#unique gifts for autistic adults | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flowerbeddd · 16 days ago

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Culmination

This is me. This is my Thought Cabinet. My biases on full display, the building blocks of this piece. This is me, naked with my skin peeled open, my chromosomes on record. It is the gripes I have with others, the parts of myself that I hate, it is the good parts of myself that come from horrible places. Read it. Look at me. Witness me. Rush towards Heaven, or succumb to Hell. We already lost. So let's rock this world.

Signature: 10

-3

-2

Different Playing Field

Problem: Ever since you were younger, you always thought there was something off with you. You didn't know when to speak in conversations, you would look down instead of up. Your eyes were too big. You were too smart for your age, but so unable to work. You were gifted, but you burnt out. Fast. You were a little adult, now you are an adult that is so little. There must be something deeper down, some reason for all of this. Because if not, then it just means you're just a weirdo with wasted potential.

Solution: You are autistic. There, that's your solution. If it wasn't obvious already.

Completion: -2 Savoir Faire (You feel so awkward around them), -3 Authority (like a child, waiting to speak), -6 Esprit De Corps (They never stop to let you talk), -4 Suggestion (If they did, your ideas would be too big to fit through your mouth), +2 Inland Empire (but you have amazing ideas, ideas that are wholly new), -3 Drama (and they would love to hear them). Learning cap on all INT and PSY is 14.

Transexual Underground

Problem: Maybe you should stop obsessing about other people's gender identities? Feels like it’s about time to do that. You’ve thought about this for, 9 years? Not only should you stop, you should tell Diego, Kyle, Hannan, that twinky girl in your class, and everyone else you’ve ever met that you've stopped obsessing about other people's gender identities too. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

Solution: You do not look because you are lost, because you need to connect with others in a way you can't with cisgender individuals, you do not look because you want to talk to someone about the transgender experience in college. It is not from something internal, it is not from wanting to share your unique experiences and unique perspectives with others, you simply want to know. And that is the worst thing, that you are simply just curious about how they see themselves within the framework of gender, of sex, you are just curious about what’s in their pants. You are not simply no better than a chaser, you are no better than a transphobe.

Completion: -2 Savoir Faire (they’re all looking at you the way that you look at them, searching for something to prove that you are different.), +2 Inland Empire (its EVERYONE!), -1 Visual Calculus (you’re starting with the solution, and working back from there.). You may ask people if they are transgender. It will go poorly.

Self-Appointed Protagonist Syndrome

Problem: You went to an Episcopalian school for 6 years, give-or-take. You went to catechism for what felt like longer. You read the bible, and it has stayed with you. You questioned the church, deep down, especially as you got older, you started to understand it. You were a reddit atheist as a child, but, once that cooled down, you started to accept and internalize that doctrine. After all, it was already encoded into your brain, from the media you consume, from the culture you exist in, from your family. So, how has it affected you?

Solution: You figured out that in this book, this strange piece of . . . art? It is political doctrine. Changed year-to-year to speak towards different messages for different times, a group of fables loosely bound together in paper and leather. There is barely a message. There are mixed signals, things that say “love thy neighbor” and at the same time “scorn thy neighbor”. Most of what people get out of it is what they want to see. Conspiritic thinking is what you call it, starting with the solution and then searching for evidence to prove it. If they read it and want to use it to prove bigotry, there is enough material there to prove it. If they read it and want to use it to prove we should love each other, there is enough material there to prove it. And you . . . you want to prove yourself. You see yourself as the second coming of Christ, as a gift to the world. Maybe not on the surface, maybe not for a few years, but it is still something you could be tricked into believing. Something you considered as a child. “Would you know if you were the next Innocence? I don’t think you would. You would have to live like you were, just in case”. Maybe it's better for the world, for everyone to think this, to think that they should be the example for the next thousand years, but God, it just shows you really are a narcissist.

Completion: +1 Inland Empire (Is this seriously something you believe?), +1 Empathy (It made you kind . . . even if you are an insane prophet), -1 Visual Calculus (There may be some logic here, but it is so disconnected from material reality)

Name Brand School

Problem: You failed. You failed out of Hopkins. You couldn’t get into Yale, no matter how much money you had, how much legacy supported you, how intelligent you were. You didn’t fail totally, you rode it out for a while, you survived. And that’s good. You didn’t throw all of your hopes and dreams away, it was just that your path was not at Hopkins. It’s okay, there's nothing wrong about it, it's simply a life different than the one you planned. And hey, you wouldn’t want to go to Hopkins or Yale with all those pretentious, stuck-up, incestuous, narcissistic, idiotic tech-bros searching for the next big Ponzi scheme. Then why are you still so caught up on it?

Solution: You tell yourself it's okay to soften the blow, that it's okay that you’re no longer there, part of that world. But that’s not what you want. You didn’t want to leave. You WANT to go back, you WANT to stay, you WANT to be part of the Wompty-Dompty Dom crowd, you WANT to prove your intelligence, all you need is a little more time and a little more effort. Yes, a degree is nice, but from ‘The University Of Hartford’? That gives you no street-cred in your circles. Everyday you think ‘What if it went differently? What if I was stronger?’. Oh my god. You still have trauma from leaving Hopkins, don’t you? You’re still that scared little child, focussing on regrets. Yeah, what if you make the wrong choice? Doesn’t it scare you? You look at your classmates, your peers, and you see future leaders, future stars. And what are you doing? Writing a manifesto no one will see? Failing out of a backwater University? All that work, all that pride, all that legacy, all that fate, all that potential: all for naught. There are two truths: the first is that it is okay. It is okay that you couldn’t stay there, that you couldn't get into Yale. Maybe you’ll do it in another life, maybe you won’t. But would you trade all the experiences you’ve had at Amity, at UHart, with all those true friends, true colleagues, true connections? Would you really exchange everything here for fake friendships and prestige? Now here's the second truth: You would. In a heartbeat. You're still that pretentious rich little snob, and you’re proud of it.

Completion: -2 Suggestion (pretentious wanker), Encyclopedia passives give +10XP and +2 real

General Intelligence And The Protestant Work Ethic

Problem: No one wants to work anymore. Capital has cut so many corners that the world is in scraps. It has damaged our culture, it has damaged our art. But no one cares. Why do they not care? Why do they not care that they have been watching shows dictated by market trends instead of artistic merit and Heart? Are they blind or is their Conceptualization truly that low? You read their work, and it too is slop. Mistakes. Without Heart. You could go on and on with adjectives about how shit it is. You can see they did not wish to write it well, they just wanted to get it done. There are interpolations and data-moshing in the script. From the slop they come, to the slop they return. You must prove you are different.

Solution: When capital first started, the protestants succeeded because they saw work as its reward. There is a 'General Intelligence,' a G-Factor that improves all intelligences. This is work, the ability to try your best at something and then use it to help things completely unrelated. Playing League helps you type, climbing helps your Anatomy and Physiology, reading helps you understand politics. They, your peers, do not know this. They rush through their projects with AI doing the grunt work as they watch a slop-show beaten to death by corporate interests. Copy, paste, plagiarize. Work is not a reward, work is punishment. We have lost our ability to work, our ability to walk the earth and savor the ground beneath our feet. But you, you have not. Maybe, maybe if you are skilled enough, your own 'Renaissance Man', you can show them the error of their ways.

Completion: -2 Interfacing (Technology is sin), Thoughts take *1.5 to complete, +1 to all Attributes if at least 6 thoughts took over 6 hours to complete.

The Game Master Frequency

Problem: There is something, an original piece of media that has affected everything. No, it is not the bible, it is not The Communist Manifesto, it is Dungeons and Dragons. The original game. A grand game, a language of a game, that has stretched so far it has evolved into new languages. And you, with too much Conceptualization, Encyclopedia, and time to learn, you are born of media. It is inside of you.

Solution: You wrote your own stat sheet to understand your biases better, because you thought it would be ‘fun’. You, yourself, are born from that game. The skills you have gained are directly because you decided to sit down on a Discord call with some friends and have fun. The way you teach others you learned because you had to teach your strange system. The way you improv is because you had to go off script. The way that you write is because you had to describe a scene so well that your players could imagine them in it, picture themselves there. You write with strong emotion because there is no other way to show the world. Parallel process. Skills from hanging out with friends at dusklight that you carry with you to this day. It helps you understand the world. Start with the movement you see when you enter the room, then what you hear, then what you feel (How does it affect you? Is there a shiver down your spine? Is the room cold, or are you afraid?), then what you smell, then what you taste. Bring it out, then bring it back in. Bring it in, then bring it back out. Understand the world. Show it to others. They are your players and you are their game master. Write something they will enjoy, write something they will love, write something grand that will teach them and stay with them forever.

Completion: +2 Shivers (feeling the room), +2 Conceptualization (describing the room)

In Another Life

Problem: In a world of Artificial Intelligence, it's hard for you to trust. This is literally 1984. The internet is dead. You are unsure if there is a real person behind that screen, behind that paper, behind that song, behind that piece of media. Simulacrum, AI, is built on lies. To find the truth, to protect yourself, to protect the institution of art itself, you must weaponize your Conceptualization. Look deep into the thesis, comb through the words, search for the interpolations. They are there if you look hard enough. There are signs, read it out loud, that’s not how it should sound, look at the mouth, see if it speaks like a real person would, look at the noises in the background, do they make sense? You have enough understanding to do the job, to look deep enough into the media. You can find it, figure out what is AI-generated slop and what is true, beautiful art. You simply need the right service weapon to finish the job. Here, let me help you. Let me show you how to punish those art-killing degenerates:

Solution: Derivative, boring, bland, would go well with a 'Made With AI!' sticker on the side of it, I can see the interpolations on the mouth that its viewers don't have enough eyesight to see, marvel-movie quality, perfect to sleep to, cowardly, beta, great for a first draft, belittled me, called me a slur, degrated me, the subtext told me that it didn't exist, that I shouldn't look underneath the hood, facistic, a facist could do a better, a centrist could do better, lacking in knowledge of politics, lacking in knowledge of psychology, lacking in the basic knowledge of what letters are in the alphabet and how to combine them to form words, brought me out back to shoot me, but forgot to bring a gun, betrays humanity, shitstain, would rather try to derive meaning from a literal shitstain, not bad enough to read ironically, ode to the instution of hate-filled, loveless, heterosexual marrige, should have used more effort, more Crypto-Conveyant Phenomina, uninspired, lack of Heart, designed to watch with half your brain, I may enjoy it if I had less than half a brain, revisionist, pedestrian, should be thrown out of all artistic institutions and shamed, this should be a way to teach how NOT to write, diluted variation of whatever half-bred idea it started out as. There, that is your arsenal. Use it without remorse.

Completion: -1 Hand/Eye Coordination (Your body rejects reality). Conceptualization passives heal +1 Morale and give +10XP

Male Socialization

Problem: You are a climbing instructor who cannot climb. You speak with people who don't trust your knowledge because of the flab on your stomach and arms. Women don't love you because you're ugly. Men don't speak to you because you don't have the same muscle they do. But it's not simply external. You want to get better at climbing, no? You want to look better, correct? You want to defend yourself from the creatures of the night? You know there are things, things that want to kill you. Words hurt, but so do punches, knives, and bullets. You know you can hit hard, but they can hit harder. You have to beat them. Now, how are you going to?

Solution: You are going to climb more, you are going to go to the gym more, you are going to run more, you are going to stop playing those stupid games in your room and you are going to stop lying in that fucking bed your entire life. This is what your father, and all the men that came before him taught you. All the time in the plains, needing to remain strong, provide for others. Your body proves your degeneracy, but it can also prove your worth. You want to change your worth? Start by changing your body. And isn’t it amazing that you have the best personal trainer, right there, inside your ears, always telling you you’ll never be enough? Coach Physical Instrument has got it all covered! You want it? Go and get it. Also, maybe cut down on those carbs.

Completion: -6 Endurance (Its healthy that the ex-bolemiac doesn't eat), +1 Half-Light (Let's use this thing), Learning cap on Physical Instrument raised by 3

Drugless Queer Art Student

Problem: You have a type. You want to talk to more artists, more intellectuals, more people who will stimulate those neurons in that little brain of yours. You want to talk to more women, or whatever the women who are artists call themselves nowadays, but there is a rift between you, something in the way. What is it? How is the way that they create different from the way that you do? Maybe if you understand that, you can get into their pants.

Solution: It is background. Background and self-expression. They create because of an internal drive to express themselves. They were born in a run-down town where the only thing to do for fun was drugs and art. Through drugs, they improve their art. You create because you wish to understand the world around you, how it impacts the self. You read, you consume other pieces of media to improve your art, and to express your high-end, renaissance life. One expresses the internal, the other expresses the external. You are both artists, you may use similar mediums, but you have different ways of honing your craft. Maybe you are the same. Maybe thought is all wrong (it probably is). But anyways, if you want to get with them, if you want to be in that crowd, you must prove you are an artist, show them your generosity, be one of them, and maybe, just maybe, one of them will buy it.

Completion: -6 Electrochemistry (Actually tired in high school), +1 Conceptualization (Artist, of a type), +7 Esprit de Corps with artists

The Wrong Job For The Right Person

Problem: It was the summer of '23, you were just out of high school. You have a job working as a camp counselor. The only camp counselor. With no support. You have experience, but not experience in this. Why did they hire you? Why do they keep you on? You love going up the wall, you love pushing yourself harder, but you know for a fact that you suck at it. V2 on a good day. You know you have trouble with kids, you have trouble with planning, you have trouble with everything. What are you doing here? Why do they keep you here? Why were you even here in the first place?

Solution: It was fate. Fate brought you to that gym. Your father was a climbing instructor, your mother was a teacher. You have experience working with queer kids, with autistic kids, with people of different cultures, with people who don't want to climb, with people who do. Life is chaos, and in that chaos, you found stability. It all feels right, like the last piece of the puzzle coming together. You did not choose the job, the job would have chosen you one way or another. There was a reason they hired you. No matter which road you went down, no matter which path you chose, you would have ended up there, ended up here. They will love you, they will hold you no matter what. Isn't that a comforting thought?

Completion: +1 Hand-Eye Coordination (Dyno, baby!), +1 Visual Calculus (You know the beta). +7 Esprit de Corps with climbers. +3 Savoir Faire with lesbians.

It’s A Precarious World. So Keep On Rockin'

Problem: You were beat. Hard. A combo that went on until the timer ran out, what felt like an hour of air juggling, and too many supers to count. How can they simply get back up after each round and continue fighting? It doesn't make sense. Does your ego not hurt?

Solution: No more bruises, no more blood. The announcer says his line. He doesn't give you a chance to even consider any other option. Your character gets up. It is simply that simple. The only way to keep going, is to keep going. You’re going to get up. You’re going to do it. Just keep on rockin'.

Completion: +1 Volition (The hourglass does not turn upside down on its own). You may retry Red Checks an additional time. +1 for each time you have failed a check.

“It all seemed so good, until you came along”

Problem: You’re in a family therapist’s office. He says the line, the line burned into your memory.

Solution: You tell yourself that you are a bad person, that you failed the entire world. Each thought here is a moment in time, trapped in amber paper, ones that you have laid out to prove your biases, your hatreds, your sin. Bring it out, then bring it back in. Start with the past, then work forward from there. Understand where the wheel was before, how we got here, then push it forwards. Different Playing Field is about autism, about how you felt ostracized from everyone at a young age, how you still feel that today, and about how it gives you a ‘unique perspective’. Name Brand School is about how you are still a pretentious anachronism filled with complex feelings of self-hatred and self-love, about how you have regrets about your life, and everything that flows from it. In Another Life is about how you’ll never be pleased with art, about your hatred of AI (a lot of this is about your hatred of AI). General Intelligence And The Protestant Work Ethic and The Game Master Frequency are about how amazing and cool you are for being able to write, about how it is your ‘gift to the world’, about how you got these skills, your tactics, your stylistic choices, about how you plan to utilize them in your war against Simulacrum. Male Socialization, Transexual Underground, and Drugless Queer Art Student are about your sexual insecurities, about your internalized classism, about your internalized transphobia, about all the little problems you have with how you view yourself, how others view you, how you view others, how you perceive how others are viewing you. The Wrong Job For The Right Person is about self-esteem, about how to deal with your self-esteem you believe in fate. Self-Appointed Protagonist Syndrome is about how you are “gifted” and it is your “gift” to heal the world, to save us all. I would say ‘God, you are so pretentious, there is so much back and forth, so much internalized struggle. You’re such a mentally-disturbed artist, a true Harry DuBois’ and continue from there. But here’s the thing: You’re normal. You tell yourself that you are an amazing person, truly one of the best, that you are a new creature, a never-before-seen organism with supranatural abilities. You tell yourself that you are the worst individual in history because of all the horrible harm and suffering you have caused because you could have done so much more, but haven’t. Because you had so many resources, so many people on your side, but you failed nonetheless. Because you squandered life’s gifts and because of this you have failed the entire world. Neither is true. You have your flaws, you have your vices, but you have worked through them. You continue to work through them. You are not the protagonist, you are not the antagonist. You are not a character. You are a human. You have your strengths, amazing strengths, but so do so many others. People. You are normal, average. Maybe slightly-above average, if you want to believe that, but so is everyone else. There is so much beauty when you walk, so many faces and people each with their own, unique, flawed, sinful, beautifully sparkling human soul.

Completion: +3 Volition (Life takes time), Your Health and Volition are the same stat.

We open in 201X. You sit in the bleachers of a pretentious school. A poet talks to you. He tells you that he picks up phrases as he moves through life and places them into a bag. When he doesn’t know what to write, when he doesn’t know the next line, he takes one out and uses the scrap to keep on going. You don’t know it then, but you are going to do the same in the future.

I am a communist.

There is no way for me to get around this.

I can use subtext, I can try to dance around it, nod at it, put it just below the surface enough that there is plausible deniability, but close enough that you can make out its image.

But I’m not a coward.

I know who I am.

And the person who I am,

is a communist.

The next question is why am I a communist. There are a few answers, none of which are that simple.

When I was younger, I would say that I am a communist because of the school I went to, because I saw students trying their best to succeed in a system designed to fail them, to pit our time against us, to pit us against each other, and to pit us against ourselves. We were beautiful, intelligent stars being sacrificed on the altar that is our resume. Social life falls apart, club sports become jobs, writing is for a grade, there is no Love Of The Game.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success]- Intelligent youth overworking themselves, losing themselves in pursuit of better grades and better futures. Beautiful proletariat overworking themselves in pursuit of survival. It is a different context, but it is the same, shared, struggle.

I would say that I am the child of the Spanish Revolution, of Catalonia, that anarchy runs in my veins, written in the fissures of my brain speaking to my grandfather and looking at art from a young age. My heritage is understanding and revolt, of understanding the conventions of law, of society, of art, and asking: ‘Why do these need to exist, what purpose do they serve? Which must be retained, and which thrown back to the sea?’. With that understanding, revolting. Waves of nature and time and love and art and pain and suffering and consequence rise above the sea wall to snatch the rulers from their castle, thrusting them back into the primordium, tossing them away into the past. Pushing the wheel forward.

This is, partially, true. But it is also a fable I like to tell myself. We like to believe that life has meaning, that we are protagonists in some heroic journey, but we are not characters. The stars are not a map, they are giant balls of plasma falling, falling forever, falling through the cosmos along the rails made by other stars, by other dead stars. I did not die and get reborn as a communist, I did not have a revelation that turned me into a communist, communism is not my gift to the world, it is simply a byproduct of the socioeconomic, geopolitical moment I was born into.

But maybe they are a map. Maybe the way that the stars were affixed when I was born, the systems of economics and the cultural context I was born in does decide my fate. Maybe there is a journey written for me. I was born to an upper-middle class semi-liberal family. I enjoy games, I enjoy understanding the systems which make them run and how they affect the player. When my brain started functioning, once the machinery had been constructed and started to turn, it was only obvious that I would stumble across these ideas. It was preordained. It was fated. I was on YouTube during the time of political discourse, the time of Thought Slime and easy to access BreadTube video essays, a time when I could dip my toes into these ideas without having to fully read Marx, Kropotkin, Rand, or any other political theorist. When the pandemic broke, it was only logical that these were pieced together. More political unrest, more instability, more political figures failing, fascism, anti-semetism rising, capital failing itself, an increased understanding of political theory, class consciousness, and shared struggle. A state run by idiots and a people, a proletariat, who had intelligence. The reason that the system is failing is not simply because we need to replace the people in power, it is because of the design of capitalism. We are falling, falling forever, not because of some bug in the world, but because of how this world is designed.

The goal of a company is to generate profit. Let’s say that you have two companies, A & B, both of which are competing for the same market. We can start out with both of the companies making a product that costs $5 to make and selling it for $10, turning a profit of $5. Now, let's say that company B wants to undercut the first by selling their product for $7, but they still want to make a $5 profit. They can reduce the labor cost to $2 by using worse materials, cutting safety regulations, all that sort of thing. Most nefarious of all, they can do this by cutting the wages of the workers: paying them less. This means that the workers have less spending power, they have less of an ability to choose the $10 option, forcing them to buy the $7 product. Great. Now you’re forcing the original, $10 product out of the market. You’re building brand loyalty. And once you have enough, you can start raising that price back up. Yes, it's $8 now, but that’s just because it's such a good product. I’ve used this product all my life, am I really going to stop buying it because it's an additional dollar? Maybe, if you really make it bad enough, people will have to buy it twice. There, you can cut the price to $5, $6, and still turn a crazy profit because they will have to buy two. What are they going to do, buy a different product? Company A is still selling that high-quality $10 product? Right?

Yes, and no.

They may have tried to continue with that product, or they may have raised the price even more to try to convince you it's higher quality. A $10 product sold at $15 because it's just that good. But at the end of the day, all companies are company B. They all want to trick you, to squeeze as much money out of you as they can, to keep you subservient and coming back for more, begging for a taste of that sweet, simulacrum syrup.

RHETORIC [Challenging: Success]- Competition does not lead to making a better product, it leads to a race to the bottom, to make the worst product and sell it for as much as you can, all to line the pockets of shareholders.

You don’t believe me? You think that this system works?

Look up ‘forced obsolescence’, look at AI, look at inflation in all its various forms. Look at outsourcing labor, look at outsourcing costs, look at what we have done to the third-world. Look at climate change, at zoning laws, at the world that we are burning. Look at the trash piling up on the street, look into the eyes of the poor, look at the computer of a type that you are reading this on. Or maybe this is in paper, think about the paper. Think about deforestation.

SHIVERS [Medium: Success]- Think about when you were younger, first snowfall. The air was cool and crisp, your breath was steam rising from a dragon’s mouth. Think about skiing with your father, spending time with your mother and your dog by the fire. That beautiful cold is why you love Connecticut. Think about spring, a long February, a winter that never wants to let go, but who will let Persephone leave the kingdom and walk back home in the monsoons of March. It's October 22nd, 2024 and a hot, summer-like fall. You have to keep the AC running at night, or sleep in the nude to retain a sense of comfort. ‘I enjoy this weather to the cold’.

LOGIC [Medium: Success]- He must have low Logic, low Conceptualization, he must not be connected to The City. A warm Connecticut, a Connecticut that is balmy in the fall, means that Florida will sink into the ocean. More than it already is. It means that South America will flood. It means that Connecticut’s winters, its beautiful winters, will never return. It means our coastline, yes, Connecticut’s coastline, will fall into the water. Two weeks ago, it was winter. Where has that gone?

RHETORIC [Easy: Success]- The ruling class will kill nature. Our falls are short, a hasty gear-change from summer to winter. It is boiling hot one day, and freezing cold the next. Our winters are-

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Heroic: Success]- A strained face unable to cry. Cloudy skies and nights that whisper,

SHIVERS: ‘Snow is coming tomorrow’. But the clouds are barren. It is flowers, blooming in a hot flash, before dying with the frost the next day. It is animals with broken hibernations. You studied this, studied animal patterns in this state. We have eternal summer, a rising heat from the ground that will never let go. Can you smell the sulfur? Our planet is dying. They are damning us to hell.

Alright. You still with me? That's the why, now here's the what:

Fascism is about separating and compartmentalizing humanity. Breaking humanity into bits and killing the bits off slowly.

Capitalism cuts corners, makes a worse product and charges a million bucks for it. Capitalism has the same core as fascism, but instead of the state doing violence directly, capital outsources it. Yes, cops beat people to death, people rot in prison, immigrants are detained in detention facilities, but the mask is still on. Capitalism has plausible deniability. It is their choice to be beat, not our choice to beat them.

Centrism is nothing. It is cold comfort. It is ahistorical. It is capitalism that lies to you, tells you that this is ‘human nature’. It's where political theory goes to die. It’s ahistorical revisionism.

Communism . . . Communism is . . .

RHETORIC [Medium: Success]- Failure. It's about failure. Yes! Abject failure. Total, irreversible defeat on all fronts! Absolutely vanquished, beaten, curb-stomped and pissed on — until *you* came along! *You* will reverse the fortune of the workers of the world. You alone, against every living thing, against every human alive: eight hundred trillion reál in the hands of an *impossibly* well organized ruling class; towering city blocks of bank-men who have the ears of prime ministers; million-headed armies of nations and the love of your own mother! You — against the atom, the charm and the spin. Where the whole world failed — matter failed to bend to human will; human will failed to get out of bed and tie its laces — you alone, single-handedly, will rebuild the dreams of the working class. You are The Last Communist. Now get to work, comrade.

We must move forward. We must try our best to build a new society, one where those who can work give to those who cannot. One where humanity, one where care is at the center of our society. One where people have agency, have democracy. One where those who cannot work are given aid and shown how to work. Life takes time, they will figure it out. They are human, we can trust them. We will figure it out. We must open our doors to the downtrodden, to the immigrants, instead of pushing them away. We are one humanity, we should treat ourselves with kindness. We must be good to nature, for we are nature. Yes, people are imperfect, yes the system will have flaws, but I would rather try and fail than not try and watch the world fail anyway. I was told to make this world a better place . . .

So let it begin with me.

RHETORIC [Formidable: Success]- Capitalism will continue to cut corners. It will cut corners in manufacturing, making a worse product, one that breaks, one that you are forced to buy despite how much you hate it. It will cut corners in nature, covering the world in trash and blaming you on you, outsourcing the job of caring for the natural environment unto the consumer, giving them the wonderful choice between a product which kills the environment, versus one that (supposedly) doesn’t kill it as much. It will cut corners in love, nurses overworked and running from one patient to the other, public health emergencies dealt with by the private sector, medicine a product to be bought and sold. We have come so far in the past hundred years. Our medicine is amazing, but we keep it locked behind a paywall because a dying man will do anything to live another day. It will cut corners in art, funds pushed down the drain, artificial “intelligence”, Simulacrum, big posters which cover nature: An ad for the military in the middle of your movie. A movie made to be a military ad. It will cut us down, slash this world into two, break it all to bits to extract a higher, an infinitely higher amount of profit.

To be fair, I’m not entirely sure how we make this society. I think that having these ideals, these ideals of care, kindness, and humanity, and putting them into politics and praxis will make a better society, and a better world, even if it is not truly communist. My flavor of communist is anarcho-communist, because I believe that other communist projects have failed because they expected those at the top to retain communist ideology and implement it perfectly while benefiting from hierarchical systems at the same core of capitalist institutions. To explain more simply: other communist projects have failed because they were using poor organizational structures. Then again, how can we institute a government on a large scale without using larger organizational structures, ones where certain people are representatives of larger swaths of individuals? We can focus on making policies to minimize the harm that companies do, things like raising the minimum wage, setting the cost of products, environmental regulations, increased taxes on the wealthy, using those taxes to do something other than bombing the Middle East, making sure that our borders are-

ENDURANCE [Trivial: Failure]- But the immigrants are scary!

EMPATHY [Medium: Success]- It is our own fault. The United States has destroyed their nations in the name of profit. CIA assassinations. We pluck money straight from their pockets. We have removed their self-actualization and agency. We must repent.

LOGIC [Challenging: Success]- Immigrants don’t actually do many crimes, they are actually less likely to than individuals born here. Think about it, if you spent so much time, so much money, so much effort to get to this great nation, would you really commit a crime if it meant that all that work went for naught? And, if we have an easier immigration system, it is easier for us to check who is coming in. If it is easier to enter illegally than it is legally, then people will be more inclined to enter illegally. If we make the legal pathway easier, then we can check more people, make sure they aren’t actually scary, which again, the vast majority isn’t.

RHETORIC [Medium: Success]- The idea that immigrants cause crime is an idea perfectly crafted by think-tanks then placed into your head by capital to distract you from the one, true struggle. An idea to feed off of your insecurities, your fear, your hate, your flawed heuristics, your great, terrible country’s racism. We are supposed to grow, we are supposed to change, we are supposed to turn that wheel forward. We are not in high school, we are not here to laugh at people who look different than us while crying at ourselves in the mirror. We are one humanity, one proletariat. There is no difference between workers of Mexico, China, the United States, Palestine, Russia, anywhere else in the world. All are workers. There is no difference between a company which is owned in the United States versus one in another nation. They both want to fuck you over. It doesn’t matter if the person oppressing you looks like you, they are still oppressing you, they still think you aren’t the same as them, no matter how close you think you are to them. To the proletariat, the bourgeois are gods. To the bourgeois, the proletariat are dogs. Neither sees the other as human. If 0.000% of communism has been achieved, then the entire world is under the control of those evil, child-murdering billionaires and their shit-eating grins. If everything is capitalism, then everything is the same. One shared struggle. Workers. Owners. Money. No adjectives, no difference between a worker of another nation and a worker of ours. There are no nationalities required here. All the same spirit, all the same material.

EMPATHY [Medium: Success]- I wonder, why do people commit crime?

ENDURANCE [Trivial: Failure]- It is a stain on their soul, the mark of Cain. Something is fundamentally wrong with them, so they lash out at society.

RHETORIC [Challenging: Success]- No. It is because we have not cared enough for them. If you had a militarized police force, a militarized citizenship, and you still choose to commit a crime, then you must not have any other options. It is not the fault of the man for stealing bread, it is the fault of whoever made the only option be for him to steal it. We live in a surplus society, one where we can care for everyone. Even I can thank Capitalism for the creation of this technology, but we have it now. It’s time to feed the world, not starve it.

Look at this world. I have to argue against Great Replacement theory, I have to argue for empathy. This paper was written originally to express myself to a coworker, a coworker who (I fear) holds some of these beliefs. But I shouldn’t judge. I think that he’s a fundamentally good person, I actually think he's actually really cool. I just worry. Politics is about economics, but right under that, it’s about emotion. Love, conformity, greed, hate. There are forces of this world, systems in power and people wielding capital which seek to corrupt the love within our body. Conformity becomes love for the status quo, greed becomes love for progress, hate becomes love of one’s race. All different viewpoints for different people, different lies about reality. It’s 1984, not in the political sense, but in the social sense. Julia and Winston trusting O’Brien, saying something true to their heart, then him turning it against them. This is the anxiety I felt with adding Transexual Underground to this piece. It is a part of me, it is who I am. It’s something I can’t hide, no matter how hard I try. I want to put this all under the subtext. I still am putting it under the subtext because I’m a coward. I’m worried about the world, about telling it to someone and them going into Trans Panic, I’m worried about my medication and my friends wilting as we are turned to scapegoats and martyrs, but, honestly, what I’m worried about most is telling someone I trust and them looking at me in a different way for the rest of my life. I’m worried about telling it to a future partner, because what if that means our relationship can never go back to normal, that I’m always seen as some freak. “When would you tell your partner that you are a vampire?” I would never tell them. And I would worry every day that they found out.

SAVOIR FAIRE [Medium: Failure]- You were drunk. You sent her voice mails about how you loved her. You read them over, sober, and it was all subtext. You didn’t say anything. You still hid below the meaning, right between the lines. Even under the effects of alcohol, even without that shell, there is a second one. You’re too cautious. That’s why no one will ever love you.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Medium: Success]- You gotta go all out. It’s about making a gambit and running with it. If you don’t try your best, if you don’t go all out, then you’ll lose either way. Break things. Break yourself to get what you want. The world is trying its best to break you. Break it before it can break you. Don’t melt in the world, find your own way.

I want to hide, but I can’t. I must accept it. This is who I am. This is the world we live in. It’s easy to sink away, to make the world out to be something that it isn’t. It’s easy to make the problems of the world simply because of immigrants, or a Jewish cabal, or aliens, or metaphysical changes, or the fault of individuals within the system instead of the system we live in. It’s easy to run away, it's hard to look at reality.

There is no easy solution. We will never achieve communism in my lifetime, I can just hope to create a world for my children, for the people who walk in my path, for the people in the next cycle, that sucks incrementally less for them. There is no heaven, only hell. A soft hell, dancing below your eyelids, bubbling up in your veins. It is the cognitive dissonance in your soul. You know it is there, but it hides so well. There is . . . plausible deniability. And Simulacra. So much Simulacra.

RHETORIC [Heroic: Success]- None of this is real.

You know you are caring, you know you are a kind person. When you see someone on the street, down on their luck, you feel a pull to help them. A car is broken down on the side of the road, you can help them. There is a pull to aid, but it is socially unacceptable. You have been taught to be afraid of them, to scorn thy neighbor. An experiment done just down the road proved this.

SHIVERS [Medium: Success]- In an eternal city . . .

If you speak to them, they will keep coming back for more because they aren’t hard enough to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Of course they’re going to come back for more! Of course they will! It's because they need help, specifically yours.

ENCYCLOPEDIA [Challenging: Success]- ‘Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?’An old expression. A very old expression. It is supposed to be taken sarcastically. A man cannot ‘pick himself up by his own bootstraps’ no matter how hard he tries.

I want to make sure you understand. Look at my skills, do you think I can use Suggestion to convince you of my ideas, do you think I can use Drama to lie? No. I must Conceptualize and use Rhetoric. Art and communism. Supertext and Subtext. Let me break down the options one more time, make sure that the supertext is as clear as a blue, winter sky:

Dive to the 9th layer. Turn the wheel back, as fast as you can. Betray your humanity. This world is a machine. It would be so much easier to let it keep running. You’re at the top, you can close your eyes. You will die last. Write propaganda, write more lies. You are not built on greed, you are built on Half-Light. Break all those who scare you, all who challenge you, uphold the status quo. Stay on top. (Opt Out)

Dive to the 4th layer. Turn the wheel back. Let greed consume you. You know that it will pull you down further, for you have you use war machines to crush those darn socialists in Villalobos, you have to crush competition, laissez faire, you have to use the police at home to crush the working class, you have to make your product worse to reduce costs, to cut corners, to hire children, to hire slaves, to cut the world down until there is nothing but barren desert and soil with no life. You will fall to the 9th layer, but not for a while. You will make a product, a product designed to be watched and consumed with half a brain. You will betray your humanity. But it will not be today, it is in the future. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about the world you are burning. (Opt Out)

Do not dive. Keep the wheel as it is, incrementally moving backwards, excited to jump and skip to 9. Stay where we are. These options are all stupid. Close your eyes and forget about these “political thoughts”. (Opt Out)

Rush towards Heaven, for there is nothing else to do. Turn the wheel forward. TURN THAT GODDAMN WHEEL FORWARD! You can feel your humanity deep inside, roaring to get out. You know something is wrong with society, you know there must be change, but you don’t know what to do. You are falling. We are all falling. We have no agency. It's always getting worse, always getting worse faster. Above you, there is the sun, the past. It feels so warm, but its warmth is fading. You look to the horizon, and it all feels the same. You look down, wishing for an end, for the ground to finally come. But it won’t. We’re falling. Falling forever. But we will flap our wings, no matter how fruitless it is. They said you had a mouth, they said you had a voice and political agency, but you can’t hear anything when you scream. It all just gets caught up in the wind. You must construct a tower as fast as you can, with crumbling support and hap-hazard railings. Pierce the heavens, break capital, kill the cop inside your head. Yes, you will fail, but it will be beautiful. Rush towards Heaven, or succumb to Hell. We already lost. So let's rock this world. (Opt In)

Great. You understand political theory now. Congratulations, it only took you your entire life to relearn basic human empathy. But that’s just the start. The purpose of this essay, of this manifesto, is to describe my visceral, primal, boiling hatred of “AI”. I haven’t done that yet. I laid the seeds, I set up the shot, now it's time to bring it home.

We were the only two real beings in a sea of the semi-real. A sea of hands with fingers that looked like cardiac muscle fusing and pulsing together. Words without Heart. To the layman, it may seem normal, but when you look at it for more than a moment you begin to realize: it's horrific. I told them reminded me why I never wanted to have kids, that something terrible would happen to the world. But, in the middle of that Pale, of simulacrum that would never challenge the status quo, that would never show you something new, something that you did not want to see, of fake-sex to run from human connection, of high-school anxieties of failure and misery, in perpetuating bias and incestuous machines, in the middle of a dead internet, I sat with them. They are my Dawn Of Revival. I wonder, maybe Crypto-Conveyant Phenomena is what destroys the Pale, not what creates it. If maybe, the act of creation, of pushing towards an enlightened, loved, fated Humanity is what lets us fight against the Pale. Maybe that is true communism. If I want to initiate the Dawn Of Revival. I want to destroy technology, I want to punch whoever runs Big Technology. And kick him. And castrate him. Each for different reasons. I want my hands to hit him so hard that I can feel the plastic under his face cracking, I want to watch that smile on his face break. I want to feel my leg in his stomach, feel the softness of his body, feel his muscle and bones, feel the desperation in his eyes. I want to castrate him, so that he may not have any more horrible spawn, that he may not treat women in the way that he does, that no one will follow in his footsteps ever again. Violence, unending violence. One CEO after the next, more rising the ranks all to be toppled down by my hands. One woman standing on a pile of broken bodies. They are impossibly strong, but the revolution is immortal. It is cathartic violence. And it never ends. It never ends because through all this violence we never end it. We are simply trimming the weeds, not plucking it out. And deep down, I tell myself, deep down even after all of the violence and hatred and destruction, they are still human like me. This is catharsis, a fantasy, but it is also a horrible, inhuman fantasy. Half-Light disguising itself as Rhetoric, Conceptualization, and Empathy. There are better options.

I stand alone on the stage. The curtains raise. I wanted to go last, because I know I will bring the house down. Within every artist, there is a little bit of narcissism. I play the fool ‘I’m not that good!’ but deep down, I know I’m the shit. I’m going to rock them.

But I rock them more than I imagined. Faces break with tears. Red eyes. I didn’t know I could do this with my words, I mean, I did, I just forgot. I’m going to increase the Conceptualization, go another level deeper. 2 weeks ago, but it seems like a little shy of two months. Two months of pining, of savoring those memories. You look into their eyes, for just a moment, and you can look past the simulacra into the person underneath.

It is 2024. I came back by chance. The phasing out has begun, slowly, and I am stressed from my life. I am stressed because I overwork myself, because I want to fix the world, but I forgot to take care of myself. I am stressed because I cannot cut corners, but I am trying to compete at the same level as those who do. Not that I can’t beat them, just that they care more about the quantity over the quality. I can feel Shivers talking to me, telling me where we are. We are in the middle of a burning world, on the middle of a continent of graves, in the middle of a nation-engine who is driving this planet to Hell, in the middle of a state which we both feel has the bubblings of fascism, of apathy, of fear deep in its blue soul. In the middle of the night, in the middle of an ancient city which I feel so disconnected from despite walking here my entire life, in the middle of a new city for them (qui transtulit sustinet), in the middle of a college that churns out Innocences (such an ironic name. Maybe, it is because they do not know their own faults. They are Innocent to their crimes, and so are we), in the middle of a high-school social circle filled with cheaters and narcissists, in the middle of dead-end relationships, in the middle of a coffee shop that we imagine is a painting, in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of their face, straddling their nose, I can see them. There is a spark. They are chivalrous. They pay for me, walk me back to their dorm. We discuss children, vampires, Magic The Gathering, relationships, future plans, then they walk me back, despite the night, despite that I am supposed to protect them, not the other way around. They are flipping the script, playing my role. They are a true gentlemen. A true citizen of the world. A true human being. Someone who is so far out of my league, so out of my level, but who I can look at in the eye nonetheless.

SAVOIR FAIRE [Easy: Success]- Easy, play it cool. Don’t fuck it up, lovergirl.

INLAND EMPIRE [Medium: Success]- We can be cool? Yeah, we’re super cool. Totally cool.

I must prove that I cannot simply do better than any machine, I must make the machine look like a fool.

Diego, here is why AI is bad.

If you ever manage to read this piece (which I don’t really want you to). Not simply glance over it with your eyes, but truly let the words seep into your soul.

Don’t let me say the next line. Don’t force me to become a solipsist.

Firstoff, AI is bad for the environment. When I was checking resources, the google AI assistant said it itself. Funny. Reminds me of when Trudaeu went to a climate change rally, or something like that. Don’t think about it too much. BLOOM, a Large Language model, used the equivalent of 24.7 tonnes of CO2 to be created (estimating the carbon footprint of bloom). This is about a shitton of CO2eq (enough to power a home for about 16 years). Using AI to look something up uses a little less than 10 times as much energy as using google (Electricity 2024 - Analysis and forecast to 2026), at least if you don’t count Google’s new AI-whatever. This is a lot of energy. An obscene amount for no gain. This is a bombing of Revachol, just to let the Pale consume us.

HALF LIGHT [Medium: Success]- By the way, why are you so apathetic?

VOLITION [Godly: Success]- It doesn’t matter. And he isn’t.

There is work, work that one must do to improve their craft. You think I came out of the womb writing like this? No. I learned how to type by playing League of Legends. I learned how to imagine by roleplaying on discord. I learned how to plan stories, to understand the flow of a piece from idea A to idea B by being a Dungeon Master. I learned commas, I learned periods, and I learned style. I learned voice through trial and error. There is no throughline, no class that can teach life. But, there are many classes that can, if you understand what I’m saying. These are skills I have stumbled upon and hobbled together to form the piece you are reading right now. It took me many classes to learn how to write, how to express myself, how to trap my emotion and voice in amber, how to understand what is going on in your head when you read, when you walk, when you think, when you speak, in all the little moments just before you play that next card. You are denying yourself this, denying your ability to have General Intelligence, denying your ability to improve in ways you could never imagine.

The models that AI is built on (and again, I am using the colloquial definition of AI) take pieces of work from artists without giving them compensation. If I remember correctly, you once said that non-Mexican people who own Mexican restaurants should have to pay a fine to Mexican people for using their culture, or something like that. AI is profiting off of artists without giving them compensation. Do you ever wonder why Dyani, why Jasper, why Wheatley, why Hannan, why I care so much about this? There is a line drawn in the sand: the artists versus the world. They are stealing art to try to undercut artists. Capital is taking our culture and using it to drive us out. This is why I say AI is sin. It is theft. It will send you to hell.

VOLITION: [Impossible: Failure]- Oh no . . . here it comes

HALF-LIGHT: [Easy: Success]- Say it. Conceptualization will love that. Kill him. Take some time for yourself and let ‘er rip. Rip. Him. Apart.

At the end of the day, what is the fucking point? You save what, maybe a generous second per sentence written by AI if you are actually going back and checking to make sure that what it said isn’t crap? You save a few extra minutes reading the snippet google gives you instead of reading an article? Are you actually willing to sacrifice the world so you can get a few extra minutes in your life? Are you willing to cause hurricanes and natural disasters to wipe out your Floridian, your Colombian family so you have a minute, or, let me be generous, an hour more of college per year? ‘I like this weather better.’ Idiot.

‘I want to have a playlist that is JUST AI songs’. Are you goading me, or do you just love the feeling of the Pale consuming you? Is your Conceptualization truly that low? Maybe you just can’t sense the Heart in a piece, so you don’t realize when it's gone. You don’t look deeper, so when there isn’t meaning, you don’t notice.

You want to know a dirty secret? Art is, by definition, simulacrum. I am making something up, I am not literally speaking to you right now. Now here’s another: I am. I am inside this piece, I am inside your head. Inside every piece of art, every word someone plucked from their world and experiences, every note someple played, every motion generated by your mouse and keys, there is a piece of someone. You are reconstructing them every time you consume it. You are finding them. This is Heart. This is why AI will never replace us, because they cannot replicate Heart. A large language model will never walk down the street and stumble on the perfect word, it will never be emotionally affected by something it read, it will never cry when it is trying to write its own stories. I could get ChatGPT to write a story like Disco Elysium, but it will never be as Disco as this. Because this is not simply a copy of Disco, this is me, talking to you, through the metaphors I enjoyed in Disco Elysium, from other metaphors from other games and experiences I have had throughout my life. It is a story being written, not simply a button being pressed. This is not from the ether, this is from my biased view of reality. There is a beating heart in the center of this page: and it is mine, bloodied and left on the paper. Writing is therapeutic, it is joyous. It is not supposed to be easy, it is supposed to feel like ripping your heart out and placing it onto the page. It hurts when you cry, it hurts on purpose. It is supposed to hurt so much, hurt so much showing it, explaining it to another person. But when that other person looks and says “There is blood, sweat, tears, and so many other bodily fluids on this piece of paper. I can see you in them. I can see myself in them. Everything you wrote, all that subtext and emotion and voice, I can see it inside here. And through this, I can see myself. I can understand you more through this piece, and because I can understand you more, I can also understand me.” it makes it so much more than worth it.

There is something permeating modern society: the love of sleep, the love of nonexistence. I understand, you simply want to slip away into the Pale, into apathy, so that you don’t have to deal with the facts of reality. Some of us have to live in this reality, to see it. You have to live here too.

No. I don’t think it's that, I don’t think it’s simply a want to cut corners. I think you want to run away, I just don't think you've thought about it at all. At first, I thought this was different than apathy, but that's all it is. You don't want to care, you just want to push it all away and never think about why you feel so much pain, never look deeper into the cognitive dissonance between your ears. I’ve seen the way you read, the way you argue. When I said you argue like a Republican, I meant that as an insult. You don’t listen, you don’t want to listen. You just pretend you know what is going on and run with it. Mr. Vice President, the adults are speaking, so it's time for you to shut up and sit down. I think you simply don’t care. Apathy takes a certain amount of effort, a certain amount of effort to distance yourself from reality. I see you exert that work ethic every day when I talk to you, to not see the crystal clear solutions I hand-feed you. Yes, relearning empathy is hard, but your life will be harder if you don't. But you don’t want to. You just want to look at the people walking in commons and make fun of them, then look in the mirror and make fun of yourself. You don’t care about the quality of your work, you don’t care about the quality of your education, you don’t care about the consequences, you don’t care to put in the time, effort, thought, empathy, humanity into what you do: You just care that you didn’t have to work as hard. Have you ever realized that I always apologize first? It's because I care about you. Listen, I can improve myself, I can heal, I can learn from my mistakes and do better. I’m honestly not sure if you can, not because you can’t do it, but because I’m not sure that you want to. You say that you’re going to be more kind, so be more kind to me. Start with being kind to others. Turn the other cheek.

You know what? Fuck it. Here's what I've realized: Different Playing Field. I'm autistic. Sometimes, people (Type B) will want to hear what I say, look past how fucking weird I am at all times. "She's weird, but she's the goat". Other times, they won't bat an eye, will turn their gaze away from me. Maybe it's because of my autism, maybe it's because of something else, maybe I'm making it all up. But sometime in highschool, I realized that that second group of people (Type C) will always hate me no matter what I do, always look at me just to laugh, start with the assumption that I suck and look for anything that they can use to prove it. If it doesn't matter what I do, if they'll always see me that way, then why should I give them my thought or effort? They are wasting brainpower on me, why should I waste brainpower on them? And honestly, this is Guilty Gear. Every character in that game is autistic to a certain extent. Every story is about autism, about how finding yourself and knowing yourself gives you strength. There, that's why I love it so much, and that's why you think it's stupid. Because I can see myself in Sol, in Bridget, in Potemkin, in Ramlethal, in Elphelt, in Sin, in A.B.A, in I-No, in That Man, in Millia, in Chipp, in Slayer, in Venom, in Zato-1, in Bedman, in Dizzy, in Delilah. I could find something about every character in that game and tell you how I relate to them, about how looking at them and seeing the Heart within a piece. A piece that has given me confidence, community, and strength. One that told me that I am scorned by society but still beautiful, and that to love oneself gives one strength. I told this to Professor Alderette and she told me it was the best presentation she had ever seen. I would tell you the lyrics, the mantras, but you can find them yourself. I hope you're Type B, I really do, but, honestly, sometimes I think you're still type C, keeping me around not as an advisor, but as a jester. I play games with you, you don’t try playing games with me. “It’s too hard! I won’t understand it!”

After this piece was done, written while I am pruning it, I got excited. A very artistic moment. Two characters talking about choice, one saying you do have choice, that you can change things, and the other saying you can’t. Then, the game asks you to choose between “You can always choose” and “You always have a choice”. I got excited. I wanted to share it with him, to share it with you . . . but then I decided not to. I’m always inside my head, picking the next dialogue option, even if you don’t realize it. I think you do, your Reaction Speed is much higher than mine is, so I think that you can sense my pauses and hesitations. ‘Is it something from that game? Yeah.’ . . . ‘Why won’t you play it with David?’ ‘Because I want to play it with you.’ It sounded like the tape of a tape recorder slotting into place. I think it hit him then. ‘We can play it together sometime in the future.’ Change isn’t instant. In this world, it’s incremental. I want to believe that in that moment he has changed, that he has changed over the month, but I’m not sure. I don’t think he really has, or will. In 2039 he will still be running on high-school software.

I want to share my life with you. I don’t care that it's hard. If you cared, you would figure it out. I try so hard in my classes, in everything I do. I stay up late at night and you what? You ask me to give YOU time the next night, instead of letting me take some time for myself. I don’t care if it's hard for you to try my interests. If you truly cared for me, then you would. You know these are things I care about and you call them ‘stupid’. Last night, I told you you should drink water, that you were too drunk. You partied while I watched. A self-isolationist, a Deserter. You snapped some retort back at me, and it was then I realized how you worked. You are my lookout, the person who stands up for me, who tells me when other people are bullying me and I don’t realize it. The person who tells me that there is someone behind my back laughing. And the only way that you can do this is by hyperanalysing everyone we meet, looking for some break in them to prove your suspicion that they are trying to destroy your social life. It’s all self-defense, until you’re building a weapon. But you’ll never know where that lyric is from because you will never listen to Charli or Lorde, and then never listen to them the way that I do. You believe that everyone is out to get you, so you desperately have to get them first. You are afraid. You are not striking back at your enemies, standing your ground against a world that hates you, you are lashing out, turning your own insecurities against you. It is not simply that Sam enables you, you and Sam are the same. It is morning now. We are talking about last night. When I told you this that you hurt me, you made a cheap shot. You proved my point for me. ‘You said something stupid’ . . . ‘Like ‘Guilty Gear’ is a good game?’.

I know I can do the same, but I’m trying to tone it down. You told me I need to learn to stop talking when I debate, so I took that to heart. Hell, I already learned that from ‘Different Playing Field’, I just forgot it because I felt so close to you. I need to put it into practice, read the dialogue options before I pick them. There's this idea: a web of care. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I do your job, you do mine. If I help everyone without getting anything back, I will get burnt out and then the font will run dry. Then, you won’t receive help from me. You won’t have someone to realize how you are hurting yourself.

But maybe this is selfish, asking for things in return. Social ‘honor’. Maybe it's just my archetype. Maybe I just love life more than you do. I think that might be what it is, deep down, a want to stop existing. A want to crawl back into that primordial darkness. For the Pale to consume all. Yeah, life sucks. it probably sucks more for you than it does for me. But you know what we do, we dust ourselves off, we pick ourselves up, and we keep on rockin’.

HALF-LIGHT [Medium: Success]- That felt good, didn’t it? Now keep on going. You have more to say.

You just told me you want to try to go to a frat. Really? Seriously? You’re looking for love in a frat? You’re looking for sex, and you’re going to be hurt sexually, emotionally, and you will end up with more social scars than you already do. Do you know who's going to have to comfort you, in the middle of the night, when you show up to my door drunk? It’s me. At the end of the day, I’de say it isn’t my choice. I’de say it's your personal choice to use AI or not. It's your life. But it really isn't. This isn't your life, make sure you emphasize that your. It’s shared between us, between all of humanity, between the rocks and the trees and the animals and the plants and the sky and the clouds and the water and the thoughts running in your head and the computer and the sticks and technology and life and death and heaven and hell and everyone and everything that will exist ever and everyone and everything that does not exist and everyone and everything that should be brought into existence. It’s a story.

It's a story that started when I lost an election. It started when I stood up during an orientation and they told me to join SGA. It started when I looked for colleges with my parents knowing I wanted to be a nurse, knowing I wanted to help people. It started before that, when I dropped out of Hopkins. It started before that, on a cold mountain where my memories fade and all I can feel is his hand on my breast. It started before that, as a child playing board games over and over with myself because I had no one to share them with. It started somewhen 20 years ago when each of us was born, and years beyond that when our parents first met. It started when factories and smog clouded up that sky, causing butterflies to adapt and change. It started when we discovered America, when the Spanish sent ships here; when I sent ships here. It started when we looked up to the stars. It started when we looked inside our bodies. It started when Romans conquered, rose and fell. It started ages beyond that, when your ancestors walked across the world just to end up here to truly discover America. It started with a great lie: that the anarchy, the art in my veins, it is stolen. It is not mine. It was smuggled and then grafted onto the self for a party trick, a joke. That the great men, the Picassos before me, were all horrible, pedophilic, narcissistic men. The fame and power went to their heads, and they were corrupted by it.

But that’s not where it started. It started when the first building was built, when the first primordial human got an idea and when we got up and began to walk. It started when we walked out of the water, used our willpower to get out of bed and change the course of this planet’s history. It started when the first microscopic piece of life jolted awake. It started when water came to this planet. It started when the planet cooled down. It started so far back that we have trouble remembering which events happened first. It started with the sun, with the sun before the sun, with all the suns that came before the sun that we have now. It started with the metal in our bones, with the elements in our bodies. It started when, by chance, by hope, by willpower, by fate, by the unknown, matter came into existence. It started just before love was written into the universe. It started just after it all began.

And it never stops. It will never stop, not after we leave this university, not after we go our separate ways, not after I do whatever I do and when I burn out and when I reconsider and reconfigure and keep falling through my life. It will never stop, not after you do whatever you do, and you succeed in that. You are on television, you have all your wildest dreams, you are a household name. It will never stop, not after we fade away from each other's lives, not after we make peace with the other, not after we meet again with different faces and different names: It will never stop. It will never stop, not after we find love and our stories start to close, not after the people who follow in our cycles meet again, not after the sun begins to set on our lives, not after we realize that it is all over. And while our lives were going, it wasn’t stopping. Because it will never stop, not after the plains burn and the sea, filled with trash, rises to conquer the land. It will never stop, not after the third-world breaks and burns. 8,000 years of recorded history and 4.6 billion people, and we failed them all. It will never stop, not after we huddle in cities and in the memories of forests. It will never stop, not after the last non-human animal dies, not after we realize this planet can’t cradle us any further and make a rush towards the stars, for we can stop deforestation by going to Mars. It will never stop, not after this planet is devoid of life, not after it starts all over again, on the ruins of humanity. It will never stop, not after the cycle begins anew, a new form of life going back over our mistakes and following along the rails we constructed for them. It will never stop, not after the sun explodes and this planet is finally gone. it will never stop, not after our atoms are caught up in some other planet, in some other sun, in some other story and decide to do it all over again. It will never stop, not when our atoms finally break, when they decay into nothingness and the concept of light in the universe ends. It will never stop, because even after it ends, there will still be a ringing, still be a difference we made in the world. Light, there will always be light running away from us, the past running naked in the town, always somewhere out there. When it is all over, when it finally stops, the universe will be a painting, a story of our lives. And we will see that it never, really, stopped.

Heaven or Hell! Romeo F. Neumann and Chipp Zanuff From the Hit Game Guilty Gear XRD Revelator 2 Discuss Death, Reincarnation, and Such (Spoiler Alert: They Both Die in the End)

There was a glint of cold red light out there, on the other side of the lake. Maybe a machine from the house had a power light flickering on and off, refracted through the window of its room, or it was a mechanical light from Chipp’s phone reverberating off the sliding door to our porch behind me.

I turned to the phone, seeing if there was something red flashing on the screen, some bit of light that could be causing that disturbance all the way on the other side of the river. The only thing that was flashing was the videos flashing by. He scrolled quickly, judging each video on sight. Sometimes he would mutter to himself ‘Too long; I’ll watch that later.’ He clicked on a weird video of a modded fighting game. I watched as the superfluous sound effects and lights of the video filled the atmosphere. The game itself was one we both enjoyed. I enjoyed it in its base form, not adding any additional modifications. On Chipp’s PC he had added tons of mods to every part of the game, every character so that when you pressed a button a million bells and whistles went off. It was funny watching it all in motion, at least for the first few moments, until it degraded into something unrecognizable.

Below was a video called ‘Afterlife tier list.’

“Wait, I want to watch that one.”

“36 minutes? There’s got to be something shorter . . .”

“I really want to watch it. It’s going to be interesting.”

Chipp thought for a second, then clicked on the video. He put it on x2 speed.

I tried to catch what was going on in the video. “Do we continue to exist after the deatlh of the body? lets take a look. IYou die. thats it. nothing this is the most straightforward scenario. nbut to an extent its unavoidable. Is death bad? asdfkljhsadfkjhasdfujnawe lets say your best friend in the whole world asdflkjh fdsjkfsdalkfjhasdk jfor the rest of life sakjdfhsadkfjhsdaflkj habit now, i.l,ets say shtat insteafdalsjhkfkljadhfadfs.”

The guy mumbled so quickly it was hard to understand him. I could hear individual words, individual sentences getting crammed into my ears, but the concepts rushed by too quickly for me to truly understand them. As soon as one entered my brain, I had to pay attention to the next one coming down the pipeline.

As my attention waned from the video, it transitioned to the river Lethe swirled around my legs. I don’t think others saw it as clear as I did, but they could feel it. It is a thin, beautiful cloud, its tendrils pulling you away from the earth, tempting you towards your second death. I knew it had taken important things from me, I knew it had taken people and places and ideas from me, but I could never remember exactly what I had lost. The Lethe almost fully enveloped Chipp, his lanky form covered in clouds. He relished in it, the billowing steam coming off of him as he rushed through life, new experiences rushing in as the old evaporates off of him.

I turned back to his phone. He had gotten bored and was looking at shorter-form content. It was so easy for him to scroll from one to the next. A video would flash in front of him before he moved on to the next. Nothing ever stayed long enough for me to grab onto it. All of a sudden, a video came on about an Afterlife tier list. It was saying the same things as the previous one, just in a shorter form. Chipp was about to move to the next video.

“Wait, I still want to watch this. We didn’t finish the last one”

“That was because it was too long”

“Well this one is shorter.”

“You weren’t paying attention to the last one.”

“To be fair, you haven’t been paying attention to anything you have been watching.”

“I have! I just get the point of it before you do. I don’t have to see the entire thing to get what they’re saying.”

“What's the last video we watched?”

Chipp paused to think, trying to remember. I saw more of the river billow off of him, as if he had forgotten he was lost in thought. He turned back to the video. It seemed to be saying the same things as the other one, but without as much information. Things were cut out. I thought that it seemed more edited, mainly because of all of the lights and sounds that Chipp would like, but I’m not sure that's true. There was more stuff going on; it was faster, but there wasn’t as much heart put into it.

“That was pretty interesting,” Chipp admitted.

“Yeah, but I have more questions. I think there were more rankings in the other video.”

He started to grumble, not wanting to waste more time than necessary.

“It will take longer to argue with me and rewatch shorter videos than to simply watch the other one at a normal speed.”

Chipp continued to grumble, but complied nonetheless.

According to the video, Nietzsche asked in “The Gay Science” (Chipp laughed at the name): that if a demon came to you telling you you would repeat your life for an eternity, what would you do? It's not supposed to be an actual afterlife, just a thought experiment. Would you be content to live your life for eternity, or would it scare you. At the end of your life, what if, instead of dying, it all started once more? You died, then you were born again, not into a new body, but back into your own. The light at the end of the tunnel was not some God welcoming you to an afterlife, but a doctor preparing to hear that aggravating scream of life.

“I think . . . Reincarnation sounds fun! I just like the idea of being able to experience life all over again.”

“What about heaven, that would let you experience more things.”

“But that's not as fun. Life isn’t fun without risk. This is what you don’t understand, Romeo, if there’s no risk, there's no reward. Danger makes it all the more fun.”

“I don’t think that's true.”

“Ok, ok, you’re into all this mythology stuff. What about that fat guy from that religion, the one about reincarnation and stuff. He lived in a palace and he didn’t like it so he went out and experienced life and it was a lot more fun for him and he loved it! That's your proof right there.”

“That's Buddhism and you’re wrong.”

“Ok, but I’m close enough!”

“No you’re not. You were wrong every step of the way. You misremembered and misunderstood the story so much its-

“Ok, fine, let's test it out.” He looked around the night and pointed to the red blinking light on the other side of the lake. “Wandering over there will be fun. There’s got to be something good over there.”

I didn’t want to go out into the woods. They were dark, and I didn’t think I needed any other reason than that to stay by the house. But, when Chipp perked up, spoke about leaving the sanctity of the cabin, the river Lethe seemed to let go of him.

It was strange, walking in darkness. My eyes searched the scene for movement, but the only movement was Chipp walking before me. The humid air tasted like pine, moss, and the wonderful smell of dew pooling under trees and nature, the taste that candlemakers and brewmasters alike try so hard to contain in their concoctions. Maybe it was Chipp’s natural gait, or maybe he simply moved quickly, but I noticed the ever-growing distance between us nonetheless. It was not that he was simply everso-slightly faster than me; it is that I stopped before I took every step, tentatively feeling the ground in front of me. Would my next foot touch a squelchy, slippery pile of leaves, warning me to be careful on their surface, or the hardness of a root, telling me in earnest that he will trip me when I move next? The smells of the lake wafted into my nose, amplifying the taste of the wood. It was a smell, not of nothingness, but of roundness, of a prepared canvas for the creatures of the deep to paint a picture of their lives. I heard Chipp laughing to himself as he tripped and slipped on the ground he refused to look at. My eyes adjusted and I could see the world in a blue light with my friend moving farther and farther away from me.

“So, what do you want to happen when you die?” Chipp asked, breaking the calm silence of the nightly ecosystem.

“I like the thought of reincarnation, but . . . ”

“But what?”

When I was younger, I wanted to be an embalmer. I thought working with the dead would bring me some sort of solace, that my fascination and fear of the beyond would somehow be quelled if I could grow accustomed to it. But when I saw a dead body, a truly dead body, I could only see how much the Lethe had waterlogged it, flushing their self away. It was a husk, a terrifying husk. There was nothing to be fascinated about, just the absolute horror of the end of a life. This experience, this question, led me to my response.

“Does it really matter? If you reincarnate, you wouldn’t be the same person. You wouldn’t remember being the same person. I understand the appeal, about being able to do it all over again, but I want to last. If you go to heaven or hell, you’ve left the world. If you die and come back, you get to stay in a familiar place, but you’re no longer the same person.”

“So you want to last? How are you going to do that?” Chipp asked inquisitively.

“I want to make an impact in the world, I want to make it so that even when I die, I will still be changing the world. If I can do something to change someone else's life, change their trajectory, it means I get to live through that new version of them.”

“What if you did something negative, something so atrocious that you forced the world to cave as a consequence of your actions? That would make you eternal.”

“Why would I want to do that? That’s stupid.”

We had almost reached the other side of the lake, and I could see that the blinking light was not a reverberation from the house, but instead a strange spacecraft. The blinking came from a cockpit filled with flashing red lights, all moving in sync. I started to feel dizzy, leaning on the side of a tree for support, its bark pressing patterns into the palm of my hand as my other covered my mouth, worried for what scream or substance would come out. The smells of the woods were cut by the smells of metal, a tinge in the air that playfully stabbed into my nose and throat. I heard angry words, cursing coming from inside the cockpit; Looking towards the noise, I saw that something was moving inside, something that looked like a man in sleek gold-plated armor.

“Wow! This is SO COOL!!!!!” Chipp yelled like an idiot.

The man turned to us, his face covered by a helm. There were no eyes there, just insignia. He walked out of the ship.

“CREATURES! HATEFUL CREATURES! LIFE-PURGERS, YOUR SIN IS SO FAR BEYOND THE MERIT ALLOTTED TO YOUR KIND THAT YOU WOULD MAKE THE RULERS OF THE HEAVENS FLEE, THAT YOU WOULD MAKE THE SIMPLE GOAL OF GLORIOUS ETERNITY IMPOSSIBLE, YOUR SINS MAKE EVEN MAKE THE DEVIL CRY!”

The man continued yelling like this. Chipp looked to me with a wide, stupid smile on his face. I knew that he wanted to rush towards the man, to do something brash and stupid. I could barely hear my words over the the man yelling out his anger, but I looked to Chipp. My emotions took over me in a difficult to process blur, I was unsure of the exact words I said, the exact actions I took in the moment, but I know that I grabbed him by the face and told him life only comes to a person once. And then we kissed, but it didn’t stop him from running off filled with glee.

As Chipp ran out of the cover of the night-woods into the clearing of the ship, I jumped from behind the tree, staring as he left. I watched the blade of the metal creature rush towards Chipp and words, true words fell out of my mouth:

“Can you chill?”

They both stopped mid swing, pausing for a moment. I didn’t think it would be that easy. The man from the ship cooled off, his red coating turning into the previous soft metal blue.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I just got annoyed, you know, ship breaking and all. I guess we all forget our humanity sometimes!”

He laughed, a strange metallic laugh.

“I mean . . .” I paused, unsure what to say. “I can try to help you, if you so want.”

“Sure!” said the man. I imagined him smiling under the helm, but I wasn’t quite sure what it would look like exactly. I was quite unsure of his form, if the blue-gold plating surrounding his body was some type of armor for a very human body, if the armor was his body and he was a type of post-Human robot, or if maybe he was some sort of bug and this was his carapace. Nonetheless, he was built the same way we were, as if we were made in the same image.

Chipp and I wandered towards the ship, following the man. When we got in, he started spewing technobabble about how his ship operated and how we would have to fix it. I understood some of it, but not enough to convey. Chipps' eyes glazed over and he got on his phone. The man continued to ramble as the gears in my head slowly turned, trying to understand his words. It was hard to put them together, but the more I pieced the more it made sense.

“Um, this may be a dumb question, but have you tried cooling the Asphidelian transmission before turning it back on? I just think that may be a way to fix some of your issues.”

The man seemed dumbfounded, yelled out a curse and a fallacy, before doing it. The lights of the machine turned off, then the red was replaced by blue and purple. He gave us a thumbs up.

“Thank you guys so much! You’re the best mechanics on this realm!”

Chipp and I got out of the ship. The man inside the cockpit waved at us. I felt strange, a warm, complete feeling of contentment in my soul. The river Lethe was washing off of me, at least for the moment. I smiled at Chipp, trying to give him some of this feeling, but he seemed to still be distracted by something.

I heard the ship rumble before taking off, and in a burst of flames, it left the ground.

And then we died. I looked into Chipp's eyes just before the river took him, the only thing they told me was that he was unfulfilled. I felt the river swallowing me, but I still felt as if some part of my body was above water, as if I was leaving something behind on the Earth.

Bring it out, then bring it back in.

Alright. You got all that? I am an artist, I am a citizen of the world. When you use AI, you are slowly, bit-by-bit killing me. Think about the world you’re creating. This is why I wanted to play Oath, to give us that experience. But we never will.

When it's all said and done, when my fists are bloodied and my arms are shattered, skin more scar tissue than not, when your tongue runs out of your mouth, when you have no more bullets in your chamber, when Half-Light kicks in, we know who will betray the other. I will be standing there, bloodied, with a first-aid kit in hand and open arms, whereas you will turn your back towards me, cast me away forever, deem me unredeemable. That weapon, that high-school weapon turned against me. You are no better than Devonicka Powell.

DRAMA [Challenging: Failure]- If he wrote an essay about you, about how you treated him, how long do you think that would be? He said he wouldn’t be able to write a page. You said you could write 9. 44. This is currently 44 pages.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success]- No. This is different. There is a clear path towards redemption written in here.

DRAMA- Do you really believe that? Sire, you are lying.

Have you realized that I always apologize first?

SHIVERS [Formidable: Success]- I am dying. I am art and I am dying. Continue, speak about work, about cutting corners, about AI. Whatever. I don’t have time to speak in prose. It is the year 2000, you get a shiver in your spine that something will happen. 22 years, in less than 22 years, a shot will be fired. Not a shot from a gun, not a shot that rings out, but a cold phasing out. The death of art. The death of culture.The death of music that we have brought from campfires to the stage and then back to the ground. It will level all of me. All of me. So list all the organs, list all the senses, and say how each of them will slowly atrophy and fail. See how frantic I’m speaking? I don’t have time to turn my life into a . . . whatever the word is for art and communism. I’ve already wasted too much time. I have things to do.

VOLITION [Legendary: Success]- Calm down. You’re overworked. This isn’t you. You love Diego. This is why you wrote so much about him. You don’t want to break the relationship. Write your thesis, then move on.

Diego, if you ever read this, I want you to know, despite all the mean things I’ve said, despite how angry I’ve been at you, I truly love you. You’re a perfect foil, the Harry DuBois to my Kim Kitsuragi (or maybe we’re the other way around), the Ky Kiske to my Sol Badguy (or maybe we’re the other way around), the person who helps me understand social skills and social cues, the person who affirms my humanity, the person who challenges me, the person who has stayed with me, the person who works so well with me despite us being so different. I am stressed. I have ideas that manifest as little marbles in my head that I need to get out one way or another. You didn’t think that a relationship this long would have strain? I’m stressed from SGA, from my degree, from the world, from life, from work. I need to get it out. To a certain extent, you are an easy target. To a greater extent, you are a metaphor.

And to the greatest extent, I am a contrarian. I am someone who critiques, someone who questions, someone who will never accept perfection. I go back to old pieces when I have new ideas, as I am doing now. What I create must be as close to perfection as it can be, as close of a reflection of my current soul as it can. My writings must be perfect, for I too run on high-school software. I scour conversations, I remember conversations, I look at every fault I have, every fault this piece has. Every comma that could be changed, every word that could be changed, when a list should be 2, 3, or 5 topics long. It can never be good enough, I can never be good enough, you can never be good enough. I guess, I guess people aren’t characters. People aren't pieces of art. They’re people. To one extent, I shouldn’t have written this. I shouldn’t have indulged.

VOLITION [Legendary: Success]- To the other, this has been on your mind. You needed to let it out. This is you, your thoughts, everything. No holding back, no time constraints, unbridled creativity and Conceptualization. If you didn’t write this, it would break you.

And Diego, if you are reading this, if you are truly reading this, it is because I needed to share it with you. Because the strain was too much for me and for the relationship. It is a last resort at understanding, a hail mary; It is Hellfire. This was on my chest and I had to let it out, something was straining our relationship and if I didn’t let it out, we would bend so much we would break.

Alright. Time for the conclusion. Here’s what I think about AI:

It is bad for the environment,

It is bad for artists,

It is plagiarism,

It is sin,

Either it will get better, and it will slowly take your life away. Everything you do, automated. You will go back to your couch to enjoy a game, only to realize there are no more games, for there is no more art. You will never find a job, for you will no longer have a niche that AI cannot serve. Yes, AI can write, but can it write like this? Can it connect on a human level? No it can’t. Remember, it doesn’t have Heart. I’de dare it to try, but it's impossible. Each word here is handpicked, the perfect way to describe what I am feeling. This is why I write and re-write, because I better understand my thoughts, learn new words, think of new phrases. Art is alive, see how the pages rise and fall, how the computer hums? My heart is here. Art is bonsai. I come back to my pieces when I get new thoughts and I recontextualize. This is why I show it to others, to bounce ideas off of them, see how it affects them. Esprit De Corps. Understanding the initial event based on the outcome. I am the furnace of creation, a fission reaction in the largest of stars, an undying engine which never fully fits into the world around it, an unsatisfied, unfulfilled maw. Burning, heat rising off of my body. I am the fire within me. I am the antagonist and the protagonist, action and reaction, the writer and the audience. For I am understanding, I am Heart. I am the Culmination of 20 years of work and 3.7 billion years of trial and error to end up with me: Perfect imperfection. I am all the media I have consumed, all the people who have taught me, everyone who ever cared for me and ever believed in me. AI is not. AI is 22 years old, pretending to hold all of human knowledge. It is a lie. I personify it, other’s personify it, but it is dead and twitching, but it is twitching in a manner that's pleasing to you.

I was going to write a counterargument, that maybe there are things that AI can do. But even if you fixed the faults of the LLMs that it’s built on (which, let’s be honest, we never will), you still have the problem that it cannot choose its actions. A human can have an epiphany, can have a new idea and understand how to add it into their project, all from some random event that sparks a conflagration in their mind. An AI cannot. It is simply guessing what comes next, not choosing. An AI could never build a city, because it does not know what it's like to live in one, it can’t look at a blueprint and imagine walking down the street, it can’t think about the terrain, how walking uphill would affect you, how it would affect people with disabilities. It cannot have a drive, it cannot have Heart, it is not a furnace with an eternal desire to build something grand. When I walk around Yale, I see history on each of the buildings. A man who decided ‘This is my magnum opus’ and made something oh-so beautiful and strange. Look at the church-library, look at the mish-mash of streets, I see someone in them. I see her in them. And oh my god is it AI apathetic. I wonder why the most apathetic people in the world love AI. And those people are so biased. We will never be able to remove the bias from AI until we remove it from ourselves. And because all AI does is guess, it will guess with bias. One of the original faults, one which sticks with ChatGPT today, is how it deals with race in stories, how all those AI-image generations are incredibly biased with the things they make. If I wanted an ‘AI is actually good’ counter argument, it would be this: we could use AI to understand our biases better. But at what cost? At what worth? And at the end of the day, can’t we do the same thing just by looking in a mirror, or into the eyes of another person, or looking around us? It is still outsourcing, still cutting costs, still bullshit.

Or, AI will get worse. Inbreeding will make its answers useless, lawsuits will destroy it, break it until it is dead. Against all odds, art will win. And then you will be lost. The parts of your brain that relied on it have atrophied; an even lower Conceptualization than before. You will see that I was right. You will be lost, and I will cry for you. Simple as that.

There is more, but if you want to find that out, try reading this again. This is my preliminary apology. Me saying that I am sorry that this piece will hurt you, hoping it did a good enough job to hurt you, but hoping that you will take a closer look. Take a pen, take a red pen, and look deeper. If I did a good job, which my narcissism tells me I did, then there should barely be subtext. It's easy, it just requires your brain and a little bit of work.

It is 2021, or 2022. You have one more year at Amity Regional High School, or maybe you have two. You love your English class, you carry it. You will learn in the future that this class is not designed to teach, it is designed for you to interact with other students, to not be afraid of going to class. But that is the joy of it. No matter what you write, it will be met with flying colors. It is your first creative writing class, your first class before Mr. Rainey tells you that you need to focus more on the thesis, reign yourself in (a very important lesson that you have forgotten when writing this piece). You write something, a piece obviously about anarchy, and the slacking-senior tells you something that you only remember now, when working on the culmination of all those original pieces:

“I have never loved something [I have never been moved by something] I disagree with so much.”

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