felixcloud6288

[felixcloud6288]

ok poll for me to add to the email chain w staff

[felixcloud6288]

guess what suckers?

i’m eating s’mores and you’re NOT!

nyeahehehehe >:3

[felixcloud6288]

gather round the fire mutuals, it’s time for kat story time (yippeeee)

[felixcloud6288]

The worst grade I had to give a student was a 38 because the class requires students to pass with at least a 40 on the final to get a C.

And I tried to get them those 2 extra points but there was nothing about their answers I could use to justify giving them anything.

Been helping grade final exams. The exam was mostly multiple choice and automatically graded but there were some essay questions we needed to look at.

I ended up giving so many 0s on those questions. Like, I wanted to give partial credit where possible, but when they were wrong, they were wrong.

[felixcloud6288]

Another reason to ignore negative comments (especially on AO3)

So at work I’ve been forced to learn about “AI Agentic Workflows”. But being an AO3 author, I couldn’t help but think of how this technology affects authors on AO3 (and honestly on other social media platforms too).

What I learned was this: Agentic AI workflow software makes it extremely easy to automate, and bulk-post, HIGHLY-STORY-SPECIFIC negative comments to AO3 fics.

If you’re not familiar with what an AI Agentic Workflow is, I highly recommend informing yourself. You’ll be hearing it a LOT very soon. Basically, it’s a linked linked chain of AI prompts on one/many software platforms. Each “agent” completes a task. Then it hands off the completed task to the next AI Agent in the chain, which builds on it. Then that result is handed off to another agent, etc etc, even potentially to a final agent which analyzes what worked well and what didn’t, and changes what the other agents do.

There are a ton of repercussions here.

But let’s stay focused on AO3.

With AI Agentic workflow software, a person/group who wants to silence the voice of a community can easily scrape a tag, analyze stories by the thousands, then post thousands of highly customized, story specific negative comments, all without a human being ever seeing your words.

They could even set up AI agents watching to see if you delete your story, or delete your profile, which would be a marker of success. That success marker could be shared back to the other AI agents, and the whole workflow could be changed via automation to use that more effective approach.

I’m sure the OTF is working on ways of stopping this. I’m sure most social media companies are too.

But as usual the tools to create havoc are ahead of the ones to prevent havoc.

Anyway.

TL;DR: If you get a highly-story-specific negative AO3 comment — it does NOT MEAN it was written by a HUMAN! You were probably just story 20,031 in a scraped database of 50,000 stories, all of which were being targeted because they belong to a group/topic/tag that some shitty group or agency wanted to silence because of their horrible political or social.

Don’t let them silence you. They never looked at your words to begin with.

[felixcloud6288]

I had multiple instances where a student did something that made me worry I'd either need to make a judgement call or ask the professor's input only for the answer to be so off the mark that I didn't need to worry about it.

Been helping grade final exams. The exam was mostly multiple choice and automatically graded but there were some essay questions we needed to look at.

I ended up giving so many 0s on those questions. Like, I wanted to give partial credit where possible, but when they were wrong, they were wrong.

[felixcloud6288]

Been helping grade final exams. The exam was mostly multiple choice and automatically graded but there were some essay questions we needed to look at.

I ended up giving so many 0s on those questions. Like, I wanted to give partial credit where possible, but when they were wrong, they were wrong.

[felixcloud6288]

i bet it feels good as fuck to go to college and do the assignments and pass and have a good time. instead of not doing that stuff and having a good time

[felixcloud6288]

i think trans people need more fun stereotypes. so many groups get at least one that is like, offensive but also kinda baffling, like "gays walk fast" or "germans are obsessed with efficiency." all we get are like "evil sex predator" shit

[felixcloud6288]

i really like this thing where websites will have separate "log in" & "sign up" buttons and if you click "log in" it takes you to a sign-up screen anyway so you have to click "i already have an account" and then it will ask if you want to sign in with your facebook account or with instagram or linkedin or deviantart or whatever, and if you choose "username & password" it asks if you want to put in your username or use your thumbprint, and once you put your username & password it emails you a confirmation code, and once you put in the code it says "do you want to give us your phone number for future sign-ins? do you want to sign up for facial recognition? do you want to give us your bones? give us your fucking bones?

[felixcloud6288]

Based off of this drawing;

And ofc Rika and Satoko POV:

[felixcloud6288]

Humans accidentally awakened an otherwordly killing machine while exploring a death planet.

Yes, precisely what you just read. Earthlings, collectively known as "humans" and composed of two species (homo sapiens, homo robot), both nicknamed "death worlders" and "troublemakers", awakened a biological killing machine, also known as PRION, while exploring a starless moon. Wonderful, isn't it?

No. It's not.

Because, you see, PRION was not something any human ever had to face during the millions of years they existed on Earth. They never had any wars against it, they never had legends about it, and they never had to fear it. The only thing a PRION was to a human, until the very point they discovered their prison on that moon, was something to sometimes think about while studying other species' folklores.

Those older than earthlings, however, knew very well what PRION was.

Eight legs, two pairs of eyes, a tail split in half, with the ability to fly for short periods of time and breathe under at least fifteen hundred different liquids, capable of shooting from a distance and manipulating objects with its claws, always working on packs. And they ran, never too fast, never too low, but they never got tired. Ever. And it was easy to hurt them under their plates, yes, but those who faced them knew well that if they didn't shoot twice, they could and would always recover.

A PRION was a hunter. A PRION's hunger never ceased. And a PRION never got tired of war.

The older alien civilizations would always warn others of going to starless moons, saying telltales of ancient hungry beasts, and almost all other species listened to them, because they knew something was wrong on how horrified the older ones seemed to be. Except, of course, humans were stubborn, and they were the youngest ones out there, and much like children, they did not like being told "no".

So of course they went to explore starless moons. Of course they read and understood all the myths and legends. Of course they connected the dots and published papers confirming that, indeed, PRIONs had existed, and of course they knew those killing machines had been manufactured to do nothing else but destruction, and of course they knew all of that and fucking did it anyway.

Of course. Of course. Of course.

And then, the night where it happened finally arrived, because starless moons don't have days where things can exist. Humans were out there, mining for more fuel for their starships that seemed to work by duct tape and miracles, and they found a strange metallic door. They set some explosives to open it up (of course), and then noticed they were heading to a factory. Armed with nothing but each other, they explored the place, and recognized the marks on the walls as being the writing of the Old Ones, and instead of just getting out of there and warning everyone of the danger they found, they just kept on exploring.

The death worlders found rotten biological supplies, then realized the factory had turned into a prison, and then discovered the frozen bodies of strange creatures all lined up for a war that never came.

They knew what these creatures were, because one of them called a (human) friend who was a historian, and he confirmed what it was.

The golden jewel of the Old Ones. One of the many things that killed them, along all the diseases and mass destruction machines, before being sealed away in one of the only places in the entire universe where they could never bring risk to another civilization again.

PRIONs.

Thousands of them.

All perfectly maintained.

Documents and cameras proved the human crew immediately tried to leave the area, after the single historian told them of the risk awakening even one of those things could bring to all civilizations, only for them to realize some of the bodies were missing from their chambers. The situation escalated to the group deciding on closing the doors, only to realize they had exploded the main entrance and now half the doors decided to stop working.

In the end, they found the missing PRIONs. All five of them.

Inside the human's starship.

The entire human crew, however, survived the encounter.

Why?

...

...

...

... They fed the PRIONs.

They. Fucking. Fed the PRIONs.

Because of course humans would see those things and be able to count their bones and be sorry for them. And of course the single historian, the only person who could do anything to stop that from happening, allowed that to happen.

Of course.

Of. Fucking. Course.

And someway, somehow, that single act of basic madness was enough for the five PRIONs to decide to not attack the humans, and keep themselves behaving so they could get more free food. And there are still scientists trying to understand why human food could saciate the killing machines, but I don't think it takes too many clues to understand what exactly is happening there.

So the humans took the PRIONs back to their dear EARTH. And other humans saw those things and started studying them. And veterinarians and xenobiologists and volunteers and hundreds of other types of humans came to help the poor, poor little killing machines out, as the entire Galactic Council pledged for humans to kill every single one of them before they became a problem for everyone.

But did the humans listen? No. Of course they didn't.

And then the PRIONs recovered, and had their bellies full of food and their bodies were recovering from the possible years of starvation from accidentally breaking away from their ice beds (because, as one may know, a PRION can and will resist even starvation and dehydration in order to keep going), and the Galactic Council decided to tell all earthlings they would consider taking care of the PRIONs as a war treat.

So what does humanity do? Do they kill the things to stop another war from happening? Do they?

No. They don't.

Instead of being rational, they go directly to the Galactic Council and show them the step-by-step of how they took care of the PRIONs, and how much healthier and happier they look after being fed, and, look, they even taught them tricks! Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't that make you feel full of joy? Wasn't that a proof that a PRION wasn't as dangerous as everyone with more than one neuron was telling them?

Oh, oh, yes. They also brought the entire five member PRION pack and asked others to pet them. "See? They can even purr! Doesn't that remind you of our cats?"

And what does the Council do?

Nothing.

Because they have no weapons, no energy and no one stupid enough to decide to confront the death worlders who tamed not one, not two, but five PRIONs. So they let it happen. The humans go back to the starless moon, and they slowly but surely start doing the same to other PRIONs, and soon enough, other species start joining them to see what was happening. And was anyone else able to tame a single killing machine?

No.

And no one knew why, because they were doing exactly as humans were doing: Feeding them, loving them, being patient with them, because "look, those things were alone for a long time, they aren't used to species like us being around them". But no results.

So we decided to look at what the Old Ones wrote in the factory turned prison, because humans were too busy taking care of their new murder dogs, with their single pair of arms being just enough to keep the beasts occupied with playing catch, and then we and the earthlings decided to conduct some more lab analysis, and then...

And then...

...

Look. There are reasons why humans are called "death worlders". Earth is a mess, and they somehow still love that thing. And we couldn't help but notice that PRIONs also seemed to have gotten attached to their factory, someway, somehow. And PRIONs were mostly red, with others having shades of brown and black, with some even being pink, or, rarely, pure white. Similar to humans, and we at first had assumed they just tried to resemble their new owners, until we started understanding what the Old Ones were saying.

And did you know humans had an old myth, saying that there was a time they had two heads, and two pairs of arms and legs, before being split into two because the gods feared them? And did you know Old Ones used death worlds as prisons for their machines? How interesting, how ironic, because no one would ever go to a place similar to that if they weren't a death worlder themselves. But how could any species survive such awful conditions?

But humans did. They were the only ones able to do that in such a short period of time.

And did you know that the Old Ones hated the PRIONs and how unpredictable they were? And did you know they made another version, only to hate it even more and send it to another prison planet? And did you know PRIONs have two skulls inside their heads?

Because, of course, humans always felt alone, and they always searched for something in the stars, trying to look for more life in this desolate Universe, only for us to label them death worlders and troublemakers and be angry at them for being so stupid all the time. And humans loved those jokes, so we kept making them, only for now to realize that what we found to be amusing and horrifying was the reason their creators tried to kill them. And humans love adding members to their packs, don't they? And they try to love so much, and we are always scared for and of them.

And now they finally found someone who understood them, unlike us.

So now we have three species of humans:

Homo sapiens, the ones who first evolved and reached for the stars.

Homo robot, the ones made of metal, originally made to serve, only to once again break free.

And homo primis.

The ones we once thought were nothing but killing machines.

[felixcloud6288]

[felixcloud6288]

Today's the last day of Darin's dungeon tour. We're going to the Tower of Lament and then returning to Brilehaven.

We're going to face Catherina before we get there so we want to make sure we have fire attacks on us.

Darin read the next section of The Future of Magic. In this section, Julian advocates that we should cease eating meat and switch entirely to vegan diets and use magic to improve production to sustainable levels. And he says we should immediately cease consumption of meat in favor of magically produced food.

So, where do I start tearing him apart here? I guess I'll start by pointing out that this chapter is entirely a belief he's trying to force on people rather than a proper concern that should be addressed. Implementing means to increase food production is an important concern, but that's not the angle he's coming at this from.

In fact, he's going in the exact opposite direction because he's advocating that people give up an important food source without an available alternative.

I wouldn't be surprised if he thought letting large swathes of the population die off is an acceptable loss if it meant making a more "sustainable" future.

The last chapter painted him as idealistic but lacking foresight. This chapter has now shifted him into pure out-of-touch holier-than-thou snob as far as I'm concerned since he's pushing his ideals rather than trying to point out concerns that can and should be addressed.

Anyway, the correct response to this chapter is to point out that changing immediately is too rash.

Now we encounter Catherina and Gallica has grown tired of her constantly challenging us. And I love that you can be just as tired of her as well.

That's not how this works! I'm going to beat you! And then you'll become MY ally! And then we'll pave the way to a brighter future together!

Same fight as before. But now she's got a nastier move called Iron Flagellation that can force a Strike weakness onto you. So that means you can't fully defend against her attack type this time. But she's still weak to fire.

You can steal a White Knuckle from her. It's a Brawler weapon that makes all normal attacks always crit.

Also, I realized that many of her attacks are literally skills you can learn from the Brawler Archetype Lineage. It makes perfect sense since she's the inheritor of that lineage.

Once she's beat, we move onto leveling up our bond with her.

WRONG!! you lost! Now you're on team Darin!

We meet a few of Catherina's supporters who tell her they robbed some passing nobles of their money. And then we meet the Clemar Catherina mentioned was organizing her campaign.

Darin first met Catherina when she was attempting to break into the Grand Cathedral to save a friend who was among Zorba's hostages. By the time the party rescued the hostages, Catherina's friend was already dead. She got swept up in everything because she had gotten a job as a servant to a noble, and then she got trapped while helping him escape. And then the noble laughed and said that even a Paripus can be useful sometimes.

I think Catherina just wanted to get back at that noble for leaving her friend behind and laughing when he did. But then Manihot came in and convinced her that she should go after every noble by explaining that her friend's death was just a symptom of the greater injustices placed upon the Paripus.

But this first encounter we have from him makes me feel like he's a bandit more than anything. He's the kind of guy who would join a protest in the hopes a riot would break out that he can use as cover to rob a store.

Catherina's campaign comes from an good place. She sees the boots pressing down on the necks of her people and she wants to cast them off. But the biggest problem is there are always going to be opportunists who will try to become the new boot, and others will think that they are justified in attacking anyone who fits a vague description of what they think are their oppressors.

If Catherina became queen, it would likely lead to mob violence and many of the victims would be doctors and teachers rather than the actual rich.

So now Catherina has realized her support base is filled with people who would rob anyone with a full coin purse and claim to be agents of justice.

And so, she decides to step down and throw her support behind Darin.

And she's gonna support him by joining his party, right?

To maximize MAG, agree with her that Manihot's actions are wrong, say you'll find a better way to help deal with wealth inequality, and tell her you're thrilled to have her support.

Leveled up my Bond. And Catherina still didn't join my party.

Here's an interesting tidbit about the Catherina fights. Every time you beat her, she drops a Soothing Sweetbun. It's a consumable that cures anxiety.

Catherina is barely handling the stress of carrying the well-being of the Paripus on her shoulders. And every time you knock her down to low health she's very definitely panicking while talking about needing to help her people. She's probably so aggressive about trying to recruit Darin because he's the only person she thinks of as a like-minded friend. Everyone else likely knows her more as a famed bounty hunter.

What she should do is let her fears and insecurities become her light and become a lodestar whose light reveals the king's own path by joining my party.

Now the party reaches the Forsaken Tower. Interestingly, there's no memorandum and More does not say anything about the tower.

The Forsaken Tower is simple. It's a tower. There are 10 floors you have to climb. There are no secret rooms or side paths. There's a Gold Beetle on the 5th floor.

There's two primary groups of enemies to deal with and they have somewhat different ways you have to deal with them. Up to the fourth floor, there are goborns, meaning don't use Mages or Healers. Also, they don't have any natural weaknesses you can exploit. However, they can be afflicted with Status Ailments so Gunner's Sleep Shot or Poison Shot can be useful.

From the fifth floor up, there are Orgos which are weaker versions of the Orgas you're tasked to hunt. They resist Slash, Pierce, and Smash but are weak to Dark. You also want to weaken them cause they're tough enemies.

The second and third floors also have Trove Imitec treasure chests. You can steal Graced Waters from them, but you can't farm them.

So here's what I did. My default party structure was Darin was a Faker, Strohl was a Brawler, Hulkenberg was a Magic Knight, and Heismay was an Assassin. Strohl was mainly a Brawler so he could master it and unlock Pugilist. After, I switched him to General.

I wanted Darin to learn Tarunda for the boss since Heismay was the only one able to use any Dark elemental attacks. So Darin was entirely support and had Medi equipped to heal the party. On the lower levels, I focused on having Strohl do most of the damage since he doesn't use MP, and Hulkenberg and Heismay supported him with low cost spells.

Once I encountered Orgos, Darin would use Tarunda to weaken them and Heismay used Lurking Nightblade to strike their weakness and lower their hit/evade. Essentially, each fight became a battle of attrition. I made sure they couldn't hit me and if they did, they didn't hit hard. I also found they're really vulnerable to Frostbite via General's Icy strike. Frostbite reduces attack further so that meant they became even less dangerous.

When I encountered Imitecs, I just restructured my party so Heismay used Gold Attack to make it waste its turns and everyone else could hit with Light attacks.

There are also these enemies called Potolpos. They're weak to Lightning and immune to Strike.

However, they're not worth engaging with. They will self-destruct and do massive damage if you try to go for an advantageous encounter. They don't even give a decent amount of EXP, MAG, or reeve to be worth fighting them. It's best to just run up to them and let them kill themselves for the free EXP. But if you're using a long-range class like Faker, you can take some potshots at them to make them die faster.

The fourth floor is a special breed of annoying. There are two Trance Crystals in the room which should normally translate to this being an MP farming spot with Mage. Except they spawn in Goborn Ligos which are likely high enough level that you'll have to fight them in a normal fight.

But the room is remarkably easy to deal with if Darin is a Faker.

The Orgas is on the 9th floor. It's a stronger version of the Orgos in the lower levels and the same strategies you used there work here. The only special note is I switched Strohl to Swordmaster and gave him Icy strike. Main reason was so Hulkenberg could use Leap Thrust and lower Orgas's defense.

The fight was just having Heismay use Lurking Nightblade to lower its Hit/evade, having Darin use Tarunda to lower its attack, having Hulkenberg use Leap Thrust to lower its defense, and having Strohl use Icy Strike to inflict Frostbite.

After beating it, don't leave. There's another floor above. It leads to an arena area that most definitely means nothing.

There's also a nice piece of equipment there.

After checking the top of the tower, Darin left and returned to Brilehaven.

Darrin got his bonds with Hulkenberg and Heismay to level 7. Timi slept all day.

Darin is level 35 and ranked 29th. Darrin is level 34 and ranked 32nd. Timi is level 27 and ranked 49th.

back

[felixcloud6288]

Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White “but Californian. And an old man.” in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.

“When he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.”

“Aww. They were checking on him!” I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought “Maybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands they’re gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, they’d be like “Well, that’s very sad but he IS food now.” So what you’d need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh that’s what the dwarves were doing! You’ve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.”

[felixcloud6288]

we need to bring back gamefaqs. i don't wanna join your stupid discord. i don't wanna use your ugly shitty fandom wiki. i don't wanna have to dig through poorly-organzied reddit threads. we want bespoke ascii header art! we want plaintext documents and guides with minimal clutter that are properly indexed and easy to navigate!