#which is - kind of famously - an island

[talesfromtheenchantedforest]

("Here the story falls silent about them and speaks about the Saxons from Ireland and the Irish, whose lands bordered the lands belonging to the kings who were waging war against King Arthur")

ah yes, the Saxons, the Saxons from Ireland. there's no such place as Saxony, don't be ridiculous

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[pocketseizure]

The Two Kings in Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom unearths the roots of Calamity Ganon in an ancient conflict between Rauru, the first king of Hyrule, and Ganondorf, a rival king who attempted to usurp him. In many ways, Rauru is characterized as a good king. He is noble, kind, and self-sacrificing, and he acts for the long-term benefit of the various groups of people living in Hyrule. In contrast to Rauru, the antagonist Ganondorf is an evil king who started a war because of his pride, ego, and greed.

Rauru and Ganondorf represent different styles of authority, both of which are grounded in Japanese fantasies of cultural identity. I’d argue that, in the end, neither king is fit to rule present-day Hyrule, which is why it’s appropriate that the game ends without any call to rebuild Hyrule Castle or the centralized government it symbolizes.

Rauru represents a golden age in Japanese culture when many arts now seen as “traditional” originated. This golden age is closely tied to Nintendo’s home city of Kyoto, which is associated with the culture of the imperial court before it moved to Tokyo in 1868. Because Tears of the Kingdom is a fantasy, the visual metaphors of Rauru’s character design are mixed, but his connection to a bygone golden age is tied to two symbols: the magatama jewels referred to as “secret stones,” and the kare-sansui dry landscape gardens of the Shrines of Light and the Temple of Time.   

The “secret stones” that Rauru gives to the six sages have the distinctive comma shape of a magatama jewel, one of the three sacred symbols of Shinto. These three symbols are as follows: a mirror represents clarity of heart, a sword represents the power to protect the weak, and a jewel represents the materiality of divine blessings. These three objects also serve as the regalia of the Japanese emperor, whose role was historically to perform ritual prayers and thereby serve as a symbolic bridge between the world of humans and the world of gods.

There is nothing sacrosanct about magatama jewels; at various street fairs and tourist areas throughout Japan, you can buy inexpensive polished quartz and jade magatama to attach to phone charms or friendship bracelets. As a result of its relative ubiquity, this particular shape of gem has both a historical and a pop culture association with being a magical stone bestowed by the gods on special and worthy individuals such as, most famously, the first Japanese emperor.

Along with his magatama “secret stones,” Rauru is associated with kare-sansui dry landscape gardens of the old imperial capital. Note, for instance, the front courtyard of the Temple of Time that Link visits at the beginning of the game:

The visual motif of raked white gravel punctuated by standing rocks also appears in various permutations within the Shrines of Light established by Rauru and Sonia. To give an example, this is what the player will see if they circle back behind the entrance of the “Rauru’s Blessing” shrines:

This style of dry landscape garden is frequently referred to as a “Zen garden” because of its association with large Buddhist temples in and around Kyoto. The most famous example of this style can be found at Ryōanji, in northwest Kyoto:

The philosophy of these gardens meshes well with the philosophy behind the Zelda series, which Shigeru Miyamoto has described as his attempt to create a tsuboniwa miniature garden for the player to explore. In the same way, dry landscape gardens represent a larger landscape portrayed on a much smaller scale. The rocks in the gravel are meant to represent islands on the ocean, or perhaps mountaintops rising above the clouds. Another common interpretation of these gardens – and one especially pertinent to Tears of the Kingdom – is that the rocks are the dorsal spines of a dragon swimming through the sky.   

Although dry landscape gardens have strong ties to Buddhist thought, they were primarily created by wealthy lords residing in Kyoto during the fifteenth century. This was a politically unstable era, and these lords needed to make a show of their wealth and cultural legitimacy. Unlike in China, where Chan Buddhism was largely anti-establishment, Zen Buddhism was the domain of the wealthy educated elite in Japan. Many of the rocks used in Zen-style gardens were imported from China and Korea at great expense, and lords competed to secure the services of celebrity landscape designers. Even today, the late medieval culture represented by dry landscape gardens is associated with the prestige of Japan’s former imperial capital of Kyoto.

Rauru is therefore associated with nobility and a certain air of sophistication. In the original Japanese script, he is unflaggingly polite and addresses everyone – Zelda, Ganondorf, and Link alike – with the sort of “clean” language associated with people of high social standing. To put it simply, Rauru is a perfect gentleman. He is the personification of the aristocratic virtues of the “traditional Japan” of the late fifteenth century, during which the wealthy filled the capital city with gardens while countless wars ravaged the countryside.    

In contrast, Ganondorf is a personification of the warrior culture of eastern Japan, especially as it was exemplified by the warlords who competed for territory outside the capital before the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Oda Nobunaga was the most notorious of these warlords. He was infamous for being aggressive but effective, and his military prowess and ruthless tactics have been memorialized in a wealth of stories whose lineage stretches to the video games of the present day. I believe that Nobunaga (or, at least, a commonly fictionalized version of him) served as a model for Ganondorf, who seeks to take advantage of the instability of the newly established kingdom of Hyrule in order to expand his own territory.

Like Rauru, Ganondorf’s character design contains mixed visual metaphors, but I think it’s fair to say that his topknot and costume are meant to evoke a samurai who has thrown off the kimono sleeve covering his sword arm as an indication of his readiness for battle. This is a style still worn by practitioners of Japanese fencing and archery, which are common extracurricular activities in many high schools. Appropriately, Ganondorf fights with a tachi katana, a naginata spear, and the body-length longbow used in kyūdō archery – all weapons associated with the martial arts of Japan’s medieval military elite.

As if to cement his connection to Nobunaga, Ganondorf speaks in period-drama “samurai Japanese” that demonstrates neither the elegance nor the poetry of his incarnations in previous games. He seems to lack both regret and awareness of the consequences of his actions, and he is concerned primarily with hierarchy, conquest, and the thrill of battle.  

As was arguably the case for Nobunaga himself, there is no endgame for Ganondorf, only scorched earth. Ganondorf has absolute faith in his own power, and he views other people only as subordinates or enemies. According to his value system, there is no merit in compromise; he simply takes it for granted that he will win.

It makes sense that the aggressively bloodthirsty Ganondorf is a villain, but it’s important to understand that Rauru is not a hero. With all his magic and culture and imperial splendor, Rauru failed to understand that the system of power he created could easily be turned against him. A nation politically defined by a central authority whose rule is justified through military conquest and the cultural chauvinism of “ancient tradition” is not sustainable, and the legacy of such a kingdom can only be tears.

This is why Hyrule Castle remains in ruins at the end of Tears of the Kingdom, and this is why the game’s central hub is a research station populated with people from all over the world. This is why Zelda doesn’t attempt to re-establish Hyrule as a kingdom, and this is why it’s so important to her to understand the reality behind the myth of the nation’s history. This is also why the grand mythology of Hyrule’s origin is far less important to the player’s experience of the game than individual acts of community building. The highlights of Tears of the Kingdom are Link’s work in facilitating a local election in Hateno, helping Lurelin recover from a disaster, and volunteering in towns facing environmental issues such as water pollution and climate change.

Both Rauru and Ganondorf are compelling in their own ways, but it’s thematically satisfying that both characters are gone at the end of the game. When Zelda meets with the regional leaders of Hyrule during the closing cutscene, they promise each other that they will work together to ensure a lasting peace that neither of the two kings made possible. The legacy of the past still affects Hyrule, but Tears of the Kingdom suggests that it’s the duty of the younger generation to understand where this legacy came from in order to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors and move forward in a more hopeful direction.

[poraphia]

Hi there! Could you make a cc!wilbur x reader fluff story? I had this idea where the reader comforts Wilbur because maybe he saw some Wilbur slander, or a hate channel about him, or something like that, or vice versa (Wilbur comforts us). Tysm!!

"A Man Of Many Talents"

pairing • cc!wilbur soot x reader 1188 words • 9/23/23 containing • little angsty, wilbur is sad, article talking down on wilbur and reader's relationship, reader comforts wilbur my masterlist ~! ღ mrs. mania ღ on Tumblr

"even when you're traveling the world, even when you're making videos of all kind, i still love you all the same."

♡♡♡

Wilbur, as many of his fans know, is a face of many.

But sometimes, the man suffers in his own success.

We were sitting in our living room, cuddling on the couch. It had been months since we’d laid with each other like this. The A/C filled our space with white noise, and the TV was at a moderate volume with the captions on. I watched the silly cartoons playing on the screen while Wilbur buried himself in my chest. He held his phone close as he mindlessly scrolled through the media. I ran fingers through his curly hair, gently tugging out his tangled knots.

Wil hasn’t been home for more than a month since the beginning of the year. We’ve been distant but kept in contact to the best of our abilities since the launch of his new group channel and his band’s world tour. Wil was finally taking his break month to rewind from such major projects. Finally, there was no struggle to match up time zones, finding the signal to text, and not being awake to answer Facetime calls. We were next to each other, engulfed in each other's warmth.

That was until a certain article Wil saw that pierced a hole right in his heart.

I felt Wil stiffen in my embrace, which made me raise an eyebrow. My hand moved down to his cheek and I began caressing his cheek. “Hey, darling, are you alright?” I asked softly. He didn’t respond. Instead, his eyebrows furrowed as his eyes frantically read the lines of text. Abruptly, he sat up on the edge of the couch, leaving me lying down with confusion rushing through my body. Suddenly it felt cold the moment his body heat left me. I slowly sat up, now sitting next to him. I tilted my head and examined the stern look on his face. The white glow of his phone illuminated his eyes, but it was more of a strain to his eyes than a starry twinkle.

“Honey?” I called out to him again.

He whipped his head around. His eyes were wide, and it felt as if he were looking right past me. I felt like a ghost next to him. He parted his lips, almost to say something, but he stopped. Instead, he stood up and left me on the couch.

“Hey!” I exclaimed. I stood up as well and followed him to the kitchen. “Wilbur, why are you ignoring me?” I asked, my concerned tone seeping into my words. Again, he didn’t speak. He dropped his phone onto the island table, making a clattering sound against the marble. His hand wrapped around the fridge handle before swinging it open and taking a bottle of water inside. Wil nearly ripped off the cap before chugging it down. I stood a few feet from him, not sure how to proceed. My hands fidgeted with the ends of my sleeves as I nervously bit my tongue.

A moment of silence passed between us as he stared down to his feet. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, feeling my heart skip a little. Finally, he spoke up.

“You… You love me, right?” Wilbur said, barely loud enough to be considered a whisper.

I tilted my head. “What?” I said, bewildered at such a question. “Of course, I love you! Why wouldn’t I?”

His grip around the water bottle tightened, crumpling the plastic. He then turned around and handed me his phone, showing me the article he was so fixated on.

“Wilbur Gold: showering in success, suffering in his relationship?”

My eyes widened. What the fuck is this about? I quietly read to myself.

“William Gold, famously known to play in well-known Minecraft servers, lead singer of an on-tour indie band, and member of an adventurous improvisation group, is known to be a busy man. What many people don’t know is that he has been in a committed relationship for years. How does he have time to be with the love of his life knowing that he’s been away from home for so long? Matter of fact, he barely even mentions them in interviews and concerts! His partner may need to start rethinking their relationship because William Gold certainly doesn’t show us what kind of a boyfriend he can be.”

I looked at Wil, his eyes refused to meet mine.

“I… I know I haven’t been the best boyfriend lately, but I mean— You know nearly all my songs it’s inspired by you!” He ran a stressed hand through his untamed hair. “Like in Warsaw, I mentioned our first kiss, and then in It’s Golden Hour Somewhere, there were the pixels! The pixels off your lips!” He explained, near frantic. “I— I—” Wil stumbled over his words as tears threatened to spill out of his eyes. He threw his head back with his palms covering his eyes. I felt my heart drop at the sight of him as I could only imagine what doubts and stress he had running through his head.

Slowly, I approached him. My feet glided against the cold tiles before I wrapped my arms around his long torso. His frantic breathing slowed, and so did his heartbeat. As I pressed my ear against his chest I could feel it pounding against me. His shoulders started to relax, and his arms fell to either side of his torso.

“Wilbur, you are the best boyfriend I could ever ask for and more.” I mumbled. “We’ve been through thick and thin. We went through long distance, arguments, hell I’ve even seen you drunk out of your mind when you threw up everywhere. “ I chuckled. I lifted my head away and grabbed his chin to look him in the eyes. “But I promise you, nothing, and I mean nothing, about you being busy has made me question our relationship. I love cheering you on and achieve your dreams. I know you take me in your heart alongside it all, and that is truly enough to make me happy.”

Wil placed a hand on top of mine. “You… You promise, right?” He asked, his voice trembling a bit. I gently smiled, reassuring him.

“I promise.” I stood on my tippy toes and nuzzled his nose with mine, finally seeing those cute dimples of his deepen with a toothy grin. He wrapped his arms around my torso, picking me up and spinning me around. I buried myself into his shoulder while giggling, wrapping my arms tight around his neck. He placed me down on the island counter before hugging me tightly. His nose poked at my neck.

“I need to brag about you more…” He muffled into my skin. I felt his hot breath against me, making my skin tingle.

“You don’t have to!” I exclaimed.

“I doooo!” Wilbur buzzed. “In fact, I’m gonna kiss you in front of eeeeveryone one day! On the stage!”

I rolled my eyes before placing a kiss on his forehead.

“Maybe one day…” I hummed.

♡♡♡

a / n ~ not proofread! just wanted to get this out as fast as possible aaahhh but i hope you enjoyed! reblogs and notes of all kinds are superrr appreciated!

[kpopsexstories]

TXT MOST MEMORABLE SEX – Story #1: ALL FIVE MEMBERS

A new story/member every Monday between September 16-October 21, 2024. Click here to view the posting schedule.

Story: Yeonjun, Kai, Beomgyu, Taehyun and Soobin bond when they go skinny dipping in Hawaii. A scary Halloween night gets sexual when they masturbate together in the dark.

Type: VANILLA/MASTURBATION ONLY

Content: Masturbation, Outdoors

Word Count: 6,416

Members: All 5 Members of TXT

Story #1: ALL FIVE MEMBERS

It was Halloween. The five boys of TXT were in the US, Hawaii to be exact. Funny enough, not because Hueningkai was born there, but because Soobin’s childhood friend had moved there from Korea.

At the end of a fun and drunken night they dropped their costumes on a beach and went swimming. Naked. It was the first time they all saw each other in the nude, and it became a positive shared and vivid memory for them all.

On this eve – Hallows Eve – there was a party in a suburban villa. Beomgyu came up to his friend and asked, “How do you know all these people?” He felt a little out of place, but Soobin was in his element.

“After my friend left Korea I've visited loads of times,” Soobin explained. He seemed to be best friends with nearly half the kids there, and it felt good to be relatively normal for a change.

Hueningkai too was filled with an exaggerated pride to be in America. He was famously born in the island state in the Pacific. But because he was only a month old when he moved away, the ego boost he got from showing the island off to his Korean friends was perhaps a little misplaced. He had no memories and no real connection to the place.

In the late afternoon, before the party started, the boys were gathered on the upper floor of the house in which Soobin's friend now lived. A floor below, the friend's sister and her girlfriends were hanging out. Several of the boys had a crush on several of the girls, which only made the trip more exciting. Though in this story that's beside the point.

The boys talked and laughed and teased and drank while they got ready for the party. They assessed their costumes and put on their makeup. They got more than a little tipsy before the party had even begun.

Hueningkai decided to go as a skater boy. Soobin dressed up as count Dracula. Yeonjun wore a tight pink t-shirt and matching tight shorts – no one really knew what the hell he was supposed to be. Taehyun had found a Spider Man outfit, and Beomgyu was an axe murderer. It was building up to be a fun night indeed.

The party they went to was hosted by the childhood friend, but it took place in a different suburban villa at the other end of town. The sister was there too, and many friends of friends. This was before the boys got so famous that they couldn't hang out in public, at least in the US.

There was alcohol, there was dancing, and it was a blast. There was more than a little flirting going on in all kinds of directions. Beomgyu, the youngest, chatted with the same girl for most of the night, and Yeonjun in his eccentric and sexy pink outfit got more than a little attention. Soobin was all over the place and friendly with everyone.

But as the party came to an end – well past two in the morning – the boys left the house together. Alone. None of them got lucky with the opposite sex, or the same sex for that matter, and that was totally fine. It was never truly the goal anyway.

Everyone was more than happy with how the evening turned out, specifically the fact that they got to feel normal for a night. This wasn't pre-debut, after all. That in itself meant the world to them, and this became the last time ever they were able to be themselves so openly.

Yet the evening wasn't over. Drunk, full of adrenaline and endorphins, and with no work to wake up to or management to answer to, someone came up with a crazy idea. Okay, not just someone. It was Yeonjun – of course it was Yeonjun! – who came up with the idea: “Let's swim with the sharks.”

And that, my friends, brings us to what this story is really about: the time our boys went skinny dipping, and – believe it or not – actually ended up masturbating together in the dark. Yes, this really happened.

“Fuck no!” Soobin exclaimed. He was wearing a black t-shirt and pants, holding his cape and fake teeth in his hands. They walked slowly through the night on a dimly lit street.

Spider Man, aka. Taehyun, was so drunk he could hardly walk straight. He stumbled while he laughed at the idea. Beomgyu the axe murderer caught him and kept him from falling.

“Oh please, there aren't that many sharks here,” Hueningkai pointed out in a serious tone. He seemed a little offended. ”Sharks don't like humans anyway. It's a myth!”

“Yeah, but they do exist,” Yeonjun said and put on a playful, scary smile. ”It's Halloween! I'm not ready to sleep. Let's do something scary.”

Soobin snickered. “Looking at Yeonjun's outfit is scary enough,” he said. It produced laughter from several of the boys.

“I could go for a swim,” Beomgyu said while playing with his axe. “My ears are ringing. It's nice and peaceful out here. I'm not ready to sleep yet either.”

“Me too,” Hueningkai said. He was wearing baggy clothes and a beanie, tossed his skateboard on the ground and briefly rolled ahead of his friends.

“We don't have swim suits,” Soobin pointed out.

“Don't be such a parent!” Yeonjun exclaimed. “We've all seen you naked before.”

It wasn't quite true, but Beomgyu went along with it anyway. “Unfortunately,” he muttered, but no one really heard him so the joke didn't land.

“Fuck, I'm too horny to undress in front of you,” Taehyun said and adjusted the bulge of his suit. That was only partly a joke.

“The fuck?” Yeonjun said and laughed out loud. ”Is it my sexy outfit?”

“The sister…”

“Fuck you!” Soobin exclaimed. “I've known her my whole life.”

The boys all laughed, stumbling through the streets, likely awakening more than a few local residents as they made their way through an otherwise quiet neighborhood.

Soobin eventually caved in. “Fine,” he said. “I'm drunk and hot. This place is worse than Korea! Let's swim.”

“Yes!” Yeonjun exclaimed, and the boys all felt happy that the evening wasn't over. The idea of late night skinny dipping actually excited them.

The horny joke wasn't really a joke though, and Taehyun wasn't the only one to feel sexually frustrated on this night. As fun as the evening had been, landing a girl would indeed have been a major bonus.

“Fuck, maybe it's these tight clothes, but I'm horny too,” Yeonjun said.

“That girl… what was her name?” Beomgyu asked and glanced at Soobin.

“What, you don't know?” Hueningkai almost shouted. “You were clinging to her all night!”

“I don't know her name, but I've met her before,” Soobin said.

“She was freakin’ hot!” Beomgyu added.

“You ever nail her?” Yeonjun asked and smirked at his friend.

“No!” Soobin exclaimed. “I said I've met her, I don't know her!”

He had never liked how rude Yeonjun could become when he was drunk, but he couldn't help but laugh at his silly friend. Sexual frustration was an understatement.

“Truth or drink,” Taehyun said. “Have you had sex with any of the people we met today?”

“That game is over,” Soobin said to get out of answering the question. “We don't have shots anyway.”

Yeonjun unwittingly saved him. “Where do we go though?” he asked, as if he hadn't heard Taehyun’s question.

“It's an island,” Beomgyu pointed out. “Pick a direction and keep walking until we hit water.”

Again, his joke was ignored. “I know a place,” Soobin said. “There's a bay not far from here. No one will be there at this hour.”

“Great!” Taehyun said. To tease his friends he added: “Then we can all be horny together, no one will see.”

“That's not what I meant,” Soobin exclaimed and laughed again. He picked up Hueningkai's skateboard from the ground and handed it over. “But it's too shallow for sharks so we'll be safe.”

“Then what's the point?” Yeonjun asked. He was dead set on the idea of swimming in dangerous waters.

“Sorry, of course there are sharks,” Soobin lied. “Actually, I have a friend who got bitten there once. I haven't been back there since.”

“Really?” Beomgyu asked. He looked genuinely shocked.

“Yeah! He spent a week in the hospital. Lost a leg and all. It's rare, but it can happen.”

“When was this?” Beomgyu asked. The others looked at each other and giggled.

“It was actually on Halloween, three years ago today.”

Beomgyu suddenly looked sceptical. The others burst out laughing at his gullability.

“Fuck you!” Beomgyu said and laughed too. “I liked it better when we talked about your friend's hot sister.”

Soobin sneered and quickly changed the subject. “Down this way,” he said and pointed.

So, instead of turning down the street on which they stayed for the week, the boys left the suburbs behind to go to the ocean.

The silence away from the party and the city was eary. Halloween or not, the open ocean in the dark was like a black hole, a scary sight in itself. And the boys wanted to be frightened, which meant the talk of sharks never ended.

Collectively, they had built up a nightmare image in their minds. Soobin guided them down a path, through a clearing in a forest, using the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the way. But as they left the forest path behind and their shoes sank into the sand, he turned it off. They all felt a pit in their stomachs, and it was indeed a thrilling sensation. Scary.

There was a rattling sound in the tree tops as the wind had picked up slightly. Little waves kept crashing against the shore, the only sign that they had indeed reached water. The moon was out which cast a low light over the scene. As they got closer to the massive body of blackness their eyes adjusted and saw the white foam of the ocean breaking and sinking into the sand.

“Fuck, I'm scared,” Taehyun said and playfully held on to Soobin's arm. This too was only half a joke.

None of the boys were horny or thinking about sex any longer, though it was unclear if any of them actually had been, or if they were only joking among friends. They certainly had been hard a few times at the party, but that was then. The bay, the ocean, the moonlight and the thought of sharks was a different world entirely.

And, to some of them, there was an additional scary element to the whole situation. Horny or not, not everyone was comfortable with getting naked in front of the others. This was relatively early in their career after all, and though they had all seen bits and pieces in different situations, they had never undressed so openly all together.

It was true that some of them had seen Soobin in the nude in the past. He certainly wasn't shy, and now, on the beach, he was the first to take off his shoes.

Hueningkai and Beomgyu had been naked in the same room before, but not in front of the others. In dressing rooms and at the gym, they were always the first to turn around and cover their private parts.

Yeonjun and Taehyun were frequent gym buddies. They often showered side by side, in the most platonic of ways, and at one point as trainees they had playfully compared dick sizes.

Still, they did know each other well after several years of living and working closely together. And though odd as it may seem, when all was said and done they did allow this night to turn sexual.

The two eldest of the group were quick to act on the opportunity for a late night swim. Drunk, happy and not seriously scared of neither the dark nor of nudity, Soobin and Yeonjun began to undress.

Soobin pulled down his pants and took off his shirt. In only his underwear, he folded his clothes neatly and placed them on the cape which he had laid out in the sand.

Yeonjun was happy to be rid of the tight shorts and pink shirt. They had been fun, but now nudity was funnier. He too was quickly down to only his underwear.

Taehyun wasn't as quick to act. He watched his friends take off their clothes, but the thought of the scary water did seriously worry him. His heart was beating fast, and sharks occupied his mind.

He was building up his courage though, and slowly unzipped his suit. He slid it down his upper body and the blue light reflected on his slim figure and broad shoulders. It felt pretty great to be free of the tight fabric.

Regarding the sharks, he told himself that there was nothing to be afraid of at all. He knew that Kai was right about them. If he were to swim, however, someone else would have to lead.

Beomgyu took a similar slow-but-willing approach. He placed his plastic axe in the sand like he was hacking a piece of meat. When the boys got naked before his eyes, Beomgyu carefully followed by unbuttoning his shirt.

Hueningkai didn't want to appear scared, but he was. Of two things: the dark, and of revealing his body so openly. Ironically, it was the dark that finally allowed him to take off his clothes too. He felt safe in the shadows and knew that despite the moonlight the others wouldn't fully be able to see him. At least that's what he convinced himself of.

Soobin, the mature leader that he was, started walking toward the edge of the water. Yeonjun, standing in his underwear, quickly stopped him.

“Nu-uh,” he said loudly. Soobin turned around to face the sound. ”It's not skinny dipping if you're not naked.”

“Are you serious?” Soobin asked and laughed.

“Yeah! Come on, it's part of the fun. Take those off!”

Soobin grinned. He wasn't against the idea of being completely naked, but he had assumed they'd all at least keep their underwear on.

Taehyun and Beomgyu didn't think much of it, but Hueningkai's heart suddenly sank. He knew he was being silly, but he really wasn't comfortable in his own skin. The idea of being seen naked genuinely worried him.

Yeonjun pressed on though, and Soobin finally adapted to the situation. Standing a distance away from the boys, a grin still on his face, he slid his underwear down and kicked them off. He picked them up and threw them in the general direction of his cape.

The boys all glanced at his dick, or at least the direction of where it would be. They could see the silhouette of Soobin's tall body, but not the details on it.

Soobin quickly turned around again and dipped his feet in the water. “Hey, it's actually quite nice!” he exclaimed.

It certainly wasn't warm, but the alcohol in their blood and the hot air around them made it warm enough. They were all still sweaty from the party and all the dancing, and cooling down in the ocean felt like an enticing relief.

Yeonjun was next to follow. He carelessly kicked his underwear in the sand and came running after his friend. Soobin produced a high-pitched scream when water splashed up his legs.

Taehyun stood fully naked in the sand, observing his friends. If they could overcome the thought of sharks, he would too. He was determined to. But not quite yet. His mind still couldn't grasp the idea of why the hell they wanted to subject themselves to such a heart pounding danger. And so, he just stood there, dick dangling between his legs, not moving a muscle.

Beomgyu, who like Kai wasn't keen on getting naked, had overcome his fears though. Seeing Soobin with his ass out, ankle deep in water, and Yeonjun run ahead and suddenly throw himself into the sea with a happy scream and a big splash, put him at ease. If everyone was getting naked, he wasn't going to chicken out.

He calmly walked to the water. Taehyun finally followed. Soon, four young men were bathing naked together in the dark, and only Hueningkai remained.

“Come on, get in here!” Soobin encouraged him.

“What's the matter? Got a boner or something?” Yeonjun asked.

“Alright,” Kai said, and finally took his pants off. He made up his mind and eventually joined his friends.

The five naked men splashed around, pushed each other, laughed and played. Things actually got quite physical.

Until they stopped. The water suddenly calmed, and a new silence surrounded the scene.

They stopped talking and laughing, and each enjoyed how calm things were around them. The rush of alcohol was settling and the water felt great as they rocked up and down in gentle waves.

Beomgyu took a few long strokes to swim further out, and challenge his fears even more than he already was. But when all he could see was a massive black wall in front of him, he regretted the decision and hastily turned back. His heart was beating so fast he thought he was going to have a panic attack.

The fear was quickly erased when Yeonjun gave him something else to think about. He interrupted the quiet and serene experience of floating in the ocean at night, fully nude and surrounded by friends, when he decided to make another joke.

And this, my friends, is the moment you've all been waiting for: the moment this fun and thrillingly scary evening with friends became sexual. Though there was no actual sex involved, the five boys went as far together as they ever would.

“Look!” Yeonjun said and grinned. The boys all turned in his general direction.

At first they didn't know what they were supposed to look at. Yeonjun was floating on his back, facing the stars, an arm slowly making circles in the water to keep his body from sinking.

“The fin of a shark!” he clarified when he didn't get a reaction.

Taehyun, who was closest to him, was the first to react. When his eyes focused on the right spot in the low moonlight he finally saw it, and his brain eventually caught on.

At an arm’s length from Yeonjun's floating face, just below his stomach, something poked straight up out of the water. Yeonjun moved his entire body to make the shark fin glide along the surface, as if it would make the image more obvious to his friends.

For a second, because he hadn't yet seen anything, Beomgyu's heart stopped. He was genuinely scared. Was there really a shark around them? He could no longer feel the bottom of the sea and once again he felt like a panic attack was coming.

But the terrible feeling stopped when Taehyun burst out laughing. “Oh my god!” Taehyun exclaimed and swam away from his friend. “You're crazy!”

“What?” Soobin asked when he still couldn't figure out what was going on in the darkness around him. “Oh,” he added when Yeonjun swam backwards past him, and he finally spotted the tip and shaft of Yeonjun's hard dick poking out of the water.

Hueningkai too bust out laughing. If anything, Yeonjun's silly antics made him feel less uncomfortable about being naked himself.

When Beomgyu finally spotted the dick, his fear was replaced with another kind of excitement. Perhaps it was the relief he felt after the shock and fear his mind had just gone through that caused him to react irrationally. Or maybe it was the girl he had spent most of the night with.

Whatever the case, when he spotted Yeonjun's hard dick floating around, he immediately swam up to his friend and grabbed it.

Yeonjun quickly stopped circling and hid his lower body under the surface. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed. He let his body sink and splashed around with his arms to protect himself. “What are you doing? Don't touch it!”

Beomgyu let the shaft go as it disappeared. “What?” he said with a grin. “Kai said they're friendly.”

“They are,” Hueningkai confirmed and laughed. Even Yeonjun, who had been violated by his friend, couldn't help but giggle.

And, when the surprise settled, he realized that someone touching his hard dick in the dark actually felt nice. He was incredibly horny, the situation was exciting, and if Beomgyu could joke like that, he was more than happy to play along.

“Alright,” he said and let his lower half resurface. “You can pet it.”

But Beomgyu, who had realized how awkward, wrong and totally embarrassing his action had been, was no longer keen.

“What, you actually want me to?” he asked. His face was turning red but of course no one could see that in the dark. “I was only joking!”

“It felt good,” Yeonjun admitted. Like Soobin, he never thought nudity – or sex – was something to be ashamed of.

Taehyun genuinely loved the whole thing as it played out in front of him. He too was surprised by Beomgyu's actions, but just like the idea of swimming with sharks was thrilling, so was the idea of his friends touching each other sexually. It was dangerous – it could potentially break their friendship just as easily as it could bring them closer – and that feeling of doing something forbidden excited him.

“Come on, do it!” he encouraged, partly as a way to tease his friends, partly because it secretly turned him on too.

“Yeah, pet the shark,” Kai concurred. He had been subjected to peer pressure himself just moments ago, and maybe he wanted to draw attention away from himself.

Yeonjun smiled in the dark and moved his arms to bring his floating body closer to Beomgyu. Beomgyu, who was genuinely curious, was thinking fast. When the dick approached him in the water, his instincts took hold of him again and he reached out for it.

Yeonjun closed his eyes and moaned. Soobin, Taehyun and Hueningkai laughed nearby. Beomgyu kicked his legs to stay above the surface, but stopped breathing as he wrapped his fingers around Yeonjun's shaft.

“Ohh,” Yeonjun repeated. “Oh yeah, the shark likes it.”

The boys couldn't hold it together. The laughter was so loud anyone living near the beach could surely hear them.

“Careful, or he'll come on you,” Soobin joked.

Yeonjun was surprisingly fast to respond: “Yeah, I might.”

This was too far for Beomgyu, who quickly let go and retracted the hand, causing splashes and waves around him as he moved.

“No, don't stop,” Yeonjun pleaded and repeated: “The shark likes it.”

“What, you want me to jerk you off?” Beomgyu asked and put on a disgusted expression. He laughed, and no one really knew if it was out of enjoyment or nervousness. As fun and sexually exciting as they all found the whole thing, they were nervous about going too far in the eyes of their friends. They all wondered what the others were thinking in this moment.

“Yeah,” Yeonjun almost whispered and swam closer still. He offered no explanation or reasoning for why it would be okay.

Beomgyu hesitated. He had actually gotten hard himself but was naturally afraid to reveal the fact. He was drunk and this was all in good fun, but he didn't want to give the others an opportunity to laugh at him.

Yeonjun's confidence and encouragement inspired him though. He finally reached out and grabbed the make-belief shark fin for the third time.

At this point, everyone was holding their breaths. Suddenly all of the boys stopped laughing and the atmosphere in the air shifted. Everyone stared wide-eyed and in anticipation at Beomgyu and Yeonjun.

Floating slowly close together, their eyes met. Beomgyu started moving his hand, gently caressing the shaft. Then he moved his own pelvis closer to his friend, and the back of Yeonjun's hand brushed against his boner.

“Oh?” Yeonjun said and smiled wide. He grabbed Beomgyu's shaft under the surface.

By now, everyone around them was horny as fuck. You could blame the alcohol, the nudity, the thrill and safety of the dark ocean, that the evening was an unusual situation to begin with, or the boys’ vivid imagination. Reality was probably a mix of everything. But the truth is, there was not a soft dick in the bay, and all five boys thoroughly enjoyed what was going on.

At the sight of his friends pleasuring each other, Soobin reached down and grabbed his own cock. He stood up and found a good footing, water reaching to his chest. Taehyun and Kai looked at each other and giggled, but quickly returned their gaze to Yeonjun and Beomgyu.

What finally tipped things over, and took the whole situation from spontaneous and uncertain fun to a literal sex act, was what Taehyun said next: “Fuck, that's hot.”

They had all been thinking it. They all liked what they were seeing, not necessarily in a gay way but due to human nature and the effects of physical, sexual touch. A barrier had been broken down, and all five were willing to join for the sake of a thrilling orgasm. Their friendship had just reached a whole new level.

“Ahh,” Soobin moaned softly, alerting everyone to the fact that he was jerking off in the water.

“I can't reach the bottom,” Hueningkai said and swam closer to shore. When he found his footing, he stood with his shoulders above the surface, mouth half open, and his arm reaching into the sea while moving slowly as he pleasured himself.

Soobin stood a short distance away from him. Taehyun joined them and looked on in amazement. Yeonjun and Beomgyu kept treading water while stroking each other.

“I can't keep this up,” Beomgyu eventually said, and Yeonjun quickly understood. Without letting go of Beomgyu's cock, he swam backwards toward their friends.

Soon, all five were standing chest deep, glancing at each other's silhouettes in the moonlight, while pleasuring themselves or, in Yeonjun and Beomgyu's case, each other. When the two didn't stop touching each other, Soobin and Taehyun shared a look.

Soobin was the one to take initiative. He pushed through the water to get closer when Taehyun nodded. He smiled at his friend while reaching down, and without a word grabbed Taehyun's cock.

Yeonjun saw what was happening, and he caught Kai's glance, who was now the only one without a partner. “Come here,” he said softly.

Hueningkai was quick to comply. He swam up to his friends, and Yeonjun quickly touched his dick and stroke it.

“Holy shit,” Beomgyu said when the three of them were close together in a circle.

Soobin and Taehyun wanted in on the action. They moved closer to the circle and added themselves to it.

As they found their comfort and rhythm, the circle became whole. Each man with a dick in their hand, one that wasn't their own. None of them said a word. None of them were thinking straight. No one was laughing any longer.

This was truly an unexpected and unbelievable situation to them all, but they were also all surprisingly happy about it. Maybe they would regret it tomorrow when the reality of what they had done settled, but in this moment no one regretted a thing.

They rocked up and down in the gentle waves, and occasionally glanced at each other with their mouths half open. Yeonjun began to pant audibly. Soobin closed his eyes and started jerking Taehyun faster. Kai felt a great sensation rush to his groin as someone – he wasn't quite sure who – pleasured him. He held on tighter around Beomgyu's shaft.

“Oh yeah,” Soobin suddenly moaned. “Fuck!”

This is insane! they all thought. And awesome.

Soobin's words were an immense turn-on. Hands started moving faster still, water splashing gently around them.

Yeonjun let out a loud groan. “Ahh,” he said and grimaced, though none of his friends could make out the look on his face.

Beomgyu could feel it though, as Yeonjun's body shook and his hip pressed forward into his hand.

“Ahhh!” Yeonjun repeated, and instantly everyone knew what was happening. The shark had attacked.

Beomgyu quickly let go of the shaft. “Did you just come?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Ahh, yeah!” Yeonjun said with a big grin on his face.

“Ugh, disgusting!” Beomgyu exclaimed and swam away from the sperm he now knew was all around him.

Soobin laughed. “What did you think would happen?”

No one else had a problem with it, or at least they didn't show any signs of it. In fact it only made them eager to come too. They kept on stroking each other faster.

Hueningkai, however, let go of Beomgyu's shaft and grabbed his own. Soobin's hand moved away from him when Kai took over, and started focusing on himself too. The others followed, and soon everyone had their hands between their own legs.

Soobin was next to come. He grimaced excessively in the dark and panted heavily, not at all ashamed to unload in front of his friends. It wasn't as if they could see anything anyway.

Hueningkai too was close, but he struggled. He held his breath, still somewhat ashamed to show himself and a little shocked by what they were doing. The deep water also made it harder for him to climax.

Beomgyu beat him to it. He felt like being funny and suddenly swam on his back and allowed his shaft to appear above the surface, just as Yeonjun’s had earlier.

“Look,” he said while stroking his cock as fast as he could. His breathing was strained and shallow as he kept his face clear of the water. He jerked himself as fast as he could while kicking his legs to stay afloat. “A wh… A whale,” he moaned when he orgasmed.

Everyone stared at the cock, as Beomgyu came and shot his load in the air.

“A sperm whale,” Soobin joked and they all laughed.

Only Hueningkai and Taheyun, who had stayed oddly quiet, remained. “Need help?” Soobin asked.

“I can’t do it in the water,” Kai admitted.

“Me neither,” Taehyun said. “I think I’m done.”

“No way,” Yeonjun said. He had come down from his own orgasm and started swimming closer to shore. “We’ve come. You have to as well.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Kai said, but the others wouldn’t let him off the hook. Soobin, who had been the one who pleasured Kai before they started focusing on themselves, swam closer and grabbed Kai’s cock a second time.

“SHARK!” Beomgyu suddenly exclaimed, and it startled everyone. In a real panic, he started flailing his arms and kicking his feet, to follow Yeonjun to shore as fast as he could.

The panicked reaction rubbed off. Suddenly everyone was fleeing for their lives, and all five hearts started racing. Adrenaline pumped as they all became genuinely terrified.

Water splashed around them. Hueningkai, who was slower to react, fell behind, and he freaked out when he realized no one was between him and the black wall behind them.

In shallower waters, they all stood up and started running. On dry land, they turned around and stared wide-eyed across the ocean.

“Where?” Soobin asked while his heart settled down.

“It was behind me,” Beomgyu said.

“Are you sure?” Yeonjun asked. He was suddenly skeptical when his heart calmed itself.

“Yes!” Beomgyu almost shouted. He turned his head back and forth in an attempt to spot something and prove that he was right. A fin, the water breaking, any hint that he had in fact seen what he thought he had seen. “I mean… I think so.”

Soobin started giggling. As they stood side by side on the beach, looking out across the water, they all did.

“Your mind is playing tricks on you,” Hueningkai said and laughed out loud. He wasn’t hard any longer as the scare had pushed his blood back to his brain.

Taehyun, however, still was, and Soobin was the first to notice his cock pointing straight out. “I do see another fin though,” he said calmly and smiled wide.

What the hell are we doing? Kai wondered in silence. Is this normal? Are we nuts?

Taehyun caught Soobin's stare and giggled. Yeonjun took a step forward and turned around to observe the naked men lined up in front of him. His soft dick swung from side to side.

“Come on,” he said with a naughty grin. “There’s no shark. And if there was we’re safe now. So, we wanna see you come.”

This isn't normal at all! Hueningkai concluded. But the others didn't seem to care if it wasn't.

Now, exposed on the beach, the situation felt much different though, compared to in the water. Less safe, or as if the time in the water hadn't been real life. They were in fact completely naked, horny so openly in front of their friends, and they had literally been jerking each other off. The reality of the situation suddenly started setting in for several of them. No one had expected or ever wished for the night to take this turn.

But it did, and all who had finished wanted Taehyun and Hueningkai to do the same. Taehyun was still hard, desperate to release, not ashamed the way Hueningkai was, and was quick to resume the stroking of his cock.

Hueningkai kept hesitating, but Soobin wouldn’t let it go. He returned to his friend, grabbed his dick, and never wiped the smile of his face.

No one said a word when he started rubbing Kai’s shaft. Kai let him, but he wasn’t smiling. If Soobin was okay with this, he was too. It felet incredible. He suddenly became determined to orgasm, as if it was a challenge and a matter of pride.

Taehyun looked at the pair while pleasuring himself. Beomgyu, who still felt certain he had seen something, altered between staring at the ocean and Soobin’s naked body towering next to their youngest member.

Yeonjun took a step closer. “Come on,” he said, while smiling softly at Kai. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Think of someone hot from the party or something.”

“Why are you so into this?” Beomgyu asked suspiciously, referring to Yeonjun and Soobin. But he kept an eye on the ocean, and no one responded to his question.

Hueningkai took Yeonjun’s advice. He closed his eyes, leaned a little forward while Soobin jerked him faster, and allowed his mind to wander.

Yeonjun took another step closer and put an arm on Kai’s back. Gently, he stroked and squeezed his friend's wet skin, looking up and down the full length of his body. For a moment it took Kai out of it, but then he started pretended that it was the warm hands of a sexy woman that were touching him.

Taehyun had gone quiet again. He stood in the sand and watched the scene unfold, and never took his hand off his own crotch. He squeezed, stroke and rubbed himself in silence, showing no signs of either like or dislike to what his friends were doing.

“Ahh, I’m gonna come!” Hueningkai suddenly announced. He hunched forward even further, and Soobin jerked him a little faster. Yeonjun grinned beside him and his hand never left Kai's body.

“Ahh,” Kai repeated. His pelvis thrust forward, Soobin’s hand slid all the way down to the root, and Kai abruptly came in the sand. “Ahh, fuck!”

The orgasm felt amazing. With two sets of hands and all eyes on him, and a beautiful girl in his thoughts, Hueningkai no longer felt any sense of shame or regret. The cum dripped out of him, dotting the dry sand while Soobin made sure his arm steered clear of it.

Taehyun behind them orgasmed in complete silence. He held his breath and showed no signs of coming except a slight tensing of his muscles. Standing broad-shouldered and wide-legged, he too shot his load in the sand.

When he released, his breathing became deep and audible. Beomgyu caught his eyes and giggled. Yeonjun looked over Soobin’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of their friend.

Soobin let go of Kai’s shaft. He kept on smiling and looking down between Kai’s legs, to witness the result of his efforts.

Suddenly, however, several of the boys felt weird about the whole thing. The fright of the alleged shark sighting was gone. They had gotten used to the dark and quiet surroundings. The alcohol had started to leave their soaked, naked bodies. Having released already, the sexual arousal went away and blood returned to their heads.

What the hell did we just do? several of them thought. But none of them said a word about it.

Instead, Soobin quietly started walking back to his cape. Taehyun and Beomgyu, who had locked eyes, both started giggling. And Yeonjun removed his hand from Kai’s back while smiling wide, as if helping his friend come was some sort of triumphant achievement.

“We better get home or my friend will worry,” Soobin said.

“Yeah,” Hueningkai agreed. He straightened his body and checked out the spots of sperm in the sand before he left it behind on the beach.

“It was a great party,” Beomgyu said. For the first time since they made it to land, he turned his back on the ocean.

“Scary, but fun,” Yeonjun agreed.

“I’m so tired,” Taehyun said. As they started walking he couldn’t help but take a peak at the naked bodies around him, though unlike before it suddenly felt wrong to do so.

“Me too,” Soobin agreed.

“Hey guys,” Yeonjun said. “I love you. I had a really good time today.”

Several of the others nodded in a silent agreement. These were their best friends, and on this night they felt closer than ever before. There were no secrets between them.

It would be weeks before any of them brought up what they had done on the beach in Hawaii. But at the end of the day they were happy, and the events that unfolded during their trip became a pleasant shared memory.

With time they spoke openly and fondly about their time at the beach, and frequently joked about that night. No one regretted what they had done even for a second, and secretly several of them would have liked to do it again. They never did.

A smut story for each individual member will be published every Monday from September 23 to October 21 (2024). Please look forward to them 😉🍆💦

[fraterribilis]

The taxonomy of Sly Cooper: Part 3

Part 1 Part 2

Sorry for being so late with this one, but I've been occupied with other things.

Anyway, time to overthink the biology of the different members of the Klaww Gang!

Starting off with a two for one, it's pretty obvious that both Neyla and Rajan are meant to be mainland or bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris). They were originally conceived by the developers as father and daughter afterall.

I think pretty much everyone knows what tigers are and what they're all about (solitary apex predators, live in Asia) so I'll spare you the details, and share some lesser known facts about them instead.

Most relevant to the topic at hand, the bengal tiger was long considered a separate subspecies from the siberian, chinese and malayan populations, but recent genetical analysis suggests that they all belong to the same subspecies, and are now collectively referred to as the mainland tiger. The only other extant subspecies being the Sunda Islands or sumatran tiger.

Contrary to what Bentley would have you believe, tigers do NOT have an aversion to water. In fact they are some of the best swimmers among big cats, with the population in the Sundarbans being known to swim between islands in the delta in search of prey.

And contrary to popular belief, there are NOT more tigers in captivity in the US than there are tigers in the wild. @why-animals-do-the-thing has a very well researched series examining the data regarding captive tigers in the US which you can find here.

Sidenote: As a kid I thought that Neyla was supposed to be just a normal (purple) tabby cat. It wasn't until I got older and heard Dimitri's office recordings that I realized she was supposed to be a tiger.

Speaking of Dimitri, he is obviously an iguana of some kind. There are no wild iguanas in France, but i guess his family could have migrated there. Some fans have identified him as a marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), but his pointed skull and impressive dewlap beard suggests to me that he belongs to the genus of true iguanas (yes, taxonomy is confusing).

There are two recognised species of the Iguana genus; the green iguana (Iguana iguana) and the lesser antilliean iguana (Iguana delicatissima). I couldn't decide which one fit Dimitri better so you're getting another two for one. Both species grow to be up to six feet long, with males being larger than females. They are herbivorous, and feed on a wide variety of leaves, flowers, seeds and fruits. Both species live in forest and swamp areas, and are very capable swimmers and climbers. In addition to having well-developed vision, iguanas also possess a so-called parietal eye placed at the top of their skull, which allows them to detect ultra-violet light.

The green iguana is by far the most widespread of the two species, being found throughout most of Central America and northern South America, along with invasive populations in Florida and the Carribean. It is also one of the most popular lizards in the pet trade, even though it can be notoriously demanding and stroppy.

By contrast, the lesser antillean iguana is critically endangered, being only found on the archipelago of Lesser Antilles. Here it faces threats from invasive species, such as feral dogs and cats, but its greatest threat is, ironically enough, its invasive cousin the green iguana. The two species compete over resources, and can even interbreed, creating hybrids which further limit the native population.

The Contessa is most likely a black widow spider of the genus Latrodectus, seeing as she's often associated with an hourglass symbol which several members of the genus famously display on their abdomen. There are way too many Latrodectus species to count, so I'm just gonna assume that she is a southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans) which is basically the type species for the genus.

The southern black widow is the most common Latrodectus species in North America, being found throughout the southeastern United States along with Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Like other spiders it largely preys on insects, but sometimes also preys on other spiders, including its fellow species.

Black widows are infamous for their venom, which causes a condition called Latrodectism. This venom is rarely fatal in humans, with fatalities usually being those already of poor health, but it is extremely painful, causing symptons like nausea, vomiting, and muscle pain. These symptoms can sometimes last for weeks.

Black widows are of course also known for practicing sexual cannibalism, where the larger female will consume the male after mating, hence the "widow" name. This is not guaranteed however, as the female may spare the male if she isn't hungry. The females are generally the deadlier of the species though, as they are not only larger, but also have more potent venom (and a longer lifespan). All very fitting for a character who likely poisoned her husband.

As for Jean Bison, I actually like to think that he is a wisent or european bison (Bison bonasus). Part of that is his design. While his head is definitely big, it isn't quite as ridicoulously large as that of an american bison (Bison bison). More importantly however, I think it makes more sense for a european colonizer trying to industrialize the wild north, as opposed to a native american animal.

The european bison is distinquished from its american relative by being generally smaller and lankier in frame, but it is still a large and powerful animal. Adult bulls stand 6 feet tall at the shoulder (taller than the american bison) and can weigh up to 900 kg, making them the largest land animal in all of Europe.

The species has historically had a range covering most of northern Europe, but overhunting and habitat loss drove them to extinction in the wild in the early 20th century. Less than 60 animals remained in zoos worldwide, but thanks to wildlife rehabilitation efforts the species is slowly but steadily recovering. Today they are found in scattered populations across Europe, mostly in the east.

All in all, quite an ironic fit for a villain who's goal involves destroying the natural environment.

And finally we have Arpeggio. I had a hard time choosing between two particular species for him; the yellow faced parrot (Alipiopsitta xanthops), and the golden parakeet (Guaruba guarouba). Thanks to @arpeggio-the-parrot for coining me in on that last one. The yellow-faced has a more appropriate plumage, but the parakeet has a more prominent beak, much like Arpeggio. This combined with features we'll discuss later makes me conclude that he must be a golden parakeet. I do also kinda like the idea of him being a flightless kakapo, but I digress.

The golden parakeet or golden conure is only found in the Amazon Basin of northern Brazil. The species is endangered in the wild due to deforestation and the pet trade. It has a diet largely consisting of fruits and seeds, particularly corn. This is a highly social species, with up to 10 individuals roosting in the same tree hole. Different females will lay their eggs in a single nest, and when the chicks hatch they are raised communally.

The golden parakeet might seem like an odd choice, given that adults of the species are almost entirely yellow, (besides their green remige flight feathers) as opposed to Arpeggio's more balanced mix of yellow and green. However, juvenile parakeets have more prominently green coloring, including their back and tail feathers, which they lose as they grow older. This to me suggests, that Arpeggio likely suffers from paedomorphism (the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood), which would also explain his underdeveloped wings, that are so key to his character. Funny how things work out like that.

[t00thpasteface]

yeah sorry, i phrased that wrong, i'm watching voyager rn so i'm kind of distracted lol

i guess i was just confused about your post about winter on an island because your bio says TX so i assumed you live in texas but as far as i know (i'm canadian) texas isn't an island............

..........unless?

anyways, i'm sorry for being rude and/or invasive! it really wasn't my intention!

haha, no prob! figured it was a miscommunication of some kind.

the states along the gulf of mexico actually have a lot of islands of all different shapes, sizes, and ecologies. generally they're very swampy and not super glamorous :') think mangroves and gators instead of palm trees and flamingos...

texas has a huge coastline, but the waters along our beaches are famously very muddy because of runoff from the mississippi river, which is where all the rainwater between the rockies and appalachians ends up draining into, bringing half a country's worth of silt and biomass with it. currents push that water westward, so you end up with almost all of texas' beaches have opaque green-brown water that looks like beer bottle glass.

so, y'know. texas islands tend to fly under the radar, because even though the biodiversity is a real marvel, the beaches aren't exactly photogenic!

[mariacallous]

On a spring day in 1978, a fisherman caught a tiger shark in the lagoon surrounding Enewetak Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the north Pacific. That shark, along with the remains of a green sea turtle it had swallowed, wound up in a natural history museum. Today, scientists are realizing that this turtle holds clues to the lagoon’s nuclear past—and could help us understand how nuclear research, energy production, and warfare will affect the environment in the future.

In 1952, the world’s first hydrogen bomb test had obliterated a neighboring island—one of 43 nuclear bombs detonated at Enewetak in the early years of the Cold War. Recently, Cyler Conrad, an archeologist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, began investigating whether radioactive signatures of those explosions had been archived by some particularly good environmental historians: turtles.

“Anywhere that nuclear events have occurred throughout the globe, there are turtles,” Conrad says. It’s not because turtles—including sea turtles, tortoises, and freshwater terrapins—are drawn to nuclear testing sites. They’re just everywhere. They have been mainstays of mythology and popular culture since the dawn of recorded history. “Our human story on the planet is really closely tied to turtles,” Conrad says. And, he adds, because they are famously long-lived, they are uniquely equipped to document the human story within their tough, slow-growing shells.

Collaborating with researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was once directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Conrad was able to use some of the world’s most advanced tools for detecting radioactive elements. Last week, his team’s study in PNAS Nexus reported that this turtle, and others that had lived near nuclear development sites, carried highly enriched uranium—a telltale sign of nuclear weapons testing—in their shells.

Turtle shells are covered by scutes, plates made of keratin, the same material in fingernails. Scutes grow in layers like tree rings, forming beautiful swirls that preserve a chemical record of the turtle’s environment in each sheet. If any animal takes in more of a chemical than it’s able to excrete, whether through eating it, breathing it in, or touching it, that chemical will linger in its body.

Once chemical contaminants—including radionuclides, the unstable radioactive alter egos of chemical elements—make their way into scute, they’re basically stuck there. While these can get smeared across layers in tree rings or soft animal tissues, they get locked into each scute layer at the time the turtle was exposed. The growth pattern on each turtle’s shell depends on its species. Box turtles, for example, grow their scute outward over time, like how humans grow fingernails. Desert tortoise scutes also grow sequentially, but new layers grow underneath older layers, overlapping to create a tree ring-like profile.

Because they are so sensitive to environmental changes, turtles have long been considered sentinels of ecosystem health—a different kind of canary in the coal mine. “They’ll show us things that are emergent problems,” says Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist who was not involved in this study. But Conrad’s new findings reveal that turtles are also “showing us things that are distinct problems from the past.”

Conrad’s team at Los Alamos handpicked five turtles from museum archives, with each one representing a different nuclear event in history. One was the Enewetak Atoll green sea turtle, borrowed from the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. Others included a Mojave desert tortoise collected within range of fallout from the former Nevada Test Site; a river cooter from the Savannah River Site, which manufactured fuel for nuclear weapons; and an eastern box turtle from Oak Ridge, which once produced parts for nuclear weapons. A Sonoran desert tortoise, collected far from any nuclear testing or manufacturing sites, served as a natural control.

While working at Los Alamos, Conrad met isotope geochemist and soon-to-be coauthor Jeremy Inglis, who knew how to spot even the most subtle signs of nuclear exposure in a turtle shell. They chose to look for uranium. To a geochemist, this might initially feel like an odd choice. Uranium is found everywhere in nature, and doesn’t necessarily flag anything historically significant. But with sensitive-enough gear, uranium can reveal a lot about isotope composition, or the ratio of its atoms containing different configurations of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Natural uranium, which is in most rocks, is configured very differently from the highly enriched uranium found in nuclear labs and weapons.

To find the highly enriched uranium hidden among the normal stuff in each turtle shell sample, Inglis wore a full-body protective suit in a clean room to keep his uranium from getting in the way. (“There’s enough uranium in my hair to contaminate a picogram of a sample,” he says.) Inglis describes the samples like a gin and tonic: “The tonic is the natural uranium. If you add lots of natural uranium tonic into your highly enriched uranium gin, you ruin it. If we contaminate our samples with natural uranium, the isotope ratio changes, and we can’t see the signal that we’re looking for.”

The team concluded that all four turtles that came from historic nuclear testing or manufacturing sites carried traces of highly enriched uranium. The Sonoran desert tortoise that had never been exposed to nuclear activity was the only one without it.

They collected bulk scute samples from three of their turtles, meaning that they could determine whether the turtle took in uranium at some point in its life, but not exactly when. But the researchers took things a step further with the Oak Ridge box turtle, looking at changes in uranium isotope concentrations across seven scute layers, marking the seven years of the turtle’s life between 1955 and 1962. Changes in the scutes corresponded with fluctuations in documented uranium contamination levels in the area, suggesting that the Oak Ridge turtle’s shell was time-stamped by historic nuclear events. Even the neonatal scute, a layer that grew before the turtle hatched, had signs of nuclear history passed down from its mother.

It’s unclear what this contamination meant for the turtles’ health. All of these shells were from long-dead animals preserved in museum archives. The best time to assess the effects of radionuclides on their health would have been while they were alive, says Kristin Berry, a wildlife biologist specializing in desert tortoises at the Western Ecological Research Center, who was not involved in this study. Berry adds that further research, using controlled experiments in captivity, may help figure out exactly how these animals are taking in nuclear contaminants. Is it from their food? The soil? The air?

Because turtles are nearly omnipresent, tracing nuclear contamination in shells from animals living at various distances from sites of nuclear activity may also help us understand the long-term environmental effects of weapons testing and energy production. Conrad is currently analyzing desert tortoise samples from southwestern Utah, collected by Berry, to better relate exposure to radionuclides (like uranium) to their diets over the course of their lives. He also hopes that these findings will inspire others to study plants and animals with tissues that grow sequentially—like mollusks, which are also found in nearly all aquatic environments.

The incredible migratory patterns of sea turtles, which sometimes span the entire ocean (as anyone familiar with Finding Nemo may recall), open up additional opportunities. For example, sea turtles forage off the Japanese coast, where in 2011 the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history caused a tsunami that led to a chain reaction of failures at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. With lifespans of up to 100 years, many of those turtles are likely still alive today, carrying traces of the disaster on their backs.

Recently, the Japanese government started slowly releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant into the Pacific Ocean. Scientists and policymakers seem to hesitantly agree that this is the least bad option for disposing of the waste, but others are more concerned. (The Chinese government, for instance, banned aquatic imports from Japan in late August.) Through turtle shells, we may better understand how the plant’s failure, and the following cleanup efforts, affect the surrounding ocean.

The bodies of these creatures have been keeping score for millennia. “For better or for worse, they get hit by everything we do,” Nichols says. Maybe, he adds, “the lesson is: Pay more attention to turtles.”

[hermesserpent-stuff]

@lirabuswavi and i had a lovely convo for the mystic misunderstanding au and I'm gonna post it in segments because they said it was okay!! I LOVE talking aus. Thank you bestie!! it'll take a moment to edit and post it all but yee.

in which hiccup being a runt would have made him revered in the hunter tribe and when they find out they start giving him offerings.

this post focuses on toothless!

L stands for them and H stands for me.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

L: Also, Entirely off topic, but the goddess Freya is the goddess of magic, and famously has a chariot pulled by giant cats. In your Mistaken Magic AU, if Hiccup compared Toothless to a giant cat, trying to get the hunters to be more chill, they could conclude that it's an emulation of the goddess Freya, and as such Toothless is an extension of his soothesaying. Entirely random thought, but I had it and wanted to share.

H: Love it. Cannon to the au now

Toothless now gets his own offerings

L: Unlike Hiccup, Toothless accepts the offerings easily. People start to use him as an intermediary for their offerings because A) Toothless pretty much always knows where Hiccup is, B) wouldn't let anything happen to his rider's stuff, C) is a very effective delivery dragon given how quickly he can fly, and D) Toothless will take the stuff and Hiccup won't have a chance to argue. On one hand, Hiccup is happy that people are getting more comfortable around Toothless and even interacting with him of their own free will. On the other, Hiccup has no clue what to do with this stuff, Toothless take it back! What do you mean you don't know who gave you what, you could sniff them out, you big, dumb lizard!

H: Yee. And along with the stuff he gets so many fishes. Toothless is happy to do the work and hiccup sets up an addition to his hut to store the items more nicely. He also asks viggo if he can set up a hut/shrine thing on Viggo's island.

L: Which would only give people a more accessible place to offer stuff, thereby giving him even more stuff that he doesn't know what to do with. Poor Hiccup.

H: Hiccup tries to figure out a polite way to make use of the stuff. He asks around if melting weapons to try and make other gear would be rude or if feeding the food to others would be improper. He turns to Viggo more often who only will answer during Maces and Talons games.

L: I can imagine Viggo kind of uses the Maces and Talons games to figure Hiccup out, in a, 'we've tried to kill you and your loved ones, and being polite is your concern? You've sunk our ships and blown up our ground based operations, and this is your problem?' way.

H: He concludes that whole hiccup is clever and smart, the kid is a little star-touched and needs someone watching his back. (Star touched politely means idiot/crazy)

L: Viggo's not afraid to make an ally out of an enemy if he can (and a brother out of him too, because it seems the only person watching out for him is the dragon. And while Viggo has been convinced of said dragon's personhood, and ability to protect Hiccup, Viggo has something Toothless doesn't have: opposable thumbs.)

H: He decides that he needs to win Toothless over and proceeds to work on that

L: They're a package deal. And while Hiccup can be persuaded by the plight of the common people and the opportunity to turn the Acumens away from dragon hunting, Toothless has a far narrower focus. Viggo can respect one's priority being 'him and his'.

H: Toothless likes Viggo feeding him and feeding hiccup. He even starts dragging hiccup to Viggo if he feels like hiccup is getting too lost in inventing and is losing weight again.

L: Hiccup is confused on why his dragon and former enemy are tag-teaming him to make sure he eats and sleeps, but if they're getting along it can't be a bad thing right? Viggo is pleased to know that the way to Toothless is through Hiccup. Before, he would have exploited it maliciously. Now, well... He knows what he wants.

H: Hehehehehehe

The village is thrilled to have hiccup here

L: Ah, but the other riders... not so much, muahaha.

[lapsedgamer]

Paradise Killer (Nintendo Switch)

A systems based murder mystery visual novel in a vaporwave Lovecraftian u/dys/topia. Lady Love Dies is summoned from exile to solve the murder of the leaders of the Syndicate, immortal humans who meddle with banished gods in their mission to create an island Paradise. In the search for answers you re-establish connections to old friends and feel out the new state of affairs. Who would stand to benefit? Who had the opportunity? And - whisper it - did the Council have it coming?

Island Sequence 24 is as densely structured a setting as anything in the Metroid Prime series. Backtracking between suspects and crime scenes soon encourages a bit of off-path first-person platforming, which the game is surprisingly well attuned to. Like Samus, Lady Love Dies moves with presence and is immune to fall damage, and the compact setting makes accidental detours tolerable. It’s a pleasure to simply explore this place for its own sake, soaking up the lush audio and juicy-crunchy visual design, but these excursions yield lost objects which offer an insight in to the millennia-long history of the Syndicate, or advance your investigation.

For a game with no prescribed structure, major revelations arrive at a steady rhythm, inconsistencies implying alternative explanations that hint at motives that must be investigated further. Your crime solving computer Starlight organises evidence and testimony but the assembly of these facts in to the truth of the crime occurs entirely in the player’s head - to the point that, famously, there is no prescribed answer.

The pull of the central mystery and the cryptic setting grow as you attune yourself. A full sense of the Island and its occupants arrives as the mystery behind the murders becomes clear, leading to a dramatic and satisfying trial sequence where Lady Love Dies doesn’t so much build her case as bury her chosen suspects under it.

Holding the truth is a unique kind of power, and power is this game’s main preoccupation. There’s nowhere you can’t go, nothing you can’t say, and by the coda, nothing you can’t do in pursuit of justice. And it feels good.

[litcityblues]

'Ashes of Victory' --A Review

The ninth novel in the Honorverse series serves as a conclusion to a three-book arc in the series that begins with In Enemy Hands, continues with Echoes of Honor, and concludes here. Honor Harrington is alive, and well and has returned home with half a million prisoners from the Havenite Prison Planet known as Hell.

Ashes of Victory is the story of her triumphant return home. I would say the first third of the book or so is centered around just Honor coming to grips with having been declared/believed to be dead. She has an emotional reunion with her parents (her mother had given birth to twins, which satisfied the requirement Grayson had for an heir to her Steading) and her cousin Devon has inherited her Manticoran title (Honor is amused by this, as she can imagine his horror at the news-- while we don't meet him, he's described as a bookish/Professorial type who would very much not interested in things like a title.) She also has to face the facts: the extent of her injuries is going to keep her from active naval duty for at least a couple of years since she'll need reconstructive surgery.

There's a heart-wrenching moment for Nimitz as well-- as the extent of his injuries becomes clear and the humans realize he has lost his ability to communicate with his fellow Treecats, though his bond with Honor remains intact and as strong as ever. It's unclear if he recovers some ability to communicate with his fellow Treecats, but what Honor does is manage to help prove that Treecats are as intelligent as humans and full communication starts to become possible thanks to sign language systems.

Honor gets her battlefield promotion confirmed (and becomes Admiral) and, since she's out of the fighting for a bit, starts teaching at the Saganami Island Naval Academy to shape the minds of future generations of naval officers-- not just from Manticore, but from Grayson as well.

Hey, remember Steadholder Mueller? He was sort of kind of involved in a plot to overthrow Protector Benjamin that got somebody else beheaded and he frantically threw everyone he possibly could under the bus to avoid being implicated himself? (Flag In Exile, fifth book of the series.) Well, he's back and he's been biding his time and martialling his power and he's emerged as the leader of the Opposition on Grayson. He doesn't know it, but he's also under investigation but before that can come to fruition, his conspirators are revealed to be agents of Masada. There is unease on Grayson- especially when rumors start flying that annexation into the Star Kingdom is being discussed. (It's not precisely that: the famously independent San Martin has joined, but it's... kind of a commonwealth situation? They maintain their autonomy but also have representation of some kind in Manticore's Parliament?) Poor Mueller is in over his head and doesn't realize until it's too late.

Meanwhile, on Haven, things are going great, and by great I mean that Rob Pierre is dead. Admiral McQueen tries to launch a coup. Oscar Saint-Just detonates a hidden nuke underneath the Octagon and decimates McQueen, her forces, and a hefty amount of the military leadership to boot. Admiral Theisman is recalled to take charge of the Capital Fleet. Admirals Tourville and Giscard are believed to be next on the list of Admirals to go (i.e. be shot) and the military situation collapses on them. They are on the verge of utter defeat thanks to Manticore's new offensive and technologies to boot.

But, a surprise assassination attempt on the combined leadership of Manticore and Grayson fails- but kills Manticore's Prime Minister which leads to a change of government. The opposition comes in and demands a halt to the fighting, believing Haven to be defeated. Queen Elizabeth is fucking pissed about it but has no choice. A ceasefire follows along with negotiations and Admiral Theisman launches a coup of his own, killing Oscar Saint-Just.

Y'all...

I am not sure how to feel about this book. The first third to half of it is just about perfect. Pays off so many plot lines laid down in the previous two books of this arc. There are great character moments as Honor returns home and is reunited with friends and family and faces up to the cost of her injuries and time on Planet Hell. (The weird awkward romance between her and White Haven is touched upon, but we don't get back around to that-- I'm thinking we will at some point though.)

But the ending to this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's... awkward. To his credit, Weber acknowledges that he had to make a mild retcon in an afterword. Basically, eagle-eyed readers noted that in an earlier book, the Prime Minister of Manticore must command a majority in the Commons. Weber tweaked that here to make it the House of Lords. That change is small, but significant and explains how the Opposition was able to force a change in government-- and, it turns out that Monarchs of Manticore are required to marry a commoner. I am assuming that this will be paid off in future volumes... somehow. But a political short-circuit on Manticore's part also covers up for the fact that Haven is a hot mess.

How can any polity survive such instability? It's all coups and counter-coups and counter-counter-coups and nukes going off and just randomly killed a million people or so. I don't see how you can have that instability without some kind of popular unrest breaking out.

I mean, on the one hand, I get it: the Honorverse train keeps on rolling. But on the other hand: this is kind of a wet fart noise of an ending to a really excellent three-book arc to this series. (Also, there's a lot of really technical exposition in this one-- maybe more than in previous novels, I don't know. And yes, it's military sci-fi, so what did I expect, but it slows this book down in parts in ways I did not like.)

Overall: Starts strong, but the ending is not particularly satisfying-- however, these three book-arc have sold me on keeping on keeping on when it comes to the Honorverse, so I guess we'll see what's next. My Grade: *** out of ****

[nyktomorphia]

(I've started the worse habit of taking pictures of sketches and getting partway through explaining them and then forgetting it's still in Drafts)

The reason I was sketching fantasy camels a while back, by the way, was... okay, let me back up

In the NieR games there's a labyrinthine desert city called Façade, inhabited by the Masked People. Façade is governed under a long list of esoteric rules that outsiders find frustrating, but the Masked People are all pretty content with it, and there are indications that every rule originally had a really good reason it was created no matter how pointless it seems now.

This would just be a Neat Thing sitting in the back of my brain... if not for the fact that in Sunless Sea there's an island called Visage, inhabited by descendants from Amarna who now live by a complex system of esoteric social norms dictated by the kind of animal mask you wear.

To my knowledge there's no direct influence between them, which catches my imagination further. "Cities of masks and rules" is so distinct it feels like an otherworldly fantasy archetype, a trope that only caught on in another timeline the way elves and dwarves did in ours. (A friend pointed out it has a certain hint of orientalism - veiled courtiers whispering in desert palaces - though a rather abstract kind.) But exploring strange human cultures is part of what I like doing with Cosmodesy, and the seeds of my own version finally clicked into place.

The Mawlayani say that the city of Mazhar was founded centuries ago by their ancestors, former slaves lost in the desert on the verge of death who discovered a hidden oasis. They took this as a sign and settled there, giving their thanks to Sarab, a trickster god of secrets and illusions. Some centuries later, changes in trade turned Mazhar into a convenient stop for merchant caravans. The city has flourished to the limits of the aquifer below, and water supply has been carefully managed ever since overuse led to a nearly disastrous drought. To merchants, however, the problem is invisible, and it is counted as merely another of the Mawlayani's many eccentricities.

The statue in Sarab's temple is famously faceless, signifying the god's infinite appearances. The desert buries its blessings in the shifting sand, and the sun hides them among countless tricks of the light. For the same reason, the scarves worn to prevent sunstroke became the Mawlayani custom of concealing their faces in public at all times, which by the era of Mazhar's prosperity evolved into personalised masks. Traditional Mawlayani masks rarely resemble an actual face, with historical examples ranging from elaborate floral embroidery to minimalistic shapes framing the eyeholes. Symmetric calligraphy is a popular modern style.

I have no idea if Mazhar is in any of my existing worlds or if it's its own thing. Probably Takiwa if any of them.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Marvelous Lenticularis

New Zealand’s stunning scenery has famously provided the backdrop for fictional worlds in fantasy films. A unique cloud that forms over the Otago region of the country’s South Island also evokes the otherworldly, while very much existing in reality.

The elongated lenticular cloud seen here, known locally as the “Taieri Pet,” is a product of the particular weather patterns and topography on the southern part of New Zealand’s South Island. The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the phenomenon on September 7, 2024.

Lenticular clouds form when prevailing winds encounter a topographic barrier, such as a mountain range. Wind that is forced to flow up and over the mountains creates a kind of wave in the atmosphere. Air cools at the crest of the wave, and the water vapor it contains condenses into clouds. Conversely, falling air leads to warming and evaporation.

“The Taieri Pet is a common feature found in the skies near Middlemarch, Otago,” said meteorologist John Law of New Zealand’s MetService. Here, strong winds from the northwest pour over the steep-sided, flat-topped Rock and Pillar Range, which runs almost perpendicular to those prevailing winds. “As the cloud forms on the crest of this wave, it remains almost stationary in the sky and is shaped by the strong winds blowing through it,” Law said.

Lenticular clouds appear smooth with well-defined edges. Ground-based and airborne observers have described them as a “huge stack of pancakes” or a “pile of plates” that seem to hover in one place. But those looks can be deceiving. “The appearance of the Taieri Pet is a great indicator of strong winds high in the atmosphere,” Law said. Conditions in and around these types of clouds pose aviation hazards in the form of vertical currents, severe turbulence, and icing. In some settings, lenticulars can signal that precipitation is on the way.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

[herora-nuva]

Toa Mata's Second Favorite Masks

So even after the Mata collected all of their various Great masks they clearly all preferred using their first masks primarily. But which of the other masks did they enjoy using? Here's my ideas for it, from most to least canon consistent.

Lewa- Mask of Speed. I think Lewa really enjoys using the mask of speed, he loves moving around quickly. This one actaully has some canon support, as the Kakama is the secondary mask we actually see him use the most. I think he'd really enjoy using the Kakama to build up speed, then launch into the air and switch to levitation to get real flight.

Kopaka- Mask of Shielding. Maybe its because its the first mask he after washing ashore, maybe its because of his first adventure with Pohatu, maybe subtle rivalry with Tahu, or maybe he just likes extra protection considering his shield, but I think Kopaka might like using the Hau. (I'll bet he's also tried using the Miru to get some alone time up in the air, but he found out this is a surefire way to attract Lewa's attention, who comes floating up to him at high speed)

Onua- Mask of X-Ray Vision. He'd use it to be able to see through the tunnel walls of Onu-Wahi. Very useful, especially for rescuing Matoran who might get trapped in the mines! (Might also enjoy the Kaukau, to navigate underground streams and rivers, or to explore sea caves).

Pohatu- Mask of Levitation. Maybe kind of ironic for a Toa whose element is rooted to the ground, but I think with the amount that Pohatu goes rock climbing on cliffs, having a Miru on as backup probably appeals to him. (He might also like the mask of strength, if for no other reason than to see if he can clear the whole island with 1 bounder kick)

Gali- Mask of Strength. I think she might enjoy using the Pakari's strength increase in creative ways, such as boosting her swimming, cliff climbing, and agility. She did once wish she had a Pakari when fighting a giant squid. Also, can't you totally see her coming up to a beached whale and just picking it up to gently carry it to the water? (I also think she might enjoy the mask of speed, just to become a motorboat)

Tahu- Controversial pick I know, but I'm going to say Mask of Water Breathing. After famously proclaiming "water is for wimps" when it comes to surfing Gali challenges him on that, and Tahu, who can't back down from a challenge to save his life, tries out water surfing. Its harder than he realized, but also surprisingly fun. During his regular lava surfing trips where he redirects the lava to flow into the sea, he's taken to just surfing straight from the lava rivers into the ocean, switching to the Kaukau as he goes. (This one is by far the most speculative, but I had to give SOMEONE the Kaukau. Sorry Gali, but not many people would really like your mask. At least this idea does have a little canon, as Tahu was actually shown surfing on a wave with Gali during the Rahkshi comics).

These are just some of my ideas, I'd love to hear if you guys have any, this was kinda fun an cute to think about.

[sina-man]

Karaku or Dwarf khonsu is the smallest species of "big-handed tyrants" endemic to huge island called "tamanorcego land". It has a lot of features which differentiate it from mainland Khonsu and Amun. First of all , Karaku is much less picky in diet and often can go for prey much smaller than itself. Huge prey is less common in it's habitat due to lack of place , resources and isolation from mainland. Dwarf khonsu are also the only "big-handed tyrant" which can be cannibals. However it doesn't include juveniles or hatchlings and often females too. It mainly occurs between adult males which are famously territorial. Due to high competition between males , their confrontations often can end up in serious injuries or even death. Due to that males have thick scales covering their hands , face and certain parts of body. Females are much less aggressive and sometimes can gather together to hunt large game (for example dwarfotan). Karakus are also found in wetlands , at south of "tamanorcego land" which is quite unusual for theropods of their kind.

[gildedmuse]

Hopes this ask helps as a distraction but say in a scenario where Zoro 1) is never tied to that cross and 2) never meets Luffy as a result, do you still think he would've become a pirate? Or do you think he would've just stayed a bounty hunter? Also say if Kuina did survive do you think she and Zoro would've become bounty hunter as well I'd they left the island to become stronger :0?

I have had some ideas as Zoro as a bounty hunter who joins Baroque Works, but thats like... barely not being a pirate. Oh, one where he became a bounty hunter, Saga a marine, and Kuina a pirate. I don't know, the girl screams either Honorable Samurai to me or else, "fuck yeah they told me I couldn't be a kenshi but no one tells pirate what she can't be!"

As for Zoro, his commitment to being Bounty Hunter was never that strong. At first he takss issue with Luffy asking him to be a pirate and Zoro considers that a kind of crook which is just down to his sense of honor in a lot of ways. After he realized Luffy actively helped people and, also, got in a hell of lot of fights he was all for it.

See, Zoro was only ever a Bounty Hunter in the first place because:

Boy needs sake. And sometimes food. Turns out these cost coin.

He needed to get stronger, and to do that he neded stronger opponents

They like... Point you to the guys you have to beat and then you do it and they give you money.

When he realized he could get all oit taht oit of pirating only with less marine assholes, more sake, and tougher enemies? Why would he ever go back?

So, I don't know if he'd stay a Bounty Hunter, but my guess is only if someone took him under their patronage, because sooner or later that boy would be out of good fights, out of food, and outside any known location.

Don't get me wrong, Zoro is VERY self determined, bit he does best when he has someone to, if not follow, believe in. It keeps him focused on bigger things and his loyalty to that person keeps him moving forward. You see it with Kuina, with Luffy, even with Mihawk. I think Zoro is simply naturally drawn to those who challenge him, and who dare him to be better, but also are - in his own definition - honorable and truthworthy, and so he was always going to be a First Mate for SOMEONE, regardless.

As you can see from:

All Hearts: Zoro gets stolen as a slave, still becomes a pirate - for Law - Kuina is alive and a Strawhat. [ZoLaw, minor other ships]

Three of Spades: Technically Zoro does get locked up but it was when he was younger and becomes a Spade Pirate. (Zoro/maybe Ace?, ZoLaw)

Three Tailed Fox: Zoro was a bounty hunter but had agreed to help these guys not knowing they were pirates, and ends up lost in a game of Davy Jones games. However, he's too honorable to back out. (ZoLaw, BARELY)

Seeing Red: Mihawk finds a lost baby Zoro and hands him over to Shanks because eww babies. He grows up a very independent Red Head Pirate. (MiZo mentiond, ZoLaw, Benn/Shanks)

Thriller Blade: Zoro was following around his sister Perona when they get kidnapped by pirate. Fighting zombies is more fun than tea parties so he's not too bothered. (ZoLaw BARELY)

Laws & Rebellions: Law as a Marine Officer, Zoro as a Marine who is actually a revolutionary undercover. (ZoLaw, ZoAce)

POTENTIALS:

Zoro (along with Law and Perona) becoming a Hawkeye Pirate

Zoro becoming a Doflamingo Pirate (there are reasons)

Zoro being in Buggy's gang

Zoro as an actual Marine obsessed with Pirate Law

Marine Law obsessed with Bounty Hunter/Robin Hood Zoro

Zoro as a leader of a dojo and all the famouse kenshi pirates come through

Baroque Works Zoro (who runs of with Law)

Zoro joining Kuina's crew. (For a while I thought of him joining Sabo's old crew, who know, when they meet up if Sabo hadn't gone right into the revoltion.)

I also like the idea of Zoro being from Wano and like, the one person Yamato really likes (Denjiro doesn't think he's too bad, either, personally) and after Ace dies they set out as their own little pirate crew.

Hope this even kind of maybe adressed you question! And thanks!