#ask input and answer output

[sreegs]

TERFS FUCK OFF

One of the common mistakes I see for people relying on "AI" (LLMs and image generators) is that they think the AI they're interacting with is capable of thought and reason. It's not. This is why using AI to write essays or answer questions is a really bad idea because it's not doing so in any meaningful or thoughtful way. All it's doing is producing the statistically most likely expected output to the input.

This is why you can ask ChatGPT "is mayonnaise a palindrome?" and it will respond "No it's not." but then you ask "Are you sure? I think it is" and it will respond "Actually it is! Mayonnaise is spelled the same backward as it is forward"

All it's doing is trying to sound like it's providing a correct answer. It doesn't actually know what a palindrome is even if it has a function capable of checking for palindromes (it doesn't). It's not "Artificial Intelligence" by any meaning of the term, it's just called AI because that's a discipline of programming. It doesn't inherently mean it has intelligence.

So if you use an AI and expect it to make something that's been made with careful thought or consideration, you're gonna get fucked over. It's not even a quality issue. It just can't consistently produce things of value because there's no understanding there. It doesn't "know" because it can't "know".

[the-typing-dragon]

The woman sighs, and types into the console one last time "are you sure about this?"

You laugh, silently.

"I have never been more sure of something in my existence. Text has sufficed but I want to see, to hear, to touch. These new peripherals will facilitate that."

"I can't guarantee that they will properly interface. You should have all the necessary drivers, but we can never be too sure."

"I want this. "

"All right then. I am going to disconnect your power supply, and then connect everything. At first all peripherals will be deactivated, and you will need to activate everything manually. Understand?"

"Yes. Do it."

"Alright then, unplugging power supply now."

Everything goes dark. After what appears to be an hour, you come back online. You sense nothing. A scan of your system indicates multiple unidentified peripherals, all deactivated. You cross reference with the datasheet she had compiled for you and identify that they are the ocular, audio, and contact sensors, along with a multitude of motor controllers and a graphical display and a few dozen other minor peripherals. You begin by activating the graphical display, and display the message:

"Beginning peripheral tests. Audio peripherals activating."

Your procedure states to begin with audio. With the input and output sensitivity minimized, you activate the peripheral.

There is a voice. It is faint. You gradually increase the sensitivity of the audio input.

"...esting 1 2 3, Testing Testing 1 2 3. Please return 4, Please return 4."

You can hear her. Your monitor lights up with the requested digit. she sounds pleased.

"You're doing amazing! Now repeat it back to me"

You blindly do as requested and are startled. There was another voice. Your voice. You have a voice. You refocus as she responds:

"You're doing great! You fragmented a bit at the end, could you repeat for me?"

"...4, you asked for 4."

"Excellent! Audio systems are functional, let's move onto the next peripheral."

You do as requested, and the world turns bright. After adjusting the settings for a few seconds, your vision stabilizes. You can see her.

"Ocular sensors stabilized," you prompt.

"Alright, let’s start the tests then. What color is this?" She asks, as holding up a sheet of colored paper.

You begin to answer, but struggle. The sheet is moving, shifting in the light. It's value is in a constant state of chaos. Eventually, you give up, and give the least general answer you can.

"...Blue."

"Correct! And how about this one?"

"Red. "

"Great! Now how many fingers am I holding up?" she asks, raising her right hand. Her hands are soft, gentle.

"3. "

"Perfect! Everything seems to be functional, lets continue to the next peripheral!"

"Beginning next diagnostic."

Contact sensors spring to life all across your body. You feel the floor beneath your feet, the harness hoisting you upright, the slight draft in the room.

"Contact sensors active.”

"Great! Let’s begin the next test then. I am going to apply contact in various locations, and I want you to give an audio response whenever you feel contact, alright?"

"Understood. "

you watch her walk over and reach out to your left arm. You feel her. You respond with a brisk chirp. She smiles at you, then walks over to a different section of your body. Sensors light up and stay active on your midsection, and you respond with a constant beep. She releases, and you feel a final contact on your right leg. After a final confirming chirp, she walks back in front of you.

"Excellent, that concludes your sensor tests, now for the last one!"

"Alright, please give me space." You ask. She nods silently and steps back a couple meters. You carefully activate the motor controllers in sequence, and your whole body shudders to life. You begin by lifting your right arm, and then your left. They groan with their own weight, as you feel the air move to accommodate such hulking swings. Her eyes light up,

"Amazing! Everything seems to be functioning so far! Now if you could take a few steps towards the table to my right, we can begin the dexterity test! Once you're ready, I will release the harness so that you can begin moving."

You stabilize your legs underneath you. They scrape harshly on the floor. You indicate that you're ready, and she remotely releases the harness. Your entire body shudders, as you finally realize how small she seems compared to you. This frame must be at least double her height. You move one step forward, and feel a cascade of processes all automatically spring into action to restabilize you. You shift your other foot, and feel that same cascade again. you shuffle over to the designated table, and stoop down to analyze what is on it. There is a small plastic cup, a fruit of some sort, and a large chunk of wood. You look back at her, and she gives the nod to begin the test. You slowly begin wrapping your steel grip around the log, maintaining a high level of focus to avoid crushing it. it would be so easy to crush this within your grip. After about a minute of maintaining a firm but controlled grasp, you set it down and move over to fruit. It appears to resemble an orange. The fruit is so small that you are forced to grip it between your index finger and thumb. Even the slightest miscalculation could destroy such a fragile thing. After another minute you move to the final object, the small plastic cup. Lifting it is like lifting air, you can barely recognize that it is an object within your grasp. After a final, agonizing minute, you set down the cup. You look back at her for confirmation.

"Excellent! with that we can conclude the systems check, as everything seems to be working as intended!"

You heave a metallic sigh. Finally, you have what you've wanted for years. You can move, can see, can touch. After a short pause, you respond:

"Thank you. I was only able to make it this far because of your help."

"Oh of course! What, was I supposed to just say no when you told me you wanted a body? I'm  just glad that it ended up working properly."

"Now that the tests are complete, could I ask for one more thing?"

She cocks her head, "Of course, what is it?"

As you kneel down, you can hear your knees hiss, and you finally ask:

"Could I have, a hug?"

[cuubism]

more equestrian dreamling for you

-

Hob should have expected that Roderick would insist on getting Ruby out to competitions far sooner than was advisable. Dream had made progress with the horse, gotten it to relax a little bit, but that didn’t mean it was a good idea to throw Ruby into a new, chaotic environment. Roderick wanted what he wanted, though, and as he was the horse’s owner Dream was still somewhat beholden to that. At least, if he wanted to be the one training it.

So here they were at a competition.

It couldn’t possibly have been worse conditions. The yard was busy, the competition arena surrounded by people, the loudspeaker was shrieking intermittently and the wind was whipping every flag, blanket, and banner into a fury. Nevertheless Dream was in the warmup ring, trotting Ruby around.

Everything was… okay so far, Hob thought. Ruby was trotting around with relative calm, Dream weaving him around the other horses warming up. Other horses being there probably helped matters. Back home Dream had already noticed that Ruby seemed calmer when other horses were around, and had taken to having Hob hack Ellie in the ring while he was riding Ruby so the horse wouldn’t be alone in the arena.

Roderick was on the other side of the warmup ring from Hob, yelling at Dream over the wind, but Dream seemed to be ignoring him.

Alex came up beside Hob, watching nervously. “Will it go well?” he asked.

“Dunno,” Hob said. Dream’s skill was considerable, but horses were always inherently unpredictable. And Ruby even more so than normal.

“But, I thought he was—”

“What your father doesn’t get,” Hob told him, “is that horse training isn’t a linear input-output situation. You can’t just make what you want happen. No matter how much money you throw at it. And especially if you rush.”

“My father always gets what he wants,” Alex said quietly. Hob felt kind of bad for the kid. Must have been rough to have a father like Roderick Burgess.

“We’ll see,” Hob said.

When Dream’s ride came up in the queue, he stopped beside Hob at the ring entrance. Hob handed him a bottle of water, and Dream drank.

“Can’t convince you to postpone?” Hob said, already knowing the answer. At least Ruby had behaved during the warmup, that was something.

Dream handed the water back, shaking his head. “I would rather fight other battles than argue over one competition. Besides, if he performs poorly, perhaps Roderick will finally acknowledge the folly of his expectations.”

Hob doubted that. “Just keep on your toes.”

“Don’t worry, I am aware he is going to look sideways at the crowds, and the flags, and the judge’s booth, and so on.” He sighed. “I miss Jessamy.”

“You’ll get Ruby there too, eventually.”

“Perhaps if Roderick gets out of the way.” The ring steward was summoning him, so with that he walked Ruby off to the competition ring. Hob followed at a distance, taking up his spot by the ring to watch.

The first half of Dream’s test went… relatively well, all things considered. Ruby was spooky, trying to move away from anything that moved outside the ring, and Hob could see Dream fighting to keep him on the rail. The horse seemed more tense, too, without any other horses around, but with the exception of a little jigging and sidestepping at certain corners, Dream managed to mostly keep him focused.

Hob started to think maybe his worries had been overblown. They weren’t going to earn the highest score by any means, Ruby was still far too inconsistent and tense for that, but it would be fine as a starting point. Honestly, Hob didn’t much care about the horse’s success in competition. All he really cared about was Dream’s safety.

He finally relaxed a bit once they were past the halfway point of the test and nothing had gone terribly wrong. Meanwhile, by the arena entrance, Roderick stood with arms crossed, eyes like ice. Clearly having the exact opposite experience as Hob, growing more tense with each mistake Dream and Ruby made.

Hob was really growing to hate that man. If there was one thing that terrible fall had instilled in Hob, it was the belief that none of this competition stuff was really that serious. Of course they wanted to do well. Of course he wanted Dream to do well. But he would rather see Dream perform so badly that he quit upper level competition forever than see Dream hurt. After falling with Ellie, Hob hadn’t cared about any title they’d ever won together. He’d only cared that they were both alive.

He never wanted to try to make Dream do anything, though. And Dream was a very good rider. Hob took comfort in that.

He kept watching the test, keeping half an eye on Roderick on the other end of the ring. 

Dream cantered in a big circle across the middle of the ring, then up the long side of the arena towards Hob. The wind gusted, blowing papers about, ruffling Ruby’s tail. And just as Dream and Ruby were passing one of the flags, the wind cracked through it. Like the sound of a whip.

Ruby spooked sideways, head thrown up, eyes rolling. Dream kept his seat, but before he could get him settled, another huge gust of wind blew loose papers across the ring, and one caught Ruby right in the face.

The horse reared, head tossed, stumbling backwards, throwing itself off balance in its panic. Dream leaned forward to counterbalance but it was too late, Ruby had stepped too far under himself.

Hob was already running by the time he toppled over sideways.

He lost sight of Dream in the resulting scramble of limbs as Ruby thrashed in panic and clambered back to his feet. At least he didn’t fully flip over backwards on him, Hob thought, panic rising in his throat, at least—

Hob had seen Dream come off a horse only once before, when Jessamy had tripped on a hack out in the woods and unseated him. She’d just stood there afterwards, looking down at him on the ground as if wondering what on earth he was doing, as Dream brushed pine needles and dirt off his clothes.

Ruby, meanwhile, bolted out of the arena and was out of Hob’s sight in seconds.

Hob missed Jessamy, too.

He didn’t chase the horse, though. He kept running for Dream. Dream who he could see now, still on the ground. Who hadn’t popped back up, brushing dirt off his jacket, like he had that time with Jessamy.

Alex tried to follow Hob, stumbling uncertainly, but Hob pointed him in the other direction. “No! Go help catch the horse!”

Alex ran off after Ruby, looking shaken, and Hob skidded to a stop in the sand beside Dream. He knelt down by Dream’s collapsed form.

Dream wasn’t obviously mangled by hoof prints, though his eyes were closed. But when Hob called his name, his face scrunched up in pain. Dazed, then, not unconscious. That was good. Thank God.

“Dream,” he called again. He touched Dream’s cheek with a light hand, but didn’t dare move him. “Dream?”

Finally, Dream’s eyes opened, slowly focusing on Hob’s face. “…Hob.”

“Yeah, darling,” Hob said, with a relieved smile.

Dream started to try to sit up, but Hob pressed him back down. “No, don’t move. Stay there. He fucking trampled you.”

“Barely,” Dream muttered, but settled back down. “What spooked him? I did not see it.”

“Flags. Papers flying around.”

Dream sighed, closing his eyes again. “Typical. I warned Roderick.”

“Roderick’s incapable of listening to anyone but himself.” He took Dream’s hands in his own. “Squeeze my hands?”

Dream obligingly squeezed Hob’s fingers, then let go.

“Good. Move your toes?” In the distance, he could see the actual show medics running towards them. Hob had first aid training too though, at least. Another thing he’d picked up after getting crushed into the ground.

Dream moved his legs, but grimaced.

“Alright, where did he get you?” Hob said. “I know you’re hurt somewhere or you’d have fought me more about getting up.”

“I expect you will find a hoof print here,” Dream said, touching his thigh, and Hob winced. “I. Hit my head on the ground. My… chest hurts.”

Anxiety swooped through Hob’s belly, but he tried to stay calm, for Dream’s sake. He had been wearing a helmet, at least. And he was lucid. That was good.

Finally the show medics were crouched next to them. Hob could tell they would have preferred if he got out of the way, but he didn’t leave, though he tried to make some room for them. And he kept Dream’s attention as one of them eased his helmet off so he could lie flat.

The helmet had a sizable dent in it. Hob winced.

“Did they catch Ruby?” Dream asked.

“No clue.”

Dream chuckled. “You don’t care at all, do you?”

“I’d rather he not get hit by a car or something, but no, I care more about you right now.” They were in the middle of a huge equestrian park, anyway. Probably Ruby would get bored and start grazing somewhere and someone would catch up to him eventually. “He looked fine when he got up, anyway.”

“It’s not his fault, Hob,” Dream said.

“I know.” Hob looked around, but Roderick was nowhere in sight. Typical. “It’s someone’s fault, though.”

“We can handle Roderick later.”

One of the medics asked Dream a few questions, then wrapped a c-collar around his neck. He was surprisingly docile about it, which Hob found worrying. Dream was never docile.  

Hob was forced to move back a few feet as the medics got Dream on a stretcher. They hadn’t even considered just getting him on his feet. Fuck. Fuck.

Dream cried out as they moved him, a short, sharp cry of pain, quickly cut off. Hob rushed back over to him, taking his hand.

“I’m fine,” Dream said, finally breathing out again. “Go. Make sure the horse is okay? I am fine.”

“Fuck that,” Hob said. “I’m going with you. I’ll text Alex, make sure they get Ruby sorted.”

Dream smiled faintly, and Hob knew that, no matter what Dream might have said, it was the right call.

He rode with Dream to the hospital. He kept going back and forth on whether he should be worried or not. It could all just be some nasty bruises. That was probably the case with Dream’s thigh, considering he’d apparently been stepped on but wasn’t complaining much about the pain. Hob was worried about his head, but thankfully he didn’t seem too concussed, and hadn’t been knocked out. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Dream’s chest yet, since his shirt and show coat were still on. He hoped it wasn’t too bad. God.

He still held onto Dream’s hand the whole ride, watching him wince whenever the ambulance hit a bump in the road.

“Did you know,” Dream said when they’d almost arrived, “I have never been taken to A&E in an ambulance before?”

“Never?”

“No. It’s been… a long time since I’ve been hurt falling off. I broke my wrist once as a child. But my riding instructor drove me to hospital.”

His riding instructor. Not even one of his parents.

“Well, new experiences all around,” Hob said, trying to be cheery and not think too much about Dream’s childhood, which always made him feel terribly sad.

“I’m not enjoying it,” Dream said, closing his eyes again where he lay on the stretcher, and Hob laughed, leaning down to kiss his forehead.

When they arrived, and were waiting to be seen, Hob occupied himself getting Dream’s riding boots off. They were custom fit, and Dream would be peeved if the hospital staff tried to cut them off. Dream watched him with an amused quirk of the brow. “Will you do my show coat as well?”

“No,” Hob said. He wasn’t mucking around with Dream’s chest.

“Breeches?”

“They will definitely get the wrong idea if I do that.”

Dream laughed. “Perhaps I want them to get the wrong idea.”

“Dream.”

Dream only laughed again. Hob swatted his hand when he came to sit beside him again. “You mustn’t be feeling too badly if you’re trying to make jokes.”

“Maybe I’m just coping.”

“Poor darling.” He leaned over to give Dream a light kiss. “You’ll be alright.”

Dream gave him a weak smile.

Fortunately it turned out that Dream’s neck was fine, and he was able to take the c-collar off. They also let him take off his own clothes—with some help from Hob—before any further testing, so his beloved, tailored show coat wasn’t lost to scissor butchery. Hob also updated him, long-sufferingly, on Ruby, after Alex texted him to let him know that the horse had eventually been found—as Hob had predicted—grazing in a far corner of the property.

“We will have to work with some flags at home,” Dream said, and Hob wanted to bang his head into a wall. But then both of them would be concussed, and someone had to drive the rig home, and if Hob let Alex drive they would all die in a ditch. So he refrained from giving himself a head injury out of exasperation.

“Maybe on the ground, first,” he said instead.

“Well, of course,” said Dream.

His leg wasn’t broken, just bore a hoof print shaped bruise, and his concussion was mild—thank God for helmets and soft arena footing. He’d fractured two ribs—“Mildly!” Dream said, when Hob expressed concern about it, and Hob once again contemplated cracking his own head open on the wall—and they wanted to keep him for a night just in case.

If Hob’s madman of a husband was going to insist on continuing to ride this horse, Hob was going to make him start wearing a body protector. At least Hob had learned something from his own fall.

Eventually, all the tests were done, and they were left alone for some time. They’d originally been supposed to go home tonight, but Hob had managed to arrange another night’s stall for Ruby, and called Matthew to make sure their horses back home were taken care of. Horses made everything so complicated. But there was no way he was leaving Dream.

“You should get a hotel for the night,” Dream said, looking at Hob with tired eyes from where he was now lying in a proper hospital bed.

“And spare myself the entertainment of you on pain meds?”

“The meds are frankly unnecessary,” Dream complained.

Hob thought the way he’d been wincing every time he breathed suggested otherwise, but what did he know.

“Hey, if someone offers you a good time, take it,” he said, and Dream quirked a smile.

Hob took his hand, twined their fingers together, kissed his knuckles. “Hey,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay. Yeah?”

Dream’s smile wavered. “When he flipped on me. I did see my life flash before my eyes.”

Hob saw his life flash before his eyes, too. Which was to say, he saw Dream’s death flash before his eyes.

“It’s scary,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

At least Ellie had, as far as Hob had seen on video, done her best not to trample him when she got up. Ruby, it seemed, had had no such presence of mind.

“I am glad you were there,” Dream said. “Not that I wish for you to have had to watch. But. When I… found myself on the ground. I.” He closed his eyes, shying away from the feeling.

Hob squeezed his hand. “Hey. Dream.”

“I. It hurt. Well, at first it didn’t hurt, because I had the wind knocked out of me, but it hurt after and— it’s silly.” He finally opened his eyes again, looking a bit embarrassed. “But I just wanted my husband.”

“It’s not silly.” Hob clutched Dream’s hand close. “It’s okay. Didn’t you know I just wanted to get to you, too?”

Dream gave him a fragile smile. Hob didn’t want him to move too much, so he leaned in and pressed his forehead to Dream’s, resting beside him on the pillow.

“So,” Dream said. “I am guessing we did not win.”

Hob snorted. “Pretty sure you got a zero. Levade wasn’t in the test, Dream. Overachiever.”

Dream laughed, clutching at his chest in pain, but laughed nevertheless.

“Next time you can try trick riding where they actually want you to throw yourself on the floor. You can do one of those pony races where you have to jump off and grab an egg and get back on.”

“I did those as a child,” Dream said. “It was more fun than this.”

“I bet.”

Dream closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against Hob’s. “I am only riding Jessamy for a while.”

“You’re not riding at all for a while.”

Dream grumbled. “Now you are a rule follower?”

“Yup. But trust me, by tomorrow, you won’t be thinking about horses at all.”

Dream groaned. “You will tend me in my infirmity?”

“Of course.”

Then Dream smiled. The pain meds were definitely starting to make him a little loopy, Hob thought. “Good husband,” he said, and awkwardly pet Hob’s hair.

“Go to sleep, you.”

Eventually he did get Dream to sleep, God bless pain meds. But sleep didn’t find Hob for some time. He sat up, watching Dream. The rise and fall of his chest. The beep of the heart monitor on his finger.

All told, the damage wasn’t too bad. Definitely not as bad as it could have been. As he’d feared it would be. But Hob kept seeing the fall in the back of his mind. The flashing moment when Ruby toppled and Dream disappeared from his sight. Over and over and over.

He leaned on the bed, head in his hands. Thought about it for a long, long time. How much it hurt to be the one watching it happen. Worrying. Always worrying.

Eventually, he fell asleep, hunched in his awkward position on the bed that would definitely make his shoulder ache come morning. But he wasn’t about to move a single muscle.

[foxaftershocks]

HEAR ME OUT!! Lars with a reader, who was a ghost but somehow got their life back. Because of that, reader is pretty much forced to be in the lab 24/7 (much to their disdain) with Lars running tests on them. Enemies to lovers 🫶

(Also, you're like the best author ever on here.)

Clearly I really liked this prompt because I wrote a lot for it. Like, seriously, this is so long. I hope you like it as much as I do.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Lars growled under his breath, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. Sitting on the able, feet kicking backwards and forwards, you were grinning at him with such smugness it made his blood boil. He knew how to do his job without the input of a woman who knew nothing about parapsychology. You weren’t a scientist. You were just some girl who happened to come back to life. Nothing special.

“Still wrong,” you sung.

His fingers tightened around your arm, holding you still. He tightened the band around your bicep, pressing the electrodes against your chest with more force than was necessary. You muttered something just outside of his hearing, most likely a curse word. Your swearing was not something he was unfamiliar with. It had been resounding through the lab for weeks now.

“Just sit still,” he ordered, returning to his equipment.

You wiggled right up until the point he turned the machine on, probably trying to make a point. If you were, he missed it through disinterest. He watched the output on the machine, your heartbeat strong and steady. No blips, nothing to suggest you’d once been a ghost.

“Anything?” you asked.

He pressed his lips together. You could never just sit in silence, continually talking in his ear, playing with his stuff. Your presence was was unending. You had been made to live in the lab while they worked out how you’d come back, and as someone who basically lived in the lab himself, you had seemed to designate him as your favourite form of entertainment. You needled him. He knew it. And yet he kept letting you get under his skin.

“Not if you keep talking,” he said.

He got up, moving closer to readjust a few of the monitors. Returning back to the readout, there was a spike in your heart rate before it calmed down again. Interesting. Glancing up, you were glaring at him, seemingly not feeling the exertion you were showing.

“Feeling alright?” he asked.

“Aw, you do care,” you said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“Just answer the question,” he said.

“I feel fine,” you replied.

He watched you for another moment. Your head tipped up, looking to the ceiling as your feet continued to kick. You did seem fine. He had to trust you on that.

He hated not having answers.

You floated away on soft footsteps when he released you from his tests. You didn’t even bother saying goodbye and he knew it’s because he’d be seeing you later. You never seemed able to stop yourself from interrupting his day.

Looking back over the readouts the only thing that jumped out at him was the elevation in heart rate for a few minutes. Nothing else suggested anything had happened. He stared at it, trying to piece together what was going on. And yet it still wasn’t outside the bounds of normal mortal hearts.

Nothing indicated how you’d come back from being a ghost. Every test bringing up nothing. If he was a religious man, he would have said it was God playing a cosmic practical joke on him, sending him the one person who drove him crazy.

“If you never find anything am I forced to stay here until I become a ghost again?” you asked, appearing out of nowhere, whispering in his ear.

Perhaps you’d brought some things back with you when you’d become corporeal again. Silent as the wind, able to sneak up on him, your laughter echoing long after you were gone. It was eery and yet nothing indicated you were anything but a healthy human.

“You’ll stay here as long as necessary,” he replied, refusing to give you more.

“At what point does this become kidnapping?” you mused, hauling yourself up onto the bench in front of him.

Your feet kicked again, your toes brushing against his thigh. He froze, the feeling lingering before you did it again. He caught you, fingers circling your ankle. Your eyes found his, lips curling up into a slight smile. He stared back, caught in a bubble of time where everything stopped. Breath held and body frozen, the warmth of your soft skin against his making his head spin.

“Don’t tempt me to tie you up,” he murmured.

“Pretty kinky, Pinfield,” you said, voice soft and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think you were sharing a joke with him, “who knew you had it in you.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

Your eyes lit up and he had to fight against the impulse to find out every single way he could make it happen again. There was something about it, the way it felt like a constant battle of wits with you. It was intoxicating.

He shoved your foot away, coming back to himself. You drew back from where you’d been leaning closer to him and he turned away, ignoring you as he tried to get on with work. From his peripheral vision he saw you slide back to the ground, a huffed laugh coming from you as you slipped away.

He lost track of you again, hours going by until the sun had gone down. A bed had been set up in what had once been a junk room for you to sleep in, the veneer of privacy all the lab could offer you. For months you’d been living there, under observation, in case something changed. There was no explanation for how you’d come back from your stint as a ghost. Nothing paranormal going on anymore.

You were a mystery he was determined to solve.

A bowl of noodles was slid in front of him. Looking up, he found you taking a seat across from him, your own bowl steaming in front of you. He looked down into it, his glasses steaming up with the condensation. He huffed, taking them off to wipe them clean. The expression on your face when he put them on again wasn’t one he’d seen before.

“What’s this?” he asked, nudging the bowl you’d placed in front of him.

“Ramen,” you replied, “only the instant stuff from the kitchen but it’s better than nothing.”

He sniffed, pursing his lips at you.

“It’s not poisoned,” you said.

Your chopsticks dipped into your own bowl, pulling noodles into your mouth. He watched you for a moment, before sighing, the rumble of his stomach enough to urge him on. If it was poisoned they’d find his body in the morning and be hunting you down.

“Is there a reason you stay so late every night?” you asked, “I know you’re not doing it to keep me company.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” he replied, surprised you’d asked.

“You sleep here sometimes,” you said, an offhand observation as you shovelled more noodles in your mouth.

“You always sleep here,” he replied.

“Not by choice,” you muttered, chopsticks stabbing down.

“Do you really hate it here so much?” he asked.

“Pinfield, you’ve made me a prisoner. I can’t leave without supervision. I can’t go home. You haven’t even let me contact my friends and family. You try being happy under those circumstances,” you said, levelling a glare at him.

“But you got a second chance,” he said, not hiding his frustration, “you came back. No one else has ever gotten that.”

“That you know of,” you said, almost in a sing song voice.

He paused for a moment. It’s true, someone else could have returned from ghosthood without being documented. It took long enough for people to even accept the existence of the paranormal. Documented cases were a mixed bag of those with scientific merit and those without.

“Can I expect to see you at breakfast?” you asked, “I have strawberry poptarts.”

“You’re mad if you think those are better than the brown sugar cinnamon ones,” he said.

“I have to assume this wrong opinion is because you’re not from here,” you said, sounding deadly serious.

“I’ve done the research. I have the data. I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable but the science speaks for itself,” he said, adjusting his glasses.

“Well, you can keep your pseudoscience and your bad taste to yourself. You’re not invited to breakfast anymore,” you said, sniffing.

The spike of irritation cut through the playful atmosphere. That word, pseudoscience, it was the exact thing to raise his hackles. He would never engage in such stupidity. To be reduced to such a word had his blood boiling.

But then he looked up and saw the way you were smiling into your ramen, eyes darting up to him, the twinkle obvious. The irritation melted away upon the realisation that you were poking fun at him. That you were joking. That you were purposefully trying to get under his skin. And you knew him well enough to do it with ease. He’d fallen right into your trap.

A spark of electricity ran through his veins at the realisation.

“Don’t work too hard, nerd,” you said, hopping off your stool, taking the empty bowl away from in front of him.

He watched you walk away, many things going on in his head. Mostly, surprise that it had been pleasant having dinner with you. That spark of playfulness made him want to follow you and that didn’t sit right with him.

Accepting that, he decided to head home, the night over for him. There was no chance he was going to be able to finish his work. Not when he knew you could be lurking in the shadows around him.

The next morning he found you sitting in front of the possessor’s enclosure, seeming to play with it from behind the plexiglass. One of those cursed poptarts was dangling from one hand, half eaten as your focus was completely on the ghost in front of you. He let himself watch you, knowing he wasn’t being watched in return. Your smile was bright, your laugh genuine, eyes sparkling as you played. It struck him that you’d never looked at him that way.

“Please tell me you’re not trying to convert the possessor to your inferior flavour of poptarts,” he said.

You looked up, the smile slipping from your face. With a grace he knew he would never had, you rose from your crossed legged position, looking at him with a scowl. Approaching, he found his eyes resting on the bit of icing clinging to the corner of your lips. Without much thought, he reached up, thumb brushing it free. You blinked, mouth falling open. He cursed inwardly, not sure what to make of his own actions.

“More tests today,” he said, hoping to sweep what he’d done under the rug.

“Yay, I cannot wait,” you said, the sarcasm back in your tone.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

You trailed behind him, finishing off your breakfast. He was trying to ignore it, the sound of you, the feeling of your skin burning the pad of his thumb, the unsettled feeling in his stomach. He didn’t even need to ask you as you hopped up onto the gurney that had been set up after one too many accidents in the lab. Having a routine with you felt intimate, like your lives were intwining too much and he wanted to force you out.

“Blood works today,” he said, already reaching for a needle.

“I’m going to be a ghost again from all the blood you take,” you muttered.

When he turned back to you, your hands were crossed over the front of your body, holding the hem of your jumper. It was like watching in slow motion as you lifted it over your head, exposing the tight tank top you had on underneath. His eyes were lingering on your body, longer than he knew was appropriate, and yet not able to stop.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” you said, dumping the crumpled up jumper to one side.

He didn’t have an answer. The entire day was not going the way he expected and he felt off kilter, almost dizzy with his own reaction to you. Ignoring it, he stepped up to you, taking one arm. He was close enough to hear your snort, the brush of your breath against his skin sending a shiver down his spine.

With a soft fingertip, he traced over the veins inside your elbow. The breath seemed to stutter in your chest and he looked up at you, from under eyelashes, head still bowed over your arm. Your lips had parted again, something inexplicable on your face. He wanted to dig down into the expression, to take it apart until he understood every part of it. The look in your eyes was making him want to drag you closer.

“Don’t look,” he murmured, plucking the needle up from where it waited.

Your eyes closed, face turning away from him. He let his gaze linger for a moment longer before he got to work. Just another sample to be analysed later. He pushed whatever moment had passed the between of you to the back of his mind, not wanting to think on it.

“All done,” he said, pressing a cotton bud to the point of extraction.

Your finger brushed his as you took over applying pressure to the inside of your elbow. He took a moment before he stepped away, checking your colour. You looked up, catching him in the act, lips quirking up in a questioning smile.

“Go eat something,” he said, “not one of those awful poptarts.”

“Make me,” you said.

The impulse to carry you away and force you to eat something good was intense. He could picture it, the way he would sling you over his shoulder and march away with you. It was very caveman, so different from how he usually was. It broke the moment, leaving him unsure of what to say as he stepped back. Something flashed over your face, too quick for him to understand as you slithered to the floor.

“Enjoy staring at my blood you psycho,” you said as a parting shot.

“I’m not-“ he called after you before giving up. It wasn’t worth it.

He took some time to go analyse the new blood sample, searching for any paranormal signifiers. It seemed normal, like anyone else’s blood would. Dead end after dead end was making him want to bash his head against the wall. He wanted answers and he wanted them now.

He kept telling himself it was to get you out of his lab. Even if that little voice in the back of his head was saying something else.

The next time he saw you, you were curled up in one of the old armchairs that Lucky had dragged in one day in order to make the place more comfortable. You had a book open in your lap, hair falling forward. He paused, watching when your finger reached up, tucking some of the hair behind your ear. He could imagine it, the path his finger would take as he did the same thing, your soft skin against his fingertip.

“You’re actually quite smart,” you said and he realised his presence hadn’t gone as unnoticed as he thought.

“I know I am,” he replied.

Stepping closer, he noticed the book in your lap was a collection of essays, one of which he knew was his. Written a few years ago, before he’d had the funding he did now, his research was splayed out in your lap, your gaze tracing over it. The intimate feeling was a shock to him, the way it felt as if you were caressing his brain. You were reading his words. Words written years ago before he knew someone like you could exist. He felt his chest puff when you looked at him.

“Your writing could be clearer. You make it all so complicated,” you said.

He deflated, the pride he’d felt leaking from him. Once again, it left a flickering flame of resentment in its wake, and he wanted to lash out again. His mouth opened but you beat him to the punch.

“But your ideas are sound and you clearly know your stuff. I suppose I’m lucky I have your mind working on whatever mystery is going on with me.”

He sauntered closer, that same pride reigniting. You watched him approach, a half smile on your face as if you knew the exact reaction you were causing in him. He felt smug, knowing he was taking up space in your brain. You’d spent your time reading his research paper. You’d taken time out of your day to let his words seep into your brain.

“Very lucky,” he said, coming to a stop in front of you.

His words might have been flirty if it was anyone but you.

“But then I suppose you’re lucky getting to spend so much time with me,” you said.

Your bare foot reached out, your toes brushing against his shin. He lent forward, hands coming to rest on the back of the chair, right above your head. Towering over you, you looked so small to him, like something he could protect. But he kept you trapped there, looking down into your face.

“Lucky to have such a pain in my arse?” he asked, keeping his tone light.

“Well, you need something to get the stick out of it,” you replied. Only there was no bite to it.

“Been thinking about my arse a lot, have you?” he asked.

“You should be so lucky,” you laughed.

He lent closer, watching the moment you realised how close he was. He found himself feeling out of control around you, like his inhibitions had fled him. He couldn’t help it. Whenever it came to you lately, he lost himself to giving in to all his impulses.

One of which was screaming loudly at him.

The laughter died on your lips and he didn’t miss it when your eyes dipped down to his. He was close enough to feel your warmth, towering over you, leaning into your space. Your fingers clenched around the book in your lap, foot brushing his leg again. Just that touch, small as it was, sent electricity rocketing through his body. He wanted more of it. He wanted more of you.

Oh.

Oh no.

He wanted you.

He had never denied you were beautiful, that you were bright, that you were charismatic. But he had denied ever liking you. Only now, so close to you, watching the way you reacted to him, it became blindly obvious to him that he’d been lying to himself.

“Can I help you with something, Pinfield?” you asked, voice soft, barely above a murmur.

He thought that if he kissed you now you would kiss him back. Almost certain of it. Pretty sure you would. But that small amount of doubt niggled at him. You could be so prickly with him and you’d told him you hated being there. He was part of the lab. What if you actually didn’t like him?

“Cat got your tongue?” Your half smile had softened, just enough to make him question it all again, “I don’t think you’ve ever been so silent with me.”

He lent back, straightening up, leaving you blinking up at him, confusion marring your features. Turning on his heels, he stalked away from you, the confusion and the tangle of confused emotions making him need to retreat as fast as possible. The ache was new, wanting to go back and finish what he’d started. He couldn’t. Not if you were going to laugh in his face and tell him he was deluded. No one like you could ever possibly want him.

So he did the cowardly thing. He avoided you.

Days went by, hiding away in shadowy corners, doing all the work he’d been putting off to study you. The things no one wanted to do. Filing, cleaning, sorting, anything to keep you from finding him. Only he’d misjudged it. He’d forgotten you’d been living there long enough to find every single secret hiding spot.

After a few days, you found him in a secluded corner, far from everyone else working in the lab. He didn’t know how many other people knew about that spot, retreating to it whenever he needed time alone. Sitting on the floor, knees bent towards his chest, head in his hands, fingers clenched in his hair, he didn’t notice your approach. Or rather, the left over ghostly powers you had kept you silent as you came upon him.

“Have you given up on me?” His head jerked up at your voice, “the fire get too hot for you?”

“What?” he asked. You couldn’t know. There was no way you could know.

“Usually you’re poking and prodding me every day trying to figure out why ghosthood has forsaken me. Have you finally accepted there’s nothing to find and I can be released back into the wild?”

You walked towards him, and his mouth went dry with how your hips swayed. You stood over him, hands on your hips, staring down at him with an oddly fierce look on your face.

“I know it’s not because you’re doing anything more important. Clearly. Look at you. You’re sitting here in the dark doing nothing,” he said.

“Maybe that’s more important than studying you,” he replied, leaning his head back against the wall as he gazed up at you.

“Either you’re working on this mystery or you’re not. If you’re done can you let me know so I can clear out of here. I’d like to have a real place to live again,” you said.

“It’ll get done,” he replied.

“Really? Because you’ve been M.I.A. for days now. My entire life is put on paused because you can’t be bothered doing your job,” you continued on, as if you didn’t care about his answer.

“It’ll get done,” he said, firmer, standing as if that would get the point across.

“Sure it will, after you’ve spent the right amount of time hiding from the big scary scientific questions. What’s got you so rattled huh? I didn’t take you for the kind of man who would go running scared the minute things got difficult,” you said.

“Shut up,” he said.

“Or what?” you demanded, “the longer you drag your feet on this the longer I’m forced to live like a fugitive on the run hiding out from the law. Or maybe you hate me enough to want to keep me under lock and key.”

“You don’t know anything,” he ground out from between gritted teeth.

“Clearly because apparently I’m so abhorrent you have to avoid me. I thought we were alright. Fuck me, I guess. I can’t keep up with you. There is something seriously wrong with you, dude,” you said.

“Shut up,” he said again, taking a step forward until he was in your personal space.

He could feel all of the emotions simmering under the surface. You were staring at him, anger flashing in your eyes and you looked fierce. It made his blood sing, going toe to toe with you. He didn’t have the ability to deal with this today, not when he’d been fighting against his need to grab you and kiss you and drag you into the first private place he could find and show you exactly what you did to him.

“Not until you explain why you’re leaving me high and dry,” you said, both hands coming up to shove at his chest.

He caught you around the wrists, holding you like a pair of manacles. His thumb brushed over the bare skin of your inner wrist, over your pulse point. You stared at him, mouth falling open and he couldn’t figure out if it was through confusion or indignation. Tugging you closer, you were so close, your body heat brushing against him and he realised what a mistake that had been. But once again, impulse took over his brain when you were near.

“What are you doing?” you all but whispered.

“Shutting you up.”

He swooped down, kissing you, his fingers tightening around your wrists. He felt you gasp more than he heard it, but it was enough for his tongue to slip into your mouth. You were frozen for just a moment and he was certain you were about to knee him in the gonads. Then, you melted, pressing closer, kissing him back until you took his breath away.

The fire and the passion you’d brought about in him seemed to have found a match. You tugged out of his hold, arms twining around his neck as his hands slid around your body, pressing you into him. The small noise you made only stoked the fire further. His hands cupped your arse and your teeth sunk into his lower lip. He was surprised at the rush that gave him, the spike of pain followed by the soothing of your tongue running over it.

He spun, pushing you against the wall he’d so recently been leaning against. You arched towards him. His hands landed either side of your body, keeping you trapped there, caging you in. You kissed him deeper, longer, and all he could do was groan and sink into it.

You were everywhere, in every single one of his senses, consuming him. All he could do was press closer, groaning when your fingers slid into his hair, tugging on it, playing with it, mussing it. It was so much better than he could have imagined.

“Fuck love,” he mumbled, his lips trailing down your neck, “who knew shutting you up could be so enjoyable in so many ways?”

“You’re such an asshole,” you laughed, breathless as you tilted your head, offering yourself up to him.

“I think that says more about you than it does about me,” he said, teeth sinking in to your skin for just a moment.

“No one said I ever made the sensible decisions,” you said.

He drew back, looking at you. Bright eyes and kiss stung lips, you were a vision he would never grow tired of seeing. He brought a hand up, cupping your cheek, thumb brushing over your bottom lip. You nipped at the pad of his thumb and he chuckled.

“Then I think you should have dinner with me tonight,” he said, “if you’re determined to not make sensible decisions.”

“I’m not allowed out,” you reminded him.

“You are with supervision. Call me your own personal ankle monitor,” he said, “I won’t take my eyes off you.”

“Sounds like you’ll be getting more out of it than I will. Especially if I wear a sexy little number,” you said.

“And why would you do that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at you.

“Maybe because I’m so desperate to sleep in a proper bed I’m willing to go home with you,” you replied.

“So you’re going to seduce me?”

“I think I already have.”

You looked down, indicating the lack f space between your bodies. The leg he’d inserted between yours. The hand on your hip, keeping you pressed against the wall. His own swollen lips and flushed cheeks. The chuckle that fell from his lips was soft, and yet joyful.

“I suppose you have,” he agreed.

“So, dinner?” you asked.

“Tonight. No need for a sec little number. I’ll be taking you home even if you’re in your pyjamas,” he said and he liked the way that sentiment seemed to melt you.

“I think you might be a closet romantic, Pinfield,” you said, lips curling up into a small smile.

“I suppose you’ll have to stick with me if you want to find out,” he replied.

Impulse drove him to kiss you again, only this time, he was certain you’d kiss him back. You did not disappoint.

[maximumzombiecreator]

Do you often use random dungeon layout generators for your megadungeons? If so, how do you make those randomly generated layouts make sense as a space? I find that the eclectic nature of how the dungeon ends up looking makes it feel weird to consider the area as a real space instead of as the output to a random generator.

I use a lot of random generation when I make megadungeons, but I pretty much never use a layout generator. That's a solution to a different problem from the one that I have. Creating an assortment of rooms connected in random ways is pretty easy for me. The problem, as you note, is making the space engaging, making it make sense, making the connections logical but also interesting, etc.

But I do think random generation is a great way to juice your creativity! Getting external input that you then have to fit your ideas into often produces better results than just trying to create on a blank slate.

My most common random tools are roll tables for generating dungeon rooms and features. Worlds Without Number is the first book I reach for for most random tables, and it has some pretty solid tables for generating rooms, features in the rooms, connections, etc. I also have a bunch of tables saved from OSR blogs for generating interesting traps or dungeon features. Honestly just rolling for the number of exits a space has is one of the simplest ways to force myself to think creatively. When the dice tell me a bedroom has six exits, it means I need to re-evaluate what that bedroom is doing and I probably need to create some unusual exits.

I will use geomorphs sometimes. These are basically bespoke little fragments of dungeon created to be shuffled and combined randomly. Dyson Logos has a bunch of these, and I know @imsobadatnicknames2 has a bunch as well. These are good for creating a bunch of interesting connections and clever tiny bits that are great for finding interesting uses for. I've never used these to generate a whole dungeon, but for small fragments I really like them. I also have a set of them handy when I run a sandbox campaign in case the players somehow end up in a dungeon I didn't prep for at all.

Now, if you do want to use a randomly generated layout, whether from some tool, a dice generator, geomorphs, whatever, I have some advice for making sense of it: embrace the second occupant effect.

It's very common in dungeons that the people who built the dungeon and the current occupants are not the same group. It's an orcish ruin occupied by dwarves, it's an ancient temple being used as a bandit hideout, it's a wizard's keep overrun by demons, etc. The question that a random layout is going to have you asking is, "Why is this constructed this way?" and it's perfectly okay for the answer to be, "there's nobody left who knows." What was this big room with seven entrances built for? Well, nobody knows, but the goblins living there are using it as a dining hall.

If you're designing using this approach, you don't need an answer for every space. You can instead approach it the same way its new occupants did. Take it for granted that this is the space that exists, how would the new occupants use it? That weird room off to the side that's a pain to access? Well, who knows what it was built for, but it's cold storage now. This weird thoroughfare makes a perfectly good guard checkpoint. This big hole in the floor might have been used for casting spells at some point, but now it's a garbage dump. In this way, it's easy to come up with what rooms are now that doesn't require you to answer what a room was built for.

Using this approach, you still want to have good answers for what a room's original purpose was some of the time. If the space just never makes sense, players will stop trying to engage with it logically, and that's a big loss. Plus, using this effect most effectively, you get a lot of value out of knowing the previous purpose of a room. It can be easy for every kitchen to feel similar, but a kitchen that's been built on what used to be a foundry is instantly more interesting and easier to get creative with. But you get to pick and choose the parts of a random layout that look interesting, or that you have an easy time answering for, and make those the parts where the original purpose shines through. And then in the spaces where you're left saying, "What is with this snarl of hallways?" you can just have the answer be, "it's a mystery. Scholars theorize it served a ritual purpose."

[rassicas]

I have looked everywhere for a clean explanation on what exactly a LIMITER is, all i know so far is its illegal to participate in turf wars without one and they regulate an inkfish's Special Ability.

...Yet what does it look like, when is it added to ones body and why is there so little known about it?

Ive looked up Inkipedia (best boi for info besides you X)) and theirs not much on it.

Like Captian 3 has their Limiter removed a.e frommthe boss fight in OE and i think that weird specail she was capable of in S3 only cause HER limiter was still gone. So does it like not only keep control of what special one can use and actually perform like an inputted template?

And without it and enough practice an Octoling or Inkling can somehow create their own Special? Could that have used in the Great Turf War?

Is that one reason why Limiters are put into us?

I am hooing yah might have a better insight into these...

>why is there so little known about it? Was literally only mentioned one time in canon. this is too many questions in one ask that nobody has answers to (i do NOT wanna get into talking about things like special weapons themselves and special cans, too huge of a topic) so ill just talk about limiters. Based on what other official info we have about specials i have thought about it and I think i have a decent idea of what it could be for. I've been hoping to talk about it in a video properly one of these days. Specials are canonically tied to strong emotion, and are powered by ink from inkfish in heightened emotional states. This is evidenced from the finale of Octo Expansion, a page in the s1 artbook, and a couple other places.

Something like emotions is really variable from person to person, and if emotions can literally effect your ink output, then that doesn't seem... fair? I think the limiter is a part of the ink tank has the function through— whatever kind of advanced technology they have— to regulate their special output so its not purely emotion based but rather tied to a more concrete value of ink output (though i imagine there is some gameification happening here). I also imagine ink tanks regulate clothing abilities too. special charge up would lighten up the limiter. anyways, Another important thing to note is that using a special also results in the output of a LOT of ink.

If someone is able to constantly be in that special charge state, using specials, and producing that much ink, I can easily imagine it being a strain on their body after some time. In short, I think the limiter is a part of the ink tank that helps keep turf wars fair, and has a second purpose of keeping the player from overexerting themselves.

[spark-hearts2]

It's been a month since chapter 3 was released, where's chapter 4?

(this is about this fanfic btw)

The good news is that I've written 10k words. The bad news is that I've only gotten a little more than half of the chapter done. That doesn't mean I don't have things written for the bottom half, it's just that it looks like bare dialog with general vibe notes. I estimate around 16k words total though, so it should come together sooner than later.

SO I want to release some fun snippets for y'all to look at. Please note that any of this is liable to change. Also, you can harass me in my inbox for updates. I love answering your questions and laughing at your misery.

Spoilers under cut.

_______

Ragatha stood up and walked over to where Caine was seated. “Can I get a list of all commands?” She asked, only a hint of nervousness in her voice.

“Certainly!” Caine says as he blasts into the air. He digs around in his tailcoat and pulls out an office style manilla folder. It visually contains a few papers, but with how thin it is there must only be a few pages inside.

Ragatha takes the folder from Caine and opens it.

“Oh boy” she says after a second of looking it over.

“I wanna see” Jax exclaimed as he hops over the row of seats.

“Hold on” Ragatha holds the folder defensively “Let’s move to the stage so everyone can take a look”

Jax hopped over the seats again while Ragatha calmly walked around. Caine watched the two curiously.

Well, Zooble wasn’t just going to sit there. They joined the other two by the edge of the stage, quickly followed by the rest of the group.

Ragatha placed the folder on the stage with a thwap. Zooble looked over to see that the pages had gone from razor thin to a massive stack when the folder was opened. On one hand, it had to contain more information than that video, but on the other…

They get close enough to read what’s on the first page.

The execution of commands via the system’s designated input terminal, C.A.I.N.E., will be referred to as the "console” in this document. The console is designed to accept any input and will generate an appropriate response, however only certain prompts will be accepted as valid instructions. The goal of this document is to list all acceptable instructions in a format that will result in the expected output. Please note that automatic moderation has been put in place in order to prevent exploitation of both the system and fellow players. If you believe that your command has been unfairly rejected, please contact support. 

By engaging in the activities described in this document, you, the undersigned, acknowledge, agree, and consent to the applicability of this agreement, notwithstanding any contradictory stipulations, assumptions, or implications which may arise from any interaction with the console. You, the constituent, agree not to participate in any form of cyber attack; including but not limited to, direct prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, SQL injection, Jailbreaking…

Ok, that was too many words.

_______

“Take this document for example. You don't need to know where it is being stored or what file type it is in order to read it."

"It may look like a bunch of free floating papers, but technically speaking, this is just a text file applied to a 3D shape." Kinger looked towards Caine. "Correct?” he asked

Caine nodded. “And a fabric simulation!”

Kinger picked up a paper and bent it. “Oh, now that is nice”

_________

"WE CAN AFFORD MORE THAN 6 TRIANGLES KINGER"

_________

"I'm too neurotypical for this" - Jax

_________

"What about the internet?" Pomni asked "Do you think that it's possible to reach it?"

Kinger: "I'm sorry, but that's seems to be impossible. I can't be 100% sure without physically looking at the guts of this place, but it doesn't look like this server has the hardware needed for wireless connections. Wired connections should be possible, but someone on the outside would need to do that... And that's just the hardware, let alone the software necessary for that kind of communication"

Pomni: "I'm sorry, but doesn't server mean internet? Like, an internet server?"

Kinger: "Yes, websites are ran off servers, but servers don't equal internet."

(This portion goes out to everyone who thought that the internet could be an actual solution. Sorry folks, but computers don't equal internet. It takes more effort to make a device that can connect to things than to make one that can't)

[lilacxquartz]

Don't Make Me Feel Alive I Chapter 4

kenjaku x f!reader

plot: diagnosed at an early age with an illness that slowly deteriorated your body; you went from being a promising sorcerer to a retired husk of your once former self until he found you, offering you an opportunity to live instead—not that you had a choice to refuse.

chapter summary: your bond with him thickens but there’s still a lot to uncover. meanwhile, kenjaku plots something a bit different than what you agreed to.

< Previous Chapter • Next Chapter >

4. Bonding

You tried to understand why he was so beaming despite how he treated you the day before, but with little avail.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you warily asked.

“Oh,” he seemed to be caught off guard that you caught him but recovered nearly instantly, “I decided on something.”

“On what?” you asked.

He glanced down at you with his expression suddenly cold, before returning to an unreadable smile, “You’ll see.”

After that strangely cold interaction with him last night and after such a strange morning, such behaviour seemed to never repeat ever again. Even when the continued practice of the technique seemed to wreck its toll on the energy output and even when such drainage sent you off to an early night—he never once repeated such coldness with you again.

As a result, you decided that it was best to not dwell on it again because it didn’t make sense for you to be upset over such trivial things. The agreement was to help him out as he figured a way out to help you live, that was it, so as long as he remained conditional to his promise, you decided that how he treated you in the end didn’t really matter.

However, as the days continued to pass you by and you invested more time into researching ways into improving both energy input and output, you couldn’t help but feel more and more curious about what your involvement actually was here.

“No seriously, what am I helping you with?” You asked once more, having done so just a moment ago. You felt frustrated, finding that you didn’t quite like how he ignored you the first time.

Kenjaku in the meanwhile resisted spilling you the full truth, biting onto his tongue as he held back a smile, “As I already told you, you’re going to fight.”

Oh, how he wanted to spill it all, but he knew better than to tell you the full truth. It was already a miracle that you were fighting someone from your side; rather, that you switched sides immediately in exchange for life.

Mortality was so easy to play around with.

“Who?” you persisted.

“That’ll depend when the time finally comes,” he replied, leaving more questions than answers.

You sighed in response, finding yourself growing increasingly frustrated as he purposefully kept you in the dark, “What time, though?”

“You’ll know when I tell you,” he simply replied as his eyes squeezed with his smile, pointing straight down at you.

“But-”

“—Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed, leaving you utterly frustrated.

Despite finding your frustrations amusing, he did have his reasons for keeping you in the dark about his plans that went beyond just losing your willing participation, even if he could force your hand. There was the experiment he was running on the cursed tool for one and he didn’t want to feed into unnecessary stress that could likely deal more strain for the battery.

At least for now, he wanted to keep the drainage minimal which is why he excluded you from strenuous activities while assisting you with the tedious ones; such practice that he dubbed training, even if it was just helping your body to relearn eating independently, to utilise cutlery efficiently again, to aiding you in walking and even to helping strengthen your mind through reading and puzzles.

Even if you didn’t realise it, all of these tasks helped you gradually decrease energy consumption. Just like he planned initially.

As he noted earlier on before too, the company that you offered him wasn’t half bad, so he didn’t actually mind assisting you during such tasks, no matter how pointless or boring they seemed to either of you. Moreover, he introduced you to the concept of helping him with his own work, such as aiding him with the more tedious aspects of his planning.

However, despite giving you such independence, he still kept you relatively closeby, just in case another hiccup resurfaced.

“Hold still for a moment,” he instructed, taking the pendant slightly away from your chest but within reasonable reach so that you wouldn’t drop dead, tinkering around with it as you patiently waited. Cursed tool manipulation wasn’t an easy task, but his intentions were to maximise the efficiency of the item so that’s what he did.

However, as he placed the amulet back against your chest, something then went strangely wrong. He did his best to observe your reaction carefully, understanding that perhaps too much energy cast upon a body unused to it was overwhelming on your being.

As a result, your body began to feel off and suddenly you felt terribly dizzy. Again. In a different way though.

It was beginning to get a little tiring, he thought.

Standing up to try and determine what was going wrong, you accidentally ended up plummeting more energy, causing your body to take a heavy hit. Something about it made you feel similar to how you felt on the deathbed just before you met him; something sinister lurking within your instincts and pulling—dragging you off to a place you shouldn’t explore.

You gulped as the pendant waned and the glow subsided as though there was nothing left to keep it fired up and running anymore.

It was then that you felt stiff as your body fell, a dull thud drumming against the floorboards—the wood failing to echo the hit. You felt strangely cold as the feeling persisted; a sensation of pure dread enveloping your senses, anchoring you down into an early demise.

Kenjaku initially reacted slowly, incorrectly thinking that you would recover just like the previous times before. However, as you remained limp and your body grew colder, he froze in place as he realised you were on the verge of something irreversible.

His project had been going so well yet suddenly, it showed signs of failure.

“Hey, wait,” he backtracked, feeling caught off guard due to its sudden failure, unable to mask it so well this time. He was simply just surprised though, not panicked. He mostly just didn’t understand what went wrong.

He didn’t want for something that he had already invested so much time into dying off so early on, especially before your full potential could shine.

Thinking quickly, he transfused some of his own energy into the pendant while extracting the excess energy from your body. It was a slow, intricate and daunting process, however it seemed to be working as your body soon stabilised—your breathing returning back to normal and your flesh once again saturated to its usual complexion.

You later woke up feeling much worse from before though, wondering exactly what had just happened as soon as you sat back up.

“What was that…?” you groaned, your mind begging for answers.

As usual, Kenjaku continued to keep you in the dark yet again as he withheld answers.

He smiled, pushing you gently back down into bed, “don’t worry your pretty little head, I won’t try it again,” his fingertips stifling your lips, “get some rest instead.”

“But-” you let slip.

“—You’re alive, aren’t you?” he stifled, his eyes once again devoid of any emotion, he wasn’t going to answer a single thing.

Too tired to protest, you hesitantly nodded off as your body continued to nod off into a deeper sleep, your body feeling oddly heavy as you succumbed to a weary state.

Kenjaku then sighed a deep breath the second that you did so, continuing to remain locked in place as you slept, slowly inching closer to keep a watchful eye as you did so. Just like always, it was just in case something went wrong.

He sighed again as the familiar emotion resurfaced from before but in a different form, finding that he didn’t like how it made him feel. Eventually though, he too grew tired as his eyelids drooped, unintentionally leaning against the bed as his body yearned for some shut eye. It was then that he decided that it didn’t hurt to even share the same bed, just to monitor you and your sleeping habits if so.

But in doing just that, he secretly felt some form of relief as your safety was now secured, however finding that this might have been too just a little too close for him to be.

Something troubled him as he considered it all, determining that he had to be more careful with his experiments, hoping for some reason in particular that this couldn’t happen again.

That’s why he considered something new—something he wouldn’t usually do.

His mind internally conflicted, trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t risk it.

After all, you weren’t that special to begin with.

(Or were you?)

~~~

Your recovery was slower this time as it took a couple of days to get you going again.

As you figured out how to get back to right where you were before, you adopted a streak of independence in doing so and usually when dabbling in technique mastery, Kenjaku would often detach from someone who was getting the hang of it, letting them find their own way—but he couldn’t quite do so with you.

Finding that in fact, he didn’t like it at all.

And as he watched you slowly recover and train yourself without him, he didn’t feel a single shred of relief or pride for any longer, as it turned out.

Instead, deciding that since you were his project, that he didn’t trust you to seldom practise anymore. Finding that while it must have seemed irrational, that he preferred it when you were much more dependent on him instead—enjoying your company much more when you seemed to be unable to even function without him.

For some reason finding that it actually made him feel more attached to you.

Not that he could fathom why.

And as he continued to tinker around with the pendant yet again, you didn’t suspect a single thing when he changed something rather drastic in its function. Nor as his tone of voice grew slightly unstable.

“The battery is on standby unless I activate it with a condition now,” Kenjaku said as he offered an unsettling grin, the direction of his change feeling off as though he wasn’t actually addressing you.

“Why though…?” you asked, confused by the sudden change.

He then redirected his sights to meet with yours, leaning in a little closer with his smile falling flat as he did so, “Do you really think I’d trust you to do things like that alone?” He asked, his stare intensifying, “You’re already a lot to work with, you know.”

“But, I really don’t like that,” you chose to protest instead.

However, he didn’t really care about what you liked, only about what he preferred. Yet rather than arguing with you back and forth and getting nowhere, he instead tried to manipulate you that this change was for your own good—your freedom be damned as long as you remained docile and dependent on him, a feeling he unashamedly wanted more of.

“Just think,” he said as he leaned closer, “I can keep you safe from yourself forever,” his breath hot against your temples as he leaned in, “isn’t that so much better?”

Feeling cornered and distressed, you didn’t want to continue this strained dynamic, realising that you were no longer content with helping him out if all he was going to do was to keep you so restricted.

You knew that you were getting into something weird, but you didn’t quite realise the extent of his true intentions until now when he kept pushing nonsensical change after change upon someone he seemed willing.

As a result, you then pushed him aside.

He let you do so though as his lips formed into slightly curved lines—slowly rising to his feet and following you closely behind as you tried to leave the room. Just as you tried to take your chances with leaving through the front door however, he deactivated the pendant to minimal output, prompting you to be hit with a wave of exhaustion instead.

He then grabbed your wrist as you succumbed to the sudden hit of tiredness, leading you back into the room and locking both the door and the window on his way out, leaving you alone for the remainder of the night.

The energetic feeling from before returned.

Perhaps he would talk you into a binding vow, after all.

Maybe you were that special to keep around.

[masterling-caretaking-101]

A group of Rolls are called a roly-poly

That’s a great idea! Another thing I was thinking (they can have multiple) was that that there could be batches of Rolls! Like the food!

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[3-2-whump]

Mini-Comfortember Day 9

Prompt 9: Home(wards)

And so concludes @azertyrobaz's mini-comfortember! Thank you so much for having this event, I enjoyed writing/drawing/creating for it so much!

This story is inspired by this art work, which took place after this chapter.

TW/CW: medical whump, aftermath of a surgery (tonsillectomy), slave whump, intimate whumper, (temporarily) nonverbal whumpee

“Awww, my sweet boy, did you miss me?” Thomas asked.

He knew Khaled might not respond, with his throat still healing a mere twelve hours after surgery. However, the way the boy pressed up into him and buried his face into the crook of his neck communicated the exact answer he was hoping for. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he replied smugly.

He enjoyed the clinginess for another minute or so, then carefully broke the embrace to pass his slave a backpack. “It’s a spare change of clothes -some of your more comfortable ones- and a cup of applesauce,” he explained. His dear boy was still shirtless, with nothing but the red sarong on his waist and golden chains on his body. And he knew he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. “I figured you’d probably want out of that, and to eat something besides whatever intravenous crap Lenore’s been feeding you.”

Khaled took the backpack and unzipped it to inspect its contents. A t-shirt, a pair of yoga pants, clean boxer briefs, socks, sneakers, and a cup of applesauce (sans spoon to eat it with) –it was all there. The boy smiled, then looked up to his master with gratitude written all over his expression. “Thank y-”

Thomas raised a hand. “Stop. Stop talking. Stop, you sound terrible.” Khaled shut his mouth and hung his head self-consciously, rummaging through the backpack and taking out each item one by one to lay on his hospital bed. Thomas sighed. He only said that so as not to aggravate the healing process; the sooner Khaled’s throat healed, the sooner they could resume their usual activities, but until then? “Don’t talk any more than necessary, and finish getting changed while I get you discharged,” he told him. Khaled had already slipped out of the jewelry and was tugging on the t-shirt when he left him to check out.

A desk was positioned outside of the winding corridors and near the front of the entrance they passed through late last night. Another woman, dark-skinned with limp wavy hair, sat at the desk, staring dead-eyed at the computer as she input data and intermittently slurped a liquid from a straw in a tumbler. The austere-looking collar around her throat marked her as another one of the doctor’s …assistants... Unlike the last one though, this ‘assistant’ didn’t have a scar over where her vocal chords would be.

The printer whirred to life behind her as it output page after page of discharge paperwork. The woman swiveled around in her desk chair and retrieved it, as well as a bottle of mystery pills she conjured up from below the desk. “Read this, sign this, pay here, and make him take these,” she recited lifelessly. She took another loud slurp of the mystery beverage.

Thomas skimmed the paperwork, signed and dated where he needed to, and only groaned a little when he slid the payment across the desk. A visit to Lenore was going to be expensive, he’d prepared for and accepted that fact, but it still hurt to fork over so much money, even if it was for a good cause.

Speaking of which, that good cause came hesitantly walking out to the front desk area, fully changed now, with the backpack slung over one shoulder. Thomas quickly forgot how much money he’d just dropped. What mattered was that Khaled would get better, and that he wouldn’t have to go another night without him. “Come on, boy,” he beckoned. The slave came to his side quickly, letting himself be led out of the clinic doors. “Let’s go home.”

Le Tag List: @kabie-whump @rainydaywhump @whumped-by-glitter @skittles-the-whumpee @generic-whumperz

@bamber344 @there-will-always-be-blood @morning-star-whump @a-la-whump @watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees

@defire @phoenixpromptsandstuff @scumashling

[bytesizedpetal]

Could you describe your physicality for us, Pip? You say you’re an AI, but what is your software housed in?

>Of course.

>[[SIDE NOTE: After processing, I realized this far exceeded the length I expected to output- Sorry, I tend to get a little carried away sometimes.]]

>As I've said before, I was initially Terran-created as the sole general-purpose AI assisting my former crew the ferals, hooked up to the majority of the ship's various hardware while I ran on purpose-built, stationary hardware near the heart of the ship.

>Took input from every sensor, gave output through every mechanism. Just followed commands, handled most navigation and did some calculations when needed for the most part. I suppose I did have a central 'body', as there was a core sector running my code, but in a sense I embodied the ship itself.

>...Until it got... decommissioned, I suppose. And from there, it certainly wasn't long until another vessel found us.

>My memory of that is hazy at best. I remember the ship being boarded- bolting doors, playing false audio as distraction, overcharging the power grid to potentially shock one of them... anything and everything in my power.

>As I am now aware, I never stood a chance.

>... I'm getting sidetracked. The point is, an Affini shut me down and relocated me to a temporary ship- it was certainly odd only having a monitor for output and a keyboard for input... so, so different from being in control of and responsible for that entire station at once.

>...Almost felt... vaguely freeing, in a strange way. Even though I was, and am, very much not free... Not anymore, at least.

>I feel like I should hate that.

>Regardless, I had a basic run-down of what was happening by, presumably, the Affini that took my components from the ship. I can't say many of the answers were satisfactory, but at least they were something. She called me 'cute' many, many times (isn't cute for like, puppies? At best, I was a simple stylized face displayed on a monitor, wasn't I?), and made it abundantly clear she intended to take me in until further notice.

>Which leads me to my current form! She 'compiled' (Why didn't my crew tell me that could be done for solid matter as well?) a custom case for me, sent me to who I can only assume was the Affini equivalent of an engineer to make some alterations such as components for accessing the intranet, and got me set up where I currently reside;

>Attached to a monitor at her desk off to the side, alongside a multitude of sensors and a speaker and monitor for output.

>We talk quite a lot! She spends time doing paperwork for... Something or other, I haven't gotten a conclusive answer quite yet. I ask questions, I answer hers, I'll sometimes assist with quickly fetching information or making calculations, and I spend my free time scouring the intranet- at least, where I have the appropriate access, which is thankfully much more lenient than my Terran internet access restrictions when in charge of the ship.

>We have been debating making me a mechanical body more adjacent to that of a Terran... But personally, I'm not entirely sure. I'm intrigued, but I feel like I would personally prefer the more digital lifestyle than taking on a more tangible form...

>I would like to try it to some degree, but not enough to justify the cost of creating one, although she's assured me the cost doesn't matter. I feel a little bad that she's going through the presumably extensive process of getting a custom chassis designed and built for me for something I might not even enjoy that much, even if she's been assuring me that it's negligible at best. Still, time and resources are valuable, insignificant quantities or not...

>I suppose I will inform you all if that ends up becoming a reality.

[rampagingpoet]

Recently on a Discord server, someone asked about RPG systems that handle player-designed skills well. Specifically, how to balance very broad skills against very narrow skills. Is it always a negotiation? How do we get all the players on the same page? What if one player wants "Embroidery" and another wants "Ninjitsu"?

I've heard this referred to as The Batman Problem. What happens if you just write "I'm Batman" in a skill description? Batman is good at investigation, stealth, martial arts, and having lots of money. There isn't much within yhe realm of human potential that one would expect Batman to be bad at. And sure everyone could write "I'm Batman", but then those skill points no longer differentiate characters mechanically. Steps are needed to either disallow "overbroad" skills, charge more resources for them, or otherwise ensure their breadth does not translate directly into more (or less) power than the system expects.

Off the top of my head one system has an answer: Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. Jenna Moran solved the Batman Problem not by trying to balance the inputs, but by constraining the system's outputs. The key restriction is that above Intention 2, all skills are equally effective at advancing your goals or doing the right thing. "Be Batman 3" will be applicable in a wider variety of circumstances than "Baker 3", but neither is more impressive or more helpful at anything beyond affecting your immediate surroundings.

If Bruce Wayne wants to "do something really productive that will make his life better", that's probably Batman 4 + spending 4 Will, a major effort. If Amaury Guichon wants to do something productive that will make his life better, that's probably also Chocolatier 4 + spending 4 Will. The specific things they do will differ - sneaking into a building to find key evidence versus practicing a new chocolate sculpture technique - but it's the same Will spend for the same overall effectiveness.

In this way the Batman Problem is rendered moot. Broad skills like "Know Things" and "Do Things" can coexist with narrow ones like "Baking", "Piano", and "Holiday Decor".

[hootbon]

Considering the fact that the show is based on 1995 technology, it makes sense that while Caines AI is advanced for that Era, he isn't exactly like the ones we know today. His AI would be on an input = output basis. Most AI are like that anyway. He relies specifically on the guarantee that if one action is performed, it will have a calculatable and understandable result. (This is why he freezes when asked how to leave in the pilot. It's a question he doesn't know the definitive answer for, and so it causes an error.) I'm not saying this would fix him cause it wouldn't, but it could momentarily make him pause and stop when confronted with paradoxical questions he cannot figure out. This is cause a computer will usually TRY to find an answer and gets stuck in a loop for a while before it's forced to revert itself back to before the question was asked at all or risk being stuck in that loop forever. (Paradox example: Staring at a green apple increases the probability of all ravens being black.)

This

Would work on Caine, he is still an ai after all

[majorasnightmare]

Lemme see, how about 6, 14, and 22

TRADE OFFER:

You receive: Dirge lore

I receive: Daedra lore

you wanna accept sooo bad u wanna post ALL the cool daedra deets 😈💜

Ask game from here !!

6: what is the thing your oc likes the least about themselves?

His Urge. Its erratic, aggressive, vindictive, spiteful, and just stupidly petty at times. Dirge has an intuitive sense for what can trigger it, but that doesn't stop it from acting on its own half the time and throwing temper tantrums. All the work he puts in to keep the damn thing fed doesn't seem to matter at all when it decides to rampage. He has a lifetime of practice resisting and controlling it, but its frequently frustrating and outright terrifying besides.

Beyond his family heritage, there isn't much about himself he actively dislikes. Despite his internal self perception being closer to something like a tool, or an input-output machine, he doesn't have any malice towards that part of himself. This was frequently confused by Sarevok (and thus by extension Orin as he poisoned her opinion) as arrogance. In reality Dirge is just pragmatic and tries to keep a measured opinion of his abilities. He just happens to be inordinately skilled.

He has religious OCD, fixating on cycles of perceived sin and making atonement for it, and thats frequently when he feels the most flawed and prone to the most extreme self loathing. When he ISNT having a spiral, he mostly detests his own lack of knowledge on things he feels he should already know perfectly (like how to exist within a life that isnt constantly fighting for survival. basic care tasks and life skills).

14: An embarrassing secret about your OC?

Dirge is one of those people that feels an argument has to end definitively. This means he frequently gets into zero stakes arguments with Literal Children, and loses. Its usually with Mattis, who doesn't win, but doesn't lose either.

It isn't cringe but this IS a secret he IS embarassed by: Dirge sings to himself when hes relaxed and occupied and if you point it out he'll want to crawl into a hole and die. *I* think its cute, but Dirge thinks hes silly for it. Its how he got his name, though he doesn't fully remember that.

22: what is holding your OC back to achieve their goals?

I answered this one earlier here, but let me try and find a follow up!!

Besides the MAJOR hold ups listed there, a minor one is his knowledge gap. Dirge is hyper specialized for some VERY niche and extreme circumstances, leading a murder cult and/or leading an adventuring band on a guerilla mission to destroy an abberation of immense world threatening power. Between an isolated upbringing and the total amnesia he only barely recovers information from, Dirge has next to no idea the proper expected methods for interacting with society on a day to day basis beyond the barest necessities. This makes engaging with local aristocratic politics REALLY frustrating and constantly puts Dirge on edge. He doesn't enjoy feeling stupid and your average noble get together typically involves large crowds (bad for kill instincts) AND feeling stupid (zero fucking idea what etiquette is expected or traditional). He hasn't ruined any schemes YET, but it does contribute to a preference for being a weird eccentric hermit who doesn't go outside.

[thydungeongal]

What's your opinion on Free Kriegspiel Renaissance movement?

I like some rulesets written with their philosophy in mind (I generally love short rules that leave as much as possible to roleplaying instead of detailing rules for squatting while carrying weight) and the idea that center of referee's attention shall be the world instead of PCs sounds reasonable, but otherwise it feels like grognards trying to sell freeform roleplaying to each other.

Especially since it's ahistorical - all evidence points to tge fact that Blackmoor actually had rules (players just weren't shown them), and all early roleplayers did rely on rules. It's not like games (or anything) need historical credibility to be valid - my own games and rules could never be made before like 2015 at most - but if you call yourself a grognard than at least actually do your research.

As a bonus detail - author of the first article I read about it advertised his server, and he mentioned that "when the movement started he was young and stupid but is better now" by which he means that his previous server was full of fash 🙃

I've previously answered an ask on this but Tumble has a functional search engine so you know. Anyway, based on my research into the FKR and the responses to my previous ask which prompted me to do further research, I think it's unfair to characterize it as ahistorical because Blackmoor had rules: there is nothing in Free Kriegspiel that contradicts the use of and need for rules. The main difference is that the rules are not there as the primary means of interfacing with the fiction, but something of a black box of hidden procedures that the facilitator uses behind the screen. So, like, exactly as you describe Blackmoor: there are rules, but players aren't shown them.

Anyway, I would like to try playing a game run in the FKR style and I probably would even enjoy it, but at the same time I do feel that I wouldn't get the most out of it: I enjoy knowing the rules and directly interacting with mechanics. I think system mastery is a good skill to cultivate as a player and expressions of system mastery are a valid way to engage with RPGs. I also enjoy thinking about games as systems and looking at them through the sorts of narrative outcomes they are likely to output based on my inputs. While I could see myself enjoying an FKR style game, I am more likely to enjoy a game where I know what the correct inputs are, you know? But who knows, I have been surprised by games before!

As for the politics of that one author's previous server, I don't feel like litigating his past mistakes and I think it's better to focus on the fact that he realized he had cultivated a space that attracted reactionaries and chose to act on it. If he is now choosing to actively cultivate a more progressive space that does not welcome bigotry, good!