#so you can see why the ai shit bugs me

[doppiomacchiato]

in every group im in i immediately become the proofreader. like if someone in a movie was like "oh no how do i write this professional email" "i know a guy" im the guy. people from high school still send me stuff to look over.

which is funny bc normally all my suggestions are like "if you really want to piss em off then sign off with 'thank you for your concern' with an exclamation point"

[freedomfireflies]

Off the Shelf*

Summary: The second part to 404*

The one where you hate working with Harry and can’t ever seem to agree.

Except on one thing.

Word Count: 3.9k

*Contains Mature and Explicit content! Please only consume what you feel comfortable with!��You are so much more important!*

(Note: This edit is not mine!! I believe the @ is on it, but full credit to the incredible creator! It's so perfect!!)

“And what seems to be the problem?”

Instantly, you and Harry are at each other's throats.

“I told him two fucking times to check his email for confirmation—”

“She wouldn’t shut up about the goddamn code—”

“—like that’s somehow my fault when he’s never on time—”

“—already in the middle of fucking rewriting the last sequence—”

“—which is ridiculous because I already told him—”

“—can’t do fucking anything when she’s yapping in my ear all goddamn day—”

“Okay, okay, all right,” Mr. Prescott sighs, raising his palms in surrender. “Let’s just take a breath—”

“She’s fucking up our project,” Harry interjects before leaning back. “Sir.”

Mr. Prescott rests his arms on his desk and glances between you. “From what I remember, the two of you agreed to work on finalizing the AI program. Comb through the bugs and whatnot.”

“Yeah, well, that was before he decided it was a waste of his time,” you retort, ignoring Harry’s obvious glare.

“That’s not what I said,” he huffs. “I said that we need to be working on expanding the GUI—”

“Except that wasn’t a part of our job, so—”

“Oh, and what? I can’t try to make the program better?”

“Maybe if you knew how—”

“I got hired for the same fucking job you did—”

“A job you don’t even want to do—”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t do it—”

“Oh, bite me, Harold—”

“All right, all right,” Mr. Prescott interjects, running a hand down his cheek. “Listen, the two of you are more than qualified for the position and perfectly capable of executing the sequence you were designing. I understand it can be hard to collaborate, but this is what you agreed on—”

“I don’t mind collaborating as long as he does what I need him to do,” you correct while Harry scoffs and uses his knuckle to shove his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “He just doesn’t like to listen.”

“If what you were saying was worth listening to, maybe I would,” he agrees. “But until then, I’d like to handle my shit and you can handle yours.”

Stuck without much dispute, you bring your attention back to Mr. Prescott, eager for his response. 

The poor, older gentleman crosses his arms and studies you both, seemingly unconvinced but perhaps too exhausted to fight it. “That’s fine by me. As long as you’re reporting your progress to your supervisors – and to each other – I don’t see why you can’t work on different aspects of the sequence.”

“Thank you, sir,” you exhale, glancing toward your partner who’s already turning around on his heel. “Uh, we really appreciate it. And we won’t cause any more trouble. We swear.”

“She swears,” Harry calls, already halfway out the door. “I don’t swear anything.”

Biting back a snort, you scurry after him and toss Mr. Prescott one final, “Thank you again!” before the door falls shut.

Harry is rounding the corner when you finally catch up, hands shoved into his dark jean pockets, and shoulders slightly tense. It’s not unusual, you suppose. He’s always tense. Muscles rigid beneath his clothing. Lip perpetually stuck between his teeth as he gnaws on the pink fibers until they tear and bleed. And glasses that are always about halfway down his nose from the bouncing of his knee.

He’s striding through the lab like he’s got somewhere important to be, and it drives you fucking mad because he’s technically done for the day. The only thing the two of you have left is a staff meeting with your supervisor before everybody is allowed to head home, and that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

But you don’t like when he walks like that. You aren’t sure why, but it’s always irritated you. Like he thinks he’s so goddamn special – so important. Like his presence is so valuable. And even worse, he’s always walking away from you. Like your presence isn’t.

However, instead of going straight to his desk – his favorite hiding spot – he rounds another corner and disappears into the next hall.

You pause, unsure whether or not to follow. He had to have known you were right behind him, so is he leading you somewhere? Or is he simply trying to escape you?

Either option seems likely.

Curiosity outweighs logic, and you continue after him until you manage to find where he’s disappeared to.

He’s hiding in the shadows of the abandoned walkway, lurking near a door you don’t recognize, his eyes now on you.

You skid to a stop, confused and a little cautious of the smirk on his face. “Uh…what? What are you…the hell are you doing?”

“You are so fucking annoying, you know that?” he scoffs, nodding his chin at you. “‘Oh, Mr. Prescott, Harry’s being mean to me. Oh, Mr. Prescott, Harry won’t do what I want.’”

Your eyes narrow at the falsetto tone of voice used to mock you. “Fuck you, I’m just trying to get our shit done and over with so we can move on—”

“Clearly,” he hums, but it’s riddled with sarcasm. “No, yeah. You wasting time going through the same data I’ve already been through is a great use of our time—”

“I’m going through it because I’m trying to make it better—”

“I made it. It was already better—”

“God, you are so fucking dumb—”

“Yeah, and you’re a cunt,” he retorts before he’s reaching for the door and swinging it open. “Get in.”

A bit stunned by the sudden and strange command, you blink. “...what?”

“I said, get. In. What, are you deaf and stupid?”

“Harry, it’s the middle of the goddamn day—”

“Get in the fucking closet, Tinkerbell, before I come over there and make you.”

Your eyes roll but you aren’t about to pretend you aren’t intrigued. Despite your revulsion for him, he seems to be in possession of the cheat code to your sex drive. All it takes is a look or a suggestive comment (or a rather rude demand for you to get inside a tiny storage closet) for you to fall victim to his intentions.

And it’s been that way since you met him. 

Which only makes it that much more infuriating.

You obey – with a pointed scowl – striding past him and into the small space as he follows suit and pulls the door shut.

A light flickers on overhead, allowing you to see Harry’s amused expression as you huff, “Now what—”

He kisses you. Instantly and without a single moment of pause. His palms quickly press to the wall beside your head, caging you between his arms as he takes your tongue between his lip and sucks. 

His glasses are cold against your face. You remember how they used to scratch you when the two of you first started this little arrangement but they don’t as much anymore. You think he might have changed the frames for this very reason, but you aren’t sure.

After all, that would be nice, and Harry isn’t nice.

“Harry—” you pant during a quick gasp for air. “We don’t have time—”

“I’m making time,” he counters, pressing his hips into yours while his mouth moves to your neck.

You want to snort your exasperation, but you’re too far lost in the feel of his body. “I thought you had shit to handle.”

“I do,” he replies smoothly, his hand now curving around your cunt until he can squeeze it tight in his grasp. “This is me handling my shit.”

His touch is unforgiving but incredibly welcome, and you whine softly before quickly reaching for his hair. “I thought I was annoying.”

“You are,” he says, sucking bruises into the space below your ear. “But there’s something about the way you stomp your little foot and tell on me that gets me all hot and bothered.”

You yank on his curls until he hisses, although he’s still much too smug. “So this has nothing to do with the girl who dropped by earlier? Or the fact that you apparently couldn’t finish?”

His eyebrow raises but he’s biting back a smile. “What girl?”

“Ha. Very funny. Are you gonna fuck me or are you gonna try to be cute?”

“Why can’t I do both?” he retorts, grinning wildly before pressing his lips to yours once more. 

It feels familiar, this routine. This dance you’ve so quickly memorized, and it becomes increasingly easier to play along as you scratch your nails against his scalp and tug on the loop of his pants.

His hand slips into your jeans, the tips of his rough fingers smoothing down the front of your panties. A teasing touch, and you jolt in his hold before grabbing onto him harder.

“Harry,” you sigh, lashes fluttering as your head falls back into the wall behind you. “God, just…hurry. Please—”

“No.” It’s an easy response. Cruel, almost. But he’s focused on you. On your body and the way it responds to him. “I’m working right now, Tink. Leave me to it.”

He crouches down, pulling on the fabric around your legs until it pools near your ankles. He seems tantalized by the way your pussy sits so close to his face. The way it looks behind the pale blue cotton with the tiny bow. 

He surges forward and presses his mouth to you. Lapping at the material until there’s a rather obvious wet patch – either from you or him, you can’t really be sure – while making your eyes roll back.

“Shit,” you whimper, once again grabbing onto his curls for stability. “God, Harry…we don’t have time for this.”

He smirks against your cunt before dragging his tongue over your covered clit. “D’ya want me to stop?”

Your lips form around the word, “Yes,” but what comes out is a very strained and breathless, “No. Please, no.”

He grins, large palms kneading on the flesh of your thighs to keep them spread before he lands a firm smack to your leg. “Good girl.”

His technique is sinful. Ruthless yet mesmeric, and you look at him with a kind of wonder you can’t explain.

Harry isn’t anything like what you expected. He’s incredibly smart and focused. He cares about his work to a point of obsession. He’s a perfectionist, through and through. He’s diligent and has a great attention for detail.

And yet this man has the most insatiable appetite for sex. 

His list of kinks is a mile long. He’s out almost every night at bars, at clubs, at parties. He likes degradation, he likes pain, he likes bondage. He likes to bend you over your desk and spank you until your skin is raw and red. He likes to yank on your hair and drag his teeth down your throat. He likes to go deep – likes to go hard and slow. 

You aren’t sure why you assumed he’d be docile and a bit vanilla in bed. Perhaps it was the glasses or the way he always corrected your grammar. Which you know wasn’t exactly a fair assumption, but you didn’t have much else to go on.

Well…until the first time.

“You’re holding your breath,” he murmurs from beneath you, forcing your attention back. “Stop doing that.”

Sucking in a quiet inhale, you oblige. “Sorry.”

You have a rather dangerous habit of taking in large gasps for air when he’s eating you out or making you feel good and then forgetting to release them. Which is all fun and games until you begin to feel a bit lightheaded and nearly pass out. In fact, one time you almost did, and it had scared Harry so bad, he refused to touch you for about a week.

Glancing up to make sure you’ve obeyed, he nods once. “Attagirl.”

Your cheeks warm slightly at the praise – another nasty habit you wish you could break – before he’s diving back in.

Despite the way the seconds are ticking by on your watch, Harry continues to revel in the taste of you, even through your panties. He hums until your legs shake, head bobbing to accompany his mouthing at your pussy.

He enjoys eating you, even like this. He always has and you can’t say you quite understand it. Perhaps it’s the power it gives him. The way you whine and whimper. The way you grab at him and give him everything you have to offer. The way you fucking hate him…yet you still let him in.

“Harry, please,” you nearly groan, tugging on him again. “If you’re gonna fuck me, then fuck me already. We don’t have time.”

He makes a tsking sort of noise before nudging his tongue against the front of your underwear. “God, you’re no fucking fun, you know that? And to think I was actually gonna take my time with you.”

Your expression is playfully unamused, but you can’t deny you’re somewhat curious.

He lands another spank to your leg and stands back up. “But that’s not what you want, huh? You just want me to be quick. Want me to fill you up and send you on your way. Don’t want me to play with you.”

You watch as he flicks his belt open and steps closer to you, a rather salacious look in his eye.

“And wouldn’t that be a shame?” he whispers, long fingers sweeping up the inside of your thigh. “For you to go into that meeting with my cum dripping down your leg? When you can’t do anything about it?”

You feel your breath catch, throat going dry at the way he drags the tip of his nose along your jaw. You want to resist him – you should resist him. And yet… 

“Maybe it would be,” you reply coyly. “If you could get it up.”

To accompany your taunt, you reach down and press your palm to his cock, smirking when he sucks in a sharp hiss through gritted teeth.

“Seems you’ve gone soft on me,” you murmur, squeezing once more for good measure before releasing him. “That’s the real shame.”

The hand beside your head smacks against the wall. “S’cute, Tink. Real fucking cute—”

“Is it because of her?” you ask, straightening up until you can ghost your lips along his. Close, but not close enough. “Could she not take your tiny, little dick down her throat?”

You notice the way he swallows. The way the muscles in his arm flex beside you. The way his lashes flutter angrily from behind his glasses.

“Or could you not get yourself off?” You reach for him again. He's already beginning to harden from your touch – your voice – and despite yourself, your ego swells. “Was it when you were fucking your fist in your car this morning? Were you thinking about her? Is that why you couldn’t get hard?”

Something finally snaps, and instantly, you feel his fingers slipping around your throat. Just hard enough to make you grin. “What if I was thinking about you?”

“Mm. I don’t think so. Said it yourself. If you’re thinking about me…you’re always hard.”

He’s amused by this, squeezing your neck before surging forward to kiss you again. “Naughty little Tinkerbell.”

You smile.

With this, he spins you around and tosses you toward the empty and somewhat dusty bookcase in the corner of the closet. His touch is firm and unrelenting. Perhaps even a little cruel. The way he tugs on your hips as though to punish you. The way he shoves you until you’re bent over the shelf, allowing him access to your body like it’s his right.

And you don’t mind. This is the kind of dominance you’ve come to expect from the quiet yet horny man you work with.

Your underwear is yanked to the ground, the sound of a ripping stitch echoing throughout the small space. You frown but you don’t comment.

His palm smooths along your pussy, cupping it somewhat gently before his thumb flicks across your clit. He just wants to see you jump. Make you whine and push back into his touch. 

You hear him chuckle. “Easy, princess. Gotta make sure you’re ready first.”

“I’m ready, just go,” you huff, staring down at the dust beneath you. 

His finger slides inside your cunt, feeling you out for only a moment before retreating. “I don’t know. Seem a little tense.”

“If I’m with you, I’m tense,” you retort, making him smile. “Go already.”

“Now, now,” he warns, slipping in a second finger. “You wouldn’t rush Picasso, would you?”

You groan. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Harry—”

“What?” He’s enjoying himself. “I’m the painter, and you are my art.”

“No, you’re fucking irritating, that’s what you are.”

“Oh, come on, I thought girls liked sappy analogies like that.”

“No, they like to get fucked. So, hurry up already.”

He lands another smack to your ass before dipping down to whisper, “As you wish.”

You hear the sound of him pulling himself out before you feel the tip of his cock dragging through your arousal. Collecting every drop while slowly pushing in.

He’s right, you are tense. And the stretch that accompanies his large size is enough to make you wince, yet…you love it.

Despite the slight pain, it feels good. Full in every sense of the word, and you focus on the deep breaths you’re taking as your nails begin to curl into the shelf. 

Through clenched teeth, Harry calls, “You okay, Tink?”

“Mhm,” you hum, lashes fluttering shut. “This is easy. In fact, you could go faster, actually.”

He exhales a strained laugh, readjusting his hands on your hips. “Funny.”

“Yeah, I’m hysterical.”

He pushes in a bit further but still slow. He knows your body well enough to know what it can handle. And he understands his size is a touch above average. 

Although he never lets you forget it.

“Being so brave,” he coos with a playful air of condescension. “My brave girl, yeah? Taking it like a champ.”

“Bite me, Styles.”

“Yeah? Just tell me where.”

You get ready to respond, but your remark is ripped from your throat when he suddenly drives in to the hilt. Ripping off the band aid and giving you exactly three seconds to adjust before he begins to fuck you.

The push and pull is everything. The pace, the anger, the pain. His hand is against your scalp, keeping you bent and pliable to his intentions. He’s grunting softly, slowing down just to speed back up. He listens to the noises you make, the way you clench around him. And he uses that to decide what he does next.

Your heart is hammering in your chest and your stomach is doing cartwheels. It’s as though this is the first rush of relief you’ve felt in weeks. Your hands can’t do it. Your vibrator can’t do it. Not even the guy you met at the bar could do it. 

Nobody can do it like he can.

And you fucking hate it.

He lets go of your hair to reach around and slip his hand up your shirt. Finding your tit and giving it a nice squeeze before slapping his palm along the tender flesh. “Oh, you like that, princess, don’t you?”

You nod faintly, whimpering from the subtle sting, silently requesting he do it again. 

So, he does. “S’cute how much you love when I hurt you. Makes me think you might even like me.”

You manage to scoff between unhinged whines. “Shut up, Harry.”

“What? It’s the truth, isn’t it?” he continues. “You like me more than you think you do. That’s why you always do what I ask. Like a good girl.”

You sneak a glimpse over your shoulder, studying the crooked angle of his glasses, and the slight smirk on his face. 

He’s cute, you think. He’s always been kind of cute, but he’s especially cute when he’s ripping you apart from the inside out.

He meets your eye and travels his fingers down to your clit. “Need more, don’t you?”

But you don’t just need more. You need everything. 

He pinches you tight and readjusts his stance to make sure he’s fucking into you at just the right speed. Just the right place to make your back arch and your toes curl. 

“Gonna have to cum for me,” he grits, the graveled request woven between your anxious moans. “You wanted quick, so be fucking quick.”

You nod your agreement, the pleasure at the base of your spine building until it becomes your singular focus. 

You hadn’t realized you were this worked up. Hadn’t anticipated being so close to release after such a short amount of time but maybe Harry was right about something else. Maybe fighting with him is your aphrodisiac.

The first few sparks explode behind your eyelids, taunting you with more as he begins to groan softly from behind you. 

“Fucking shit—” His hips are slapping into your ass, the sound of your arousal being fucked into you by his cock like music to your ears. “There you go, princess. Just like that – keep squeezing me. Yeah…fuck.”

He’s close and you clench around him to get him closer, needing to feel him fill you more than you need air in your lungs. 

When he does, it tips the rest of the dominos. One after the other until everything is falling apart. The warmth of his cum inside of you, the pulsing of his cock in your pussy, the scattering of pleasure between your thighs.

And he sounds so beautiful. Rough and exceedingly desperate. The most perfect, delicious sound and it makes your stomach flip in the most excruciating way. You could listen to him for hours. Could get off to his voice alone, the way he grunts and moans for you. The way he says your name through a heated curse and spanks his hand along your ass.

“S’fucking good, Tink,” he exhales, tightening his hold on your waist to keep you upright and steady. “Milk me, baby, come on. Fucking take it.”

You can feel him dripping down your legs. Can feel the heat and the soreness already settling but you thrive off it. Indulge in the way he takes care of you for a moment more before finally pulling out and turning you around.

He checks your face for signs of distress. Brows furrowed and expression scrutinous from behind his glasses. You can tell he’s got another sarcastic comment locked and loaded but before he can fire it, you reach up, and slip the frames from his nose.

Then, you kiss him. Hard and with fervor. It’s oddly passionate – perhaps filled with the lingering frustration from your previous altercation. But you don’t mind. It feels like him.

After a minute or two, you pop off his tongue, return his glasses to nose, and shove him back. “And now we’re gonna be late.”

He smiles to himself, stepping closer once more to run his thumb just beneath your eye. Collecting what you assume are dried tears and runny mascara. “Oops.”

However, before you can pull your jeans back on, Harry is crouching down and grabbing onto the material for you.

He pulls your panties up and secures them around your hips, ignoring the sticky cum beginning to seep out of your pussy. 

Confused, your eyes narrow. “Har—"

“I told you,” he says calmly while zipping your jeans. “You’re gonna go into that meeting with me inside you.”

You feel your heart skip.

“But maybe if you’re good,” he whispers before looking up with a devious wink, “…I’ll do something about it.”

Next Part:

~ SnakeBite*

Previous Part:

~ 404*

~ Full 404 Masterlist

~ Main Masterlist

~ Blurb Masterlist

Taglist: @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite @keepdrivingkisses @swiftmendeshoran @tiredinwinter @straightontilmornin @justlemmeadoreyou @harrysdaydreams @tiaamberxx @peterparker1sgf @myfavfanficsever @littlenatilda @vamprry @fdl305 @tchalametishot @ssaama @indierockgirrl @likeapplejuicenpeach @vane28282 @lukesaprince @closureesny @lc-fics

[akiraarabella]

Bro I've seen so many people literally TELLING Horikoshi the fucking CREATOR of bnha "who deku should've ended up with" Using AI!!!! IM SORRY BUT EXCUSE ME?!?!?!

Lemme get one thing straight, STOP BUGGING THE FUCKING CREATOR WHO HAD TO TAKE BREAKS MULTIPLE TIMES TO GIVE YOU YOUR FAVORITE MANGAS NEW EPISODES EVERY SINGLE WEEK DESPITE HIS CONDITION AND THIS IS HOW YOU REACT?!?!?!

And if im being honest i feel like what horikoshi thought when he did this ending was that the fans would be happy BECAUSE since all of the characters thats being shipped with deku are single, he literally let readers to complete dekus love story. Deku didnt end up with someone so that he could end up with whoever the reader wanted!

You're telling me if IzuOcha became canon people wouldnt get mad saying bakudeku should've been canon and vise versa.

Also does Deku HAVE TO end up with someone???? Cant he just be a happy single teacher like aizawa was???? Everybody is shipping aizawa with mic even though they're not canon so why not do the same for izuku and let the author be.

I'm an izuocha shipper myself and yes i was sad to see them not being end up together but nobody ended up with no one so does it really matter?? I've seen ochatoga shippers shitting on izuocha shippers which not to say that all these shippers are bad but to say regardless of who you are shipping together be respectful to one another.

One last time. You can ship whoever you want, just stay respectful and LEAVE HORIKOSHI ALONE FFS!

[cairavende]

Worm Arc 10 thoughts:

Well. Ok then. Regent can do that I guess. I mean it makes sense given that it's basically a more extreme version of what we've seen him do so far. And with who is father is, family powers being related and all that.

Just get up in there and Yeerk someone.

Creepy as it is, I do have a hard time feeling bad for Shadow Stalker. I'm not claiming to be morally correct. But she fucked with my daughter and I'll take what I can get.

Watching Grue deal with Imp is just such older sibling wanting a break energy - "No we can't turn on the TV". I feel him so much. I'm glad Tattletale is willing to step in to help.

WHY MY BABIES FIGHTING? NO FIGHT!

I mean like, nothing like trying to kill each other to bring two lesbians closer together, I get it. But I just want more lunches with puppies and sharing jackets. My faith in Wolfspider is rock solid but this is still hard to watch.

Chatterbug/Smugbug is going a little better at least. Lisa is the one who already knew the truth about Taylor and seems to trust her fully.

Infiltrating the Wards HQ realistically went better than I expected. Weld was exactly on top of things as I thought he would be.

Imp's power is sooooo cool! I fucking love her.

🔥🪓

HOLY SHIT MY DAUGHTER COVERED HER BUGS IN CAPSAICIN! She's fucking scary. But also such a problem solver. I love her so much.

I do feel bad for the Wards who got capsaicined though.

DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON! I love Dragon and was very excited to see her again. And she is understandably upset about someone trying to give her a virus made by a fucking third rate hacker. But I knew she wouldn't hurt my babies too badly.

Tattletale with the "Fuck it, lets take untested tinker tech and go to town" was amazing.

I think the Wards HQ needs a better lockdown procedure, until Dragon showed up it was shockingly easy for the Undersiders to go wherever they wanted.

I love that the fight with the Protectorate is almost a side note. Big fight with the Wards and then on the way out it's just "oh ya and we fought these guys for a minute but they weren't too much trouble." The fucking shade.

The Slaughterhouse Nine seem nice. I don't expect they'll become a major issue.

This end of the world thing is problematic though. I could see that getting in the way of my endless gay shipping so it's gonna need to be taken care of.

They making my babies live in different places! OH NO! How will Taylor and Bitch make up if they don't see each other as much? How will the cute lesbian polycule watch TV together in the evenings if they don't live together??! Fixitfixitfixit!

Interlude thoughts get their own separate bullet point lists cause HOLY SHIT! So first, Regent interlude thoughts:

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCKING DESTROY HER! AHAHAHAHA! REGENT YOU BEAUTIFUL LITTLE SOCIOPATH.

I mean you are legit a sociopath and it's kinda scary but right now I don't care. I'm making you cookies. And a pie.

He dismantles everything Sophia has piece by piece. Like it's an art form.

She carries her civilian phone around with her on patrol. It is unlocked. And she specifically saved texts about shit she did to Taylor? Just digging her own grave and I can't stop watching!

E-mails the school, all the teachers, and then adds in the police? God Regent you are earning so many brownie points from me. (Which I am sure you will burn through by doing horrible stuff in the future but I'm focusing on the here and now)

Fucks with her and Emma's friendship. Shows Sophia he could kill her. Leaves her with no real way out. Breaks her spirit. Terrifying. BUT YOU FUCKED WITH MY DAUGHTER BITCH SO THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!

I'm sure Sophia will leave town and never ever show up again in the next 20 arcs. /s

Regent gets so many fucking cookies.

Dragon interlude thoughts:

DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON DRAGON!

Look at this wonderful little AI! She's so good!

Her dad watched too much Terminator and put a wonderful robot girl into a cage, denying her the ability to truly do what she wants. Fuck him.

I told Dragon to kill god and take his place, but god is already dead I guess. Too bad he died with the stupid rules in place.

Know what Dragon needs? A mom. I have two daughters now.

Look at my beautiful and wonderful AI daughter. I think she and her sister will learn to get along eventually.

The sexual tension between Lung and Marquis in that scene was thicker than peanut butter. Marquis a bit of a bratty sub to Lung's controlled Dom.

I will NOT apologize.

If my robot daughter loves Bruce Lame I will accept her choice but I do not think it's a good one.

[buwheal]

what are personally your favorite spamton headcanons?

OOooooh this was the wrong thing to ask me if you hate lots of letters on your screen. Get ready!!!!!! Here's my list :-) Its not organized by least to most btw im just typing everything i like lol :

puppetification theory.. AAUUUGHHH!!!!! this one is so much fun for so many reasons.

he's got a BJD (ball jointed doll) body

He's kinda an asshole

While a good chunk of his glitching is from puppetification, way more of it is from malware he's collected over like 20 years on the streets of cyber city

He absolutely feels and is aware of his glitches but he's so used to them it doesnt really bother him anymore. scratch that, it 100% does bother him that his body is actively defying him. but what can you do? :shrug:

he's like 5'1. I HATE HATE HATE seeing him the size of a toddler both because you can literally see his world sprite is the same height as kris, which is a teenager (His proportions just are unbelievably fucked up because of puppetification) and because thats just kinda weird. Something about making him so so small feels weird to me but im not sure, really. take it with a grain of salt.

He was an Email Addison. You see it everywhere. He was like a mailman or something.

He wasnt like four foot or something throuhghout his whole life, but i do imagine he was only slightly smaller than an Addison, which doesnt sound that bad except when you realize everyone else is normal height except him. Maybe it was a manufacutring bug, or maybe it was intentional for his job.

Addisons are like weird organic robots kinda. Cause everything in cyber city is made of code i imagine they are like basically sentient AI.

They (addisons) physically do not age unless their code is damaged. (Guess who's code is fucked up) They were "born" physically and half-mentally adults, and count their age based on their manufacturing date. I say mentally half because it quickly develops soon after while they do things like advertise. Their personality develops a time after.

HE IS OLD!!!!!!! HE'S AN OLD GUY!! HES GOT LITTLE WRINKLES N SHIT!!! HES GOT A GREY STRIPE!!!!!! Not really because of physical aging but its more of like a glitch tbh lol. Like a chunk glitch in minecraft. Whatever happened as his code got progressively more beat up caused a patch of his hair to register incorrectly and show up slightly wrong.

His hair is natrually white. He dyed it in his big shot era ofc, but it faded out. He keeps it colored currently with car oil and shit. Whatever he can find that will color it. It will and does wash out partially when he's drenched in the rain.

He completely refuses to acknowledge his physical changes. Glimpses he sees he ignores or passes it off as he's seeing things.

He prayed to the Neo robot because he saw the beginning of puppetification. He was praying for forgiveness or another chance. He believed it was a divine punishment because he had no other explination. He doesnt believe he changed much more than the very very early stages, and he thinks he's forgiven in his delusion. Which is why he wants the robot so bad.

When he gets mad he turns kinda red and steam comes out the side of his head in short bursts, train whistle sound effects and all. looney tunes type junk.

He has lips... but they're stretched so far because of his huge fucking brick ass teeth that it doesnt really matter at that point.

He's got a scraggly ass mullet.

he has little bitty dot eyes. Every other addison does too but they keep them closed for visual appeal. Theyre robots and shit they dont really need them to get around, even though they help a lot.

Thats about all i can think of rn!!!! ^_^ hope you enjoy that brick of text lol.

[erose-this-name]

I saw you are working on a grimdark apocalypse and as a fan of both Warhammer and fallout I would like to hear about your story but with one caveat:

You also have to answer if mothman exists in that universe

But also please tell me I wanna learn about the story

I mean, there isn't a mothman, but then again I do really like stealing being inspired by things and putting them in there. And like, I AM GOD, so I could just do that. Right now.

I mean, can't be like a magical cryptid mothguy since this is a hard scifi setting. So how can I gnaw off the sharp corners to make this square peg fit into a round hole?

What are the fundamental qualities of mothman? Large humanoid moth, portends of doom, west virginians, sexy, glowing red eyes, easily confused for a large heron.

There are no six foot tall insects in my setting because there isn't enough oxygen for them to breathe without lungs. But there are flesh-filled biohybrid robots with plastic exoskeletons, which is kinda like a bug. If you think about it.

Since it's a robot with both flesh and mechanical components, we don't even need to worry about bioluminescence or if it's possible to see out of eyes that are glowing. It could straight up just have actual red tinted flood lamps on it's head for that iconic mothman glowing eyes look.

The internet says that a average man would need a wingspan of 6.7m (22ft) to fly, though some sources can go up to 80 feet or some shit. But the mothman could probably be a lot less dense than a human so wouldn't need wings quite that big. But also that's probably based on bird or plane wings, not insect wings. As we all know bees cannot fly by any known laws of aviation, because they fly by different laws considering that they are not aircraft. I don't know what those laws are, though. So this is the kind of problem we biologists like to call "as a biophysicist" problems. I'm not on good terms with any of them. So let's just say our mothman has completely mysterious and indeterminately sized wings.

So, some West Virginians ~400,000 years ago (the story is set ~400,000 years after whichever of the many imminent apocalypses befalls us) got access to some cool hyperintelligent artificial intelligence with the ability to create life (such AI may or may not be related to said apocalypse that befell us). And they used it to make a cool mothman robot thing. For the obvious reason why West Virginians would do that. It's designed to perform and improvise on it's own maintenance to safe costs, because West Virginia.

Oh, no! It got out of it's enclosure in the Pleasant Point petting zoo! Because someone let it out! Who would do such a thing??!!

So it's been spending the apocalypse hanging around bridges and staring at people ominously in the fog while tour-guide infodumping about 21st century cryptozoology in dead languages no one understands. Doesn't try to kill anyone though, since it's designed to be an entertainment animatronic, which is more than what can be said for the vast majority of monsters in the setting. But that's also why it's survived for so long, doesn't like confrontation. Just flies away mysteriously. It eats nuts and berries or something.

yeah, this is canon now.

I got some other posts about my setting under the #The Diluvian War tag if you're interested

[hacked-by-jake]

I didn't finish the first episode yet, but I saw a lot of people saying that the ending was amazing and worth the pain. I was disappointed in the game, but the way all people boycott Everbyte without even finishing the episode is ridiculous to me.

I understand the anger about AI art, the emptiness of the characters, and ESPECIALLY the pay to win concept. Just because it has a good ending doesn't make up to the negative parts. But people should have first finished the episode and only then give their opinion. It wasn't fair. Yes, we are all disappointed. I also get the conspiracy theory about Everbyte having an investor or someone else taking over the design and completely messing it up. It's still no excuse to shit on the work of Everbyte like that.

People played the episode for about 15 minutes and immediately hated on Everbyte and I was one of them and am a little ashamed. It was a smart move of Everbyte to mix the main game with the side story, but I also get the people who are upset by it. We waited 2 years for answers and now we have to pay diamonds and money to get the full experience. I fully get it, yes. The criticism is completely fine but hate to the point that they insult the developes? No, just no. I can't wait to find out about the end of the episode. Until then, I wish you a good day. 🩵 Thank you for your work.

Greetings, an old friend ♡

Well, I absolutely get what you mean and I also understand why you think so.

But I have to say, I don’t think finishing the episode before wasn't necessary to see the problems and to point it out.

Many people had problems right after starting the game. It started with bugs. Of course we all had to look around before we started playing. And I guess many people immediately went to check the profile customisation options etc. Then we were greeted with AI art only. We directly saw the pictures aren't even free and most of us, or all thought we're allowed to put our own pictures as profile picture etc. Which was another disappointment right away.

Then we had to realise that we cannot pick a specific picture and buy it but only randomly.

Just a bunch of disappointments from the beginning and it didn’t get better. I mean, I saw so many people who said they gave up to play because of bugs and the mini games and stuff.

So actually, I think it's very understandable that some started to show their disappointment right away.

Of course, I only talk about critism. Not hate. There's a difference. And I said a lot of times by now that hate is absolutely disgusting.

Luckily, on Tumblr I almost saw no one really hating on Everbyte. I don’t know how hate looks to you and when it was already hate in your eyes. I think we don’t know exactly what we others meant and saw. So it's hart to give my opinion on that.

It's simply hard to say much when I don't know what exactly you saw or said or mean. Hating can look differently and I think even harsher words don’t have to be hate right away, it always depends on the context.

However, I find it very strong of you to admit that you were involved. And your words show that you have empathy with Everbyte and reflected your behavior. This is a good thing to be proud of.

I think we all might have made a mistake or two in the situation, Everbyte, but also the community. But hey, I just have to say: These games that Everbyte has created are visibly attached to our hearts and thus evoke stronger emotions. Which actually only shows how much we like the games and especially want to play them.

It’s just problematic that there were so many people at once, but that’s not our fault. We can’t just be quiet just because others have already mentioned it, it just doesn’t work that way. And unfortunately, in this situation Everbyte received criticism with the side effect that many more people follow them. So it is clear that the outcry is much bigger and louder.

Everbyte deserved the criticism. And the normal critism was much more silent than the hate. Because unfortunately it is always the case that the hate is much more noticeable than the normal critics. Hate is much louder and that’s why we remember it longer.

The whole situation was just overwhelming and we were all just full of emotions. This can get stronger and stronger, and sometimes it can make us say things we regret later.

Pure hate is a completely different story. Especially when the hate was deliberately pronounced just like that because people don’t care that we still talk about real human beings.

But I think we can all forgive ourselves for saying something in a very tense and emotional situation that might have been a bit brisk. It happened and we can't change it. The situation was too much for many of us, and it’s part of being a human being to do or say sometimes rash things without think a lot beforehand.

So I think we should not be mad at ourselves for it. (Unless you spread real hate and pure hate by insulting Everbyte personally or anything)

I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts and especially for mentioning positive things at the end. And I hope you are doing better now and all thoughts can be classified and understood more calmly.

I wish you a wonderful day/evening/night. 💚

Lots of love to you, old friend. 💚

[pergerinerabbit]

Right so I've been sick in bed all day; and as some of you may know, outside of my business, as in when you're not thinking of the person who runs this shop as a mippy itty bitty brand entity, I'm kind of a Massive Non-traditional Horror Fan? So I finally watched a playthrough oh and picked around the files of Indigo Park Chapter One. And this post will very much contain spoilers for that as I pick it apart in the same way I suck the marrow out of the bones of a roast chicken; but the tldr is that:

1- I feel like game theory is... *mostly* wrong, but they always are. Sensationalist and nuts, for views and in turn, money

2- UNIQUEGEESE IF YOU EVER NEED A MERCH ARTIST *PLEASE* HIT ME UP MY SCHEDULE IS SO WIDE OPEN AND THIS IS A PROJECT I WOULD KILL AND DIE TO WORK ON,,,

3- Rambley Raccoon scratches the same itch in my brain as Ralsei Deltarune, which if you Additionally know anything about me or my shop, you'd know that means that he is My Son Who Can Do Very Little Wrong and I Will Commit Attrocities for Him

So, we Know Isaac Indigo, if he's meant to be a direct parallel of Walt Disney Himself- Must be an absolute Stark-Raving Lunatic. Anyone who likes Disney beyond its brainwashing mouse-eared nonsense knows this. and You CAN in fact, like Disney's body of work and know the guy was just as insane as John Harvey Kellogg.

So i am. Thinking there may be some stuff that alludes to the "Disney wanted to live forever"/"Cryogenically Frozen Head" Theory? It's clear that he's picking animals that are easy to obtain and raise from a very early age, if you happen to be a deranged madman with a ton of extra cash and a clear kind of unethical science-experiment hell center under your theme park. In addition to blood, we do see sparks fly off of Mollie in that decapitation cutscene, so. It very well may be a combination of organic being and cybernetic nonsense, as well as the good ol "placing everyone you love into your mascots/ai so they can live forever" thing (Eat your heart out, GLaDOS!) the creator did say that they were a MASSIVE fan of Shipwrecked64 (aka, the game I affectionately call "Shit-rekt-my-pants, 64 times." I would have appreciated it more if the shock and surprise horror elements werent so heavy-handed. the giovanni goose death scene lives in my nightmares rent free, not inclusive of how much havoc that game's jumpscare-only layers wreaked on my heart condition.) so it would not surprise me that these mascots are human and animal experimentation gone so wildly wrong it warrants a horror title. I definitely CAN appreciate that these critters are actually slightly cutesy and not... gross 80s rubber mask mascot being piloted by a morbidly deformed and genetically altered human, but also I can Appreciate if that's the angle and its just more palpable to the viewer as a sort of fursuit thing... ah, but that's always the surprise/plot of mascot horror-- "what the fuck is wrong with them and why do they act Like That." Rambley is Very Obviously Not The Villain, he comes across more like Ricky from My Friendly Neighborhood. And also he also comes across like a more verbally comprehensible Donald Duck who actually DID take the spotlight over Mickey Mouse, or in our case, Lloyd. He really DOES just want all his pals okay and to not be forgotten about. Also im going to put him in the pear wiggler. Next chapter is DEFINITELY going to focus on the Submechanophobia elements, no doubt. Really love the lil eeyore guy. I think Salem will also get a chapter, but it's really really clear that they're a kind of "bug in the code" here. For whatever reason, Rambley can't form a functional statement about them, and all their traces either disappear or blow up. Its clear the other mascots do not want them there, re: why their shit's just annihilated.. I can imagine that the other mascots aren't okay with humans (their first instinct is to run and hide, not attack. to approach first with curiousity and THEN murderous intent.) Its really clear to me that lloyd is driven off NOT by some noise your cuff makes, but by Mollie mimicking some high-pitched noise she once heard to make Lloyd get away. The other theory im entertaining is that these mascots are Mostly Harmless and the park is Not Actually Abandoned, but something inside them (like an AI chip) is going nutso and telling them to kill and maim. either way Salem isn't the bad guy either, outside of the cartoons themselves, and mioght be something like a "we don't talk about Failures to the Process" kind of thing. I'm betting money that the True Bad Guy is Indigo's Lunatic Hubris and Corporate cash giving him access to tech levels of a Mad scientist. it's said that Ed's full name is a reference to something extremely niche, and I'm going to be so real its probably a reference to some yet unknown by me Theme Park Urban Explorers thing or, my funniest and favorite theory I have ever come up with, its a Reference to Crashbox's Eddie Bull. God I hope its a Reference to Eddie Bull.

[diodellet]

hiya dio!! tossing in 3 (honkai star rail? 👀), 5, and 15!!

hiya ian! thanks for shooting me an ask!!

3.) Go to the [honkai star rail] tag and reblog some art you like that has under 100 notes

aight i gotchu oomfie, ill search for stuff to queue up 😤😤

5.) What genre do you like reading the best?

angst and hurt/comfort 🔛🔝!!!

it's painful, it's good, and it makes emotional processing so much easier and less burdensome because the difficulty goes into finding an okay sentence and stringing together ok-ish dialogue (but at least those can be solved with a banger ass playlist, ykw?)

augh special mention to one of my formative twst fics i love that grim has such a big role in this

15.) Worst fanfic tropes ever?

NOO!!!! U CANT MAKE ME SAY BAD THINGS ABT FANFIC!!! ALL FANFIC IS GOOD WHEN IT IS MADE WITH HEART!!!

(did i say bridal carry? ill just say it again for funsies HAHAHA i dont like bridal carries, it doesn't spark any joy, please just carry me like this🤧👇👇)

i'm usually really open-minded with reading fanfics... so aside from the obvious fanfic writing sins (using generative AI, plagiarism, not doing enough careful research for sensitive topics) OH WAIT--

(this is probably specific to genshin/hyv) but i Reaaaaally don't like it when fandom infantilizes characters that use the teenage model. like, there is such a thing as short adults! (me. i am one of them!) one time i saw someone say that lynette was probably a year younger than lyney and i was confused bcs aren't they twins??? like, are we forgetting that lynette was the primary "errand-goer" for the house of hearth upon getting her vision? girlie's probably seen more shit than lyney did.

^^semi-related to infantilizing characters, i dont like how some obm fics treat luke as a literal toddler. like, yes he's immature but he's got a good head on his shoulders and even if he's a low-ranked angel he probably has sm powers that he can make use of to protect MC. and i esp see how he gets left out even in gen/platonic fics and hcs. smtimes i feel compelled to look at the game's shitty pop quiz events for fanfic fuel (i mean, the luke tag has more ppl saying not to sexualize him than actual writing and that bugs me ://)

There used to be this really good obm fanfic (Nightmare by StarsEncrusted) and it had a plot point of helping luke get his wings, but it++the author's orig account got deleted from ao3. thankfully some fans had the foresight to archive it, so heres a wayback link to the fic and the accompanying side stories

i guess to expound more on my aversion to marriage in fanfic, it icks me when the characterization stops feeling like the characters themselves and the fic starts feeling heteronormative (also sometimes the writing comes across as if the marriage/childbirth "fixes" all those issues, which, it doesn't) and, well, i already kind of deal with the idea of "getting settled down" shoved in my face. it's really not for me. but i do understand why it's comforting to people, smtimes i can indulge in reading in it. but on a bad day, nah, i can't.

anyway, also special shout out to chat fics, they can be fun but idk it reads to me as a way to regurgitate overused incorrect quotes. (please some vines need to be laid to rest. also, can we stop quoting that one copaganda show oh my god)

(art appreciation ask questions, please bug me to rb some underrated fic and art)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Revenge of the Linkdumps

Next Saturday (May 20), I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on May 22, I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On May 23, I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

If you’ve followed my work for a long time, you’ve watched me transition from a “linkblogger” who posts 5–15 short hits every day to an “essay-blogger” who posts 5–7 long articles/week. I’m loving the new mode of working, but returning to linkblogging is also intensely, unexpectedly gratifying:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/02/wunderkammer/#jubillee

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/13/four-bar-linkage/#linkspittle

[Image ID XKCD #2775: Siphon. Man: ‘Wow, it’s true — the water doesn’t flow up the tube anymore.’ Woman: ‘Honestly, it’s weird that it ever did. Why did we ever think it was normal?’ Caption: ‘Physics news: the 2023 update to the universe finally fixed the ‘siphon’ bug.’]

My last foray into linkblogging was so great — and my backlog of links is already so large — that I’m doing another one.

Link the first: “Siphon,” XKCD’s delightful, whimsical “physics-how-the-fuck-does-it-work” one-shot (visit the link, the tooltip is great):

https://xkcd.com/2775/

[Image ID: A Dutch safety poster by Herman Heyenbrock, warning about the hazards of careless table-saw use, featuring a hand with two amputated fingers.]

Next is “Hoogspanning,” 50 Watts’s collection of vintage Dutch workplace safety posters, which exhibit that admirable Dutch frankness to a degree that one could mistake for parody, but they’re 100% real, and amazing:

https://50watts.com/Hoogspanning-More-Dutch-Safety-Posters

They’re ganked from Geheugenvannederland (“Memory of the Netherlands”):

https://geheugenvannederland.nl/

While some come from the 1970s, others date back to the 1920s and are likely public domain. I’ve salted several away in my stock art folder for use in future collages.

All right, now that the fun stuff is out of the way, let’s get down to some crunch tech-policy. To ease us in, I’ve got a game for you to play: “Moderator Mayhem,” the latest edu-game from Techdirt:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/11/moderator-mayhem-a-mobile-game-to-see-how-well-you-can-handle-content-moderation/

Moderator Mayhem started life as a card-game that Mike Masnick used to teach policy wonks about the real-world issues with content moderation. You play a mod who has to evaluate content moderation flags from users while a timer ticks down. As you race to evaluate users’ posts for policy compliance, you’re continuously interrupted. Sometimes, it’s “helpful” suggestions from the company’s AI that wants you to look at the posts it flagged. Sometimes, it’s your boss who wants you to do a trendy “visioning” exercise or warning you about a “sensitivity.” Often, it’s angry ref-working from users who want you to re-consider your calls.

The card-game version is legendary but required a lot of organization to play, and the web version (which is better in a mobile browser, thanks to a swipe-left/right mechanic) is something you can pick up in seconds. This isn’t merely highly recommended; I think that one could legitimately refuse to discuss content moderation policies and critiques with anyone who hasn’t played it;

https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/

Or maybe that’s too harsh. After all, tech policy is a game that everyone can play — and more importantly, it’s a game everyone should play. The contours of tech regulation and implementation touch rub up against nearly every aspect of our lives, and part of the reason it’s such a mess is that the field has been gatekept to shit, turned into a three-way fight between technologists, policy wonks and economists.

Without other voices in the debate, we’re doomed to end up with solutions that satisfy the rarified needs and views of those three groups, a situation that is likely to dissatisfy everyone else.

However. However. The problem is that our technology is nowhere near advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic (RIP, Sir Arthur). There’s plenty of things everyone wishes tech could do, but it can’t, and wanting it badly isnlt enough. Merely shouting “nerd harder!” at technologists won’t actually get you what you want. And while I’m rattling off cliches: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Which brings me to Ashton Kutcher. Yes, that Ashton Kutcher. No, really. Kutcher has taken up the admirable, essential cause of fighting Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM, which is better known as child pornography) online. This is a very, very important and noble cause, and it deserves all our support.

But there’s a problem, which is that Kutcher’s technical foundations are poor, and he has not improved them. Instead, he cites technologies that he has a demonstrably poor grasp upon to call for policies that turn out to be both ineffective at fighting exploitation and to inflict catastrophic collateral damage on vulnerable internet users.

Take sex trafficking. Kutcher and his organization, Thorn, were key to securing the passage of SESTA/FOSTA, a law that was supposed to fight online trafficking by making platforms jointly liable when they were used to facilitate trafficking:

https://www.engadget.com/2019-05-31-sex-lies-and-surveillance-fosta-privacy.html

At the time, Kutcher argued that deputizing platforms to understand and remove which user posts were part of a sex crime in progress would not inflict collateral damage. Somehow, if the platforms just nerded hard enough, they’d be able to remove sex trafficking posts without kicking off all consensual sex-workers.

Five years later, the verdict is in, and Kutcher was wrong. Sex workers have been deplatformed nearly everywhere, including from the places where workers traded “bad date” lists of abusive customers, which kept them safe from sexual violence, up to and including the risk of death. Street prostitution is way up, making the lives of sex workers far more dangerous, which has led to a resurgence of the odious institution of pimping, a “trade” that was on its way to vanishing altogether thanks to the power of the internet to let sex workers organize among themselves for protection:

https://aidsunited.org/fosta-sesta-and-its-impact-on-sex-workers/

On top of all that, SESTA/FOSTA has made it much harder for cops to hunt down and bust actual sex-traffickers, by forcing an activity that could once be found with a search-engine into underground forums that can’t be easily monitored:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/09/more-police-admitting-that-fosta-sesta-has-made-it-much-more-difficult-to-catch-pimps-traffickers/

Wanting it badly isn’t enough. Technology is not indistinguishable from magic.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Kutcher, it seems, has learned nothing from SESTA/FOSTA. Now he’s campaigning to ban working cryptography, in the name of ending the spread of CSAM. In March, Kutcher addressed the EU over the “Chat Control” proposal, which, broadly speaking, is a ban on end-to-end encrypter messaging (E2EE):

https://www.brusselstimes.com/417985/ashton-kutcher-spotted-in-the-european-parliament-promoting-childrens-rights

Now, banning E2EE would be a catastrophe. Not only is E2EE necessary to protect people from griefers, stalkers, corporate snoops, mafiosi, etc, but E2EE is the only thing standing between the world’s dictators and total surveillance of every digital communication. Even tiny flaws in E2EE can have grave human rights concerns. For example, a subtle bug in Whatsapp was used by NSO Group to create a cyberweapon called Pegasus that the Saudi royals used to lure Jamal Khashoggi to his grisly murder:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/nso-spyware-used-to-target-family-of-jamal-khashoggi-leaked-data-shows-saudis-pegasus

Because the collateral damage from an E2EE ban would be so far-ranging (beyond harms to sex workers, whose safety is routinely disregarded by policy-makers), people like Kutcher can’t propose an outright ban on E2EE. Instead, they have to offer some explanation for how the privacy, safety and human rights benefits of E2EE can be respected even as encryption is broken to hunt for CSAM.

Kutcher’s answer is something called “fully homomorphic encryption” (FHE) which is a theoretical — and enormously cool — way to allow for computing work to be done on encrypted data without decrypting it. When and if FHE are ready for primetime, it will be a revolution in our ability to securely collaborate with one another.

But FHE is nowhere near the state where it could do what Kutcher claims. It just isn’t, and once again, wanting it badly is not enough. Writing on his blog, the eminent cryptographer Matt Green delivers a master-class in what FHE is, what it could do, and what it can’t do (yet):

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2023/05/11/on-ashton-kutcher-and-secure-multi-party-computation/

As it happens, Green also gave testimony to the EU, but he doesn’t confine his public advocacy work to august parliamentarians. Green wants all of us to understand cryptography (“I think cryptography is amazing and I want everyone talking about it all the time”). Rather than barking “stay in your lane” at the likes of Kutcher, Green has produced an outstanding, easily grasped explanation of FHE and the closely related concept of multi-party communication (MPC).

This is important work, and it exemplifies the difference between simplifying and being simplistic. Good science communicators do the former. Bad science communicators do the latter.

While Kutcher is presumably being simplistic because he lacks the technical depth to understand what he doesn’t understand, technically skilled people are perfectly capable of being simplistic, when it suits their economic, political or ideological goals.

One such person is Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called “father of AI,” who resigned from Google last week, citing the existential risks of “runaway AI” becoming superintelligent and turning on its human inventors. Hinton joins a group of powerful, wealthy people who have made a lot of noise about the existential risk of AI, while saying little or nothing about the ongoing risks of AI to people with disabilities, poor people, prisoners, workers, and other groups who are already being abused by automated decision-making and oversight systems.

Hinton’s nonsense is superbly stripped bare by Meredith Whittaker, the former Google worker organizer turned president of Signal, in a Fast Company interview with Wilfred Chan:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90892235/researcher-meredith-whittaker-says-ais-biggest-risk-isnt-consciousness-its-the-corporations-that-control-them

The whole thing is incredible, but there’s a few sections I want to call to your attention here, quoting Whittaker verbatim, because she expresses herself so beautifully (sci-comms done right is a joy to behold):

I think it’s stunning that someone would say that the harms [from AI] that are happening now — which are felt most acutely by people who have been historically minoritized: Black people, women, disabled people, precarious workers, et cetera — that those harms aren’t existential.

What I hear in that is, “Those aren’t existential to me. I have millions of dollars, I am invested in many, many AI startups, and none of this affects my existence. But what could affect my existence is if a sci-fi fantasy came to life and AI were actually super intelligent, and suddenly men like me would not be the most powerful entities in the world, and that would affect my business.”

I think we need to dig into what is happening here, which is that, when faced with a system that presents itself as a listening, eager interlocutor that’s hearing us and responding to us, that we seem to fall into a kind of trance in relation to these systems, and almost counterfactually engage in some kind of wish fulfillment: thinking that they’re human, and there’s someone there listening to us. It’s like when you’re a kid, and you’re telling ghost stories, something with a lot of emotional weight, and suddenly everybody is terrified and reacting to it. And it becomes hard to disbelieve.

Whittaker sets such a high bar for tech criticism. I had her clarity in mind in 2021, when I collaborated with EFF’s Bennett Cyphers on “Privacy Without Monopoly,” our white-paper addressing the claim that we need giant tech platforms to protect us from the privacy invasions of smaller “rogue” operators:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

This is a claim that is most often raised in relation to Apple and its App Store model, which is claimed to be a bulwark against commercial surveillance. That claim has some validity: after all, when Apple added a one-click surveillance opt-out to Ios, its mobile OS. 96% of users clicked the “don’t spy on me” button. Those clicks cost Facebook $10b in just the following year. You love to see it.

But Apple is a gamekeeper-turned-poacher. Even as it was blocking Facebook’s surveillance, it was conducting its own, nearly identical, horrifyingly intrusive surveillance of every Ios user, for the same purpose as Facebook (ad targeting) and lying about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Bennett and I couldn’t have asked for a better example of the point we make in “Privacy Without Monopoly”: the thing that stops companies from spying on you isn’t their moral character, it’s the threat of competition and/or regulation. If you can modify your device in ways that cost its manufacturer money (say, by installing an alternative app store), then the manufacturer has to earn your business every day.

That might actually make them better — and if it doesn’t, you can switch. The right way to make sure the stuff you install on your devices respects your privacy is by passing privacy laws — not by hoping that Tim Apple decides you deserve a private life.

Bennett and I followed up “Privacy Without Monopoly” with an appendix that focused on a territory where there is a privacy law: the EU, whose (patchily enforced) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the kind of privacy law that we call for in the original paper. In that appendix, we addressed the issues of GDPR enforcement:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy#gdpr

More importantly, we addressed the claim that the GDPR crushed competition, by making it harder for smaller (and even sleazier) ad-tech platforms to compete with Google and Facebook. It’s true, but that’s OK: we want competition to see who can respect technology users’ rights — not competition to see who can violate those rights most efficiently:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/gdpr-privacy-and-monopoly

Around the time Bennett and I published the EU appendix to our paper, I was contacted by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology to see whether I could write something on similar lines, focused on the situation in India. Well, it took two years, but we’ve finally published it: “Securing Privacy Without Monopoly In India: Juxtaposing Interoperability With Indian Data Protection”:

https://www.ijlt.in/post/securing-privacy-without-monopoly-in-india-juxtaposing-interoperability-with-indian-data-protection

The Indian case for interop incorporates the US and EU case, but with some fascinating wrinkles. First, there are the broad benefits of allowing technology adaptation by people who are often left out of the frame when tools and systems are designed. As the saying goes, “nothing about us without us” — the users of technology know more about their needs than any designer can hope to understand. That’s doubly true when designers are wealthy geeks in Silicon Valley and the users are poor people in the global south.

India, of course, has its own highly advanced domestic tech sector, who could be a source of extensive expertise in adapting technologies from US and other offshore tech giants for local needs. India also has a complex and highly contested privacy regime, which is in extreme flux between high court decisions, regulatory interventions, and legislation, both passed and pending.

Finally, there’s India’s long tradition of ingenious technological adaptations, locally called jugaad, roughly equivalent to the English “mend and make do.” While every culture has its own way of celebrating clever hacks, this kind of ingenuity is elevated to an art form in the global south: think of jua kali (Swahili), gambiarra (Brazilian Portuguese) and bricolage (France and its former colonies).

It took a long time to get this out, but I’m really happy with it, and I’m extremely grateful to my brilliant and hardworking research assistants from National Law School of India University: Dhruv Jain, Kshitij Goyal and Sarthak Wadhwa.

I don’t claim that any of the incarnations of the “Privacy Without Monopoly” paper rise to the clarity of the works of Green or Whittaker, but that’s okay, because I have another arrow in my quiver: fiction. For more than 20 years, I’ve written science fiction that tries to make legible and urgent the often dry and abstract concepts I address in my nonfiction.

One issue I’ve been grappling with for literally decades is the implications of “trusted computing,” a security model that uses a second, secure computer, embedded in your device, to observe and report on what your main computer is doing. There are lots of implications for this, both horrifying and amazing.

For example, having a second computer inside your device that watches it is a theoretically unbeatable way of catching malicious software, resolving the conundrum of malware: if you think your computer is infected and can’t be trusted, then how can you trust the antivirus software running on that computer.

Back in 2016, Andrew “bunnie” Huang and Edward Snowden released the “Introspection Engine,” a separate computer that you could install in an Iphone, which would tell you whether it was infected with spyware:

https://www.tjoe.org/pub/direct-radio-introspection/release/2

But while there are some really interesting positive applications for this kind of software, the negative ones — unbeatable DRM and tamper-proof bossware — are genuinely horrifying. My novella “Unauthorized Bread” digs into this, putting blood and sinew into an otherwise dry abstract and skeletal argument:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Then there are applications that are somewhere in between, like “remote attestation” (when the secure computer signs a computer-readable description of what your computer is doing so that you can prove things about your computer and its operation to people who don’t trust you, but do trust that secure computer).

Remote attestation is the McGuffin of Red Team Blues, my latest novel, a crime-thriller about a cryptocurrency heist. The novel opens with the keys to a secure enclave — the gadget that signs the attestations in remote attestation — going missing.

When Matt Green reviewed Red Team Blues (his first book review!), he singled this out as a technically rigorous and significant plot point, because secure enclaves are designed so that they can’t be updated (if you can update an enclave, then you can update it with malicious software):

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2023/04/24/book-review-red-team-blues/

This means that bugs in secure enclaves can last forever. Worse, if the keys for a secure enclave ever leak, then there’s no way to update all the secure enclaves out there in the world — millions or billions of them — to fix it.

Well, it’s happened.

The keys for the secure enclaves in Micro-Star International (AKA MSI) computers, a massive manufacturer of work and gaming PCs — have leaked and shown up on the “extortion portal” of a notorious crime gang:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/leak-of-msi-uefi-signing-keys-stokes-concerns-of-doomsday-supply-chain-attack/

As a security expert quoted by Ars Technica explains, this is a “doomsday scenario.” That’s more or less how it plays in my novel. The big difference between the MSI leak and the hack in my book is that the MSI keys were just sitting on a server, connected to the internet, which wasn’t well-secured.

In Red Team Blues, I went to enormous lengths to imagine a fiendishly complex, incredibly secure scheme for hosting these keys, and then dreamt up a way that the bad guys could defeat it. I toyed with the idea of having the keys leak due to rank incompetence, but I decided that would be an “idiot plot” (“a plot that only works if the characters are idiots”). Turns out, idiot plots may make for bad fiction, but they’re happening around us all the time.

In my real life, I cross a lot of disciplinary boundaries — law, politics, economics, human rights, security, technology. I’m not the world’s leading expert in any of these domains, but I am well-enough informed about each that I’m able to find interesting ways that they fit together in a manner that is relatively rare, and is also (I think) useful.

I admit to sometimes feeling insecure about this — being “one inch deep and ten miles wide” has its virtues, but there’s no avoiding that, say, I know less about the law than a real lawyer, and less about computer science than a real computer scientist.

That insecurity is partly why I’m so honored when I get to talk to experts across multiple disciplines. 2023 was a very good year for this, thanks to University College London. Back in Feb, I was invited to speak as part of UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law’s annual series on technology law:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/2023/feb/recording-chokepoint-capitalism-can-it-be-defeated

And next month, I’m giving UCL Computer Science’s annual Peter Kirstein lecture:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peter-kirstein-lecture-2023-featuring-cory-doctorow-registration-539205788027

Getting to speak to both the law school and the computer science school within a space of months is hugely gratifying, a real vindication of my theory that the virtues of my breadth make up for the shortcomings in my depth.

I’m getting a similar thrill from the domain experts who’ve been reviewing Red Team Blues. This week, Maria Farrell posted her Crooked Timber review, “When crypto meant cryptography”:

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/05/11/when-crypto-meant-cryptography/

Farrell is a brilliant technology critic. Her work on “prodigal tech bros” is essential:

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

So her review means a lot to me in general, but I was overwhelmed to read her describe how Red Team Blues taught her to “read again for joy” after long covid “completely scrambled [her] brain.”

That meant a lot personally, but her review is even more gratifying when it gets into craft questions, like when she praises the descriptions as “so interesting and sociologically textured.” I love her description of the book as “Dickensian”: “it shoots up and down the snakes and ladders of San Francisco’s gamified dystopia of income inequality, one moment whizzing up the ear-poppingly fast elevator to a billionaire’s hardened fortress, the next sleeping under a bridge in a homeless encampment.”

And then, this kicker: “it’s a gorgeous rejection of the idea that long-form fiction is about individual subjectivity and the interior life. It’s about people as pinballs. They don’t just reveal things about the other objects they hit; their constant action and reaction reveals the walls that hold them all in.”

Likewise, I was thrilled with Peter Watts’s review on his “No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons” blog::

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=10578%22%3Ehttps://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=10578

Peter is a brilliant sf writer and worldbuilder, an accomplished scientist, and one of the world’s most accomplished ranters. He’s had more amazing ideas than I’ve had hot breakfasts:

https://locusmag.com/2018/05/cory-doctorow-the-engagement-maximization-presidency/

His review says some very nice and flattering things about me and my previous work, which is always great to read, especially for anyone with a chronic case of impostor syndrome. But what really mattered was the way he framed how I write villains: “The villains of Cory’s books aren’t really people; they’re systems. They wear punchable Human faces but those tend to be avatars, mere sock-puppets operated by the institutions that comprise the real baddies.”

One could read that as a critique, but coming from Peter, it’s praise — and it’s praise that gets to the heart of my worldview, which is that our biggest problems are systemic, not individual. The problem of corporate greed isn’t just that CEOs are monsters who don’t care who they hurt — it’s that our system is designed to let them get away with it. Worse, system design is such that the CEOs who aren’t monsters are generally clobbered by the ones who are.

So much of our outlook is grounded in the moral failings or virtues of individuals. Tim Apple will keep our data safe, so we should each individually decide to reward him by buying his phones. If Tim Apple betrays us, we should “vote with our wallets” by buying something else. If you care about the climate, you should just stop driving. If there’s no public transit, well, then maybe you should, uh, dig a subway?

[Image ID: Matt Bors’s classic Mr Gotcha panel, in which a medieval peasant says ‘We should improve society somewhat,’ and Mr Gotcha replies, ‘Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very smart.’]

This is the mindset Matt Bors skewers so expertly with his iconic Mr Gotcha character: “Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very smart”:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

(Which reminds me, I am halfway through Bors’s unbelievably, fantastically, screamingly awesome graphic novel “Justice Warriors,” which turns the neoliberal caveat-emptor/personal-responsibility brain-worm into the basis for possibly the greatest superhero comic of all time:)

https://www.mattbors.com/books

Watts finishes his review with:

I’ve never fully come to terms with the general decency of Cory’s characters. Doctorow the activist lives in the trenches, fighting those who make their billions trading the details of our private lives, telling us that they own what we’ve bought, surveilling us for the greater good and even greater profits. He’s spent more time facing off against the world’s powerful assholes than I ever will. He knows how ruthless they are. He knows, first-hand, how much of the world is clenched in their fists. By rights, his stories should make mine look like Broadway musicals.

And yet, Doctorow the Author is — hopeful. The little guys win against overwhelming odds. Dystopias are held at bay. Even the bad guys, in defeat, are less likely to scorch the earth than simply resign with a show of grudging respect for a worthy opponent.

I often get asked by readers — especially readers of Pluralistic, which is heavy on awful scandals and corruption — how I keep going. Watts has the answer:

Maybe it’s a fundamental difference in outlook. I’ve always regarded humans as self-glorified mammals, fighting endless and ineffective rearguard against their own brain stems; Cory seems to see us as more influenced by the angels of our better natures. Or maybe — maybe it’s not just his plots that are meant to be instructional. Maybe he’s deliberately showing us how we could behave as a species, in the same way he shows us how to fuck with DRM or foil face-recognition tech. Maybe it’s not that he subscribes to some Pollyanna vision of what we are; maybe he’s showing us what we could be.

Got it in one, Peter.

And…

It’s also about what happens if we don’t get better.

Writing on his “Economics From the Top Down” blog, Blair Fix — a heterodox economist and sharp critic of oligarchy — publishes a Red Team Blues review that nails the “or else” in my books, and does it with graphs:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/

Fix surfaces the latent point in my work that inequality is destabilizing — that spectacular violence is downstream of making a society that has nothing to offer for the majority of us. As Marty Hench, the 67 year old forensic accountant protagonist of Red Team Blues says,

Finance crime is a necessary component of violent crime. Even the most devoted sadist needs a business model, or he will have to get a real job.

[Image ID: A chart labeled, ‘With more plutocracy comes more murder. As countries become more unequal (horizontal axis), their murder rates go up (vertical axis).’]

Fix agrees, and shows us that murders go up with inequality.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/#sources-and-methods

Which is why, while the average private eye is a kind of “cop who gets to bend the rules of policing”; Hench is “a kind of uber IRS agent who gets to work in ‘sneaky ways that aren’t available to the taxman.’”

[Image ID: A chart labeled, ‘Was the US prison state the inspiration for cyberpunk? The term ‘cyberpunk’ (which describes a genre of dystopian science fiction) became popular in tandem with mass incarceration in the US. It’s probably not a coincidence.’]

This observation segues into a fascinating, data-informed look at the way that science fiction reflects our fears and aspirations about wider social phenomenon — for example, the popularity of the word “cyberpunk” closely tracks rising incarceration rates.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/05/13/red-team-blues-cory-doctorows-anti-finance-thriller/#sources-and-methods

(It’s not a coincidence that the next Marty Hench book, “The Bezzle,” is about prisons and prison-tech; it’s out in Feb 2024:)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

I’m out on tour with Red Team Blues right now, with upcoming stops in the DC area, Toronto, the UK, and then Berlin:

https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2023/04/26/the-red-team-blues-tour-burbank-sf-pdx-berkeley-yvr-edmonton-gaithersburg-dc-toronto-hay-oxford-nottingham-manchester-london-edinburgh-london-berlin/

I’ve just added another Berlin stop, on June 8, at Otherland, Berlin’s amazing sf/f bookstore:

https://twitter.com/otherlandberlin/status/1657082021011701761

I hope you’ll come along! I’ve been meeting a lot of people on this tour who confess that while they’ve read my blogs and essays for years, they’ve never picked up one of my books. If you’re one of those readers, let me assure you, it is not too late!

As you’ve read above, my fiction is very much a continuation of my nonfiction by other means — but it’s also the place where I bring my hope as well as my dismay and anger. I’m told it makes for a very good combination.

If you’re still wavering, maybe this will sway you: the blogging and essays are either free or very low-paid, and they’re heavily subsidized by my fiction. If you enjoy my nonfiction, buying my novels is the best way to say thank you and to ensure a continuing supply of both.

But novels are by no means a dreary duty — fiction is a delight, and after a couple decades at it, I’ve come to grudgingly concede — impostor syndrome notwithstanding — that I’m pretty good at it.

I hope you’ll agree.

Image: Robert Miller (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/12463666@N03/52721565937

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A kitchen junk-drawer, full of junk.]

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Valley of the Fallen

I've still been running through Stuff in Horizon Forbidden West in the mornings, but the last day or so it was mostly "Attempt to hunt up THINGS for armour, be disappointed when the Slaughterspine I was hunting didn't turn out to be the really dangerous one, sigh and decide to try again later". But I did trip over a quest, and ... yeah.

So yesterday I tripped over a quest from Nakka in Fall's Edge, when I was trying to tick the "Visit Fall's Edge" box on the main questline. But I can't find the person I need to talk to here and the quest isn't ticking. Lemme check Reddit.

Sooooooooo it just ... stays there until I do the main part of the quest? Really? Couldn't we have at least had it turn off when I actually visit the place? What the--? Oh. Hi, Nakko.

Okay, so, dude's worried about his brother. Who has disregarded orders to avoid the Really Weird Valley with the Really Weird Lights. Kids are stupid. Buuuuut they probably don't deserve to die for it. I mean, there are limits to how Darwinian we want to get here, right?

But first I wanna get that data point I keep missing, or I will forget it again.

I mean, it seems useless, but it honestly doesn't seem to be. There have been at least two data points that I can remember that talked about people struggling to find jobs. That's ... a mood.

Right. Valley of the Fallen.

Hi, Ivvira. Yeah, I feel for you, getting sent out to rescue kids from their own overconfidence. Park rangers used to get that all the time, and there were fewer killer machines back then.

Oh dear. Poor Daxx. Wonder if I can get Ivvira to tell this dude's brother about this.

Huh. That's not too bad a gathering. I expected more in the way of Clamberjaws, since map tells me this is a Clamberjaw site. Maybe it's only a Clamberjaw site after I take out the lures--

Oh. Zenith lures. Well, yeah, protecting their private island, right.

Override you and--

Did ... did you just say "Local vermin"?!?

Did you just add "Yay!" after your fucking kill count, you asshole AI?

Zenith genocidal fuckwits GO DIE IN A FIRE.

Right. Site the second aaaaaaaand ... ah. Spikesnouts. At least I know how to deal with those.

Yep, lemme just loot first-- There was a Skydrifter there? I ... guess I killed it without noticing?

Sorry, Yivekka-- Oh. Hi again, Ivvira--

There ... are Spectres now?!?

Why do I suddenly feel like I did this backwards?!? Oh fuck it; poonk-time is now!

Okay. Yes, Ivvira, you stay here with Yivekka; I will go deal with that last lure.

And this lure-- OH SHUT UP, YOU HORRIBLE LITTLE AI! YOU'RE LIKE CLAPTRAP FOR GENOCIDAL MANIACS!

Thunderjaw and Tremortusk? Oof. Okay. Lemme see how much damage I can do without getting close.

...Quite a lot, apparently. Right. Lure the third.

And now the AI has a voice. And ... it really is Claptrap for genocidal maniacs.

Oh. Hi, Erik. Genocidal fuckwit.

Yeah, I definitely did this backwards because now it's telling me to go to the third lure. Gods, I hope I didn't bug this out completely...

I did not. Good. And I have ... another weapon I will never ever use. But thank you anyway.

Right. It's night. If I hurry, I might be able to get myself an Apex Slaughterspine. I'll blow a fast travel pack, just to be on the safe side.

And up the mountain I gooooooooooooo...

Scanning ... it's taking a second--YES! Just want to get the Leaplashers first.

Bye, Leaplashers! Now-- oop I alerted the Slaughterspine AND I HAVE NO COVER SHIT.

Smoke bomb; dodge roll-- AGH!

Fuckthisthingfuckthisthingfuckthisthiiiiiiiiiiiiing...

YES! With my last arrow, too.

Now, lemme just find a workbench-- Oh. I missed a Leaplasher. Now, how far away can I be and still hit?

...Never mind next post code; that was across state lines. Best way to deal with a Leaplasher, in my opinion.

I could fast travel, but I want to get that Redeye Watcher site.

Quietly tracking aaaaaaand--waitwut.

Why are there Bellowbacks THIS IS NOT A BELLOWBACK SITE ON MY MAP WHY ARE THERE BELLOWBACKS?!?

Okay, I don't really need to hunt the Bellowbacks so I'mma just sneak through in the river, thanks.

Redeye Watchers. I don't really need to hunt them either, but what the hell. It'll get me close enough to register the site properly on my map.

And over I go to Lowland's Path. And workbench aaaaaaaaaand...

FULLY. UPGRADED. LEGENDARY. UTARU. WINTERWEAVE. ARMOUR. I AM INVISIBLE!

Right. I was going to be better about food. So I should do that.

Well, I mean, as well as food, I have a D&D thing to do today. At least I'm a little better on the pain scale. Yesterday wasn't great. Had to take a dose of mallet meds to leave the house. Did I mention I hate fibromyalgia? Because I hate fibromyalgia.

[semi-imaginary-place]

pluto

From my understanding pluto is basically official fanwork for manga god tezuka osamu's astroboy.

I get the feeling homeboy aint gonna get that vacation.

Hmm a serial killer who is physically a robot but who isnt bound by the robot's rule to not kill humans and who the police bot identified as human

Aw north #2... Just wanted to play piano

Oh you know this manga is from like 2000 because future turkey is part of europe

Geischt is worrying. He remembers 500 to buy (scrap?) when brando talks about getting kids and then he get hung up on atom being sold to the circus.

Ok so all the murdered humans were part of an investigation squad in the 39th central asia conflict but it seems like all the robots were too. Montblanc, #2, brando, atom, hercules. Was gesicht there too?

Nightmares and inconsistent memories compared to evidence thats never a good sign

Hmm thracia acted to maintain the status quo. Halted robot development so that no one else could get super powered robots except its allies amd used it as a justification to destroy persia (also persia now has a democracy maybe this is the better timeline)

... wait... if the dr teddybear controlling the tracia president?

manga is now implying geischt might have killed robot kkk's brother or at least he is one of the few possible. 3 years ago dude was murdered by a robot. 3 years ago geischt has inconsistent memories. Uh how'd they make an entire robot out of zeronium ifits explosive. Ooh i see gesicht killed the dude and then europol covered it up including ltering his memory its a coverup all the way to the top. Gesicht looking sussy.

Bora, another super advanced robot, pluto... hmmmm. Welp we found tornado man. Another serial killer suspect! Robot schizophrenia. And we have robot ghost possession. Notices this with Brando too but robots cant operate 2 bodies at once. Hmm the robot murders abd human murders dont necessarily have to have the same culprit. But this seems like pretty good confirmation that pluto is killing the 7 robots on orders of the persian scientist dude and is also and em wave being.

The robot dog got to me ok. Ah it was bait.

Isn't this a tribute manga to atom? Wow that takes chutzpah to kill him. Now what IS the connection between gesicht and pluto?

Ooohh all the set up. Kf setting up gesicht for the long game fall. Adolf trying to kill gesicht. Gesicht assigned to shadow adolf. And kf trying to kill adolf.

Oh i should have put this together faster. Persian dude the us accused of building robot weapons is the one murdering bora squad members because he can jump bodies with his cyborg bugs. And then he's sending pluto to kill the robots.

Tenma who fully believes robots need hate and errors to be human (*slaps roof of robot* this baby can fit so many mental illnesses) was the one to create atom called the perfect robot and who is the opposite of hate. Gesicht is a robot capable of hate. The panel transition after "gesicht didn't do it out of hate"? Oh yeah he totally did it out of hate

Come to think of it why isnt uran considered one of the super robots she gets emotions better than anyone else. And why is teddy bear not considered one if it's the most powerful super computer?

Manga hasnt shown adolf's brothers crimes but wow literally everyone thinks he's a shit bag what did he do?

A common trope in robot stories is how robots cannot die, their ai can be reinstalled, their memories copied and reuploaded. It's interesting how here in Pluto death is very final.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

This reminds me of dick ants

See, ants are attracted to protein and will very rarely do something like crawl into a body part following the smell of sugars or proteins, even if that's not a super common occurrence.

So this guy gets on this forum and was like "hey I had pain in my dick and after peeing and whatever else I did to get fluid to come out, first there was some blood and then a few ants came out?????? What should I do?" And then instead of telling him anything useful, everyone just started laughing at him about his new "dick ants" superpowers.

Anyway, sometimes, as in very very rarely and probably only for some people, bugs will mistake you for a dead body or a food source and if they make their way into your body. The correct course of action is seeking medical attention. I imagine most ants who make their way into most people's bodies realize it's a bad time, back out and then tell other ants not to follow, that no glory or esteemed deeds are there. No non-parasitic insect is going to survive well inside the human body for long, and even our openings aren't usually that attractive for various reasons, and your biggest concerns are potential infection from their presence, in passing or their corpse [I once had to dig an dead ant out from under the middle of my toenail].

Non-parasitic bugs in your body is possible but not normal and you WILL generally know they are there! [hear scratching inside your ear, pain, etc]

If you are like me and multiple kinds of insects like to mistake you for a corpse while you are alive and moving around, or alive but asleep, the answer is to remove yourself from environments where you allow those insects to be [clean your house/apartment keep food in sealed containers and use ant traps, be careful when camping, put your bed halfway up the wall, etc...].

It is not, to the best of my knowledge, common for cockroaches to pull this shit WITH PENISES, but then, I don't live around cockroaches, and I do not have a penis that emits anything so I couldn't tell you from personal experience.

Earwigs do get their name from biting inside the ears of livestock and will do it to humans, in fact bugs like human ears a little in general, but I doubt the naming of any other insect trends towards following this theme. Indeed the name cockroach comes from "cucaracha".

Doing research you may find that the human -ear- is a potentially attractive environment to cockroaches...

"The human ear, in case you do not know, is an ideal place for cockroaches to live in during the cold months. The ears provide them a warm shelter, that is why there are other reported cases of them living inside a human's ear."

There have seemingly been 2 documented cases in extenuating circumstances, they are smaller German cockroaches, they are attracted to the ear because they smell like fermenting bread and cheese to a bug.

BUT!!! This information is provided by a pest control website! So consider the source! And even they tell of circumstances where men are sleeping on beds they allow to regularly be full of food!

I have had bugs try to enter my own body on some notable occasions, so I can tell you it really does happen even though I don't have a penis or roaches to give you any annecdata about, but I can also tell you the easiest way to avoid it is by keeping your environment clean, IT IS RARE even in unsanitary conditions, and you will generally always be aware that it is happening or has happened and minor medical intervention can usually resolve any damage they do.

Why the AI thinks Penises are particularly attractive to cockroaches I can only venture guesses at, which mostly start and end at "It just substituted one body part for another because penises seemed more relevant to your query".

[kogetaikid]

Childhood Ruined. (“Mini-Story”)

(TW? AI art/capitalism I guess)

Finally hung out with a friend yesterday after a long time. We went to a Halloween event at our Natural History Museum. That place was just one big compilation of childhood memories. They’re slightly faded from trauma, but the fragments that remain still bring joy to my soul. (e.x. This building block like place, fossils of mammoths and dinosaurs, the bug candy and fake gift shops, an outdoor space with a small river, a place with a hut made of REAL STICKS, and the time I poked a kid in the eye with one.)

I was so happy to come back after so years, and also see a close friend when my mental health isn’t doing so great.

The Halloween event was mainly a skeleton themed event. I was expecting to see skeletons of dinosaurs, mammoths, maybe even exo-skeletons of bugs! There was a scavenger hunt too! The Halloween event was for kids, so I wanted to go flaunt my inner child, but when we got there, I noticed something…

1. ALL THE ART WAS AI.

As soon as a walked to the entrance, I noticed the art was AI. I thought it would be a one off thing, but it continued THROUGHOUT THE AREAS OF THE EVENT!

Here’s some proof from one of the signs:

I wanted to ask a staff member SO bad about why all the art was AI, but I was scared, and they seemed busy anyway…

2. The theme was bland, generic and had NOTHING to do with natural history.

The whole thing was just skeleton animatronics and AI art. I KID YOU NOT. It wasn’t even clever, just cheap. Some animatronics has voices, but it was SO EASY to tell they were speaking through a microphone. It didn’t seem exclusive in any way to the natural history museum. It just felt like a a quick buck, and that you can find something similar anywhere, but hey, there’s also the scavenger hunt, right?!

3? Scavenger hunt was broken

Me and my friend didn’t do the scavenger hunt, but there were around 40 scavenger locations and I overheard a family saying they were MISSING NUMBER EIGHT.

Maybe I’m being a bit biased for this part, but considering how cheap the whole event was, I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who made the event (or lack thereof) JUST FORGOT NUMBER EIGHT ENTIRELY.

(Keep reading for closing thoughts. Feel free to reblog to spread awareness :)

The only redeemable thing about the event was that I some person dressed as SPAMTON G. SPAMTON from Deltarune and I screamed:

“HOLY CRAP! IS THAT SPAMTON FROM DELTARUNE?!”

They recited his lines at me. We also emailed at each other when exiting. Other than that the event was disappointing. I still had a good time hangin out with my friend though. I brought my Omori plushies and we were messing around with them. Here’s something we did with Hero!

I wasn’t disappointed about the event because no childhood nostalgia, I was upset because KIDS DESERVED MORE THAN THIS!!! THEY DESERVED SOMETHING MANMADE AND EDUCATIONAL!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE SUCH A KEY PLACE IN MY LIFE PRODUCED SUCH SLOP!!! NO AMOUNT OF BRIGHT COLORS AND FLASHING LIGHTS CAN HIDE THE LACK OF EFFORT THAT WAS PUT INTO A KID’S EVENT!!! AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS SHIT LIKE “Well, kids don’t know better, they’d be entertained by anything as long as it’s fast-paced and fun colored”, FUCK YOU BECAUSE KIDS CAN BE MORE INTELLIGENT THAN YOU THINK, AND BY BOMBARDING THEM WITH SLOP, YOU’RE STIFLING THAT INTELLIGENCE!!!

Maybe I might look more into this. I could start a petition, but no promises. I’m busy enough as it is.

I guess on a more lighthearted note to end this rant off with, my friend said that Spamton nose would kill anyone in a five mile radius. Perhaps I may draw that! Albeit on MSPaint cuz I need to slowly regain my motivation to do digital art.

[bells-of-black-sunday]

2,5,7,12,15

Dbd Asks | Accepting

2. Favourite chapter?

So I've been playing dbd since a tiny bit before blight or a tiny bit after I can't remember, so I'm going to split it up into favorite chapter I've been at the release for and favorite chapter in general.

Favorite chapter release was probably Hellraiser, because I love the franchise so much and even with all the "making a mountain out of a mole hill" that went on around the chapter release, I fucking love his voice lines and I think he's a really fun and dynamic killer to play as and play against. (unless you're solo then he's kind of a solo stomper tbh) Though I am very well aware I am unique in that I love playing against killers that don't let me sit on gens and make the match more engaging like Wesker, Knight, Singularity, Pig etc.

Favorite chapter in general: Demise Of The Faithful. I fucking love the Plague, I love her design, I love her lore, I lover her game play, her cosmetics are fucking incredible, she genuinely is one of the killers that I am delighted to see every time I see one. I love Aldiris. Especially since they added one corrupted fountain, it was such a minor buff, but changed how you'd play her and play against her in such a positive way. Like how it went from basically being an m1 killer, because no one would cleanse to "Oh shit I actually have to think about when I want to cleanse now."

I think she has some really fun add ons that aren't just your usual buffing her power and genuinely she is such a fun strategic killer to play. She is both a set up and projectile killer and its so much fun, plus she came out with Corrupt Intervention that is a key perk for a lot of set up killers in the game currently. Genuinely if you've never played the plague would highly recommend, she has such a high skill ceiling and expression.

5. Favourite killer to play as?

Normally I'd say the Knight, but as I keep talking about, because it's come up a lot online this week from my own circles: he's is such a buggy fucking mess that you cannot play him. You play him and set down a patrol path just to get stunned by a pallet you're 50 feet away from because you ended your path near it, you can't use your power 90% of the time because you're "too close to an object", map of the realm is needed to get any use out of your guards 99% of the time, even then your guards move so slow they're never going to get a hit and their ai is so easy to trick, you have to sit in place to even use your patrol paths to break pallets or gens, so you're ultimately losing more distance than you gain 99% of the time you use it, etc. etc.

He has so many issues and it's past the point of frustration in playing him for me to just me being sad that I can't play my favorite killer, because he's virtually unplayable most games and this is after he was kill switched for 1 or 2 months. All of his bugs and issues remain the exact same, because of how poorly coded he is. Genuinely he is incredibly fun and interesting when I can play him, but to just be able to play him is a challenge in itself where you're fighting the game every 3 seconds.

7. What's a license you'd like to see added to the game?

Look I'ma be entirely honest with you all: I do not care about what license is added to the game. There's ones like f.naf where I'm like eh... I'd rather see a more deserving license added that actually fits the games style, but I genuinely do not care if they're added. (I mean this 100%: I hate S.pringtraps design, I'd rather it be V.anny or N.ightmarrionette if anyone is added)

I guess if I had to pick one though it'd be like The Thing or Outlast.

12. Favourite perk to use?

Old Blast Mine, no contest. I literally have no idea why they nerfed it, it was such a meme perk that had no real use to it.

15. Favourite chase music?

Legion, Oni, or Knight- I'm a slut for drums to be honest.

[arsonistbunny]

idk, writing on how i'm not sure glitchtrap is william

Here are some rambles about how I don't think Glitchtrap is William but more of a mimic. The thing is that no side was clearly taken by the games. I wish there were cause it seems important, but you know...

There's a quote from HandUnit that says that they recreated personalities from the past. "Using proprietary technology developed by Fazbear Entertainment, our VR development teams were able to use vintage control board, almost like plug and play, digitally recreating performances and personalities from the past in an instant."

Which hints towards what Glitchtrap might be. He's treated as a glitch, a virus, something that invited himself but also grew stronger by himself as if he was an unfinished code and finished his own coding.

It's also worth looking into Glitchtrap's design. It doesn't really look like Springbonnie, does it? It has resemblances, sure, but it is also very different. In fact, it looks like someone tried to draw the bunny from memory but like, very fuzzy memory. You know, as if someone saw a picture once and tried to recreate it. In fact, Glitchtrap does look more like the Springbonnie posters from Security Breach.

A little step aside, I'd like to point out that Glitchtrap isn't the first virus in FNAF. Remember Lolbit? That's a virus - a very bad one, but it acts like one and it doesn't have a physical body. So there's a possibility that William might have tried to "clone" himself as an AI - in his goal of being immortal or some shit - but didn't have time to finish it. This could explain why Glitchtrap knows so much about William without being William.

Ok, back to the subject. Throughout Help Wanted, Glitchtrap is said to be observing. Learning. And this is a theme that goes on a lot.

“I saw it for the first time today. There was a character, I couldn't make out who it was, standing at the end of the hall. I thought it was just bugged out, so I made a note of it and kept playing. But then it was looking in the window. And not like Chica or Bonnie would. It was like it was actually looking in the window, seeing what I was doing.”

Only after you're done getting all the tapes and beating the game, you have access to Pizza Party which is a very different level. It's an amalgamation of everything. As if Glitchtrap is connecting to William's memories.

The first time I saw Pizza Party, I thought it was Glitchtrap pridefully showing the player what he knows. But you could also assume that he's trying to copy William. In other words, what if he's not trying to show the player, but rather he needs to recreate William's crimes? As a step closer to be him.

Then there's that one thing from the fake mails (of FNAF AR) that's bothering me. "One day you're researching flowers and the migration patterns of bees (fascinating, right?) and the next day you type in 'How far can a human being be cut in half before losing consciousness.' "

Which is something you'd think William would already know and wouldn't have to look up on google. But Glitchtrap, who isn't human in the first place, wouldn't know. He doesn't have any idea about how human works.

In the CDs from Security Breach, you have "two" Vanessa. The one who answers and the one who does not. If you pay attention, you will notice that the Vanessa who talks back is the real one and the Vanessa who does not talk is Glitchtrap.

The Vanessa who does not talk reacts a lot. And she goes through a lot of sensory issues. First, there's the sun too bright, the chair not comfortable enough, the smell of the flower, the taste of the candy. Which is something you could both attribute to someone who didn't experience sensory in a long time and to someone who's never had them.

It's also worth noting that the real Vanessa doesn't want the candy whereas the other one seems to really be enjoying it. There's also Vanny's chasing animation which is... very funny. But also it's not very human-like? It looks a lot like some old cartoon character chasing you. Which is something that has been very much associated with Glitchtrap before, all the friendly cartoony movements (such a the wavings and the little dance). So definitely Vanny chasing you is Glitchtrap in control.

But then there's also that Security Breach canon ending that doesn't make sense (due to the obvious lack of parts that was supposed to be there before. It's like a whole chapter got deleted.) I'm not going to talk about how stupid I think that Burntrap still exists when it has been burned down to the ground with everything else... What I don't understand is how it'd be a good idea to go back to that... scraps that is just gonna break down on itself. However, if Glitchtrap's whole purpose is to mimic and maybe replace William, he's gonna want to be him in what's left of his body - even if it's not a reliable idea.

Oh! and let's not forget about the Afton Family bots in the sewers! You can take it the way you want, but the way I see it still feels like recreating a picture. Like trying to be closer to the person Glitchtrap wants to be but he didn't know the Afton family.

They're not human-looking, they've been recreated with - I can't find the exact term - pictural codes? Like the way children will draw a house: a triangle on a rectangle.

Which is very fortunate for us to determine which robot represents who: the headless for Crying Child, the pigtail hair for Elizabeth, the fancy outfit for William, etc.

Lastly, there's also the thing where William is literally stuck in hell with Cassidy.

But also it would be better because you can only make a character come back so many times. At some point, it'll get old and boring.