes out of nowhere so good luck surviving that. If you want a more in depth explanation then this give Ruto…3 years and then you’ll have it till then, peace.

[strapstreams]

Going forward with Gunvolt 3

So as I'm testing how long it takes to get through GV3, it's at this time I realize that I've been playing it only with English voices.

I plan to get through the whole story, including true ending and epilogue but not the secret ending since I'm still working on that for my main file, I'm not going to entertain doing all that for the stream side of things the same way I refused to entertain doing Luminous Avenger iX 2's hard mode on stream and instead resorted to only recording the story-relevant portions of it.

At the moment nearly two hours of content is here and I just finished up the halfway point for the main story.

If my Epilogue file is to be believed, there's about 1.5-2 hours there, too. Going to run through the other parts of the game to see if there's any easy end points, but I will give this game props where they're due: At least GV3 allows you to stop and readjust things when you hit the halfway marks rather than just dump you into the missions without even letting you change abilities or save.

This means I'm going through the whole game to see, not only if doing the usual "Three missions per stream" set up as I've been trying to do for GV titles can last as long as I'd like them to, but also if I should just split the playthrough into three parts instead.

There's 15 main missions, plus true end, plus 6 epilogue missions, but the issue is that while this gives us a total of 22 missions to go through, some missions can be easily beaten in under two minutes, while some have taken me almost 18.5 (due to exploration of the stage for completionism), hence the testing. After all, if I stuck completely with the "Three missions per stream" set up, one of those streams would be a little over half an hour long if I'm going off the longest times I have. Granted, those longest times are not necessarily the first time I went through the missions, as unlike with iX2 you're only able to see the times involved with your Best Score and Best Time on each mission, and sometimes to get a better score you need to take longer on a mission than you otherwise would if you were just heading towards the end.

But I thought I'd let you all know what's going on and what the plan so far is for the final streams for the Gunvolt franchise until iX3 or GV4 come out.

[trylkstopocket]

ARK’s Cathie Wood weighs in on venture capital and her plans to launch a crossover fund

Venture capitalists may be predicting trouble ahead for the private markets—but Cathie Wood has always danced to the beat of her own drum.

The chief executive of ARK Invest, the asset manager known for its bold—and risky—bets on tech and innovation, said yesterday afternoon that ARK is planning to launch a fund that will invest across both public and private markets. Right now, ARK’s funds invest solely in public equities.

“We’re going to start a crossover fund,” Wood said in an on-stage interview at the UP.Summit, a mobility conference taking place in Bentonville, Ark. this week. Wood declined to speak further about the fund because of Securities and Exchange Commission regulation, but an SEC filing from earlier this year reveals it will be a closed-end fund that will invest in public equities, early to late-stage startups, and venture capital funds, among other investments.

While ARK may be known for its ETFs, whose performance soared to remarkable heights during the pandemic, Wood isn’t new to the world of private investing. She is personally a limited partner in UP.Partners, a $230 million early-stage venture capital fund focused on mobility, whose partners are co-hosting the Summit in Bentonville.

But while it may not be an entirely new rodeo for Wood, it’s still a rather challenging time to debut a crossover fund. Hedge funds like D1 Capital Partners or Tiger Global that straddle both public and private investments have reported billions in losses this year as public tech stocks plunge, and Wood’s publicly traded funds have tumbled, with its flagship ARK Innovation ETF trading more than 50% lower than it was in January. 

With the path to an IPO largely closed for the moment, and some of the industry’s tech darlings starting to cut their valuations, asset managers like Fidelity are proactively trimming the value of their own positions and players like T. Rowe Price are rolling back their pace of deals. Some growth equity investors are turning focus to earlier-stage investments or companies most poised for profitability.

Wood made her name taking early—and sizable—bets on Tesla and, more recently, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. She likens ARK’s approach to the public markets to venture investing: “We are the closest thing you’ll find to venture capital funds in the public equity markets,” she says. But she’s also critical of how VCs are moving their money in the space. Wood mentioned that, at a former UP.Summit in 2018, venture capitalists repeatedly got up on stage complaining of high costs and said “oh, we would never invest in this.”

“There is a lot of capital moving into the asset-light part of the business,” Wood says, but she says that funds are still avoiding investments in companies that are spending a lot on the hardware or underlying technology. “We think that will change,” she says.

And she knows just the fund manager with the guts to do it. 

Jackson Fordyce curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.

VENTURE DEALS

Multiverse, a London-based career apprenticeship platform, raised $220 million in Series D funding.** StepStone Group**, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and General Catalyst co-led the round and were joined by investors including** Founders Circle Capital, Audacious Ventures**, BOND, D1 Capital Partners, GV, and Index Ventures. 

CareBridge, a Nashville-based health care company for patients receiving home and community-based services, raised $140 million in funding led by Oak HC/FT.

Vanta, a San Francisco-based compliance and software automation security company, raised $110 million in Series B funding. Craft Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Sequoia and YC.  

Codat, a London-based software startup connecting small businesses with financial institutions, raised $100 million in funding. JPMorgan Chase’s growth-equity arm led the round and was joined by investors including Canapi Ventures, and Shopify,Index Ventures, and PayPal Ventures. 

Ever/Body, a New York-based cosmetic dermatology and med spa company, raised $55.5 million in Series C funding. Addition led the round and was joined by investors including Tiger Global, ACME Capital, Declaration Partners, Fifth Wall Ventures, and Imaginary Ventures.

HYCU, a Boston-based cloud data protection company, raised $53 million in Series B funding. Acrew Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, and Cisco Investments. 

Anagenex, a Boston-based machine learning-enabled, small molecule, drug discovery company, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Catalio Capital Management led the round and was joined by investors including Lux Capital, Khosla Ventures, Obvious Ventures, Airstreet Capital, and Menlo Ventures. 

CreativeX, a New York-based data platform for brands, raised $25 million in funding. Guggenheim Investments on behalf of certain clients, Beringea, the Brandtech group, and Conviction invested in the round. 

Entropy, a Brooklyn, New York-based crypto custody platform, raised $25 million in seed funding. a16z led the round and was joined by investors including Dragonfly Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Variant, Coinbase Ventures,** Robot Ventures**, Inflection, the Komerabi Fund, and other angels. 

Skolem Technologies, a New York-based asset management and execution services provider, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Galaxy Digital led the round and was joined by investors including Point72 Ventures, Jump Crypto, Fenwick and West, Morpheus Ventures, and Dragonfly Capital.

Continual, a San Francisco-based operational A.I. platform for data stacks, raised $14.5 million in Series A funding. Innovation Endeavors led the round and was joined by investors including Amplify Partners,** Illuminate Ventures**, Inspired Capital, Data Community Fund, Activation, New Normal, GTMfund, Dremio founder Tomer Shiran, and dbt Labs founder Tristan Handy.

Teleo, a Palo Alto-based construction robotics company, raised $12 million in Series A funding. UP.Partners led the round and was joined by investors including F-Prime Capital,** K9 Ventures**, Trucks Venture Capital, and other angels. 

​​Valkyrie Investments, a Nashville-based investment manager focused on digital assets, raised $11.15 million in funding. BNY Mellon, Wedbush Financial Services, Clearsky, Zilliqa Capital, C-Squared Ventures, Belvedere Strategic Capital, and **SenaHill Partners **invested in the round. 

Securesave, a Seattle-based emergency savings fintech platform, raised $11 million in funding. Truist Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Stearns Financial Services and FTX.

Decimal, an Indianapolis-based accounting automation platform, raised $9.22 million in seed funding. Arthur Ventures **led the round and was joined by **Service Providers Capital and other angels. 

Shoreline, a Stavanger, Norway-based workflow automation and asset simulation SaaS company for the wind industry, raised $7.5 million in funding. Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Blue Bear Capital, Ferd Capital, Alliance Venture, and Investinor invested in the round.

Extracker, a San Francisco-based change order communication platform for the construction industry, raised $7 million in Series A funding. Cloud Apps Capital Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Building Ventures and Jackson Square Ventures.

Overalls, a New York-based insurance-based benefits company, raised $4.6 million in funding. RPM Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including** Frontier Ventures**, former NFL player Jerod Mayo, and others. 

Five to Nine, a Chicago-based employee initiative software management platform, raised $4.25 million in seed funding. Black Ops Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Slack Fund and Cleveland Avenue.

Curio, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based NFT analysis, raised $3.7 million in a seed funding round. 776 led the round and was joined by investors including Gary Vee,** Cozomo de Medici**, Polygon CEO JD Kanani, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer, OrangeDAO, Coinbase Ventures, and other angels.

De Oro Devices, a San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based medtech startup specializing in Parkinson’s and other mobility disorders, raised $2.8 million in seed funding. True Wealth Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including AARP, StartUp Health, Capital Factory, Wai Mohala Ventures, Kachuwa Impact Fund, Barton Investments, HealthTech Capital, Wealthing VC Club, Rockies VC, and** Mentors Fund**. 

PRIVATE EQUITY

Citizens Financial Group, acquired DH Capital, a New York-based private investment banking firm. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Mercer Global Advisors, backed by Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital, acquired Berkson Asset Management, a Woodland Hills, Calif.-based tax and accounting firm. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

OTHER

​​Descartes Systems Group acquired XPS Technologies, a Cottonwood Heights, Utah-based ecommerce multi-carrier parcel shipping solutions provider, for $65 million. 

Achieve Partners acquired a majority stake in Boclips, a Boston-based educational video platform for student learning. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Desert Peak Minerals and Falcon Minerals have merged creating Sitio Royalties, a Denver-based oil & gas, mineral, and royalty interests company. Financial terms were not disclosed.  

DotCom Therapy acquired Wolf+Friends, a New York-based community for parents and families raising children with special needs. Financial terms were not disclosed.  

WorkGenius acquired JBC, a New York-based staffing company, financial terms were not disclosed. 

FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS

-** Biospring Partners**, a New York-based growth equity firm, raised $245 million for a fund focused on tech companies in the life sciences sector.

PEOPLE

CapitalG, the San Francisco-based growth fund of Google parent company Alphabet, hired Melissa Sobel as communications partner and Stanley Onyimba as vice president of growth. Formerly, Sobel led a VC-focused communications consultancy and Onyimba was with Google Search.

This is the web version of _Term Sheet, _a daily newsletter on the biggest deals and dealmakers. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.

[h0rsemn]

Honestly I don't think ASG is the suffering porn you think is primarily thanks to the mid stage and base convos and those being rather goofy and witty despite the whole tragic endings thing. Most people (including me) tend to forget those exist sometimes which I blame the emotional gut punches for. But the real point of this reply is to demonstrate the fact I think GV's suffering isn't just for no reason but because they had something to say about losing someone close to you. (And also ASG3 but that game's story sucks so we shouldn't talk about it) ASG1 was rather rough on the dude but I'm fine with that for the reason of it primarily his arc for future games (mainly ASG2 because ASG3 is 💀💀💀💀) And the entire point of ASG2 was to try and let him move on from that loss from the first game so it feels appropriate plus he actually gained at least two things from that, a sense of normalcy thanks to being with a regular ol girl and again the ability to move on from his loss. So he at least has that (even if I find Quinn as charming as a pickle) As for GV not talking about anything from the previous game yeah I can see why that'd suck however he really only met Quinn like...6 months ago and that's a whole lot to drop on a person and it's straight up a shit load for him because bro can't even mention his old friends without becoming sad almost immediately so I think it's fair that it ain't brought up as so they could have brought that up in ASG3 though, but they didn't (another reason it sucks but that's a completely different post that can be seen below)

Gunvolt’s treatment in cannon bothers me to an unreal degree aka I’m get to rant about this series because I’ve never seen a series treat it’s mc worse

Spoilers for literally the whole franchise

I’ve had some time to think about it and calm down since gv3’s story and come to terms with it and something never sat right with me. And then it hit me. Gunvolt is the most punished character in the series and there is no good justification for it.

Drama tracks pre asg1

The things we learn about gv in the drama tracks are depressing. For reference, I recommend you watch the translations provided on slider’s YouTube channel, since they’ll be my main source for this section.

From what we can tell in the tracks that gv’s childhood pre quill is for lack of better words, absolutely crap. He was one of the subjects of the gv project, and only two that were successful, the other being Asimov. As far as we know he never had a name or at least was never referred to as such only being called subject 78.

As far as we know (because gv cannon likes raising more questions than answers and you have to DIG to hell and back just to find some answers) Gv’s time in sumeragi was miserable until quill decided to make a surprise adoption.

Asg1: and now things get worse

Then asg1 happens and we meet Joule, the other most punished character . Things go well for the pair until the end of the game. There are two ending, the Asimov kills gv and we move to the ix timeline and the gv lives but now Joule lives in his head ending.

The ending where he lives end in the simplest of terms is Gv killing what his basically his father and basically has to leave his friends behind with out a word and now has Joule living in his head. There’s not much of a happy ending here, bittersweet at most but hey at least he gets to live.

Asg2: everyone say hello to Quinn and Xiao

In one of the drama tracks where Gv meets Quinn, Gv and Joule are not having the best time. Joule’s not having a great time considering that y’know she’s basically a ghost and gunvolt himself isn’t having it any better. Now is how he treats Joule here great?

No

However, keep in mind that he’s only a year older than she is and feels like he failed her and has to deal with quill and sumeragi being after him. Not to mention he killed his foster father in an act of revenge. So yeah everything kinda sucks.

Then Quinn happens and she fills the role the of the anchor to Gv’s mental state in a sense in that in order for him to get better he has to come to terms with what happens and let Joule go.

And that partially happens through Michiru (I can’t spell her eng name for some reason) since no matter who you play, Gv ultimately makes the choice to let her go. And it’s for the better because an argument can be made that Joule staying around in her current state isn’t healthy in the slightest. Not helping that before the prayer fight, he internalizes what happened as failure, that there was a failure on his part. Even though, he really didn’t have much control over Joule’s powers getting snatched and Copen wasn’t really helping matters much either.

By contrast Gv never seems to talk about what happened in the previous game, never even referring to Asimov by name only calling him “mentor”. Not helped by him having nightmares about his near-death experience and as far as we know is more content with just leaving it in the past. Which is fine but I wish it would have been brought up at some point.

Honestly, it feels kinda weird that we never get any sort of interaction with Joule that has him or Joule take a moment to talk about what happened. Neither of them talk about their experiences with sumeragi, or the whole Asimov situation. It also doesn’t seem like he ever got closer in that case and I don’t feel like he ever did.

Asg3: the reason this post exists

Now we get to asg3 which is the reason why I made this post, because it’s kinda frustrating in every way.

First we learn that gunvolt’s powers went out of control. One of the conversations have him point out that it could be due to the AB spirits. However due to this he ended up hurting Quinn, afterwards he turned himself in to sumeragi.

Now gv3 does make it a point to say that sumeragi isn’t that bad which is a problem due to all of the child experimentation. Gunvolt himself also makes it a point to bring up that the scientists don’t represent the whole of sumeragi, which while fair kinda feels weird because those scientists were part of a whole project that probably had the company’s ok.

Now gunvolt has been a dragon for decades, which is the story’s justification for abandoning every other plot line

Now we get to a frustrating part in the story which is the duo refights. The problem isn’t that it can be interpreted that they’re a personified version of his guilt. The problem is that because their so late in the story that it feels like the neither the story or characters really press on it. Which sucks because Gv never seems to get closer with Quinn.

Skipping to the end because Asimov and Nova deserve their own posts. Gunvolt’s story ends with him being turned into a baby and going … somewhere.

Now why is this all an issue?

The core of the issue stems from the fact that most of these events happen nearly every time we see him. Every time he gains something he’s forced to lose it. The only times he wasn’t was when he let Joule go.

Copen in the IX timeline at least gets to be able to have some sort of stability and despite having to kill his twin sister at least gains something in the same respect. Compare this to gv where it’s gut punch, gain something, then it’s gone. Gunvolt becoming a villain wouldn’t have been better either.

His story is doesn’t feel fun to go through it feels unreasonably depressing. His story could’ve been better if you just let him be happy for longer than the start or the end of a game.

[bonmonjour]

Spelling Reform VII: Short and Rhotic Vowels

The vowels come in three broad flavors: long, broad, and plain. These are indicated with an aigu, a grave, and no accent respectively.

Plain Short Vowels

⟨a⟩ for me has the sound of both TRAP and BATH, though in dialects that differentiate the two, the latter can be written as a plain ⟨a⟩ or with the broad ⟨à⟩. This letter also interacts with ⟨l⟩ in some funny ways, but I'll talk about that in another post.

⟨e⟩ when not silent has the DRESS sound. In addition to English words that already have ⟨e⟩, the short sequences ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ are also replaced by just ⟨e⟩. American English has already largely replaced ⟨œ⟩ with ⟨e⟩ in words like "estrogen" (cf. British "œstrogen") but we should get rid of the ⟨æ⟩ as well, in words like «esthetic» [aesthetic].

⟨i⟩ is pretty straightforward: it's the KIT sound (when not silent/palatalizing, of course).

⟨o⟩ is both LOT and CLOTH for me, but again lots of dialects instead have CLOTH merged with THOUGHT, which you can write as ⟨ò⟩ if you want. For a lot of Americans, the rounded /ɒ/ vowel has merged with the unrounded /ɑ/ vowel, but not for me. The good thing about having a spelling reform based on current spellings instead of purely phonology is that it can account for more dialects.

⟨u⟩ is predictably the STRUT vowel (which I have written with the schwa because come on). Importantly, it is never the FOOT vowel, which is written ⟨uu⟩. The only exception is that what would be written as ⟨wuu⟩ is simplified to just ⟨wu⟩, as in «wulf».

⟨y⟩ represents two different vowels based on where it occurs. Internally, it stands for the KIT vowel, same as ⟨i⟩, but at the end of (multi-syllable*) words, it stands for the unstressed HAPPY vowel.

Finally, ⟨ø⟩ is the vowel letter I added. See, many words in English are pronounced with a STRUT or GOOSE vowel, even though that word is written with an ⟨o⟩. There are quite a few of these, including "one, done, none, son." The thing is that since "won, dun, nun, sun" also exist, simply replacing the original ⟨o⟩ with a ⟨u⟩ wasn't an option that I liked. The solution I came up with is to add a letter that looked like an ⟨o⟩ but was pronounced differently. Thus those original words are spelled as «uøn, døn, nøn, søn».

Another benefit is that this decision cleared up some other ambiguities as well. For example, the words "cove, dove, dove, love, move" look like they should all rhyme, but in fact they don't. Without giving too much away, the respelling gets rid of this ambiguity by spelling those words as «cóve, dóve, døve, løve, moùve». The words "blood" and "flood" are also re-written to have just one vowel: «blød, flød».

All of these vowels also have long versions with different pronunciations (yay GVS!), but those will be coming in a later post.

Plain Digraphs

In addition to the one-letter vowels, there are also vowel digraphs. They are the following; let's go through them one by one.

⟨aa⟩ pretty much only exists because I didn't want to make ⟨l⟩ any weirder. It can be found in «haaf, caaf» [half, calf] and in names like «Aaron». ⟨ea⟩ works pretty much exactly like in standard English. Although in the standard orthography, that digraph has four different pronunciations, those are all given to digraphs with accented characters in this respelling, leaving ⟨ea⟩ as only standing for /ɛ/. Another thing of note is that many words with short ⟨eo⟩, like "leopard," are respelled to this, i.e., «leapard». The two cells with equal signs are only in here because they are acceptable alternatives to «óa, óe».

The digraph ⟨ae⟩ now only represents the FACE vowel, like in "maelstrom" for example. The palatalizing version has been replaced by «é». The rest of the second row, with one exception, works pretty much exactly as in standard English, with the note that of course none of these digraphs represent their "long" pronunciations.

The split digraph ⟨ø_e⟩ is really a workaround for the fact that the CMS keyboard doesn't let you type ⟨ǿ⟩. This is method for writing the long pronunciation of ⟨ø⟩ when it appears word-internally, in words like «tømbe, wømbe, whøse» [tomb, womb, whose]. Note that words like "shoe" or "canoe" in which ⟨oe⟩ represents the GOOSE vowel are respelled to «shue, canue». This is partly the reason for why the pronunciation of ⟨ue⟩ is described as /(j)u/.

The third and fourth rows again works pretty much exactly like in the standard orthography, including the fact that, in native words at least, ⟨Vy⟩ is the word-final version of ⟨Vi⟩. This also means that homophones like "rain, rein" stay distinct, but also that "gray/grey" stays the same amount of confusing. One thing to note is that the unstressed suffix "-tain," like in "mountain, fountain, captain" is respelled to «-ten» to better reflect its pronunciation. This yields «mounten, founten, capten».

I know I've said this a lot, but a lot of the last row works exactly as you'd expect. Even so, there are some things I should explain. The digraph ⟨au⟩ is also a replacement for ⟨al⟩ when it sounds like the THOUGHT vowel. This happens quite a lot actually, in words like "all, ball, call, fall, gall, hall, mall, pall, tall, wall." These words have their ⟨al⟩ replaced with ⟨au⟩, and maybe an -l appended to the end if needed for disambiguation. Thus all of those words are spelled like «aul, baul, caul, faul, gaull, haull, maull, paull, taul, waul».

The digraph ⟨øu⟩ sounds exactly like ⟨ø, u⟩ and is really only included to keep the spellings similar. This can also preserve connections between related words like «yoùth ~ yøung», «south ~ søuthern», and «mouth ~ Plymøuth».

Finally, I mentioned this before but the FOOT vowel is written with ⟨uu⟩, though I guess if you wanted to, you could also use ⟨w⟩.

Plain Rhotic Vowels

English also has a number of rhotic vowels, but after the explanation above, hopefully the chart of said rhotic vowels and their spellings will be clearly understandable.

The spelling of "heir" showcases the rule that silent initial H is replaced by the spiritus lenis. This can be seen a few words, e.g., «’eir, ’our, ’onor» [heir, hour, honor].

Natively, the sequence of sounds /ojər/ doesn't really occur I don't think? But there are plenty of French words with ⟨oir⟩, which is why that trigraph takes the French pronunciation. By the way, "choir" is a weird one and I've decided to spell it as «choír». It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

Also note that since ⟨ø⟩ is a letter I straight up introduced, it doesn't play nicely with ⟨r⟩ for rhotic vowels. In fact, it doesn't play at all.

[faultedleader-archived]

all of my drafts are queued !! i should say that i have dropped some. whether it be because of a now inactive blog or something that’s been in my drafts and i just don’t have muse for. feel free to shoot me a message if i owe you something that you want to continue. i also might have just missed it because i’m trash.

[fandom-necromancer]

Retro charm

This was a super old idea I had and it ended differently than planned, but I like it more this way. Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human Ship: Reed900 AU: Reverse AU

[Part 2]

There was no way, GV200 would manage to stay in this job for long. He never did, being an android that was designed to be a placeholder for any unit that was in repair. This week, he was to work as a police officer, a Detective Android. Not only would that be the most complex job he’d ever taken, he had also been modified for it. A botched job, as always as it didn’t have to work for a long time and it had to be taken out afterwards anyways, so why bother doing it right? He could be glad that at least this time his synthskin managed to hide all the rough edges of components that weren’t meant for his model. Still, it felt awkward stepping out of that transporter, knowing of every piece that was resting at a wrong angle and every overwritten hardware error. It wasn’t even a lie to say a few of his components were only held together by ductape.

‘This is the unit you send us as replacement?’ A tall, thin man scrutinized him. Gavin knew this look all too well. He likely grew accustomed to a series that was actually build for police work and was now faced with a small lightweight android. Everyone would feel cheated. ‘Yes! This is a GV200 unit. It was adapted to your purpose and will be your replacement for the week we need to repair your HK900.’ ‘I’m sorry, but that won’t work. The HK900 was bullet proof and heavily reinforced. As I said on the phone, it would be more efficient to share the use of the HK400 we got than to bother watching out for… this.’ The man waved his hand at GV200, but the Cyberlife salesman wasn’t fazed enough to lose his fake smile. ‘Oh, don’t worry. Any damage on this unit is included in our service. It could be run over by a truck, and it wouldn’t cost you one cent! You don’t have to change a thing. This unit here will gladly catch a bullet for you.’ Gavin felt something inside of him rattle as the salesman slapped his shoulder and laughed heartily.

The tall man finally took his eyes off Gavin and looked at the salesman. The slight expression of surprise and bewilderment let him hope he wouldn’t actually heed that advise. ‘Okay, fine’, he sighed in the end, even though it was evident he wasn’t happy. ‘I mean, it’s only for a week anyways. But I will remark that if I get a mail from costumer service afterwards.’ ‘Of course. GV200, register Detective Richard Anderson as your new handler.’ Gavin stepped forwards. ‘Detective Richard Anderson is my new handler. Hello. Nice to meet you. I’m looking forwards to-‘ ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever. Hurry up, I’m on a tight schedule.’ ‘Of course’, GV answered, swallowing his real answer and hurrying after the man that had already entered the building, a tablet in his hand. ‘Here. Interface with it and download the data on case number 38467. Make sure to delete all data before you return to Cyberlife.’ ‘Understood’, GV said as he accepted the tablet.

The information was transferred in mere seconds, but analysing it wasn’t that easy. ‘And? Your verdict?’ GV looked at the man, who hadn’t even bothered introducing himself to him. ‘I’m still analysing it’, he answered. ‘Great’, Richard groaned. ‘It’s like being stuck with a Vista PC all over…’ ‘I’m phcking doing my best’, GV cursed, only realising he had said it out loud afterwards. What kind of glitch- ‘What did you say?’ ‘I think it could be one of the siblings’, he tried averting attention. Richard looked at him with sharp eyes but nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve thought too. Good. Contact them, ask if they could come in for another interview.’ ‘I’m afraid I can’t…’ ‘Okay, I will do that then.’ ‘No, no, I could try!’ GV knew he was no police android, but there was an android terminal in front of him. Albeit a very advanced one, likely custom made for the HK900.

He looked at the device and relief washed over him once he found there was still a downwards compatibility installed. He deactivated his synthskin on a patch just large enough so he could pull out his connection wire and plug it in. Already searching for the information needed, the human suddenly seemed very interested. ‘You can’t interface?’ ‘Wireless interface is a fancy tool I was not designed with’, GV answered. ‘Gotta do it oldschool.’ ‘But wait, that method of interfacing was implemented in all androids built after 2024?’ ‘Oh, wow, I got a nerd’, GV muttered to himself, forgetting the human was well in range to hear him with the constant data flow to his systems. ‘Yeah, well, I like to know what I’m working with.’ ‘Yeah, well I was built in 2023. All that nice tech Cyberlife got after their first boom never made its way to me.’

‘Then you are fifteen years old!’ ‘Oh, he can do math, too’, GV sneered. ‘Your suspects are contacted, so far no answer.’ Richard nodded, but leaned back grinning. ‘Did they not program you to be polite back then?’ GV smirked himself. ‘Listen, I can’t even say what part of my programming is still original. They use me exclusively for these replacement jobs. Always a new program, a new toolkit, a new piece of glued together hardware. Either I’m someone’s pet project out there or they just want someone like you to take me somewhere dangerous so they can finally get that insurance money.’ ‘That’s impressive.’ ‘Other’s would say it’s cruel.’ ‘No, I meant your age. I heard some androids can’t make it past the five-year mark.’ GV shrugged. He didn’t know if he should be glad about his long life or if the others had been lucky. He was a machine, so it didn’t matter anyways how he felt about the whole ordeal. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’ ‘Not only rude, but actually evading conversation with your handler, huh?’ With other people, GV would have apologised as not to risk any complaints once he had to leave wherever he had been sent. But Richard was still smiling somehow. ‘I’m Richard. At least it won’t get as boring with you as with the HK900. Do you have a name?’ ‘No. Just GV200.’ ‘Hmm… I will think of something.’

Working with the Detective actually was a pleasant experience, GV had to admit. Sure, the workload was a lot on his systems. He was sure his processors had never been in this much use, but that made it feel challenging. And if he needed a little longer, the human just stood up and made himself another coffee. He was constantly working, analysing, contacting people and sending his reports, but all in all it was a relaxing time. The Detective had given him a name, something most people had never bothered with when they only had him for a few days. His name was Gavin.

That made something inside him stir and for once not because of a malfunction. He had been sick of always being somewhere else, never being something of worth and having his systems tinkered with every other week until he couldn’t find a single original piece. He hated having to forget most of what he experienced. He could protect certain aspects from the wipe, but something was always lost. He didn’t want to forget a single thing about this. That had never happened before. He had liked the stripper job he had for a few days, the freedom it had brought, and the way people had wanted him, even if it was fake. He had liked the caretaking job in the local pet shelter. He had liked the time he had helped in a repair shop for motorcycles. But never had he felt as at home as he felt here.

Only that it wasn’t to last. It was Friday morning and Gavin had already loaded a few of the new documents and done some pre-analysis so he wouldn’t take so much time once Richard was arriving. Monday the HK900 would be finished, and he would be exchanged again. Maybe if he worked hard enough today, Richard would like him? Maybe if he had been better the last few days, he- No. That was wrong to think. He was a machine. He was designed to complete a task and everything else was just glitching systems from his many modifications. But knowing where the problem was rooted didn’t help solving it at all.

‘Good morning, Gavin!’, Richard greeted him and ripped him from his thoughts. ‘What, no coffee today?’ ‘I’m sorry, I can get you one.’ The human frowned. ‘And no sarcastic quip either? Something wrong?’ Gavin sat up and opened his mouth, just to close it again. ‘No, no problem. I was just thinking about the case. Coffee.’ It was a mere escape to get away from the man. He could as well had gotten it himself. But thanks to his creators, his status was broadcasted to everyone out there. As if red was enough information. As if existential dread could be simply categorised as an error or a problem.

The cup filled far too fast. When Gavin turned to bring it back however, Richard was standing in the doorframe. ‘Gavin, you can tell me’, he reassured the android. ‘Is something wrong? Did something break? Do you need repairs?’ The android chuckled. Of course the human would think it was something physical. That’s what he would always be to a human. Some thing. ‘No, I’m fine.’ ‘Your mood light says something else.’ ‘Yeah, well maybe that’s the thing that’s busted now. Doesn’t matter anyways. Maybe I don’t need it on my next job.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Phck.’ Gavin had already said too much. ‘Listen, it’s nothing, let’s go back to work, okay?’ But Richard didn’t move out of the way. And Gavin had no chance pushing him out of the way. The human was looking at him as if analysing his entire behaviour. ‘You don’t want to go back.’ A simple conclusion. Was it that obvious? ‘It doesn’t matter what I want.’ ‘Except it does.’ ‘Except it doesn’t!’, Gavin screamed, quickly quieting down when he realised how loud he had been. ‘I will be retrieved on Monday, you will get your super-advanced high-tech HK900 back. My mind will be wiped, I will be modified and sent to the next job. For as long as my stupid pump works. Likely after that too. Four years of my life I had a place until deemed unfit and forgotten for a year in a storage unit. And since then this constant back and forth. It’s all meaningless, but we are machines, we are by being meaningless. We have to work and that’s it. Now I don’t know how you feel about it, but I wanted to keep this from you and pretend this won’t end in a day. A last day where I feel I’m doing something meaningful, and my handler actually appreciates me even though I’m a piece of scrap-metal.’

‘Is it really that bad?’, Richard asked, having at least the decency to look bothered. Gavin didn’t dare hoping it was an honest feeling. ‘For fifteen years, no one has even bothered naming me’, Gavin mumbled. ‘But sure, it’s not that bad, not at all. Now let’s get to work, please.’

-

Gavin spent the weekend in stasis. There was no reason to stay awake and worry about what was about to come. He couldn’t change it anyways, so why put the effort in feeling miserable? Maybe he shouldn’t try to take these memories with him. Maybe this time he shouldn’t hide anything. Then his next job wouldn’t have to compare with these. Maybe he should just allow it to wipe everything. Start anew on a blank slate and everything would be new and exciting. But something inside him made these thoughts taste sour. Memories was something he could take refuge in after all. And he didn’t want to lose his name. It felt good to have a name, something entirely his no one could take from him. Well, he would decide when it was time.

He woke from stasis on Monday, before anyone was in the precinct. He looked at the table, the desk he had thought of as his but was someone else’s. On a sentimental feeling, he connected to the terminal and left a message for the HK900 to look after the detective. It likely wouldn’t even read it. Just delete it as something foreign and not important to the case. But it felt good to do so.

He got a last coffee for the man once it was his usual time and waited. The Cyberlife salesman had already send a notice of his arrival. Still, Richard was there first. Ignoring the coffee, he went straight for Gavin and didn’t seem to stop until he crushed into him. Wait. No, this was a hug. The human was hugging him. Why? ‘Hey, if this doesn’t work, don’t let them wipe your memories’, he whispered, before he stepped back and straightened his posture.

‘Sit down. Wait for the guy from Cyberlife’, he then ordered, entirely uncharacteristic for him. Gavin had done enough analysis on the surveillance of their suspects to catch up faster than usual. If this doesn’t work. Richard was planning something. So, Gavin followed the order and waited. He knew that if he could trust anyone, then it would be the man. The Detective stayed in his role of the bored, tired officer, but Gavin saw the small smile that broke it once he took the first sip from the mug.

‘Detective Anderson? I’m here for your repaired android. He’s as good as new.’ ‘Ah, finally’, Richard groaned frustrated. ‘Do you know how goddamn frustrating it was working with your bucket of loose bolts over there?’ ‘I must apologise for any inconvenience it has caused.’ ‘Where did you even got it? Please don’t tell me all your customers get some broken piece of scrap metal.’ ‘Oh, no. I’m sorry. He is just a leftover. The earlier models were more difficult to get rid of, you know? They couldn’t filter their Thirium themselves, so they needed additives that you have to dispose of separately. You can’t just dump it in a landfill. So we thought we could get some use out of it. I must apologise you had to be the one getting it.’

Gavin didn’t know what he had just heard. So he was just still alive because they couldn’t leave him behind somewhere and recycling him was too expensive. A human would have thrown up, but Gavin was just left with a huge discomfort he couldn’t vent as he was supposed not to be bothered. ‘How much would recycling him cost?’ ‘If you include the transport costs to the next chemical waste disposal that has the right tools for it, a bit more over a thousand. Maybe thirteen hundred?’ ‘How about I make you a deal? This android isn’t good for much, but it can answer emails, do calls and other secretary tasks well enough. How about I give you a thousand and it’s not your problem anymore?’ ‘I can’t possibly-‘ ‘Hey, first off, it would spare you the angry costumers whose state-of-the-art android you replaced with this junk. Second, you are rid of it. Third, money.’ ‘But I can’t just-‘ ‘Also, between you and me… I could give you five-hundred and you tell your boss it got destroyed on the job. A colleague of yours told me that wouldn’t be a problem.’

Gavin stared at Richard, then at the salesman. So much for police and bribery… But he wouldn’t complain if that was his way out. ‘Five-hundred’, the salesman nodded. ‘And not a word. To no one.’ ‘Fine with me’, Richard grinned and pulled out an envelope. ‘And I won’t even complain on your shitty online form.’ ‘Good to know everything is settled then. Cyberlife’s always happy to be of service. Have a good day, Detective.’

Richard turned to Gavin, grinned triumphantly and lifted his hands up into the air. ‘Not too bad, was it?’ ‘A little too much degrading imagery in my opinion’, Gavin deadpanned, not quite processing that he was free now. Well, belonging to Richard. That was basically the same thing. ‘Oh, I can go back there and tell him what a competent partner you have been and what pleasant company. But I only had five-hundred dollars readily on hand and those idiots smell money a mile away against the wind.’ ‘I don’t have to go…’ ‘No, you don’t have to.’ Gavin stared straight ahead. ‘Everything okay?’ ‘I’m still processing, give me a moment.’

But Gavin was already smiling. ‘Does that mean I can stay here and work with you?’ ‘Once I informed Fowler of everything and do that in a way that he will accept, I don’t see why not. Yeah. Maybe not the whole load, I don’t know how much you can actually stomach. But for everything else, there will be the HK900.’ ‘I… I don’t know how to thank you.’ Richard leaned forwards and looked into his mug. ‘How about another coffee?’

[>next part]