#my opinion of ai is complicated but im not going to get into it here

[honeysuckle-fae]

Y'know I will probably regret this post when it's no longer nearly 4am but it's mildly infuriating to see people calling for others to delete their nano accounts and boycott nano over this AI shit when it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the bullshit they've pulled previous years. Were you also telling people to delete their accounts and boycott when there was so much racism among the forum mods and next to nothing was done about it? Were you telling people to delete their accounts and boycott when there was all that trouble last year with the security of the forums and, again, racist mods?

People of color have been having trouble with nano for YEARS and I have never seen this much outrage. I myself was called a reverse racist by a forum mod and threatened to have my account terminated if I didn't stop defending myself. Like I'm sorry but it's a little frustrating that nano having a generative AI sponsor and wording something poorly in a blog post is what gets y'all's attention.

[funishment-time]

is there anything on ur iceberg ud like to expand on in particular? all of it is sooo good 2 me and im rlly interested in ur thoughts. all the junko ones in particular are SO GOOD u get her!!!

(cw: cannibalism, Junko stuff)

thank you!!! here's a few random JUNKOS ones i'll expand upon:

Junko originally considered sparing her classmates: taken from a translated interview where Kodaka says that he wanted to do an OVA where a truly happy Junko would have had to work up the "resolve" to enact her last plan. i mourn that we never got this OVA every single day

Monokubs meant to represent aspects of Junko's personality: kind of Complicated, but pretending that Moogs' story is mostly right, i like to think corporate added the Monokubs to give a dash of personality-shifting Junko to the game before the reveal, for long-time watchers. the kubs are heavily Junko-coded to me

Junko has no real sexuality or opinions on anything: she is both a bigot and not a bigot, gay or not gay, genderfucked or not, trans or not trans, depending on How She Can Hurt You. to me, she long ago lost the ability to have any worldview besides trying to feel psychic damage and inflict it on others

Junko & Remnants were all cannibals: this in itself is the tip of the iceberg of some of the things she and the Remnants probably did, but for Junko specifically, she def ate Mondo Butter and maybe some of her other classmates too. we have lots of evidence she has a sort of weird "wants to be one with everyone" complex (Junkoland, her monologue about being twins w/ Mukuro) and what better way than to nomnomnom on human flesh

DR world already a dystopia before Junko arrived: Junko just tipped the scales. (the fact that HPA openly had an Ultimate Soldier/SHSL Merc who certainly joined up as a minor, which we know for a fact from DR1, should be all one needs to know...but there's other stuff going on, too.) btw: true in both the main timeline and in the nice AU. arguably more true in the nice AU because while we're missing Ultimate Merc (Mukuro attends as Junko, no one knows Mukuro) the V3s are all there too and very much real (so we have Maki etc)

AI Junko not a continuation of the real one but separate entity: just aligns with what the DR universe tells us about other AIs/its AI rules. there's lots about how Alter Ego is not Chihiro and Kodaka recently confirmed AI Chiaki was not the same girl as OG Chiaki (+ she says so directly in DR3)

Junko genuinely wanted to get Makoto to hook up with some girls thru Monokuma: just a silly one. in my head, before the Despairening(tm), Junko was kind of a wingwoman for Makoto because she has a little crush on him and it hurt her real fuckin' good to try to get him with other girls. this continues into the killing game where she uses Monokuma to constantly tease him into being a pervert. she is the biggest Makoto Harem fantasizer

appreciate the question! please enjoy!

[horseforeplay]

hi! what do you make of ai art? im conflicted cause i see how its great for disabled people in many ways, but then i look back at the work people put into becoming artists and mastering the craft and feel many things lol i wish i could look at it similarly like i look at producers for example, where you have a vision and tools and you know how to use it well so you dont need the musical training background to be creative, but i cant help but feel like its more complicated with visual art? that theres a whole other side besides having a vision and good understanding of a shortcut tool. im very very torn and also sorry for all that on your succession blog but knowing youre a fantastic artist whos recently been dealing with this sort of impossibility to make art i wonder if you have some insight in this area.

sending love!

i appreciate u wanting to know my opinion on a Hot Topic such as this! i dunno man i have an aversion to any definition of art of any kind that requires effort or skill as essential features that make the art “real”. i think a lot of what is happening with AI discourse is that people are appropriately appalled by the way capitalism mangles creative output and even what kind of relationships artists can have with their work and with the rest of the world. i do not have a problem with a machine that digests and reconfigures information — a machine is just a machine. if one copied the way i make texture with colored pencil and produced an approximation of a new original work by me, i would be fascinated by what reactions i might have to it. would i feel threatened by it? would i be flattered? what might it open up for me, to see my work broken into a particular machine’s data? this is just a dream, though. i see many artists understandably frightened by what the exploiter class may choose to do with their new toys (and what they are already doing to us with them). it just sucks to see that very plain class antagonism passed over with arguments about the “purity” of human-made art, how it is somehow apparent to any observer when a work is truly endowed with a “soul” (if these arguments sound eerily like fascist aesthetic principles, it’s because they are fascistic).

and then to see people cheering for their own doom with this thing of mr. game of thrones & co suing chatGPT, complete with condescending explanations of how it’s not going to hurt fanfic writers because the problem these multimillionaires have is actually with people monetizing their work, and the true humble Fan would ne’er ask a but penny. do people really not see how this is making the divide between the “artist” and the “common person” greater? it is so goddamn expensive to survive right now, and the wealthy are using fear of technology as a tool to prevent you from making money, and yes, making art at all. only those with enough capital to protect their intellectual property with the force of the law are allowed to express themselves through art. yes, i think it should be well within your rights to bind and sell (for money, yes, money) your game of thrones fanfiction. so many of us are living in poverty right now, bombarded by entertainment but prevented from ever chewing it up or spitting it out. ed roth’s rat fink character had it right. fuck mickey mouse. like, we’re actually back to saying “fuck mickey mouse” being really cool. put him in a blender full of data, have it put him into a beach scene with BBW anime versions of lara croft and princess peach. intellectual property is a historically recent phenomenon. it is a tool to make the rich richer and get you well and squarely fucked. theoretically, yeah, it sounds good to have your work and livelihood honored and protected, but just like they’re trying to replace artists and actors and writers with AI, every single tool becomes a weapon in the hands of the rich. the hell people are worried they need more punishing copyright law to fix is already here. the woman who designed care bears & strawberry shortcake never saw a penny from it. AI art is only a threat in the hands of the corporations that happily do these things in the first place.

anyways. lol. i’m not very technologically minded in my own art practice — i’m not naturally drawn to new technology as a part of my work, and find many of the results i’ve seen from current AI art tech to be kind of aesthetically unpleasant. artwork contains unpleasantness, though. i’m not really interested in arguments over what artwork “should” contain, only what it does. i think the best AI art i’ve seen (ie: the stuff i’ve enjoyed the most) has been from alan resnick:

it is so terrifically disquieting. it leans into what makes AI-generated BBW lara croft kind of difficult to actually jack off to. the overlapping lines of bodies, the nonsense text. but then, if this work has merit, is that because alan resnick is uniquely special, thus proving the point that the technology is only valid in the hands of a “real artist”? can mr. resnick be said to be the “artist” of these images at all, because he trained a program to his own style and input interesting ides? does he deserve lots of money for his work creating iconic adult swim shorts like this house has people in it? well sure

or would this art only have value if somebody put a tremendous amount of labor into it? you know. my mother used to tell me, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work”. she said she should nail the phrase to my forehead, like martin luther at the church doors. having very recently become disabled & chronically ill, i don’t believe it anymore. i believe we should be able to use technology to make ourselves more free. we should not be so financially insecure that we are threatened by anyone expressing themselves with something we made. the ultra-wealthy are threatened by infringement because they need everybody else to stay poor, and the poor are threatened because they do not want to be poor any longer. it’s got nothing to do with strange scrambled pictures. if i could take pictures of every work of art i’ve ever loved and put it into a machine that mixes it up and turns it into a monster, i would do it just for a bittersweet laugh at it.

[commsroom]

i need to relisten to wolf359 bc it was YEARS ago so i don't remember much, but i have this specific idea about hera post-canon

i don't remember if they get her onto the escape vessel (im pretty sure they have to? she has the power of navigation being a literal slave station?) but when they get back to earth, in the chaos that ensues, jacobi makes sure to somehow... store hera? only her personality matrix, if that's possible. he could break into the high performance computing cluster of some university and store her in a little known spot, then "break her out" later.

i don't remember how much in character this is (he seemed a bit more chummy with the haephestus crew by this point), but i imagined him building either (1) a robot body (who knows how common that is on earth at this point) or (2) an eyepiece and earpiece for here's personality to exist in, so she can in SOME way go out, see the world and talk to them still once they're off the escape vessel.

i want her to still be with them even when they're not on a ship anymore.

first: you should absolutely relisten! and you should let me know your thoughts, when you relisten. especially if it's been years, i'd be really curious to know if and how your opinions have changed!

thankfully, you remember right - hera does go back with them, and the final scene and sentiment of the show definitely implies that eiffel, hera, and minkowski intend to stick together. they would fight for her to stay with them. which does get potentially complicated, from both a legal and practical standpoint.

(and i won't get into my thoughts about post-canon jacobi here, but i will say... he went to MIT and was friends with maxwell; he's more likely than eiffel or minkowski or lovelace to know people who know people who could maybe help hera. and wolf 359 loves to put characters in situations where they have to rely on people they don't particularly like. they've even done that with jacobi and hera specifically - ep 57. "sure. fine. as long as it's not jacobi doing it, it's fine." cut to jacobi doing it. of course.)

i don't think AI is actually that common in the world of wolf 359; hera is the first AI eiffel and minkowski have met, and even maxwell, working for the "best AI research lab in the country" was unaware of the existence of "full-minded" AI (however that's defined) until she was recruited by goddard in 2013. my impression is that it's, like, something people are aware of, but it's still very detached from the average person's life, and AI personhood is not even a consideration yet. having an android body would definitely make hera... visible, in some ways that she might not like.

maybe worth noting that goddard is also very into biotech, and there's some interesting... overlap with that and the dear listeners' duplicates in terms of what it asks about 'artificiality', in my opinion. wolf 359 is very much a show about humanity, and i think any post-canon extension of those themes would have to be about... learning to be a person on earth, with all that entails, and the way that applies to hera's situation is meaningful to me. all of which is just kind of a rambling way to say, yes, i'm also totally in favor of hera having a body. like, on one hand, because i think there's something to it as a discussion about disability and bodies in general, with the way it would re-contextualize her experiences on the hephaestus and the pain she's been living with - and that a lot of things she experienced without a body and felt were unique to her, she would still experience with one. but i also think it's the best option for her; i really think anything else would by design deny her autonomy and freedom of movement on earth. from a more sentimental standpoint, i just want her to be able to go to a real beach and put her hands in the ocean.

[iam93percentstardust]

Hey love! How about some winteriron h/c fluff? Millennial vet Bucky, Tony as his generous amazing self just without IM. T picks B as a test subject for his project on prosthetics he started after making a new [blank] for himself after Afghanistan. B expects the public Tony Stark persona and so he's a bit rude (cuz "fuck corporations and the superwealthy") but can't afford to say no, T picked him cuz he read B's profile and found him hilarious&refreshing. Snarks ensue. You know how it ends ;)

This ended up diverging a little from the prompt but I hope you’ll still like it :)

Also on ao3 here

~

“If there’s one thing I’ve proven,” Stark says on the screen, “it’s that you can count on me to pleasure myself.”

Bucky snorts and shakes his head in disgust. Maybe he shouldn’t be so disgusted by the guy seeing as he’s the one offering to build him a new arm but honestly, Bucky just thinks it’s a publicity stunt. He knows the type of guy that Tony Stark is. He was at the last SI weapons demonstration before Stark nearly got himself blown up and he remembers how drunk the guy had been. He remembers Stark leering at Steve before climbing into a jeep with members of their sister troop—good soldiers, men and women who hadn’t deserved to die defending someone like Stark.

So what if Stark had stopped making weapons?

So what if it had turned out that Stane was double dealing?

So what if it isn’t actually Stark’s fault that Bucky had his arms blown off a few months after Stark announced he wasn’t going to make weapons anymore and the DoD had turned to Hammer who apparently couldn’t even make a decent bomb that blew up while he was setting it?

People are dead because Stark couldn’t pull his goddamn head out of his ass, because he’s just like every other billionaire in the world, obsessed with his own wants and his own wishes and expects the world to bow to his every whim. And now, when he gets called in front of Congress to account for breaking his contract with the DoD, he makes a complete mockery out of the proceedings. Not that that’s all that hard and honestly, Bucky would have probably done the same thing if he’d been in Stark’s position.

Bucky wouldn’t have even accepted the offer of the prosthetic if it hadn’t been for Steve signing the paper for him. He would have told Stark exactly where he could stuff his publicity stunt of a philanthropic endeavor. Steve had been the one to fish SI’s letter out of the trash, sign the waivers and the forms, and mail it back to a Ms. Potts to tell her that he was apparently accepting SI’s oh-so-generous offer.

Eventually, he’ll get Steve back for that. Probably after he gets used to having another arm.

“Mr. Barnes?” someone asks, walking into the waiting area from one of the many branching hallways. “Tony’s ready for you now.”

He stands, tucking his phone back into his pocket, and joins her. She’s pretty enough and once upon a time, he probably would have even flirted with her but that was back when he had two working arms and self-confidence. Now he has one arm, a cheap prosthetic that makes his shoulder seize in pain sometimes, and he’s in therapy to get his head straight.

…Dr. Beck probably wouldn’t call it that though and he’d probably get upset that Bucky is, even if it’s in his own head. He’s big on that whole “use nice terms to describe your PTSD” thing.

…He’s in therapy to learn how to manage his PTSD.

There. That sounds nice, right?

“Tony’s sorry he couldn’t get to you sooner,” the woman tells him as they walk down the hall. Her heels click on the floor, sounding a nice rhythm that Bucky finds himself emulating unconsciously. “He had you lined up for the program ages ago but then everything with Obadiah and—”

“It’s fine,” Bucky mutters. He probably wouldn’t have wanted to meet Stark back then anyway. He doesn’t even want to meet him now.

The woman stops in front of room that looks like it should have glass walls but are currently covered in some sort of black…stuff, Bucky isn’t sure what. A keypad pops out of the wall right next to the door and she types something in that looks long and complicated. Bucky looks away so she’s not worried about him trying to guess the password even though he doubts he could have remembered it even if he’d been hovering right over her shoulder.

The door slides open and Bucky follows her inside—into a wonderland.

There’s a whole bunch of absolutely gorgeous vintage cars in one corner and what looks like actual robots fighting over a smoothie machine in another and blue holograms filling the air and Stark himself talking to…thin air?

Except not thin air because a moment later thin air says, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sir.”

“Sass!” Stark exclaims. “I’ll donate you to MIT, see if I don’t. Let the undergrads pick you apart.”

“As you say at least once a day, sir.”

“What do I have to do to get some respect around here?” he mutters and before Bucky can stop himself, he snickers.

Stark wheels around, seemingly startled, and peers first at Bucky and then turns to the woman. “Pepper,” he laments. “Why do you let me make a fool of myself?”

“You do that just fine on your own,” she says, smiling fondly.

“Hmph. Sass from you, sass from my own AI—”

“That was an AI?” Bucky blurts out. The articles don’t say anything about something like that.

Stark looks at him again and then asks, “Which answer is less likely to make you think of Skynet? Never mind, not important. Your arm is what’s important and I put it—somewhere. I put it somewhere. What the fuck did I do with it? Pepper!”

“Have you checked the fabricator?”

“…No.” He wanders off towards the robots and some sort of fancy device behind them.

Pepper must see the shell-shocked expression on Bucky’s face as he tries to put together the image of the polished Tony Stark he’s seen on TV with the greasy mechanic wearing goggles on the top of his head in front of him because she says, “You’ll get used to him.”

“Uh-huh,” he agrees doubtfully.

“Do you have a preference on color?” Stark calls from the other end of the—what does he call it, a lab? A workshop?

“What?”

“Color!”

“You might as well join him,” Pepper says. “He really wants your input on this.”

“Why?”

He must sound as confused as he feels because Pepper smiles understandingly at him and says, “Because it’s your arm. I know Tony puts on this front for—everyone, really—but he’s not as bad as he makes himself seem. He blames himself for you losing your arm.”

“Why would he do that? It’s not his fault Hammer makes shitty bombs.”

“No, but it is his fault that the Army went to Hammer in the first place. He still thinks this is the right direction to take the company in but he still feels guilty for what happened to you.”

“Do you agree with him?”

“About the company?” She looks over at Stark, a wistful look in her eyes. “I’ve always thought that Tony could do something more. About you? It doesn’t really matter how I feel. It matters how both of you feel.” She pauses and then adds, “He really liked your application, you know.”

“Application? What application? I didn’t apply for this.”

“No we both know that,” she reassures him. “Your friend did. Said you were too stubborn to take a handout from a stuck-up billionaire to fill out the application yourself. It made Tony laugh.”

Huh. That says something about him, doesn’t it? That he can laugh about being called a stuck-up billionaire?

He glances over at Stark who’s now jumping up and down in the air, waving his arms to get him to go over there. “Barnes!” Stark calls. “I want your opinion on the color of your arm.”

“Wait, that’s what he wants to know?” Bucky asks, amazed. The world suddenly feels like it’s been flipped upside down. “He’s asking my opinion about that?”

“It matters to him,” Pepper says simply. She raises her voice to ask, “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“That’ll be all, Miss Potts,” Stark calls back, grinning like it’s an old joke between the two of them. “Barnes!”

As Pepper leaves, Bucky picks his way across the room, carefully dodging holograms even after Stark says it’s okay to walk through them. “You know, you can call me Bucky,” he says as he joins him.

“Sure, I’ll do that just as soon as you call me Tony,” Stark says distractedly.

“Can do, Tony.”

Tony visibly freezes, shivers a moment, and then flashes him a quick smile. It’s there and gone but it’s still surprisingly lovely, something real and sweet that Bucky thinks he’s gonna have to ponder when he gets home tonight.

“So, color?”

“I don’t really have a preference.”

“Great!” Tony says enthused. “Because I had an idea last night for interlocking plates.”

“Like armor?”

“Yes, but sexier.”

And his enthusiasm must be infectious because Bucky thinks about that quicksilver smile he saw a minute ago and says, “Sure thing, Tony.”

[tumblunni]

Random game idea that came to mind: clockwork man simulator

I dunno, i just got the general image in my head of a soft homey aesthetic equivelant of that terrible game about the androids. Itd be more like just a life-living game, like stuff like animal crossing or harvest moon. Just fully exploring the perspective of these creatures and the world that created them, rather than BOOM ACTION SETPIECES or whatever

I only have some scattered ideas for it tho, and not really any idea of a main plot or gameplay gimmick or 3 act structure or like.. Anything to take this from idea to game, lol.

SO ITS MISC IDEAS TIME

* more of an olden timey fantasy style instead of sci fi. Youre still an artificial person created to run errands for humans, but youre more of a combination of clockwork and magic. There's still an element of being made of inanimate object parts but there's also some glowy energy core or something. Possibly would be interesting if it was something unusual to use as a power source? Like i dunno, a bell or an acorn or a teacup or one of those rocks with the hole in it that sometimes wash up on beaches. Or just a glowy orb of Generically Defined Energy Substance, which flows through you like aesthetically pleasing glowy veins

* you're a service clockwork homunculus thingy, bought by a disabled person who needs help around the house. PERHAPS A SWEET OLD GRANDMA! Whatever i decide on (IT'LL PROBABLY BE THE GRANDMA), your owner is a kind person who sees you as part of the family and feels guilty using an android as they believe you are absolutely a real person and wish they could set you free. Unfortunately theyre kinda one of the people who needs androids the most, as they dont have any family who can help them. At the same time though, they are very old and quite resigned to nobody caring about them, plus theyre just a good person who'd put your life over their own. So i feel like the plot would literally start with this person trying to set you free and you are just like "i do npt understand the concept, that is not in my programming". Its become kind of a morning routine now to hear "youre free! Get out, dammit!" and have a brisk argument over breakfast that inevitably always ends with you refusing. Grandma's prpbably got so desperate they're resorting to tactics like trying to trick you into getting on the bus out of town or "if you dont leave im gonna hold my breath and i wont stop til i pass out". All inevitabley failing! So they just try and help you understand your sentience and become more independant, encouraging you to take free time every day and go around the town to enjoy yourself. Which is kinda a concept you dont understand yet, so its just like MISSION RECEIVED: WALK IN CIRCLE AROUND PERIMETER OF TOWN. And its kind of a hit and miss experience because the people in this town have never seen an android before- this magic is usually a thing for rich people and this proposed scheme of disability assistance androids is still in its test run. Some people are suspicious or hateful, but there are others who welcome you to the village and brighten up your day. Not just a world of 100% everyone assholes to make a melodramatic point delivered awfully through racist stereotypes.

* i think a good subplot with this disabled grandma would be to show her regaining her independance too. Like she starts off quite fatalistic and used to nobody caring about her, all this mobility aid stuff is new and she feels like its too complicated and she'll never get it, or its too expensive and she doesnt deserve it, or all the nonsense that ableist society drills into people. But with the support of her new friend and access to more tools to help take her life into her own hands, she starts regaining hope again! Like ironically she felt like her previous carers were all the kinds of awful things people expect these androids to be. Robotic, emotionless monsters who dont care about the person's feelings and comfort, and certainly not independance. She suffered from a lot of the same nightmares that androids do too: being forced into a rigid schedule, limited in her options, deprived of basic rights, being told how she's supposed to feel, etc. But to an android that all seems like an inefficient way to do things! My function is healing and human healing efficiency is decreased in this circumstance! I am incapable of ignoring data due to personal bias! Basically imagine MAGIC BAYMAX ok. Anyway this plot would progress with grandma regaining her smile and eventually itd be a super happy day when she's able to get her new wheelchair that she can wheel to the shops on her own without needing someone to push her. Itd be really sweet from the player's perspective to get used to saying goodbye to her every morning and then suddenly you see her wandering around the shops with everyone else and she can become a part of the vibrant town too. Im thinking give her more complex AI than all the other villagers even, like give her a more complicated set of actions and move routes and stuff like SHE IS EVERYWHERE and she is LOVING IT! Life is back where it belongs: in the hands of the person living it! And it also intensifies the message of android slavery not being necessary or moral or good. Like i mean here this lady benefitted from getting an android but literally all she needed was a friend, a healthcare professional who gave a shit, and affordable access to mobility aids. Humans could have done that if they werent lazy assholes! And this android deserves the right to the same uplifting independenceifying experience they helped this grandma have!!

* random idea: all the events you encounter on each daily walk are actually stored in your inventory as items. Memories of experiences, good or bad, become literally experience for you! They each affect stats in different ways because of what you learned from that moment. Maybe bad experiences give you combat abilities and good ones help with your daily life skills and development of personality? And its possible to crack or even shatter a memory, if new experiences end up clashing with it. Usually its just 'oh i learned the more advanced version of this skill through better understanding of why humans do it', but also traumatic memories damaging good ones, and good ones helping ease traumatic ones. And maybe you could solve puzzles and make friendships through using these memory items? Youre faced with a challenge and have to make the connections in your mind to figure out which past experience is relevant here. And becoming more talented at something would help narrow down the choices you get given? And being unskilled would do screwy stuff with the interface like putting the correct option far away near the bottom or mixing up the names and icons of each memory. (Dunno how i'd program that though!)

* Maybe character customization similar to Medabots? The games were so cool and ahead of their time, you get to collect hundreds of different robot base frames and then mix and match the parts to make your own cool aesthetic! Shame it was only used for fighting though, that could be cool in a more social game too! Like go out wearing different fashions to help befriend different people, but its more fun cos its ROBOT FASHIONS! 'hey grandma do u think fred will like this arm or this arm?' She fusses over you all excitedly cos you showing an interest in fashion is a good sign of developing free will! Though you still get stuck in logic loops of 'you should wear what you like best, honey' 'HUMAN OPINION IS OF HIGHER PRIORITY' ...god i think i just made this character so i can ramble Relateable Social Anxiety Moments BUT ROBOTS

* possible ideas for Memory Events you can find around town! Meeting a cute neighbour cat- a fascinating creature you were not programmed to deal with, as you're a hospital android who isnt even meant to leave one single room for your whole life. You get absolutely entranced by the confusing small carpet with legs, and spend all morning interrogating it on why it wishes to rub its face on you. Why is your motor overheating, tiny carpet? Human master, how do you troubleshoot this noise?

* Another idea! You get 'mission: count the steps on the stairs to town' popping out of nowhere, and at first you ignore it because this is an illogical directive that does not come from a human. But it keeps happening every time you go here!! You try finding new ways to get to town crossing through fields or forests or walking directly into the path of a horsedrawn carriage, but ALAS it seems the only efficient path is those curious curious steps! Only then do you finally realise the mystery command is coming from yourself! You're not used to this strange concept of just..wanting to do something, all by yourself. You talk to your human and she says that's 'natural curiosity', 'personality', 'free will'...things that seem impossible to understand. You ask her to take you back to the shop to get this fault fixed, but she says its good and you should try acting on it. But it'll serve no purpose!! BUT AAARGH I HAVE TO KEEP SEEING THOSE STEPS EVERYDAY!! Eventually you do count them and you find it makes you satisfied for no logical reason. And that was the end of that small crisis, but you'll forever be confused by the whole thing! The next week you're like "what if i organized all the blue things with the blue things" and youre intensely frustrated at yourself. Human grandma says this is a "taste for fashion" but you remind her that you do not have a tongue. (And then she gets you the robo parts catalog and you unlock customization. Yay!)

* Possible idea for a sad subplot! A new human visits the village and he seems very strange, sometimes seeming kind and other times being angry and standoffish. You think its a simple 'jerk with a heart of gold' story but the truth is a lot stranger! It turns out this stranger is actually an important bishop in disguise, and he has multiple androids acting as body doubles to protect him while he's on the road. Theyre supposed to just be empty husks who only know how to imitate, but they clearly have their own personalities! You're tasked with finding all these runaway androids and returning them to their master for a reward, leading to a goofy lil game of hide and seek with twelve of the same guy. But it starts to get a bit sad because they're all convinced theyre the real one, and whenever they stumble into holes in their memory they freak out. When they all see each other gathered together its an absolute despair explosion and theyre forced to face the truth. And you can help them bond together as brothers and develop their own individual identities, even helping them pick out their own new faces from your set of fashion roboparts. Sadly you cant keep them here for long because itd obviously be suspicious to have exactly twelve new people move into the town right when twelve bots went missing. So you get help from one of grandma's friends to send them off in a stagecoach to another town where they can find employment and start their own life disguised as humans. The asshole bishop obviously doesnt react well to his androids vanishing into the night, but he never thinks of blaming you because after all you're only an android and you could never choose to help others out of all that free will you dont have. He just berates you for being so incompetant as to fail his quest to find them, and you get your reward taken back. Oh no~ i am~ very ashamed~ i will go tell my human that my ocular circuits require recalibrating~ (internally: HAHA YEH FUCK U OLD MAN) Grandma is super proud of you!

And thats all i got so far

[polteageistplush]

ok literally no one asked for this but im going to be putting my opinion about each of the splatoon 2 bosses under the readmore (to protect ppl from spoilers)

remember its jus my opinion so it wont match yours, i jus wanna post my thoughts on em!!

(also  tell me what your favorite and least favorite splat 2 boss is in the replies!! once again ppl who dont want spoilies, dont look at the notes on this and dont look under the readmore!!)

BOSS 1: the bread dude

pretty creative!! i thought its kinda silly but also its a kids game so its allowed to be silly. still its interesting!! its not very difficult, of course, its the first boss. pretty intimidating though, at first!! i think maybe it should kinda rush you to get to the top of it in its final phase though, 1st and 2nd i will excuse bc once again, its the first boss, and its in a kids game. so ppl need to get the hang of things this early on.

overall, i give it  ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 4 out of 5 stars!!

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BOSS 2: samurai dude

a very interesting concept, very unique attacks, but very weak. he’s the 2nd boss still, so its not going to be super strong, but its by far the easiest boss in splatoon overall. i think they couldve made him so he didnt flinch (probably not the right term to use here but its 1 am and im tired) when you hit him a lot, and since he’s a samurai, give him actual armor? i think they could do something similar to boss 3, give him armor that you have to hit a certain spot to remove the armor and then attack him. a very interesting concept, but he doesnt really live up to the samurai part of his title, and is far too easy. 

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ 3 out of 5 stars!!

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BOSS 3: angry gamecube 2: electric boogaloo

its him!! it was nice to see a boss return and then have the difficulty added!! overall a really good and enjoyable boss. my only complaints would be that he doesnt use the gun much except for one time in the 2nd phase. a nice, healthy challenge, you can ink a little bit (depending on your weapon) of the buckle, but not all of it at once unless you have the timing and distance right. the other complaint would be that its easier to climb up his side, instead of the parts falling off like they did in 1. but i’ll let that slide bc maybe they got better technology to build him or smth. 

  ★ ★ ★ ★ * 4 and a half stars!! (i dont have a half star ok. im sorry. accept that instead.)

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BOSS 4: no

-27 out of 5 stars. awful. horrible. i hate

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BOSS 4 realsies this time: shower dude

well. ive had THE worst time with this guy. he’s difficult to reach with most weapons. after playing thru this stage with every weapon, i’ll admit i got the hang of it at the end a bit there. but still, difficult to reach. his attacks arent very strong, so its not that i have a problem surviving, its decent attacks!! i’ll give him that. the sting ray is also a nice touch. a proper 4th boss, attack-wise. but jus. trying to reach the octocopters. its really difficult, especially on the last part of his battle!! its very stressful, i really dont enjoy fighting him because the fight is too  tedious imo.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ i’ll give it 2, because attack wise and creativity n stuff, its very good and interesting, i just think its needlessly complicated because of how hard it is to reach the octocopters. 

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BOSS 5: return of octodad (oh and callie is there, too)

Well. 

Well... unpopular opinion... the music really wasnt that good? but im not going to let that effect my scoring on him. jus personally a bit disappointed with it. it wasnt as good as splat1, i really enjoyed octavios theme from that, and im sad that they didnt even reference it at all. he doesnt collab well with callie... dj, in splatoon 3, lets go solo again, buddy... i miss u

OVERALL, the fight is good, the punching machine and how theres spinning punches. if you dont have your hero shot upgraded, its very difficult. i died. but after i upgraded it, it was significantly easier!! easier than the 4th boss, honestly. i feel like it couldve been a LITTLE more challenging, maybe more bombs or something for the bomb rush? the takoyaki orbs were pretty cool, they dont do much tho. his ink shower attack thing is pretty good, predictable and easy to dodge, but good.

callie tho... she doesnt really like. serve a purpose other than singing? its kinda disappointing. i thought maybe we were going to fight her or smth, that wouldve been cool for the first or maybe 2nd phase. all they gotta do is add octoling AI to her, they have octolings with multiple weapons, so she couldve used mostly anything and it wouldve been neat. i think its a bit of a wasted opportunity tbh?

the rainmaker part is pretty good tho, it was REALLY difficult to get the hang of, but after you know what youre doing its really cool!! 

so, overall,  ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ 3 out of 5 stars. couldve been better, couldve been worse, its interesting and has a bit of a challenge, i just wouldve liked for callie to have a bigger role other than singing.

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so there u have it folks. my opinion that literally no one asked for. this isnt going to reflect what other people think, of course, and i wouldnt judge people for thinking differently about the bosses!! for best results u just gotta play thru them yourself and form your own thoughts on em!!