#seek wildbow

[ishdaj]

Drew Winnifred from the Seek web serial!

[blogishdaj]

Seek 0.1.0 spoilers

> guy with full arm tattoos

> thrown blind into a situation where he's in way in over his head

> dark, possibly traumatic, troublesome past

> surprisingly chill in the face of the horrors

> trusted people who betrayed him

> cannot look directly at the enemy

> amnesia and altered/false memories

> handyman-ish skills

> implied to have mad rizz

Close enough, welcome back Blake Thorburn

[estavionpira]

Reading Seek 0.2.b and it's somewhat concerning that A isn't anywhere in the list of people for Basil to listen to. AI that has control over your entire body and only does what you say because it's what your parents want.

[lilliankillthisman]

Wildbow Antagonists Ranked By How Good They Are At Basketball

11. Barbatorem. Carries scissors at all times and therefore not allowed to run.

10. Goddess/Teacher/Amy Dallon. I don’t believe the antagonists of Ward can play basketball.

9. Davie Cavalcanti/Laird Behaim. Both ordinary middle-aged men with a square build who were killed by complete physical wrecks on their last legs. I don’t care if they were driven by rage and adrenaline if you lose a fight to Blake Thorburn or Natalie Teale you’re not winning a basketball game.

8. Charles Abrams. Undernourished and ill as a mortal man; the only time we see him act physically as the Carmine Exile he wrestles a large centipede to a draw. Unclear whether this is impressive.

7. Genevieve Fray. Huge fan of performance-enhancing drugs. Will quickly pick up the game due to her melted and malleable brain. Undermined by only working out at the library.

6. Jack Slash. Just some guy, but in good shape from running away all the time. Does enjoy games; quick reflexes.

5. Abraham Musser. In good shape, can do magic, and they do usually have basketball courts at posh European boarding schools. Still kind of a loser but easily beats out Jack.

4. Coil. Famously seven and a half feet tall.

3. Conquest. Extremely imposing on the court but not a team player. I can’t imagine him jumping for rebounds or running back in defense. Likely crumbles against strong opposition but large and in charge enough that he could defeat any mundane team by himself.

2. The Infante. The tallest and most physically powerful character on the list. Knows how to lead a team. The tentacles undoubtedly act to extend his range and options on the court. People don’t know this but he used to take his large son Augustus to basketball practice when he was younger.

1. Scion

[artbyblastweave]

After three chapters, one of my big takeaways is that Seek seems really conceptually interested in parents and parenting.

You've got A, raised by parents whose superficial commitment to A's self-determination and self-identification are completely undercut by the invasive dystopian cyberware they use to control them, coupled with the (what I believe to be the) implication that the double edged sword of the post-scarcity future is that A's only reason to exist is that their parents wanted a child- spending their entire childhood being shot down any time they express interest in a career path that could give their life meaning outside of that. All of which feels like the logical terminal point of parenting as a vanity thing. Then you've got Winnifred, whose parents are vastly more involved, attentive, and invested- but in a way that goes hand in hand with a sometimes-uncomfortable spiritual and ideological investment, which in turn manifests as a regiment of full-body invasive modifications so that their child can perpetuate and participate in their culture and lifestyle.

Then you've got Orion, whose "birth" is his much more metaphorical escape from the cryopod (complete with associated womb imagery); out of the three he's arguably the most "liberated" from the context of the people who chose to create him or put him in this situation- popping out of his "womb" with imprinted skills and knowledge and only vague memories- but given the overall survival-horror nature of his situation that's not actually any kind of improvement. (It would frankly dovetail incredibly well with the theory I've seen that it's actually an Onboard who's taken control of a braindead human- total hands off parenting, he was put in this situation by entities that don't even realize he's alive.)

All of which is circling and circling around the central reality of parenting, which is that it's not just something that happens, it's a choice, any way you choose to go about it's a choice. And in our current context there's only really a couple ways to make that choice and they're all a few degrees off from each other anyway, so it fades into the background. But in a society with advanced enough technology that you've really got options, the fact that you're making any choice at all- and the resultant horrible consequences every possible choice will have for your kid- becomes way way more visible. Truly, a web serial aligned with my heartfelt belief that We Are Never Getting Out Of Here

[eddathegreat]

I am way too tired to read it right now but the banner for Orion fucks hard, and I like him 10% more because of this. Weird dead space ginger versus fractal deer fuck.

[ewingstan]

Seek seems to have an interesting viewpoint on AI-generated art. It envisions a future where people don't really make art to be viewed and purchased by others, judging by A's conversation with Addy. And it does frame that as sad in some ways: Addy doesn't react with quite the level of joy we'd expect from receiving a drawing from her kid. A's dream of being a famous artist doesn't seem like it fits in this world.

And yet, it isn't just an "oh this is the death of art and human creativity" perspective. The first time we see this real-time made-for-you art, its a familiar instance of childhood play, with the Onboards adding details to a pretend shoot-out. The next, the movie with prompts input by A and Quinn, is an instance of kids collaborating to get a unique story, like kids asking for their parent's bedtime story to include pirates and moonmen. It seems like this world doesn't really respect specific, individual pieces of art as objects to be viewed and interacted with multiple times. There isn't a cultural context for "Great works" or the like. But such a view of art isn't necessarily what art's always been, and Seek doesn't view it as something we should expect to be in the future. Its world's ephemeral, machine-created art isn't framed as soulless; it's an interaction between tools and users for purely creative purposes between friends.

And yes, that itself is given a bit of melancholy. Wildbow seems to be setting up a theme that a post-scarcity, post-want life can start to feel meaningless. Even still, since machine-made art is often bemoaned as the ultimate corruption of art as commodity, its novel to see it positioned instead as unbridled play.

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

Despite our best efforts, few survived faster than light travel.  None survived the trip back.  So we took a different approach altogether.  We started bringing the universe to us. There’s no point.  We’ve solved it.  Everything humanity needs, it has.  We’ve reached the finish line. There’s no point.  What hasn’t changed in the last four hundred years won’t change in our lifetimes. There’s no point.  Turn off the lights, close your eyes, and cover your ears, nightmares come manifest. Three storylines from three individuals, worlds and eras apart.

-Wildbow introducing Seek

[ronthedunedain]

From twigdice (circa 2019), I guess Winnifred is our starting protagonist.

[titanfortuna]

friend and I made a seek bingo...

[victoriadallonfan]

Got some free time, AMA about Wildbow webserials

[ishdaj]

Basilisk "Basil" from Seek

Thoroughly enjoying the latest wildbow web serial and had to do a quick art of my favorite boi, Basil.

Textless version under the cut

Tried doing something vaguely lizardly/dragon-y with the circuitry on A's face, which I modelled from her chapter banner

[blogishdaj]

Seek 1.6.B spoilers

Basilisk IDLX-B Elabre Systems Seekwebserial is now my new blorbo my new babygirl. Incredibly badass, incredibly chill, incredibly messed up existence. Bro is the true Space Blake/Rose Thorburn, doing the scifi equivalent of advising a hardheaded 'sibling' through a mirror / being a living tattoo / possessing the body of someone else.

Does he have feelings? Questionable. A personality? Kinda. A body of his own? He can puppet his owner's, sometimes. Free will? Absolutely not. He is trapped in subservience to some dystopian AI company and exists as a nanotech lattice embedded in an extremely stubborn 16 year-old girl's body, who is his client. However he is a good boi doing his best <3 I await his ascension into omnipotent superintelligence and/or civilization-ending cognitohazard.

[estavionpira]

Hey all! Check out my fanart of Winnifred from Seek!

[tomatosauce5]

I was playing 20 questions with friends the other day and the way we play it you get a note with the character you have to guess taped on your forehead. Halfway through the game I had to go to the bathroom and there it was basically like I was in Seek webserial.

The bathroom mirror had turned into a cognito hazard that I had to avoid looking at at all costs. Routine and instinct were telling me to look but if I did the sigil on my forehead would scramble my brain and do irreparable damage (telling me my friends had picked Britney Spears for me and spoiling the game).

In the end I managed not to look tho so I figure I'm pretty much ready for the DEER now.

[artbyblastweave]

Now a trend I’ve noticed, not necessarily in the culture at large but certainly in the circles I run in on tumblr, is this sort of persistent association between extreme transhumanism and atomization (positive). Transhumanism as escape, transhumanism as abdication or repudiation of familial obligation and hidebound tradition and societal expectation in favor of absolute individual autonomy and self realization. Which is why I found Winnifer’s first chapter very interesting because it’s like, no, actually. Not necessarily. Now watch us turbocircumcise this baby