#experimental procedures

[hajihiko]

What do you think about the whole “Hajime’s parents have their permission for the Project” thing? Because of course it’s possible they were lied to about what it involved or even that their signatures were forged

Í think I support the idea that they knew at least somewhat. a) Hajime got his obsession with talent from somewhere and it makes sense that the root might be at home, b) it's a good commentary on how much talent and profession matters in this world and how far people are willing to go for the chance to be an Ultimate. It matters THAT much, that kids are forced into a career at an early age and parents are willing to let their kids go through medical procedures.

Probably they didn't know details, and by the time they started wondering where their boy was, HPA just shut them down and made investigation impossible because they're THAT powerful. But they should have read the fine print / between the lines, when it comes to surrendering their kid to an institution.

[marshmallowloves]

thinking about this asshole again

[literaryscribs]

Feeling a bit irky because of physical pain and I'm trying to do research on some stuff. I saw people being ableist about Neve over the past few days, basically calling her disability "ugly" and how she's "not a whole woman". So there's things upcoming about that when I get time between work and setting things up for other job stuff for the year. Today it's about SWTOR and namely, power. Power levels of the protagonist to be precise.

I occasionally browse around the internet since not all swtor update news gets forwarded to me, every now and again I run into topics that annoy me with how short sighted they are (or at times actively racist/sexist/ableist etc). I've got one post planned regarding Koth's character and one for Arcann/Vaylin. But after listening to someone complain about the Traveller from Genshin Impact's power level inconsistencies between what's displayed and what's stuck in a cutscene, it got me thinking to a post I ran into this morning.

Quote:

"I wonder if there is reason why my sith warrior just gets thrown around and gets sh*t thrown at him whilst hes supposed to be on a similar if not higher level of a sith compared to his enemies.

Going through KOTFE/KOTET for the first time and it also happens a bit during the normal campaign but i find it very odd he just keeps dodging these objects thrown at him instead of showing his superiority and blocking it with the force or something a bit more forcey then just dodging.

Im the emperors wrath, i supposedly have no equal as far as i understand it.

Its probably something to do with plotlines etc. but its a bit immersion breaking seeing my chad sith dodge sh*t instead of using the force for a change" Ignoring the 'chad' thing because it's kinda stupid, there's several flaws in the game's design vs player expectation. I haven't played SWTOR since vanilla, I joined during the 4.x period just after Anarchy in Paradise had been released. But I did START in with the vanilla story and progressed until that point and this's where the flaw in the game design comes in. The main issue that the original dev team faced was that the main protagonist grew in political (and to a extent physical) power too quickly. Sith Warrior started on a elevated pedestal to be an apprentice/Lord during the prologue and by the end of the arc in Act 3 they're filling a spot as the Emperor's Wrath which was abandoned by Scourge after he went rogue from the Empire. (Which ironically should have the Empire absolutely buzzing with the news but it's not). Sith Inquisitor starts from either a fallen family if human/sith iirc or is a slave and spends most of the prologue being lucky that their rivals for Zash's apprentice role were picked off long before the main showdown where your brawn and cunning wins over the overseer's favouritism. You go from apprentice to a ambiguous lord and then take over Darth Thanaton's seat by force. Only because it's a kill or be killed situation as you force yourself to be a battery of sorts via ghosts and genetic manipulation. Kinda sorta becoming akin to Vitiate himself but in a different way. Bounty Hunter already has somewhat of a track record, likewise the Agent. However other than optionally becoming a Mandalorian the only 'power gain' so to speak is taking out a Jedi with the help of a companion and either making the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic step down or killing him. The Agent spends most of their story as Cipher Nine until the very end of the third arc and from that point they don't receive any real tangible power. Even if you hand over the black box for freedom from Imperial Intelligence or retain it. Unless power of blackmail is counted. On the other end we have the Jedi Knight who was somewhat of a prodigy. They spent most of the acts being a Knight before being promoted to Master for taking out 'Vitiate' after already being taken over and doing evil acts for a unknown period of time. Jedi Consular is labelled Bar'senthor and a Jedi Master by the end of the first act and is a member of the council at the very end of Act 3. They're gifted and display immense force power pretty often in the cutscenes, particularly during act 1 despite being made 'weaker' as they shield other jedi masters from a force plague.

The trooper is promoted across all acts, including the prologue and makes it to the rank of Major at the start of Act 3 while the smuggler goes from to a privateer to eventually being the Voidwolf themselves. Which doesn't have any impact on things on the story going forward, even if you keep it for yourself. Just stuff regarding Nathema down the line.

The overall level of political or militaristic power gained within 3 years is unusually fast and left the devs in a awkward position going forward. The initial plan WAS to have act 4 continue all class stories separately but it was discovered to be too time consuming and costly to have a whole new line for 8 class stories who were already top of their classes and minimal room for more power gain in their respective spheres. Especially considering the higher up the chain you go the more paperwork, negotiations and being tied to a desk there is. It's not all sunshine and daisies. All 8 class stories had the player character start pretty high in their respective fields either by luck or skill. But in terms of raw power there were very few moments to showcase that within vanilla and even much later. Consular and I think Inquisitor got their little showboat moments but the devs at the time were careful to not display too much otherwise you'd run into a issue where powers in cutscenes didn't match what was being displayed in game. However that hasn't stopped the player base from superimposing their ideas of where the force using characters in particular 'should' be in their power level. So....lets take a number of caveats into account here.

With the exception of certain parts of the prologue chapters, none of the 8 class story characters were ever fighting alone. Even with the original system of companions being locked to certain classes at the time. Vette being dps, Dorne and Quinn being healer etc. There's only been, to my memory, one instance of the player character being 100% alone and that was during chapter 12 of Knights of the Fallen Empire where you have a backpack of healing resources and shields etc.

2. Even if you dismiss your companions to truly fight alone, the game assumes a certain canon in order to follow the story sequence.

3. With flashpoints, gsf, pvp maps, on rails space missions or operations you're fighting with other players on your side or npc crew members. It's still never you on your own.

4. As for choosing dodging instead of showing off power? it's more efficient and means you draw less attention than you would by showboating. A fair whack of KotFE and parts of KotET are supposed to be subterfuge and infiltration, not a full scale battle.

5. Baras and Thanaton were both old and egotistical sith that weren't in the best state of health and WELL past their prime. Vitiate's voice was being hampered by multiple distractions going on despite his threat, Syo as the First Son had to deal with his other consciousness banging at his mental door. Rakton wasn't really geared for a physical fight since he's a tactician and Jun Seros was also getting up there in age as well plus being hampered by emotions and the desire for revenge after the death of his friend at the hands of the Hunter. While Voidwolf was ultimately killed because of his own stupidity and ego. They're not really good measuring sticks to be used for power comparisons, raw or otherwise.

Following from point 5, what needs to be understood is that despite personal head canons, the player character themselves isn't exactly in peak physical condition either as time goes on. This can be from continued service and missions, lingering traumas (JK Rishi story), issues with their own body (Inquisitor story and to an extent Consular) or outside interference (majority of KotFE/ET)

In the case of the Inquisitor story, their body had become so messed up from a combination of genetic manipulation plus sucking up force spirits, that it was literally breaking down around them. The procedure on Belsavis merely stabilized them to enable to further use force walking without consequences, the new power so to speak still has to be actively channeled to be of any use.

It's my theory that whatever time they lost prior to the Mother Machine still remained until Rishi where the Inquisitor was investigating several machines that 'supposedly' extended their life span by one solar cycle each. Using Earth as a rough estimate and a rewatch of the quest, a solar cycle is (roughly) 11 years and Inquisitor gets zapped four times so that's 44 years regained on estimate since I'm not sure if the solar cycle is involving Rishi's sun or some other planet's. But it loosely means those solar cycles regained were simply just the Inquisitor regaining their original lifespan back. Possibly at the cost of some of their power since that's usually the case. Come the Knights arc and onwards the player character's kept on their toes a ton fighting tiring enemies that're all the same and don't suffer the same issues they do. Valkorion's also hollowing them out in the process of helping them (and probably kicked the other force ghosts out for a fresh start). They've got multiple wounds either from a lightsaber or from the repercussions of using force lightning at a extreme intensity that they aren't used to. There's also the fact (even though this's kept off screen) that they're behind a desk more often doing paperwork for the Alliance that they aren't able to actively train or look at expanding their abilities to the extent they normally would, had things been during the first acts. We don't know what Valkorion actually did to them during those 7 years of interference of him being a shoulder gremlin. You're getting kicked around a lot more in story cutscenes because your character is getting older and a certain level of balancing has to be in place to keep things fairly uniform between scenes of force users and tech. This might come to a end if my theory may possibly be correct and thanks to the Nul holocron, all classes open up to one another. Meaning no longer will there be a force/tech wall which may mean more opportunities for new classes depending on how long the story is able to keep going into future arcs besides Hidden Chain and Malgus.

No your character isn't uber powerful, no they aren't god tier. They just essentially got lucky over egotistical, conflicted, old and well out of their prime/element characters. A fancy title doesn't mean you're the most powerful being out there considering the in game canon says you've never fought alone without someone (or multiple people) helping you.

[fagbearentertainment]

I especially need a doc for Trevor (tv head) and Weston Briar (alastor rip off) bc I have so much intricate lore for them that is important for their story but will never reasonably come up in the mediums I tell thru

[multidusk]

do you think murmur/angel void limbs can phase through objects at will

how would that feel

a little funny or extremely painful

[saturnshari-art]

hc for vincent's surgery scars

cw: heavy scarring , post op scars

[paradife-loft]

it occurs to me that part of this "chatgpt will make up nonexistent articles and quotes and whatnot and then attribute them to real people" issue - I suspect it has something to do with "referencing and citing Actual Things In the World where appropriate" and "not plagiarizing existing writing" being two goals at cross-purposes for training a program on like, general writing I guess? - when it doesn't already have a background of understanding the difference between "real" and "fake".

like, you have something that understands "here are strings of text! I know a lot about how parts of these strings tend to get put together to form larger blocks of text. I also know that it's important to make sure I don't arrange those blocks or strings of text in ways that directly match existing blocks of highly unique text in my dataset."

so like... it completely makes sense why it'd have trouble contextually with stuff like "citing real scientific article titles"? unless you put it through a much more rigorous training designed specifically to learn what (contextually) makes something an "article title" as opposed to other text, and what distinguishes "citing something [e.g. putting an exact copy of existing unique text into what it generates]" from "plagiarizing".... that's probably not a task the computer is equipped to handle.

[vaultsixtynine]

i literally have no idea what her name is so we'll go with the government-assigned option. also i styled her after a dragonfruit so there wasn't a ton of thought put into the Meaning of it all.

[modern-day-kleavor]

Selfie with my latest work!! :333 I can't actually show my work because I'll get flagged, so you just get the legs haha

[xhuth]

i feel the need to vent or complain or something but it’s so pointless. i’ve already beat this dead horse to a fine pulp. i need to stop this whole mental illness shit

[apehardware]

DETUNED demo released!

DETUNED is a bizarre game based on personal experiences with sensitivity to noise. It turns classic rhythm gameplay on its head: rather than hitting the notes of a song according to its beat, you need to avoid a randomly generated series of notes.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325040/DETUNED/

Itch: https://apehardware.itch.io/detuned

Gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/ITriedTurningMyNoiseSensitivityIntoAHorrorGame/788909

[marshmallowloves]

can I tell you guys a secret about my history with my crash f/os... well here it is anyway cause I feel like rambling more about them fjdhfj

back in 2013, maybe even a little earlier, I got this little palm-sized notebook with teacups on it (which I referenced in this post for my crash self insert!) that I called the Tiny Tea Journal.

2013-2015 was a very tough time for me for many reasons. moved schools, family things, all that stuff. but I also happened to be very into crash bandicoot at the time! so in this journal, I wrote dozens of pages of dialogue exchanges between N. Gin, Cortex, and myself...or rather, Twist (my OC at the time, before I made a proper self insert) about stuff like people who annoyed me at school or my friends and family or struggles I had with studying. I also had a word document where I did the same thing, but the tea journal was more portable so there were way more entries in there.

this journal quickly became very important to me, as did the two doctors in question. Actually, it was originally just N. Gin... I shipped him with Twist before even starting this journal. but I came to adore Cortex as well...or I guess my own interpretation of him at the time. when I wrote him in the journal he acted somewhat differently from canon, he still had classic evil tendencies like wanting to vaporize my classmates and his usual brand of humor/theatrics, but he also treated me/Twist kindly - the whole "only exception" thing I'm a sucker for.

N. Gin didn't really have many tweaks to his personality when I wrote him. he was still unhinged as usual and I always imagined him to be polite and affectionate if he liked someone a lot anyway, so it worked out for the journal~

eventually I started flat-out self shipping with both of them, but nowadays I try to write them as close to canon as I can, because a.) that's what I initially fell in love with anyway and b.) I've grown up and realized it's waaay more fun and interesting to use their current canon personalities when making my s/i interact with them.

but...there will always still be the Tiny Tea Journal version of them that lives exclusively in my head...and in that book. (which is sort of why it's been a struggle to flesh out Synes and Cortex's relationship lately... I never had to think too hard about whether he'd love me genuinely or not, because of the way I wrote him all those years ago. he just...did fjdhfj)

bonus fun fact as a thank you for reading to this point: the reason my ship name with N. Gin is Fuzzy Slippers is because when I was writing those entries, I was mostly picturing the CTTR/Titans/Mutant version of him. there's one mission in CTTR where he asks for fuzzy slippers to complete a weapon and for some reason it just kinda...stuck with me, to the point where he would call me/Twist his fuzzy slipper as a term of endearment in the journal. and now it's carried over to Synes fjdhsf

[burning-burning-burning]

The ghost of old memories

A young Shadow listens, helpless and half-conscious, to scientists talking over his head about the anesthesia for a procedure they're about to perform.

Wrote a little thing, don't know yet if I want to write a one-shot for it or a little comic on my art blog. Decisions, decisions...

[trashpandaqc]

digging through a bunch of my old flyers!

roughly ordered from 2013-2020, showing my progression from abstract cut up/dada collage to a more surrealist and procedural art influenced approach.

good memory from the Ñaka Ñaka headlined show at Muchmore's of downloading a bunch of rainforest field recordings and playing them in between all the acts, rather than a DJ

more info on my art/video freelance at my website and Artstation

[getyinyusedtoit]

crying over that man again, they can't keep getting away with this.

[mylordshesacactus]

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.