#pixel enforced pattern

[whompthatsucker1981]

real actual nonhostile question with a preamble: i think a lot of artists consider NN-generated images as an existential threat to their ability to use art as a tool to survive under capitalism, and it's frequently kind of disheartening to think about what this is going to do to artists who rely on commissions / freelance storyboarding / etc. i don't really care whether or not nn-generated images are "true art" because like, that's not really important or worth pursuing as a philosophical question, but i also don't understand how (under capitalism) the rise of it is anything except a bleak portent for the future of artists

thanks for asking! i feel like it's good addressing the idea of the existential threat, the fears and feelings that artists have as to being replaced are real, but personally i am cynical as to the extent that people make it out to be a threat. and also i wanna say my piece in defense of discussions about art and meaning.

the threat of automation, and implementation of technologies that make certain jobs obsolete is not something new at all in labor history and in art labor history. industrial printing, stock photography, art assets, cgi, digital art programs, etc, are all technologies that have cut down on the number of art jobs that weren't something you could cut corners and labor off at one point. so why do neural networks feel like more of a threat? one thing is that they do what the metaphorical "make an image" button that has been used countless times in arguments on digital art programs does, so if the fake button that was made up to win an argument on the validity of digital art exists, then what will become of digital art? so people panic.

but i think that we need to be realistic as to what neural net image generation does. no matter how insanely huge the data pool they pull from is, the medium is, in the simplest terms, limited as to the arrangement of pixels that are statistically likely to be together given certain keywords, and we only recognize the output as symbols because of pattern recognition. a neural net doesn't know about gestalt, visual appeal, continuity, form, composition, etc. there are whole areas of the art industry that ai art serves especially badly, like sequential arts, scientific illustration, drafting, graphic design, etc. and regardless, neural nets are tools. they need human oversight to work, and to deal with the products generated. and because of the medium's limitations and inherent jankiness, it's less work to hire a human professional to just do a full job than to try and wrangle a neural net.

as to the areas of the art industry that are at risk of losing job opportunities to ai like freelance illustration and concept art, they are seen as replaceable to an industry that already overworks, underpays, and treats them as disposable. with or without ai, artists work in precarized conditions without protections of organized labor, even moreso in case of freelancers. the fault is not of ai in itself, but in how it's yielded as a tool by capital to threaten workers. the current entertainment industry strikes are in part because of this, and if the new wga contract says anything, it's that a favorable outcome is possible. pressure capital to let go of the tools and question everyone who proposes increased copyright enforcement as the solution. intellectual property serves capital and not the working artist.

however, automation and ai implementation is not unique to the art industry. service jobs, manufacturing workers and many others are also at risk at losing out jobs to further automation due to capital's interest in maximizing profits at the cost of human lives, but you don't see as much online outrage because they are seen as unskilled and uncreative. the artist is seen as having a prestige position in society, if creativity is what makes us human, the artist symbolizes this belief - so if automation comes for the artist then people feel like all is lost. but art is an industry like any other and artists are not of more intrinsic value than any manual laborer. the prestige position of artist also makes artists act against class interest by cooperating with corporations and promoting ip law (which is a bad thing. take the shitshow of the music industry for example), and artists feel owed upward social mobility for the perceived merits of creativity and artistic genius.

as an artist and a marxist i say we need to exercise thinking about art, meaning and the role of the artist. the average prompt writer churning out big titty thomas kinkade paintings posting on twitter on how human made art will become obsolete doesnt know how to think about art. art isn't about making pretty pictures, but is about communication. the average fanartist underselling their work doesn't know that either. discussions on art and meaning may look circular and frustrating if you come in bad faith, but it's what exercises critical thinking and nuance.

#gonna start tagging shit as #ai art discourse #bc lmao stiff just doesnt stop coming

[thermitetermite]

The power to see emotions! Like auras or however

Power: 🧐

(hey, not all the emoji translations can be winners)

Author's note - I hope you don't mind that I added another power onto the prompt!

Prompt #13 - Reality Manipulation and Aura Reading

Tldr: Villain is walking home when reality goes weird. They're compelled to find the source not expecting to find Superhero dissociating. Can be read as platonic or romantic

CW: Descriptions of a dissociation episode

As Villain walked home from a late day grocery run they felt something strange.

It was an odd feeling that Villain always had a hard time explaining, much like the power that allowed them to experience it.

To put it simply, they could read and sense auras. It made it easy to target nervous marks or read the physical position of law enforcement through walls. Pretty useful for robberies and manipulation but useless in combat.

It was a 6th sense to Villain. Like pressure in your ears when you change elevation or humming a tune before it plays on your favorite radio station.

Needless to say it was strange that Villain was feeling even more odd than usual.

They knew something was definitely amiss when they saw birds flying in reverse. Sparrows specifically, not hummingbirds which can in fact fly backwards.

Villain mentally kicked themselves for getting sidetracked by bird facts before continuing towards home. For all they know it could have been a fluke. Maybe they were wrong about their bird facts. Maybe their birdwatching books were outdated.

They would have continued that train of thought but were snapped back to reality when they noticed what looked like rain. They opened the umbrella they brought (just in case) but was even more weirded out when eggs started falling instead of rain.

From the looks of it they appeared to be chicken eggs which reminded them of a fun fact about chicken gestation... No! Focus! Something weird is happening and bird facts will not help!

Villain made it home, threw their groceries away as fast as possible, and ran back out to try to find the source of the weirdness.

At this point their street looked completely chaotic. Eggs littered the street like rain, cars drove in reverse, everything was some shade of blue and anyone on the street made animal noises instead of actual words.

On top of everything else, time seemed to work weirdly. One moment everything was moving slowly and the next it seemed like everything blurred by. Pure uninterrupted madness.

Villain didn't have time to focus on the mess in front of them. They had to find the source of it.

Luckily their 6th sense acted like many others. In the same way you could hear a sound from another room or smell a fresh baked pie from a bakery down the street, Villain could feel the direction of the anomaly source.

They ran down what was left of the street towards an apartment building that seemed to be more affected than the rest with half of it appearing to be pixelated.

At this point Villain didn't know why they were doing this. This was a hero's job. They weren't responsible for fixing reality. Why charge in headfirst without a second thought?

'Because you can do something about it' a small voice in their head told them. Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't. Maybe dumb thoughts are just dumb thoughts. But Villain couldn't bother to care as they ran up apartment steps.

They turned down a hallway before stopping at a door.

They could feel it. Whatever lied behind this door was responsible for everything going all Alice in Wonderland-y. All the hairs on their arm raised as they put their hand on the doorknob to twist.

Behind the door was a fairly normal apartment. Some of the furniture had funky patterns (maybe due to the source) and the walls had odd textures (probably due to the source).

Sitting on a cow-patterned couch was a person with a TV for a head. Villain was unsurprisingly caught off guard by the sight but they were even more shocked that they could recognize the TV person from the super suit they wore.

"Superhero?"

The figure looked towards them, static playing on their screen. They patted the seat near them before staring straight ahead again.

Villain did the only thing they could and sat next to Superhero.

This was new to Villain. Superhero had a TV instead of their normal head (at least from what they saw on TV, pun not intended), the world seemed to be crumbling around them, and weirdest of all they were in Superhero's apartment.

Superhero that took down legions of villains in a single night. Superhero that featured on magazine covers and talkshows across the city. Superhero that wrote a cookbook and wouldn't look at minor criminals like Villain.

That Superhero... wasn't the same one beside Villain.

"Um... hi. Are you ok? Superhero?" Villain sheepishly asked locking their eyes ahead.

"Yeah. I'm ok." A voice croaked out of the speakers, seeming to come from much farther away than expected. Villain was unconvinced.

"Are you sure about that?" Villain asked. Superhero looked at the hands in their lap.

"No" Superhero replied, "just a mood."

"Do you get moods often?" Villain pressed, earning a small nod from Superhero. "How does it feel when you're in a mood?"

"Pins and needles. Like I'm far away from my body. I'm bad with words but I'll live."

It was clear to Villain that Superhero was dissociating. Maybe it was a bit ironic that someone who could control reality fell out of touch with it. Maybe that just happens when a person is able to control the very fabric of existence.

Point being, what could Villain do? They were sitting next to a person who could easily spagettify them and Villain knew absolutely nothing about how to help someone who's dissociating. But that voice from before came back telling Villain they could at least try.

"I'm sorry. About all of it. I don't really know what I'm doing here or what I'm doing period, but is there anything I can do to help?"

Superhero looked to be lost in thought. Villain started to worry that they said something wrong or needed to repeat the question when Superhero answered.

"Would you mind... Would you mind sitting and chatting to me? I can't respond much but listening helps."

Villain smiled. "I'd be happy to. So, um, do you want to hear some bird facts?"

Superhero nodded in affirmation and Villain began enthusiastically giving bird facts. Villain couldn't tell for sure but they could swear they felt Superhero's aura lighten or see a faint smile occasionally crack through the static on their screen.

It was only a matter of time till Superhero returned to themselves and reality with them. However, Villain took the time to enjoy their company and recounting their numerous factoids. There was no rush.

Who knew you could save a city with a dumb inner voice and some bird facts.

#writing prompt #hero #hero x villain #heroxvillain #supervillain #villain #villian x hero #writing #super villians #romantic or platonic #superhero #superhero x villain #superhero x supervillain #cw dissociation #heroes and villains #heroes and heroism #nerd villain #im a sucker for writing villains who are nerds #bird obsessed villain #my asks #ask #superpower ideas

[ghostedglitch]

happy one year to my hypnospace comic!

(and one day, just pretend i had this up yesterday shhhhh)

here's a little series of fun facts about making it

- started as a poem. i wanted to make a Millenium Anthem animatic and/or write a fic (i ended up doing the latter) but this came to me in the meantime and, being hyperfixated and eager to make something about it, it developed into a comic.

- that said, i was deep in the throes of an art burnout. i tend to make a lot of art around the new year, usually due to being in multiple gift exchanges, as well as working on my own things during winter break since i don't usually have the time to during school, and that wears me out. both this year and last i struggled with having energy to draw. however, i'd just recently found out a style that was pretty easy to work in even in that state: polygonal! so the comic is pixel polygons.

- the comic actually sort of ties into (and is directly quoted in the summary of) the aforementioned fic i wrote—which is called "do(n't) be afraid"—as evidenced by the focus on the HSPD badge as well as the Enforcer being almost a self-insert

- the typography is done by hand. i looked at the game's font file for the standard font and copied it. to this day i can pretty reliably just. handwrite in hypnospace font with the pixel pen. and i do! it's very space efficient!

- the dithering is also done by hand, because i'm a madlad. well, for each pattern i did like a portion by hand and then copy-pasted it until i covered as much area as i needed to, because i'm a madlad but i'm not a masochist. and then when i needed it again i just copied and pasted the layer and used a clipping mask to change its color. now though i have that big pixel brush pack on clip studio paint. so i won't be needing to do that again anytime soon.

- in panel 3 we see the Enforcer's face as well as glasses on their desk. like i said. pretty much a self insert. we also see their computer and hypnospace headband; i studied that intro video for this but between not seeing it a whole lot and the artstyle i was using being really simplified, i'm probably missing something lol

- in panel 4 we see dylan merchant at his desk. there's a calendar behind him. i actually looked up what day of the week was december 31, 1999 so i could circle it. it was a friday.

- the girl in panel 5 is supposed to be rebekah, the girl who likes squisherz and won the fan art contest but didn't get to find out because her dad took away her hypnospace headband. there's only one small picture of her to go off of, though.

- panels 7 and 8, which can also go together as one tall panel, were fucking FUN. what i did for the glitchy static bits was i made various clusters of black rectangles, each cluster on a different layer so i could copy and rotate them to fill more space. then on a clipping mask i used airbrush without antialiasing in white, RGB, and CMY. boom, static pattern. the elements from the game (the error message window, the cursors, the car) i had to copy by hand. see, the wiki doesn't have many screenshots, and if you try to screenshot the game or a video of it then it scrungles your image clarity. so i had to take those screenshots, eyedrop the colors from there, and then do such riveting and time efficient (that's a joke, it took forever) tasks as Count Pixels So Everything Is The Right Size. which for the shiny new HypnOS 2000 look was painstaking. look at those gradients. gradients everywhere. it was worth the work because it looks fantastic but man. and then to scrungle those elements i just used the rectangular selection tool, grabbed arbitrary bits and pieces of the things and Moved Them Elsewhere.

oh yeah babey

#harper babbles #hypnospace outlaw #hypnospace outlaw spoilers #not art

[nickbennettd]

Unveiling Digital Secrets: A Guide to Forensic Image Analysis Tools

Introduction

In an era dominated by digital imagery, the authenticity and integrity of images have become paramount in various fields, from law enforcement to journalism. The rise of misinformation and image manipulation has led to an increased demand for advanced tools capable of unraveling the intricate layers of digital images. This guide aims to shed light on the evolving landscape of image forensic tools, essential for uncovering the truth behind the pixels.

Understanding Image Forensic Tools

The Complexity of Digital Images

Digital images are not just pictures; they are a mosaic of metadata, compression algorithms, and hidden information. Image forensic tools delve into this complexity, employing a variety of techniques to scrutinize every aspect of a digital image. These tools can reveal whether an image has been manipulated, identify the source device, and even extract hidden details that the human eye cannot perceive. From EXIF data analysis to error-level analysis, these tools operate at the forefront of technological advancements, offering investigators and analysts a powerful arsenal to dissect digital secrets.

Categories of Image Forensic Tools

Image forensic tools can be broadly categorized into passive and active tools. Passive tools focus on analyzing existing data within an image, such as metadata and noise patterns. On the other hand, active tools involve altering the image to reveal hidden information or to assess its resilience to tampering. Each category has its unique strengths, with passive tools being non-intrusive and active tools providing a deeper insight into the image's authenticity. Understanding the strengths and limitations of these categories is crucial for professionals working in digital forensics, as it enables them to choose the right tools for specific investigative tasks.

Conclusion

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital imagery, image forensic tools play a pivotal role in uncovering the truth buried within pixels. As we navigate through a sea of manipulated images and deceptive visual narratives, the significance of these tools cannot be overstated. Whether used in legal proceedings, journalistic investigations, or cybersecurity analyses, image forensic tools serve as the guardians of authenticity in our digital age. By staying informed about the latest advancements and categories within this field, professionals can empower themselves to unveil digital secrets and ensure the integrity of visual information in our interconnected world.

[unrealperson011]

The Magic of AI Face Generator: Creating Realistic Faces

I. Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made significant advancements in various fields, and one area where it has truly captivated our imagination is in generating realistic faces. AI-powered face generators have revolutionized the way we create and visualize human faces, unlocking a world of creative possibilities. In this article, we will delve into the magic of AI face generator, exploring their capabilities, the technology behind them, and the impact they have on various industries.

II. Understanding AI Face Generators

It is also known as generative adversarial networks (GANs), are AI models that generate synthetic human faces that are incredibly realistic. These systems are trained on vast datasets of human faces and can generate new faces by learning the underlying patterns and features that make a face unique.

2.1 How AI Face Generators Work?

These tools employ a two-step process involving a generator and a discriminator:

A. Generator: 

The generator component of the random face generator creates new faces by synthesizing images based on the patterns it has learned from the training dataset. It generates images pixel by pixel, aiming to produce realistic and unique faces that resemble those found in the training data.

B.Discriminator: 

The discriminator is responsible for assessing the generated images and distinguishing them from real images. It acts as a critic and provides feedback to the generator, helping it refine its output. Over time, the generator learns to create more realistic faces based on feedback from the discriminator.

The continuous interplay between the generator and the discriminator during the training process leads to the development of AI models capable of producing highly realistic and visually coherent faces.

III.Applications of AI Face Generators

3.1 Entertainment and Gaming Industry: 

These tools have had a profound impact on the entertainment and gaming industry. They enable game developers to create lifelike character models, enhancing the overall gaming experience. Additionally, in the film and animation industry, artificial face-creator tools can generate virtual actors or assist in creating digital doubles for actors, saving time and resources.

3.2 Fashion and Advertising: 

These applications offer innovative solutions for the fashion and advertising industries. They can generate virtual models for fashion campaigns, allowing designers to showcase their creations without the need for physical models. AI-generated faces can also be utilized in advertising to create diverse and representative campaigns.

3.3 Research and Training:

These are valuable tools in research and training scenarios. Researchers can use AI-generated faces to conduct studies related to facial recognition, human behavior analysis, and emotion detection. In training simulations, these random faces can be employed to create realistic scenarios for professionals in fields like healthcare, law enforcement, and customer service.

3.4 Personalization and Customization: 

These software are instrumental in personalized applications. They can generate avatars or profile pictures that closely resemble an individual's appearance, adding a personal touch to social media profiles, virtual reality experiences, or video game characters.

IV. The Impact of AI Face Generators

4.1 Enhancing Creativity and Efficiency for Designers and Artists

Face generatorshave revolutionized the creative process for designers and artists. These tools provide a wealth of inspiration and streamline the creation of realistic human faces. Designers can use these images as a starting point for character design, saving time and effort. Artists can explore new possibilities and experiment with different facial features, expressions, and styles, fueling their creativity. These software act as valuable resources, enabling designers and artists to push the boundaries of their work and achieve remarkable results.

4.2 Ethical Considerations and Implications

The rise of these magical tools has raised important ethical considerations. The potential for misuse, such as creating deep fake videos or misleading images, is a significant concern. AI-generated faces can be used for identity theft, harassment, or spreading misinformation. Additionally, privacy issues arise when AI models are trained on publicly available images without individuals' consent. To address these concerns, ethical guidelines, and regulations must be established to govern the responsible use of random face creators. Transparency, consent, and safeguarding privacy should be prioritized to ensure the ethical deployment of this technology.

4.3 Redefining Beauty Standards and Cultural Representations

These applications have the potential to redefine beauty standards and challenge conventional notions of aesthetics. By generating diverse and inclusive faces, these tools promote representation and celebrate different cultures, races, and identities. They can help break the stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream media and foster a more inclusive and accepting society. These apps contribute to the ongoing dialogue about beauty, identity, and the importance of diverse representation in media and art.

4.4 Potential Risks and Mitigation Strategies

While these magical applications offer tremendous potential, they also come with risks that must be addressed. The technology can inadvertently perpetuate biases present in the training data, resulting in discriminatory outcomes. For example, if the training data is biased towards certain racial or gender groups, the generated faces may reflect these biases. To mitigate such risks, diverse and representative training datasets should be used. Regular audits and fairness assessments of AI models can help identify and address biases. Additionally, continuous monitoring and evaluation of this software are necessary to ensure that potential risks are mitigated and ethical standards are upheld.

V. Statistics

Let's explore some statistics that highlight the impact and growth of these Artificial random face creator software-

5.1 A research study conducted by NVIDIA demonstrated the capabilities of their StyleGAN2 model in generating realistic human faces. The study showed that the model achieved a 64% similarity score when compared to real human faces.

5.2 The global market for AI in computer vision, which includes AI fake face creator apps, is projected to reach USD 25.32 billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.1%, according to a report by Grand View Research.

5.3 A survey by Deloitte found that 63% of organizations are actively implementing or considering AI and machine learning technologies, indicating the growing interest and adoption of AI in various industries.

Conclusion

AI fake facecreators have opened up a world of possibilities for creating realistic human faces. With their ability to generate highly convincing and visually coherent images, these systems have impacted industries such as entertainment, fashion, research, and personalization. While the technology holds great promise, it is crucial to ensure responsible usage and address ethical considerations.

As AI technology continues to evolve, we can anticipate further advancements in AI random face creator apps, unlocking even more creative potential. By harnessing the power of these tools, we can create new digital experiences, push the boundaries of visual storytelling, and explore the depths of human imagination.

[techalertx]

Computer Vision: What it is and why it matters

What is computer vision? In the broadest sense, it is the ability of computers to interpret and understand digital images. This includes everything from identifying objects in an image to understanding the meaning of an image. Computer vision is a rapidly growing field with many potential applications.

It is already being used in a number of industries, including healthcare, automotive, and security. And as the technology continues to develop, the potential uses for computer vision are only going to increase. So, why does computer vision matter? In short, because it has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with the world around us. With computer vision, we can create smarter machines that can help us automate tasks and make better decisions.

We can also use it to enhance our own human abilities, such as by giving us superhuman. It helps us to better understand the emotions of those around us. Ultimately, computer vision matters because it has the potential to change the way we live and work for the better.

Who’s using computer vision?

Computer vision is being used more and more as we move into the digital age. Here are some examples of who’s using it and why it matters:

The medical field is using computer vision to create 3D images of patients for diagnosis and treatment planning.

Law enforcement is using it to automatically identify criminals in security footage.

Manufacturers are using it to inspect products for defects.

Retailers are using it to track inventory levels and customer traffic patterns.

As you can see, computer vision is becoming increasingly important in a wide variety of industries. It’s accuracy and efficiency saves time and money, while also making our world a safer place.

How computer vision works?

Computer vision is a field of Artificial Intelligence that deals with teaching computers to interpret and understand digital images. Just like the human visual system, computer vision systems perceive the world through digital images. There are a number of different techniques that can be used for computer vision. But they all boil down to three main steps: 1) Pre-processing: This is where the raw data from an image (pixels) is converted into a format. That can be processed by a computer. This usually involves cleaning up the image, removing noise, and correcting for any distortions. 2) Feature extraction: This step involves extracting meaningful information from the pre-processed image data. This can be done using a variety of methods, but commonly used techniques include edge detection and template matching. 3) Object recognition: In this final step, the extracted features are used to recognize objects in the image. This step usually requires some form of machine learning, as it’s often not possible to write explicit rules.Tthat will reliably identify objects in all cases.

What is computer vision?

Computer vision is a field of computer science. That deals with how computers can be made to gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do. Computer vision is concerned with the automatic extraction. It’s analysis and understanding of useful information from a single image or a sequence of images. It involves the development of computational models of objects. This scenes from one or more images for applications such as recognition, detection and segmentation. The ultimate goal of computer vision is to give computers a high level of understanding about what they see so that they can perform tasks such as object recognition, scene understanding and image retrieval automatically and efficiently.

Computer vision for animal conservation

Computer vision is a field of computer science that deals with the automatic extraction, analysis, and understanding of useful information from digital images. It’s an important tool for animal conservation because it can be used to monitor and track wildlife, identify poachers, and assess the health of ecosystems. Computer vision has been used in a variety of ways to help conserve animals and their habitats. For example, it can be used to automatically count animals in a given area, which is useful for estimating population size and density.

It can also be used to track individual animals, which is helpful for studying migration patterns and understanding how different species interact with one another. Additionally, computer vision can be used to identify poachers by their tracks or the presence of illegal hunting equipment in an area. And finally, computer vision can be used to assess the health of ecosystems by monitoring changes in vegetation over time. Overall, computer vision is a powerful tool that can be used in many different ways to help protect animals and their habitats.

Seeing results with computer vision

Computer vision is a field of computer science and engineering focused on the creation of intelligent algorithms that enable computers to interpret and understand digital images. The applications of computer vision are vast, ranging from autonomous vehicles and facial recognition to medical image analysis and industrial inspection.

Computer vision algorithms are typically designed to draw inferences from digital images in order to make decisions or take action. For example, a computer vision algorithm might be used to automatically detect pedestrians in an image in order to trigger a warning for the driver of an autonomous car. Or, a computer vision algorithm might be used to analyze a medical image for signs of cancer. The development of effective computer vision algorithms is challenging due to the vast amount of data that must be processed and the many different sources of variability present in digital images. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in recent years thanks to advances in both hardware and software. As the field of computer vision continues to grow, we can expect even more amazing applications that make our lives easier and safer.

#computerscience #digital #computervision #engineering #machinelearning #artificialintelligence #tech #technews #techalertx #techcareer #technology #technologies #technologynews #computer #5g launch #futurism #mobile #news

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Scientists Show How Forests Measure Up Every now and then, a new map changes the way we view our planet. This is one of those maps. The map above shows the height of Earth’s forests, from stubby saplings to timbers towering more than 50 meters tall. It reveals some patterns you might expect, such as taller forests hugging the equator in the Amazon, central Africa, and Indonesia. But tall trees show up outside the tropics, too. For example, giant sequoias in California can grow to nearly 80 meters (260 feet) tall; Bhutan pines in the eastern Himalayas reach similar heights, exceeding the scale of this map. But these astonishingly tall trees are the minority. According to a research team led by Nico Lang of the EcoVision Lab at ETH Zürich, only 5 percent of the Earth’s land area in 2020 was covered with trees standing taller than 30 meters. Lang, together with colleagues Konrad Schindler and Jan Wegner, produced the map by merging lidar data from NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission with optical imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites. GEDI’s lidar profiles give detailed canopy heights, but the profiles cover limited areas; Sentinel-2 optical data has abundant coverage, but it is not designed to measure canopy height. The researchers used the GEDI data to train a deep-learning model capable of estimating canopy heights from Sentinel-2 images anywhere on Earth. On a very basic level, it works like this: A computer examines millions of examples of brightness patterns contained in the pixels of Sentinel-2 optical imagery. The algorithm is then given the tree height at the central pixel of each example region, as precisely measured by GEDI’s lidar. The algorithm takes this information and teaches itself, learning which canopy heights are associated with certain textural and spectral patterns in the images. Once the model is trained, it only relies on the optical images to estimate canopy height. “Our focus in this work was twofold: First, we wanted to reduce the error associated with tall canopies, as they typically store large amounts of biomass and carbon,” said Lang, a remote sensing scientist who developed the approach. “Second, our approach integrates probabilistic deep-learning techniques to estimate the uncertainty of each pixel estimate. This is an important aspect to inform downstream users about expected errors in the map.” Scientists have mapped the planet’s tree canopy heights before, but current technologies and the novel approach have allowed Lang and colleagues to achieve more detail. The length of each pixel on these maps equates to 10 meters on the ground—detailed enough to show some interesting patterns on local scales. The detailed map above shows canopy heights near Eugene, Oregon. Notice the checkerboard pattern across the landscape, which reflects land management decisions made in the mid-1800s when the Oregon and California Railroad was granted square-mile parcels of land along a rail line between Portland and California. Now controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, these parcels remain mostly forested, while the privately owned parcels in between tend to be harvested for timber. Even amid the forested parcels, some trees are quite a bit taller than others. Detailed views also reveal that taller canopy heights often occur within the borders of protected areas. This map, for example, shows the comparatively taller trees of Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. Declared a forest reserve in 1903, clearing was restricted but the law was not consistently enforced. In 2005, the forest was declared a national park. Since then, various projects have aimed to better protect the trees and to boost ecotourism and education on biodiversity in the park. Not all tall trees have this level of protection. Analyzing the global map, Lang and colleagues found that only 34 percent of the planet’s tall canopies (above 30 meters) fall within protected areas. Maps like these could contribute to future studies on forest ecosystems and perhaps inform forest management. For example, research has shown that spotted owls in California prefer tall trees, as opposed to shorter, denser stands. The maps could also aid in climate studies, given that tall trees store abundant amounts of carbon above the ground in their trunks and branches. “We hope that this work will advance future research in climate, carbon, and biodiversity modeling,” Lang said. “We also hope that our freely available map can support the work of conservationists.” NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Lang, N. et al. (2022). Story by Kathryn Hansen.

#space #science #earth observatory #nasa #news

[spectogram]

King of Spades: head over heart and matters concerning law enforcement , judgement and integrity

(Please click for quality! Image description added under the cut)

[begin ID]: Coronabeth sits on a throne, depicted as a white cutout in the shape of a spade. She’s sitting with her knees apart and she’s holding a sword with the tip down, so it’s resting against the tip of her boot. She’s wearing golden yellow boots that are knee high with a red laurel pattern at the top. Her pants are fitted and red with a spade pattern in a lighter shade of red on top. Her shirt is blue and loose, and is open down to her waist where it’s tucked into her pants. She’s wearing a body chain that falls between her breasts and disappears under her shirt. It has a gold chain connected by 2 red spades. She’s also wearing a chain and a signet ring with a spade on it on her hand not holding the sword. She’s wearing an ornate collar that’s gold with 4 rows of patterns going across: one is laurel leaves, one is a row of flowers, one is a Greco Roman style geometric pattern and one is a row of spaces. She’s also wearing a piece of armor on each shoulder, both in a reflective gold material. One is frowning and one is smiling. Coronabeth has a mane of wavy, thick blonde hair, a golden brown complexion, purple eyes and a gold mustache. Behind her we can see a royal blue sky, a stylized sun with a calm face, clouds and trees. The entire drawing is done using a pixelated brush, giving it the look of old computer graphics. Many of the visual motifs come together to reflect the king of spades playing and tarot cards. [end ID]

#the locked tomb #coronabeth tridentarius #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #tlt #gtn #htn #ntn #seelie art

[omnepresent-technologies]

How To Protect Your Data Analytics

The data analysis is so robust that you can combine data sets to infer the lifestyle, consumer habits, social media preferences of the user even if no data set reveals this information. It’s no wonder that people have raised concerns about the impact of big data on privacy. People worry that essential protection is now being challenged by the sheer speed, accuracy, and amount of data and how it can be manipulated once taken for granted. Some people believe that our concept of privacy must be changed and that the need for innovation and unlocking the value of data must exceed traditional concepts. But this idea of a compromise between privacy and innovation is useless and outdated. While businesses are using data analysis to reveal new insights and innovations to drive progress, it is entirely possible to protect personal privacy. 

Just as technology has produced data analysis, it can also be used to solve the resulting privacy issues. Data analysis aims to coordinate the needs of solid data protection and data-driven innovation technology because it requires a lot of processing power, so the solution must be lightweight.In recent years, the rapid technological advancement of intelligent devices and their use in a wide range of applications has caused the data generated by these devices to grow exponentially. Therefore, traditional data analysis techniques may not handle this extreme data called big data generated by different devices. 

However, this exponential data growth has opened the door for different types of attackers to launch various attacks exploiting various vulnerabilities in the data analysis process. Taking inspiration from the previous discussion, we explore models and techniques based on machine learning and deep learning that can identify and mitigate known and unknown attacks in this article. Machine learning and deep learning-based technology can use test and training data sets across many network domains to learn from traffic patterns and make intelligent decisions about attack identification and mitigation. 

Here are a few examples mentioned below:

1. Image Recognition- Image recognition may be a well-known and widespread example of machine learning within the world. It can identify an object as a digital image, supporting the intensity of the pixels in black and white images or color images. Real-world examples of image recognition:

Label an x-ray as cancerous or not.

Recognize handwriting by segmenting one letter into smaller images.

Machine learning is also frequently used for facial recognition within an image. Using a database of individuals, the system can identify commonalities and match them to faces. This is often used in law enforcement.

2. Speech recognition- Machine learning can translate speech into text. Specific software applications can convert live voice and recorded speech into a document. The speech is often segmented by intensities on time-frequency bands also. Real-world examples of speech recognition:

Voice search

Voice dialing

Appliance control

Some of the foremost common uses of speech recognition software are devices like Google Home or Amazon Alexa.

3. Medical diagnosis- Machine learning can assist health professionals with the diagnosis of diseases. Many professionals use a combination of chatbots and speech recognition features to detect patterns in symptoms. Real-world examples for medical diagnosis are:

We are assisting in formulating a diagnosis or recommending a treatment option.

Oncology and pathology make use of ML to identify cancerous tissue.

Analyze bodily fluids.

As far as rare diseases are concerned, a combination of face recognition software and ML helps scan pictures of a patient and detect phenotypes that correlate with rare genetic disorders.

A secure data analysis architecture based on deep learning and machine learning has been proposed to classify normal or attacked input data. The detailed classification of the security data analysis is summarized as a threat model. The threat model uses multiple parameters such as efficiency, delay, accuracy, reliability, and attacks to solve various research challenges in analyzing security data. Finally, a comparison of existing safety data analysis recommendations is entered for multiple parameters, allowing the end-user to select one of the safety data analysis recommendations and compare it with other suggestions. 

Data is a term used to refer to massive data sets with more diverse and complex structures. These characteristics are often associated with additional difficulties in storing, analyzing, and applying other procedures or extracting results. Data analysis is a term used to describe the process of studying large amounts of complex data to reveal hidden patterns or identify secret associations. However, there are apparent contradictions between the security and privacy of big data and its widespread use. This document concentrates on privacy and security issues in big data, the difference between the two, and privacy requirements in big data. 

Many privacy protection mechanisms have been developed for privacy protection at different stages of the big data life cycle. This document aims to provide an essential review of the privacy protection mechanisms in big data and to challenge existing tools. This article also introduces recent privacy protection technologies in big data, such as finding a needle in a haystack, identity-based anonymization, differential privacy, privacy-protected big data release, and rapid anonymization of big data streams. 

This article is about the privacy and security aspects of healthcare in big data. It also conducts comparative research on several newer big data privacy technologies.In today’s digital world, a large amount of information is stored in big data, and database analysis can provide opportunities to solve important social problems, such as healthcare. Smart energy big data analytics is also a very complex and challenging topic, having many common problems with big data analytics in general. Smart energy big data involves a wide range of physical processes, among which data intelligence can have a major impact on the safe operation of the system in real-time. This is also helpful for marketing companies and other business ventures to develop their business. Because the database contains personal information, it is easy to provide direct access to researchers and analysts. 

Data analytics has appealed to many organizations because they lack standard security and privacy protection tools, and a large portion of them choose not to use these services. These sections discuss possible strategies for updating the big data platform with the help of privacy protection features. Developers must be able to verify that their applications comply with privacy agreements and regardless of changes in applications or privacy regulations, sensitive information is kept confidential. To overcome these challenges, it was concluded that more contributions in formal methods and test procedures are required.

One platform that securely processes your data is Microsoft Power BI. It keeps your data secure with industry-leading data protection features like sensitivity labeling, real-time access monitoring, end-to-end encryption, and more. 

If you’re looking to implement a BI platform for your business, get in touch with us.

#Data analytics #PowerBI consultants #PowerBI service providers #PowerBI experts #BI consulting services

[ghostboy-gamedev]

Learn Log #4 - Grassy Grove

On week 4 of my pixel art journey, I learned how to make objects of nature including grass, bushes and trees. Unfortunately, I had to postpone this to this week when the learning and blog post was set for last week as I was just preparing for a return to university (it’s all online – social distancing dw). Anyway, I ended up making the forest scene you see above, and it was a lot of fun. I think that the GUI elements last week had a focus on technicality and exactness. Letters are very rigid, and we have somewhat set ideas about what each character should look like. However, nature is more flexible and therefore logic isn’t as heavily involved.

Tile Sets

Before jumping into the actual elements of this week’s piece I want to talk about making pixel art tiles. You will have probably noticed that the nature scene is quite rigid like each element is set into a box. This is because I’m learning pixel art to make games and games often use tile sprites to build their environment.

Tile sprites are the floors and sometimes walls of the environment. They often loop or repeat to cover the environment, however, some engines have tools allowing game designers to build environments tile by tile.

In the first case, the tile sprite will have to be created with its looping in mind and details may be added to provide variation in the environment. However, these added details may highlight the repeating the pattern and the more a detail sticks out the obvious the repetition becomes. Additionally, smaller tiles will repeat more frequently, and this also shows repeating textures.

The second scenario requires variation to be created from the creation of multiple tiles. This is great for creating variation; however, the tiles will also have to line up with each other which may be trickier for more rigid surfaces like rocks or bricks.

Since Unity has a tile builder tool and I was creating a natural environment where tiles wouldn’t need to line up so clearly – I decided to go with the second option.

The size of the tiles may also dictate the size of the rest of the game. For example, a bush may be 1 tile large in terms of level design, so the size of that bush is determined by the size of the tile. This also goes for the player whose sprite will typically range from 1 tile to 2x2 tiles. I decided to just make my tiles 16x16 as I enjoy learning within that space.

Grass

A grass tile is typically made of a green background with blades of grass texturing the surface. Many people may open up a couple of green canvases and start texturing them with green lines, however, there’s a much better way to do things I think. Since we’re working with 16x16 tiles there’s a limited number of shapes that look like grass and are small enough to fit within the tile. So, if we make a bunch of lines in green then we have blades of grass that we can copy and paste into each tile (the blades should typically be a lighter green as light will be hitting them).

However, having blades of grass like this make tiles look flat. Adding shading will fix this issue by giving the grass depth, however, more complicated shading will obviously make the background more complicated which can affect the readability of your game.

Each blade of grass can now be copied into a 16x16 canvas to make grass tiles. I made 4 grass tiles shown below putting approximately 10 blades into each tile. I made each tile with different elements of the environment in mind such as short grass, long grass, bushy grass and leafy grass.

With these tiles, I created a larger image to test the repetition of the tiles. The repetition wasn’t a big issue; however, I didn’t think the leafy grass fit with the rest of the grass, so I decided to leave it behind for the next stage.

Next, I was going to add an extra tile for each of the current textures to reduce repetition as well as two flower variants for each tile type to add some colours into the textures. I did another test of the tiles’ repetition and overall look and it looked good but somewhat cluttered though I figured that this wouldn’t be an issue when I deliberately place the tiles rather than randomly scatter them.

I had in my mind the type of scene I wanted to make for this week, but it required dirt paths. Luckily this wasn’t an issue to make. I made two variations of the straight, one-way paths as they would be tiling and altered one of these tiles slightly to make the curve and intersection tiles.

I then assembled these 15 tiles into the image below.

Trees

Next, I wanted to add some plant life which would involve trees and bushes. I decided to do trees first as they would be larger than the bushes. First, I started with the shape of the tree which would be fairly basic. I made a rough tree trunk shape to start with and topped it with a circle that was a little squished before refining the shape a little more to get what’s shown below.

I then added colour into the tree. A simple brown for the bark and 4 shades of green for the leaves. These greens were made by colour picking the base green background and hue-shifting it towards yellow so the tree would stand out more from the background.

The colours are organised into ovals to help give the tree a sense of depth. The dark shades wrap around the edges of the tree to show the tree’s roundness. The colour thins out as it goes around because you’re viewing the shaded leaves from a side-on perspective.

Next, I blurred the lines between these circles by mixing the colours slightly. This was the start of adding leaves onto the tree. Quickly after that, I added more detail to the leaves by spotting the head of the tree with lighter greens. The details added were in ‘leaf-like’ shapes like hearts, single lines, and arrows. They don’t look like leaves individually and can’t receive much detail themselves (such as a stem) but together they make the tree look nice and bushy. I also added some detail to the tree trunk including shading.

The tree trunk seemed a little off when I checked it out with the image I had so far, unfortunately. So, I added some extra trunk at the bottom along with a nice shadow. This shadow was the colour black at a transparency of 127 (or half transparency). This works really well as a quick and easy shadow on detailed background, but it does, unfortunately, mean the shaded area is not hue-shifted as typically preferred. The final product is below.

Looking at this sprite you may think it would be difficult to construct a game environment due to the leaves, trunk shape and shadow involved. However, we can place each section down as a separate 16x16 tile with the main trunk tile being a collider and other tiles not having a collision box (like decoration tiles – we don’t want players to run into tree leaves). This works out really well, and I focused on the main trunk tile when positioning the sprite in the piece. Which is shown below.

However, the scene below is bit lonely so I thought I’d add some pine trees as a level border. The process of the pine tree is similar so I won’t describe each step but will show the images. This time around I did shape the tree a bit more wildly with branches and leaves sticking out from the tree. I also hue shifted towards bluer colours rather than the more yellow colours I used in the round tree.

Next, it was time to add more trees into the scene and add some grass beneath them. I made the grass beneath them short grass simply because it looks a bit neater than the other grass types.

I think it looks pretty neat! I made a pine tree variant by swapping the colours with that of the round tree for some variation which worked as a nice, easy trick. But it would look livelier with some bushes.

Bushes

You might have looked at the trees just before and thought, ‘That kind of looks like a bush on a stump.’ That’s because the techniques used to make bushes and trees are typically very similar depending on the style of the game. Since we’re using a 16x16 size which is somewhat limited they will likely turn out in roughly the same way.

I started with a circle shape that was modified at the bottom to be a bit flatter. This will hopefully give the impression that the bush is touching the ground and rounds out on the top

I did a similar process in colouring the bush as I did with the tree, however, I used fewer colours as I didn’t have as much room for highlights with the bush. The colours used are actually the same as those in the pine tree.

I then adjusted the outline to give the bush a wilder feel as well as texturing the inside of the bush to create the appearance of leaves.

The bush still felt a little flat, so I added highlights to the top of it to add a greater sense of depth. The highlight was rounded towards its end at the bottom to enforce the rounded nature of the bush. This required me to add another outline tone for highlights which I might apply to other elements of the picture. I was pretty happy with the bush, so I made another for variation and added them into the picture with some shadows.

The picture looked pretty good, but I thought some touch-ups might make it just that little bit better.

Touch-Ups/Conclusion

To touch up the piece I added some more trees for denser looking forest, added the lighter outline colour to the tress and expanded shadows around some of the pine trees. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the shadows could use some refinement at the top border of trees. I also think that top border highlights the repeating pine tree trunk which could also be changed to tile better. I do wish my bushes were a bit leafier than shrub-like, however, I think my ability to make leaves on both bushes and trees will improve as I practice. I also think a 32x32 base picture would allow me to make some more defined leaves. The lighting on the pine trees also uses a different technique to the round tree so next time I’ll try to be more consistent with that. Overall though I’m happy and I quite like the outline highlights as they make the image a bit softer.

That concludes week 4 of learning how to make pixel art. Next week I’ll be looking at sand, water and rocks to make a top-down beach scene.

My learning and this blog post wouldn’t have been made possible without these fantastic resources. Go check them out if you wanna learn some stuff about pixel art!

How to Draw Tiled Pixel Art by TipTut

Creating Variation in Pixel Art TutsByKai

Pixel Art 101: Grass by Pixel Pete

How to Make Pixel Grass Tiles by TutsByKai

RPG Grass Background Tiles by HeartBeast

Pixel Art 101: Trees by Pixel Pete

[Let’s Pixel] Tree by HeartBeast

[Let’s Pixel] Spruce Tree by HeartBeast

Pixel Art 101: Bush by Pixel Pete

#pixel art #learning #gamedev #pixel aesthetic #pixel #gaming #learn

[champprivacy]

GDPR Compliant Cookie Solution - What it means?

Cookie Law as passed in 2009 got a new enforcement life after GDPR. Court of Justice of the European Union in the Planet49 case ruled that storing cookies required active consent(GDPR standard). Following the judgment Data Protection of Authorities of Ireland, Germany, Spain, and others have started enforcement actions against websites that do not have a GDPR compliant cookie consent banner on their website.

5 steps to create a GDPR compliant cookie consent solution for your website

Give users a notice using a banner or pop-up with clear and comprehensive information on the use & purposes of cookies. Ensure you add a link to your cookie policy or privacy policy in the notice

Set the cookies only when the user has given consent for cookies

Give users an option to Accept and Reject cookies

Create a second layer where users can give consent to each purpose of cookies separately

Create a permanent link or button for users to withdraw cookie consent. This should be placed on your home page or privacy policy page.

On implementing the above steps, your website should have the following flow for cookie consent:

GDPR Compliant Cookie Consent Banner

Table of Contents

What’s cookie consent

Cookie Consent Banner Design

GDPR Cookie Consent Examples

Cookie Consent Script

Cookie Consent for Google Tag Manager

Cookie Consent for Website Builders

Conclusion

What’s cookie consent

Cookie Consent is the process by which websites take user’s consent to set cookies. It started with Europe’s ePrivacy directive or the cookie law. With ePrivacy, it was mandatory for websites to take consent from users before storing or accessing cookies from user’s devices. However, websites termed consent as showing cookie banners with just an Ok button or implying consent by use of the website. GDPR clearly defines what constitutes as a legal consent and hence now cookie consent has to include an option to deny alongside accept and a method to give consent based on purposes or use of cookies like Targeting, Analytics amongst others.

When is cookie consent needed?

Cookie consent is needed:

If you offer your product or service to EU customers, including a free product or service. For example, media websites like Techcrunch are free services for EU customers

If you are targeting EU customers, this is indicated if you have an EU domain like .eu, .de or you offer local currencies, local language on your website or you are advertising to EU users like an American university advertising for its courses in EU

What happens if you don’t comply with cookie consent?

Users can file a complaint against your company with the Data Protection Authority of your country and this could lead to fines under GDPR. Recently, the Data Protection Authority of Ireland, Germany have started a sweep of websites to check if they comply with cookie consent and will be sending notices soon. Here are some actions are taken for not complying with cookie consent:

Planet 49: CJEU Rules on Cookie Consent

Oracle & Salesforce hit with class action GDPR lawsuit

IKEA was fined 10,000 Euros for cookie consent violations

Vueling Airlines was fined 30,000 Euros for not allowing users to give granular consent

Cookie Consent Banner Design:

A cookie consent banner has the following requirements to make it legal:

Cookie Consent Text: This is also termed as Cookie Consent Notice and is used to inform in a simple, clear language that you use cookies on your website.

Cookie Policy: This is a detailed version of your cookie consent notice explaining why you use cookies, a list of cookies with purposes and a method for users to withdraw consent for cookies

Accept & Deny Buttons: These are options for your users to either accept or deny the cookies. You should ensure that you don’t use dark design patterns to give more weight to Accept over Deny. For you cookie consent to be valid in EU, you have to ensure that for users ease of accepting and denying cookies is same.

Cookie Preferences: This should open up a preference center where users can give granular consent for each purpose. ePrivacy allows websites to set Strictly Essential Cookies without consent so that can always be on, for other purposes like Targeting, Analytics you should allow users to switch them on or off.

Is your website cookie compliant?

Scan your website for cookies and generate a compliance report

GDPR Cookie Consent Examples

Cookie Consent is the first interaction that users will have on your website, you should ensure that it is styled according to your website. Smashing Magazines list some ways to create user-friendly cookie consent banners. Some examples we liked and you can take inspiration from:

Techcrunch does a good job with the cookie consent notice. They explain to the users that they are using cookies, explains the use of the cookies, and also links to both privacy and cookie policy. However, they don’t have an option to Reject cookies and thus not a great experience for users who want to reject the use of cookies.

GDPR Cookie Consent Example: Techcrunch

AirBnB gives a preference center for users to give consent on each purpose separately. Here they have clearly defined Performance as one of the purpose explaining the use of cookies. Also, they allow users to switch off cookies for this purpose completely or switch off each cookie individually. In our opinion, consent for each cookie is overkill for users and you should be good with just giving a purpose level option to users.

GDPR Cookie Consent Example: AirBnB

Asos’s cookie banner is well styled but does not give option to users to reject or change cookie settings. This is something we would not recommend.

GDPR Cookie Consent Example: Asos

Webflow gives a nice banner at the bottom but does not give option to the user to accept or reject cookies. You can change your preferences, it would have been much better if we had the buttons on the banner itself.

GDPR Cookie Consent Example: Webflow

Cookie Consent Script

Cookie consent script blocks and unblocks cookies based on the user’s consent. It ensures websites comply with the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR. There are two ways in which the script can function:

Manually block cookies:

Change the class of each script that is setting a script from </type = javascript to </type=text & class = website-category>

The class value will allow you to handle granular cookie consent

Once the user gives you consent, change these scripts to type = javascript and execute them

One of the problems with the manual method is it takes a lot of time and you can miss some scripts which will make your website non-compliant.

Automatically block cookies:

Scans the website for cookies and allows you to categorize them into different categories

Automatically blocks the scripts and unblocks them once the user gives cookie consent

Sign-up to Privado and automatically block cookies with our cookie consent script.

Cookie Consent for Google Tag Manager

Your cookie consent solution should also ensure cookies set via tags from Google Tag Manager are blocked until the user gives consent. Here is how you can you use our cookie consent solution to do that:

Download the container from our dashboard

Import the container to your GTM, it will add the triggers to block and allow tags in your GTM account. Some examples are Allow Analytics, Block Analytics

You can either use the Allow triggers to fire these tags or use the Block triggers and add as an exception for your tags

Go to preview and your tags should only be fired once the user gives consent

‍

Cookie Consent for Website Builders

We offer integration with the following third-party website builder tools to seamlessly display a cookie consent banner:

Conclusion

Cookie Consent seems simple on the outside but involves you to set the right cookie banner, blocking cookies, tags, pixels with the help of a script, and allowing users to change cookie consent from your home page or cookie policy. This guide will help you with setting all these elements for your website.

You can also use this free cookie consent tool and make your website compliant with privacy laws across the world including GDPR.

‍

Originally published at https://www.privado.ai on October 6, 2020.

#gdpr #data privacy #ccpa #cookie consent #cookiebanner #data protection #data protection Officer

[secretshinigami]

Author: @translightyagami For: @kratqa Pairings/Characters: L, Light Yagami, Kiyomi Takada, Sayu Yagami, Kyosuke Higuchi Rating/Warnings: T for, you know. Murder happening off screen but its still gross. Prompt: Roleswap AU between L and Light. Author’s notes: I hope you like junior sleuths Light and Kiyomi, L and Ryuk having a mutual candy-and-TV = Death Note agreement, and letter-writing, because when I write a fic…you know there’s gonna b letters. i also appreciate your patience with any typos; I am a human with sticky fingers.

To-Oh during spring made Light’s skin crawl: love notes proliferated the campus from students not quite grown out of youthful notions; heat creeping beneath his sweaters, tugging at them as if to say short sleeves begged entrance; and the anniversary of his father’s heart attack—one year past—hung over all the landmarks no matter their relation to cardiac health. In that way, he noticed the newspaper story of the murderer who died of a heart attack blaring on a nearby kiosk. Without any real eye of the bizarre, Light didn’t notice things unless their relevance was near to his own life or those around him. Dark ink stared back at him, a jack-knifed business man laid out next to a graphic discussing murder statistics in the Kanto region. It was of no surprise or consequence to Light, whose policeman father made him all too aware of how life flitted from a people every day.

Slipping payment to the newsstand worker and stalking off to his next class, Light read through the story: a well-liked business man succumbing to a heart attack mid-quarter projections meeting and was found—after a house search was requested by the detective L—to have four intact human skeletons buried in his backyard. The wife, a woman with a name that flew in one ear and out the other, claimed no knowledge of her husband’s cruel hobby of picking up young men and then poisoning them with club drugs concocted in their garage; however, the great detective was said to still hold her in suspicion and no innocence was assumed.

A woman bumped into Light, who flicked his newspaper down and apologized for not paying attention. His thoughts were scrambled between happiness for a murderer slain and a stomachache—born not of bad food but an innate strangeness to what he’d just read. The newspaper went into his bag, the story out of his mind, and Light continued classes at To-Oh without much more than passing conversation devoted to “that criminal who died of a heart attack, can you believe it?”

Which, of course, wasn’t his last thought on the case. He chewed the flavor out of the incident, but in quiet. Light never liked to burden people with more than they could take and while his own voice was his favorite song, he knew people had limits. Off-hand, he mentioned the report to his father at dinner, whose murmured response left Light’s trap shut tight to further inquisitions.

“How troubling,” his father said. “We must treasure every day, and live our lives as honestly as possible.”

Three weeks later, in a smaller column, another criminal’s heart attack was reported; this time, Light didn’t pay for the newspaper as Kiyomi put her copy down in front of him. Her near-despot rule over the school’s journalism outfit drove her to often drop stories in front of him, asking for his interest and time to discuss various dictates of law enforcement. For this story, however, she asked not for his expertise, but instead to prod in tandem with her at the curiosity of it all.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She traced a finger over the meager profile shot of the victim, who was discovered post-death to have been collecting severed human fingers in his fridge door. “That one guy dies, turns out to be awful, and then another one?”

“Makes a person want to believe in patterns.” Light looked at her through his lashes, fork to his lips as he took another bite of their shared tart. Whenever they discussed important issues, Kiyomi liked to do it at cafes; Light suspected it was out of journalistic habit, since she took all her interviews to the same place they sat now. “Or even luck, I guess.”

“Luck?”

“Well,” he said, “luck for anyone who would have been those guys’ victims. Luck for the rest of us. Not so much for them.”

Kiyomi took a larger piece of tart, shining with a glazed cherry, and chewed it in vigorous gnashes. “Do you believe in patterns?” Her question was idle, almost absent between chews.

Light shook his head, fork placed down on a napkin and his hand now free to fish his phone from his pocket. “I don’t think there’s anything to this random stuff besides a few jerks getting their comeuppance,” he said. “Nothing but justice, you know. I have to go; my sister texted me.”

Sayu sent him a string of texts, to be honest, about how his mom needed him to come home and help with dinner. Of course, when Light arrived he saw the situation for what it was: his sister needed to watch a TV drama premiere; his mother needed onions chopped; and both of them were unwilling to compromise. Fortunately, the best brother and good son arrived home in time to accommodate them by chopping onions and fending suggestions that he was on a date with Kiyomi.

He fell into his computer chair, swung himself around in lazy circles until his brain became dizzy—one word thoughts all that remained. Onions. Kiyomi. Death. Patterns. Luck. Sticking his foot out, Light halted his movement and froze. In two scoots, he was at his keyboard, and he typed in his query to the Internet as quick as he thought it: Recent Murder Investigations Detective L. After a second, he added quotations around the phrase Detective L and pressed enter. Floods of pixel results washed over him as Light took in link after link to articles covering the great detective who solved any case put on his desk but never revealed himself to the public.

Three articles spoke of specific cases L solved: the Monkey Thief Theory (a jeweled monkey stolen from a well-loved heiress, ultimately found to have been absconded by her own hand); the Pit Viper Peril (a man who used viper venom to poison his business associates); and the Beautiful Woman Break-ins (a woman broke into several of the world’s richest mansions but stole only their fresh fruit. The woman was caught, but no details on her arrest were ever given to the public.) Two articles called L the single most important person in criminal justice history. One article mentioned, albeit as an end note, that L had worked on both cases whose solving had more to do with sudden heart attacks claiming the perpetrators than his own prowess.

A headache formed at the horizon of Light’s skull after reading too close to the screen, so he tried to print the articles. Only one printed all the way—on the second, he ran out of paper and went to Sayu’s room to bug her for using all the printer paper, which she insisted she needed for art.

“You print off pictures of that actor guy in full color and paste them onto your binders,” Light complained. “I need that paper for important stuff. You can’t be so wasteful.”

“It’s the art of collage,” she intoned. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have passions like I do, otherwise you’d go out with Kiyomi.”

Light took a third of her printer paper as revenge for the comment and brought in the articles to show Kiyomi. Her eyes were luminous when he arrived at the café table, arms similarly weighted with information which they swapped. She gave him a newspaper with intriguing, if distressing, updates: another man killed by cardiac arrest, revealed to be a secret killer.

“Do you know who was pursuing this one’s death?” He paused, pushing the paper away to give the waitress his full attention and order: black coffee and banana muffin, if they still have some. Kiyomi ordered ahead of him, and her meal sits in front of her pock-holed by her absent bites. In answer, she shakes her head and takes another minuscule clump of her rolled omelet.

“Nobody special was named, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “These articles are pretty good, but it’s hard to know whether L has been involved in more without knowing how many heart attack deaths like this have happened.” She gestured with her chopsticks as she continued, pointing at the highlighted National Police Association in the paper’s text. “From what I can gather, the Japanese police are the ones that found the posthumous evidence in the man’s apartment, same as with the other ones.”

“What’s the rub is how would they know?” Light tapped his chin, wristwatch catching café lamp glow and projecting a jiggling circle down on the laminate table. “A heart attack happens, you can just rule that as someone’s poor health, or maybe just a sad stroke of fate. But someone must be alerting police to these people’s suspicious nature for them to be investigating in depth.” He coughed, his next sentence making his throat close in embarrassment, but continued. “Listen. I support the police, you know that, right?”

“Sure,” Kiyomi mumbled around more egg. “You support your dad, at least.”

“Yeah. Well. I know the guys he works with, and while they’re not stupid, there’s no way they got this intuitive so quick.” His muffin slipped in front of him and Light nodded his thanks to the waitress, waiting until she left to pull over one printed article. “Here’s what I know: at least one of these cases was under L’s purview. Who’s to say the other ones aren’t also?”

Discarding the article, Light reached for the condiment caddy and snatched up two creamer cups, while Kiyomi set her chopsticks down in contemplation. Her eyes—dark blue to the point of midnight—scanned both the newspaper and articles. With her mouth pressed together, red lips shining with waxen smoothness, Light could see why she held sway over so much of the school’s masculine consciousness: a beautiful woman who thought before anything. His own attention settled further from attraction and more into an approach toward admiration; she would’ve made a good rival, were he still seventeen and looking for the challenge.

“How would we find out what cases L has worked on?” Kiyomi’s gaze darted from the papers to Light’s coffee, swirling ever more auburn with the creamer added. “Why didn’t you just get a latte, if you’re going to make it so sweet with cream?”

“I like to make things myself.” Light waved his hand to dispel her remark. “I don’t know how to find all the cases lining up to this particular situation, which also have L’s involvement, but I think I can get us to a starting place.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. But I’ll need my computer.” Light took a sip of his coffee and couldn’t resist the pleased smile it brought to his lips: the satisfaction of something useful and pleasurable mixed into one cup. “And about an hour of time, so I’ll probably skip contemporary law today. You don’t have to come, but you can if you like.”

“I should stay, go to class to get notes so you don’t fall behind.” Kiyomi ran her finger around her own teacup, liquid no longer steaming but cool and green with tea leaves solidified at the bottom. “Can I ask you something?” Her voice wavered and Light couldn’t catch its true colors—only flashes of uncertain purple, vulnerable red. “Is it silly to be excited about this? Trying to figure out a mystery together?”

Swallowing, Light pretended not to hear the word together as he knew she meant it: you and me, an item, a duo. “No,” he said. “It’s exciting to solve mysteries, in any case. Every time I’ve worked on stuff like this with my dad, I feel changed, uplifted. Like,” he paused, rubbing his fingers together, “someone just turned on the lights in a pitch-dark room, and now I get to see all the secrets around me.”

“I understand,” Kiyomi said, and in that moment, Light looked at her midnight eyes and saw that she did.

…

It was easier than expected to hack into his dad’s account on the NPA intraweb, although Light knew he used the same password for everything: ssl226. He wanted, in a strange way, for his dad’s heart to be harder to crack—to know less about the key and earn it fitting in the lock—but couldn’t dig into why he felt such a way. Not with Kiyomi sending him text after text from class, each one a more urgent call for updates on his progress. His attention snapped from phone, to computer, to an odd hole in his stomach after their earlier meeting.

He never enjoyed when people tried to get close to him, as though they wanted a piece of Light the same way a child wants a piece of adulthood—desperate without knowledge of what lay beneath. While a social creature, thriving on connection, he cringed from women’s fumbled confessions of attraction and roamed away from their asking mouths toward men, who wanted silent partners to their escapades and were willing to return the favor. In many ways, those interactions left Light cold as well: tacky plastic bandages peeling off at the slightest friction.

The truth was it was easier to want what was right in front of him and not consider the far off. So, Light’s fingers flew across his keyboard with the neon flash from his cell phone ignored. He flipped through files labeled in long numerical defaults—a mark of his father’s tech-illiteracy—with time ticking away. When he finally alighted on the correct documents, his phone inbox was full. Without reading any of the messages, he deleted them all and texted Kiyomi to meet him later at the library.

Armed with a large stack of paper, he weighed down his backpack and left, waving off his mother’s question about why he was skipping class. On the television, a reporter spoke about rising stock in the Yotsuba Corporation’s new make-up company. She laughed after her speech and admitted to wearing their lipstick during the segment. Both Sayu and Light’s mother laughed along too. Light ran out the door, his bag smacking on his side.

The library was quiet except for a few students banging on keyboards, their faces shining with essay-deadline sweat. Light found Kiyomi lounged on a two-seat bench, her legs propped onto the low table and a style guide opened over her face. She sat up when he dropped in beside her, pushing the guide off and starting into an interrogation on why he didn’t answer her texts. Holding up a hand, Light pulled out his papers and set them on the table, smacking a finger on them.

“I know who he’s attacking next,” he said.

“What?” Kiyomi pushed his hand aside and flicked through his findings. “Okay, so these are the last, what? Twenty or so cases the NPA worked on with L?”

“Yes, about twenty,” Light agreed. “But we don’t usually call on him, unless it’s a difficult case. I mean, it’s pretty rare he takes any case at all unless it’s big news. But look at the cases he’s worked on since 2002.”

“Heart attacks.” Stopping at the top page, Kiyomi drew her finger along the chart labels—suspect name, suspect location, case title, behavior—and ended on the final column of conclusion. “Not all of them, though. Only a few scattered ones.”

“I know!” Light couldn’t stop a little eagerness leaking in; his sleuthing was about to pay off. He took out another stack of paper—thinner than the last—and handed those to Kiyomi. “I looked at those cases. All of them had victim counts lower than ten. Some of them were even cases the NPA didn’t put much resources behind. But,” he raised his finger in emphasis, “these ones had interesting details. Like the guy who had skeletons in his backyard? He was some kind of cannibal who left organs behind. The finger guy was notorious, even though he was pretty low activity.”

“You sound like you have a theory.”

“I might. Check out the most recent listing.”

Kiyomi flipped back to the case chart and narrowed her eyes. “Do we know this guy? Kyosuke Higuchi?”

Light sighed and tapped his finger to his knee. “He’s some kind of executive, at the Yotsuba Corporation. I tracked the case listed to one about a bunch of their new make-up brand’s younger interns going missing. The count is five right now, but one of them was the niece of a big government person so the NPA got told to ask L about it.” He smiled at Kiyomi. “Do you want to hear my theory?”

She tapped the paper stack and set it on the table, turning her full attention to him. “Someone is picking off the small fries,” she said, “with heart attacks, and the link between cases is L.”

A frustrated puff of breath exited Light. “Well. Yeah. I guess,” he said. “But it’s pretty smart, right? Getting rid of the guys who you can find, but can’t super prove anything about, before they get to higher numbers.”

“He’s still killing people,” Kiyomi said. “I mean, isn’t that just like what they’re doing? These guys are victims too, in a sense, and this L guy is offing them before they get a trial. What if he’s wrong?”

Light folded his arms across his chest. “But he hasn’t been wrong,” he said. “Not yet.” Shuffling in his seat, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and took a deep inhale. “I want to send him a message.”

“What? A message?” Kiyomi laughed, her long earrings shaking with her clipped hair. “What’re you going to say? We’re on to you, buddy. Better watch out.” She shook her head, laughter making way for a more serious expression. “It’s not a good idea,” she said. “We don’t know how he’s giving people heart attacks, other than by magic or something. It’s dangerous.”

Air lifted and deflating from Light’s chest as he mulled her response around inside. It burned a trail through his soft meats, where enthusiasm continued to grow through whatever scorch she inflicted with sense and caution. His body was a garden growing thicker at just the idea of communicating with the person who had such a power, who made such a decision as to end someone’s life when they ended someone else’s.

Headless of his contemplation, Kiyomi stood and took the papers. “It’s interesting, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But we shouldn’t contact L directly. It will alert him to our own knowledge; we’d give more ground than gain. Let me look over what you have, and later this week, we’ll pool our thoughts and start to put together a better case.”

He handed over his print outs, not too precious about them since he had the real digital versions at home. As she left, Light’s eyes danced away from Kiyomi’s prim stride and toward the tall bookcases. His mind brought to him a scenario where he, and everyone else in the library, was crushed by toppled bookcases and the ceiling caving in. A tragedy without a pinpoint reason behind it—only a god who wanted to see something destroyed. Or maybe it was some kid who leaned too hard. Life was so random in how it could be taken or given, and that thought propelled him further into whatever L’s powers were.

Somehow, there was a man out there able to control death and Light, despite Kiyomi’s warning, wanted to know the shape of his tools.

…

L counted three red candies from his pack and collected them into his palm. They rattled against each other like gemstones, gleaming under computer-haze lights until long black claws pinched one away.

“Red ones are best,” Ryuk said. “Except for cherry flavor.”

“Cherry flavor is fine if you get the right brand.” L turned back to his laptop, nabbing a pink hard candy for himself and sucking its watermelon flavor into a slow, sugar liquid. It subsumed his entire mouth, coated his tongue and teeth. His hand stayed outstretched as Ryuk one-by-one crunched the red candies into his toothsome mouth. Clattering shards collected at his lip corners only to be wiped away by his skeletal hand.

At the moment, both occupied the same opulent hotel room despite their aesthetic pairing more implied them existing in different realities. L had laid out over his hotel desk his laptop, a bowl of packaged sweets, and a thin notebook—opened to a page half-filled by his scrawl. Methodical in his fingers, he looked over the most recent reports sent in from Japan, his interest waning here and there into an intense focus on whatever candy he opened next. Ryuk, on the other hand, was taken up by the television, which L left on for him in most hotel rooms, and all the small colored blotches fizzled together on the screen. He laughed as one blotch fell down a flight of stairs.

Their relationship often balanced on this mutual agreement for entertainment—it flowed between them as Ryuk received TV, movies, and candy from L and L, of course, got the Death Note. While this arrangement meant they were in constant contact, Ryuk did fly between the human world and Shinigami realm on his own whims; he told L human poker wasn’t as good as the death gods played it, which L couldn’t argue being he wasn’t too fond of poker either way. At one point, L asked why he—of all people on Earth and beyond—received such an unholy tool of death and Ryuk responded, “Oh, yeah. The thing sort of fell out of my pocket. I need one of those chain wallets, keep that on me.” As if to prove his point, the next time Ryuk showed up to see how L and the Death Note were progressing, he had his personal Note hooked to a thick metal chain.

“Made it myself.” His voice smacked of undue pride, although L complimented the chain without trace of sarcasm. “Not as good as the human ones, but pretty cool.”

L didn’t care if the Shinigami made a thousand ugly chain wallets, or watched TV all day. What he cared about was the ease the Death Note brought to his work. So often fissures of stress cracked along his psyche when dug into cases which were clean cut—to him, at least—but couldn’t get traction enough with local enforcement to make arrests: to bring justice to people who screamed their guilt to L’s careful crow eyes. But with the Death Note, all he had to do was write a name, wait and assign a search team to the killer’s home posthumously.

Spread in front of him, he tapped a pen end to the blank Note page. All that was left in the Higuchi case was to find a time to kill him while he was alone; for that purpose, L wormed around several important forms and decision-makers to install camera into the vile businessman’s home and office. Blue connective fuzz overlaid the images displayed on his laptop and made Higuchi, idling behind his large desk, appear alien. To some degree, L felt the man was alien to him—in thought, in action (or lack of it), in intention—and had no interest in learning a scrap about Higuchi. He cared more about the space beneath the man’s home, which would be unlocked and unloaded of its human prisoners once Wedy got her go-ahead; keeping a successful thief on his payroll benefited L tremendously.

“He’s been alone for two hours,” L said, to himself and also Ryuk, if the Shinigami wanted to hear. “If I kill him now, how long before someone finds the body?”

“Weekend,” Ryuk piped back. L looked over his shoulder to see his long ebony chicken legs crossed on the bed while yellow eyes stared at the television without blinking. “He might just rot there over the next two days.”

“Oh, I think so—,” L stopped mid-speech at Higuchi’s secretary and her brown ponytail bobbing into frame. She stood at near two inches taller than the man, who sneered as she spoke. At the very least, L knew she was not in danger of kidnapping. He sat straighter and leaned to hear their conversation over the microphones, the secretary’s voice soft and faint from many miles away.

“A young man left this for you.” She held out an envelope; even at his angle, L saw no address or marker beyond Higuchi’s name. “He said he needs you to give it to someone.”

“What?” Higuchi’s nasal intonation pinched his words. “I’m not some kind of messenger. Tell him to just send it by post, if he needs someone to see it so bad.”

“He sounded urgent that you give it,” the secretary said, and dropped the envelope down. “I’ll tell you something, he was very handsome. Seemed like a smart young man. This is probably his resume, you know.”

“Ah.” Snake oil slithered through Higuchi’s response as he took hold of the envelope. “Well, who am I to keep down a young upstart? Anything else he said?”

The secretary taped her finger to her lip and hummed. “Just that it was important someone get this message,” she said. “Someone powerful, who knew what you’d done. I don’t know what he meant by that.”

L’s eyes lit up; Higuchi became pale. “Ah yes,” the businessman simpered. “I’m not sure I know either. Well, why don’t you go home? I’ll see you on Monday.”

The moment the secretary left, Higuchi threw the envelope into the trash and L whipped around to Ryuk.

“Can you fly somewhere for me?” he asked. “And pick something up?”

“Dunno,” Ryuk said. “Depends what I get in return.”

After an hour and a promise for several all large candy purchases, L held a faintly sticky gold envelope in his hands. His hands, covered by white fabric gloves, turned the item over and over in curious rotation. Thumbing the corners, he admired how thick the stock seemed, how elegant the adhesion of the close seemed to lay, and upon opening it, he was sorry to mar the lines. Out fell a quarter-folded page with lines as crisp as the outer shell. L unfolded the page, smoothed it with both hands with delicacy he hadn’t practiced on something non-confectionery in years. Across the fine surface was hard-black typed words, struck out in small font but for some reason read to him like slow cream—a voice L never heard before but caught him, easily, by his mind’s tongue.

Dear L, the letter started. I know what you’ve been doing, but I don’t know how. I’d like to know. I’d like to know you and what tools you’ve picked up that let you wrack such havoc inside cruel men’s bodies.

Are you like them? A cruel man? I can’t say; but I’d like to be able to reject the sentiment.

Each word dropped into L’s consciousness as water on a garden and flourished greenery within him until his interest became a full forest. Someone caught on to him; their fingers brushed his toes but couldn’t quite hold the tiger. Still, the letter’s writer was unknown and on this front, L couldn’t abide. He took to his laptop and rolled back footage upon footage until video of a man at Higuchi’s secretary’s desk showed. At all times, the man’s face was out of view and his voice so low, L couldn’t make out his exact words. Had the letter writer known he’d been watched? A subtle tingle wormed through L’s chest: he knew about the cameras, or suspected them; he knew Higuchi was next; and he knew L was listening, in some capacity.

But how much did this man—who still carried handsomeness in his stature, turned head or no, and had a whisper coated by sugared familiarity—actually know? L frowned and turned back to the letter, scanning it again. He then turned to Ryuk.

“If someone wanted to send a message with the Note,” he said, “how might they do so?”

Ryuk laughed, throaty and amused. “Few ways,” he demurred. “You’re a smart guy. You figure it out.”

L raised an eyebrow, but not an argument. After all, he was the world’s greatest detective; a smart guy who could figure it out. He set to work and by nightfall had a plan. As he finished, he imbued his last pen stroke with some warped hope—that the letter writer saw what his message truly was: not cruelty but a hand beckoning him closer. An invitation.

“A challenge,” L said, to himself, to Ryuk, to the young man whose face he didn’t know. “And an answer.”

…

“Is that the newspaper?” Light slipped in next to Kiyomi, who held ink-covered pages in front of her face, elegant nails curled against headlines like red slashed wounds. Their first period literature class—a dreaded requirement on their degrees which neither enjoyed—found him harried from waking up late. He was unpracticed in disordered sleep and didn’t know how to control panic when it seeped from his pores and into his routine; ever since he gave the letter off to that Higuchi, Light was aware to his core something might happen—something deadly, even.

Kiyomi tilted the front page down enough to show her disappointed gaze trained on Light’s perfect smile—beguiling by practice, not nature. “You can buy your own,” she said. “After all, you don’t want anything from me, much less information.”

“Don’t be like that,” he countered. “You know, I didn’t make any moves.”

“Don’t lie,” Kiyomi said. “Look,” she flattened the newspaper to the desk, and after glancing around, pointed to a large headline, “your little love note found its recipient.”

Light leaned over the paper and scanned the article. Phrases floated forward—a sex dungeon with the women freed by an unknown accomplice—and others were faded but intriguing—Higuchi succumbing to cardiac arrest after consuming an energy drink, a large latte and a bottle of caffeine pills. His eyes froze on one paragraph, detailing a letter found in Higuchi’s handwriting and tucked inside his pocket.

“Experts say the letter was written within an hour of the man’s death,” the article read. “It’s contents are, however, not addressed to anyone known to the victim but instead a mysterious figure called ‘letter writer.’ Beneath we have listed some of the letter, which was confiscated by police and edited for clarity.”

Kiyomi sighed. “You’re in real danger now,” she said softly. “We’re both in danger.”

“He responded,” Light said, breathless. “He wrote back to me.”

Dear letter writer,

I don’t want to alarm you or make it seem as though I am on a crusade. Far from it. This is just my job, and I am good at my job. I get rid of people doing terrible things, but time and resources don’t always play on my side. This is my way of prioritizing.

I’m not a cruel man; and I hope you never think of me as such. But understand I can’t tell you what my methods are. After all, where’s the interest in that for me? But I can give you something small, something to hold onto: without your face, I can’t harm you.

Speak to you soon,

X

Light’s heart thudded in his throat. “Do you still have that chart on you?” He asked Kiyomi, who brought out the papers with eyes warmed by the prospect of research.

“Of course.” She laid them out and shrugged in closer to Light. “What are we looking for? What do we do next?”

Light couldn’t answer. Around and around in his head echoed Speak to you soon in a voice he didn’t know. Yes, they’d speak again soon enough, but he just needed to find out what they’d talk about. Right now, the room was dark; it was all a matter of turning on the light and seeing the secrets in the room.

#fanfiction #L #L Lawliet #Light Yagami #Kiyomi Takada #Sayu Yagami #Kyosuke Higuchi #pairings: none #ratings: teen #murder #translightyagami #kratqa #B's Bitchin Borthday 2k19 #submission