#Human-Generated Content in Search Results

[etechnewsglobal]

Google Launches Perspective Feature to Show Human-Generated Content

Google, the largest and most well-known search engine on the internet, has introduced a new ‘Perspective’ feature in its search engine. Google had announced last month, in May, the introduction of the ‘Perspective’ feature and had informed that fans would see noticeable changes in the search engine over the next few weeks. Before this, there had been news about Google that a feature to display…

[despazito]

internet search tips on how i sift through junk or mischaracterizing content when looking up visual animal references:

Use the scientific name instead of common name for less false ID (especially if you want to see real wolverines or jaguars instead of the x-men or car maker)

Instead of “baby“, try “juvenile” or a more species specific term (bird=chick, bovid=calf, carnivoran=cub, etc..)

If it’s a rarer animal without many results try searching its name in a native language, it’s usually on wikipedia

Search the scientific name in inaturalist for multiple party verified ID sightings with locations

Searching “skeletal” in place of “skeleton” gives different results and usually less products

try adding “zoo” to your search if you want to look at over-exploited viral species like otters, foxes, primates, or exotic cats. there can still be shady zoos but it weeds out videos of animals in people’s living rooms

Add “vet” if you’re searching for reference on how large/small an animal looks next to a human instead of exotic pet vids. vets and zoos can be very fond of sharing educational pics of an anesthetized animal’s cool features or a huge paw/teeth besides a human hand. vet visits for beloved zoo animals also tend to draw the media so there’s many articles written for them and in general i just love learning about weird vet procedures on exotic animals, 10/10 rabbit hole.

“Morph” or “mutation” tends to give you more legit resources on animal variations instead of photoshop edits.

Even though i know there’s a difference I also find that searching “leucistic” just gives you less fake stuff than the more commonly known albino or “white___” unless its a very common mutation. same with “dilute” instead of blue and such.

[txttletale]

I think the reason I dislike AI generative software (I'm fine with AI analysis tools, like for example splitting audio into tracks) is that I am against algorithmically generated content. I don't like the internet as a pit of content slop. AI art isn't unique in that regard, and humans can make algorithmically generated content too (look at youtube for example). AI makes it way easier to churn out content slop and makes searching for non-slop content more difficult.

yeah i basically wholeheartedly agree with this. you are absolutely right to point out that this is a problem that far predates AI but has been exacerbated by the ability to industrialise production. Content Slop is absolutely one of the first things i think of when i use that "if you lose your job to AI, it means it was already automated" line -- the job of a listicle writer was basically to be a middleman between an SEO optimization tool and the Google Search algorithm. the production of that kind of thing was already being made by a computer for a computer, AI just makes it much faster and cheaper because you don't have to pay a monkey to communicate between the two machines. & ai has absolutely made this shit way more unbearable but ultimately y'know the problem is capitalism incentivising the creation of slop with no purpose other than to show up in search results

[jstor]

I saw something about generative AI on JSTOR. Can you confirm whether you really are implementing it and explain why? I’m pretty sure most of your userbase hates AI.

A generative AI/machine learning research tool on JSTOR is currently in beta, meaning that it's not fully integrated into the platform. This is an opportunity to determine how this technology may be helpful in parsing through dense academic texts to make them more accessible and gauge their relevancy.

To JSTOR, this is primarily a learning experience. We're looking at how beta users are engaging with the tool and the results that the tool is producing to get a sense of its place in academia.

In order to understand what we're doing a bit more, it may help to take a look at what the tool actually does. From a recent blog post:

Content evaluation

Problem: Traditionally, researchers rely on metadata, abstracts, and the first few pages of an article to evaluate its relevance to their work. In humanities and social sciences scholarship, which makes up the majority of JSTOR’s content, many items lack abstracts, meaning scholars in these areas (who in turn are our core cohort of users) have one less option for efficient evaluation. 

When using a traditional keyword search in a scholarly database, a query might return thousands of articles that a user needs significant time and considerable skill to wade through, simply to ascertain which might in fact be relevant to what they’re looking for, before beginning their search in earnest.

Solution: We’ve introduced two capabilities to help make evaluation more efficient, with the aim of opening the researcher’s time for deeper reading and analysis:

Summarize, which appears in the tool interface as “What is this text about,” provides users with concise descriptions of key document points. On the back-end, we’ve optimized the Large Language Model (LLM) prompt for a concise but thorough response, taking on the task of prompt engineering for the user by providing advanced direction to:

Extract the background, purpose, and motivations of the text provided.

Capture the intent of the author without drawing conclusions.

Limit the response to a short paragraph to provide the most important ideas presented in the text.

Search term context is automatically generated as soon as a user opens a text from search results, and provides information on how that text relates to the search terms the user has used. Whereas the summary allows the user to quickly assess what the item is about, this feature takes evaluation to the next level by automatically telling the user how the item is related to their search query, streamlining the evaluation process.

Discovering new paths for exploration

Problem: Once a researcher has discovered content of value to their work, it’s not always easy to know where to go from there. While JSTOR provides some resources, including a “Cited by” list as well as related texts and images, these pathways are limited in scope and not available for all texts. Especially for novice researchers, or those just getting started on a new project or exploring a novel area of literature, it can be needlessly difficult and frustrating to gain traction. 

Solution: Two capabilities make further exploration less cumbersome, paving a smoother path for researchers to follow a line of inquiry:

Recommended topics are designed to assist users, particularly those who may be less familiar with certain concepts, by helping them identify additional search terms or refine and narrow their existing searches. This feature generates a list of up to 10 potential related search queries based on the document’s content. Researchers can simply click to run these searches.

Related content empowers users in two significant ways. First, it aids in quickly assessing the relevance of the current item by presenting a list of up to 10 conceptually similar items on JSTOR. This allows users to gauge the document’s helpfulness based on its relation to other relevant content. Second, this feature provides a pathway to more content, especially materials that may not have surfaced in the initial search. By generating a list of related items, complete with metadata and direct links, users can extend their research journey, uncovering additional sources that align with their interests and questions.

Supporting comprehension

Problem: You think you have found something that could be helpful for your work. It’s time to settle in and read the full document… working through the details, making sure they make sense, figuring out how they fit into your thesis, etc. This all takes time and can be tedious, especially when working through many items. 

Solution: To help ensure that users find high quality items, the tool incorporates a conversational element that allows users to query specific points of interest. This functionality, reminiscent of CTRL+F but for concepts, offers a quicker alternative to reading through lengthy documents. 

By asking questions that can be answered by the text, users receive responses only if the information is present. The conversational interface adds an accessibility layer as well, making the tool more user-friendly and tailored to the diverse needs of the JSTOR user community.

Credibility and source transparency

We knew that, for an AI-powered tool to truly address user problems, it would need to be held to extremely high standards of credibility and transparency. On the credibility side, JSTOR’s AI tool uses only the content of the item being viewed to generate answers to questions, effectively reducing hallucinations and misinformation. 

On the transparency front, responses include inline references that highlight the specific snippet of text used, along with a link to the source page. This makes it clear to the user where the response came from (and that it is a credible source) and also helps them find the most relevant parts of the text. 

[therobotmonster]

Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

[blubberquark]

Auto-Generated Junk Web Sites

I don't know if you heard the complaints about Google getting worse since 2018, or about Amazon getting worse. Some people think Google got worse at search. I think Google got worse because the web got worse. Amazon got worse because the supply side on Amazon got worse, but ultimately Amazon is to blame for incentivising the sale of more and cheaper products on its platform.

In any case, if you search something on Google, you get a lot of junk, and if you search for a specific product on Amazon, you get a lot of junk, even though the process that led to the junk is very different.

I don't subscribe to the "Dead Internet Theory", the idea that most online content is social media and that most social media is bots. I think Google search has gotten worse because a lot of content from as recently as 2018 got deleted, and a lot of web 1.0 and the blogosphere got deleted, comment sections got deleted, and content in the style of web 1.0 and the blogosphere is no longer produced. Furthermore, many links are now broken because they don't directly link to web pages, but to social media accounts and tweets that used to aggregate links.

I don't think going back to web 1.0 will help discoverability, and it probably won't be as profitable or even monetiseable to maintain a useful web 1.0 page compared to an entertaining but ephemeral YouTube channel. Going back to Web 1.0 means more long-term after-hours labour of love site maintenance, and less social media posting as a career.

Anyway, Google has gotten noticeably worse since GPT-3 and ChatGPT were made available to the general public, and many people blame content farms with language models and image synthesis for this. I am not sure. If Google had started to show users meaningless AI generated content from large content farms, that means Google has finally lost the SEO war, and Google is worse at AI/language models than fly-by-night operations whose whole business model is skimming clicks off Google.

I just don't think that's true. I think the reality is worse.

Real web sites run by real people are getting overrun by AI-generated junk, and human editors can't stop it. Real people whose job it is to generate content are increasingly turning in AI junk at their jobs.

Furthermore, even people who are setting up a web site for a local business or an online presence for their personal brand/CV are using auto-generated text.

I have seen at least two different TV commercials by web hosting and web design companies that promoted this. Are you starting your own business? Do you run a small business? A business needs a web site. With our AI-powered tools, you don't have to worry about the content of your web site. We generate it for you.

There are companies out there today, selling something that's probably a re-labelled ChatGPT or LLaMA plus Stable Diffusion to somebody who is just setting up a bicycle repair shop. All the pictures and written copy on the web presence for that repair shop will be automatically generated.

We would be living in a much better world if there was a small number of large content farms and bot operators poisoning our search results. Instead, we are living in a world where many real people are individually doing their part.

[dcdreamblog]

Followup, the Joker has claimed a few times that he was the original Red Hood--do you think there's any credibility to that?

Am I placing much historical stock in one of the many, MANY manifestos written by a murderous sociopath? No honestly I can't say that I am. Thankfully, I do not have to because as any Gothamite will tell you, the Joker is not as slick as he likes to think he is. SO, let's talk some dates and times.

(The Ace Chemical Process Planet located in Gotham City, NJ) The raid/robbery that The Joker cites as his "one bad day" in his manifesto DID happen. That much is a matter of public record. Generally, here is how it went down.

(All times are taken in EST)

2:00 AM: The Gang makes their way, unnoticed into the factory's central processing area

2:02 AM: The Gang's gunmen are spotted by Ace security, a call to the GCPD is made and the security guards open fire against police advice.

2:03-2:15 AM: Most of the Gang members are killed in the resulting firefight before the police arrive outside the building. Leaving only "Red Hood One" the Gang's assumed leader.

2:16 AM: Batman arrives on the scene, breaking through the skylight of the processing area. His presence is noted entering the building by the GCPD and within the plant by Ace security

2:17-2:20 AM: Batman and Red Hood One engage in a short scuffle and chase through the processing plant, eventually ending up on a catwalk overhanging vats of caustic chemicals. Red Hood One is characterized as "nervous", "jittery" and "terrified" by Ace security

2:21 AM: Red Hood One backs up against the railing of the catwalk, seemingly over committing his weight he falls backwards over the railing. Batman lunges forward in an attempt to catch him but Red Hood One's loose evening glove slips free and he tumbles into the vat below.

2:25 AM: GCPD arrives on the scene, all members of the Red Hood Gang are marked DOA by paramedics.

1 Week: The tanks are drained in full, their contents and the drainage pipes, outflow stream and factory grounds are searched. Red Hood One's body is never recovered. Ace Chemical releases a statement saying that full immersion in the chemicals within the vat is "incompatible with human life". On their advice, Red Hood One is declared legally dead, his identity never established.

1 Month: His single evening glove is left in a sealed evidence bag on the desk of Gotham's then new police commissioner, Jim Gordon. This is taken as evidence that even Batman has declared the case cold.

4 Months: The Joker makes his first public appearance, attempting to release toxic chemicals into the Gotham reservoir. After his defeat and arrest, the chemicals are tested. They are the same chemical from the vats at the Ace Chemical Planet where Red Hood One went missing. The chemical is not publically available for purchase and is a controlled substance, meaning it is only purchasable in bulk for corporate and government manufacturing. This means the only missing batch is the one drained from the vats to search for Red Hood One's body.

It's that last detail that I think will leave this door open until the end of time. Famously as it has been noted though, it's impossible to prove beyond circumstantial evidence.

The Joker has no fingerprints (consistent with them being burned off, which is a common enough criminal tactic that it doesn't prove anything), dental and DNA records matching his own do not exist on any public database.

If Red Hood One left skin, hair or prints on the inside of that glove it's not in the case file and Batman's not telling.

[buf309]

Pose Reference Resources

I promised Dia (aka aerequets) that I will make a collection of pose references in the reply of one of her art posts, and then I completely forgot about it. Until now. I'm sorry for my bad memory.

So, yeah, better late than never I guess?

The pose collection I use the most is no longer free. They used to let you download a whole album (more than 8GB worth of data) to use offline, but now you have to pay $40/package or $200 for full sets. I still have the zip file for a very old version of theirs, but I can't legally share it. So, let's skip to the other options.

1/ First, you heard of those 3D dolls program that let you model your own reference pose? This one is an online one and for free, the whole ordeal. Of course since it's online and free, you can't save your model for next time, and it costs quite a lot of time to set the model up. So, you should take as much screenshots in as many tricky angles as you need once you done with the setting. Best using for complicated scenes where those below don't have what you need already available.

2/ This one is free and in 3D, you can rotate the model to any angle that you need. The only set back is the numbers of poses are quite limited. This one is best for using as a basic blocks then build up what you want to draw, or just as a practice to improve your understanding of human anatomy.

3/ This one is free for personal uses and the pose collection is massive. The setbacks are the language barrier (it's in Japanese, English is sometimes tag-a-long) and you have to search through their pages for what you need. The pics for each pose is static but they are in different angle in almost 360 degrees. There are many 2-person and 3-person poses too. Great for illustration inspiration.

4/ This one will only show reference photos of human head, at whatever angle you rotate the model. The web interface is easy to use. There are options like searching based on gender, ages, emotions, glasses, facial hair or not, etc. Good for practicing face drawing.

5/ This one will show reference photos for human body parts, at whatever angle you rotate the model, read the instructions for how to do it. The web interface is quite hard to use at first, just tinkering around for a bit, and you will be fine. There are options like searching based on gender and which particular parts that you need refs for. Good for that moment when you go "huh? how is this <body part> will look in this <situation>????"

6/ This one will only show reference photos of animal heads, and only the head, at whatever angle you rotate the model. The accurate skull refencence list is their best point. There are enough common species in the drop down list. Tbh, I don't use this much because I often need refs for the whole animal most of the time. But it's best for furry artists, I guess?

7/ Real model photos. They sell pose reference in themed packs, but there are enough free packs to use as drawing practice too.

8/ This is the best for general background reference. Lots of options. Not really good for very specific location results, but good for random background in drawings.

9/ Lastly, for specific objects or background references at strange angles, I often search for 3D models on this site then take screenshots of whatever I need.

That's all, folks. Hope this list can help ease some of the struggles that we will encounter on our quest of learning the art of drawing things 😂

[tellmeallaboutit]

knock knock (Raphael x F!Player)

Chapter 2, In Which You Meet A Tall Dark Stranger 

Chapter 1

SUMMARY: Careful which mods you install for BG3. Did you read the terms and conditions carefully?

TAGS: meta romance, psychological horror, smut, the character is the player, Raphael is after you, you wanted him, you invited him to our world, he accepted your invitation

RATING: explicit

AO3

Chapter 2

The next day, during your lunch break, you made another attempt to persuade Raphael to take his clothes off. The clock struck noon; your private laptop was on the right side of your desk, while your work laptop was on the left, Teams open and your mouse ready to show signs of activity from time to time.

The sun was shining through the wide open window, children playing outside. Idyllic. Nothing sinister could be happening in broad daylight with those happy sounds in the background. The horror movies told you so. Except for Midsommar.

Well, screw Midsommar, then. This isn’t Sweden.

"All right, I'm going to set some ground rules here," you said to the loading screen. "I can be as creepy as I want to be to you, because you're just a bunch of pixels, but you can't do anything creepy to me, because I'm a human being. Got that? Good."

The sound of your voice made you feel braver.

As you heard the familiar sinister 'you-let-the-villain-win-bad-player' music in the background, you covered your eyes with your hands and peered through splayed fingers.

Then he appeared. Just as you had wished. Perfectly naked, with a stereotypical video game six-pack and just the right amount of body hair. The orange lighting made his skin glow, and his flaccid penis, like that of the game's generic male model, vanished from sight as he strode closer.

Your ears pricked up to listen to the scripted monologue you knew by heart, watching (waiting?) for any hiccups or new animations, the YouTube app on your phone playing the identical scene for comparison.

Everything happened exactly as it should, word for word, save for the speaker’s nudity.

All good. You breathed a sigh of relief and spread your fingers wider to admire Raphael a little better. 

Same as always. Handsome and charming and completely imaginary, which, now that you thought about it, was the biggest part of his charm. 

"Ta-ta... for now," Raphael's signature line echoed through the room.

"Bravo, Raphael," you praised the screen. "You've done nothing creepy. You have earned your title of Archdevil Supreme."

After waiting for a response that never came, you laughed off your silliness and shook your head. Your laptop was overheating, giving off a slight synthetic smell. Should have upgraded a long time ago. Just need to put enough money aside.

"OK, screenshots," you said. "I wanted to take some screenshots. Do you mind, Raphael? Can I have your consent? They’ll help recruit more followers for you, my liege."

Your phone vibrated. The FaceID gave you a preview of the Discord messages from Queen-of-the-Bored, one of the few Raphaelites you'd actually spoken to directly and felt like you kinda sorta knew.

queen-of-the-bored: ngl that was some really funny joke, we spent the whole night trying to recreate it :-D queen-of-the-bored: you sounded legit worried over that voice message tho haha you: it was legit. check the reddit thread queen-of-the-bored: which thread

Ok, let me google that for you. You typed in the same search words as yesterday, "Raphael naked mod April prank," clicked on the thread from yesterday, and skimmed through the comments.

“nah not joking there is this naked mod for teenage mutant ninja""

“all dongs appeared MASSIVE on April’s first”

Scrolling further, you realized that was not the correct Raphael - it's Raphael the Turtle, not Raphael the Devil. Why was there so much NSFW content about him? What did people see in turtles?

You quickly corrected your search to "Raphael BG3 naked mod April prank," but it didn’t bring back any relevant results. So, you changed it to "last twenty four hours" just to be thorough.

Didn’t help. Nothing. You were the only to be called a naughty little mouse. The special one.

queen-of-the-bored: which thread dude??? you: my bad it was the turtle queen-of-the-bored: ??? queen-of-the-bored: I am slowly getting worried about you haha

Next step? Contact the mod developer directly? What if they have no idea what you're talking about?

Then what? What were the alternative theories? You've been hacked and doxxed to madness for that one Twitter post that got people waving pitchforks at you? 

There you go, you were scared again. Daytime, sun shining and children playing outside, but there you were, alone in your flat, scared again.

You took a deep breath and looked at the screen. "All right, I understand, Mr Archdevil Supreme. No screenshots. I'll uninstall the mod and I apologise for my disrespectful behaviour."

You couldn't bear to see Raphael's face on the screen again so you hit ctrl alt delete instead of Escape and stared blankly at the Task Manager.

Next, you uninstalled the mod that had caused all this trouble. Then you went to Tumblr and removed the reblog of Raphael in a cat playsuit with the tag "my poor miau miau". Then you deleted your bookmarks on AO3. Your Twitter account was beyond repair, so you deleted it altogether.

None of these actions made you feel any better. You grabbed a quick cup of shrimp noodles, but eating it only made you feel worse. As you tasted the sodium on your tongue, you came to a realisation: what you needed was to go the fuck outside.

You had been stuck in your flat and home office since the start of the pandemic, chronically online. Online work, online colleagues, online friends, who was the last real person you saw, talked to and hugged?

Your mum, probably. 

Oh yes, no wonder you were going mad. You need to get out there and meet some real people. You opened Discord, quickly scrolled past the sketch of Tav giving Raphael head, and typed a message: you needed to touch grass.

queen-of-the-bored: well there is Comic-Con this weekend  you: this is NOT touching grass, this is burning it queen-of-the-bored: true you: besides not going alone queen-of-the-bored: maybe Raph will keep you company 😈 

What? Such a strange thing to say. Or was it? Who the hell was that behind the screen anyway? Apparently someone called Sammy from Ohio. Supposedly. Wasn’t she the one who recommended this mod?

She was.

Come on, you're just letting your paranoia get the best of you.

queen-of-the-bored: oh BTW I found THE hottest Raph smut  queen-of-the-bored: mind the tags it's so hot but soooooo fucked up queen-of-the-bored: just read it trust me thank me later

Who the hell were you, Sammy from Ohio, Korilla? You put the phone down and started pacing around your small flat. It was not much to pace around, only forty-two square meters. 

At least you rent a flat in a building with other people and not some house at the edge of the forest. Strangers live below you, above you and on either side of you. They don't know you and you don't know them... but they were there, just in case...

Just in case.

"You know what?" you said to your computer. "I need a break. I need to focus on my mental health. Self-care, Raphael. I'm not playing with you. For now".

The moment you finished speaking, your phone lit up again with another notification. This time it was an email. You made a mental note to start managing your notifications better.

Did you enjoy your Devil Dick © - Natural Red experience? We know you will be back for more 😈 Check out the new...

What the fuck? Oh no, no, click away and make a mental note to never order from Bad Dragon again with customer satisfaction emails like this. It's borderline harassment. You ordered from them ONCE, as a joke, just to see what ridges might feel like.

Not as good as the smut had promised you,

Private. Private stuff. Between you and your bed drawer. Between you and your browser. God, how much stuff you have in your browser history. You should have used incognito mode more often.

Would that have helped? 

"That was low, Raphael," you muttered. "Or is it Haarlep today?"

You glanced around your room before angling your computer screen towards the wall, then retrieved the Devil Dick © from its hideaway in your bedside drawer. Your fingers grazed over the silicon ridges as you swiftly stashed it away in a box beneath the bed.

"If you must know, it was too big for me. Flattered?"

Crawling out from under the dusty bed, you looked up and realized for the first time that anyone in the building could easily peep into the flat if they tried hard enough or cared enough to do so.

Enough is enough.

You need to hydrate, you need to eat some vegetables, you need to start jogging again and you definitely... you definitely need to go out and talk to some real people. Maybe it's time to get back on Bumble and try your luck again. Who knows, it might actually work this time.

He wouldn't like that.

Where did that thought just come from? He wouldn't like it, who the hell cares what some imaginary devil thinks.

Standing up straight, you pointed a finger at the screen in front of you.

"Raphael, just so we are clear, you and I: I really like you. I do PR for you every day for free. You don't have to scare me to get my attention. You should appreciate me and be nice to me. I'm the best agent you'll ever have.”

Having made your point, you put on your running shoes and AirPods. It brought back memories of all the times you had jogged through the nearby park. Afterwards you'd sit on the bench and eat an ice-cream, watching couples, happy and glowing, watching families with children, happy and stressed, watching people living their lives in a reality parallel to yours, and then you'd come home and go into a reality parallel to theirs.

The AirPods picked up right where they left off last time.

I want to hold you close, soft breasts, beating heart, as I whisper in your ear

I wanna fucking tear you apart

You removed the AirPods from your earlobes and exhaled. This wasn’t Raphael's fault. This is She Wants Revenge, you have listened to it a thousand times. You knew the lyrics, they hadn't changed. 

You can't even listen to music anymore. Pull yourself together. 

Get some vitamins from the pharmacy.

Touch some goddamn grass.

***

You stuck to your digital and physical diet until the weekend, and as a reward, nothing happened. No oddly timed emails, no strange messages, no random phone calls. Maybe it was your pitch talk or the vitamins you started taking, but either way, Raphael was on his best behavior, and so were you. 

No Tumblr, no AO3. Didn't even touch Steam. Got into a highbrow podcast about the Roman Empire.

You set a new personal record for days without 'self-indulgence', as Raphael would put it, although that wasn't really the intention. Something always seemed to interrupt - whether it was the loud hum of the fridge (which was always obnoxious) or the flickering light in the hallway (which had been broken for over a week). 

By Friday, you had finally finished the work projects you had been putting off for months. The job wasn't too bad, but it hadn't been any fun for years, if it ever had been. You did the bare minimum to get the paycheck and keep the job, and your employer kept the paycheck at the bare minimum to keep you. If there was anything else you could do, you would do something else.

Still, this was probably the most productive week you had in years. You scrubbed your flat from top to bottom twice and cleared your wardrobe of clothes that no longer fit.

You were proud of yourself.

Gradually your sense of security began to return. You tried not to dwell too much on the incident with the naughty little mouse; if you didn't think about it, it almost felt like it hadn't happened.

On Friday, you plucked up the courage to play BG3 again, wandered through Baldur's Gate, avoiding the House of Hope for the time being, had a few fights, played the graveyard scene with Astarion (daring, but a small part of you hoped it would make Raphael jealous enough to come out again), and shut it down. 

Nothing out of the ordinary.

You hadn't planned to go to Comic-Con. For one thing, it was on the other side of the city, in the business district of the convention centre, so it would take at least an hour to get there. Secondly, going alone just felt... weird.

It was not until Friday night that a little voice in your head started to whisper, "Why not? Maybe you'll meet some like-minded people”. Make some friends you can actually touch (not in a creepy way). 

It's a better chance than endlessly swiping on Bumble.

Maybe you'll meet...

Neil Newbon. If you can get past the hordes of fangirls. Andrew Wincott. No, Andrew Wincott wouldn't be there; you'd checked beforehand. To be honest, hearing his voice might have been too much for your psyche at that moment.

So you decided to go. You went, and it was as fun as you had imagined it would be - that is, hardly any. The convention hall was huge and crowded, rows and rows of stalls, crowds and crowds of people. Live panel discussions, cosplayers, flashing lights, bright colors, chatter, laughter, very loud, very lively.

Raphael wouldn't last a minute in that chaos.

"Hell is other people," you thought to yourself, quoting Sartre. If you ever met Raphael, you'd quote Sartre to him too. He must know that you read intelligent books and not just fanfiction. 

Some people might be comfortable going to events and eating alone in restaurants, but not you. It's even worse being the odd one out in a group of odd ones. How come all the others had someone to take along? Where did they find all those people in this godforsaken city?

You talked to a few people and a few people talked to you. Nothing really took off. Your mind was elsewhere, to be fair. You were looking for something in the crowd. 

Someone.

It was absurd, yes, but so was what happened this week with the mod. You had met a few Raphael cosplayers, three at least, but they were...

Well, of course they weren't him. But they did a great job with the clothes and the hair and the make-up, and one had really great prosthetic horns, and you touched them and admired them and praised that particular Raphael for all his hard work in creating them.

They were real people, not video game characters that had come to life, and neither were you. You looked down at your jeans, at your thighs, and thought you should start jogging again, and felt even less comfortable in your own skin. 

Then Neil Newbon came along and things quickly became too chaotic for you.

You decided to take a break and walked down the street until you came across a cosy café - none of that generic chain stuff, but something that tried hard to be authentic with pretty flowers in the windows.

Sitting alone at a table for two, you looked down at your phone and opened the Discord chat because you came here to talk to some real people.

In the main chat, there was a heated debate about whether devils are allowed to torture mortals into signing contracts. Both sides presented arguments based on lore, edition contradictions, past precedents and personal conviction. 

A man's voice interrupted you as you typed your own very elaborated opinion of hellish law. "Excuse me, may I?" he asked, his words slightly muffled by the AirPods.

"Sure," you replied with practiced friendliness, not even looking up. That was always your default answer. It's not like you can say no to this kind of request anyway. 

People ask and do a lot of things out of politeness. That was precisely why you took the AirPods out of your ears.

The moment you lifted your eyes to meet the man's, you learned the true meaning of the word 'jumpscare'. Your body jerked upwards, the table shook and the coffee cup tumbled - narrowly missing Raphael.

Raphael. 

Not a man who looked like Raphael, not a man who was dressed like him - Raphael. 

You weren't sure if you made any sound or uttered any words. You probably yelped.

What you did do for sure was gawk.

His skin tone identical; hair slicked back just right; eyes uncannily accurate in hue and shape - down to every wrinkle. A perfectly realistic rendering. Not the uncanny valley type, no, perfectly believable. This is exactly what he would look like if he were real and swapped his fantasy clothes for a business suit.

So this is what it feels like to go completely insane.

Very banal, actually. You are having a psychotic breakdown and no one is even looking at you, except for an imaginary devil.

"Oh my, my apologies," Raphael said as he quickly grabbed napkins to mop up the spreading lake of coffee on the table. "I did not mean to scare you."

Oh, but he did, very much. You could not breathe, your chest encased in an iron brace of fear. It's you who needs to apologise, and apologise fast, and apologise a lot, and beg for mercy. Especially for liking the Twitter art of him being spit-roasted between Yurgir and Haarlep. 

If you only knew... you would never have clicked on it... absolutely never... all those posts you wrote... 

"Raphael?" you managed to squeak out. “I didn’t mean it, I swear.”

This must be how a deer feels in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

He looked at you, very sincere confusion etched across his handsome face. "Excuse me?"

You drew in a shaky breath, your nostrils flaring as you tried to catch a whiff of cherries under the aroma of fresh coffee, not caring how absurd you appeared. Yes? No? Or was that strawberry jam on his croissant? Have your senses gone haywire? Your mind certainly has.

"You're... you're here to cosplay Raphael?" 

The thought tumbled out of your mouth before it had time to fully form in your head. It was the only explanation that made sense... It didn't, but it made more sense than all the others put together.

Raphael moved closer, pulled up a chair and asked, amused: "I beg your pardon, I'm here to do what to whom?"

The voice. The voice was the same. Andrew Wincott's voice. The man had simply stolen his voice. Or had the man stolen it from him? The movements, the mannerisms, the facial expressions. This man could not be Raphael because...

Well, because this man was real. As real as you were. 

"Raphael," you explained. "From the video game. Are you here to cosplay... to play... Raphael?"

The man gave you a look as if questioning your sanity, and rightfully so. You were also sweating bullets - could he see the damp patches under your hoodie? You pressed your arms against your sides; wouldn't want him noticing.

"I'm hardly an actor," Raphael replied with a polite smile, "although there was a time in my youth when I entertained such ambitions."

He chuckled lightly and took a leisurely sip of his coffee. 

"I'm here to enjoy my espresso, nothing more. I... have never been particularly fond of..." he added with the disdain of a typical middle-aged man, "... video games.”

You had no response for that because Raphael wouldn't be into video games either; that much was believable.

"My office is across the street," he said, pointing towards the office complex opposite you. "Precisely there."

The golden sign on the building across from you, d'Avergni & Partners, told you nothing, except that Raphael had an office job and an office space and a desk and all the things that the devil shouldn’t have because the devil invented them to torture the others.

Raphael was dressed like he had just stepped out of a board meeting. A three-piece slate gray tailored suit, white shirt peeking out from underneath, silk tie and matching pocket square. Of all the modern Raphael AUs, you preferred the Professor one, you voted for it, you had Sucharide’s fic bookmarked. The Professor was more, ugh...

Safe.

As for you, you were wearing a hoodie with your university on it. A clean hoodie, but a hoodie nonetheless. What the hell else would you be wearing to Comic Con? You didn't do your hair. Well, putting it in a ponytail is not doing your hair. Why did you not do your hair? 

"I know, I know, you must be wondering why anyone would toil on a weekend," Raphael continued. That was the last thing you were wondering. "Alas, no rest for the wicked."

"Wicked?" you echoed. You looked at the people in the cafe, sure they were staring at the both of you, but they weren't.

"Oh," he chuckled lightly, "it's just an expression – 'No rest for the wicked.' You've never heard it before?"

"Of course I have," you said, momentarily embarrassed. "Never mind...sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for," Raphael raised his eyebrows. "In fact, I should be the one to apologise for startling you. May I offer you another cup of... ah, what was that... cappuccino? After twelve? Tsk-tsk, young lady".

Not a single modern man could ever manage to say the words "tsk-tsk, young lady" as charmingly. That was Raphael.

"No bother, I can get one myself," you said quickly, about to stand up. 

He raised his hand slightly and put it down to halt your movement, and for a second you thought he was going to touch you, and if he had, if you had felt the skin of his skin, he would have felt more real and you would have died on the spot from a bursting heart.

"I have no doubt about that. But may I treat you? It would be my absolute pleasure”.

Pleasure. The way he said the word was straight obscene. You couldn't handle the word 'pleasure' coming from a man who had been responsible for more than half your orgasms in the last few months.

So in your daze, you mumbled: "Yeah. Yeah, sure."

Raphael stood up and walked over to the barista. She acknowledged him, so that's one point for him being real and you not hallucinating. Not only did she acknowledge him but she flashed him a goofy grin - clearly smitten.

Of course she is.

You have to take a picture of him. How do you take a picture of someone without their consent without being a total creep?

You don't. It's in the fucking definition; you can't. But you should. Maybe you'll open your camera roll and see someone completely different, and then you'll know it's time to call for mental health services.

Your phone was buzzing with messages, which you quickly swiped away and went straight to the camera. You took a picture of him from behind while he ordered you a coffee. The barista gave you a “fucking weirdo” look. 

Fuck you, you thought, you have no idea what I am going through right now. Then you switched to the camera roll and checked to see if the photo reflected what you saw.

A broad, fit back of a very attractive middle-aged man with lush brown hair, paying for coffee with cash.

You couldn't decide whether this made you feel better or worse.

When Raphael returned with your cup, you had something for him too. "This is the character I was talking about," you said, a screenshot of virtual Raphael ready on your screen.

Anyone who saw the screenshot would say, "Who motion-captured me?" 

Not Raphael. He barely glanced before shrugging and handing your phone back. "Hmm, I see some resemblance, I guess."

Resemblance? What fucking resemblance? There was no resemblance; he WAS Raphael! You were about to argue but he beat you to it: "Why? Were you hoping to meet this...Raphael?" 

His voice dropped an octave and he looked at you intently. He was flirting - openly, unashamedly.

"I...I was," you stammered out. "He's my favourite character."

Brilliant, brilliant line. Dear diary, today I wanted to meet Raphael, my favourite character from my favourite game. So much for quoting Sartre.

"Well now, I'm flattered," Raphael purred, causing you to wriggle uncomfortably in your seat. "I do bear some physical likeness."

That was a massive understatement. 

The man had a disarmingly charming smile. You tried to remember if Raphael had ever smiled like that in the game. It was mostly scowls and grins and smirks, but this kind of smile? You didn't think so. You caught a glimpse of yourself in his hazel eyes, and that was not Tav; that was you. Just you.

Not that you were unattractive or anything. Average. Maybe even a little pretty on a good day. You didn't like yourself very much. Then again, most people don't. That's how the beauty industry makes its money. 

You got your share of attention, some, nothing to brag about. Had two boyfriends, it didn't work out, you used to care, now you don't. Certainly never got any attention from men who looked like him.

Why should this man be interested in you, why? Ah, yes. Your soul. He probably wants your soul. Is it worth much at all? Is it worth coming all the way to Earth? You wanted to apologize to him for going through all this trouble just for you.

"So this event in the convention hall down the street..." he snapped his fingers as if trying to recall a forgotten name.

"Comic-Con 2024," you supplied. "It's huge in fandom culture. TV shows, video games, that sort of stuff.”

"Ah. Not my kind of entertainment - or my kind of audience, for that matter," Raphael said with a slightly raised eyebrow, eyeing the “Astarion approves” badge on your backpack.  "It does remind me of a deal I signed recently."

"Deal?" you asked in a weak voice. He nodded. "What deal? With who?"

"With who? No, I meant the Microsoft-Blizzard acquisition". 

Ah, that kind of deal. The words felt so reassuring, so real, the acquisition. Raphael would have no idea about these words. Raphael wouldn't say "Microsoft". You mean the real Raphael. What the hell is a 'real' Raphael again?

For the first time, you let go of a little tension. You took a first sip of your coffee and leaned back slightly in your chair. 

"Actually, I think these acquisitions are really harmful for the industry," you said. 

Why did you have to be so confrontational? You didn't have anything clever to say about such things, so you spoke the truth instead. Bad idea.

"How candid of you to say that. Well, I’ll be just as candid with you: I am indeed a villain." Raphael grinned. "I hope you can forgive me." 

There went your short-lived relaxation, which lasted less than a minute.  Raphael had just looked at you and said "I am a villain". Challenge him. Tell him it's him because, well, it's him. It can only be him. Tell him you know it's him, and then...

And then what?

"Everybody's got a job to do, I guess", you managed to utter the most generic phrase in existence.

"Isn't that so..." Raphael replied, pausing for a moment before finishing the sentence with your name.

You did not introduce yourself to him. You were sure of it. Absolutely sure. 

"How do you know my name?" you asked, half rising from your chair, raising your voice and quickly lowering it again. "I didn't tell you my name. How do you know it?"

Raphael gestured to your phone, which lay on the table screen between the two of you. Your work ID card was tucked away in its transparent case - something you hadn't needed for a while.

It had your first and last name on it.

"I saw it right before my eyes," he explained. "I thought it was a hint."

"It wasn't," you said.

"Oh, another faux pas on my part then," he said. "At this rate, I owe you something to make up for all my many transgressions. Perhaps dinner?"

You let out a nervous chuckle. One of your popular Tumblr posts had been an impassioned rant about how Raphael had promised a similar in-game offer but failed to deliver despite the many times you gave him the Crown.

"I seem to have absolutely terrified you, and that was not my intention. I insist on making it up to you. If you allow me, of course. I don't want to impose. Would you allow me to?"

He looked at you with the intensity of a man admiring a beautiful woman, his shoulders back and chin slightly up, trying to present himself from his best angle - something you've seen men do before, but rarely (if ever) to you. It was as if he could hang on every word that came out of your mouth, simply because he enjoyed watching your lips move. Raphael looked like he was in love, for Christ's sake.

Your cheeks grew warm. 

"Yes," you replied.

He kept silent for a bit, savouring your answer. 

"Splendid. Where might I collect you?"

It took you a moment to realise that he was asking for your address. Your personal address. Shouldn't he know it already, if he was Raphael? You replied as nonchalantly as possible:

"Why don't I give you my number and we can arrange to meet at the center?"

His expression darkened slightly; you've seen this look in the game before.

No, you shouldn't have said that. You wanted him to like you. 

Desperately.

"You don't trust me?" Raphael's voice dropped an octave or two, playful and just a little threatening.

You felt his breath on your face (cherries?) and the next second you stopped feeling your legs. The attraction that had been simmering inside you for months started boiling over.

Breathe. Pretend it's not Raphael. A man came up to you in a coffee shop and asked you if you trusted him in that kind of tone, leaning in like that. You know what the sensible thing to do would be - get up and walk away. And if it really was Raphael, get up and run away. 

You remained seated and stayed. 

"Just, ugh..." was all you managed to get out of the jumbled thoughts in your head; two coherent sentences so far into the conversation, and both of them made you sound like an absolute madwoman. 

Raphael laughed.

"Of course you don't trust me, that's only prudent, and you seem to be quite an intelligent young lady. But just so we are clear, you and I: you have nothing to fear from me. What is that number of yours?"

Quite an intelligent young lady, the words echoed in your mind and you remembered your naughty anonymous Tumblr confession: I would suck every last drop of cum out of him as long as he kept praising me.

God, everything you've read with him in the main role. Double penetration, double vaginal penetration, pet play... you weren't even into half of it. You hoped Raphael didn’t think you actually wanted him to do all of the things you read with you.

You just liked clicking on random links.

"Do you need something to write it down or...?" you asked hesitantly.

"I will remember," he said curtly. “I do not forget things easily”.

You realised that there was something far more frightening than anything that had happened before: that he wouldn't remember, that he would never call you, and that this conversation and this meeting would end there. 

So you carefully enunciated each number, then took a pen from your pocket and wrote it down on a napkin: it seemed romantic in the movies, but your handwriting and the coffee stain made it look like a secret message from the madhouse.

He grinned and tucked the napkin into the pocket of his suit.

He took the last sip of coffee and then took your hand in his. He touched you. His skin was warm and real and soft and everything you had ever imagined, his touch surprisingly tender. 

Your whole body responded to that tiny crumb of affection, viscerally. You hadn't realized how famished you were for a touch until that moment.

He lifted your hand to his lips and pressed them against yours. His lips were soft too, slightly damp from the coffee.

"I am looking forward to our rendezvous," Raphael murmured against your palm. "Ver much so."

Rendezvous.

In any other situation, a middle-aged man kissing your hand would be downright creepy. But this... this was a fever dream, an illusion, anything but reality. Because there was no way this madness could actually be happening to you.

Was it a bad thing? Was reality ever... this? So unpredictable? So exciting? 

You only snapped out of it when the door closed behind him, but you snapped out hard. You practically threw yourself at the next table, where a group of guys were sitting, their appearance screaming video games - backpacks and scruffy beards, Warhammer-emblazoned T-shirts. 

You grabbed one by the shoulder and hissed urgently: "Guys-guys-guys-guys." Your words came like rapid fire. "Tell me that guy doesn't look exactly like Raphael from Baldur's Gate? That one? On the street behind the window?" 

Damn, you sounded desperate.

"Ah, sorry, never played it," came the nonchalant reply before he turned back to his friends' conversation.

"Baldur's Gate," chimed in another, his face lighting up. "Amazing game. Looks like who?"

"Raphael," you said. "The devil."

The guy laughed, but didn't even look where you were pointing.

"Ah, the two-pump chump?"

You shot a quick glance at Raphael. His eyes met yours through the glass window, and they were cold now; his smile was gone. 

I didn't say that, you pleaded with him in your thoughts. That guy said that. That guy over there. I would never say that.

Your defence of his bed skills stretched from Reddit to Tumblr threads, you argued that Haarlep was slandering him, that Raphael was the best fuck there ever was and you personally vouched for that because you fucked him a thousand times in your head.

"Don't call him that, please," you whispered to the guy. He gave you a confused look when you pointed at Raphael again: "Look at him. The one staring at us. Does he look like him?

Is he real? Do you see him too?

"Ah yes," he admitted with a grin on his face, raising the cup of coffee to his lips, "he sort of does. Yes, he does! Well, I hope he doesn't...oh shit! FUCK!".

The guy's face contorted in pain as he clutched his mouth, jumping, cursing, tears streaming down his face. You could see the skin on his lips reddening and blistering.

"What the fuck?! It's fucking boiling! FUCK! "

The barista rushed over to him, spewing apologies as she tried to handle the situation. You took a step back and glanced at Raphael whose lips were moving subtly - two syllables that matched rhythmically: 'bye-bye' or maybe 'ciao-ciao'. 

It didn't have to be 'ta-ta'. He waved nonchalantly at you.

You waved back.

NEXT: Chapter 3, In Which Larian Introduces The Raphael Romance

[probablyasocialecologist]

To bring about its hypothetical future, OpenAI must build a new digital ecosystem, pushing users toward the ChatGPT app or toward preëxisting products that integrate its technology such as Bing, the search engine run by OpenAI’s major investor, Microsoft. Google, by contrast, already controls the technology that undergirds many of our online experiences, from search and e-mail to Android smartphone-operating systems. At its conference, the company showed how it plans to make A.I. central to all of the above. Some Google searches now yield A.I.-generated “Overview” summaries, which appear in tinted boxes above any links to external Web sites. Liz Reid, Google’s head of search, described the generated results with the ominously tautological tagline “Google will do the Googling for you.” (The company envisions that you will rely on the same search mechanism to trawl your own digital archive, using its Gemini assistant to, say, pull up photos of your child swimming over the years or summarize e-mail threads in your in-box.) Nilay Patel, the editor-in-chief of the tech publication the Verge, has been using the phrase “Google Zero” to describe the point at which Google will stop driving any traffic to external Web sites and answer every query on its own with A.I. The recent presentations made clear that such a point is rapidly approaching. One of Google’s demonstrations showed a user asking the A.I. a question about a YouTube video on pickleball: “What is the two-bounce rule?” The A.I. then extracted the answer from the footage and displayed the answer in writing, thus allowing the user to avoid watching either the video or any advertising that would have provided revenue to its creator. When I Google “how to decorate a bathroom with no windows” (my personal litmus test for A.I. creativity), I am now presented with an Overview that looks a lot like an authoritative blog post, theoretically obviating my need to interact directly with any content authored by a human being. Google Search was once seen as the best path for getting to what’s on the Web. Now, ironically, its goal is to avoid sending us anywhere. The only way to use the search function without seeing A.I.-generated content is to click a small “More” tab and select “Web” search. Then Google will do what it was always supposed to do: crawl the Internet looking for URLs that are relevant to your queries, and then display them to you. The Internet is still out there, it’s just increasingly hard to find. If A.I. is to be our primary guide to the world’s information, if it is to be our 24/7 assistant-librarian-companion as the tech companies propose, then it must constantly be adding new information to its data sets. That information cannot be generated by A.I., because A.I. tools are not capable of even one iota of original thought or analysis, nor can they report live from the field. (An information model that is continuously updated, using human labor, to inform us about what’s going on right now—we might call it a newspaper.) For a decade or more, social media was a great way to motivate billions of human beings to constantly upload new information to the Internet. Users were driven by the possibilities of fame and profit and mundane connection. Many media companies were motivated by the possibility of selling digital ads, often with Google itself as a middle man. In the A.I. era, in which Google can simply digest a segment of your post or video and serve it up to a viewer, perhaps not even acknowledging you as the original author, those incentives for creating and sharing disappear. In other words, Google and OpenAI seem poised to cause the erosion of the very ecosystem their tools depend on.

[liongoatsnake]

It has come up as of late, yet again, regarding the use of the term phantom limbs while referring to the experiences some alterhumans have where they feel traits on their bodies that are not physically there.  

While I could go into the long, long history of the term being used in the alterhuman communities going back into the 1990s, as this debate’s key sticking point is in regard to phantom limb being a medical term specific to the experiences of amputees or instead a general term that can be used for non-amputees as well, I’m going to strictly be pulling from academic sources below.   

To put it succinctly, the use of the term phantom limbs for alterhuman experiences has been recognized by multiple researchers and in other academic settings over the years. Ergo, no it isn’t a term specific to amputees that doesn't apply to alterhuman experiences. - Academic references below cut-

Examples:

The research done by a multidisciplinary team of researchers focusing on the study of the furry fandom called the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, uses the term phantom limb while referring the experiences of therians and otherkin. In their book, FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, which is a summary of five years of continuous research into the furry fandom, a section simply named “Phantom Limb,” touches on the topic of phantom limbs among furries, therians, and otherkin. [1] They go into the presence of “phantom limbs” among furries, therians, and otherkin again in their piece “Furries, Therians, and Otherkin, Oh My! What Do All Those Words Mean, Anyway?” which was part of the book, Furries Among Us 2: More Essays on Furries by Furries. Further, in 2019, the team published an academic article which shared their results where they used the previously mentioned Rubber Hand Illusion experiment on furries and therians. Once again, when bringing up the existence of experiences among therians and otherkin, the researchers use the term “phantom limbs.” [2] 

Devin Proctor’s 2019 dissertation, On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space includes, along with dozens of mentions of the term throughout the work, a section on Phantom Shifting and in which he uses the term “phantom limbs.” [3]

For yet another example, the article, “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community” also goes into quite some detail regarding the experience of “phantom limbs” among therians. [4]

A final example includes Nat Bricker’s 2016 thesis, Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model. [5]

…

This is NOT an exhaustive list in the slightest, but I think I’ve made my point clear enough (and I have other things I need to do today other than keep searching through my archive...).

TL;DR - Researchers who have studied therians and otherkin ALSO use the term phantom limbs to describe our experiences. This isn’t appropriation or otherwise misuse of medical terminology. This is using a word for what it means.   Citations:

[1] Plante, Courtney N., Stephen Reysen, Sharon E. Roberts, & Kathleen C. Gerbasi. FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. Waterloo, Ontario: FurScience, 2016. https://furscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FurScience-Final-pdf-for-Website_2017_10_18.pdf, page 116.

[2] Kranjec, Alexander, Louis Lamanna, Erick Guzman, Courtney N. Plante, Stephen Reysen, Kathy Gerbasi, Sharon Roberts and Elizabeth Fein. “Illusory Body Perception and Experience in Furries.” CogSci (July 2019): Page 596-602.

[3] Proctor, Devin. On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space. The George Washington University. May 2019. pages 172, 203-209, & 255.

[4] Grivell, Timothy, Helen Clegg & Elizabeth C. Roxburgh. “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research. Volume 14, Number 2 (May 2014): pages 119-120, 124, 128-129.

[5] Bricker, Nat. Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model, Lake Forest College, April 2016, pages. 10, 14-15, 39-41, 60.

[memoriashell]

another year, another birthday tweet...i actually really (mostly) liked this year's message, so i prioritized working on it asap. lol. one day i'll get around to doing some of the ones from the previous years, but not today. also bc twitter is a ticking time bomb and i am doing my part in archiving content o7

disclaimer, i’m not fluent in japanese, so i’m not claiming that this is perfect or potentially not without misunderstandings. i’ve also included some translation notes to clarify some things that i felt needed clarification and to offer explanation as to why i reached the conclusions that i did.

i'll also have everything under the cut for easier accessability! sorry if there are typos it is almost midnight as i schedule this up for tomorrow >.>

--

大和田

「あぁ？誕生日だぁ？ Ah? [My] birthday?

やめろや、恥ずかしい。Quit that, [it’s] embarrassing. **

オレは日本最大最狂最悪の暴行チームの頭だぞ？I’m the leader of Japan’s most biggest, craziest gang, you know? ***

こんな事で喜んだ姿を見せてられっかよ……けど、まぁオメーらにだったらいいかもな。 [I’m] not sure if I can show how happy I am [for this sort of thing]...but, well, maybe it’s okay [to show that emotion] if it’s just you guys, right? ****

兄弟からも『本当の強さとは弱さを見せられる相手を持つ事だ』って忠告されたばっかだしな 」 “True strength is to have somebody to show your weaknesses to.” That’s the advice that Kyoudai gave me.

//

** やめろ generally is translated as stop it, but the や emphasis at the end gives the idea of this being a little more intense, which is generally on point for Mondo. To try and get across that it’s more than just a normal stop it, I decided to translate it as quit it instead. 

恥ずかしい just generally translates as being embarrassed or that something is embarrassing, so contextually you could read this as “Stop that, it’s embarrassing [that you’re celebrating]”, or “Quit that, I’m embarrassed [that you’re celebrating me]”. I went with the former because in the overall context that one made the most sense to me, but I think it’s probably okay to read it either way.

*** Okay this one was a bit of a doozy to try and make sense of, because 最大 is biggest, 最 is most, 狂 depends on context but one of the more common ways is to describe someone who is crazy enthusiastic about something, and 最悪 is for worst/terrible. It didn’t seem like there was an easy way to translate this without it becoming a mouthful and also not really making much sense, so I tried to compromise in the translation. 

As a bonus fun fact, since I cross referenced it trying to figure out how to translate,  最大最悪 is used for infamous: the biggest, most awful [most tragic event in human history] line in DR.

The other issue with this line is that uhm. I am hoping Kodaka just accidentally made a typo? 暴行 (boukou), I am hoping, was supposed to actually be bousouzoku (暴走族), which is the term used for referring to Mondo’s gang/deliquent activities. 暴行 is a word that can be associated with violence, but specifically SA. Sorry that I have to bring this up. Anyways, I tried to google to see if there was perhaps some slang I was missing (including the チーム/team from the original tweet), but that really only gave results for things related to sports teams and SA. Considering that as far as I could tell, no one on the JP side said anything about it, it might be something just lost in translation? But even searching the term on twitter didn’t seem to suggest that it’s a term used commonly so I don’t think it’s like a fan abreviation for bousozoku >> boukou. Anyways this god awful tangent aside, I’m working with the assumption that we’re talking about biking!!  Please know I was this close to giving up on this tweet because I did not want to have to explain this mess.

**** Okay so like this part is pretty straightforward, but I figured I’d give a few note anyways:

The first part of the sentance here technically is skepticisim about being able to show delight, but hesitates to say that it’s okay to do so. The following sentence builds on that, which suggests that he believes that showing happiness over celebrating his birthday would be weak, but because he takes what Kiyotaka has said as advice, he presumably takes it into consideration. 

It should be noted that 相手 is usually translated to like companion, partner, or company (singular), so I considered translated it as friend but, I opted to leave it a little more vague and use somebody instead. It seems intentional that it is supposed to be a very narrow translation instead implying that this is something that should be conveyed to anyone/everyone. In conclusion, the train of thought is something like: I’m a gang leader >> It’s embarrassing to be celebrating birthday’s >> I can’t show that emotion.

Then with the following sentence: There’s strength in showing weakness >> It might be weak to show emotion but that’s okay >> I can show that emotion around some people.

[ceapa-mica]

Grand Admiral Thrawn - The NSFW Alphabet 💋

I had the autistic urge™ to put my Thrawn thots into alphabetical order. This Thrawn NSFW alphabet is the result of my three month Thrawn brainrot. Enjoy! ❤️

There is no mention of the reader's gender btw.

🔞 This is 18+ content, minors stay away! 🔞

First of all, congratulations! 🎉 You successfully managed to seduce the Galaxy's smartest, most emotionally constipated, art loving, morally grey character. That's very brave of you!

Now let's get started!

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Thrawn makes sure you're cleaned up and comfortable. If you're big on cuddling, this could be something he has to get used to first. He would also remind you to use the refresher after sex to avoid catching a UTI.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Your human eyes fascinate him, he likes to imagine what a painting done with the color of your irises would look like. As for himself, it's his arms. He loves how you seem to fit perfectly into his warm embrace. He holds you close with them, safe from any harm.

One day after taking a shower with you, he looks at the reflection of your nude bodies in the mirror and realizes that you two look like a piece of art together. He loves the contrast of his blue skin and your [your skin color] skin together.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

This man cums a lot and I imagine it tastes slightly different from human cum. He likes cuming inside you but also likes seeing you covered in ropes of his cum like a work of art. Where he cums depends on where you want him to cum, and if you don't care, it just depends on where he wants it to go. If he had to choose one, he would always cum inside you.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

When he first felt attracted to you, he had searched for erotic art of people that resemble you to figure out if those feelings are in fact attraction.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Thrawn only had very few partners before you, but he's a quick learner. He definitely knows the basics and should he be unfamiliar with something you wanna try, explain it to him.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Any position that offers him a good view of your body. He loves seeing you on top, looking up and admiring you riding him. To him your body is a work of art, this man worships every inch of you!

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc

Thrawn is a serious person. His sense of humor is very dry and he wouldn't use it during sex. He's focused on you, and you only. Making you feel good and leaving you satisfied afterwards is something he takes very seriously.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

You can't tell me this man doesn't have a hair and body care routine. I imagine Chiss don't have much body hair in general. (To keep warm on Csilla they have thicker skin and a high metabolism.) He keeps his looks clean and tidy, and yes, the carpet matches the drapes.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Look, this man wouldn't just go and sleep with anyone. He's a Grand Admiral and has a reputation to maintain. If he sleeps with you, you must mean a lot to him if he decides to take that step with you. To him it's a way to connect with you on a deeper level. He continuously tells you how beautiful you are and what he loves about you.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Before you he used to masturbate rarely and during your relationship he stopped masturbation altogether. He simply prefers sex with you over his own hand. Unless you're separated for a longer period of time, that's when he would masturbate only while calling you via holocomm where you can see each other and satisfy each other's desires from afar.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

He has a competency kink™. Watching you work on something you’re good at, being all professional, it makes Thrawn melt. He will keep up his mask until you're alone with him in his quarters, then he will be all over you, praising you for your good work and fucking you senseless.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Thrawn has a reputation, he's a Grand Admiral, you wouldn't catch him in the act in a supply closet or anywhere else on board of the Chimera that isn't his quarters. He wants his private life to remain private. Inside his quarters he has a large bed and a comfortable luxurious sofa, and he likes to take you on either.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Like I said before, he's into competency, and there's nothing more attractive to him than you passionately talking about work or hobbies, anything that you love doing. The passionate spark that appears in your eyes makes him want to support you unconditionally and at the same time makes him want to take you to his bedroom to show you what you mean to him. Oh and you explaining a piece of art to him he doesn't know much about yet? Instant turn on!

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Thrawn draws the line at degrading or hurting you. He doesn't understand how anyone could actually enjoy that. To him, you are the most beautiful person in the Galaxy, and he makes sure to remind you of that whenever he can. He always asks for your consent too, just to reassure himself you actually want this.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Thrawn clearly prefers giving oral. To him your taste is something he didn't know he needed, and now he could spend hours down between your legs, lapping up your juices and stimulating you, making you cum over and over on his tongue. He doesn't mind receiving oral, but definitely prefers cuming inside your pussy or on your body instead of inside your mouth.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Thrawn is very thorough when it comes to sex. He wants you to feel all of him, so he prefers being slow and sensual. Unless you crave a fast and rough fucking or when he's had a bad day at work (some pent up frustration over Krennic’s antics idk) then and only then will he go for fast and rough sex.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He doesn't like them and he doesn't do them. He wants to take his time to love you properly, and that can't be done in a ten minute quickie.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Sure, he's up to anything you're willing to try, unless it's something that could hurt you or involves other people. Thrawn would never share you with anyone, that's unheard of where he comes from.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

His enormous self control allows him to go for hours. An average human body would be exhausted after two rounds with him. So the question should be how many rounds can YOU go for?

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Thrawn is open to new ways of pleasuring you. Initially he doesn't know much about sex toys, but after you explain what you want to try with him, and after some research on it, he's willing to try out toys with you. He prefers using them on you instead of himself.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He's a patient man, and he knows about the perks of delayed gratification. When he's in the mood to tease, he will edge you. He loves watching you squirm underneath him.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Thrawn is not very loud. Labored breathing, moaning into the crook of your neck and occasional grunts when he picks up the pace are the only sounds you can expect of him.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

With your consent, he would either paint a picture of you in the nude, or pay an artist to do it, so when you're separated, he can have a piece of you with him, that's only meant for his eyes.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Thrawn has a healthy muscular body with several scars from past battles. I imagine his cock looks pretty much human, safe for the color of his skin of course. It's just slightly bigger and it has alien ridges that feel incredible when inside of you.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Not very high until you came into his life. He didn't know he could feel this way about anyone. With you his sex drive is average, he makes time for sex when his busy schedule allows him to. You better have nothing planned for that period of time.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Chiss don't require as much sleep as humans. While you doze off next to him, he works on his datapad some more before falling asleep, or he simply watches you sleep peacefully next to him while being the big spoon. You should get used to red glowing eyes in the dark when you stay overnight or move into his quarters.

If this has inspired any additional thots, pls let me know in the comments. ❤️

[sexhaver]

I’m inclined to agree with you about AI image generation but I was reading about Google’s currently-in-development program that just seems like it’s AI generated plagiarism:

“To produce articles, publishers first compile a list of external websites that regularly produce news and reports relevant to their readership. These sources of original material are not asked for their consent to have their content scraped or notified of their participation in the process—a potentially troubling precedent, said Kint.

When any of these indexed websites produce a new article, it appears on the platform dashboard. The publisher can then apply the gen AI tool to summarize the article, altering the language and style of the report to read like a news story.”

Idk in general I don’t see any positive developments coming out of LLMs beyond mild novelty and this specifically seems like using the technology to straightforwardly do plagiarism, minus any meaningful transformation or sleight of hand

yeah this is definitely my least favorite part of AI in general, the gradual shitting up of google search results. and just like with AI image generators being used to crib a specific artist's style, this use of AI is tricky to figure out a response for because it fundamentally doesn't create any "new" kind of offense (like those AI image gens used to "undress" pictures of women), it just massively lowers the barrier of entry for an existing one.

the parallels between these "plagiarism summarizers" and warehouse automation robots is actually kind of funny now that i think about it. in a vacuum, they both save human labor: summarizer-bots could just be used on a personal level to give people a summary of recent articles from sites that they personally choose to follow like an RSS Feed (remember RSS Feeds? oh my god im so old), and automated storage and retrieval systems literally exist to make warehouse work easier. and yet because we live in a world where capitalism demands websites make their money off ad revenue and warehouses make their money off working their employees to the bone, summarizer-bots are used to shit up search results with autocompleted drivel that reads like the intro to a recipe on a cooking blog, and ASRSs are used to fire half of a company's workforce while doubling production quotas on the remainder. there's so much potential for robotics to help humanity as a whole but all the money rn is funneled into getting robots to either cut corporate costs or kill people

[unforth]

I’m sorry, I’m confused, is all AI equally environmentally damaging, or just AI based on Language Learning Models? I can’t find search results that tell me what else AI can be based on if not LLMs. Would a CBT “therapist” AI bot count as an LLM? I know therapy +AI is not private and has ethical concerns but for non sensitive things it worked way better for me than any human therapist but based on your post it seems like I should stop using it for the sake of the environment

Anon, your therapist bot is an LLM.

Look, I can't give you permission, but thinking that a therapy bot is better than a human therapist is A Choice and the therapy bot is generating sentences word by word using statistical analysis of "the word that it thinks makes the most sense to come next based on its analysis of input text-based data." Chatbots that generate "original" content (as opposed to, like, basically running a search and outputting pre-generated content from the FAQ or whatever) definitely are language learning models. I'm about as far from an expert as it's possible to be so I don't know enough to say more than that, but regardless... yeah, idk really know what you want from me anon? If you think the help it gives you is worth the environmental consequences and, ya know, the massive unethical theft of copyrighted material used to teach it, then you do you.

But yes, therapist bot is an LLM, and yes, it's burning disproportionate amounts of resources compared to many other tech uses but not all, and yes, only you can decide where your priorities lay, and I mean that honestly and not, like, snarkily. No one else can tell you if the cost is worth the benefit.

[coughloop]

Prototype Jack (プロトタイプ・ジャック Purototaipu Jakku?, in Russian: Прототип Джек) (P. Jack for short) is a playable robot in the Tekken series of fighting games. Prototype Jack was created and designed by Doctor Bosconovitch as the prototype model of the main Jack series. However, after it was stolen by Heihachi Mishima, it was pitted against the main line of Jacks.

Contents

1 Biography

1.1 Personality

1.2 Appearance

1.3 Outfits

2 Story

2.1 Tekken

2.2 Tekken 2

3 Other Appearances

3.1 Tekken: The Motion Picture

3.2 Tekken Tag Tournament

3.3 Namco X Capcom

3.4 Tekken Tag Tournament 2

4 Gameplay

4.1 Fighting Style

4.2 Moves

5 Character Relationships

6 Trivia

7 Gallery

8 References

9 Navigation

Biography

In search of a new, more devastating, weapon, the Russian military began work on the development of androids - superhuman robots built for the purpose of causing destruction. The first step in production was the prototype model of what was to become a line of military robots, which were named "Jack". The prototype was stolen by Heihachi Mishima and his Mishima Zaibatsu, but Russia was still able to produce their main line of Jack robots without the prototype at hand. With the project a success, the first Jack was entered into the King of Iron Fist Tournament. On learning of this, Heihachi entered Prototype Jack into the tournament to face its upgraded counterpart. Prototype Jack was ultimately destroyed by Jack. A couple of years later, the genius Russian scientist, Doctor Bosconovitch, was kidnapped by the new CEO of the Zaibatsu, Kazuya Mishima. Bosconovitch repaired and updated Prototype Jack. After being remodeled and gaining new abilities, Prototype Jack was entered into the second tournament as a rival to the upgraded Jack robot, Jack-2.

It is unknown what happened to Prototype Jack after this. In the non-canonical Tekken Chronicle, some of Prototype Jack's parts, along with parts from Jack and Jack-2, were used in the creation of Gun Jack.[3] Given that Gun Jack inherited some of Prototype Jack's moves, and was partially built in Mishima Industries where Prototype Jack received its upgrades, it is possible that canonically its remains were indeed dismantled and used in the creation of Gun Jack.

Personality

Despite being a robot, Prototype Jack was able to develop some kind of sentience. As a result of being discarded in favor of the main Jack series, it came to resent the Jacks and their creators - the Russian government. As a result, Prototype Jack is an aggressive character, determined to grow stronger and smarter in order to destroy all of its opposition, especially the Jacks, which it sees as potentially obsoleting it and jeopardizing its utility. While silent in battle with the exception of generic grunts and growls, outside of battle Prototype Jack was very vocal about its thirst for strength and intelligence, and frequently practices its newly-learned abilities to the point of perfection to ensure it will never again be defeated.

Appearance

As a prototype model, Prototype Jack's appearance lacks the finesse of the main line of Jacks. In its original appearance, it lacks a human-like torso and arms; its robotic frame is visible and it possesses a pincer and a drill in place of arms. Prototype Jack has a humanoid head, although it is noticeably damaged, and one of its boots is a metal prosthetic. After being remodeled, Prototype Jack gained a new, more distinctive look. It now looks more like the main line of Jack robots, although it lacks the Jacks' skin-like finish; it instead has a shiny, metallic finish. It also now has a rotating hand, a feature which was expanded upon in later releases, allowing it to spin at the waist also.

Outfits

Main Article: Prototype Jack/Outfits

The original build of Prototype Jack wore only green camouflage pants and left the rest of its robotic body exposed. Its second outfit was a bright metal exoskeleton or suit of lightweight body armor, giving it a Robocop-like appearance. After being remodeled for Tekken 2, Prototype Jack received the same outfit of camouflage pants, tank top and combat boots worn by the main line of Jack robots. While these Jacks sport a distinctive Mohawk hairstyle, Prototype Jack differed by wearing sunglasses and a military cap.

Story

Tekken

Version 1: The prototype for Jack was developed in Russia. Since it was just a step in the production, the skin was removed from the mecha. Prototype Jack (or P. Jack, for short) was built only for power, so his power capacity far surpasses that of the completed Jack. The tournament's sponsor, Heihachi Mishima, has entered P. Jack into the contest in order to pit him against Jack.

Version 2: P. Jack is the experimental version of Jack, which Russia developed. As it is only a prototype model, its mechanics are still evident. Its overall balance is bad, but even so, it possesses a power that far exceeds Jack's own. Heihachi has entered Prototype Jack in the tournament to confront Jack, whom it hates.[4]

Tekken 2

Tekken 2 Prototype Jack's Ending

Version 1: After the first King of Iron Fist Tournament, the remains of the first Prototype Jack unit (a first-stage model of the final Jack model) were repaired after almost being destroyed by Jack's rampaging combat abilities. Upon reactivation, P. Jack complained that his alter-ego had received a refit, and he repeated his complaint until his fuel ran out. Now resting in Kazuya Mishima's laboratory, P. Jack was left untouched for months before a back-up fuel supply reactivated him, and once again he began his constant pleas for a new look. To quiet him, Kazuya gave his captured scientist, Doctor Bosconovitch, the task of remodeling the robot.[citation needed]

With a cunning memory change, the doctor managed to convince P. Jack that his new body afforded him superior protection to Jack's, despite it being only a hat and sunglasses. Kazuya is currently goading P. Jack, demanding more programmed maneuvers in time for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 2. Having repeated his fighting moves over and over (to such an extent that the doctor disconnected P. Jack's voice box), P. Jack now feels his next encounter with Jack will have a much different conclusion.[citation needed]

Version 2: Prototype Jack, an android built for military applications. Prototype Jack solicited Kazuya's assistance with upgrades after learning that only its successor, Jack, was making advances in that area, and for reasons beyond its understanding, Kazuya promptly agrees and has Dr. Bosconovitch comply with the androids request. Unbeknownst to it, the only changes made were to its outer shell, which was now armor plated. Prototype Jack despises both Jack and its developers, namely Russia. Recent overwrites of its own CPU has resulted in memory loss, causing Prototype Jack even more grief.[5]

Ending Description: Prototype Jack traverses a tunnel and emerges from the shadows into a chamber with a vertical opening. P. Jack turns on the boosters in its legs and rises upward, into the sky. As it flies away, it explodes and three screws drop back onto the ground.

Other Appearances

Tekken: The Motion Picture

In Tekken: The Motion Picture, three Prototype Jack robots are programmed to protect the labs in which Lee Chaolan and Heihachi Mishima had their test subjects hidden. There comes a point in time where the three Prototype Jacks and Jack-2, along with Lei Wulong, have a battle in the middle of the lab.

Tekken Tag Tournament

Tekken Tag Tournament Prototype Jack Ending

Prototype Jack appeared in Tekken Tag Tournament as a playable character.

Ending Description: Prototype Jack and Gun Jack are standing facing each other. They nod to each other in unison, then turn to face the screen. They then both lift their arms and fly up into the sky, performing a synchronized version of one of their win poses. This ending takes place at Paul's stage.

Namco X Capcom

Prototype Jack appeared in Namco X Capcom as an enemy character. It first appears in Chapter 14, along with a second Prototype Jack, as part of Waya Hime's army, when she attempts to ambush Bravoman and Jin Kazama.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

Prototype Jack appeared as a playable character in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, sporting the same look it received in Tekken 2 and the original Tekken Tag Tournament. Its fighting style is very similar to Jack-6's, although it has a slightly different moveset, making use of its rotating hand and torso.

Profile: The first incarnation of the JACK series, developed by Russian engineers. Hoping to be upgraded along with his fellow JACK units, P. Jack had Dr. Bosconovitch add rotating arms and torso, as well as flight capabilities, to his frame. He is generally well-balanced in all regards, but his strength exceeds previously developed JACK units. He runs on gasoline.[6]

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prototype Jack Ending

Ending Description: An enormous Prototype Jack is being built in a construction lab by many regular Prototype Jacks. A regular Prototype Jack walks toward to the large robot and stares at it. The body of the robot under construction opens and steps descend from its torso. P. Jack enters into the stomach of the robot and sits down at a control panel. It activates the robot and prepares to launch with a countdown while the other Prototype Jacks leave the perimeter. Just as the giant P. Jack launches, a regular Prototype Jack rushes back into frame holding up a large screw. It desperately waving to the pilot in an attempt to get iy to abort the (incomplete) giant P. Jack's launch. The pilot, however, misinterprets the worker's actions as a simple good-bye wave, and does a thumbs up. The Prototype Jacks on the ground are left to watch helplessly as the giant P. Jack launches, rising high into the air before exploding, after which three screws fall back into the hangar.

Gameplay

All Jack robots embody the huge, slow and powerful fighter archetype: they need only a few solid hits to destroy an opponent, but they're very slow and their limited moveset can be predictable, so they require good timing to play well. Jacks deal good damage and possess good pokes and throws, but their real advantage comes from the long range of many of their attacks - most of their punishers are able to hit from afar.

In Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Prototype Jack returned with its moveset changed to be more similar to Jack-6's. There are some differences between the two - Prototype Jack utilizes its spinning limb related moves, while Jack-6 possesses extendable arms - but their core gameplay is essentially the same. Prototype Jack also has moves used by previous Jack models that Jack-6 no longer has.

Fighting Style

While other characters utilize Martial Arts, what Jack robots do is best described as "using brute force to annihilate the opponent", and their fighting style is listed as "Brute Force" accordingly. Prototype Jack is no exception.

Moves

Prototype Jack Moves

Prototype Jack/Tekken Movelist

Prototype Jack/Tekken 2 Movelist

Prototype Jack/Tekken Tag Tournament Movelist

Prototype Jack/Namco X Capcom Movelist

Prototype Jack/Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Movelist

Character Relationships

Dr. Bosconovitch - Its original creator and also its remodeler in Tekken 2.

The Jack series - P. Jacks more advanced successors and rivals whom it hates. Defeated by Jack and possibly destroyed by Jack-2.

Kazuya Mishima - Ordered Dr. Bosconovitch to remodel it for Tekken 2.

Heihachi Mishima - Entered P. Jack to fight the main Jack in the first tournament, either for Heihachi's own amusement or as defense against the perceived threat of Jack - although Jack's true target was Kazuya, not Heihachi. It is unclear how Heihachi managed to steal P. Jack from the Russians.

Trivia

General:

Prototype Jack is the only Jack model that doesn't have plutonium blood; instead, it has gasoline in its 'veins'.

P. Jack is also the only Jack robot that has competed in more than one canonical tournament in the Tekken universe, although there is a large difference between its appearance in Tekken and Tekken 2.

Unlike the other earlier Jack models, Prototype Jack is fitted with a rocket booster built into its leg. P. Jack's internal support system can provide up to three "detonations" to the booster.

P. Jack's arm and body are somewhat "loose", as it can spin its hand freely without limitation. This trait has remained unchanged since the first game, when a drill was present in place of its right hand.

Tekken 2

If P.Jack loses a final round in Tekken 2 due to Time Up, it will faint on the continue screen in the same manner as a losing character on Time Up in the original Tekken. This animation also occurs in Tekken Tag Tournament even without a Time Up, and is also used by Roger and Alex in both games.

Tekken Tag Tournament

As of Tekken Tag Tournament, it is shown that P. Jack's left hand and torso can also rotate, as seen in its moves Drill Upper and Tornado Cutter. Gun Jack also retained the spinning hand mechanism when performing the Ground Zero throw; however later models, such as Jack-5, do not have a spinning hand during this move.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2

If Prototype Jack is idle for about six seconds, it will shut down and reboot itself.

Prototype Jack's Tekken Tag Tournament 2 ending is a re-imagining of its Tekken 2 ending.

Prototype Jack, along with Jack-2, Gun Jack, Jaack-4, and Jack-6 are the only Jack robots to appear in more than one game.

Prototype Jack's Item Move has it grab the opponent with a crane and uses it to spin them around before launching them away. This can also be used against mid-air opponents.

Gallery

Prototype Jack/Gallery

References

^ a b c d e f g h i https://www.bandainamcoent.co.jp/cs/list/tekken2/pjack.html

^ P. Jack's official TTT2 profile

^ Tekken Chronicle, p. 70

^ Tekken Zaibatsu Tekken 1 character profiles

^ Tekken Zaibatsu Tekken 2 character profiles.

^ Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U profile.

Navigation

CharactersPlayable CharactersIntroduced in TekkenAnna ·Armor King ·Devil Kazuya ·Ganryu ·Heihachi ·Jack ·Kazuya ·King ·Kuma ·Kunimitsu ·Lee ·Marshall ·Michelle ·Nina ·Paul ·P. Jack ·Wang ·YoshimitsuIntroduced in Tekken 2Alex ·Angel ·Baek ·Bruce ·Jack-2 ·Jun ·Lei ·RogerIntroduced in Tekken 3Ancient Ogre ·Bryan ·Dr. Bosconovitch ·Crow ·Eddy ·Forest ·Gon ·Gun Jack ·Hwoarang ·Jin ·Julia ·King II ·Kuma II ·Mokujin ·Ogre ·Panda ·Tiger ·XiaoyuIntroduced in Tekken TagTetsujin ·UnknownIntroduced in Tekken 4Christie ·Combot ·Marduk ·Miharu ·Steve ·VioletIntroduced in Tekken 5/5:DRArmor King II ·Asuka ·Devil Jin ·Dragunov ·Feng ·Jack-5 ·Jinpachi ·Lili ·Raven ·Roger Jr.Introduced in Tekken 6/6:BRAlisa ·Bob ·Jack-6 ·Lars ·Leo ·Miguel ·NANCY-MI847J��·ZafinaIntroduced in Tekken Tag 2Jaycee ·Sebastian ·Slim Bob ·Super Combot DXIntroduced in Street Fighter X TekkenJack-XIntroduced in Tekken RevolutionElizaIntroduced in Tekken 7/7:FRAkuma ·Claudio ·Fahkumram ·Geese ·Gigas ·Jack-7 ·Josie ·Katarina ·Kazumi ·Kunimitsu II ·Leroy ·Lidia ·Lucky Chloe ·Master Raven ·Negan ·Noctis ·ShaheenIntroduced in Tekken (Mobile)Isaak ·Rodeo ·Ruby ·Tiger Miyagi ·YueIntroduced in Tekken 8Jack-8Non-playable CharactersBossesAzazel (6) ·Devil Kazumi (7) ·Kinjin (TR) ·Revenant (TM)MajorDr. Abel ·Jane ·Shin ·TougouEnemiesType J ·Mokujin Monster ·Monstrous Ogre ·Tekken ForceMinorAkiko Miura ·Bet-rto ·Billy ·Emma ·Feng's Master ·Kazumi's Tiger ·Lee's Secretary ·Legendary Capoeira Master ·Miguel's Sister ·Mr. Baek ·Mr. Chang ·Mrs. Chang ·Mr. Kazama ·Mr. Kliesen ·Mrs. Law ·Mrs. Williams ·Roger's Wife ·Roperto ·Slater ·Olivia ·Sugar ·Thug ·Zafina's GuruDeath by DegreesAlan ·Bryce ·Enrique ·John ·Lana ·Lukas ·RichardOtherFemale Tekken Force Soldier ·Ganmi-chan ·Sake ·Taekwondo Girl ·Wild Card ·Zombie Bride

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