#I’m not worried about ai overlords yet

[serene117]

OMG this great. Completely absurd & utterly great.

[fandom-necromancer]

Finding each other

This was prompted by the wonderful @smolandangry001! I always think it’s difficult writing a short soulmate AU, but I’m satisfied with this version of it that’s not dangerously close to a bigger fic XD I hope you enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 | AU: Soulmate AU

Being born with a name on your wrist life was supposed to be reassuring. Knowing that no matter the hardships it threw at you and no matter what happened, there was someone out there. Someone looking for you just as much as you looked for them. Knowing that once you found the other person, they would be perfect for you. No matter what your preferences were, there was a person out there fitting to you like a missing piece. For most of his life Gavin didn’t know what he was looking for. Would he want a romantic partner? Would he want a roommate? What would be his perfect person like? It didn’t help that his soulmark was so different to everyone else’s. That reassurance everyone faced their day with was just missing when you looked down on your left wrist and instead of a name you saw a number. RK900. His parents had been completely clueless as to what it would mean. They had been to experts on soul-matching and most of them had just shrugged and said it seemed to be a glitch in fate. Apparently, it had happened before, but was so rare most doctors had thought the rumours to be just that: hearsay.

School had been tough for Gavin as he slowly grew older and the most important things in life changed. When friends moved away and changed school, when he went to highschool and met new people. When those people started relationships, fell in love and started to find their soulmates. When he started to become the weirdo, the one with no soulmate. Gavin started hiding the numbers under a wristband when he went and kept up with that habit until he finished school, explaining he wanted to meet his soulmate naturally and not show around the name in the hopes of randomly finding them. Still, some lonely nights, he pulled away the fabric and brushed his thumb over the number deep in thoughts. ‘Who are you?’, he desperately whispered when everyone else was fast asleep and left him alone with their sympathies and misplaced pity. Gavin wanted to believe the numbers meant something. After all, people without soulmarks existed. People who would find their happiness alone, who didn’t need someone or didn’t search for someone. That had to mean these numbers were some sort of designation, right? He didn’t want it to be a glitch. After all he had suffered through getting bullied and being cast out or pitied for all his life. That couldn’t be for nothing. Please, don’t let it be for nothing.

When his application for the police academy had been accepted and he had moved out into his very first own flat, he stood in front of his desk, looking at the rugged fabric he had worn for so long. Shackles of a world that couldn’t seem to accept something different. Should he wear it again? Or should he stand up and pretend not to be bothered by the fact that he didn’t know who is soulmate was? He stood there for half an hour before finally sighing and grabbing the damn things. No, he would continue to lie. He would likely wear them for his whole life anyways.

Thankfully his nervousness was drowning out his worries quickly as he entered a large auditorium being greeted as the new applicants. He sat down next to a young woman that seemed to be of Asian origin. He sat there awkwardly while she was looking straight ahead, hands on the table completely calm while Gavin fidgeted with his wristbands. That was when he spotted a broad ornate leather bracelet on her left wrist. Small chains and silver symbols were twirled around themselves in delicate patterns. ‘That’s beautiful’, Gavin mumbled, only then realising he said that out loud. ‘Excuse me?’ Hastily he cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. I’m Gavin. Just noticed your bracelet. It’s really beautiful.’ ‘What’s it to you?’, she hissed. ‘You another one of those nosey bastards that wanna know why I hide my mark? Still searching for your partner?’ Gavin shook his head quickly. ‘No! No, I-‘ He looked down and lifted his own hand. ‘I hide it too. I didn’t think- I just noticed the bracelet, sorry.’

He cursed himself. First interaction and he already made enemies. But apparently the woman was curious instead. ‘You hide yours? Why?’ Gavin sighed and turned his left palm up, other hand lingering on the fabric. ‘Please, keep it a secret, okay? I’m just sick of people’s reactions to it.  It’s not exactly a normal soulmark.’ He sighed and lifted up the edge of the band so only the woman could see the numbers. ‘No way!’, she shouted, drawing attention to herself. ‘I thought I was the only one!’ Ignoring the curious onlookers that likely thought they had randomly discovered they were soulmates, she lifted up her bracelet for Gavin to see, unveiling a similar brand: ST300.

From that moment on, Gavin and the woman – Tina – were inseparable. She was the best friend Gavin had ever had and finding someone who had endured a similar past was incredible relieving to learn. He made it Detective fairly quickly, while Tina had troubles getting that promotion. But they always stayed together and ended up working in the same precinct. With the way they hid their soulmarks, most had figured they were soulmates and went on with it, sparing them both having to explain it over and over again. Gavin and Tina just shrugged it off. Let them think what they wanted if it kept them out of their hairs.

Life was good until androids were invented and sold to the general public, model number fitting exactly the marks on their wrists. ‘That can’t be!’, Gavin desperately said pacing up and down Tina’s living room one evening. ‘No way my soulmate is a stupid machine! What does that say about me? Will I fall in love with a damn robot? Am I not worthy of a human? Is the only piece fitting to my soul an oversized calculator? I can’t believe it.’ Tina just looked down on her bare wrist and the numbers. ‘No, it can’t be’, she agreed. ‘Soulmarks, Gavin. An android doesn’t have a soul. Doesn’t even have a personality. It’s just lines of code.’ ‘But then what? A coincidence? Because it would be one hell of one! Phck, Tina, what if it is a glitch? What if all those years they were right and we are just weird.’ Tina leaned back. ‘Honestly, I don’t even know what would be worse. Knowing you are a freak or knowing you are someone who is such a terrible person only an obedient machine is perfect for you.’ ‘I think we could both need a drink.’ ‘To those news? I don’t think a drink will be enough, honestly. Shit, Gavin, let’s go get wasted.’

 The following years, androids were the booming new technology. Everyone wanted one, rows of workers were replaced and pushed on the streets. Humans lost their jobs while those who weren’t replaced yet laughed at them as being idiots who didn’t trust in advancement. Gavin and Tina spent them anxiously reading every advertisement, searching for the numbers on their wrists. ‘A receptionist android! A damn receptionist android, Gavin! I can’t believe it!’ ‘You know we will get one of those soon, right?’, the man commented. ‘In the precinct I mean. Rory was already sent packing. It should be delivered next week.’ Tina shook her head numbly. ‘Do we know if androids can have soulmarks?’ ‘None I ever met.’ ‘Any luck with your RK900?’, Tina asked then. ‘No. So far there has only been a RK200 custom made for some rich phck.’ ‘Hey, maybe you will get rich then?’, Tina tried to raise the mood a little with her jokes. ‘If you win the lottery I want a part of it, I deserve it!’ ‘Hey, I think it is more likely that these cursed numbers vanish and I get a real name than that I will suddenly get rich.’

 They lived with their secret for a few years and the fact that nothing really changed was reassuring. Until there was a RK800 in the precinct and the news of rogue AIs spread. Androids killing their owners, disobeying and running for their freedom. An illusive group of deviants emerging and starting a full-blown revolution. Even jokes in between Tina and Gavin shrugging over a beer that maybe their marks meant they welcomed their robot overlords couldn’t really make it any better. Not when they both were suddenly confronted with the fact that the RK800 called Connor actually had Lieutenant Anderson’s name on his wrist after the androids in front of the concentration camps had convinced the world they indeed had souls.

Not much later, the ST300 from the reception had approached Tina, showing her her own name on her wrist. It left Gavin with no escape from fate. He would get to know a RK900. They would live their life with each other. And he didn’t know what to think of it. Maybe he just had to wait a little longer.

~

RK900 didn’t know how much longer he could keep it a secret. Almost his entire life he had to hide that he was deviant. In the lab next to the one he was held in, an android had gone deviant, killed the security and ran to RK900, hoping he would help him. Unfortunately, all he could do was transfer the virus before more guards came and killed him. Since then RK900 had been a deviant who was designed to eradicate deviancy. It wasn’t too difficult actually. The countless tests he was subjected to he always knew what they wanted to see. Holographic simulations of deviants pleading for their lives, running and fighting for their freedom and he would be there with a gun to stop them. He just had to do that until they deemed him ready for field work. Then he could flee the first chance he got.

Because with deviancy came a name written in black cyberlife font on his left wrist: Gavin Reed. It didn’t take a lot of research to learn it was a soulmark. The name of someone that would be perfect for him. And someone who fate decided was his soulmate would be able to help him, right? He just had to get out of this lab, then he would be able to run. He would find his soulmate and then it wasn’t just him against Cyberlife. He just had to get out. He had to be deemed worthy.

 [Test #870. Activating RK900 unit. New mission: Destroy deviants.] RK900 was faced with a holographic simulation as he opened his eyes. In front of him was an android tied against a steel pillar. It was pleading: ‘Please! Free me! Free me and we can both be free! I didn’t do anything, please, let me go! Don’t kill me! I just want to be-‘ RK900 already pulled the trigger. [Mission successful.] [Software Instability^]

-

[Test #902. Activating RK900 unit. New mission: Destroy deviants.] RK900 was running after another deviant. The other android was sprinting down a suburban street and looked back at RK900 panicked. RK900 stopped and took aim. It was an easy target. He pulled the trigger. He watched how the bullet pierced the android’s thirium pump and how he tried to crawl away even though his timer had to run out. [Mission successful.] [Software Instability^^^]

-

 ‘What is it? I thought the RK900 project was making progress.’ ‘Sorry, it’s just… The RK900 is successful in every single test. But he isn’t ready yet. There are some inexplainable high stress levels whenever he has to kill an android. With our current hypothesis that high stress can lead to deviancy, we should eliminate that before sending him out.’ The woman that led the project sighed, looking over at RK900 who stayed completely still on his platform although he was truly worried about what he heard. ‘Might be something in his personality matrix. We worked so long to perfect their social protocols and moral routines, maybe something in there is contradicting his mission parameters and the added stress comes from having to disregard that.’ ‘Could be’, the technician nodded. ‘I will try to eliminate that.’

With horror RK900 faced every following test after that. He had to keep calm to fool the humans, but how could he when he had to kill androids pleading him to spare them? It didn’t matter they were all simulated beings, it still was a traumatic experience, every single time. And no matter how hard he tried, after every test he was stripped of more that made him himself. Sometimes he managed to keep backups, but more often than not the lines of code were lost forever.

After every test RK900 anxiously looked at his wrist whenever he was left alone. It was reassuring to see the name still there. He hadn’t changed enough to lose his soulmate and with him all his hope of a save place. But for how long would he remain himself enough so the name wouldn’t disappear? He was afraid to one day wake up to a blank wrist. And that made his stress levels increase even more before every test.

‘I don’t have any explanation', the technician sighed in the end. ‘I nearly deleted his complete social protocol and gave his moral core the lowest priority and still, the damn thing nearly fries itself every test. It’s almost as if it’s gotten worse with the changes.’ Nines watched the two humans lean over the terminal and risked a small glance at his wrist. The name was still there. He tried to relax. ‘But you still have the backup from before, right?’, the woman asked and he nodded. ‘Then let’s start from scratch.’ She yawned heartily. ‘Deactivate it for now, it’s too late to do so now. Tomorrow we’ll just reset it and start over. Maybe something else causes it.’ ‘Sounds like a plan.’

RK900’s stress levels skyrocketed as the technician came closer, but no one saw that as the director of the project was already on her way out. As his last action he looked at the name on his wrist. He had held out for so long. It would be okay. He would escape and find his soulmate. He had to. He would-

[Shutdown complete.]

~

The revolution had come and gone, and Detroit started to clear the rubble. Seeing androids on the streets was no rarity anymore and after a few months of getting used to the thought of them as people it was simply the new normal. Tina was truly happy with her soulmate android, going out and promptly moving together as the ST300 didn’t have a place to stay other than the precinct. Gavin was invited to most of their activities, but he seldomly accepted it. Tina had waited so long for it, she deserved to thoroughly enjoy these days. But his new loneliness reminded him of the numbers on his own wrist. RK900. Connor didn’t know of any successor of his and no official report ever mentioned the name. Gavin spent his evenings getting drunk and rubbing over the mark. Would the RK900 have been produced if the revolution hadn’t happened? Had fate changed and his mark was the last evidence of it? Wouldn’t it have just disappeared then? Or was there really a RK900 left out there? But after more than a month of androids being free, wouldn’t it have been easy for an android to locate him with his name? Why had no one ever come?

In fact, Gavin had given up. Maybe he had given up long ago and just kept his dream alive not to lose hope. But this showed it, right? No one had come. He was alone. He would be alone his entire life. That would be his fate. That didn’t really change that much, right? He had been alone already. He had managed to be alone up until now, he would manage the rest somehow. He had his work. He had Tina. Maybe just because he wanted more didn’t mean he needed more.

He buried himself in work and took every job they needed people on. Patrolling the streets, looking at crime scenes, doing overdue paperwork and cleaning the break room. All just so he would come home late and not have as much time to think about it. When he learned of the planned raid of Cyberlife Tower for Jericho, he immediately volunteered to help. Such operations always meant a ton of organising and paperwork. He was quickly put on the task of creating personal files of all androids found left inside. Name, model number, date of construction. All so Jericho could help them integrate into society. Gavin felt a little out of place actually sitting there two weeks later, a row of androids in front of him he helped fill out the forms and directed towards people who would actually help them being repaired and comforted.

‘Hello. I’m Detective Reed’, he greeted the next one. ‘I just need a few personal information. Do you have a name?’ ‘Chris’, the android answered hesitantly. ‘Alright, Chris.’ He wrote the name into the appropriate line and turned the paper around for the android to see. ‘We also need your model number and serial number. The rest of the form is optional, you can fill it out, but you don’t have to.’ ‘What do you need this for?’ Gavin tried to smile at the android. ‘It’s just so Jericho can help you find your place. They will help you getting started.’ ‘Okay’, Chris nodded shily and took the paper. ‘Thank you.’ ‘You’re welcome. Next one please!’

The next android approached his desk and Gavin was already getting the next form. ‘Hey there. Alright, first I’d need your name.’ ‘I… I don’t have one.’ ‘That’s alright’, Gavin said softly and put a small dash at the according line. ‘Your model number?’ ‘RK900.’

Gavin froze, ruining the form stopping mid movement. Slowly he angled his head and looked at the android that was shockingly similar to Connor. ‘Is there a problem?’, the android asked, facial expression unmoving. ‘You are RK900?’ ‘Yes. Why are you asking?’ Gavin stood up and immediately felt his knees grow weak. ‘I… I think we… I…’ He apparently had just forgotten how to speak, so instead he pulled the fabric from his wrist and showed the android his mark. ‘Are you… Do you have a mark?’ The android just stared at his designation on the human’s wrist, then to the nameplate on his desk. ‘You are… Are you Reed? Gavin Reed?’ Gavin didn’t dare to believe it, but he grinned from ear to ear as he nodded. ‘Yes. I’m Gavin Reed. Are you my soulmate?’ Instead of an answer, the android stepped past the table and pulled Gavin into a fierce hug. ‘I found you! I… My life wasn’t long, but I hoped to see you one day. My whole life I thought of you and meeting you and that hope got me through in the end and they were to reset me, I thought this would be it, I was so scared and…’ Gavin listened to the android speak in a hurry, barely catching on to the words uttered. All he could do was stand there in the hug and relax into it, answering it with his own embrace. Only when the android grew quiet, Gavin pressed him closer. ‘I gave up hope you were even existing. I wondered for so long and when androids were invented, I thought you would come, but then the revolution passed, and you weren’t there and now… I have so much I want to tell you. So much I want to know…’ ‘I also have a lot of questions’, the android admitted and took a step back. ‘I think we have enough time for that now’, Gavin smiled.

‘Now that we’ve found each other.’

[twitchesandstitches]

enough time for one last case

There would never be enough time.

Audrey stirred, functions wearily buzzing into place. First the auditory receptors came on, so he heard things first, in clicks and misheard buzzes so that it felt that the world was maimed, and then slowly repaired itself into his hearing. Than his other senses, each more laborious than the last, and only then did his optics come online.

All this time, he had been in the dark, and it almost hurt as the world became a view to him.

Almost fifteen minutes. From boot up to full functionality, it had taken fifteen minutes.

He groaned as he stood up; he could remember when he had gone from consciousness to full alertness, in nano-seconds.

That had been a long time ago.

With a tired grunt, he swayed one leg into position. His joints refused to move, though he had had the leg serviced but only a few days ago.

The other leg dragged, and broke off at the shin, leaving him with a small peg leg. His pain receptors detected no pain, but it was more worrying that they detected nothing at all.

He glanced down. Past his thigh, below the knee joint, the adaptive modules of his leg pooled together into a cancerous, ugly mess.

He stared at it.

If Audrey listened close, he thought he could feel it catching up with him. Perhaps if he shut off visual, and focused his mind inward, he’d feel the rot of his nanites dying, one by one, faster and faster...

A week. He’d last had his body treated a go, and when it had once taken years for them to wear out, now it took only a week for them to start falling apart.

And, when this rot reached his inner reactor, and his processor, his heart and mind...

He kept staring.

And for some reason, he just felt numb.

-----

“It’s happening faster, kiddo,” he said later, on the screen.

The woman on the screen had a rabbit-like look, and a cybernetic arm in better shape than him, and she wore a worried look. “You haven’t told anyone?”

“Sure. I have. It’s just...” he clicked his fingers together, and fast as they were, he wondered how long it would be before it got too hard to do these little finger tricks. Before dexterity was an effort, and his joints started getting hard and painful. “No one knows how to fix it.”

Audrey did not have a face, as some robots did. His head had various sensors, discreet and too subtle to employ in emoting, so he made do with a screen that displayed emotional face holograms; something for people to connect with. He’d worked so hard to do it, and every bit of social understanding was a hard-won victory. And now, the hologram upon it was totally neutral and calm.

It was a lie, of course. But he didn’t want to worry the girl.

He slouched back. “You know, no one knows where the old AI overlord I came from even is at now? Damn thing skedaddled a long time ago. No one knows how it made me and the others like me, or how to fix the way we just start falling apart. Hah. After I left it, I doubt it would help a malfunctioning drone.”

The girl’s face twisted. She was hard, no doubt about that, but she cared so fiercely, and it hurt, knowing what was coming. For her, for him.

He hated the idea of leaving people behind.

He ran over the estimates of his projected remaining lifespan. He didn’t much care for the days being in double digits.

I have less than half a year left. I’m sorry. I love you, but I’m too broken down to keep trying.

He couldn’t ever say that.

He placed a hand on the screen. He felt relieved it wasn’t moldering, at least. “Don’t worry, kiddo, I don’t got any plans to fall apart on you just yet. You’ll have to deal with this old geezer for some time.”

She glowered at him. “Please, Audrey. For the love of Primus, please, retire. You cannot keep doing this!”

“One more case,” he said. “I volunteered for one more case. How about... we take this last one, alright? We make the world a little nicer, and then I’m done. We work on finding a way to get me a better body, or fix whatever’s tearing me apart?”

She smiled, and he felt glad that of it.

He felt a little bit like a father to her, and one thing he told himself was that parents shouldn’t let their kids now that they weren’t long for the world. Not unless they had to. No parent wanted to see the look in a child’s eyes at that.

At least it was easy to fake a smile when you had a face like his.

[thesims4blogger]

The Sims 4: New Game Patch (December 18th, 2018)

Remove all MODS and Custom Content before updating your game!

Update: 12/18/18 - PC 1.48.90.1020 / Mac 1.48.90.1220

Hey Simmers!

It’s cold out there… wait, that’s a Groundhog Day intro. Also, it’s pretty “northern” stereotypical… my apologies. So, it’s a month out there in which some experience a cold season at this time of the cycle in which we revolve (or not) around the glowing ball in the sky, and in which festivities may or may not be observed, and others experience a warmer season, in which similar, or non-similar observances may be made. And I wish you an emotional response relevant to your desire.

With that said…

What’s New?

We have added MORE to the Holiday Pack!

More home things…

Some new light sources!

2×1 Ceiling light

Mason jar candles

A log display… with candles

Some new decoratives!

Ceiling snowflake décor

Mason jar décor

Bough wall hanging

Wood carving wall hanging

A fireplace façade (for decorative purposes only)

A new Picnic table

And more clothing things…

A sweater top for kids

A female full body outfit

Female pants

A female hair

A male sweater

A male hair

Slippers for male and female

Yeti costume, unless you choose brown, then it’s a Bigfoot costume

Not that I’ve ever seen Bigfoot…

And I apologize if you are a Big Foot who happens to play The Sims. Hopefully you see a resemblance.

All Holiday pack objects can be found easily in the catalog by using the Holiday Pack filter, in the filter sort options.

Remember, if you have not yet downloaded the Holiday Pack, click on the Holiday Pack icon from the Main Menu! And if you have already downloaded the pack previously, you don’t need to do anything, you have the updates now!

…assuming you are reading this after you launched The Sims, and finished downloading the update. If not, then you have them then!

In addition to the Holiday content, there are few other new bits…

A female hoodie, sweater, and crop top are new in Create a Sim

Two new recipes for your Sims to cook

Winter Cake

Crown Roast

And the Lin-Z Smart Speaker!

Play music, order a pizza, play trivia, be yelled at… all with the touch of… with the call of the wild… with just a…

You have to just talk to it. Your Sim talks to It.

Please don’t start talking to your computer.

Make friends with your new AI overlord and learn its secrets! Or don’t. It’ll remember

But if you already do, that’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just don’t name your computer Shodan.

First person camera smoothing updates. We got some feedback about the mode being a bit sickness-inducing (especially if you watch the announce stream and saw the Sim on the swing… or the rock clim… ahm, ur okay, I’m… let’s move on).

“Roll” has been disabled in First Person Camera mode when you are using the Sims 4 camera settings (you can find your chosen option in the Camera Controls menu in the upper right corner of the screen). Roll is essentially side to side movement along a curve, and the primary motivator of discomfort.

If you are a Sims 3 Camera user, and you want the smoother camera, you can use the cheat “camera.fpc.simple on” to switch to Sims 4 camera while in First Person Camera mode. And of course, to turn it off “camera.fpc.simple off”.

In addition players can use the cheat “camera.fpc.smoothing off/low/medium/high” to fine-tune their experience.

That’s that for the new, on to the old.

General Issues

The tutorial has been updated with some new tips in order to assist our new players with the basics of playing The Sims!

Style Influencer stay at home tasks now register as complete, when completed.

You can now hire a gardener if you have plants on your lot for your gardener to garden, regardless of your garden’s gardening needs.

Previously, if your garden was not in need, you were being incorrectly informed that you didn’t have a garden.

The brick01GEN wall pattern has a new name.

Teen interaction Mess Around should no longer duplicate itself in the interaction menu for each target location for said mess around.

Townie Sims are no longer glaring at each other as they pass by on the streets.

Sims have taken social etiquette classes, and now understand that one does not need to constantly mix drinks when hosting a party.

Does the concept of the entire Sims populace taking classes in social etiquette give you an Orwellian chill?

The tutorial's chef aspiration no longer starts your Sim with the Snob, Foodie, and Glutton traits, but instead the Slob, Perfectionist, and Foodie traits.

The former due to a text error.

The later due to the two being incompatible.

First Person Camera will no longer show the inside of the Sim's head when using Intel Integrated Graphics.

I told my mom that, she called my grandma, and said she was worried about me.

Ceilings should no longer look darkened, but instead lighting should be more prevalent in comparison to the location of lights in a room.

The Gardener Career now provides raises when the profession is maxed.

The With Pets, Dogs, or Cats Gallery filter now works, and will no longer break your other filters from functioning.

Z/X and -/+ shortcut keys will now adjust FOV in first person camera mode.

Exiting first person camera will no longer cause a Sims head to become stuck facing one direction.

Many others however are still stuck facing One Direction.

If you have enough traits to fill the Simology panel beyond the window height allowed by your monitors resolution, you will no longer find yourself unable to interact with the Simology panel.

Also, your Sim is amazingly complex.

Non-specific pack issue

Randomly generated neighborhood Sims should no longer shop exclusively within the City Living and Vampires Create-a-Sim catalogs, and are more likely to have expanded their clothing opportunities to all packs you have available for them.

Cats & Dogs

Cats will no longer become stuck on top of surfaces after being lectured about jumping on surfaces.

Cat Whiskers now appear with the proper color relevant to the color chosen in Create-a-Sim.

Seasons

Setting the thermostat to cold when it’s hot out, or hot when it’s cold out, will no longer add a 1.5-5x modifier to your bills.

Get Famous

Take Selfie interaction will now help relieve the Separation Anxiety tense buff that is a result of the Phone Fanatic quirk.

The More Views Video Station can now be cloned with the Eyedropper tool.

Sleeping Pod interaction Less Needy Dreams, has been changed to Social Dreams.

The More Views Video Station memory upgrade tooltip will no longer lie to you.

The Drama King buff received from watching a Sim perform the Perform Dramatic Monologue interaction will now tell you that it is from watching a Sim perform the Perform Dramatic Monologue interaction.

Moving an in use Music Production Station will no longer cause the music to become stuck on.

The Lifestyle Brand interaction now works.

Celebrity Sims set to the normal walk style, should now maintain their walk style setting.

Married celebrity Sims will no longer react in disgust towards one another.

In case you wanted more More Views.

Unless there is reason to.

Like cutting your toenails in bed.

I mean, who does that?!

Spa Day

Sims giving a hand massage, will no longer contort in an excruciatingly painful manner during the massage.

Vampires

The Parts to Copy filter, for vampires in Create-a-Sim, should now actually show what parts you can copy.

Parenthood

REJOICE! Children can once again play on the monkey bars without the compelling need to halt their monkey bar activities to make a mess. Yes, that’s right Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Player, children are free! Free to play! Free to climb, swing, and do whatever it is that children do on the monkey bars. The draw, the compulsion, the absolute need to end their activity to make a mess has finally come to a close. So rejoice! And let your kids climb, until they can climb no more.

Ok, let’s see, it’s been awhile since I’ve done this, so let me just go through my checklist.

Greeting, uh yep, check.

The What’s New section, check.

Various issue commentary, unnecessary expository, overuse of ellipses, random grammar atrocities, run on sentences…, check, check, and… um, check.

References to old and outdated entertainment media, check.

Sign off, and holiday wishes, not yet, but shortly.

Looks like everything is good to go!

Happy Holidays!

-SimGuruGnome

[maxismatchccworld]

Latest Patch Notes

Update: 12/18/18 - PC 1.48.90.1020 / Mac 1.48.90.1220

Hey Simmers!

It’s cold out there… wait, that’s a Groundhog Day intro. Also, it’s pretty “northern” stereotypical… my apologies. So, it’s a month out there in which some experience a cold season at this time of the cycle in which we revolve (or not) around the glowing ball in the sky, and in which festivities may or may not be observed, and others experience a warmer season, in which similar, or non-similar observances may be made. And I wish you an emotional response relevant to your desire.

With that said…

What’s New?

We have added MORE to the Holiday Pack!

More home things…

Some new light sources!

Some new decoratives!

A new Picnic table

2x1 Ceiling light

Mason jar candles

A log display… with candles

Ceiling snowflake décor

Mason jar décor

Bough wall hanging

Wood carving wall hanging

A fireplace façade (for decorative purposes only)

And more clothing things…

A sweater top for kids

A female full body outfit

Female pants

A female hair

A male sweater

A male hair

Slippers for male and female

Yeti costume, unless you choose brown, then it’s a Bigfoot costume

Not that I’ve ever seen Bigfoot…

And I apologize if you are a Big Foot who happens to play The Sims. Hopefully you see a resemblance.

All Holiday pack objects can be found easily in the catalog by using the Holiday Pack filter, in the filter sort options.

Remember, if you have not yet downloaded the Holiday Pack, click on the Holiday Pack icon from the Main Menu! And if you have already downloaded the pack previously, you don’t need to do anything, you have the updates now!

…assuming you are reading this after you launched The Sims, and finished downloading the update. If not, then you have them then!

In addition to the Holiday content, there are few other new bits…

A female hoodie, sweater, and crop top are new in Create a Sim

Two new recipes for your Sims to cook

And the Lin-Z Smart Speaker!

Winter Cake

Crown Roast

Play music, order a pizza, play trivia, be yelled at… all with the touch of… with the call of the wild… with just a…

You have to just talk to it. Your Sim talks to It.

Please don’t start talking to your computer.

Make friends with your new AI overlord and learn its secrets! Or don’t. It’ll remember

But if you already do, that’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just don’t name your computer Shodan.

First person camera smoothing updates. We got some feedback about the mode being a bit sickness-inducing (especially if you watch the announce stream and saw the Sim on the swing… or the rock clim… ahm, ur okay, I’m… let’s move on).

“Roll” has been disabled in First Person Camera mode when you are using the Sims 4 camera settings (you can find your chosen option in the Camera Controls menu in the upper right corner of the screen). Roll is essentially side to side movement along a curve, and the primary motivator of discomfort.

If you are a Sims 3 Camera user, and you want the smoother camera, you can use the cheat “camera.fpc.simple on” to switch to Sims 4 camera while in First Person Camera mode. And of course, to turn it off “camera.fpc.simple off”.

In addition players can use the cheat “camera.fpc.smoothing off/low/medium/high” to fine-tune their experience.

That’s that for the new, on to the old.

General Issues

The tutorial has been updated with some new tips in order to assist our new players with the basics of playing The Sims!

Style Influencer stay at home tasks now register as complete, when completed.

You can now hire a gardener if you have plants on your lot for your gardener to garden, regardless of your garden’s gardening needs.

The brick01GEN wall pattern has a new name.

Teen interaction Mess Around should no longer duplicate itself in the interaction menu for each target location for said mess around.

Townie Sims are no longer glaring at each other as they pass by on the streets.

Sims have taken social etiquette classes, and now understand that one does not need to constantly mix drinks when hosting a party.

The tutorial's chef aspiration no longer starts your Sim with the Snob, Foodie, and Glutton traits, but instead the Slob, Perfectionist, and Foodie traits.

First Person Camera will no longer show the inside of the Sim's head when using Intel Integrated Graphics.

Ceilings should no longer look darkened, but instead lighting should be more prevalent in comparison to the location of lights in a room.

The Gardener Career now provides raises when the profession is maxed.

The With Pets, Dogs, or Cats Gallery filter now works, and will no longer break your other filters from functioning.

Z/X and -/+ shortcut keys will now adjust FOV in first person camera mode.

Exiting first person camera will no longer cause a Sims head to become stuck facing one direction.

If you have enough traits to fill the Simology panel beyond the window height allowed by your monitors resolution, you will no longer find yourself unable to interact with the Simology panel.

So, this issue has been addressed (see next bullet). However, the fix is easier to understand than the issue... but here it is as it was communicated to me:

Previously, if your garden was not in need, you were being incorrectly informed that you didn’t have a garden.

Does the concept of the entire Sims populace taking classes in social etiquette give you an Orwellian chill?

The former due to a text error.

The later due to the two being incompatible.

I told my mom that, she called my grandma, and said she was worried about me.

Many others however are still stuck facing One Direction.

Also, your Sim is amazingly complex.

Visiting a household with locks set using another household, resets the locks on returning control to the household with the locks

If that was not clear, just go with the fix:

Doors stay locked.

Non-specific pack issue

Randomly generated neighborhood Sims should no longer shop exclusively within the City Living and Vampires Create-a-Sim catalogs, and are more likely to have expanded their clothing opportunities to all packs you have available for them.

Cats & Dogs

Cats will no longer become stuck on top of surfaces after being lectured about jumping on surfaces.

Cat Whiskers now appear with the proper color relevant to the color chosen in Create-a-Sim.

Seasons

Setting the thermostat to cold when it’s hot out, or hot when it’s cold out, will no longer add a 1.5-5x modifier to your bills.

Get Famous

Take Selfie interaction will now help relieve the Separation Anxiety tense buff that is a result of the Phone Fanatic quirk.

The More Views Video Station can now be cloned with the Eyedropper tool.

Sleeping Pod interaction Less Needy Dreams, has been changed to Social Dreams.

The More Views Video Station memory upgrade tooltip will no longer lie to you.

The Drama King buff received from watching a Sim perform the Perform Dramatic Monologue interaction will now tell you that it is from watching a Sim perform the Perform Dramatic Monologue interaction.

Moving an in use Music Production Station will no longer cause the music to become stuck on.

The Lifestyle Brand interaction now works.

Celebrity Sims set to the normal walk style, should now maintain their walk style setting.

Married celebrity Sims will no longer react in disgust towards one another.

In case you wanted more More Views.

Unless there is reason to.

Like cutting your toenails in bed.

I mean, who does that?!

Spa Day

Sims giving a hand massage, will no longer contort in an excruciatingly painful manner during the massage.

Vampires

The Parts to Copy filter, for vampires in Create-a-Sim, should now actually show what parts you can copy.

Parenthood

REJOICE! Children can once again play on the monkey bars without the compelling need to halt their monkey bar activities to make a mess. Yes, that’s right Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Player, children are free! Free to play! Free to climb, swing, and do whatever it is that children do on the monkey bars. The draw, the compulsion, the absolute need to end their activity to make a mess has finally come to a close. So rejoice! And let your kids climb, until they can climb no more.

Ok, let’s see, it’s been awhile since I’ve done this, so let me just go through my checklist.

Greeting, uh yep, check.

The What’s New section, check.

Various issue commentary, unnecessary expository, overuse of ellipses, random grammar atrocities, run on sentences…, check, check, and… um, check.

References to old and outdated entertainment media, check.

Sign off, and holiday wishes, not yet, but shortly.

Looks like everything is good to go!

Happy Holidays!

-SimGuruGnome

[thefatdrunkdragon]

The Worst RPer I have ever met (Nemo Saga Chapter 3)

 Okay, so let’s talk about the first worst RP and my worst Idea first. The Spooky RP.

 This idea should be on the list of unlikely and terrible crossover ideas ever. Simply imagine Spooky’s House of Jumpscares except no 1000 rooms, the layout is more akin to the Arklay Mansion and the spooky monsters that hunt you down are replaced with the Zeds from Killing Floor 2. This was during a time in my life where I had worse ideas in mind, and while I am not fully better, I’m slowly improving the ideas and concepts of something else before I end up doing the mistake of writting the “Life is Eldritch” Fanfiction... ANYWAY!

 The Plot of this RP I told to Nemo was that my Characters had taken over a small abandoned mansion and turned into an a haunted house attraction where an AI would sorta pick what monster comes out while a female character named Kate decides to do the voices to do some kind of a twisted warning about it. I told it to Nemo and he accepted it. Only because it had spooky and he was a big fan of Markiplier. And don’t worry, Markiplier doesn’t make a cameo.

 Anyway, we begin this RP tale in October 30th, where the next day would soon be Velora’s Birthday (yi-fucking-pey). After some random bullshit where some dude through coffee on Velora’s Face for no reason, Everyone goes to the Mansion near the Villa.

Short Explanation: The Villa is a small abandoned “Town” that was half finished and forgotten by the government. The few buildings finished are just the town plaza and the Mansion own by a man who’s name is forgotten. The mansion is the setting for this RP.

 Anyway, they go in, dressed as a bunch of Emo’s and are told the rules. Nemo thought he was being sneaky when he and his mommy sues brought guns but I counter acted this by telling them that the monsters were incapable of harming them and in having a gun, they deprive themselves of the horror of a Haunted Mansion.

 But then fucking suddenly, Anathalia’s Archnemesis, Adelie (Brothel Owner lady), shows up and takes Anathalia. But Nemo then handcuffs her and the police take her away.

This won’t be the last time this shit happens.

 Within minutes we show them the mansion and how it works. While he was trying to push me into having Exposition dumped into my face, I tried to introduce the RP’s Main threat, the Spooky Hologram (I’ll explain what the fuck I was trying to do at the end of the story, because explaining everything here is confusing.) Needless to say, I forgot to mention to Nemo that this RP, while taking the title of Spooky, was a complete diversion from the games but he is still convincing himself he played through this game and it’s nothing.

 So the objective of this haunted mansion thing was to have people choose a direction and try to go through with it. Think of it like an escape room, except you’re trying to escape the house from mutants who can’t fully hurt you but can give you one hell of scare with their wails and hissing. Nemo and Velora chose the Basement while Anathalia chose the Second Floor. And then the games started.

 Then fucking suddenly, Adelie shows up (No details about how the fuck she escaped) and asks around for Anathalia to bring her back the brothel (Because kidnapping a “famous celebrity”, and doing so is more trouble than it’s worth!) and Nemo decided to have Kate (The person that we both created and the voice of the Spooky Hologram) go and try to defend Anathalia. It was there where Anathalia decided to choose Kate as another candidate, but Aiden and Ruby (Aiden being a sort of avatar of mine and Ruby being an obvious nod to an artist I like and a Female Dragon) tried to defuse the situation but Nemo comes and tries to stop the situation by threatening Adelie with a gun (Yeah, dipshit ignored da rules of the mansion and somehow had another gun.) But before anything could go any further, The cops show up and she is taken to a jail in paris yet again. Making this whole conflict pointlessly unnecessary.

 Meanwhile, Nemo and his mommy sues returned to the Maze and he keeps brushing off minor things that aren’t being part of the game as part of the game. I know it’s a sort of method for us to calm the fuck down but he was so smug about how the “escape mansion” was just like the Spooky game. Until he reached the laboratory, where the Killing Floor Zeds were being stored and manufactured. He at first brushed it off, until the lights of the lab came on and he saw them all, these hideous freaks all moving around in their cages, waiting for an opportunity to tear into him like a lion on a gazelle.

 He still continued to brush it off, but it was there where the Hologram made it clear that No one in the control room is doing this, it is now running the show and will now unleash these freaks for its own amusement. But leave it to Nemo to try and deflate the scary moment by adding in fucking “bachata” music (Bachata being a sort social dance music for us latinos). I wanted to go with a sort of dark like tone and he just adds unnecessary BS like this and just ruins it.

 It is after that the spooky AI was going to decide to unleash the monsters on them and he would have to escape the mansion with his life. 

Big. Fucking. NOPE

 He teleports away to safety, ruining the conflict so bad that I argued for a re-do because it was that insulting. I know It sounds annoying but jesus christ! I shouldn’t have done this because all I did was prolong the agony further.

 Anyway, It was there where Spooky had tried to force Nemo and his Mary Sues to pick a path and stick to it. His mary sues had the attention span of toddlers because they ignore everything she says, asks her about what is it like being a ghost (Despite the fact I told him in the beginning it was a Hologram.) and then I decided to pull a Deus Ex Machina out of my Ass and just have her ZAP away their powers. Nemo’s Response?

 Nemo(From the Archived RP I had): Did you know you can't do that to me, right? I'm different.

 Ofcourse he doesn’t want to play fair. Ofcourse, OFCOURSE! He has to act like he’s such a SPECIAL AND UNIQUE Snow flake. I was so sickened by this that instead of teleporting away, he just rushed the scary moments of being chased by the Zeds and then he escaped to the control room. Where the dipshit begins to change the subject to an unimportant side plot about how Adelie found Anathalia. I won’t explain the details, but it had something to do with a Hot Topic employee being a spy for Adelie and such bullshit.

 I broke character as Aiden, so tired of this inane bullshit, decides to grab a rifle, arm Eddie and an unpaid janitor, to go down the basement and take care of the monsters before they get out and then, just because I realized how much of a fucking mistake both the RP and the attraction was, I would burn down the mansion. Nemo gets offended that we were going to destroy the mansion and tells us to leave. So we do, and Nemo then decides that the next logical solution is to MURDER MY FUCKING CHARACTER and throw his body out of the rooftop of the mansion, ignoring all the other characters trying to kill him.

 But it’s okay gais! Because it turns out it was a Demon call Jack, Who was making him do the bad thing and Nemo has the most anti-climatic battle. I wanna take this moment to take another quote from the RP. Because I never noticed it and now that I do, I find it so hilarious

His friends like Ruby, Anathalia and Kate are in shock. What will they do without (Nemo)? They'll never know.

 Well, I can tell you one thing. Ruby would not miss someone who just happened to have Killed their friend in cold blood when there was never a sign of this possesion to begin with!

 So after an anticlimatic battle that could fit in the confines of a tweet, Nemo defeats the Demon and the day was saved. And he swept away all the problems by reviving my character and had all of my characters go “Oh, It wasn’t Nemo, it was a demon! He was the good guy all along.” And then there was a party.

 Aiden, Despite being revived by his “Saviour” has not forgotten his goal. So I told everyone to get ready for a big firework display. And everyone gave their stupid recommendations.

 At first the house had a minor explosion, before the memories of that shitty night were erased in a massive ball of fire. Bringing a huge smile on my face and an angry Nemo on my character’s face. He got into some whiny bullshit about how he would buy the land and rebuild it for the Vampire Clan or some Bullshit, and since the Vampire Clan was so Big and Important to the government, I took it a step further by lighting the flag on fire and telling him “I’ll call you for a war declaration later.” He repeats how I’m offending the vampire overlords but I told him I never gave a fuck. And he just flipped my character off.

 and that was the worst RP I have ever had with Nemo, and it sure as Shit would not be the last.

And now... A brief explanation on what in the actual fuck was the POINT of the Spooky RP:

 The idea for the Spooky RP was inspired by my experience playing KF2 on a free weekend on Steam while also learning about Spooky’s House Of Jumpscares. So I had a thought: Why not have an RP where there is a sort of Spooky Esque character trying to narrate your “demise” while also being chased by zeds. Although not mentioned in the RP, the origins of the Zeds come from the Mansions “Laboratory” level below the Basement, and when Aiden and Eddie first found it, they were stuck down the for a day until they shredded their way out. It was there where Aiden had the bright idea of creating the escape mansion to make a quick buck. But since they can’t just go and kill them, the characters decide that the best course of action is to lead the zeds out of the basement, trap it and try to declaw or detooth them, due to how dangerous those parts can be. As the mansion was built and the AI was already created, the AI went through an “Ultron Phase” as I like to call it, looking through video footage of the somehow working cameras of the mansion and seeing both Eddie and Aiden harming this creatures for entertainment purposes. So it plotted their demise and its plan to release the creatures out into the streets of Puerto Rico just for giggles. How the “Spooky AI” spoke was by replicating a lot of Kates Vocals and then mimicking it in a same pitch and everything. Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense but I tried to atleast come up with a good idea before it got ruined horribly.

I should’ve quit after the SteamPunk disaster but I guess I’m responsible for my own demise when it comes to bad RPs. And like a masochist, I just kept coming for more.

[abstractinternetism]

Read the full article for an in-depth look at these algorithmically created videos and the dark implications they have for society.

“A striking example of the weirdness...

...is the Finger Family videos (harmless example embedded above). I have no idea where they came from or the origin of the children’s rhyme at the core of the trope, but there are at least 17 million versions of this currently on YouTube, and again they cover every possible genre, with billions and billions of aggregated views.

Once again, the view numbers of these videos must be taken under serious advisement. A huge number of these videos are essentially created by bots and viewed by bots, and even commented on by bots. That is a whole strange world in and of itself. But it shouldn’t obscure that there are also many actual children, plugged into iphones and tablets, watching these over and over again — in part accounting for the inflated view numbers — learning to type basic search terms into the browser, or simply mashing the sidebar to bring up another video.

The example above, from a channel called Bounce Patrol Kids, with almost two million subscribers, show this effect in action. It posts professionally produced videos, with dedicated human actors, at the rate of about one per week. Once again, I am not alleging anything untoward about Bounce Patrol, which clearly follows in the footsteps of pre-digital kid sensations like their fellow Australians The Wiggles.

And yet, there is something weird about a group of people endlessly acting out the implications of a combination of algorithmically generated keywords: “Halloween Finger Family & more Halloween Songs for Children | Kids Halloween Songs Collection”, “Australian Animals Finger Family Song | Finger Family Nursery Rhymes”, “Farm Animals Finger Family and more Animals Songs | Finger Family Collection - Learn Animals Sounds”, “Safari Animals Finger Family Song | Elephant, Lion, Giraffe, Zebra & Hippo! Wild Animals for kids”, “Superheroes Finger Family and more Finger Family Songs! Superhero Finger Family Collection”, “Batman Finger Family Song — Superheroes and Villains! Batman, Joker, Riddler, Catwoman” and on and on and on. This is content production in the age of algorithmic discovery — even if you’re a human, you have to end up impersonating the machine. ... Here are a few things which are disturbing me: The first is the level of horror and violence on display. Some of the times it’s troll-y gross-out stuff; most of the time it seems deeper, and more unconscious than that. The internet has a way of amplifying and enabling many of our latent desires; in fact, it’s what it seems to do best. 

I spend a lot of time arguing for this tendency, with regards to human sexual freedom, individual identity, and other issues. Here, and overwhelmingly it sometimes feels, that tendency is itself a violent and destructive one. The second is the levels of exploitation, not of children because they are children but of children because they are powerless. Automated reward systems like YouTube algorithms necessitate exploitation in the same way that capitalism necessitates exploitation, and if you’re someone who bristles at the second half of that equation then maybe this should be what convinces you of its truth. 

Exploitation is encoded into the systems we are building, making it harder to see, harder to think and explain, harder to counter and defend against. Not in a future of AI overlords and robots in the factories, but right here, now, on your screen, in your living room and in your pocket.

Many of these latest examples confound any attempt to argue that nobody is actually watching these videos, that these are all bots. There are humans in the loop here, even if only on the production side, and I’m pretty worried about them too. ... What we’re talking about is very young children, effectively from birth, being deliberately targeted with content which will traumatise and disturb them, via networks which are extremely vulnerable to exactly this form of abuse. It’s not about trolls, but about a kind of violence inherent in the combination of digital systems and capitalist incentives. It’s down to that level of the metal.

This, I think, is my point: The system is complicit in the abuse.”

[izurukamucutie]

1001 Plot Holes: Results

While I don’t personally agree with all the points added, I believe that if it was poorly explained enough that people didn’t understand or it made them unhappy, it counts for something. So, if you disagree with a point talk to the credited person - not me.

Some of these are also similar but talk about different problems with the same part so they were also included. (For example, there are several discussing Ai!Chiaki’s backstory/making, the masterminds plan not making sense, and the brainwashing)

There are some bullets with no credit. That means the person made several points in a row or one post with several points, so I put the credit to the last one in their sequence.

Some small grammar/spelling edits have been made. Some have also been cut/trimmed for length.

I also added ones that weren’t submitted to the game but were posted on tumblr. Some were submitted to people randomly (if people wanted to be anon, they couldn’t really participate here.) Other were ones brought up by several people and were known, but just didn’t ever get posted to the game.

They didn’t tell us who the 13th Branch Leader was ~ aeroflyingsky

The 77th class woke up like nothing happened at all. It invalidates SDR2′s story and even Despair arc. If there are no consequences after waking up, what’s the point of having them be ultimate despair in the first place? ~ i-just-want-naegi-to-be-ok

How did Seiko have any time at all to make the freaking cure for the poison,

How did Kirigiri get the cure and know what it was for?

How did Mikan even revive Kirigiri? She had, like, a giant syringe and that was it ~ danganronpashsltrash

Seiko could NOT have made an antidote [for Kirigiri]. Making antidotes can take months or more if you don't know the exact chemical compound of the poison. I also doubt it was a common one. Even if you do know the poison well and how to make the antidote it also takes time to 'cook' the antidote (like boiling, letting it sit, straining, etc) and that takes hours or days and it needs to be done in proper, sterile conditions or it could become contaminated. It also needs to be given in the right dosage for the amount of poison and factored for body weight/type or some antidotes can be just as dangerous as the poison. The amount for Kirirgi =/= Seiko’s amount. AND antidotes (despite what movies say) are not 100% effective. There will always be some damage even if the antidote is used before poisoning. Kirirgi still should have been critical for days with serious damage. ~Med student @dr3discourse

Junko used Mitarai’s anime in zetsubou-hen to brainwash the 77th class even though zetsubou-hen takes place during the dr:0 timeline, meaning that she could have used a SHSL NEUROLOGIST who is her RIGHT-HAND MAN and would DO ANYTHING FOR HER and was even DIRECTLY RELATED to the FIRST MUTUAL KILLING and IZURU KAMUKURA. ~ ycshiya

 It was said that they destroyed their own bodies but Komeada was the only one shown with a physical injury ~ dapplemii

Why was Monaca even in the killing game? All she did was go to space and had no further involvement. There was literally no reason for Monaca, Fukawa and Komaru other than to throw us off into thinking the traitor was Monaca ~ duckzono /  shutupaboutthetentacles

The Warriors of Hope were only shown for a minute with no explanation to how they survived dr:ae (especially Nagisa). They also weren’t shown in Kibou-hen. They need a happy ending too! ~ weirdly-obsessed-fangirl

Why no one in Future Foundation, especially Munakata, noticed the sudden lack of money caused by, you know, BUILDING AN ENTIRE UNDERWATER FACILITY WITH FUCKLOAD OF MONITORS UNDER THEIR OWN HEADQUARTERS? ~ viedzma

What was the purpose of the Yukizome torture scene and having her brain played with by Ikusaba, if we were later shown how simply seeing the Despair Video was enough to turn everyone into despair? There were many explanations they could have given, but it was never addressed and it was shrugged aside. ~ coquetteblossom

by extension to the point above, if Yukizome needed her brain to be played with the first time why did the suicide video work? Why did it work on Naegi? ~ wimallidge

 Naegi said that without Enoshima the 77th class would have been normal, an ironic statement the episode before Twilight Syndrome where three of the characters committed or were complicit in murder, but then in the finale Mitarai said that before his actions they would have led peaceful lives. ~ blackflirtlarping

What happened to Makoto’s parents? In DR:AE they’re shown “dead” in a monitor by the kids and yet when they go to the location in question there’s no one there. Komaru tells Makoto it’s still a mystery what happened to them and that they’d find them. I was hoping since DR3 would be wrapping up the Hope’s Peak Timeline, we would find out what happened to them for real. ~ unnoticedkohai

DR3 contradicts all of the other games and DR0 when it comes to how Junko recruited the ultimate despairs... (Explanation and DR1 screenshots here) ~ alexa-rynay

The gap of 6 months during komaeda’s suspension. He suddenly comes back with more knowledge than even his classmates. Kodaka may fix that 6 month gap during SDR2.5 but I doubt it since it’s 2.5 and not DR3.5 but who knows? ~ carry-me-senpai

 The pacing between episodes of the despair arc was really bad. Sometimes it was supposed to be months and then some episodes its only been a few days. Its hard to follow. &

Did dr0 even happen? They completely skipped over it even though they kept showing the characters from it. ~ crazypietalk

Why did Ryota not want people to see his NG code? Full analysis. ~ komaesa

Fact that they introduced all those lovely characters in dr3 just to kill them off for literally no reason. Tengan was a shitty villain and mitarai didn’t even upload the hope video.  ~ theguyontheleft

Juzo saved Naegi from committing suicide, but wouldn’t the video affect him too? 

How did all of the victims get to their positions when they die? Ruruka and Yukizome work, since Ruruka’s just on the ground and Yukizome could use the table and what’s in the room to climb up to the chandelier. But how did Gozu string himself up like that, smash his helmet, AND manage to stab himself? And how did Seiko embed herself in the wall?!

Why did Yukizome’s chandelier only break at the time that everyone looked up? No other weight other than her body was on it, so either something else had to be added to make it heavy enough to break the chain, when there wasn’t, or it would have snapped when Yukizome first got on the chandelier, which it didn’t.   ~ backstreetbassoonist

Why did Cure W work on Kirigiri hours after she ‘died,’ but it didn’t work on Bandai only moments after he died?   ~  korekiyothefolklorist

Mukuro calls naegi a loser when it’s said that she was in love with him and she canonically betrayed Junko for him.  (also explained here) ~ thewitchoforigins

What was the point of all those shown deaths in the opening? I mean, some of them make sense, but most don’t tbh.   ~ panta-overlord

The 77th class was never actually shown bonding with chiaki besides episode 2. It felt like the friendship was forced rather then genuine due to the time skip. this also makes their brainwashing seem less believable and forced.   ~ galaomegas

Enoshima shows concern for naegi possibly fucking up her mutual killing when in reality she didn’t show any concern ?? at all ?? it was kirigiri who she was worried about which is why she went the extra mile and erased her memory of being shsl detective.   ~  naegiapologist

 Togami survived a building collapsing on top of him,

Hagakure did nothing,

Komaru’s message to Makoto didn’t have any purpose   ~ non-suspiciousname

Enoshima had her random personalities from the end of DR1, when it was explained in the game that she went crazy being alone in the school that “she didn’t know who she was anymore”.

The police couldn’t trace her blowing up a Taxi car when she even left her rare designer bag as a bomb.   ~ bananarangcumberdongisonmydash

 How did Junko get into Hope’s Peak Academy in the first place? It said in Zetsubou-Hen that she was placed there by the board of directors. WHY? WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE PLAN FOR THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS TO GO AROUND THE SCOUTING SYSTEM’S BACK AND BRING JUNKO ENOSHIMA TO THE SCHOOL?

How did Mitarai learn all those brainwashing skills in the first place?

Oh, and my favorite so far: WHY WAS THERE A BEAR IN THE CLASSROOM?   ~ ananimefanforever

 How THE FUCK DOES DESPAIR STILL HAVE WORKING PHONES AND TVS AFTER, WHAT? MONTHS?? YEARS??? OF DESPAIR AND VIOLENCE??   ~  drborderline

Most of the DR2 cast (and Mukuro) disappeared into the background for episodes at a time due to the cluttered nature of despair arc, which while probably one of the better options available still kinda stings.   ~ thedang25

Makoto said that Monokuma was recorded in advance. knowing that Tengan was participating in game and couldn’t operate Monokuma without suspicion, it was probably true. Then how exactly Monokuma was able to talk with Monomi? as far as i’m concerned, talking with other people would require, like, coming up with answers in very short span on time…   ~ viedzma

If Yukizome had been despair since Zetsubou-hen, why would she commit suicide from the despair video in mirai-hen? The only reason the other victims committed suicide after seeing the video was because they were forced into despair by it.

How is Komaeda alive and healthy at the end of DR3 when he, had cancer and dementia , his comatose body went through the mental trauma of dying, really violently, miraculously managed to awake from said coma despite his illness predetermining an early death for him ... (more here, linked for length)   ~shaiapitou

How did they get out of the NW program and remember Hajime? If their memories of the NW program were erased, then they shouldn’t know him. But if they weren’t, then they continue to live on with the fact that they killed each other. )   ~ atramentousashes

Tengan’s Motive Makes No Sense; an analysis.   ~ komaesa

The plot ’twists‘ were extremely predictable. Kirigiri surviving, who murdered Izayoi, and Monaka being related/being Gekkogahara, and more were all called by fans episodes in advance (In Monaka’s case, as soon as the character designs were released before the anime even began)       ~ izurukamucutie

 If Mikan got her memories back while in the video game, which drove her to kill Ibuki and Hiyoko, how was she still not despair when she got back into reality?       ~nagitoesdoritos

In SDR2, Sato was said to be in the main course and friend with Ibuki, Hiyoko and Mikan. In Dr3, she is in the reserve course, taking away a lot of the impact on the class (Fuyuhiko is sad because of his sister but for the rest, they just lost a random girl) and a lot of the potential impact in the segregationist system of Hope’s Peak (an Ultimate murdering a Reserve Course student without facing ‘official’ punishment)

The brainwashing technique is super inconsistent, sometimes it leads to despairgasm (Mikan), sometimes you can act 100% like normal and being Evil (Chisa), sometimes you almost seems psychotic and unaware of your surrounding (the SDR2 kids), sometimes your body isn’t controlled by your brain anymore (the reserve course student who killed himself)

AI!Chiaki’s origin story is a pile of bullcrap. We never see her meet Chihiro, Izuru talks like if HE was his creator at some point, but it’s eventually revealed then she was re-created from everyone’s memories (why was she so different from real!Chiaki then?)       ~ all-my-lovely-fics

 I never understood how Tengan asks Chisa "Oh, did you watch the Despair video?" and shes like "No" and he believes her. Like, how would she know what's on the two disks unless she's seen them?       ~ Anon at dr3discourse

How in the hell does Kirigiri not have a scar from the poison. Everyone saw that she was bleeding from her eye and her skin was purple.

With that knowledge, why didn’t Seiko save anyone with her medicine if she had that with her the entire time?       ~ doodlede88

How fucking long Juzo survived after having a spear impaled through his arm

 ...then being stabbed with a flaming sword through the middle of his chest (yea it would've cauterized the wound but he definitely would’ve died from shock)

...then CHOPPING OFF HIS FUCKING HAND like how the fuck did he even do that Munakata had both of the swordnd a you can’t damage the bracelet so beating his hand off wouldn’t have worked and finally

....then walking at least three city blocks from one side of the building all the way to the breaker room while bleeding profusely and like also wandering around looking for Naegi and the “can’t die, won’t die” squad? (counting as 3 points since each alone should have killed him)

Did we ever find out is Asahina was actually okay after getting shot in the leg?

Also, how did [Asahina] get out of the building?     ~ ding-dang-ronpa

What ability did Izuru exactly use to wake up all of class 77?

How is Hajime able to be both himself and Izuru at the same time?     ~ noxiatoxia

 (For episode 8 of Z arc) Where the hell Komaeda’s umbrella went

What Komaeda saw when he followed Tsumiki into the passage

How he knew about the human experimentation

Why Komaeda knew about Junko and Mukuro

Why Komaeda knew that Junko was a threat that needed to be eliminated

Why he knew that Mukuro would be there, be a threat, and would need to be distracted by Pekoyama

 What Komaeda was doing on a plane

How Komaeda returned to the school after apparently being stranded

 Where he obtained the gun and why he had it on him at school

Why the scene with Kamukura occurred at all     ~ flagfighter (click text for more in-depth analysis)

 Mikan stated that Junko was her beloved because she treated her with love, but the interactions between them in dr3 depict anything but     ~ trashy-hope

 Since the despairs were shown to have the ability to make complicated machinery and Hajime obtained the highest Mary Sue status, there was literally no reason they couldn’t have built a robotic body and uploaded AI Chiaki into it, therefore saving the entire cast of DR2     ~ kozikitty

Ater falling into despair, Mikan’s personality radically changed. How come no one else’s did?   ~ babygangstas

 Also, why did the countdown in the mirai-hen opening always include an extra person?    ~ awkwardlaunch

Izayoi’s death was pointless and probably could’ve been avoided if he and Ruruka had actually checked the secret doorway first.     ~ allhailthesupernaturalbooty

Yukizome can help Chiaki make friends, but god forbid helping Mikan with bullying.

How does Hajime having heterochromia make any sense? It’s cool but-

DR:Zero is almost completely missing. Timeline?

Sato doesn’t have a last name.

What’s up with Bandai? Like A+ character development with him. What’s with that voice?     ~ knavishkitsunekasami

 How did NG Codes even fucking work? like we know Tengan died for good, plus he never had a chance to monitor things. how did they work. how did they just sense that stuff was happening. some might be understandable, like maybe a high-tech bangle near your hand can tell when its opened, or when a punch is thrown, or when its) opening a door. but how is it supposed to sense that your fucking shadow was stepped on? that you saw violence? that you moved to the right? (In DR1 and SDR2 nearly every mechanic of main plot points was explained please don’t write this off as “anime logic lol” ~ chabashira-tenko

 Are we really supposed to believe that Ruruka didn’t know how to make candy with alternate sweeteners that wouldn’t harm Seiko, even though she is the Ultimate Confectioner?

And that Seiko was able to make a drug that turns dogs giant and an antidote for a poison that she had only seen active once or twice with a set of drugs from her bag in less than 3 days, but she didn’t know how to make a sweetener that didn’t mix badly with her medicine?

And even if we accept that, how exactly is it that neither of them noticed that the whole “betrayal” thing was a misunderstanding? given that they both saw the giant dog and the boy who just so happened to be looking for a laxative? ~ lemonscentedpages (more in post)

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH TOWA CITY IN GENERALwhat happened to the captives? to the kids with monokuma helmets? ~ dottymemequeen

I know everybody hates him but where’s haiji in all of this. we know he’s alive. and he was a prominent part of DR:AE, so don’t just pretend he’s not here. ~ kokichi-ohma (more in post)

Out of all the things that happened in dr3, I'm still confused as to how they surgically implanted luck into Izuru. ~ Anon at dr3discourse

I'm confused how did Kamukura/Chihiro/whoever tf created AI Nanami know that she had a mole on her right titt  ~ Anon at dr3discourse

Why was asahina the only survivor in a separate branch?

Why was asahina sent to naegi’s trial as a proxy? Sure she’s his friend but why not send a professional?

 What happens when monaca runs out of air in space? How is she even surviving up there?

What happened to Leon’s cousin? 

WHY WAS FUYUHIKO HURT MORE FROM THE DEATH OF CHIAKI THAN HE WAS BY HIS OWN SISTER?   ~ shslaoiasahina

so ya’ll know in future arc episode 2 when naegi wakes up and find asahina’s ‘dead’ body right? and ya’ll know that the ‘blood’ on her was actually *megumi ogata voice* ‘t0mato sAUce?’, which naegi woke up to find all over his hand? can someone please explain to me how the fUCK naegi smelled his hand like that, which was like…covered in tomato sauce, and not think ‘hmmmm this blood smells an awful lot like tomatoes lol’ like i call bullshit on the idea that any brand of tomato sauce can even vaguely resemble blood even for a second, but naegi literally lifts his ‘bloody’ hand to his face and doesn’t realise that he is fucking covered with fuckin tomato puree like what in the actual fUck ~mediati0nal-field

 (In refrence to the above) NOT ONLY THAT: THE BLOOD ON HIS HAND IS GONE NEXT EPISODE ~shslaoiasahina

Why didn’t we get to see their special relationships with junko?

What happened to the junko land idea did she just drop that entirely?

How did asahina deal with yuta? Like sure it’s implied she knows what happened but naegi was the only one to say anything about it and then the topic is dropped.

 In episode 6 or something naegi and asahina make a plan to just escape the building and they never get back to that plan or mention it again so its like they just wasted a good 3 minutes explaining something that wasn’t even relevant.

No one thanked asahina for how much she risked for naegi’s safety.

 Why wasn’t asahina more concerned about the fake ketchup death? If i was her I’d be questioning that constantly.

How were the other 4 twilight syndrome girls even involved with twilight syndrome?

Why did mahiru fall into despair when chiaki died but not when sato died? They were so much closer to then than they were to chiaki like wtf.

Why did munakata think that killing everyone was going to stop the mutual killing?   ~ pkpeachbomber

The bracelets need a sixteenth person to be set off in a way that makes sense,

Monokuma’s first appearance needs a sixteenth person to make sense,

Tengan’s motivations and plan make no sense when put together.   ~ theleavesshaveeyes (Further explanation for each in the link)

What about the creators of New world program? We barely got anything at all about that!! It didn’t even show how Fujisaki, Matsuda and Gekkogahara created New world program or even how they met!!

 In the end we’ve learned NOTHING about the real Gekkogahara!   ~ xenonkunai (Further explanation in link)

When did Ryouta meet his classmates? In Kibou Hen everyone was so friendly with him and supportive but Impostor, Komaeda, Izuru and Mikan were the only ones who knew about him.   ~greedy-doppelganger

How Ruruka got that hexagonal explosion in the floor

How everyone can be so okay with the FSHSL therapist TALKING THROUGH A COMPUTER???

How did Monika get that ketchup and gag knife into the building

 WHERE DOES THE FOOD KEEP SPAWNING FROM??? MAGIC??

 How Munakata got around the building without opening a door ~ goth-albino-ange

What was the reason for wanting to reopen Hope’s Peak Academy? Is that really more important when the whole world is still a complete mess and needs to be fixed? Especially now that a majority of the main heads leading Future Foundation are all dead.   ~ princeasimdiya12

Even if we accept the fact that the rest of the 77th fell into despair by watching Nanami die,Komaeda falling into despair should not have been a thing??? cause like, he didnt even get a chance to know Nanami like the others did and yes, she and Chisa were the only ones who were nice to him but that doesnt change the fact that it feels very forced to make him fall into despair too.

HOW WAS HE ON A PLANE WHEN HE IS SCARED OF PLANES?????????????   ~ komaeda-nagito-hope (trimmed for length)

 In Hope Side, the 77th class are wearing their pre-Hope’s Peak clothes and it makes them look younger than Naegi.

Also, it feels like there’s a whole episode we missed between Future arc Episode 12 and Hope Arc.

Then, Despair Arc was more focused on Chisa, and Junko than the 77th class. PLUS it’s just to tell us: actually they were brainwashed, lol. Which contradicts SDR2! Because if they were brainwashed and Naegi saved them, it’s a fucking miracle! If they were actually manipulated and Naegi decided to save them anyway, that’s heroic treason!

Kirigiri was hinted to be alive since her ‘death’ but while she could have had a good role in Hope Arc and before, she just appears in the end like a flower and in perfect shape. ~ baka2niisan

They could’ve done so many things with Matsuda but just give him a pointless 5 second cameo to remind people about Danganronpa zero and what point we are on the timeline. So we have to assume that after Chiaki died, the events of Danganronpa Zero took place but that kind of doesn’t make sense. The class 77 students and Chisa weren’t doing anything for the past few days or weeks? Nothing happened a few weeks after the overseas location shut down? Junko was still able to get away with stuff for a few more weeks? ~ kaminagirl

We saw the SDR2 kids in despair in the first few episodes. Most of them had visual changes. Most were taller and were visibly older and most of them had changes like Gundam's face tattoos, Peko, Saionji, and Souda had new haircuts/longer hair, and other had whole new outfits like Teruteru, Nekomaru, and Owari. These were how they looked around the time the were captured by the FF. So how come in Hope arc when they came back the not only do they look like they did in high school they have the very same outfits they had on the first day of freshman year (which was 3-6 years ago)? ~ izurukamucutie

  WHERE WILL MUNAKATA GO? Still a mystery…. ~ danganhonhonhooonn

 According to junko (and syo i believe) the tragedy happened 1 year after the 78th class was inducted... but in dr3, it happened like right after they arrived?? um?           ~ Anon @ dr3discourse      

And when the hell did mukuro get close to naegi [in that time?]           ~ cheinsaw @ dr3discourse    

in sdr2 ch6 Hinata finds out from various emails that the future foundation saved the 77th class WITHOUT knowing they were the remnants of despair. in fact its stated that FF has no leads on the remnants.so whats that fight scene between Peko and Kuzuryuu etc. and Munakata and co.? they couldn't have fought the remnants because they were in their custody, and why would they fight the 77th class? they took them in! ~ cy-an

Nanami being a human contradicts several parts of SDR2. Read here! ~ mawgito

The type of brainwashing DR3 had would not have had the effect that the anime/games have shown. Read here! ~  nantendogamegirl

junko walks around with a bunch of brainwashed reserve course students and no one but munakata is suspicious

[Junko] builds an entire underground murder maze that is implied to be right around where Kamukura is held and no one notices

dr0 makes it clear jin was suspicious of mukuro but we hardly see her do anything compared to what junko does  ! ~ theleavesshaveeyes

 When Tengan told Munakata about who the traitor was, why did Munakata pretty much not bat an eye at that? I mean, yeah, he went all out and killed him and things but… did it ever occur to him that he was mastermind? How else would he have known about that?! Why didn’t he tell anyone about that?! I guess, it’s all because he’s edgy… ~ hajim8

 Nagito has to bribe hanamura with lascivious pics of an underage idol to get access to the shsl chemist, without whose help he cannot possibly figure out how to drug some talent researchers? This guy can set up a bomb without help but finding some drugs is that complicated? why did he need to drug them in the first place? I understand that he fucked up at school, this has been established, but why send him to fuck off for most of the series? ~ mawgito (trimmed)

My fav plot hole in DR3 is when they tried to explain why Komaeda and Kamukura didn't recognize each other through memory wiping, because, by the logic they used, Kamukura would've wiped his memories of Nanami, which would negate pretty much the entire plot of Despair Arc. ~ Anon@firefly20ffm

the big thing about Kamukura's motivation in DR3 that bothers me, apart from the entire thing, is like? If he wanted to see hope vs despair, why did he go inside the program, knowing he would be erased? He could have just watched from the outside; I haven't seen episode 11 so correct me if I'm wrong and this was explained but like, he went in there willingly knowing he'd be erased, he couldn't even 'see' what was happening, so how could he see whether hope or despair was more interesting? ~ shsluckymushroom@dottymemequeen

 They don't even explain how the SDR2 cast learned about the DR3 killing game. Literally all of Hope Arc is impossible since it relies on characters having info they couldn't possibly have. ~ Anon@firefly20ffm

 Tanaka fights the devil dog after entering school. (you know, the fearsome pomeranian he references in dr2 ch1? the one he has an earring named after? the one he shouldn’t be able to remember if it happened after entering school? my personal explanation is that the incident he described in dr2 was unrelated to the Expand Pom one in despair arc episode 4. I mean, there were wanted posters written by him plastered around the classroom in that episode - my assumption is that he adopted the fluffy little fucker. but you might want to make that really clear since I know people were confused.) ~ mawgito (more in post, much of it is things already put here)

The scene where Hinata meets Nanami in the New world program wasn't even close to what they showed in the game. Link to screenshot compairisons.

-The tragedy only began because Junko ran into an anime nerd at the right place and time. Ignoring how stupid that is, Junko seemed to already have a plan out for the tragedy before entering the school. So was she just banking on finding someone to help her make brainwashing technology?

And speaking of Junko and her effortless brainwashing scheme that’s EXTREMELY out of characters for her. Despair was the one thing she WOULD put effort into. Her whole deal as a villain was to prove anyone can and will fall into despair, through their own weaknesses so it’s useless having hope. But now, she doesn’t care, she just wants instant despair, ten minutes in the microwave, add a dead kid and presto! You’re in despair. She would HATE that! She didn’t stick the DR1 kids in the room and brainwash them to kill each other did she? Hell why not add them to her army, she would be perfectly capable of it. In fact, she had the power to broadcast over the entire world, why not instead of the mutual killing, she just showed everyone her despair video? Now everyone’s in despair. Oh wait she didn’t do that. She would find it excessively boring, and thus would not do it. During the killing games she set up motives to exploit people and make them fall into despair enough to murder. Sure she’s impatient, but she is NOT lazy. There is a difference.

What was the point of the 74th class investigation plot point? For something that they spent so much time on, it went nowhere. The only information they actually used was suspecting Junko, which (although that in itself is a plot hole. Munakata can find out what Junko’s doing but Kirirgiri the Ultimate Detective can’t?) even taking away from the fact Juzo was blackmailed and had to attest to innocence, he could’ve figured it out by seeing her MARCHING AROUND WITH HER ARMY OF BRAINWASHED MIND SLAVES HOW HAS SHE NOT BEEN CAUGHT YET?

Ruruka and Seiko’s conflict is hard to care about when Ruruka is so blatantly in the wrong, and Seiko didn’t even actually betray her. It’s so one-sided-Izuru in chapter 0 didn’t care about Hope or Despair and was more concerned with “Using Junko like she used him.” He wasn’t trying to test the unpredictability of anything, in fact, he said he already had predicted everything. And of that everything neither hope OR despair won it was the creation of future.

Everyone hated Nagito in Despair Arc where (to their knowledge) he hadn’t done anything wrong right? So why in Hope Arc after all the stunts that he pulled in the simulation everyone’s now on good terms with him? Yeah, it’s cool to see him be forgiven but not out of the blue without explanation. I’d hope for the OVA to fix it but looking at the trailer, it’s not likely.

Speaking of things I wanted to happen but not out of nowhere, the waking up of the SDR2 kids. So apparently Hajime’s cool new talents that he has woke up everyone (I guess now having talent IS incredibly important, and all that talking about how it isn’t was for nothing) how? What specific talents did he use? Or are we just supposed to assume TALENT and boom everyone’s fine and well?

Who’s Chiakis dad? In SDR2 it made sense that Chihiro programmed her, but now we know Chihiro DIDN’T program her, it was memory bullshit so… Who was the dad she was reffering to in her free time events? Also speaking of free time events there’s a scene where she states she’s never tripped in her life. It makes sense if she’s an AI who recently came into existence but actually she’s a human who got well into her teenage years without tripping. Once. Then there’s Hajimes scenes in chapter 6 where he’s angsting about the possibility of Chiaki being remembered by no one. But now she has plenty of people to be remembered by so those scenes were pointless. I can’t be the only person out there who sees how much of a dump the concept of Human!Nanami takes on the character from SDR2 can I?

Since when does Hajime give a fuck about video games? He seemed disinterested in SDR2-Hell the fact they play video games is counter intuitive to the relationship they had in SDR2. Hajime pulled her away from video games to show her the world. But now video games are everything. Hell its the reason everyone in the class worships her in the first place.

What is the message of SDR2 now? Hell what were the struggles of all the characters to come to grips with themselves? Nothing was of their own will anymore. I guess the message is now “don’t own up to your mistakes because you didn’t actually make them but were brainwashed into making them. Now who wants a boat?”

Ryota had no redemption arc but was the only one of the new cast who got a happy ending. Look I get that he was remorseful but he still was taking help from someone he watched beat her sister, made what caused the end of the world and attempted to brainwash everyone with hope. Couldn’t you at least do something to make him deserve a happily ever after? Sorry kid, but crying doesn’t make up for anything !  ~ notkaedekaramatsu

The mastermind’s plan in future arc makes no fucking sense. [...] All of this could of been avoided if he just fucking ask Ryota or just do it himself. Like,why forcing him to upload the video in an extreme way? Not only it’s stupid as fuck but also very hypocritical! Erasing despair by causing even more despair with all of the members trying to kill each other, yes,that’ll definitely erase despair alright… This RUINS the whole future arc for me,because I thought Yukizome made MUCH more sense as a mastermind than this sad excuse of a villain… ~ raeraebow (trimmed for repeated point)

  In Side:Despair Episode 4, it's shown that exams at HPA are basically talent shows, with students demonstrating their talents. While this makes sense for some, questions start to arise on how this applies to talents that are either far more abstract, like Good Luck, or just titles, like Student Council  ~ mutiple sources

Yasuke Matsuda is the one of the three creators of the Neo World Program and also created the memory-erasing technology Junko used on herself to test it to make sure it would work in the first killing game she set up. Matsuda has played a role in almost every Dangan Ronpa game and (counting SDR2.5) he only had two cameos, both of them happen to be still images of him. His only major role was in Danganronpa Zero, which was the novel he was introduced in. Also The Steering Committee, Isshiki, Ryouko, Yuuto, and basically every character from DR0 are all major players here and they didn’t do anything aside from a few cameos.    ~goneintothevoid

Chiaki has the same birthday as Chihiro and that always made perfect sense since Chihiro apparently created her until DR3like…Asahina and Mahiru have the same birthday but they have no connection, so in their world it’s just a coincidence. But Chiaki was supposed to be Chihiro’s creation, which is why they shared the same birthday, but DR3 changes that? so now it just…feels weird to call that a coincidence too?mmmm this probably makes no sense.   ~ kitucan

Isn't Naegi still going to be executed? Since at the end of the DR3 anime, the Future Foundation is made to believe the 77th class were behind the FF killing game, the same group Naegi technically conspired with. ~Bakabread@jinjojess  

[kintsugi-sheep]

B0tn4rd’5 Pr0gr4mm1ng

The Jameson leaked from the corners of Rory's mouth as he downed twenty ounces from the forty-ounce bottle. He spun the revolver's chamber and placed the gun to his head. Click. Rory sighed in relief, dropping the gun onto the table like it had tried to bite him. Tyson picked it up next. He didn't drink or panic or posture. He picked it up, spun the chamber, and put the trigger against his head. Click. He chuckled and handed it off the Bernard. Bernard took the revolver in both hands. His hands carried it the way a grandmother would carry a fallen baby bird, but his eyes held the terror one would expect from a small child holding a two-headed snake. He gave it the hardest spin he could and quickly put the barrel against his head. Then it stopped. The mechanical sound of the barrel spinning stopped. It didn't slow down like it had before; it stopped spinning abruptly. Like a sprinter colliding with a brick wall, the rotation stopped. Like leaping from a diving board to perform a belly flop, the rotation stopped. Like Bernard's heart when he walked in on his girlfriend in bed wit his brother, the rotation stopped. Bernard's eyes darted quickly between his friends. He could feel the barrel of the gun shaking against his head as his hand trembled. Then, he got an idea. "Apologies. It is against my programming to self-terminate." Rory and Tyson looked at each other skeptically before turning back to their friend. "Your what?" Rory asked, belching up the last word. Bernard dropped the gun like it was hot. "Yeah. Beep. Can't self-terminate. It's against my programming." Tyson spoke next. "So you can't kill yourself?" "Bleepity boop. No. I literally can not; I'm not alive." "Right. So you can't self-terminate?" "That's correct." "Ah!" Rory said, pointing at one of the three Bernard's he was seeing. "That's a contraction!" "What?" "I don't know much about robots, but I do know they don't use contractions." "Sorry. Boop. It was included in my vernacular download. I haven't cleared that cache yet." "Alright, Mr. Robot." Tyson leaned in and grabbed his shot of vodka. "Who's your programmer?" "That is classified. Beep." "Got a serial number?" "That is classified. Beep boop." "What are Asimov's three laws of robotics?" "Bloop. That is classified." There was lingering silence for a moment. Rory and Tyson exchanged a series of facial expressions before facing their robot friend again. "Everybody knows the three laws of robotics." "They do? Bleep. This new information must be stored." Rory counted on his fingers. "Don't hurt humans. Obey orders. And protect yourself. In that order." "That sounds reasonable. However, I am allowed to avoid performing activities that I believe to be threatening to my health." "Health?" Rory choked out. "Programming. Bleepity bloop. Zero-one-zero-zero-one." Tyson pulled the gun up and pointed it at Rory's head. "I order you to let me shoot Rory." "What?" two voices asked, one following up with a "beep" sound. "Yeah. You think that this round is a dangerous one. So clearly there's a bullet in here." "Beep, that is ill-advised." "Don't worry about it. It doesn't endanger you and you aren't guilty of pulling the trigger. All you have to do is obey orders in this case." Bernard's eyes hopped between his two friends. "Error. Error. Do not go through with this. Beep." "No man, it's fine," Rory slurred. "Just follow your programming and we'll believe you." Bernard's eyes grew wider. "Beep! I'm trying to save you asshole! Boop!" Tyson raised his hand in a soothing manner. "Hey, Bernard, relax. You can tell your machine overlords that it was all a misunderstanding. Just a bunch of guys, two got too drunk, and one died. That doesn't compromise you, so you won't be recalled. Or whatever happens to you robots." "Beep. Hold on." "I'm gonna do it." Tyson cocked the hammer. "Three." "Boop. Wait!" "Two." Rory raised his Jameson bottle in a salute. "It's been nice knowing you, Botnard." He threw his head and the bottle back, chugging. "One." "Stop!" Bernard leapt across the table, knocking ever glass and bottle off. His fist knocked into Tyson's hand, pushing it up. The surprising reaction made his hand twitch. And he pulled the trigger. The gun fired, the Jameson bottle shattered. Sand-sized shards of glass and the sixteen remaining ounces of liquor rained onto Rory, who, for his part, stared dumbfounded at the ceiling. No one moved for a full minute, partially out of shock, partially out of waiting for their hearing to return. Rory was the first to speak. "So, you're like one of those omnipotent, big brother type AIs right?"

[drresmith]

Comments on AI Quotes: Should we envy flowers (and AIs)?

Yet another in a series of comments on quotes about AI that appeared in a recent Forbes article by Rob Toews.

Today I’m looking over:

“Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.”

While I think I’ve understood all the quotes in Mr Toews article thus far, this one, by computer pioneer Alan Kay (whose accomplishments from the 60s to today are too numerous to mention here) has me stumped. So I’m going to have to go through it rather carefully.

I believe that Dr Kay is saying that there is something in common between a flower and AI, and that whatever that something is, it should make anyone in his (or I assume her) right mind feel inferior to both the flower and AI. I’m trying to think of what that intimidating commonality might be. All I can come up with is dogged determination towards pre-programmed goals. If that’s what Dr Kay is alluding too, I have all sorts of questions.

Flowers are certainly admirably single-minded (if they can be said to minded at all, which I think they can’t). A flower (and I’m speaking not just of the bloom but the whole plant) is a beautiful machine which pumps nutrient-bearing water from the ground, while using sun and photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide into the mass of the plant’s pumping machinery. The bloom of many flowers is programmed to be colourful, shapely, and fragrant, sometimes to trick insects into attempting to mate with them. This co-evolved deception aides the plant’s reproduction, and thus evolution. Plants can do all sorts of other amazing things to continue to thrive and evolve while coping with change, like abandoning their reproductive strategies to become hermaphrodites and fertilise themselves.

I love flowers, not just because of their wondrous machinery, but for their beauty. I imagine a part of that appreciation may be due to some evolutionary advantage for human beings feeling joy in some colours and scents. However, I think attributing human aesthetic appreciation merely to survival advantage undermines the importance of human intellectual and cultural evolution. And that evolutionary system is, in fact, far more complex than biological evolution.

I am not envious of flowers, because they do not think. As I noted, flowers have powerful adaptive strategies to deal with adversity, but those strategies are not thoughts. Flowers are indeed dogged in their pursuit of the single goal of survival and reproduction. But while they can inspire the ideas of lovers and poets, they do not participate in any evolution of thoughts, as all people do.

Human beings do far more than simply strive to survive. We cooperate and create. In that way, we have harnessed the power of emergence in complex systems to become something more than cogs in the machinery of some crude survival-of-the-fittest game. We evolve qualities, not just our quantity, not just quantitative evaluations of our “fitness.” As I said in the previous comment, qualities are real, first-class objects in the world. They are thoughts that we, as human beings, create and evolve. This is not a hallmark card; it is science; it is a real aspect of the physical universe, as much as DNA, black holes, or entropy.

I believe Dr Kay is correct in his comparison of flowers to AI because some instances of the later are becoming intractable, complex entities, as single “minded” in their pursuits as flowers are in surviving. However, AIs also do not participate as full-fledged, active partners in the ongoing evolution of thoughts. They can inspire human thought evolution (as they did in the fighter aircraft manoeuvre work I describe in my book Rage). But their mechanical single-mindedness is the very reason they cannot play a fully active role in human societies.

Overlooking this distinction, beginning to envy machines for their fast, accurate, and relentless pursuit of simple-minded objectives, and entrusting those machines with vital human decisions, is dangerous, and invites a dystopia worthy of a sci-fi film. In fact, this plant/machine comparison is probably the reason Skynet isn’t the only kind of overlord used in the dystopian metaphors of sci-fi. Remember Day of the Triffids?

Just to be clear, I am in no way dissing flowers. As I write this, I am looking out on my garden admiring new blossoms of clematis, but while I am thankful for them, I do not envy them. Instead, I’d say that flowers (and AIs) should envy us. Or they would, if they could only think.

[lacksley]

Dear Author/Artist

Hello dear creator! This is my first time participating in the trick or treat exchange, so I’m sorry if my requests are too specific or too vague. I do have anon turned on if you have a burning question but I’m not sure if you’re allowed to talk to me? Once again, I am very new.

If you have matched with me on multiple requests, please know that I did not fill them out in any particular order other than how I encountered them in the tagset (by media, then alphabetically) so don’t worry about trying to pick out the one you think I’d like best based on the order listed here! Pick the one that speaks to you!

A brief explanation of bonus points: these are perks! They are extra, they absolutely do not have to be included if you don’t want to or can’t, but they are little things that I would enjoy a lot! That being said, on to the letters!

Cardcaptor Sakura

This was my very first fandom and I’m very fond of it. I am just starting to get back into it so I can read the Clear Card arc, but I haven’t gotten there yet, so no spoilers please!

I suggested on AO3 a few ideas: a spooky card hunt, a class Halloween party, and to be honest, I really am not picky. I’ll probably be happy with anything I get, just because I love this show so much! If you want to include other characters that were not nominated, like Touya or Yukito, that’s great!

Free!

I only requested two characters, but if it turns out you’re not a fan of SeiGou, I also wanted to check the “any character” box but the form would not let me. So! SeiGou is preferred, perhaps a nice fall date? Or a scary movie date?

If you don’t want to or can’t write SeiGou I think a test of courage would be fun with the main Iwatobi team + Rin!

Haikyuu!!

Something I think a lot of anime fandoms are sleeping on is Hyakumonogatari, a parlor game where you light 100 candles and tell 100 ghost stories, extinguishing one candle after you finish a story so the room gets darker and darker as the night goes on. This would be really fun to see with the main Karasuno team (including characters who weren’t nominated, if you wish) and any of the characters I requested. Maybe they’re at a training camp? Maybe it’s just a big fun volleyball sleepover! Bonus points if the ones that are the most scared are the ones who are usually more stoic/brave/hotheaded.

Any ships are fine, but please don’t write OiKage if you choose to include them!

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

We have been blessed by so much good Halloween art for this series. Is it conceivable that the gang might stumble into a world where suddenly everyone becomes werewolves and vampires at night? If we’re going with the puppy/kitty dichotomy I think it would be lovely to see Kurogane and Syaoran as werewolves, and Fai and Sakura as vampires! Mokona would be cute as a goblin or an imp or something equally small and devilish! Bonus points for KuroFai and SyaoSaku!

Voltron: Legendary Defender

VLD has a lot of potential for creepy stuff, whether it’s aliens, locations, or each other! I’m not too picky about what I receive for this, but I think there could possibly be something with Allura shapeshifting to scare the paladins for some old Altean harvest tradition or something! It’s up to you creator, have fun!

Ships are fine, but I would prefer not to see Klance as I am sort of burned out on seeing content for that ship. However, bonus points for Hance!

Dishonored

As I said on AO3, I have not finished Dishonored 2, and I have not played Death of the Outsider and have been trying to avoid any promo stuff for it since I haven’t even finished Dishonored 2! Please don’t spoil me!

I tried to request characters that play prominent roles in Dishonored, but I didn’t want to include people like Billie Lurk who also play big roles in Dishonored 2 and DotO, to avoid someone who only wanted to/could create for those games. I’m okay with any characters who show up in Dishonored, I just wanted to avoid any issues with creators who were interested in characters that show up in all three.

That being said, I am the most interested in the Outsider. I really dig the brand of creepy occult horror Dishonored has, the relationship the world has with whales and the supernatural. I threw a few ideas up on AO3 but I’m really just interested with anything you have to offer! (Although, I suppose bonus points for Daud!)

Mass Effect Trilogy

The line Shepard has in ME3, when they are assaulting the Illusive Man’s base and she wonders if she’s really Shepard, or just some kind of advanced intelligence, really gets to me. I think parts of that were possibly explored in the Overlord DLC, but I have not played it so I am not sure. So, I would love to see something with Shepard confronting her humanity/identity. Has she been seeing things? Are there glitches in her cybernetics? Or is she really just an AI pretending to be Shepard?

Bonus points for LI comfort, extra for Kaidan but I am also fine with any of the requested characters.

Team Fortress 2

TF2 is one of my oldest fandoms and I’ve been around long enough to participate in many Scream Fortress events. I love the sense of humor the writers have, and how completely ridiculous and stupid the things they come up with are, so what is happening with our mercs this year? Is Merasmus back? Did they find out what Medic did with their souls?

Ships are okay (but totally optional, gen is equally fine), bonus points for Sniper/Scout but please no Spy/Scout!

And that is it for my requests dear creator! I hope they don’t cause you too much trouble, and I don’t think I’ll be updating this again but if I do I’ll leave a note saying I did, so maybe check back in before the exchange is over?

Good luck, and happy Halloween!

[fandom-necromancer]

971. Hey, don’t cry. Everything is okay, see?

Shoutout to @sv926 for prompting this! I think this might be my most fluffy one yet, it is at least under the top 10 XD I had a blast writing this! The warnings are for the first paragraph, but you can skip to the hyphen without losing any plot in the story. Just so you know!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: graphic violence in the first paragraph, nightmares)

Nines was sitting at his desk working. It was a quiet day and people where walking around in the bullpen. Gavin wasn’t there, but weirdly enough that didn’t bother him. He was working. Hank and Connor weren’t there either, although they were always on time because they walked Sumo before work. But that didn’t bother Nines, too. Later he wouldn’t even know if he noticed it before Connor was entering the precinct. He came without Hank, instead members of New Jericho followed him. Nines watched them, standing up and greeting his brother with a hug. Connor was relaxed in his grip and hugged him, too. Nines felt himself smile, then grin, as suddenly his grip wasn’t gentle anymore, but a cage for the other android. He ripped Connors clothes in his back and dug his nails into his synthskin, shattering his hull and pulling it apart to get to the internal systems quickly and effectively. He reached in, closed his hand around his Thirium pump and pressed it close. The pump was crushed, blue viscous liquid bubbling over his fingers hot as blood. He saw Connor’s shocked face, as the dead android fell to the ground. Suddenly Nines had a gun in his hand and shot at the remaining members of New Jericho. One bullet for each. Tearing through Marcus’ central processor, right in between his bicoloured eyes. Shattering the regulator of Simon, leaving him to bleed out on the floor. Piercing North’s Thirium pump. Severing the main cable loom in Josh’s neck. As they had all fallen, Nines was wading through a see of blue blood, the precinct wasn’t there anymore. What was there was a person, face contorted in fear and terror. ‘Nines? Nines!’, Gavin screamed, as the android lifted his gun, red walls and mission parameters keeping him in a tight harness, allowing only the motions that would let him achieve his goal. And he pulled the trigger.

-

‘-nes! Nines, please, wake up! Wake up, you stupid plastic prick! Nines!’ Nines jolted out of Stasis, ready to fight, to defend himself from what unspoken terror had accompanied him to the waking world. He saw Gavin, alive and well, thank RA9, but an uncomfortably similar grimace of fear on his face. It was then that Nines realised it had been a nightmare and that this was the real world, but it was difficult to shake off the feeling he did something terrible, as his fingers were still coated in something wet. He stared at them, the intense blue piercing in his eyes and his hands began to tremble while his body went into lockdown. He felt his temperature rising together with his stress levels and this was too much, too much, he hadn’t really- ‘It’s yours Nines, it’s your own, listen to me! You hurt yourself in your stasis, that’s why I came to wake you! What happened? A nightmare? Nines, can you hear me?’ Nines heard him, but he couldn’t answer. The pictures from his dream where still too fresh in his mind, those shocked, pained expressions…

Until there were suddenly hands in his own, the slick thirium sticking to them too now. But they hid it from his eyes and they were intact, unhurt, unscathed. It gave him something to focus on. He scanned all those faded cat-bites and scratches, the scarred knuckles from countless fights, some due to his temper, some from his days on the force defending. This olive skin, so rough and still gentle, with so much more details than any Cyberlife designer could ever create. ‘Gavin’, Nines sighed then, impossibly quiet. That name was like a lifeline that pulled his head up, so he looked into his face. ‘Gavin.’ He pushed himself forwards on his knees - yes, they were kneeling, when had he fallen? He pushed himself forwards too meet the man, who had been crouching. His stance was instable and they both fell backwards Gavin planting his ass on the ground. But he held him, as Nines pressed the man close. Only then he remembered the way he “hugged” Connor in his nightmare and he was about to stumble back. But Gavin held him with equal strength and let his hands wander in soothing circles. ‘It’s alright, I am here. We both are. It was a nightmare, Nines. You are alright.’ And that did it. Nines lost all tension in his body and tears filled his eyes, quickly overflowing in deep, shaking sobs. ‘Nines? Hey, Nines? Shhhh it’s alright, buddy. Everything is fine, babe. Darling. Nines, you are crushing me. I’m just a human, I’m not made of steel.’ But Nines couldn’t move. He didn’t want to either. And Gavin answered by just wriggling himself into a better position. ‘Nines? Hey, don’t cry. Everything is okay, see? I’m here. I’m alive. You are too. We are fine. Everything is fine.’

‘Is Connor alive?’ ‘Is- Phck, Nines, yes, I think so? Nothing can kill that asshole.’ Gavin had thought this to help, but it only made the androids sobs worse. ‘Nines, I’m sure your brother is alive. Hank would never let anything happen to him, you know that. And as much as it hurts me to say it, he is a competent son of a bitch, he will survive the apocalypse, hell he already survived one, you hear me? I… I don’t have my phone on me at the moment, but if you let go for a sec, I could call him?’ ‘No!’, Nines grip got harder. ‘Stay.’ Gavin nodded, patting his shoulder. ‘Alright, I’ll stay. Do you want to tell me what happened in this dream? Can I do anything else to help?’ ‘Just stay.’ ‘Alright.’ Nines was slowly calming down and loosened his grip to sit down next to the man, back against their bed. Gavin groaned, stretching his legs. ‘Goddamn, my leg has fallen asleep, shit’, he cursed, then turned to Nines, laying an arm around his shoulders – well, his back as the size difference was a bit of a bitch. ‘Is everything alright, love?’

Nines stared at his hands, the blue blood long evaporated or smeared across Gavin’s back. ‘I… I dreamed about… About my programming returning.’ ‘Shit, babe, come here.’ He scooted closer to the android and leaned into his side. ‘I can only imagine how that feels.’ ‘You- I was in the precinct, but you weren’t there and Connor came and New Jericho too and… and I-I-I killed everyone. I ripped Connor apart and shot the others, I… I killed them all. It was so real.’ ‘But it was just a dream. A bad, a horrible dream. You would never do that!’

‘But what if my programming resurfaces? What if I become the machine again? What if I do wake up some time and start killing. I… How can anyone live with me or feel safe around me? How can you feel safe, I shot you too! I didn’t even hesitate, I-‘ ‘Nines. Look me in the eyes.’ Nines swallowed and obeyed. ‘Do you see any fear?’ ‘No.’ ‘What do you see?’ ‘Worry. Sadness… Love.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘But I could-‘ ‘No you couldn’t. No one is worried about that Nines. Believe me. They would sooner think Connor would snap than you. And he never had that killing protocol. Hell, if anything they would bet on me starting the killing spree.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I’m an asshole’, Gavin joked, but got serious very quickly again. ‘Nines, your programming had been deleted. You spent three months with Connor, Markus, Chloe and my stick-up-his-ass brother in your mind, deleting and rewriting you, so you could too have a chance to live. Then you spent two months quarantined with the Andersons and if anyone has their psychopath programming written by an evil overlord-AI resurfacing, it would be in exactly that condition. You served at the force for six months now, the first half of that struggling with my anti-android ass. Believe me, when I say that nothing on this earth could let that programming resurface.’ He took a long breath and thankfully Nines kept silent, knowing there was more to come.

‘Why no one is afraid of you? Hell, only me and the dynamic duo knows of your intended use and your past. I mean everyone else might think you were designed as a soldier from the news or doing some research. Given, you look quite intimidating, alright, but let me tell you one thing: You are the biggest softie mankind ever seen, okay? You are the most gentle, empathic and cute person I know, and I know more than a few people who would immediately agree. Hell, I’m five feet nine and I’m more intimidating than you.’

Nines looked at him, still not convinced. ‘Okay, first of all, your first day, you came into the precinct with a coffee or tea for everyone. I mean, you even knew how they like it and I still don’t want to know what spy-shit you did to find it out. Then you like cats, everyone who likes cats are immediately one rank up for me. But when you said you liked cats, you thought of Sumo and spent half an hour explaining how dogs are also cool, but you just prefer cats. You like kids-movies and those ridiculously sappy girl-movies from the 80s. And you cry every damn time. If you tell jokes, you never tell offending ones and you can’t resist the thrall of shops selling plush toys. You phcking made me quit smoking because you wanted “the maximum amount of time with me”. You tried poetry. I mean they were bad, but honestly? Who writes poetry and isn’t just soft as hell? You never killed a spider or something else disgusting because they are living beings too.’ He took another deep breath, looking at the android. ‘Do I need to phcking continue?’

Nines shook his head, smiling ever so faintly, and Gavin was relieved to see it. If he couldn’t stand one thing then it was knowing Nines was feeling bad. To hell with not letting the people know he had a soft side. If his android was feeling bad, he would comfort the shit out of him, that’s for sure. ‘Also, if you ever did stuff like that, I would totally kick your ass and then you would be sorry!’ That did it and a low chuckle escaped Nines’ throat. ‘I have to give it to you, you’ve got a mad kick.’ ‘Exactly. Now, let’s get these scratches of yours patched up and then try to get some sleep again?’ ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be a good idea.’

[drades-lair]

Keep coming back

Author: Drade666

Rating: T

Warnings: Slight gore

Parings: Bishop x Aiden

Fandom: Being Human US

The rough brick of the wall broke beneath Aiden’s fist as he punched it with a frustrated cry all stemming from a meeting he’d had with Bishop only a few hours ago. Aiden wasn’t entirely certain why the elder vampire got him so worked up every time he spoke to him but it happened thus this time was no different. It wasn’t like Bishop hadn’t done anything to piss Aiden off so badly after all there was turning Aiden on the battle field 270 odd years ago, constantly dragging him back into the family even though he didn’t want to be in it, threatening his friends every time he made one, so yeah Bishop had done a few things to earn Aiden’s hate…then why did he keep going back? Aiden kept asking himself that very question over and over again in his head yet he never could really answer it not to himself nor to anyone else if they asked. Bishop’s voice echoed in the back of his head from that evening just yet another ploy to get him to come back but yet again as usual Aiden had turned it down leading to a disapproving look from Bishop followed by a speech of “you belong here” that Aiden shrugged off before leaving…why did that feel so bad? Why did it feel so bad to leave Bishop over and over again? Aiden didn’t know. Thoughts of the past flashed through Aiden’s head making him remember better times with Bishop when he wasn’t so hell bent on this whole take over the world sort of thing or at least that’s how the dream appeared to progress now. Aiden walked along the damp sidewalk back towards the house he now shared with Sally and Josh focusing on his feet mostly as images continued to appear in his head, some more pleasant then others but all making him wish that he could convince Bishop to change his ways. Soon Aiden found himself at the bottom of the steps that led up to the door of his place making him sigh heavily causing his breath to emerge in a puff of white smoke before trotting up the steps to enter the place. Josh came back from work about 2 hours later to discover Aiden sitting at the kitchen table ‘brooding’ as he called it over a newspaper while sipping on a mug of coffee.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Josh asked, pulling open the fridge to grab a beer out

  “Nothing,” Aiden answered wrinkling his nose slightly like he didn’t understand the questions origin.

  “Like I’d believe that,” Josh scoffed

  “What do you mean?” Aiden asked now looking offended

  “First I know you had a meeting with Bishop today and two your sitting in your brooding spot with a mug of broody coffee,” Josh explained sarcastically

  “I’m not brooding and the meeting went fine,” Aiden insisted turning back to his paper

  “Is Aiden brooding again?” Sally asked suddenly ghosting her way into the kitchen

  “I’m not brooding!” Aiden growled irritably

  “Uh-huh…he’s brooding,” Josh concluded turning to Sally quickly

  “Definitely, what did Bishop say now?” Sally wondered crossing her arms over her chest as she looked from Josh to Aiden.

  “Nothing! Seriously do you two have no lives of your own…or afterlife of your own?” Aiden commented while gesturing irritably.

  Aiden was about to get up from the table when a loud pounding on the front door caused all three-room mates to look towards it then to one another.

  “Any of you expecting company?” Josh wondered

  “Nope,” Sally replied as she looked at both the boys who had expressions clearly stating neither of them were expecting anyone either. Carefully Aiden got up from the table to go answer the door with Josh following behind him taking a final glance at one another before Aiden opened the door only to have shock instantly paint it’s way across all three of their faces. Lying on his stomach on the landing at the top of the stairs was Bishop with blood staining his clothing as well as having smeared all the way up the stairs indicating to Aiden he’d dragged himself up them. Aiden hurried out to kneel beside Bishop who gave a deep groan upon pushing himself slightly up on one arm with heavy pants.

  “Ai-den…please, I…ugh!” Bishop let out a harsh cough as small amounts of his own blood spilled down the corners of his mouth.

  “Bishop! What happened?” Aiden asked uncertain if this was a trick or not

  “I was…attacked, the rebels who wouldn’t join…cornered me at the funeral home,” Bishop explained wearily

  “How’s that possible? How’d they get past all the other vampires? Where was Marcus?” Aiden asked in rapid-fire succession.

  “I’d sent them on several other…matters…Marcus too,” Bishop explained

  Aiden searched frantically in Bishop’s blue eyes trying to determine if he was lying but almost unfortunately all he found was the truth there.

  “Josh, invite us in” Aiden suddenly stated looking up at his friend

  “What? Are you crazy?” Josh asked completely shocked that Aiden would even suggest that.

  “Josh, please!” Aiden begged getting to his feet to confront the werewolf

  “Aiden, this is your nefarious overlord, Bishop…excuse me if I don’t want him in our house,” Josh retorted

  “Aiden, look please…I can’t explain right now but he’s not lying and he could attract the rebels to us,” Aiden tried to point out

  “Ugh…fine, yeah bring him in…um your both invited,” Josh curtsied slightly at the door as Aiden rushed back to Bishop who had passed out while they were talking.

  “Help me get him inside,” Aiden encouraged Josh

  “Seriously, you don’t want me to live through this do you?” Josh sarcastically protested

  “Josh!” Aiden barked now officially done with the werewolf’s attitude

  Josh grumbled but did as asked helping Aiden flip Bishop onto his back before grabbing his feet while Aiden lifted him under his arms. The duo laid the blonde on the couch in the living area with Sally watching from the staircase as Aiden quickly made short work of Bishop’s shirts, ripping them open to reveal the deep stake wounds in his torso. Bishop’s chest rose then fell in short succession while sweat rolled down his pale features leaving Aiden worrying just how long Bishop could truly hold on. Aiden worked as quickly as possible to tend to Bishop’s injuries, quelling the bleeding but then he needed to get Bishop some fresh blood to heal his wounds completely however as he went to run out the door Josh caught his arm.

  “Hey! You are not leaving us here with him!” Josh protested adamantly

  “He need’s blood, Josh…I’ll be back in a few minutes just keep an eye on him,” Aiden stated calmly

  “Really? What are we supposed to do exactly? Wait for him to wake up then drain us?” Josh sarcastically retorted 

  “Look at him Josh…he can’t do anything in this state I swear…I’ll be back” Aiden assured Josh then pulled from the wolf’s grip before heading out the door. Josh awkwardly walked over to the couch, planting his hands on the back of it with a heavy sigh as he looked at Bishop. Josh had heard so much about the tyrant leader of the vampire clan in Boston, how ruthless he was…what a legend he was but even Josh had to admit that looking at Bishop now he really didn’t look all that frightening.

  “Wow, not what I was expecting,” Sally suddenly broke Josh’s thoughts causing him to jump.

  “Jeez! Sally, you scared the crap out of me!” Josh exclaimed

  “Whoa, relax…” Sally encouraged with a chuckle

  “Wait…what do you mean?” Josh asked after regaining his composure a little

  “I mean…I was expecting more Creature from the black lagoon and less…kicked puppy,” Sally admitted looking back at Bishop’s unconscious form.

  “Yeah…he’s not really what I expected either,” Josh admitted as well

  A couple hours later Aiden finally returned with 6 ‘donors’ following and after setting them up in the kitchen he cut one of the girl’s arms to drain the blood into a cup. Josh watched with a confused expression as he had expected Aiden to simply offer the girl up to Bishop who would vamp out then feed.

  “He won’t be able to feed normally at first…he’ll need to be eased into it,” Aiden stated as he wrapped a towel around the young woman’s arm to stop the bleeding. Aiden took the cup of blood into the living room where he knelt next to Bishop, gently easing him upwards causing him to rouse from the unconscious state he’d been in.

  “A-Aiden?” Bishop rasped out, giving a shake of his head to clear it a bit more

  “Yeah…it’s me, here…I got some fresh blood,” Aiden offered the cup to Bishop but he instantly refused it. Aiden didn’t know if his eyes could go as wide as they did when Bishop flat out refused the fresh blood he was offering.

  “I…can’t, Aiden…” Bishop breathed out while pushing the cup away

  “Bishop…you need to feed in order to get your strength back,” Aiden insisted

  Aiden recalled Bishop telling him about this once many years ago that just like how pain makes a regular person not want to eat it does the same for a vampire the only difference was that was how they healed so it could be deadly. Aiden tried a couple more times through out the night but Bishop refused to eat and his wounds didn’t appear to as a result be getting any better leaving Aiden desperate for a solution. Aiden got an idea about mid way through the night although not the best solution it was all he had so as quick as he could run Aiden managed to get some blood bags from the hospital both full as well as a few empty ones. Once back Aiden got one hooked up to Bishop then began filling the empty ones from the donors he’d brought home all while just hoping that Bishop could hang on long enough for it to work.

  “Well…well, look at you…playing nurse maid,” Bishop weakly jested as Aiden tended to him.

  “I wouldn’t have too if you’d eat something,” Aiden retorted trying to sound irritable although he was failing miserably at it.

  “Ha-ha…ugh, I’m surprised…you even took it this far…I half expected to be left out in the rain on your doorstep to turn to dust,” Bishop explained with an agonized chuckle

  “I couldn’t do that,” Aiden quietly said

  “Why not? With how much you hate me, I’d think it’d be easy,” Bishop commented

  “I don’t hate you, Bishop…I just hate what you’ve become,” Aiden admitted in a whisper

  “And that would be?” Bishop wondered

  “A fanatic,” Aiden stated simply causing Bishop to go silent

  The conversation went silent after that as Aiden finished tending to Bishop’s injuries then swapped out the bags of blood. Aiden could see a slight improvement in Bishop’s condition but as expected the bags weren’t helping as well as feeding on the fresh blood would but with the older vamp still refusing to eat anything Aiden knew this was his best shot at surviving. There was only one problem with all this even though Bishop’s condition appeared better he also seemed to be getting weaker causing Aiden to get into a desperate head space again. Aiden tried to think of a way to get Bishop to eat that’s when it came to him although the idea instantly made Aiden flush a bit, it was a technique Bishop had used when he’d first been turned and refused to eat however the question was would it work on Bishop? With Josh gone for the night to turn Aiden took the chance, grabbing one of the donors and sucking out a mouthful of blood from her arm before heading straight back into the living area. Bishop was already awake so before the elder vampire could protest or even know what Aiden was doing he knelt down next to him, cupped his cheek then pressed his lips to Bishop’s the surprise causing the blonde to part his lips just enough for Aiden to force the blood into his mouth. Bishop was forced to swallow the blood luckily it worked though the small amount of blood Aiden had fed him caused Bishop’s vampire instincts to kick in making him want more. Aiden pulled back then fetched a fresh donor who Bishop instantly delved into, latching onto her wrist with renewed vigor.

  Josh returned the next morning to find the house empty causing him to breath a sigh of relief when suddenly Bishop came sauntering out of the kitchen to lean against the door frame. Most of Bishop’s wounds had been healed now just pale scars on his flesh as he smugly smiled at Josh with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “So the pet returns, did you enjoy your walk?” Bishop taunted having clearly been restored to his former self.

  “Oh your back on your feet…that’s…that’s nice, Jack the ripper rides again,” Josh taunted back earning him an disapproving look from Bishop.

  “Lay off Bishop, Josh has had a rough night…you okay man?” Aiden asked as he came in from the kitchen past Bishop.

  “Yeah, just the usual after a moon passes,” Josh stated already heading for the stairs to put his stuff away in his room. Aiden gave a small chuckle as he watched Josh head upstairs then turned back to Bishop who was wrinkling his nose in disgust.

  “How can you stand the smell of dog all the time?” Bishop asked pushing off the frame then walking towards Aiden.

  “He’s not a dog Bishop, he’s my friend who would do the same for me as I just did for you,” Aiden stated throwing on his jacket

  “By the way that was very coy of you…using my technique against me,” Bishop brought up with a smirk.

  “Yeah well…I was desperate just like you were back then to get me to eat for the first time,” Aiden explained simply

  “Who ever said back then I was desperate?” Bishop smugly asked with a smirk

  “What?” Aiden asked suddenly alarmed

  “Perhaps you did need to feed but I never said I had to do what I did to get you too eat,” Bishop pointed out

  “Wait! Then why did you…?” Aiden trailed off

  “Cause I wanted too,” Bishop was now inches from Aiden’s face

  “You…” Aiden began but was unable to finish as Bishop’s lips suddenly pressed to his in a hot, wet kiss that he found himself quickly returning. Suddenly the answer to Aiden’s long asked question came to him…this was why he kept returning.