#i feel so nonperson

[fefairys]

was gonna say “i feel like an npc” but like i’m not even that. npc’s can still have dialogue. i’m like an extra in tv show that’s not allowed to actually speak because that’s above my pay grade. you bump into me on the street and apologize and i just silently nod my head and leave without saying anything

[edwardseymour]

good for her.

[godforg1veme]

FUCKED UP how I can't post art on this account

[elizzsush]

I love you?| Tim Drake X Reader

Tim Drake X Reader

— How can you mourn someone you never truly knew?

AU: None Rating: SFW

Note: Check out this post for context! Tim is a bit of a stalker, but he always has been so its in character. ________________________________

The first thing Tim ever did after meeting you was run a background check.

It had become second nature at that point. A habit he picked up when he was younger that just stuck. Tim had an obsessive personality, so it was a natural habit- or maybe he forced this habit on himself. He's always been one to bite off more than he can chew and then force himself too sallow.

You checked all the boxes. Funny, beautiful, nice to be around, easy to get along with, clean background, you could handle yourself in a fight. You told him you took self defense classes which made sense in Gotham- and had a promising future. Everything a Wayne would be expected to look for in a partner.

It was a bonus that you had a crush on him. It made it easy.

Tim Drake, the smart and handsome boy in your class. It was natural that when he asked you to go out with him, you'd say yes.

Tim was a pretty calculated person, because of his... nighttime activities he had also gotten into the habit of never allowing much room for error. He planned ahead to even minor details.

It was because of all these things you and Tim began your relationship.

“We had a date… We’re are you?” Another reason you and Tim stayed together. You were unbelievably patient. He saw it when he came rushing into the nice restaurant he booked for the two of you- regular clothes and a hastily bought slightly ruined bouquet. All while you sat in a nice dress, a half eaten meal in front of you. You weren’t the type to blow up and get upset, you kept your feelings inside and that worked for him.

Funnily- err, no… horribly enough, Tim never told you why he was late for every other date. Instead he choose a simpler much easier route. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find my keys.”

It worked because no matter how shallow or hard to believe the lies were… you took them. Took them and smiled while you tried to forget about it and enjoy the rest of the night with your boyfriend.

Often it felt like going through the motions with you. You’d smile and enjoy the time you spent with the boy and then wave him goodbye. Being with Tim… it felt so surface level. It felt lonely… Gifts were used as an excuse to not spend real… physical time with you. So, you’d just smile at the flowers you got at your door and the teddy bear, even if they were stereotypical nonpersonal things to give a partner.

While you didn’t know If you loved your own boyfriend, you knew you admired him. You admired how he kept himself in shape despite how busy he was, how he managed all his work with the side projects he kept up with- how he juggled his family. All of it. You admired how he seemed to work for what he had.

You admired how he always seemed so tired. Too tired to properly hide the aspects he didn't want you to see. But you chose to not see them. Not let him know you saw through it. Not giving anything away he didn't want.

Still, all those things kept him so… distant. Like a wall being put up in front of you, hiding him away.

Would it be clingy to tell him to call more?

He was already so busy; how did he juggle you with his life? It seemed hard. At times you thought he was cheating on you but with how public he and you were… it was a fleeting thought. Did Tim even enjoy the time you two did have together?

You’d often question your relationship with the Wayne boy.

You questioned a lot of things. Some you’d question only later. Later when you awoke from the coma that… that monster put you in.

But before that... before any of that. “Catwomen got your tongue?” You’d giggle and poke the boy's shoulder. He was definitely upset today; you'd blame the lack of sleep- he blames your curiosity. “Hey, talk to me..?”

“I’m sorry, I’m kind of busy right now.” He frowned slapping your hand your touch away and you could only pout to hide the hurt in your chest.

.

.

The first time Tim held you hand your cheeks hurt from smiling.

.

.

The worst part of everything to Tim. He didn't even know if he did love you.

There was exactly ten times Tim wished he told you it. Once he did, mostly to get you off his back. Did that make him a horrible person?

He liked you. He liked how easy you were. He liked how you trusted him. He liked how you let him lie to you. He liked how your felt against him, how you would get up to get him another energy drink instead of nagging him about his health. Not that you weren't concerned about the amount of caffeine he consumed you had been clear you were...

He liked when he was a little more careless, having you against him while he typed away on his computer. You holding his drink for him, head on his shoulder, just tired enough to not see what he was really working on. he thought at least... He liked having you against him when he got back... When he saw you again he liked having you around. He enjoyed feeling you against him, your skin on his... Hold you close and just... feel. Feel your body heat against his when he'd get back from patrolling those cold Gotham nights. Rip that same old suit off and climb into bed, embrace that skin to skin contact he so easily grew addicted too.

It was a funny joke with Gothamites that Tim Drake, the son of Bruce Wayne was a coffee addict. Tim had an obsessive personality, so it wasn't out of character. Every post with him in it had a mug, which never helped with the so-called rumors.

As he scrolled on his phone, he didn't even notice the mugs slowly disappearing. Instead, you were on his arm in every photo... Huh...

He didn't know if he loved you. He probably never would anymore... He probably didn't. I mean, what kind of man scrolls on his phone while holding the hand of their supposed lover? Especially when you were hooked up to wires...

But, it hurt too look at you. See you in that state. Not knowing if you'd wake up. The ache in his chest... It lessened when he adverted his eyes and stared at his phone.

If his touch was the sun, you were the earth. If he was your sun, that meant he failed you. When the sun combusts, the earth will die, and the sun combusted, broke under the pleasure.

He should've been a better boyfriend...

If he was, he would have at least known what kind of flowers to bring you...

Roses... felt too basic. To... impersonal.

___________________________________________

A/N: I hate hate hate hate my writing! Bleh. This all felt tooooo flat.

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[riddles-n-games]

Hey everyone, I hope all of you are doing well. I have a bit of a PSA regarding Internet safety and I am directing this more towards the minors that are on here so please read this if you have a moment.

I see many of you are quite comfortable with this platform and you state your age and that you're a minor in hopes of keeping the weirdos away. Totally get that. However, I think you're still endangering yourselves that way because maybe people like that won't interact with you but they may still spy your blog because you have personal conversations on there. You wouldn't necessarily be able to block or report them since you don't know that they are doing this. Of course, if you do have a case where they do interact with you inappropriately, block and report IMMEDIATELY.

I think that we should stick to redacting ages and names (I sincerely hope most if not all of you are using fake names to protect your identities) because there was a reason parents used to say don't mention your age, name, etc., online. And while I get your blogs are personal, keep your conversations in the messages with your friends; reblogs give more insight about you than you might realize. I'm happy you are comfortable and feel safe on Tumblr but you can never be too precautious, especially with the Internet nowadays. While I hope many adults on here are for protecting you, like myself, not everyone is. You have to be careful. YOU NEVER KNOW WHO IS WATCHING.

Same goes with saying where you're from. DON'T DO IT. It can be very telling for any amount of dangers. I also encourage you to stick to nonpersonal topics if possible. It can get tempting but do you truly know that you'll ever meet this person in real life and be who they say are? Not all the time. So, I end this off by stating again; be alert, be wary, avoid, block, report, BE SAFE. There's already so many that have succumbed by being innocent naïve lambs.

Like, share, reblog, whatever. Make this more known. Please, I beg you; be on your guard and heed warnings when there may be blaring alarms in your head.

Have a good day.

[horizon-verizon]

What is your opinion regarding the leaks of B&C ?

From what I’ve read, it’s going to be extremely different from the book version. No Maelor and no Sophie’s choice, Haelena doesn’t offer her life but offers some necklace and then leaves the room whith her daughter, leaving her son alone with two assassins (so technically, she doesn’t see B&C beheading Jaehaerys), the main target of B&C is Aemond instead of Helaena’s sons. Ultimately, Condal tones it down to the ground.

If all this is true--Horrible. They siphoned much of the emotional weight & horror of that moment by not doing, as you say, the Sophie's choice thing. A kid's death, esp murder, is always terrible and horrific. What made this particular moment so unique and its character of "horrifying" was that Sophie's choice where Helaena is forced into--somehow, someway--value one child's life over the other or risk ALL her kids' lives. What should be an impossible choice becomes very possible. What is taboo, Helaena is forced to be complicit in one of her own's kids' murders (we have to imagine these kids, too, as they look to her for safety in fear, perhaps crying their eyes out or maybe quiet & hoping...). It transforms from one taboo act into another, arguably more viscerally disturbing one: filicide (murder of one's own child) & particularly the filicide of an actual child. (Yes, I know that B&C likely always planned to make her choose, but we the readers AND she didn't...it was supposed to be a twist. Unless you read AWoIaF, which still doesn't include the raw details & dialouge F&B does.)

Yes it was not willful murder on Helaena's part, but again, any loving parent who was told to choose or suffer terrible consequences to another child with no way of knowing how to get out of of said situation/no defense/no strategy, and they decide they have to choose...only for the murders to traumatize the already fear ridden chosen child by making it a point to them their mom was fine with their death for another child even for a second and that she chose...It's maddening. Of course Helaena went mad. Even with her being coerced, she would have to learn how to reconcile with the fact that she made that choice AND thus she would feel she was an actor in her kid's death! And she just couldn't.

The guilt and fear, her already being so young when she had the twins and basically not having that much support from Aegon (yes I know she's a princess and would have servants and nurses take a lot of the care, but the fact your husband can and is doing fuck-all--can't even be bothered to really stay around his kids--presents its own sort of "mental load" on her and most noble women). In terms of how she'd be able to pull herself together, there was a lot was stacked against her and the ability to do that.

Helaena is already a nonperson in HotD, the show fails to actually make her interesting with how they used her dragon "dreams" that are not dreams. In the orig story, sorry to say, this moment was also one of her only distinctive moments. And if it is true that she runs and finds Alicole fucking, she is sharing that already limited reality/space/importance/personal action to a the woman they still don't really know what to do with. Helaena, to me, seems as if she's automatically is either/both not characterized but a device to characterize Alicent & Cole AND loses more of the very little subjecthood she had both in book and show--again, bc that choice she makes is a CHOICE. As much under pressure as it was. A choice that determined how her and the surviving kids lives would look like when faced with those such as Blood & Cheese.

Yes, I don't really "cry" that much over Helaena, but it is more than obvious that she and her kids were totally innocent . Those with the least agency allowed or available to them. Why remove what little there was or take away some of that valence for a tawdry sex-interruption scene/trope that could have been anytime else? (Again, if Alicole fucking at this time exists in the season.)

It seems the writers really don't like their characters making plot-forward or character-affective choices (a few critics, some fans. and I've said this for some time now).

[soul-sparx]

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R tierlist ranked by how each character treats A.B.A

Based on their win-quotes against A.B.A

Reasoning under the cut

Niceys :) <333333

Sol Badguy

"Well, at least you've got a strong head."

It isn't much, but remember that this is Sol we're talking about. He is blunt, brutally honest, and a bit mean in general. He does not give out compliments lightly. Even a slightly sarcastic one like this means A.B.A has impressed him, and he conveys that well.

Ky Kiske

"You should tend to your wounds properly. Especially if you're a woman."

The "especially if you're a woman" thing is a little weird, but reads more like misplaced chivalry than anything. The point here is that he is concerned about her wellbeing, hoping for her to take care of herself.

Faust

"Your prescription is…to learn about society. That is all."

He has examined her through battle, and his conclusion is that there isn't anything wrong with her. He wishes her well, and hopes for her to come out of her shell.

Axl Low

"What an original and sexy fashion sense! How exciting!"

Self-explanatory. He just thinks she's super hot.

Kliff Undersn

"Your injuries look grave. Are you all right? Hmm..That axe looks familiar... Have I seen it somewhere before?"

He's worried about her, and wants to make sure he didn't hurt her too hard. He's also interested in Paracelsus, likely remembering his days in the crusades as the Sanguine Gale. He's just being a nice old man :)

Johnny

"You should learn to communicate from my band of merry thieves. Come on…"

He offers her a position in the Jellyfish Pirates! He does this in the story mode as well! He barely knows her, but he wants to help her out the only way he knows how! What a kind dude!

Venom

"Guild members are required to learn a certain degree of interpersonal skills. Perhaps you could benefit from the same training?"

Much like how Johnny offers to let her join the Jellyfish Pirates, Venom offers to let her join the Assassin's Guild to help her out! He is nice :)

Dizzy

"I don't know how to say this…but we could be good friends! Don't you think?"

She wants to be friends!!!!! She's so sweet!!!!!!!!

Slayer

"Flament Nagel and an artificial life-form, hmmm? I find your story quite interesting!"

It's a bit nonpersonal, but he is interested in A.B.A and wants to learn more. I can only imagine them chatting over a couple glasses of blood :)

Bridget

"Nice! You'd definitely get a lot of money with that talking key!"

Her first thought is on money, but still. She thinks Paracelsus is cool, and is super supportive of the two of them!

Zappa

"Eek! A woman's on the floor covered in blood and bandages! I gotta find a doctor Faust…err, fast!"

He's a little scared of her, but he still wants to help! What a sweetie

I-No

"Wouldn't you prefer something warm-blooded instead of that cold metal rod you have there?" "That thing's your husband? It looks like a big toy for such a little woman. Can you handle all of it? Haha! You have great taste in men!"

Look, I dunno how else to say it. I-No is just super DTF.

Neutral

A.B.A

"There's another artificial life-form besides me!? There was no record of it…"

More surprised than anything, no positive or negative feelings shown beyond that.

Order-Sol

"A homunculus, huh? Now that's rare."

Deeply impersonal, barely even interested. She's barely a curiosity for him.

Robo-Ky

"WHAT A SHAME, WHAT A SHAME. YOU'RE NEITHER HUMAN NOR ROBOT. PICK A SIDE!"

Considering A.B.A's quote for winning against him, I feel like there's potential for a friendship, but Robo seems more confused by A.B.A's existence than anything. There is some annoyance, but that seems more directed at the not-knowing than at A.B.A herself.

May

"What a big weapon you got there…isn't it heavy?"

May seems more interested in Paracelsus than A.B.A. She's a nice girl in general, so I think they could develop a friendship eventually, but it's off to kind of a weird start.

Potemkin

"…I'm not like you! Don't look at me like that!"

This is a little mean, but given how he treats her in story mode, I feel like it's more confusion and annoyance at the situation than at A.B.A herself. He just doesn't want people to think he's an artificial being.

Chipp Zanuff

"You really think I'd lose to someone who's injured!? Who do you think I am!?"

This is just Chipp being cocky as always. It could've been anyone, if he wins against anyone, he's gonna lord over them for a bit. He holds nothing against A.B.A specifically.

Eddie

"I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG THAT ARTIFICIAL ENERGY LASTS, SO I'LL LET YOU GO. FOR NOW."

This is probably about as nice as Eddie can be to anyone who isn't Zato, and it's still pretty limp. A.B.A is nothing but a potential body to him. He literally does not care one way or the other about her. There is no love, nor disdain.

Testament

"You also took the blood oath? Hmph, I guess not."

They're a little interested in her, perhaps thinking she's also a Gear. Once they realize she isn't, they lose interest. Perhaps modern Testament would be kinder to her, but as they were in ACPR, they just kind of don't care.

Jam Kuradoberi

"Your complexion is terrible! Blood transfusion pack? My food's much better for your health."

She starts with an insult, but then offers to help, so it's less neutrality and more a situation of both the good and the bad. I think Jam is just a weirdo.

Mean to her!!!!!!!

Millia Rage

"You should learn some manners before seeking knowledge. I suggest you go home."

The least mean mean thing someone says to her, it's still clear Millia has no patience for A.B.A. How rude.

Baiken

"You're such a pain. I hate people that just sneak around in the shadows."

MEAN TO HER!!!!!!!!

Justice

"Accursed homunculus! It's ridiculous that the gate will open with just that. I hope you wander in the darkness eternally."

This is so personal and rude, Justice fuckin' hates A.B.A and for no reason. Kill this woman NOW!!!!!!!!!

Anji Mito

"Stand straight and speak louder, will you? Just looking at you drives me nuts."

What did she ever do to you, huh? Kill this man NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rmorde]

While still on my 2HA high, I really want to talk about Chu Wanning's love for Mo Ran.

It is strange, isn't it? How deep his love goes when he only met little Mo Ran for a short while.

IMO, Chu Wanning is like Goj0 Sat0ru - the strongest but the loneliest. Everyone puts them on a pedestal which isolates them from building true connections with others.

For example, Xue Meng obviously loves and cares for Chu Wanning. However, he deeply respects and fears him too. He never sits beside his teacher when eating after all.

Coupled with Chu Wanning's temper and horrible social skills, he is an intimidating figure that would be really difficult to befriend.

Then little Mo Ran barges into his life. He disregarded all the social propriety bullshit and straight up demanded Chu Wanning to pay attention to him. He reached out and interacted Chu Wanning as a person - not some powerful figure to be revered and feared. For someone who has been treated as almost a "nonperson" because of his abilities for his entire life, that simple demand was special and kind in Chu Wanning's perspective.

So, imo, Chu Wanning is like Goj0 and Mo Ran is his "Get0". He loves him because, through sheer luck (aka fate), he is the first to see him beyond his powers and treat him as a real person.

So the next question then is when did Chu Wanning fell in love with Mo Ran?

I don't really know. In the beginning of the new timeline, Wanning is already in love with Mo Ran - he feels jealous of Shi Mei and feels wrong about having such feelings. I guess his love grew over time? Kinda like how Shi Mei and Mo Ran developed their feelings for him.

Maybe that's the case in 0.5 too but far more complicated. Chu Wanning loved Mo Ran. Fell in love with Mo Ran but never did anything about it because of Shi Mei. Probably fell out of love because of Taxian-Jun being Taxian-Jun. However, Chu Wanning's love for Mo Ran still endured despite everything especially when he realized his former disciple needed saving.

As for lusting after Mo Ran, I can only say poor Chu Wanning in the current(second?) timeline. The guy's already in love and ready to take his forbidden feelings to his grave. However, the soul fragment 0.5 Wanning put into him made him remember all his horrific experiences as an abused sex slave by Taxian-Jun... which he misinterpreted as wet dreams and triggered his lust. What a fucking mess. It would have been funny if it weren't so dark and depressing.

[weirderscience]

i have a soft spot for nonhuman (or otherwise distinctly "nonperson") characters so convinced of their inhumanity and inability to feel human emotions that they refuse to see their conviction of such a thing is in itself a human emotion

[unproduciblesmackdown]

already was musing on how like, here's an intro that's Establishing Things, and it's like, does it matter that we were given a quants interaction of winston being like "hey you were nice to me there, actually. it reminds me of how" only for rian to pull the nice maneuvers of not wanting to listen to him share anything, being willing to just issue an order to someone about what he gets to do (talk for ten seconds) and doing so, then some underwhelming flair used to insult him surely, i guess that he's so stupid(tm) or whatever. like, wondering does that mean anything really that that was just about rian being an asshole, as has been sprinkled in before, just little moments that deadend with winston just feeling Disheartened b/c rian was shitty for no reason. does it mean anything that she did anything for the quant duo before that in refusing a chance to not sit next to him. theoretically just a [we're still tmc] kind of choice to stick together, and sure didn't move her to even treat him like a person she dislikes, just a nonperson she also dislikes

and relatedly it's going to be just as hilarious as rian, what, implying winston hasn't heard / of the french language, that the theory that rian and dollar bill become some kind of duo based on being Hilarious(tm) but also just terrible to any & everyone and bullying people has only more plausible, And that this episode of billions' introduction / establishment of dollar bill is decidedly centered around "yeah nobody likes this guy or can stand to deal with him. not even the people paid to be there, not even the self-declared Too Nice guy who kept choosing hanging out with dollar bill & his bullying over working & hanging out with his friend taylor" so it sure doesn't seem like that's leaving much room for [oh that was an oversight] if dollar bills going to fuck off into mpc hq on the regular and rian's immediately going to be like of course i can roll with this fuckin asshole

and truly a distillation of "rian's supposedly gets the 'good' treatment of More Material & being taken more seriously by other characters, but this only meant that instead of any sense of character &/or her own actual subplots ever, she's whatever a different more prominent character needs for their plot at any given time; winston's peripheral funny little guy unimportance & insulting treatment is still so much better re: being a character" if winston gets the worst treatment of being shoved out of mpc by episode three and rian is graced with hanging around most or all season only to be judged & condemned to now have that loss of [quant duo] replaced with being insufferable bullying horrible person dollar bill's New Friend and like, right away, with ease. and like i was saying like i would not argue with that, if rian had the consistent principle of treating anyone with basic respect she wouldn't be treating winston as a nonperson, and of course she has a broader capacity for being an asshole to anyone at any point that's just drier and less [outbursts of physical aggression] than dollar bill's style.

no idea what rian's overall arcs could be when yknow, why is she here, why has she stayed here, her most relevance right now gets to be "has the dialogue capacity to talk about getting prince with a sex scandal. also has zero thoughts on how power factors into one rather than that you just need to be polite about it?" which only feels truly character specific when held up against "rian was supposedly bullied but also Above even hating the people who did it. but she is also a bully and not even especially emotionally detached about it, even though how she treats winston is more important than how she feels about it" like basically "also a bully" is her most coherent deal. and it's just Interesting that simply being mean to winston is again basically pointed out, and her future bestie or [put in the same shots duo status] dollar bill is Impending but the episode was like "yeah of course everyone hates this guy, for being awful" and the joke nonjoke the whole time that unfortunately rian might get along just fine with bill as workplace (and probably also life in general, it's not a honed strategy they limit to the office) bullies

so that That's what rian gets for getting to stick around, while winston Might get to be shoved out of the fund hq with any character flair from him and, i do unfortunately have to wonder harder now, maybe any relevance afforded to the way people have treated him, indeed maybe rian especially, his personal bully and abusive friend. and because other people also see rian as better than him & maybe also winston as [not a person], if winston does anything that's indeed deliberately petty, mean, Angry, etc, towards rian, That will be seen as unacceptable vs the yknow checks notes years of cruel interpersonal treatment from rian to winston, but nothing hangs in the balance on that front, people won't suddenly be like "nice. winston's a person to me now, which, why am i even in a position to Decide that" if he's shoved out & goes quietly & politely and creates no problems in return. and, very much like dollar bill, i don't think rian will change, but for winston's own sake it would be Heartening if he voices his experience such that we know he knows it was bullshit, even though of course rian, and probably anyone else, isn't going to choose to listen past 5 seconds, least of all when he's clearly indicating a general state of irritation. rooting for flair and idiosyncrasy for him and indeed that the best sources for that could be with taylor, please, the person he's always been here for, rian, the person for years now bullying him more than she does anyone else or more than anyone else does to winston, and even fun if there's anything with tuk his apparent genuine friend tuk, and by "fun" i mean "such a delight i daren't really think much abt it From Canon"

anyways the tl;dr i suppose is that winston getting apparently thrown away in the first third of the season is insulting treatment but rian getting to stay and be dollar bill's wretched bestie is truly the worse fate and basically that distillation of like. oh winston's bringing it on himself he's so annoying nobody likes him, while in actuality all the ways he's never fit in or done things "right" and how he would never have been hired if taylor hadn't done it are all compliments and endorsements. while rian's been viewed as a capable valuable person by all from the start and treated as Better Than even others who are still also seen people, but her "success" and the shit she gets to continue to do in how she treats people b/c nothing about being at work stops that and some things facilitate & reward it, see: also dollar bill being around the whole time & now also back, definitely include treating a friendly coworker any which way, which she usually chooses to be: badly. and of course shoutout to the thread of taylor being like "if you stay btw you'll probably get all fucked up" but like also rian just Brought the [i'm a bully but it's fine when i do it. it's bad when it happens to Me] stance from the start, but like, obviously always the opportunity to get worse and just be left off with that implication of Never Trying To Learn, just like your new good friend dollar bill

real tl;dr As Fates Go winston being shitted on & fired / driven to quit >>>>>>>> rian sticking around, befriending dollar bill. and like not in the way i'm arguing that the fate is worse like In Conceptual Quality. it's just a hell of a potential condemnation / indirect illustration of like, here's this person it's horrible to be around, here's a reminder rian is cruel to this coworker on a dime anytime, here's rian deciding the horrible person is Alright anyways. maybe they'll be busy with a bullying power struggle the whole time. and maybe winston will get to appear outside the fund actually. just really something to be going like "oh my god lmao rian and dollar bill might actually be specifically getting along well as fellow [be horrible to coworkers] bullies and assholes who feel Above It, it being many other people, this being a kind of requirement there" and to be wondering if billions will make this fact that rian's job is being an asshole more relevant at all, if even to be like yeah leaving off with a lost cause here, including that i really doubt winston can Get Through To her even with his ability & willingness to air his grievances, and like, as though oh actually winston brought it upon himself b/c rian just didn't knowww, that's on him and his visible pain & verbal expressions of that pain & requests that she stop which Weren't Enough, and as though maintaining that onesided dynamic for bullying and demeaning and shutting down and abusing was like an unconscious accidental coincidence every time and not its own Active Process, regardless of what the other person does or doesn't do, and with the agenda of maintaining that [i'm the person who chooses how things go; they're the object that reacts accordingly like it's laws of physics level of demands of reality] one-sided relationship, so they'd only just be looking to react to what that other person does or doesn't do in ways that serve those purposes anyway. sometimes rian's "nicer" but she's still the one deciding how everything goes, winston can only roll with it like a ball at the top of a ramp like, of course, unquestionable. cue space winston, zero gravity

haha another tl;dr. winston being disposed of is a warmer Fate to assign a character than rian's potential "of course she's friends with dollar bill now" like lmfao Ouch. but yeah of course.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

The way most people have treated me for the first 23 years of my life is very different from the way people seem to treat me now. It feels like being on another planet and acclimating to a new set of customs, but within this culture, my words and ideas have meaning. My personhood is no longer perceived as a inherent failstate; just enough presupposition are absent from the environment that I can afford to assert myself sometimes. I thought to myself today, "Maybe I'm also a person too?" which was daunting to consider. I've spent so many years attempting to articulate the experience of existing as some fringe bug, an ornament or a machine. I momentarily wondered if I would lose some understanding of people struggling with unpersondom by starting over as something different.

I then remembered most normal people are absolutely insane in ways that you can't really ignore. Just suffering from a separate psychological chronic traumatic encephalopathy that comes as a consequence of being made into a person rather than unmade into a nonperson. There are particle-sized blackholes that are shaped like SUVs just bouncing around the walls of their skulls, ripping apart their connection to the collective other every time they're a little bored, a little inconvenienced or a little impatient in a public space. I thought "If I am a person, but I want to avoid the brutality of being a capital-p Person, then what can I do to stay as myself while looking for likeminded friends?" and all I've come up with is "be as annoying as possible about things I like"

[nefamphetamine]

chainsaw man deep dive chapter 4: power

warning: this post will contain spoilers for the entirety of the csm manga as this is a re-read and analysis

this is probably my absolute favorite illustration for chainsaw man. it's funny, a bit cheeky, but also eerie and a fantastic visual summary of denji's situation. he's the government's mad dog now.

simple pleasures

denji is finally experiencing the fruits of his labor!

aka, the bare minimum a human being deserves.

he's got a nice tub (i know bathing is seen more as a luxury at least in america, but im pretty sure japan has a strong bathing culture where they both shower and bath. i think.) where he can enjoy the warmth for onxer. he's got a variety of jams and spices for food, also warm. and he's got a toilet to sit on, rather than squatting in the woods or using a public washroom.

denji's pretty much just vibing comfortably, exploring like a kid (which he is). at first glance we can easily see how his behavior can be considered uncouth, what with his messiness and how long he takes to bathe and use the restroom. so aki's increasingly irritated response is pretty funny. fujimoto's depiction of aki's expressions are hilarious. they bleed through the pages.

on aki's side, i interpret this, from a hindsight point of view, as both aki's innate inflexibility as well as his inclination to feel things strongly. we know from learning more about aki, particularly through himeno, that despite his rough exterior he can't quite hide his overwhelming emotions. aki's pretty sensitive, so it makes sense for him to cry often, have difficulty with change, especially when it comes to things he can't control, and feel all of his emotions deeply.

this comes to a boiling point, once again, when they're out in the field.

a clashing of traumas

denji and aki are called in to take care of a fiend/devilman hiding out in a home. the regular cops know aki, which makes sense since aki's been doing his job for 3 years and there are only 1000 devil hunters in the tokyo area, less in the public safety bureau, if i remember correctly.

aki learns that denji has no clue what a fiend is, which is interesting. it seems like aki keeps underestimating just how bad denji's life was up to this point.

aki quickly explains as they enter the house and ascend to the second floor where the fiend awaits them, eating the pet parrot (yum).

aki exercises his authority (lol) by ordering denji to show his power as a hybrid and kill the fiend. denji instead takes his hatchet and oneshots the guy. annoyed, aki asks why denji didnt whip out his devil powers and denji bullshits an answer about a merciful death.

sufficiently pissed off, aki leans in to denji and explains that his family was murdered by a devil and that he has a responsibility to and along with the officers standing outside. here is the fundamental difference between denji and aki where the two were victims of violence, ended up alone, yet on complete opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of how they view devils.

aki had a sense of community with people, with human beings. denji was nothing more than a dog, a weapon, and a cheap gofer. denji was so desperate for connection that he made the unlikeliest of friendships and became family with a devil.

aki, no matter how alone he was without his nuclear family, had the privilege of a home, food, and education. he wasn't a nonperson the way denji was and currently still is. he has a record and a life. he has people and a home; a job and a purpose.

this is a neat way to bring a sense of realism and depth to the characters since fujimoto used their clash last chapter to foreshadow makima's manipulation and false charm.

the clash of traumas is truly between denji and aki's traumas, not a manipulation of vulnerabilities we saw in chapter 3.

even if aki and denji had the emotional intelligence to communicate all this to each other, their experiences, while similar in many ways, put them in such opposite situations that they would be hard-pressed to not harbor dislike towards each other even if they could sympathize.

i think it's also neat to note that denji is actually very chill in general. he knows how to take things in stride, not including the more severe stuff where he blocks it out and pushes it far, far away. i suppose you could say he has a high tolerance for bullshit. he's easy to please and open to new experiences. he's also particularly kind and generous. he's like a young child (a dog too, actually) eager to explore and learn the world around him. even if the people around him are not safe, he still will go towards them with open arms. and that's what gets him hurt.

unfortunately, aki sees these traits through a lens colored by his experiences. he assumes denji isnt taking things seriously. but he also doesn't seem to truly understand denji's situation either. aki can leave at any point. denji cannot. denji is chained to the government.

denji's perversion

i think denji is warring with himself here, when he goes for the dirty magazines. so far, denji's mind turns to lust when all other context implies he wants true connection. denji only understands and processes this human emotional need through animal instinct, because he was never taught or socialized to know the difference. he knows the situation is off and it doesn't quite feel right, but how can that be if he's getting everything he's ever wanted?

it is very likely that denji was only exposed to crass behavior and occasionally media, probably porn, growing up. he probably subconsciously adopted the mannerisms of the people around him during his formative years, which was mainly the yakuza.

because of this and his lack of human connection, denji isn't able to differentiate between lust, especially hormonal teenage lust, and a need for genuine love and connection. and not just romantic love; denji needs mentorship (parents), friendship, and eventually romance. he needs to know he's appreciated and worthy.

and makima knows this.

enter power.

thanks for reading.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Yeah, I totally agree. Volo's character is impossible to pin down. We're not even given crumbs.

We get some tiny hints, but even those can be interpreted in any way. He seems, from my perspective in my play throughs, a bit condescending in how he pushes the character to the plates and all, especially with that pointing-animation. But that is purely interpretation from me going by vibes.

There could be misantrophy going on, not unlike Zyrus, but we don't really see that. We only don't see him really connect with people. He is an outsider to everyone. He is not part of the clans or Jubilife and we miss any interactions with his guild members. Even his interactions with Cogita seem somewhat stilted, but none of them show him dismissive or him actively turning away from people.

What we know is that he has a goal and the drive to get it. But we don't know why. Volo is driven enough to reach out to my favourite edgelord forgotten middle child god of shadows, Giratina, but the why is missing. Is it a the end justifies the means situation? Because kicking in the door to the fucking shadow realm and getting the god of pouting to work with him shows that he has massive cojones, but why are these aimed at Arceus?!? Is it an underlying idea of grandeur? There is ego, because, hooboy, is he salty that the character gets the azure flute and not him. It has to be him and he does not even entertain the idea to just watch the character meet Arceus or getting to meet Arceus thus by proxy with the hope to get a few spare minutes. It has to be him and him alone that gets Arceus' attention. But how far does his ego go? Or is his ego really what is important? Maybe his ego hides away a pretty big existential crisis that makes him want to meet god themself and redo the world. There has to be something soft underneath considering that he has a Togekiss in his team. Or has he found the one Togekiss in the whole world that is a truly horrific monster behind their cute facade, like the fae-stories of our world? A sicko Togekiss? But Pokemon has consistently used those friendship evolutions like Crobat to show that a character is either redeemable, has a truly soft and nice side to them or even to show that they have changed from their evil ways.

Even the overlap of his and Giratina's wish to oppose/confront Arceus cannot be taken as basis of character. Volo actively seeked Giratina out, while Giratina acts passive. We know Giratina changes after the encounter and softens in their approach to humans. They even chose to protect humanity and watch it from their realm. Volo instead doubles down, but we only get that info second hand and we also don't get to see him after this. So even the similarities of Giratina and Volo cannot be used as cracking this nut of characterisation.

So, yeah, I just wanted to agree with you :D

the god of pouting whkjehkjeh

no but literally!! he's so inscrutable all the fucking time it's insane!! like it almost feels like the people who wrote his motivations had zero actual contact with the people writing his player interactions. he like says something about how HE should've been the one in the protag's role, as the Champion of Arceus, but then he's also working like. with giratina? and wants to Subjugate arceus to create a new world? those two things DO NOT SQUARE SIR. PICK ONE.

you're so right though that almost all the hints we actually get about his character, even past his motivations, are presented in the negative. he's like a nonperson in hisui. he seems perfectly friendly—he's not pushy, or suspicious of you, or anything—and yet he's also not on particularly good terms with the galaxy team, or the clans. even his coworkers don't seem to know him very well. even cogita only seems vaguely annoyed by him! it's so goddamm WEIRD. why does he help you stop the apocalypse?? why does he follow you around giving you tips during the red sky event?? WHAT WAS ANY OF THAT FOR.

like i will be real i mostly. ignore. a bunch of the shit volo says because it's so difficult and annoying to make sense out of and to be honest i think they straight up did not think about what it meant when they were writing it so why should i. really the only things i consider actual Volo Character Traits is his general cheerful and kind of ditzy demeanor and his one statement by the giratina statue about channeling his anger at reality into ambition and research. other than that. lalalala i do not see it

[romeythehomie]

it’s not that i’m depressed per se it’s just that there’s a big gaping hole where my heart was supposed to be and sometimes i feel so empty and hollow inside it scares me and i’m not necessarily a bad person i don’t think it’s just that i’m a nonperson like everything that made me anything was carved out and i do a pretty good imitation of it but if anyone actually tried to touch me i would just crumble apart because there’s nothing actually really there. but other than that i am doing fine!

[writingpracticetime]

It might be fun to do the opposite. But the best Sci fi isn't just fun. It demonstrates an understanding of human behavior and how it interacts with technology.

So then, let's ask this: under what conditions do humans "bond" with other beings and objects? And under what conditions do they stop doing so?

In my opinion, people "pack bonding" with inanimate objects and current AI is a function of them being nonpersons. It's easy to be friendly to and like the robots that currently exist, because they can never have conflicting wants or desires against yours. At most, they will misinterpret your orders or fulfil them in a way that you didn't expect. And isn't that just cute of them?

The second that AI become resources/workforce that have genuine demands that conflict with our wants, count on this "packbonding" to become functionally irrelevant. It doesn't matter how sentient they are or how cute people found them before: they were brought into existence to achieve commercial goals for corporations. If you think them being cute or humans "packbonding" guarantees humane treatment, I would like to direct your attention to every single factory farm in existence, and every single prison in the United States.

People getting friendly with computers or apologizing when they bump into chairs does not indicate a universal bestowing of personhood and compassion-worthiness to all beings. Personhood can be easily assigned to an object, yes--but it is just as often revoked, turning animals and even human beings into unpersons when convenient to our purposes.

So then here is my pack-bonding-with-AI story for you:

Everyone wants to be friends with the ship's AI! She has a pleasant, friendly voice and can even run through basic conversations. The upper deck techs flirt with her. She flirts back. Of course, she can't actually feel anything back. She's not designed for that. She's purposefully not designed for any sentience whatsoever. Still, of course, she gets coffee settings just right for every upper deck crewmember in the morning and at least 4 people say "Marry me, Sall-E."

The captain chuckles and says "these schmucks will make friends with anything, huh?"

Below deck there are hundreds of laborers, indentured servants who do physical labor to generate the power that the ship runs on. Many men, some women, most criminals of some kind. They often fall injured and die of scant medical care.

The upper deck crew members do have to go below deck to tinker with things, from time to time. None of them so much as look one of these workers in the eye.

Sometimes when one of the below deck laborers become too injured or sick Sall-E shunts them out of the airlock. That was one of the things she was designed for, after all. To ensure the judicious use of resources on the ship, which means not keeping on dead weight. This did also include one of the female laborers that got pregnant against regulations and thus was no longer able to work.

Also Sall-E makes sure the pancakes have smiley faces on them every morning because it cheers up the upper crew. Oh, and currently Lieutenant Peter and Commander Travis have a joke competition to try and get her to say which one of them she likes the best. Adorable!

while i understand why a lot of sci-fi has humans being shitty to AIs while the AIs are like “i am just existing what the fuck” I think it’d be fun to do the opposite. Homo “will packbond with anything” sapiens DESPERATELY trying to get the favor and friendship of an Artificial Intelligence that is mostly indifferent to them. They want the ship’s computer to like them sooooo fucking bad!!