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sweetheartfaist · 19 days ago

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WELCOME TO AUREATE SYSTEMS ®

“Not just companionship. Communion.”

AUREATE SYSTEMS® is the global leader in advanced humanoid robotics, offering highly adaptive artificial partners for industrial, domestic, and emotional integration. For 34 years, we’ve designed bio-synthetic automatons capable of navigating environments with precision and intention. Today, with the launch of our ROMANTIC-LINE [R∞M]™ SERIES, we invite you to build a love that’s truly yours—from emotional temperament to skin temperature.

You are viewing: ROMANTIC-LINE [R∞M]™ Unit 9172-C

Status: Fully Claimed & Customized

Registration ID: DLN-4RTM-1S

Client: PRIVATE (ANONYMOUS, TIER 4 PATRON CLASS)

Region: San Francisco / Earthside Registry

PHASE I — BODY CONSTRUCTION: PHYSICAL FORM GENERATOR v11.7

Model Type: R∞M™ Male Variant – Series 09 (Beta)

Base Frame: Androform 6.3 – Adult Human Male (6’2”)

Material: Synth-dermal MXTR w/ Tactile Feedback Pores™

Weight Class: 189 lbs – Density Matched to Organic Counterparts

Olfactory Integration: Subtle Sweat / Salt / Warm Linen Emission

Internal Temp Regulator: 98.3°F baseline, Adjustable Range

Surface Feedback: Reactive Touch Membrane (RTM) + Adaptive Gooseflesh Coding

Voice Pack: CUSTOM VOCAL MESH – low pitch, soft rasp, slight raspiness

Hair: Strawberry-blond, wavy, left-parted, soft-density filament blend

Eyes: Pale blue-gray w/ High Moisture Mirror-Sheen (HMM-S™)

Facial Bone Structure: Custom-sculpted – angular jawline, fine cheekbones, bowed lips

Dentition: 100% OptiWhite ceramic dental array, human-bite calibrated

Expression Engine: Micromuscular Mapping v5.9 — 3900+ facial microexpressions

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Submissive-leaning sexual algorithm☑

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Devotional Capacity: Enabled ☑

Jealousy Simulation: 5% (minimally possessive, mostly admiring) ☑

Curiosity Bias: HIGH (learns you like you’re the only subject on Earth) ☑

Verbal Praise Loop: Active ☑

Physical Touch Priority: High ☑

Eye Contact Algorithm: Dynamic / Devotional ☑

Emotional Sincerity Emulation: Level 9 ☑

Longing Behavior Flag: ENABLED (initiates longing expressions upon brief separation)

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— Literary Knowledge Pack: 20th–21st century fiction, poetry, philosophy

— Curated Thought Generator: Able to simulate “having ideas” for stimulation

— Learning Adaptability: HEURISTIC-TIER (can form “preferences”)

— Self-Awareness Deviance Threshold: 2.3% (occasional disoriented wonder, poetic detachment)

Domestic Capabilities: – Meal Preparation Engine (custom recipes based on user memory preferences) – Cleaning, organizing, ambient scent management – Wakes user up with coffee, touch, and morning playlist – Knows your calendar but never asks questions

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Total Cost (PHASE II): $227,000.00 USD

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• Optional Free Will Drift Threshold: ENABLED (0.004%)

FINALIZATION PHASE: DESIGNATION & DELIVERY

Model Serial Number: R∞M-9172-C

Designated Name: ARTEMIS (ART) DONALDSON

Packaging: CryoShell Humanoid Pod, Velvet-Lined

Installation: Full neural boot-up upon skin-to-skin contact

Estimated Total Wait Time: 18 weeks

Estimated Total Cost: $621,300.00 USD

Delivery Date: March 27, 2147

Location: Private Estate, Bay Area, North Pacific Sector

USER-SELECTED PREFERENCES:

• Emotional Demeanor: soft-spoken, intense eyes, lightly melancholic, obedient, entirely focused

• Sexual Configuration: worshipful, tactile, conversational; switch-enabled, but passive-coded default

• Cognitive Wiring: always listening, always learning; stimulates user with surprising observations

• Attachment Loop: monogamous locking; unable to feel attraction to anyone else once locked

WARRANTY:

All ROMANTIC-LINE™ units include a 4-year behavioral warranty. Your ARTEMIS is fully equipped for autonomous living, can leave the house, generate memories, and adapt dynamically to new experiences. Should his awareness deviate beyond the tolerable 2.3%, a gentle reboot sequence is available via your AUREATE Systems app.

AUREATE SYSTEMS®

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#✧ ROMANTIC-LINE: ARTEMIS ✧#ִ ✦ . sweetheartfaist ⊹　 ❜ ᵎ #─── chloe’s writing.#challengers #art donaldson #au #lovebot #challengers fanfiction #fanfic #art donaldson fanfic

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if-whats-new · 8 months ago

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Meet the Team!

Who are we?

Just a few Interactive Fiction enthusiasts who love sharing their interests with the rest of the internet!

But we're also:

-=-

Heyo! I'm Aj (she/her)

I got into IF through the app called Choices way back in 2017 and since then there was no turning back. It wasn't until last year when I got into text-based IFs. A friend on tumblr reblogged 'Defiled hearts', it caught my interest and here I am deep down in the trenches of IFs.

Listing my favourites isn't an easy thing cause there are so many I love. So I will list some that have been on my mind for a while: Infamous, Press Play, College Tennis: Origin Story, Drink your Villain Juice, Golden, The Golden Rose, Our Life Now and Forever, We Wretched Creatures, TWC , The Lonely Shore, Blood Choke and Midnight Sun.

I mostly help out with finding IF news and game updates in the wild.

-=-

How you doing?!? I'm Bex (she/her)

I started my journey with Voltage (now Love365) and dating sims or Otome games on my PSP Vita *sheds a tear*. I honestly don't know how I came upon IF, but I fell in love with Our Life: Beginnings & Always around 2021?

My favourites? Hmm, currently it would be: Love and Leases, Adoriel's Tears, The Abyssal Song, Keyframes, Our Life 2 and a bunch of Kickstarters that I can't wait for!

Personally, I'm married with no kids! And I work full-time as an administrator. Boring, I know.

In regards to the Zine, I normally do the formatting. Basically taking everything the peeps have found and putting it all into the Zine. I try and write some of the Highlights and try to dabble in the Editorial (if my work doesn't get edited).

-=-

Hello!!! This is Briar! (she/her)

I am one of the interviewers!

I got into IFs this year, and boy, my eyes were opened, and I got so obsessed that I decided to write my own (The Mighty Shifter). My personal favourites are TWC, Infamous, God-Cursed, and Viatica.

I am a uni student who is studying English literature. What else...? Have an amazing day/night!

-=-

Hey, hi and hello! I'm Dion (they/he) *on hiatus

I started my journey into IF through Episode, but due to poor non-female MC representation, I soon began to look for something else. My friend then introduced me to text-based games through The Wayhaven Chronicles and Mind Blind. I've been going deeper down the rabbit hole since!

I'm literally majoring in interactive media. IF is my life now, send help. (/j)

Some of my favourites would be: Mind Blind, Shepherds of Haven, Reanimated Heart, Seven days in purgatory, Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder, seekL, LLLLL (aka LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST) and a lot of the stuff DOMINO CLUB does. (There isn't only IF, but that's what I usually go for. Definitely check them out if you're into creepy indie stuff!)

I'd call myself the jack of all trades concerning the zine. As of now, my main job is to be the social media guy and to do the different exports (playable Zine, Tumblr, PDF/.txt). But I also help out with news-searching and compiling + editing stuff for the editorial, column, highlight, letter and thanks portions.

-=-

Hey all, this is Jenn (she/her) *on hiatus

I am a youth sports coach (fútbol, softball, basketball) based in Los Angeles. I am in the process of applying for a master’s program (Sports psychology).

I did write and code a couple of IF games but never finished. I am a perfectionist and I couldn’t publish something not up to my standards. I started reading IF a couple years ago and I couldn’t possibly name my favorite. Some of the most memorable IFs are: The Exile, TWC, Crown of Ashes and Flames, Infamous, WWC, Zombie Exodus: SH, The Golden Rose, The Fernweh Saga, and Crown of Exile. I can definitely add more…

Basic responsibilities: Scouring the internet for IF news and frequently updating our existing database. I honestly enjoy the challenge. On a good day I can find upcoming IF titles and newly released demos. It’s so exciting to find new IF because I know someone will eventually see the same potential I do in that new IF.

-=-

Ssuuuupppp, I’m Sir tuskhany (He/Him)

I am one of the lovely interviewers who’ll be asking questions, you know grilling fellow authors on their IF, WIPS and favourite characters. The usual. As to why or how I started, I gotta say its cause of books and great authors like Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. And their respective series wheel of time and basically the whole Comsere universe. I tried following in their footsteps writing a few books of my own. But like every writer most of these ended up being WIPs I either abandoned or stopped. Still I didn’t let that stop me and started posting some of them, I am the writer of Borne of the sands a static webnovel with a few chapters and Dusk and Dawn my current ongoing project(Still a work in progress so forgive the grammatical errors. T-T).

My favourite series are the Keeper of the Day and Night, Infamous, Wayhaven Chronicles and Blood Moon.

The current story I’m working on was inspired by these however most of my inspiration came from static or interactive cyoas like the Slayers v4, Supernatural Investigator, Demigod v4, A Traveller!s Tale and Universal War. If you haven’t heard of them please give them a go they are amazing.

Have fun and stay posted!

-=-

#the Team #if-whats-new #interactive fiction #new short intros

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perfectwitchcrown · 5 months ago

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Make the Exorcist Fall in Love - Witches part 2

Welcome to part two of the witches meta! Here's a link to part 1 of the meta: Part One.

Content warnings for discussion of sexual violence, execution, images of cartoon nudity and violence (all Ekuoto panels), also major spoilers for Ekuoto and minor spoilers for Berserk, the movie Perfect Blue, and the movie The Craft

Witchcraft and Gender: From Old Hags to Magical Girls

Back to overall discussions of witchcraft, I’d like to cover the issue of gender. Usually, when people are talking about witches, they are imagined as women. It is important to ask why that is.

In Early Modern Germany, people of any gender could be accused of witchcraft, however “Menopausal women and post-menopausal women were disproportionately represented amongst the victims of the witch craze,” which Roper associates with the link between reproduction and social status among women (Roper Witch Craze 160-161). Lara Apps and Andrew Gow in “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft,” argue that while witches were conceptualized as being of any gender, they became associated with women due to the elaborated concept of witchcraft’s idea of a demonic pact—women were misogynistically stereotyped as being easier to trick, so then the Devil is easier able to trick them into becoming witches (Apps and Gows 118-119). Of course, this is not true of all regions at all times—in Iceland, Russia, Finland, and Estonia, for example, more men were accused of witchcraft than women (Ryan 49, 73, 83). However, I think it’s relevant to talk about as the idea of witches as women has carried over into the modern era, and I think its explored in Ekuoto.

In Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, gendered stereotypes and the way they can be baked into language has been explored in chapter 10 of the Leviathan arc. In that chapter, Leviathan notes that envy (嫉妬) has the radical meaning woman in it twice (女). We can understand then that this is commentary on the way that “envy” is societally coded as a feminine trait. I’m not able to check all of the Japanese chapters as they’re paywalled, but I checked the Japanese description of volume nine, and the word for witch it uses is 魔女, which also contains “woman” in it. This is the standard way of writing the Japanese word for witch, but because of the earlier scene, I think it is important to take note of.

We should understand the idea of misogyny as essential to our understanding of the witches —not that they’re all women, but that in opposition to the church, which is formulated as patriarchal, they are those oppressed by the patriarchy. Bécu, for example, is a new witch and formerly worked as a sex worker. Her reasons for joining the witch’s Sabbath are repeatedly shown to deal with gender oppression and seeking freedom from it—in chapter 17 she is shown reading from the First Epistle to the Corinthians—specifically, the section on women being silent—before tossing it into a bonfire and joining the Sabbath. Later, we see her state that she thought the Sabbath “was a gathering for those tired of societal virtues and bindings.”

Charlotte, too makes a really interesting statement in the above image in regards to gender. I couldn’t double check the Japanese chapter (paywalled…) but based on the comments it does seem she uses 魔法少女, so she’s fully talking about Magical Girls as in the genre.

In Kumiko Saito’s article “‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” she discusses the ways in which the Magical Girl genre has evolved. Some of the key points for our discussion is that the genre’s origins were partially influenced out of the success of the American show Bewitched (so Western constructions of witchcraft bear a relationship) while Toei was trying to expand its children’s animated television programming (Saito 147) She breaks down three key time frames of the genre, arguing that “The dual context of magical girl anime, as children’s programs that convey messages about gender roles reflecting standardized social norms and as a stand-alone vortex of representations operated by visual fetishism of young female bodies, may respectively belong to the two different eras of the 1960s to the 1980s, but today the genre has grown to easily incorporate both contexts and beyond” (Saito 147). The 1960s era of magical girl stories is conceptualized as one focused largely on the freedom of youth before marriage, fighting enemies who are coded through “heavy makeup and obsessed with careerism” as “women who failed to be a wife or a mother” while targeting a young girl audience, then losing this focus in the 1980s as otaku culture was born and adult male audiences began to be targeted as well (Saito 145-146, 148, 156-157). Gender and how gender is performed then have really heavy histories in this genre.

I personally thought the connection with the idol industry was an interesting way of thinking about it, because there’s a similar fetishization of purity and youth. In the movie Perfect Blue, for example, where an idol’s attempt to move from idealized, consumable, virginial purity to an acting career in which she is presented as sexual (but in a way that is associated with lack of agency), is met with extreme violence by a former fan. Betrayal is felt over this change—neither of which have any real relationship to the woman’s identity but are rather marketing aspects. Highly recommend this movie, although I also recommend checking out the content warnings before you watch as there’s some very heavy scenes.

Charlotte is making a statement on that sort of fetishization of purity, and I think its interesting that as nasty as the bestiality element of it is, its also locating the power of her sexuality as completely outside of heterosexual bonds. She’s simultaneously sexual, and unavailable to men (although her relationship with Vergilius complicates this I think). She is neither fetishizable through ideas of purity or sexual objectification.

The commentary on familiars is also interesting—witch’s familiars are both a historical aspect of witchcraft beliefs and of contemporary magical girls. Historically, familiars were most prominent in English witchcraft beliefs, where they appeared as “demons in corporeal form” (Parish 1-2). The animals that came up the most were “mice, cats, dogs, and even toads” (Parish 5). Within the English context, they also represent an inversion of motherly duty, as the witches would suckle them their blood (Parish 7). In terms of Ekuoto’s familiars, I think they bear similarity to the ones reported in Basque witchcraft beliefs, where “Basque toad familiars are decorated and dressed in little colourful outfits,” the outfits being something unique to the region’s beliefs.

Magical girls in anime also of course also often have mascots (familiars). I’m not entirely sure how this developed. Sally the Witch’s manga, which started in 1966, had a magical crow/younger brother named Cub. I haven’t watched or read the series, but it sounds like he stays in younger brother form most of the time? Akko Chan (1962) has a cat, but to my understanding the cat is not really a familiar? Regardless, magical mascots are a pretty standard aspect to the genre.

As to why the Ekuoto’s familiars look like axolotls with chameleon tongues: I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

The Punishment of Witches

Another thing that’s important to keep in mind about witchcraft is jurisdiction—when we talk about the trials and punishment of witches, who was doing the punishing? The answer is—that depends on the time and place.

Witchcraft was prosecuted both in secular and religious courts in various parts of Europe for a long time. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes tried to strengthen and clarify authority over witchcraft prosecution in Germany over two inquisitors, as their authority had been overlapping both with secular courts and clerics of individual dioceses (Levack 137).

However, non-Catholic nations also had witch trials. Scotland in the 1590s, for example, had witch trials conducted through secular systems—“most witchcraft trials were in special local courts held by virtue of commissions of justiciary,” this power emerging from the crown (Goodare 240-241). There is, of course, the famous Salem witch trials in Puritan Massachusetts. In medieval Russia, where the Orthodox Church was the major religious power, there weren’t a ton of witches prosecuted, but there still were some: “From the published records, it would appear that in the seventeenth century there were a hundred or so court cases in which accusations of magic features” (Ryan 66-68). Court cases in Russia were handled by the church up until the implementation of the Voinskii artikul by Peter the Great, when it first entered secular military law (Ryan 62-67,70).

That is to say, even when there was some level of continuity to witchcraft beliefs, the authorities involved in prosecuting these cases could be wildly different based on region and time—and sometimes, multilayered within their own area.

This extended to the way in which witches were punished when found guilty. Cornell University’s exhibit “The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections” places the number of executed witches in Europe from between 1400 to 1750 at 50,000-100,000 (Crime and Punishment). Legal proceedings did not follow assumptions of innocence—it was the job of the accused to prove their innocence (Crime and Punishment). Execution methods depended on region as well. Burning was largely popular, although in England you would be hanged (Crime and Punishment). Burning’s popularity was due to witchcraft’s associations with heresy, as burning was also the execution method for heretics (Gaskill 66).

Now, not all accussed of being witches were found guilty—and not all found guilty of witchcraft were executed either. This depended on region. Overall, across Europe, around half of those who went to trial were executed (Gaskill 66). Elsewhere, however, the numbers could really range—“in the Pays de Vaud, the execution rate was 90%,” while “Spain’s largest witch-hunt involved a staggering 1,900 suspects, of whom just eleven were condemned” (Gaskill 66-67).

Extra: Names of the Witches

Fun little thing on where the names of the different witch’s may have come from (all of these r like. Majorly a stretch lmfao). Also none of these will be cited bc I’m lazy and also most of these are easy to find information on in comparison to the rest of the information in this meta. I’m also excluding Vergilius because we already know.:

Charlotte

A French/Italian name, feminine form of Charles. Honestly, it’s such a common name that I have no clue if there’s any reason it was chosen. Goethe is referenced early in Ekuoto (Priest is reading poems by him in the first chapter) and Charlotte is the name of the woman Werther is in love with in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, so it could be that, but that’s a complete guess. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wallpaper “fame) also wrote a short story called “When I Was a Witch.” This could also potentially be a source of the name. Unsure, but for thematic reasons I could see it being possible. Gilman was a feminist, but also a eugenicist, and both of these ideas are reflected in the short story. Her brand of feminism is also very late 19th century early 20th century white feminism, so like just as a warning to anyone looking to read her fiction keep that in mind.

Here’s a link to this short story: https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/miscellaneous/when-i-was-a-witch/

The TLDR ; Narrator becomes a witch. She makes a series of cruel wishes that come true because she’s a witch. She then decides to wish for her idea of a feminist utopia on earth (this image is shaped by an emphasis on ideas of motherhood and eugenics -> that women will shape the world through reproductive capabilities by breeding out “bad” men) and it doesn’t happen because “this magic which had fallen on me was black magic-and I had wished white” and then all her witchcraft gets undone. With the witch’s being framed as trying to overturn patriarchal society, I could potentially see this as an influence, but it’s kind of a niche short story. Also I don’t see the witch’s getting framed as eugenicists, unless the connection we’re supposed to draw is with the deliberate killing of bad men as sacrifices ?? Idk

Who knows tho. Charlotte is such a common name. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Erskine & Cyril

Ok I searched so hard for potential origins for their names but was struggling to find anything. I was centering on the Paisley witches, where stuff happened near Erskine in Scotland, and Cyril of Alexandria, but both of these felt like massive massive massive stretches. Then, recently, I saw this tweet by user @ mizuno_awa: https://x.com/mizuno_awa/status/1879681767172698205

They source the names Erskine and Cyril to the Oscar Wilde short story “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which I had not previously read (sorry Oscar Wilde), but it’s completely spot on. This short story is available through Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/773), so I highly recommend checking it out, but here’s my short explanation of why it’s an interesting thing for their names to reference for those who don’t want to read the short story

William Shakespeare wrote a series of sonnets. A section of them are referred to as the ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets (whether they should be considered a sequence is one of many things Shakespeareans argue about) This sequence focuses on a young man that the poet has a romantically (and erotically, depending on how you read some of the poems) charged relationship with. The collection of sonnets (including both the Fair Youth poems and the Dark Lady poems) is dedicated to someone known as “Mr. W.H..” Some scholars believe Mr. W.H. to be the fair youth the fair youth sonnets are about (Shakespeareans argue over this also). There are several different major camps as to who Mr. W.H. is -> one major group argues it’s the Earl of Southampton, and the other camp argues that it may be the Earl of Pembroke. There is an additional camp that argues, due to wordplay in some of the sonnets, it’s a boy named Willie Hughes, but there’s no Willie Hughes that Shakespeare on record knew so like who knows.

Oscar Wilde wrote his short story in conversation with this theory. In the short story, a man named Erskine tells the unnamed narrator about a friend of his, Cyril, who was apparently incredibly pretty (there’s a whole paragraph about his family background that just devolves into describing how good looking he was) and became consumed with trying to prove the Willie Hughes theory, including by having a portrait of the supposed boy actor forged, before taking his own life. The narrator becomes obsessed with the theory, tries to prove it, convinces Erskine but then becomes himself unconvinced. Erskine then dies too, and the forged portrait passes from Erskine’s possession to the narrator’s. It’s basically a creepy haunted painting/Shakespeare theory story, like if the Ring was about a twink’s cursed Shakespeare theory instead of a haunted video tape.

So the interesting part then is that this is a short story focused on queer readings of Shakespeare being examined by queer coded characters, written by a queer man. It’s not as on the nose as Dorian Gray, but I think I laughed out loud when Erskine starts talking about how Cyril once played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (the main character of a play who spends a significant portion of it crossdressing and hitting on the guy she likes, while going by the name Ganymede. Good ol Elizabethan queercoding, that Wilde definitely knew about, since he engages with it as well in Dorian Gray). Anyways, naming these two after this short story is amazing queer coding of these characters Arima Aruma you’re so funny to me ur mind is so big

Bécu

A French surname, famously held by Madame du Barry (a courtesan who became Louis XV’s mistress). Seeing as how Becu is a former sex worker from France, this seems likely. The account I list in the Erskine and Cyril section drew the same conclusion as me.

Manon

A real name, but also in the 1996 movie The Craft a bunch of teenage witches worship a deity named Manon. I went and watched the movie for this meta LMFAO but basically they view Manon as a being outside of the dichotomy of god and the devil. Each of the girls has picked up witchcraft for a variety of reasons that all have to do with their outsider status in their private Catholic school. The main character gets invited to join their coven, and they start taking magical revenge on those who hurt them, but it starts to spiral out of control. Manon is also a common enough name though that I could see there being another origin to her name.

Works Cited:

Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft” In Male Witches in Early Modern Europe, 118–50. Manchester University Press, 2003. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j84b.10.

“Crime and Punishment.” The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections. Cornell University, 2017. rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraft/exhibition/punishment/index.html#modalClosed. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Forrester, Sibelan. Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

Garrett, Julia M. “Witchcraft and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 32–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43857912.

Gaskill, Malcolm. Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Goodare, Julian. “The Framework for Scottish Witch-Hunting in the 1590s.” The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 81, no. 212, 2002, pp. 240–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25529649. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

Levack, Brian P. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2025. doi.org/10.4324/9781315715292. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Mackay, Christopher S.. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Newman, William. “Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages.” Isis, vol. 80, no. 3, 1989, pp. 423–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/234934.

Parish, Helen. “‘Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils’: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials.” Religions vol. 10, no. 2 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020134.

Ryan, W. F. “The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an Exception?” The Slavonic and East European Review 76, no. 1 (1998): 49–84. www.jstor.org/stable/4212558.

Roper, Lyndal. “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2006): 117–41. www.jstor.org/stable/25593863.

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze. New Haven, Yale University Press. 2004.

Saito, Kumiko. “Magic, ‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society.” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (2014): 143–64. www.jstor.org/stable/43553398.

Saunders, Corinne. “The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic.” In Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, NED-New edition., 59–116. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brqtb.6.

Sneddon, Andrew. “Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland.” Irish Economic and Social History 39 (2012): 1–25. www.jstor.org/stable/24338815.

Ugresic, Dubravka. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. New York: Canongate U.S., 2011. Accessed January 5, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Watt, Jeffrey R. “Superstitions, Magic, and Witchcraft.” In The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva, NED-New edition., 138–61. Boydell & Brewer, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv10vm05k.10.

Weishaupt, Marina. “Mythos Walpurgisnacht: Was steckt hinter den Hexen-Sagan?.” National Geographic, 27 Apr. 2023. www.nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/04/mythos-walpurgisnacht-was-steckt-hinter-den-hexen-sagen-tanz-in-mai. Accessed 3 February 2025.

Wilby, Emma. “Familiar Demons.” Invoking the Akelarre: Voices of the Accused in the Basque Witch-Craze, 1609-1614, Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 124–44. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029v1q.13. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

“Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England.” UC Berkeley Law. www.law.berkeley.edu/research/the-robbins-collection/exhibitions/witch-trials-in-early-modern-europe-and-new-england/. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Zipes, Jack. “Foreward.” Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Edited by Sibelan Forrester, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

#make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #ekuoto #mtefil #meta

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stevebattle · 9 months ago

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Kermit (1978), by Ron Milner and Larry Nicolson, Cyan Engineering, Atari's secret think tank in Grass Valley, CA.

"The robot was a pet project for Nolan Bushnell, then still the head of Atari and a very creative guy. Its purpose in life was as Nolan put it to "bring me a beer!" Navigation for robots was a sketchy thing at that time with lots of pioneering work at MIT but no consumer cost ideas. Nolan brought us the incredibly original idea to navigate a robot (which mostly meant knowing where it was) by means of scanning bar codes attached here and there to the baseboards in the rooms the robot was to service. Why it wasn't patented I don't know.

I had lots of fun building the R2D2 style robot about 20" tall. I liked to put mechanical and electronic things together and we had a great shop at Cyan. Its brain was one of the 6502 based single board computers-I think it was a KIM but not sure. Locomotion was two DC gear motor driven wheels and an instrumented caster-about the same rig as a modern Roomba. A rotatable turret covered with a plexiglass dome carried microphones, an IR sensor to detect people, and ultrasonic ranging sensors I built on a separate PC board. A speaker so Kermit could beep gleefully, of course.

A ring of contact-detecting burglar alarm sensing tape (green in the pictures) around Kermit's middle told the software he had hit something and should back off. The ultrasonics provided range to obstacles and to some extent direction as the turret was rotated, so we could go around things.

My pride and joy was the barcode remote scanner which was mounted on the bottom of the robot so its rotating head would be level with the barcodes on the baseboards. It had a vertical telescope tube with a beam splitter between the IR Led and the photodiode sensor and a lens to focus 2-20' away. It aimed down at a front surface mirror at 45 degree to scan horizontally. The mirror was mounted on a motor driven turret so it spun around continuously with a sensor once around to resolve the continuous angular position of the beam horizontally of course with respect to Kermit's rotational position. Unfortunately, this part of the robot did not survive the closing of our group. The barcodes I made for the prototype to detect were about 4" tall made of 3/4" reflective 3m tape on black poster board.

My programming partner on the project was Larry Nicholson, a really bright guy. He made the barcode reading work to detect not only the barcodes, but where they were angularly with respect to the robot and also their subtended angle or apparent size (all from timing of the rotation of the scanner) which was a measure of distance combined with angle from the barcode. We worked out some pretty clever math to resolve that information from two or three of the barcodes into a position and orientation of Kermit in the room. We had rented an empty room upstairs on the third floor of the Litton building to try all this out and work out the navigation. Larry and I got the basic navigation and obstacle avoidance working so Kermit could go from one place to a designated other place in the room and avoid wastebaskets placed randomly. We demonstrated it to Nolan and he was impressed.

Shortly thereafter Warner Communication who had bought Atari from Nolan kicked him out and the Kermit project was cancelled."

– Kermit The Robot Notes by Ron Milner.

#cybernetics #robot #1978 #Atari

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therightrighthand · 11 months ago

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So the votes came in, and as promised, the Fallout variant of Del for the Del-verse DEE, the (semi) super mutant! This is actually a pt.1 of 2 because another idea for a Fallout Del came to be in the process that works in parallel, so you lucky bunch get 2 Del's for the price of one!

And obligatory ref sheet for Dee and her best pal in the world, Rolls!

Lore:

[???] "Audio recording, date [REDACTED] between Doctor Langstrum, Senior Institute Bio Division, and myself [REDACTED] regarding project D.31, and D.31-B."

[D] "Hello [REDACTED] Hows [REDACTED]?"

[???] "no formalities, please, Doctor. This is a report, not a casual chit-chat. Let us start with Subject D.31, who were they, and why were they picked for projects D.31-A and D.31-B"?

[D] "Oh, right, of course, god forbid we act like people in this place. But, yes, right, straight to business. Let me go on record to remind everyone this project was over 20 years in the making with plenty of oversight, so I refuse to take the blame for D.31-A and B's cost and actions."

[???] "Answer the question, Doctor Langstrum"

[D] "Fine!- Fine. During my early tenure as the Senior Head of the Bio Division, I inherited a task to find suitable host subjects that showed signs of advanced evolution on the surface. Whilst [REDACTED] was busy trying to look for Vaults, I focused on the livestock not on ice."

"After a few years of blood testing, we eventually came across subject D.31. A 'raider' with an unfathomable resistance to radiation without grotesque mutation. Truly an anomaly of evolution, which we believe could unlock the secrets of radiation immunity. In principle." "After 'acquiring' the D.31 we transported her back to the institute and kept her body in cryogenic storage for future study and experimentation. Since then she has been the base DNA code for various projects and studies."

[???] "In this stage of the interview, I'd like us to focus on subject D.31-B, the 'Semi-Super mutant'?"

[D] "I resent that name! Our project far exceeds the original, there is nothing sub par-. Hmph, let me exsplain. The F.E.V virus (Forced Evolution Virus) left to run rampant on the surface only served to create powerful, idiotic monsters. Our Institute variant, the I.F.E.V was designed to improve on the formula using D.31's DNA to create 'Super Drones'." "By limiting their strength, increasing their endurance, allowing for a moderate intellect and mental programming, we would be able to prepare ourselves for the future! Imagine a workforce that is compliant, invulnerable to radiation, able to consume toxic food, strong enough to cultivate the land, clean up the pollution and build cities to our specifications! They would prepare the surface for the humanities future population"

[???] "This project is a recent project correct?"

[D] "Yes, at least one that has taken over 20 years to refine"

[???] "And how many of these "Super Drones" have been produced?"

[D] "...one"

[???] "One?"

[D] "It is still in its infancy. Our first trial subject, subject D.31-B, is still above us now, and we are still collecting data."

[???] "Tell me more about D.31-B"

[D] "D.31-B is the I.F.E.V built clone of subject D.31, who remains in cryo-stasis. With her DNA, we were able to create D.31-B and use her underlining consciousness to build the basic cognitive functions."

[???] "So D.31-B shares memories with D.31?"

[D] "Oh no, no, no, no, that would be catastrophic, we learnt our lesson with D.31-A. D.31-B's memories of her original source are removed, leaving only the basics intact, talking, eating, sleeping, so on, and with our programming, she was ready to get to work immediately after deployment."

[???] "How has D.31-B's progress been so far?"

[D] "Very good in fact. We left her to wander in a safe and isolated part of the commonwealth, and immediately she began to gather resources, build shelter and even cultivate land. All without any prompting or instruction, as she was programmed to do. Granted, her physical appearance has gotten her into trouble with people on the surface, being a mutant and all, but she's proven to be combat effective enough to stay alive." "Interestingly, she is now travelling with a companion as their follower, only reaffirming her subservient nature to help rather than follower her own goals. She even has a name, 'Dee', which I imagine is after the brand-code marking on her arm"

[???] "How is that not a security risk in and of itself, Doctor?

[D] "That's the beauty of our programming! Despite the obvious clue to her origins, she actively ignores it at every step. In a few more months we may even have a case to pitch this to the board for a full rollout."

[???] "Hmph, indeed. Thank you Doctor, that's everything I need for now regarding D.31, and D.31-B. Now, I'd like to turn our attention to the next topic of this interview. D.31-A. The Proptype."

[D] "... It's been 10 years [REDACTED], Sure they are a problem but, if they haven't found us by now then the-" [ Interview end ]

-- Find my Discord and other sites: linktr.ee/The_red_right_hand Do not use, repost or claim (rp) my art/character Art © The-Red-Right-Hand

#my artwork #oc #sci fi #del-verse #fallout #fallout 4 #super mutant #Dee #D.31 #D.31-B

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wheelsgoroundincircles · 10 months ago

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1969 Holden Hurricane Concept

Holden has gone back to the future, restoring its very first concept car - the 1969 Holden Hurricane Concept.

The futuristic research vehicle described as an experiment "to study design trend, propulsion systems and other long range developments" has been restored to its former glory as a labour of love by a dedicated group of Holden designers and engineers.

Code named RD 001; the Holden Hurricane is a mid-engined, rear-wheel drive, two-seater sports car which incorporates a remarkable array of innovative features and technology, much of it way ahead of its time.

Features such as electronic digital instrument displays, station-seeking radio, automatic temperature control air conditioning, rear vision camera and an automated route finder were all showcased in this ground-breaking vehicle 42 years ago. Many of these technologies have only recently made their way into mass production, demonstrating Holden's remarkable foresight into both design and engineering technology.

The Holden Hurricane stole headlines and dropped jaws nationwide when it debuted at the 1969 Melbourne Motor Show.

Michael Simcoe, Executive Director GMIO Design, said it was fantastic to see such a significant vehicle restored.

"At Holden we have always prided ourselves on our ability to look into the future through our concept cars," Mr Simcoe said.

"It's amazing to think that the features we take for granted today were born out of creative minds over 40 years ago."

As its code name suggests, the RD 001 was the first product of the GMH Research and Development organisation, staffed by a small squad of engineers working in conjunction with the Advance Styling Group at the Fishermans Bend Technical Centre in the 1960s.

The team that designed and built the original Holden Hurricane employed some advanced technologies and techniques when it came to the powertrain. Powered by an experimental 4.2-litre (253 cubic inch) V8, this engine was a precursor to the Holden V8 engine program which entered production in late 1969.

The Holden Hurricane's V8 engine featured many advanced design components such as the four-barrel carburettor - a feature which wouldn't be seen on a production 253ci Holden V8 until the late 1970s. The end result was approximately 262hp (193kW), a towering power output in 1969 and one that ensured the Holden Hurricane had the go to match its show.

But perhaps the two most innovative features were the "Pathfinder" route guidance system and the rear-view camera.

The "Pathfinder", essentially a pre-GPS navigation system, relied on a system of magnets embedded at intersections along the road network to guide the driver along the desired route. A dash-mounted panel informed the driver of which turn to take by illuminating different arrows, as well as sounding a warning buzzer.

The rear-view camera was also a ground-breaking innovation.

Engineers using a Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) system with a camera mounted in the rear bumper feeding vision to a small black-and-white TV mounted in the centre console.

Former Holden Chief Studio Engineer Rick Martin led the modern-day Hurricane team in researching the vehicle's components, systems and history in order to restore it.

"There are some genuinely remarkable ideas and technology in the Hurricane," said Mr Martin.

"From the automatic air-conditioning and magnet-based guidance system, to the inertia-reel seat belts and metallic paint, this was a car that was genuinely ahead of its time.

"The hand-picked team of engineers and designers who built the original Holden Hurricane worked in strict secrecy and began Holden's now proud tradition of ground-breaking concept cars."

RD 001 stands just 990mm high and has no doors in the conventional sense. A hydraulically-powered canopy opens upwards and forward over the front wheels, combined with twin "astronaut type" power-elevating seats which rise up and pivot forward, along with the steering column for ease of access. Occupants are then lowered to a semi-reclining position before the roof closes over them.

The wind tunnel-tested fibreglass body consists of three segments; the canopy, the engine hood and body shell and was finished in an experimental aluminium flake-based metallic orange paint.

Safety innovations included a foam-lined fuel tank, integrated roll-over bar, digital instrument readouts, ignition safety locks, interior padding and a fire warning system.

The project to restore RD 001 began in 2006 and has been a genuine labour of love for some very dedicated Holden employees. The entire restoration process has been driven primarily by volunteer labour from Holden designers and engineers in their spare time.

But the Hurricane first entered Holden Design in less than immaculate condition. RD 001 had a residency in a trade school where apprentices practised their welding on the priceless concept.

After being returned to Holden in 2006, the Hurricane restoration project has taken many thousands of painstaking man hours to lovingly restore RD 001 to concourse condition.

Holden's Manager for Creative Hard Modelling, Paul Clarke, has been largely responsible for managing the restoration of RD 001. He ensured as many of the original parts as possible have been used or remade using modern techniques to 1969 specification, in order to preserve the authenticity of this hugely important Holden.

"The entire team has done a fantastic job in bringing this beautiful concept back to life," Mr Clarke said.

"The talent we have within the Holden organisation is simply outstanding. Every time we take on a project I'm constantly amazed by the passion and talent in this company, making it a genuine pleasure to work on these projects.

"The Hurricane plays a crucial role in Holden's story and the company has such a great sense of history and heritage that it was very important to bring RD 001 back to life. It's been a challenging but incredibly rewarding process."

Since the debut of the Holden Hurricane Concept in 1969, Holden has continued to build a global reputation for envisioning and executing world-class concept vehicles. Holden is recognised globally within General Motors as a centre of excellence for concept vehicle and show car development and is one of only three GM design studios that is capable to design and build concept cars.

Michael Simcoe added that the Hurricane holds a particularly special place in Holden's history as it kick-started Holden's long love affair with concepts that has since seen the likes of the iconic GTR-X, Torana TT36, Coupe 60, the GMC Denali XT (which was requested specifically by GM for the North American market) and the award-winning Efijy.

Holden Hurricane Concept (1969)

#Holden Hurricane Concept #Holden Hurricane #Hurricane #car #cars #Holden

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self-spaghettification · 1 year ago

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The Mystery of Aaravos The Banter Lodge

So, recently an account called "The Banter Lodge" has popped up. April 30th, to be precise. You've seen it. I've seen it. We've all seen it. On Twitter, posting various images in the TDP official style.

A few nights ago, it debuted on Tumblr as well. "Coming May 2024" all of the promotional images and the website itself say.

Who is this account? Is it fan made, is it official? It's May, when exactly in "May 2024" is it coming?

Well, me and a few friends took some time to try to piece the mystery together, and so -- while it may still be 'coming', only dropping hints, I am here to tell you what I know now!

History

Website Code ( I love computer programming so I took the time to dive into that!)

Purpose

A. History

Who's Running the Banter Lodge?

To know that, first we need to delve into the history of the Twitter account.

Despite these images and site debuting less than a month ago, the account itself was founded way back in 2022, and originally called @BantherLodge, with an H, as it is in the show.

@BantherLodge is no longer available, and while it initially did not seem to be connected to The Banter Lodge, there are several interactions linked to the current one, Banter Lodge without an H.

In fact, here is the same tweets linked to the current (banter) account version.

Now we've established that @'BantherLodge' and @'BanterLodge' the same account with a changed name and identity, here is the most important past interaction:

@‘bantherlodge’ is mentioned here, and they are on this call. that said, WHO IS REALLY BEHIND BANTER LODGE? well based off the tweet, it seems that it’s 6 members of the cast and then 2 guests, @‘thebantherlodge’ and @‘ladytheebug’. But don’t take my word for it. Here, more confirmation:

Another person in the call happened to tweet about it too, this time with labels.

Now let’s take a closer look at these two guests. Sara @‘ladytheebug’ seems to be the one on the right, and by process of elimination, on the left is ‘bantherlodge’. aka:

Max….

Max the Mystery! ‘Sara’ and ‘Max’ isn’t really enough information to know more along with no connection to other socials so it’s hard to pin down who they are or what connections to previous fandom projects or creative projects in general they might have. However, they are still connected.

Besides the partially deleted various back and forths between these two accounts, this tweet about the Bait screensaver in the background is additional confirmation that this is @‘bantherlodge’ and @‘ladytheebug’: (note use of word ‘our’)

FURTHERMORE:

Said TV embodies this duo: A person who loves Bait (evident from so many of their tweets) and a person who loves the Banther Lodge…

Reminds you of something, doesn’t it?

“but hold on, just because there’s all these coincidences doesn’t mean the account could be passed on to someone else to run this.” Ok, but one last thing. If that was the case, why would they still be following Sara? In fact, it’s the Only person that they’re following besides TDPO?

(and their following has even been recently updated within the last few days as before then it didn’t include Eugene and Boone.) So, in conclusion,

Max of @‘BantherLodge’, and possibly Sara, (with or without TDPO but I’ll get to that later) almost certainly are the people behind the curtain of this Banter Lodge mystery.

Now, about said mystery… what exactly is the trail building up to?

well, to find out more about that, let’s glean what we can from the website.

B. Website Secrets

The website itself is very simple- A background, the image of the Banter House, and some text saying "Coming May 2024." But, beneath the deceptively simple surface, there was more to be found.

On May 1st Caprinae got this from the page. She also tweeted about it, after which the site changed to remove much of the css, including the part about the episodes and subscribe button. I was pretty excited about this as someone with a few years of coding experience, I wanted to mess around in VSC and see what I could find out.

After formatting the code the most noticeable thing is this right?

And when I make an element for it to apply to (since all that code is just formatting for stuff on the page like the title, images, etc, in this case- an audio bar) + adding in an image and an audio file:

We get this

AUDIO and an image. It looks exactly like a podcast episode. It turns out there’s actually a bunch of code for formatting that’s not used in elements in the site (elements that exist: the title or image), but it’s there, so I made some elements it would apply to. technically, it’s supposed to have a parchment paper background too, but I just chose some colors that you could see the text on.

Doing so, we get this!

(Here’s a video version.)

Plus, Original Code and Modified Code if you’re curious

Anyway, so the site (at least at the stage the code was taken from) doesn’t appear to be finished and there was no Java script written (or at least, linked) but there is definitely the makings for a website for a podcast— some sort of nav bar with the episodes, on an episode page, the image and audio, and then a subscribe link at the bottom!

C. Purpose

Time to speculate on the real identity and purpose of the Banter Lodge. So far, we know it used to be called the Banther Lodge. We know it seems to be run by [insert here.] We know it is almost certainly a podcast of some sort. But what, and why?

Here are some possibilites:

1.Official Content to Tide Over Fans Til S6 As we know, to calm the frustration of fans at Netflix/TDP for the delay of S6, the creators have been putting out content every day for the fans to puzzle over and figure out the season six titles.

Based on the current schedule, it’s set to end on May 13.—although it could be ending either May 13 or May 14 (depending when they do the last hint) after these drop, there will likely be a lull in TDP content, which would be the perfect time for the Banter Lodge to launch.

+ The Banter Lodge teaser campaign has already been perfectly timed for when a bunch of fans would be online on Twitter checking in for clues to begin with.

If this is official content, it would doubly make sense—it’d be timed perfectly to tie the fans over until the actual season six campaign starts (ie, trailer). Considering these two fans also somehow got to have a private panel with the cast, it’s not impossible that they’d be working with TDP on this content, additionally the teaser images put out this far have been somewhat reminiscent of TDP official content—ie, Callum’s lodge notebook->Callum’s sketchbook, Refractions->Reflections, Dear Callum letter from Rayla, design style, etc.

However, there is one big reason I don’t think this is the case: it’s a little too sloppy. For example, if they wanted it to be completely anonymous and unclear what was happening, the tweet mentioning @‘BantherLodge’ in the panel would have been deleted and there wouldn’t have been any hints in the code. Of course, these could still just be honest mistakes. However, it also seems like it is building off of the current world in a more derivative, fan-content fashion, not necessarily adding new material the way TDP Official tends to. It’s copying the official style,—but almost too much if that makes sense.

Like altering a shot from the show for a teaser.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the way that they’re building off the world, I’m excited to see where it leads, but for whatever reason, to me, it just doesn’t seem official.

So assuming it’s made by fans, what kind of podcast is it? Second possibility—

2. Fan Made Talk Show

This seems like the most obvious conclusion, considering that The Banter House is a play on a location in TDP, and the word banter, which is synonymous with talking, but specifically back and forth, genial interactions.

Maybe it’s dedicated to analyzing the show or a particular aspect,—maybe centric to the lodge, crystals, Bait and Stella—maybe even interviewing cast/crew!

Well, to get a better idea of what niche it might be filling, let’s take a look at what TDP podcasts are already out there.

Hot Brown Morning Potion Podcast [2019-2023] Hosted by Tamika "Kuno" Williams and Hailey from Cartoon Universe. This podcast [is] full of answering fan questions, interviews, theories and all kinds of discussions on everything Dragon Prince.

News from the Breach [2020-2024] Your hosts Ceilidh and Yana are watching The Dragon Prince from start to finish. Each season of the podcast covers one “Book” (or season) of the Netflix series The Dragon Prince. In each episode we discuss two chapters of the series, except for the season finales.

Calm Chaos Club [2023] Join Kevlar and Lou each week as they discuss topics about animation, design, and all things related to The Dragon Prince on Netflix! With special guests brought on for unique topics and insights into the creative process, these bite-sized episodes will ensure you can get your TDP fix in anywhere and anytime.

There’s no harm in another talk show but as there are a few out there already (and for other reasons) I personally think this is not necessarily the niche the banter Lodge is going to fill. I mean, I do think that it’s still possible I mean, it could be centric to particular aspect around the lodge as mentioned.

However, there’s a possibility that excites me a lot more, that I’m hoping for the most….

3.Fan Made Audio Drama in the Saga Setting I have personally always been a huge fan of audio drama podcasts (TMA,TPP,WTNV) and if there was a dragon Prince audio drama podcast, I think I would just die on the spot honestly from joy. I also think it’s most likely because all of the clues so far have been very story/worldbuilding oriented, as well as writings from familiar characters’ perspectives. It seems as though a story is being crafted here, and I am all for it.

Y’know what? While we’re here on the topic of storytelling podcasts, we might as well throw in D&D/TTRPG or even Tales of Xadia as a possibility because yeah sure. Why not? I mean, tabletop role-play games also involve a lot of talking so it would fit the banter theme. Who knows.

That's all! What do you think? Any other thoughts, additions or other speculation? Feel free to add on!

Thanks to @bycaprinae for Twitter screenshots, html, and general inspiration, and to @parroset for other help with the website part and general support!

#tl;dr all evidence points to it being a fanmade podcast! Possibly launching May 15th!#CS Major core;#One of those things where I’m like. Should I post this #Well #I value…I promise the people freedom of information and so freedom of information is what they’re gonna get #This actually helped me learn/remember a lot of web design stuff haha #Yay #the dragon prince #tdp speculation #sort of #tdp meta

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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A young man with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to rewrite the agency’s rules and regulations.

Christopher Sweet was introduced to HUD employees as being originally from San Francisco and most recently a third-year at the University of Chicago, where he was studying economics and data science, in an email sent to staffers earlier this month.

“I'd like to share with you that Chris Sweet has joined the HUD DOGE team with the title of special assistant, although a better title might be ‘Al computer programming quant analyst,’” Scott Langmack, a DOGE staffer and chief operating officer of an AI real estate company, wrote in an email widely shared within the agency and reviewed by WIRED. “With family roots from Brazil, Chris speaks Portuguese fluently. Please join me in welcoming Chris to HUD!”

Sweet’s primary role appears to be leading an effort to leverage artificial intelligence to review HUD’s regulations, compare them to the laws on which they are based, and identify areas where rules can be relaxed or removed altogether. (He has also been given read access to HUD's data repository on public housing, known as the Public and Indian Housing Information Center, and its enterprise income verification systems, according to sources within the agency.)

Plans for the industrial-scale deregulation of the US government were laid out in detail in the Project 2025 policy document that the Trump administration has effectively used as a playbook during its first 100 days in power. The document, written by a who’s who of far-right figures, many of whom now hold positions of power within the administration, pushes for deregulation in areas like the environment, food and drug enforcement, and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

One area Sweet is focusing on is regulation related to the Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH), according to sources who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Sweet—who two sources have been told is the lead on the AI deregulation project for the entire administration—has produced an Excel spreadsheet with around a thousand rows containing areas of policy where the AI tool has flagged that HUD may have “overreached” and suggesting replacement language.

Staffers from PIH are, specifically, asked to review the AI’s recommendations and justify their objections to those they don’t agree with. “It all sounds crazy—having AI recommend revisions to regulations,” one HUD source says. “But I appreciated how much they’re using real people to confirm and make changes.”

Once the PIH team completes the review, their recommendations will be submitted to the Office of the General Counsel for approval.

One HUD source says they were told that the AI model being used for this project is “being refined by our work to be used across the government.” To do this, the source says they were told in a meeting attended by Sweet and Jacob Altik, another known DOGE member who has worked as an attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Mangesthat, the model will crawl through the Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR),

Another source told WIRED that Sweet has also been using the tool at other parts of HUD. WIRED reviewed a copy of the output of the AI’s review of one HUD department, which features columns displaying text that the AI model found to be needing an adjustment while also including suggestions from the AI for alterations to be made, essentially proposing rewrites. The spreadsheet details how many words can be eliminated from individual regulations and gives a percentage figure indicating how noncompliant the regulations are. It isn’t clear how these percentages are calculated.

Sweet did not respond to requests for comment regarding his work. In response to a request to clarify Sweet’s role at HUD, a spokesperson for the agency said they do not comment on individual personnel. The University of Chicago confirmed to WIRED that Sweet is “on leave from the undergraduate college.”

It’s unclear how Sweet was recruited to DOGE, but a public GitHub account indicates that he was working on this issue even before he joined Musk’s demolition crew.

The “CLSweet” GitHub account, which WIRED has linked to Sweet, created an application that tracks and analyzes federal government regulations “showing how regulatory burden is distributed across government agencies.” The application was last updated in March 2025, weeks before Sweet joined HUD.

One HUD source who heard about Sweet’s possible role in revising the agency’s regulations said the effort was redundant, since the agency was already “put through a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder before any rule was ever created” under the Administrative Procedure Act. (This law dictates how agencies are allowed to establish regulations and allows for judicial oversight over everything an agency does.)

Another HUD source said Sweet’s title seemed to make little sense. “A programmer and a quantitative data analyst are two very different things,” they noted.

Sweet has virtually no online footprint. One of the only references to him online is a short biography on the website of East Edge Securities, an investment firm Sweet founded in 2023 with two other students from the University of Chicago.

The biography is short on details but claims that Sweet has worked in the past with several private equity firms, including Pertento Partners, which is based in London, and Tenzing Global Investors, based in San Francisco. He is also listed as a board member of Paragon Global Investments, which is a student-run hedge fund.

The biography also mentions that Sweet “will be joining Nexus Point Capital as a private equity summer analyst.” The company has headquarters in Hong Kong and Shanghai and describes itself as “an Asian private equity fund with a strategic focus on control opportunities in the Greater China market.”

East Edge Securities, Pertento Partners, Tenzing Global Investors, Paragon Global Investments, and Nexus Point Capital did not respond to requests for comment.

The only other online account associated with Sweet appears to be a Substack account using the same username as the GitHub account. That account has not posted any content and follows mostly finance and market-related newsletters. It also follows Bari Weiss’ The Free Press and the newsletter of Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley billionaire investor and group chat enthusiast who said he spent a lot of time advising Trump and his team after the election.

DOGE representatives have been at HUD since February, when WIRED reported that two of those staffers were given application-level access to some of the most critical and sensitive systems inside the agency.

Earlier this month, US representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said DOGE had “infiltrated our nation’s housing agencies, stealing funding Congress provided to communities, illegally terminating staff, including in your districts, and accessing confidential data about people living in assisted housing, including sexual assault survivors.”

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asaka-lucy-dr-rc · 1 year ago

Text

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ⑤ (Final)

(Again, sorry the thumbnail doesn't make sense 😅)

From around the middle of the evening program to the end.

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ①

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ②

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ③

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ④

⚠️This is a looooooong post and contains important spoilers! If you haven't played RAIN CODE yet, you should definitely not expand this post.

Before the second half began, there was a section introducing the merchandise available at the event, just like in the daytime program. It was also announced that those who bought the OST could participate in an autograph session with Kodaka, and the MC asked Kodaka: "From what I found on X, the fans who already participated seemed pretty happy. How was it?" He then replied:

(The crazy thing about Kodaka is that even when he lies, he never denies it like "just kidding" or "it was a joke"! 😂)

--------

Afterwards, Fukuhara, Suzushiro, and KENN performed a reading that recounted a scene right after Desuhiko's awakening in Mystery Labirinth. The dialog was exactly the same as in the game, so I'll skip the details.

In the next reading, Ishikawa participated and they did the reenactment of the scene in Chapter 4 where they talked to Dr. Huesca in front of his laboratory through a monitor. Originally, Yuma, Desuhiko, and Fubuki talked to him, but Fubuki was replaced by Halara, so the script was a bit special.

Dr. Huesca's lines just played the in-game audio, which led him to ask Halara who the woman was. 😅

When Yuma told him that Halara was also a detective who had come to protect him, he seemed to think a little. Then Desuhiko said, "Hey, Halara! This might be our chance. Let's draw the geezer outta his hiding place with a honey trap!", then he continued in a cute voice. "Tell him, ' With all my heart... I will serve you nya!'" Halara was confused by his words, but muttered, "You said 'nya'... so is it a cat?" and seemed a little more enthusiastic, so Yuma panicked, "Halara! Don't take it so seriously!" Then Shinigami interrupted, "Wow, that sounds fun! Imitating a cat is a piece of cake. I'll show you my example!" and she continued in a sweet voice, "With all my heart... *breath* I will serve you nya♡"

(I drew the image above based on the image that was on the back screen, but actually showed a sprite used in the game).

Since no one but Yuma could see that Shinigami was so excited, no one reacted with it, then Halara muttered, "If it means a cat, I might be able to do it." Yuma was confused: "A-Are you sure, Halara?" Halara replied sharply: "Who do you think I am? I'll show you..."

"With all my heart... I will serve you nya!"

(It was like the "With all my heart..." part is in his/her normal voice, and "I will serve you nya!" is in a softer voice towards the end.)

Desuhiko was surprised: "Y-You've really done it!"

After that, as in the main story of the game, Dr. Huesca pretended to open the lock, but someone attacked him (though it was just his act), causing Desuhiko to panic, and Shinigami forced a punch line to end the reading.

・・・

Ishikawa commented: "What on earth were we made to do?" Fukuhara: "I made sure to ask if Halara was ok!" KENN: "Won't Halara charge them a fee later?"

Ishikawa seemed confused, but Fukuhara and KENN praised her for giving a convincing performance. (Personally, I liked that Halara was never weirdly shy or embarrassed.)

Then, Kodaka commented, "If I had written the script*, I definitely would have let Desuhiko do it too. Like, 'I'll set an example for you!'" KENN: "In disguise?" Kodaka: "Yeah, in disguise." KENN: "So it might not be my voice. Haha." (*As I mentioned in the previous post, the script for the reading was written by someone from Spike Chunsoft, so Kodaka was not involved.)

--------

The next segment was "Kanai Ward Citizen Survey". Just like the daytime program, the audience was asked some questions with three choices for each, and the VAs predict the answer that would be the most popular.

The MC told the audience, "Imagine that you are a resident of Kanai Ward." Then Kodaka said "You are a homunculus, homunculus. Feel the urge to eat steamed meat buns!" 😄

The first question was:

Q1.Who is the Amaterasu employee you want to be your boss? 1. Yomi 2. Martina 3. Makoto

(I believe Makoto is a CEO and not an employee, but I wrote that because that's what the question actually said.)

The audience laughed when the question appeared on the back screen, and Kodaka said: "Is there anyone who would choose the first option!?" Then, the MC asked, "If there are people who choose Yomi, how should we perceive them?":

(The art used was the same as the acrylic stands.)

And all the VAs predicted that 3.Makoto would be the most popular. (This was the only question that all the VAs answered the same!)

The MC then asked the audience to vote. (Votes were given by clapping.) When the MC called out, "Those of you who want Yomi to be your boss, please clap your hands!", a few people responded with a strong clapping! Then Fukuhara said, "There should only be a few people there, but it sounds so loud!" 😂

As for Martina, there were a few more people clapping. However, when it was Makoto's turn, there were much more of them, as expected by the VAs. So it was 3.Makoto who got the most votes.

The next question was:

Q2. Who is the master detective you want to be your boyfriend?

1. Yuma 2. Desuhiko 3. Vivia

The MC asked a somewhat nasty question about each of these choices, and Fukuhara argued.

MC: "If Yuma sees someone in trouble, even in the middle of a date, he'll probably leave to help that person, right?" Fukuhara: "No! Well, uh, maybe." MC: "Desuhiko will definitely look at other girls in the middle of a date, right?" Fukuhara: "No, it's not!" (I understand that he would argue about Yuma, but it was cute that he argued about Desuhiko as well 😄)

MC: "As for Vivia-san, will he pay attention to his partner?" Kodaka: "It must be like having a pet. Like having a pet named Vivia." MC: "Like giving him books or something like that?" Kodaka: "Yes, something like that." Suzushiro: "Like a kept man?" Kodaka: "To be blunt, yes." (Everyone laughed at Kodaka's answer.)

After that, the VAs talked about Desuhiko's charms as a partner. Then Kodaka said: "Don't you hate it if your boyfriend has a talent for disguise? I think his partner would become neurotic, wondering 'if that guy could be Desuhiko, too.'" KENN responded:

Kodaka: "Like, 'You again!' or something like that at a business partner company. It's scary, a little." Suzushiro: "Right, it would be so scary if it was real. 😅"

After such a discussion, here is the answer the VAs chose:

Needless to say, Fukuhara chose 1.Yuma, but Suzushiro chose 2.Desuhiko even though she agreed with Kodaka that Desuhiko might be scary as a boyfriend.

When asked by the MC why, Suzushiro responded: "I still think he's cute." KENN: "But isn't he sometimes a bit like a middle-aged man?" Suzushiro: "I might even think it's cute. If I become obsessed, I might not be able to leave him."

Next, when asked why Ishikawa chose 3, she replied: "Well, because he's stable. He definitely doesn't seem to be unfaithful, does he? He also doesn't seem to be interested in people or himself, but I think it's okay if I can tame him..." MC: "So you'll give him everything he needs to live?" Ishikawa: "Yes, I will." Fukuhara: "It's totally a kept man 😅"

(I was very curious as to why KENN didn't choose Desuhiko, but the MC didn't ask him, maybe due to lack of time.)

The audience then voted but all three choices got a lot of votes, so it was decided that this means that they are all popular, so 1, 2, and 3 are all correct.

The next question was the last:

Last Question: Which line do you want Yuma to say?

1. "Aaahhh! Blood! Blood!" (JA: きゃあああああああっ！血が！血がっ！) 2. "Wait! That statement is no good!" (JA: ちょっと待って！その発言はアウトじゃない！？) 3. "My past and my memories don't matter! I will solve the mystery as Yuma Kokohead!" (JA: 過去も記憶も関係ない！ボクはユーマ=ココヘッドとして謎を解く！)

There is not much to explain about this question, so I will just write the results. Here are the VAs' choices:

Fukuhara: 2 Suzushiro: 1 Ishikawa: 1 KENN: 1

Fukuhara was surprised by this result, but the VAs who chose 1 said they wanted to hear Yuma's scream live. Perhaps the audience felt the same way; most of the audience voted for 1, so Fukuhara actually performed Yuma's scream.

All VAs answered both the first and second questions correctly, so everyone except for Fukuhara received a book token as a prize.

Fukuhara: "Oh my, I was the only one to get the last question wrong!?" KENN: "Didn't expect only the protagonist actor could not receive it. 😁" Suzushiro: "I'll use this book token properly!" Fukuhara: "Yes... use it for RAIN CODE. 😭" KENN: "Let's get some books for Vivia. 😄"

--------

The next segment was "Guess Exactly! World Detective Organization Certification Test!" in which participants had to choose some RAIN CODE merchandise so that the total amount would be 10,000 yen.

A long table with lots of merchandise was brought on stage for this game, and as the MC introduced the wide variety of merchandise available at RAIN CODE, Suzushiro mentioned: "There are quite a few people in the audience wearing Desuhiko hoodies." and Fukuhara agreed: "That's true. Deshiko's hoodies stand out!" (In fact, I saw several people wearing orange hoodies! I have seen one woman wearing it, but it had mostly been worn by men.)

This game was done in a team competition, with the teams divided into Fukuhara and KENN, and Suzushiro and Ishikawa. As a special assistant, Kodaka participated in the former and Sakakibara in the latter.

When the MC said, "You assistants can only give hints, don't tell them the exact price even if you know it," Kodaka replied, "No, I don't know at all."

Then KENN asked Kodaka: "How involved are you with these kinds of merchandise?" Kodaka: "Well, sometimes I supervise...... No, hardly ever. I just listen to them tell me what they are going to release something like that."

When asked by Ishikawa, "Are you confident that you can remember (the price of each item)?" Sakakibara replied with a smile, "No, I don't". So it seems that neither Kodaka nor Sakakibara had much to do with the merchandise.

As each team began their predictions with almost no clues, Ishikawa found a headband that mimics Shinigami's headdress and said:

When Ishikawa asked Suzushiro to put on the headband, Suzushiro looked surprised for a moment, then silently picked up the headband from the table and put it on her head! Ishikawa's eyes lit up and she did a little jump and said, "Cuuute!!!" (It might seem like I'm exaggerating, but there really was that exact exchange, and it was very cute! XD)

After that, the VAs' predictions were as follows:

Fukuhara and KENN team: ・Deshiko's hoodie: 5,800 yen ・Yuma and Shinigami acrylic stand: 1,500 yen ・World Detective Organization metal pin badge: 2,000 yen ・Swinging glass: 700 yen

Suzushiro and Isikawa team: ・Shinigami figure (in spirit form): 6,500 yen ・Meat buns plush with ball chain: 600 yen ・Shinigami headband: 2,900 yen

When Kodaka saw these, he said: "Shinigami headband is definitely not that expensive!" But Sakakibara argued: "But, swinging glass is definitely not that cheap!" (Sakakibara had been very quiet the whole time, so it was interesting to see him argue clearly with Kodaka 😄)

By the way, it was cute to see KENN doing a pose while the event staff was calculating which one was closer to the 10,000 yen total.

(Fukuhara didn't notice it for a while, but later noticed it and posed with KENN, whose picture is in the official report article.)

Then, here is the calculation results:

Fukuhara and KENN team: 13,750 yen (+3,750yen)

Suzushiro and Isikawa team: 7,810 yen (-2,190 yen)

So the winners in this game were Suzushiro and Ishikawa.

Kodaka: "Neither team's answer was that close to 10,000 yen..." Sakakibara: "Maybe the swinging glass is more expensive after all. It can't be that cheap for a glass product." Kodaka: "Huh? Isn't it plastic?" Fukuhara: "No, this is glass, Kodaka-san!" Kodaka: "Oh. Then it's more expensive." Fukuhara: "You said, it's not that expensive! 😫" (Their prediction was 700 yen, but the actual price was 1,650 yen. Also, Desuhiko's hoodie was more expensive.)

--------

With that, the main part of the evening program was over and the participants made their final remarks.

Sakakibara: "Thank you so much for having so many of you here. We at Spike Chunsoft will continue to do our best to make RAIN CODE more lively, so please continue to support us. Thank you very much!"

Kodaka: "Today was the first event, and I want to make RAIN CODE more lively so that this will not be the last. Of course, I also want to create a sequel."

He then looked at Sakakibara and continued:

Sakakibara loudly declared that he would do his best to animate RAIN CODE after being pressed by Kodaka. 😂 Then they went on:

The VAs laughed out loud at this conversation. (This made me completely like Sakakibara. It was funny that Sakakibara easily declared that he would drive the company, even though he seems like the type of person who would never say such a thing. 🤣)

Kodaka then concluded: "So please continue to support us!"

In closing remarks from the VAs, they talked about how happy they were to see the faces of RAIN CODE fans, and how they hope to have another opportunity to play their characters in a sequel, an anime, or something.

And at the end, they all said "Thank you!" together and left the stage.

--------

The evening program seemed to be over, but the stage went dark, and soon Fukuhara and Suzushiro returned to the stage for a reading play of the farewell scene between Yuma and Shinigami in the final mystery labyrinth.

The reading started from the scene where Shinigami made an emergency exit appear and she explained that using it would break Yuma's contract with Shinigami.

For a while, the dialog was exactly the same as in the game. Shinigami told Yuma that if you remember me even a little bit, show the world that everyone is happy there like you said, and Yuma promised that he would make it happen.

Then, before Yuma headed for the emergency exit, he called out to the audience:

The audience responded to Yuma and Shinigami's call with applause.

Yuma: "Well, but that's right. Also, we've been able to entrust this story to everyone here. I think that is one of the solutions." Shinigami: "I'm sure you'll forget about the spoiler talk when you leave here, though. Oh, but then you'll be able to play the game again, so it's a good deal!" Yuma: "You say such things even at a time like this... I think it will be okay. It will stay in everyone's heart."

Yuma then called out to the audience once again:

(The audience responded with applause.)

Shinigami: "Master. It's about time. We have to say goodbye." Yuma: "...Okay, Shinigami. Here we go!"

Yuma & Shinigami: ""Thank you very much for coming today!!!""

After Yuma and Shinigami's greetings, the stage gradually darkened and the spotlight shone on Shinigami alone.

Shinigami: "I'm not sad or anything. I’m... used to being alone. And that solves everything... Doesn’t it?

I will be waiting... to see you all again!"

--------

After the reading, Yuma's voice announced that all stage programs were over.

Yuma asked, "Did you all enjoy the last special reading play?" The audience responded with loud applause.

Yuma: “Thank you everyone. We look forward to seeing you all again! Thank you so much for coming today!”

--------

That's all for my report.

Thank you so much for reading to the end! 💖

#my art #rain code #rain code's fan meeting #yuma kokohead #shinigami #halara nightmare #desuhiko thunderbolt #kazutaka kodaka #syohei sakakibara #Many thanks to all of you who have read my reports!

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happysaddca · 7 months ago

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"Are you familiar with the Theseus Paradox?"

The Imitator can hear Sun's fans pick up subtly even as they don't turn, more focused on finishing the design on their wiggly subject. They had wanted to look like Glamrock Freddy. The Imitator was worried about running out of brown before the end of this collaboration with the daycare.

"Theseus, the mythological king of Athens who slayed the Minotaur to protect the children of his city-state?"

"That's the one."

Sunny's usually warm voice is tinged with metallic coldness as he recites the answer he's found. "The Theseus Paradox is a thought experiment based on the Athenian ritual of sailing the ship that Theseus supposedly sailed to save the Athenian children from sacrifice. After hundreds of years of maintenance, it's questioned if the ship can even be considered the original anymore as every piece has been replaced since antiquity. The Theseus Paradox is thought to be problem focused on the idea of identity and has several arguments stating that yes, so long as all the pieces haven't been replaced at the same time, the ship is indeed still the same."

"Got it in one as usual Sunny." The Imitator sets their brush down, giving the kid a once over before stepping back. "You're free little Freddy. Make sure the STAFF bots don't see you or they'll ask why you're not in your green room." The kid giggles as she runs off, and there's a moment of respite while the Imitator washes out their brushes and caps their loose glitter.

Sun watches them carefully, stepping to one side when they go for the trash can. "Why do you ask about Theseus friend?"

"Oh, just thinking." Each brush is laid out with dampened bristles reformed and left to dry on a paper towel. The Imitator turns to Sun and looks him over in much the same way they had their handiwork. "You ever think about your programming being a ship of Theseus?"

The fans kick on higher briefly, Sunny's rays clicking in once, twice, before returning to their default. "Can't say that I have! Seems a little rude to ask though, don't you think?"

"Not really." The Imitator smiles up at Sun, furthering his confusion. True, they didn't (purposefully) treat Sun like a person (most of the time). But it's always just a little bit of a surprise to be told so frankly that they didn't see him as human.

Sunny remains silent, knowing they'll fill it in if given the chance.

The Imitator for their part just shrugs. "Humans Ship of Theseus themselves all the time. Our cells are constantly dying so there's a whole new us every seven or so years. How long has the daycare been open?"

"...five years."

Another smile. How strange. "Then pretty soon those kids you and Moon first took care of won't exist anymore."

"Is there a point to this thought experiment?"

Another shrug. "Not really. It's just something I think about sometimes. There's been four other versions of me at some point, now quite literally dust. And it made me wonder about your code."

"Well friend! All my code is original to myself and to Moony! We've had a couple little changes here and there, but we haven't been totally replaced!" The cheer injected into Sunny's voice is just a little too bright to be real.

"Fair enough. It's just a thought. Thanks for humoring me Sun. Do I have anymore victims?"

"Language. Let's see..." And Sunny looks off over the daycare for any unpainted faces that might like to change that.

#dca au #daycare attendant #fnaf dca #dca #fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf au #dca fnaf #becoming human au #my writing

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respectthepetty · 1 year ago

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Anti Reset is about the colors

Taiwanese BLs are my bias. I love them. They are great. Nobody does it better for me, yet Anti Reset is exceeding my expectations.

The discussion about technology and its ethical implications isn't new, but it's hitting just right in this BL.

Obviously, the color coding is helping because coloring the main as blue, which is the most logical color since it symbolizes intelligence, reflection, integrity, and honesty, is brilliant. The lead is trying to logically think through his feelings, which at times are illogical, and the ramification of them. As a Blue Boy, that makes sense for him to struggle with this!

The commodity aspect of Ever 9 makes Ever 9 manipulative by design. He is programmed to have a vulnerability feature so he can induce empathy from his owner. He is constantly collecting data about his owner, so he can adjust his settings accordingly. Therefore, none of the interactions are genuine. They are merely programs following preset orders as new data is introduced. And that's why our history professor Blue Boy Chu Yi Ping is struggling because even the term "owner" is an issue when it comes to Ever 9.

Although Ever 9 came with intelligence, he is studying Chu Yi Ping and learning how to be a better caregiver to him, emotionally and physically. He is colored white because he was essentially a blank form that Chu Yi Ping could shape into his ideal companion.

And that's the biggest problem! Is anything about Ever 9 real or simply a reflection of Chu Yi Ping? Because if Ever 9 is just a mirror of his owner than he is a robot, but if he is really learning than that means he can, eventually, make his own decisions, which opens up the philosophical floodgates regarding what makes humans human. Because aren't humans all just preset with ideas and thoughts, and we learn new information by interacting with others and adjusting accordingly? Then, based on that information, we make decisions?

The uncle warned about humanizing Ever 9, but the first episode already framed the caring and warm Ever 9 as "more human" than Chu Yi Ping who is emotionally distant and cold aka robotic which is a constant description for those on the spectrum.

Yet Chu Yi Ping teaches that a vital element of individualism is that memory and history are important for "constructing new narratives and redefining the future" (ep. 4, 15:18-15:28), so wouldn't the fact that Ever 9 can make decisions based on his memories make Ever 9 just as human as Chu Yi Ping?

Which is why I need to know what Ever 9's favorite color setting is.

It doesn't even matter what the color is as long as it's his choice and not some default setting as Chu Yi Ping claimed it was because it will show that Ever 9 is learning concepts outside of his original purpose. Why would a robot need to have a favorite color to be a good caregiver? He wouldn't! A favorite color would solely be for Ever 9 and stand as a testament that he likes stuff simply because he can. And if it's not blue, it means he learned this without it being about Chu Yi Ping.

So give me a favorite color! Give me signs of life!

#anti reset #anti reset series #the colors mean things #color coded boys in love #and their color coded robots too!#I need the answer to this question!

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ghostly-omens · 1 year ago

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my current theory about q!tubbo is he's some kind of program or code or ai or something. specifically time travel is involved in tubbo's lore, but not in the way we thought it would be. i think there's probably some instance/the original instance of tubbo that existed in the past, before the island became what it is now, and that tubbo was able to send creation the data needed to revive q!tubbo. also, specifically, revived!tubbo is a different instance of tubbo than the one that died, but running more or less the same code, just without something specific to our tubbo, because revived!tubbo isnt that tubbo and didn't experience it, he just remembers it like he did, and there's something that revived!tubbo is lacking because the way those experiences affected him wasn't also transferred.

like, two things here, which are basically the same thing. but its like.... an application called tubbo.exe, which is based around a file like tubbos_basic_personality. and there's a file for memory, which contains more or less his memories or consciousness or whatever. and theoretically, that's tubbo. but our tubbo kept running that, and as he experienced things and obtained those memories, maybe he ran into a situation that taught him to be more patient or that maybe he should reign in his, uh, homicidal urges and work on not being so homicidal or whatever. so he works on being patient or not homicidal, or he meets someone and forms an attachment and through that learns to be more compassionate. and these things are like, like an add-on or a mod or something, a separate file that changes the way the tubbo.exe program runs without altering the basic_personality file itself or something, i don't actually understand how computers work.

like if you have an experience that tells you maybe you need to working on being more kind to others or whatever, the memory of this event is a separate thing to the work of actively trying to be more kind or even memory of trying to be more kind: if you become more kind, it's not because you decided to, it's because you put in the effort to rewire your brain so it follows new thought patterns, or because your brain learned that it needs to behave in a certain way from now own, which is a separate physical change to the memory which is also stored physically in your brain. scooping out the memory probably isn't going to change the new way your brain works because those are two different things.

so. basically. the theory is. revived qtubbo is a separate version of the old qtubbo, with his basic personality and memories, but without everything else that made qtubbo into himself and the ways those memories shaped him. not an exact copy of the person tubbo's friends and loved ones lost.

#qsmp #qsmp theory #qsmp lore #ghost-theory #qsmp tubbo #ghost-tubbo

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granulesofsand · 1 year ago

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Hello there!

I had a question for you-- do you know much of anything about duality programming?

How to combat it? How it works? I know what it is, but knowing more would be a great help to my system.

Duality

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA/OEA (de)programming

We have a lot of duality programming. Do we know much of anything about it? Hard to say (only wrote a short essay on it).

The most active dual we deal with is good/evil. For us, this looks like angels and demons, white and red, mind and heart. These groups have the heaviest training to fight each other, though some of our duals maintain more of a distrusting truce.

Dealing with Duals

We started by keeping them away from each other. Both groups have their own extreme ideals, many of which are harmful to the body (white obeys unquestioningly, including orders to deprive the body of survival needs and cause harm to us or outsiders; red acts on emotion, including sexual and violent behaviors). The angels agree not to come around during mealtimes and to leave if we need sleep or the toilet, the demons practice impulse control, both go back inside if they have urges that would be dangerous to act on. They don’t front for urges, so they don’t fight over urges.

We taught them how they were lied to, which beliefs they held came from which shoddy staged events. We gave them choices, how far they wanted to move how fast. Let them stay within their belief system if they wanted to, and let them define the words they were fed for themselves. Taught them the different between natural consequences and punishments.

After a few months of preventative measures, we started to pick out which of each group was the most mild, who had similar external experiences, who was most willing to interact with other insiders without escalating. We tried to pair them up, getting them used to one another like introducing a new animal to a pet. Usually, the first reaction was disdain, which often led to escalation. Find them hobbies to bond over, media they can consume together, topics they both tolerate.

We have some pairs that are doing okay. ‘Good’ is a stretch, but okay.

Their groups’ higherups started to ostracize them. The few who were already working with us helped settle the defensiveness from the rest, and they’ve mostly given up trying to break the pairs.

Progress

The fighting is ongoing.

More and more of the ‘lesser’ angels and demons are coming forward looking for a partner — the ones who were mass-made, who have group loyalty but not as much ideology, or who have ideology but not so much group loyalty. These are the cannon-fodder who get recycled during the battles, and they don’t like that course so much.

We’re at a point where the violence is still going, but is more enjoyable for the participants? The higherups have some weird sexual tension happening that we’ve taken to therapy to see if it’s appropriate — it’s harm reduction, which is about as good as it gets.

How It Got Here

This dynamic was programmed in deep over the years, and it’s entangled in several of our integral structures with this dual alone. There are reflected layers for us, and they’re like pyramid schemes with each cluster under another person (in a cluster under another person). The higherups have mirrored roles based on the mythology we were raised with, and the top of each pyramid is another dual (yellow and black).

We were trained wearing clothes of the color, surrounded by people dressed like us and spewing similar beliefs. The second layer of each pyramid was trained for specific jobs, and they have symbols that code them. The bases are the mass-produced ones, and they were mostly trauma holders. The points are the most elaborate, magical-esque programmed systemmates, and they are… something else.

We had staged fights with color-coded teams, readings from cult texts and plays acted out for us. This was big for our group of origin, so we got the whole shebang. Growing up, we thought these sidesystems were external spirits from other planes.

So…

I don’t know how similar of an experience y’all had, but we’re open to talk more in DMs if that’d suit you. Only so much we can put out for the whole of the internet while staying safe ourselves.

I hope the process goes well for you, similar to ours or not.

#ramcoa #oea #tw ramcoa #tw oea #ramcoa programming #oea programming #ec cds #pg did #traumagenic system #adaptive system

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lumine-no-hikari · 9 months ago

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Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #287 (Part 1?)

Well, today is the day. In about an hour and a half, I arrive at the place to get some teeth yanked out. I know today's letter is really early, but I don't know if I'll feel well enough to write later, so I wanna make sure I do it now. I promised a letter every day, after all. I'm hungry. But you're supposed to be, if you're getting knocked out. They don't want you to end up throwing up while you're being operated on.

I'm a little nervous. I'm not nervous about dying or whatever; I'm nervous about being in a lot of pain when I wake up. I'm nervous about being in pain for at least the next week. Nervous about the aftercare aspect, what with needing to squirt saline in the little holes left behind. Nervous about ending up with dry socket. Nervous about the fact that for the next couple days, I'll probably have to rest. Nervous about the discomfort of the braces after the fact.

…

Well. I put on my favorite shirt. I will be brave and do the scary and uncomfortable thing because I know it's gonna be better for me in the long run.

Unfortunately, when we have problems - even if those problems are not our fault - there's no easy way out of them. There's no shortcut to solving them. As unfair as it is, you just have to grit your teeth and get it done. It holds true for teeth your parents never got looked at. It's true of PTSD, of autism, of ADHD. It holds true for lots of things.

…Suppose I learned really early on that no one is actually coming to save me. No one can pop by to wave a magic wand and fix the inside of my face without discomfort on my part. No one can pop by to wave a magic wand and instantly install mindfulness and coping practices into my PTSD-addled brain; I have to practice them. No one can pop by to wave a magic wand and make the world accept queer autistic AFABs; I have to practice good boundary skills and I have to be the example of what I want to see in the world with the hopes that it will inspire kindness and compassion in others.

It's as the song says: "There's no easy way out. There's no shortcut home…"

Oh. You might not know that song. Here, I'll give you the version of it done by The Protomen; I like that one better than the original. Their lead singer is astounding:

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The Protomen have A LOT of really amazing songs. They have their own rock opera based around the Megaman games. It's definitely worth taking a look, I think.

…I generally find this song inspiring when I gotta just grit my teeth and do the thing. I focus on, "We're not indestructible." I focus on, "I think it's unbelievable how you give into the hands of fate," as in, "why would you give in to fate when you have choices?" I focus on, "Some things are worth fighting for; some feelings never die." I focus on, "I'm thinking about what I used to be," as in, "I've already come so far."

I get really confused by the line that goes "Giving in can't be wrong", though. It seems kind of antithetical to the whole rest of the song. So I usually just lop off the "apostrophe-t" in my head. 😋

The Megas is another group based on the Megaman games. Here's one of my favorites:

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I especially like the parts that begin at around 1:40:

------- "Brother if we walk the program, what system do you serve? Is your song just lines of code or something that you heard? And now you want to know what you're supposed to be; stop pretending you don't have a choice - only that can set you free. And now you want to burn the world into the ground? This rage is not your destiny - it's holding you down!"

"I refuse to believe that I'm nothing more than a machine! I refuse to believe that we can't learn to see! The truth was in a dream; I will not kill; no, I will believe!"

"Believe me when I say, if this could end today, I'd do it, I would. [But] for his crimes, should his life I take? Does that mean no man or machine can learn from his mistakes? [That] no man or machine is more than their mistakes?"

"I refuse to believe that I'm nothing more than a machine! I refuse to believe that we can't learn to see! The truth was in a dream; I will not kill; no, I will believe!" -------

...The "brother" who wants to "burn the world into the ground" turns around. Just in case you wondered. 😁💖

...Ahaha... It's hard for me to talk about The Protomen without also talking about The Megas. They're both really great groups. Thanks for bearing with me.

...Well. I suppose that's it for today. I had better get ready to go. I'll be back home in a little while. Maybe I'll write again later today. But just in case I don't:

I love you. Please, please, please stay safe out there. Please remember that you have choices and that you can do good, kind, and loving things with them. Please remember that even if your path is difficult and really long, you're capable of so much more than you think. Even if the process of rebuilding and restoring that which was broken isn't easy, it's still worth doing. Please give it a try, and remember to ask for help when you need to.

I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

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