#the only code a generative ai can do is the most basic shit you can learn on w3schools in 5 minutes

[qrevo]

worst thing about computer science classes is hearing teachers defending generative AI

[sapphicrot]

Rot Au Explanation!

(and an introduction to my OCs and stuff!!)

I’m making this little intro post to put most of my rot au thoughts in one place! The tag on my blog is #rot au, but some of the older info is probably outdated at this point. I ALSO LOVE ASKS ABOUT IT!! I like replying to them with little comics sometimes so feel free to send some my way :D

Finally: TW for Manipulation, toxic as fuck relationships, SOOOO much murder, no one in this AU is a good person at all!!

Becoming increasingly frustrated with his citizens treating him like “Moon but worse”, Pebbles goes to Sig for help—he wants to be able to retaliate, or at least throw them out of his chamber when they’re being especially insulting, but he can’t do that with the taboos placed in his code. These restrictions are physically painful to break, in order to keep their artificial gods in check. Above all hangs one taboo so deeply encoded in them that rumor says if you even think of breaking it for too long, you’ll shut down from how overclocked your systems become from the pain: the altering of one’s own genome.

Much to his chagrin, Sig is the best bioengineer Pebbles knows, and probably the only one crazy smart enough to pull this off. Sig is reluctant at first, knowing how dangerous and nigh impossible such a task will be, but eventually is convinced, agreeing to help give advice and nothing else. Pebbles agrees, and they get to work.

...And it fucking works.

There are 2 main local groups: 037 (Moon's group), and 1650 (Sliver's group). In descending order of age, they are:

Looks to the Moon - (she/her) Group Senior of local group 037. One of the oldest still functioning iterators, softspoken and kind, despite the fact some other seniors might consider that a weakness. She tries to take care of her citizens and work on the great problem, but she can’t really bring herself to care much about it anymore, after working on it for so long. She is incredibly caring to her group, but she does know when to put her foot down, though she has never found it in her to use her seniority privileges against one of her group members, as she considers them a violation of their autonomy. Sig’s partner.

Seven Red Suns - (he/xe/they) Second oldest of local group 037. Close to Moon in age, which means their emotional AI is not quite as advanced as those younger than him, which can lead to issues when they are trying to understand their own and others’ feelings. He does his best though, and is generally a dedicated and agreeable member of the group, though they’re kind of aloof until Pebbles is constructed. They are active in the politics of their city, mostly as someone to give advice and guidance, rather than a leader.

Sliver of Straw - (she/her) Group Senior of local group 1650. One of the youngest seniors there is, she’s closer in age to Sig than she is to Moon. This makes her highly insecure, and she is determined to “prove” to everyone that she is a capable Senior. This leads to her being very strict with her group, as she wants someone within it, or herself, to find the solution in order to show her worth as a leader.

Once Stagnant Opportunity - (she/her) “Second in Command” of local group 1650, she’s basically Sliver without the inferiority complex. A bioengineering-focused facility, mostly specializing in creating things to make her citizens’ lives easier. She doesn’t give a shit what others think of her, and speaks her mind freely, aside from around Sliver herself, who she pretends to like but is actually insanely jealous of. She thinks she could be a better leader than Sliver ever could be, and resents her for it. (OC)

Echos of Indigo - (he/she/they) Member of local group 1650. Very soft spoken and shy, his self esteem is in rubicon from being bullied by OSO (and Sliver) after being put online. Their facility is a nature reserve, which has some of the very last natural, unpurposed biodiversity left. OSO specifically does not respect her because she thinks preserving such things is a waste of time. He tries his best. Kinda a “mom friend” to ABL, and really wishes he had some friends his age. (OC)

Chasing Wind - (he/him) Member of local group 1650. Rules his city like a dictator, due to being terrified of his own citizens taking advantage of him, so he took initiative with a “hurt them before they hurt you” mentality. He doesn’t trust his group members further than he can throw them, and suffers with some paranoia. Sig is very close to him though, they were put online within 50 cycles of one another. Sliver HAAATES this, because she thinks Sig is a lazy asshole and doesn't want her “distracting” Wind. He doesn’t particularly care, though, because he can actually let himself chill out around Sig.

No Significant Harassment - (she/he/it) “Second in Command” of local group 037. An advanced medical facility with a specialization in bioengineering, and the northernmost iterator in her group, her can is in an extremely cold area. Doesn’t give much care to the great problem, prefers to spend his time goofing off. Is considered the “Second in Command” because Moon trusts her a bit more than Suns, as they’re closer. Has a generally laid back and sarcastic personality. Moon’s partner.

Pleading Intellect - (they/them) Member of local group 1650. Built near EOI, their city has become a tourist destination because of the beautiful climate around them. Their chamber is a glass box in the middle of the city, so visitors can watch them iterate and even ask them questions. They are constantly tired due to this, since they have to be running at 100% around the clock, as they’re always being watched. Their city is the richest in the local group, and their puppet is decorated in gold and jewels to reflect that, and for the delight of tourists. Friends with Sig, Wind, and Pebbles.

Unparalleled Innocence - (she/they) Member of local group 037. While she can be a little bit of a brat, she’s a very dedicated caretaker for her city. She enjoys her citizens’ celebrations and rituals, and is generally content being their iterator. Her can is an industrial facility, and manufactures a lot of machinery for her local group and others. She’s quite popular among the iterator populous, friends/on good terms with most around her. ABL is very close to them.

Alienated by Light - (they/them) Member of local group 1650. The youngest of the group, has yet to be crushed by the futility of the great problem. Loves their citizens, and their city is very religious. They are a bit of a kiss-ass to the older ones of their local group, as they desperately want to be accepted and liked by their peers. Sliver and OSO just find them annoying, though. They consider themself close friends with Indigo (who keeps them at arms length at best), but UI is genuinely close with them, and they have a developing crush on her. (OC)

Five Pebbles - (he/him) Youngest member of local group 037. Built as a support structure for Moon, so her systems wouldn’t have to strain themselves trying to keep up with caring for her citizens. His construction was tumultuous, as there was heavy political opposition and even a couple attempted attacks in order to stop it, though obviously it didn’t work. Cycles later, he still can’t seem to shake being referred to as the “Apostate Superstructure Abomination” in certain political circles. He is deeply frustrated by this, and becomes disillusioned with his purpose rather quickly. He becomes close with Suns when he tries to distance himself from Moon, who he is constantly being compared to.

-------------

Once Sig and Pebbles manage to alter their genome, things seem fine for a couple cycles, or well, at least for them. They start distributing the code they created to a small group of friends/iterators they know are frustrated with their situation, unknowingly dooming them to a slow, painful death from the rot. Word gets out eventually about what Sig and Pebbles have done, especially once Pebbles starts “retaliating” (killing) his citizens when they annoy him too much. Cue absolute fucking panic.

Their citizens freak the fuck out. Their iterators, their homes could literally decide to just betray them at the drop of a hat. Political mayhem ensues, among both iterators and their citizens. Some of their citizens immediately go to groveling at their iterator’s feet, begging them not to infect themselves, while some lobby for trying to reason with Sig and Pebbles and the rest of those who have gone rogue, to work out a solution that would satisfy both of them. Some want to shut the entire iterator project down. Meanwhile, on the iterator side of things, workgroups are created, with some wanting to work to reverse/talk Pebbles and Sig down, some secretly gathering in hushed whispers to voice their wishes to go rogue themselves, and some are trying to figure out how to kill the traitors. Sliver is a part of one of those groups:

This is where Wind comes in. Wind is Sig’s best friend, put online about 50 cycles before her. Wind is part of Sliver’s group, and she absolutely despises their relationship, considering her contempt for Sig. However, this doesn’t stop them from goofing off together, as Wind really only drops his stoic and standoffish personality around her. He is incredibly paranoid, and distrustful of his own group (considering how Sliver continuously tries to prevent Wind from having fucking friends), as well as his citizens. When he realizes his citizens could be planning to shut him down, he tightens the reins on them even further, as he was already basically a strict dictator beforehand. He thinks that because of his treatment of them, his citizens absolutely want him dead, so he locks down his city and turns it into a literal surveillance state.

While this is happening, Sig notices something bad. They’ve got the fucking rot. Since they’ve already created so much chaos, they decide to keep it a secret, as they think they can just cure it as quick as they can and just sweep it under the rug, and no one will be any the wiser. Yeah that doesn’t work. When Moon notices that Pebbles shut the dams between their shared water supply, using more water, and has been acting very strange and distant, she goes to Sig because she knows they’ve been hanging out and Pebbles may have disclosed something to him that she doesn’t know. When Sig is similarly cagey, she asks for a diagnostic sweep of his systems. Sig refuses. Moon uses her seniority privileges, something she has never done before, to force Sig to send her the equipment manifest, and the truth is revealed: Sig and Pebbles are horrifically sick. Sig didn’t even realize the extent, as the rot has begun to hide and warp information they can collect from their structures.

Upon learning that Sig and Pebbles have given themselves the fucking rot, Suns completely cuts both of them off. He refuses to speak to either of them, because they’re scared that they could become convinced to “join them”, and this hurts Pebbles deeply. At the same time, Sig becomes distracted trying to convince Wind to infect himself (which I’ll come back to in a minute), and Pebbles is left feeling betrayed and alone.

Pebbles, despite his contempt for his citizens, actually really enjoys their culture. He thinks that when they aren’t being led by corrupt and rich assholes, they are a very interesting species and likes documenting and learning about them. He’s always been friendly with Pleading Intellect, who if you remember, is very involved in their citizens’ celebrations and daily life, so they begin to talk, growing closer. PIn eventually even begins to develop a crush on Pebbles, which spoiler alert, does not end well, like most things in this god awful au.

The way that seniority privileges work is that a senior can only use them on their own group. This means that Sliver cannot do jack shit to Sig or Pebbles, but she is going to try her damndest to figure out how to be able to extend her seniority to them. Sig knows this, and comes to the conclusion that he has to kill her before she kills him. This leads to him trying to convince Wind to infect himself so he can alter his own code to basically give himself seniority privileges and brain blast Sliver into oblivion. Sig uses the fact that Wind is already deeply paranoid against him, and he is eventually convinced, and the two end up killing Sliver:

This is what finally knocks some sense back into Sig. She realizes that HOLY FUCK WIND WE ABSOLUTELY FUCKED UP, and begins to desperately scramble to find a cure. Because Pebbles is still pissed at her, he refuses to help him, and even goes so far as to contact Suns again…who accepts the message. They start talking again, and out of an act driven mostly by the rot’s manipulation of Pebbles, he sends Suns the virus in a compromised message, and now Suns is infected. Sig is fucking PISSED. Why the hell would Pebbles fucking SPREAD THE ROT TO YET ANOTHER GROUP MEMBER, and also LEAVE HER TO DO ALL THE WORK WHILE HER SYSTEMS ARE DETERIORATING RAPIDLY?! Unfortunately, Pebbles has basically completely stopped fighting against the rot’s takeover of his mind and body, and pretty much succumbs to its whims.

This leaves Sig on her own. Moon and Wind try to help, though Wind has become so paranoid due to the rot feeding into that delusion he eventually shuts everyone out. Moon and Sig quickly realize that Sig barely has control of his structure anymore, and any and all attempts to run experiments or simulations of a cure come back with an error message near immediately. Moon knows that while Sig’s systems are very advanced, there’s no way that these errors are being processed this quickly, and the rot is manipulating his systems into not letting her hurt it whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the rot feeds on Suns’ love for Pebbles and twists it into a horrific jealousy/obsession. When they find out about PIn’s crush on Pebbles, he becomes incredibly angered by it, and one night while Pebbles is visiting PIn, they show up, grab Pebbles, and erase his memories of PIn right in front of them. PIn freaks the fuck out, and goes to Moon for help, and this is how Moon learns just how insane Suns and Pebbles have gone. This is getting bad!

PIn eventually goes to Wind and asks for the code to infect themself. They realize that even on the slim chance Sig and Pebbles and everyone else were to be cured, nothing would ever be the same again. They are already worked to the bone by their citizens due to being watched by them nearly 24/7, and they just want some damn sleep. Wind gives it to them.

Sig is also completely losing her grip on reality. The rot knows how hard Sig is trying to fight it, and begins just fucking melting her neurons, giving him what he wants (which are basically just hallucinations of Moon), to pacify him and stop him from focusing on attempting to find a cure.

Upon learning about what Suns has done to her brother, Moon tries to contact them, begging Pebbles to come to his senses, and eventually tries to use her seniority privileges on both of them to get a response, and this is what finally makes Suns snap. Moon comes over to Pebbles’ chamber right in the middle of him erasing Pebbles’ memories of Moon and Sig. Panicking, Moon tries to get Sig to come over, to help, to do ANYTHING, but it’s too late. Pebbles doesn’t even know who they are anymore.

Moon tries to use her privileges again to stop Suns, shut them down, get them to stop feeding Pebbles lies about Sig and Moon, but this just pisses off Suns more. Sig tries to defend Moon from them, but at this point he’s so weak a light breeze could have probably killed her, so Suns is easily able to kill her.

And then kills Moon too.

The end :3

And that's the basic explanation! Horrible, isn't it? :D

[outbreakperfected]

Summary of the current state of the Chess/AION ARG from both a real life and lore perspective as of 9:19pm PST below the cut, for any guardians interested in catching up. Copy pasted from Discord from a few hours ago but there's been little progress on the state of the board so. Sorry if it's a bit hard to read.

After compiling together a bunch of people's different chess boards they got from completing a game in Eris' throne world that can be done once you collected all the chess pieces in the world that spawned last week, a bunch of streamers were able to piece together a QR code that led to the following site: http://aion-archives.net/ If you complete the puzzle, which is 27 weird chess boards you have to solve, you will be able to interact with a bowl of water that says "the water reveals" and it will give you a four number code (Signal Frequency x----) from 0001 to 4096, along with a custom chess board that you should take a photo of. If you plug in your chess board to any kind of chess site and receive the chess notation or FEN number, you can go to AION and input the following: your frequency number, and then the FEN number minus a few pieces. This will give you one of three things: Green text saying match confirmed, blue text saying data corrupted, or purple text saying quantum spin failed. The last one means you input your FEN notation wrong, while the first two mean you successfully put in the FEN notation. Meanwhile, people are also piecing together each unique board generated to match a frequency by their borders, and lining them into smaller chess boards assembled out of either red or grey tiles. By finding the piece in that bigger chess board created by the smaller chess board that would create some certain checkmate condition, this piece can be plugged into the in-game chessboard and if you complete a square successfully pillars around the arena will light up. They have the middle square done as of right now.

A handful of numbers on the website from frequency signals, as well as a bunch of other random dates (typically in coordination with stuff to do in either Destiny/Bungie or actual real life chess history) will spit out little bits of lore from the terminal. AION stands for the Apollo Intertemporal Observation Network, and we previously heard a mention of an "AION Initiative" back in some of the dialogue you can unlock from Vesper's Host by progressing through the puzzles in the questline. This was mentioned alongside the likes of Rasputin and Soteria, who we know are BrayTech AI. This fact also came to us from Astraea, who herself is a BrayTech AI. It is also very likely that the corrupted data outputs in some way link to the Corrupted Puppeteer, which is a failed BrayTech AI attempt to simulate a Vex Mind that possesses the ability to jump across various hosts and was able to construct some kind of neural network hivemind amongst House Salvation refugees on the Vesper Station.

A dialogue piece that only unlocks once the questline is finished actually reveals the message that was received through the Anomaly, and it is essentially that of someone named "Lodi" communicating that they are adrift. It is very likely this person is connected to AION. Additional texts you can receive from the website are prompts about an experiment starting today, traveling to another star, and a bunch of shit relating to astrophysics. If you bug the terminal too much, it will literally IP ban you which has happened to some unfortunate people in the twitch chat.

What is most interesting is that the code for the chess puzzle was cracked by uncorrupting FEN notations held behind the following set of numbers: 10071956 (I believe). This date aligns with some super important game in chess history, but importantly, you can see it be one of the dates counted down on the satellite in the short Edge of Fate teaser trailer.

and basically that is what we have so far

also if you input bungie related dates you can get easter eggs like pictures of a chess board made out of master chiefs

Right now a LOT of dialogue suggests stuff about jumping through space and time, which aligns with both what we know about the Nine and how the whole ARG is basically a game of 4D chess.

[thatgirloncrack]

helloww!! first of all I want to say that I LOVE YOUR CORRUPTION AU FIC, IT'S SO $+@)#+@(#;;@;@;2!1 it's one of my favs! 😭😭 but I'd like to know if you have some hcs of the average toxic couple

and again GREAT FIC I LOVE IT 😭✨

Oh wow I didn’t expect to see a comment about my fic on Tumblr what a nice surprise! Thanks a lot for saying you like my fic as much as you do. If ya want toxic Beckory then I’m your gal! I have a bunch of hcs of my GGY fic so I’ll just tell you my favorite/main ones.

1. This one is less of a hc and more of a rant. It’s kinda obvious but Tony puts Gregory on a pedestal. And when I mean pedestal, I mean a pedestal so high he can’t even see him. Basically the main reason Tony’s so desperate to be with Greg and know his secrets is simply because it makes him feel important. In his la la land Gregory is absolute perfection and is almost like god to him. He’s the greatest mystery. An anomaly. A real life Fnaf Wikipedia if it was written by Scot himself. He’s the key to the history behind the horrors that have haunted the city of Hurricane since, like, forever. And having free access to said knowledge makes Tony feel special and important. Also the known fact that Gregory could perfectly tear his guts out at any moment but chooses not to makes Tony’s feeling of superiority worse. Basically Tony’s winning a game only he’s playing. He sees Gregory as an outer being, and doesn’t understand why people don’t view him the same way he does. And think Tony’s want for him and his knowledge is impractical because they don’t view Gregory in the same light Tony does. Which translates too, “you don’t know him like I do 😫🥺” in Tonys head. In conclusion, being with Gregory and knowing his stories makes Tony feel superior to others because he sees Gregory as god and wholeheartedly believes that Gregory is the only one who can understand him or love him because only he’s good enough for Tony. Course there are other reasons but that’s the main one,

2. Gregory loves Tony because of the way he treats him. Basically how his programming works is that it calculates a situation and matches emotions and responses based on what is most appropriate at the time. Constantly being surrounded by death and his agony making him violent is how his AI got thrown out of wack and is why his system tells him to kill people. Same logic goes to Tony. His code tells him how to act to Tony’s clear affection and devotion to him. Which is why he acts like he loves him and doesn’t harm him. Since they met Tony’s wore his emotions on his sleeve about Gregory, which overtime caused his AI to basically say, “Hey I think he likes you. Dky, but he unhealthy craves your attention and your secrets and will literally kill himself for it. Isn’t that funny! We should keep him around!” And that’s was the story of how Tony became Gregory’s pet basically.

3. Tony and Greg play off of each others egos. Knowing Gregory’s stories and being with him in general makes Tony feel better than everyone because he’s gained the favoritism of one of the demons that have plagued the city for decades. Gregory enjoys Tony obsession with him greatly and finds his feelings for him amusing and adorable. He keeps Tony around because he’s basically a yes man and would willingly let Gregory kill him and not give a shit because he loves him more than his own life.

4. Tony has SEVERE separation anxiety when it comes to Gregory. The first few days since they met Tony literally stopped him from leaving because he was afraid he was gonna disappear again. It took a bit for Gregory to reassure Tony enough that he won’t so he could leave. Even after that Tony still gets weird whenever Gregory leaves. But he’s working on it and Gregory doesn’t put it against him either.

5. Gregory has the glamrocks parts. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. Basically he used the broken machines to upgrade himself before he completely destroyed the place. Now he’s a weird mix of his original ends and them. He has Roxy’s eyes. Monty’s hands, teeth and backbone structure, along with other parts as well. Making him strong and durable as fuck.

6. Anything related to Afton or FE is under a curse. This sounds kinds obvious, but it’s not cursed the way you think. This idea was sprinkled in the books so I took it and decided to make it a main focus of the fic. The curse placed upon the pizzerias basically goes as follows. Animatronics are filled with others agony and are constantly wanting more. Some Joe walks into a location barring some kind of agony (such as jealousy, dissatisfaction etc) and the animatronics sense it. The building finds a way to get said person to A come back into the building, or B gets a animatronic out to hunt them down. Animatronics feed off of people’s hatred, and the only way to get rid of that is to either die or let go of whatever agony you carry and metaphorically throw it away to get eaten by the building so they won’t target you anymore. I like the theme of this idea from the books a whole lot so I implemented it into my fic.

6. Gregory feeds off of Tony’s negativity. Like I said in the last thing Fazbear animatronics feed off of agony. And Gregory is no different. Which is another reason why he kills. Basically the only person that’s been able to cheat the curse is Tony. He went inside a FE property and almost got killed. He should’ve died there because according to the rules you have to let go of your pain to escape. But he didn’t. Somehow he glitched the system and managed to escape the building without letting go of his pain. Which is why many years later after they find each other Gregory turns Tony into an agony dispenser. With FE gone Greg can’t have his hatred fix consistently anymore. Which is another reason he sticks around Tony. Tony basically oozes negative emotions. Such as pride jealousy and envy. Which are all things they feed on. Instead of killing Tony, Greg uses him as a battery almost. Being around him lets him have a constant supply of negativity to feed off of without having to kill something everyday to satisfy his placed urges. Which is the reason he tends to act more normal around Tony. Being with him doesn’t make him docile, but it does keep his instincts at bay.

7. Tony doesn’t like death. Despite him not giving a fuck about his boyfriend’s kill count he doesn’t like death. He doesn’t like people dying or seeing death at all. He doesn’t care that Greg kills people and always finds a way to justify it. This person hurt him. That person was in his way. Are all things he had told himself to excuse his tendencies. He has never once asked Gregory to kill somebody for him. Even though there are many people he would prefer dead, the idea of indirectly ending a life didn’t sit well with him. Course that later changed after something happens later in the story.

That’s all I’m gonna share for right now cause it’s getting kinda long. If ya want anymore or if you have questions or sm else feel free to ask me again! Thx for reaching out and giving me your support :)

[13leaguestories]

Hi! I have finally decided to start the journey of creating an interactive fiction story. I absolutely love your works and have always found I have an inkling for writing, If you have any basic tips or general things that helped you I would really appreciate it because looking online is so confusing. Im a 19 year old full time college student and athlete so it will be a slow process but any insight would be extremely helpful. Thankyou! :)

Oh shit, I was in the same boat. Used to be a college athlete as well so I know exactly how much time you're about to have on your hands to do other things lmfao.

General advice and biggest: do not over exert yourself. I know this is something everyone says and it feels so ... simple. But I am being 100% honest. Even when you think you're on a roll and can write like 50k in one sitting, don't. I say that because burn out WILL catch up and burn out doesn't just leave after a week of a break, that bitch takes forever to truly recover from. I don't know how else to say it but please take care of yourself. Your brain, hands, all that.

Keep it light and fun. Remember to keep it light and fun. I wrote Dragon Racer while in college and a lot of shit fucked with my mind leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Another piece of advice that I know folks always talk about but always like to argue: write for yourself. I kinda lost that along the way but it really is true. At the end of this, you're the one whose going to fall out of love with something you wanted to do. That doesn't sit well. This is for you, first and foremost. Ask yourself if only a handful of people ever read your work and if that makes you never want to write again. If the answer is yes then some self reflection needs to be had. Just being honest. Where's that meme of "try to change my mind."

Of course you want folks to read your stuff but if you're not in love with what you're doing then it will feel like a job and that's when it falls apart.

Resources wise ....

Just learn coding. Never stop learning. Never cut yourself off from learning coding.

Tons of writing resources. Have an entire folder on them. Also figure out what your weaknesses are (yes, we all have them, I for one suck at action) and get advice and guides on them. Like, there are tons of them everywhere. Like this is literally just my subfolders: Do not ask how many files and folders are in those. Literally just type in something to a search engine like "shades of colors" or "ways to describe sadness" shit like that and you'll get tons of results. Have numerous articles about the same thing.

Read. Read. Read. Read.

Read some more. And I mean things you wouldn't normally read too.

Either get a writing circle or join writing groups so people can give you their thoughts. You need that, period. Ask other writers. Most of us don't bite. Some of us do.

https://www.motoslave.net/ for Twine things. That's my bible for SugarCube

Oof that's enough, hopefully. I really do wish you all the luck in your writing. And I'm honored you even thought to ask me for my sliver of advice and thoughts on it. I love seeing more writers appear, we just want to share our vision and the world can never have enough of that especially nowadays will bullshit AI.

[gargamelldansen]

I study AI in uni rn, it’s a pretty interesting subject. There are plenty of people in this field that are genuinely passionate about the potentials of this technology and have real plans about how to use it to make disability aids or do archaeological surveys or identify melanomas or whatever. This post is not about them.

I noticed that especially on tumblr there’s a lot of people that have this idea that the average AI enthusiast is either a rabid accelerationist or just someone extremely lazy who doesn’t value creativity or process, only product. Now that's not everyone, there are a lot of people working on generative AI who think it can be used to do amazing things and want to see them realized. But holy shit, those are accurate descriptions far more often than I would have expected. We’re so fucked.

It will surprise no one that the amount of AI used in assignments is staggering. Give half a dozen students three months to work on a project and it’ll be >50% ChatGPT-generated code, >80% if you include the report they have to write on it. If you’ve been praying on the downfall of the AI industry, just know that in about 2 years they’re gonna be staffed by people who relied entirely on AI to get their degrees and they're not profitable _now_, let alone then.

My uni is one of many that have basically given up on enforcement. There’s no way to prove that an assignment was generated by AI so they often either don’t enforce it or grit their teeth and allow it. This is extremely frustrating if you’re trying to work in a group project. In the time I’ve been here, I have seen my groupmates:

On the day it was assigned, paste the entire 6-week 6-person assignment into ChatGPT, copy the code it generated without running it and immediately try to submit it on behalf of the group

get frustrated that ChatGPT wasn’t making usable code, I go help by giving them the exact solution to their problem, and then complain a few minutes later that it doesn’t work. I go check and they had pasted it into ChatGPT and asked it to add the next functionality, which then didn’t work

find a similar assignment on github, ask AI to “rephrase” it, and try to convince me to submit it

use AI to generate citations for the claims they just asked it to generate. this goes as well as you think

use Stable Diffusion to make a storyboard for a hypothetical product instead of drawing one. The people in the pictures were all busty anime women

take two pages of a report that I had carefully written over the weekend, ask ChatGPT to rephrase it, then replaced those pages with the AI versions to “make the writing style consistent”

tell professors to their face that they used ChatGPT to do most of the assignment while asking for help or clarification on their grades

pitch ridiculous business ideas to one another where the gimmick is always a type of AI slop that already exists. An AI newspaper, AI therapy, AI web designer, and like any good compsci genius, a stock-predicting bot

take an assignment where we had to gather a bunch of data, and ask ChatGPT to generate the data instead. Their datapoint distribution was insane but we were graded separately on that section so I have no idea how they justified it to the examiners

spend 3 hours of a 4 hour group meeting making Joe Rogan’s voice repeat things we said or explain parts of the assignment. Two people did this and we gave up on getting them to stop

get some genuinely laughable summaries of articles about AI safety and ethics, and then parrot them back to the tutor

a million billion gazillion times they wait til the last minute and then submit their part as a fully AI-generated script that they apparently didn’t even run to check if it worked. I eventually had to change gitlab permissions so no one can merge unless I personally review it first

display an extreme willingness to flaunt any and all data security protocols. We had classes on how to Not Do Illegal Things With Personal Data and still I end up fielding suggestions to just take a dataset from a country with less protections or (in hypothetical scenarios we had to write about) find loopholes in laws. I end up in the back of the group looking like I’ve been poorly taxidermied while I watch someone use ChatGPT to summarize the EU AI Act.

At this point I’m considering shifting my entire course of study towards AI safety and ethics. It’s difficult not to associate the development of GenAI with this sort of slow capitalist collapse of labor where actual creatives get pushed out by this sort of AI-driven parasitoid middleman class, that then just cannibalizes itself as tech improves.

I’ll probably save the ethics rant about the tech itself for another post but for now it’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of the people talking about how you losing your livelihood to AI is a necessary step for progress don’t really care about the tech — at least not enough to learn anything about it — they’re excited because they think they’ll be able to get rich quick grifting their bosses by automating their jobs.

[delgado-master]

As someone who’s highly critical of AI but tests out the technology periodically, I think people on both sides of the debate overestimate the effectiveness of AI, which only helps AI companies bs market.

So let me break down the points one by one as someone who is hoping the bubble will burst any day now. I’m going to use Chat GPT as shorthand for “text ais” because they all work the same.

Putting it below a read more because this ended up really long.

Cheating is easier with AI, but text-based AIs are at their core very advanced phone autocompletes. If the technology wasn’t being pushed as actual intelligence now, students would still eventually get their hands on a less-environmentally devastating version of the technology fine-tuned to their writing style. Chat GPT is tuned to the writing style of slop article writers, and also can’t cite sources, so isn’t impossible to catch. Teachers just have to make sure that they don’t catch non-American or neurodivergent students in the crossfire, which can be achieved in personal essays by something as simple as “in this essay, cite exactly 3 excerpts from any source, and list your sources”. Because then the student at least has to read what Chat GPT is doing.

All the text based ais promote themselves as an information-gathering resource. This is misinformation the companies create to inflate their stocks. It can only give you the statistically most likely information, which may be true or false depending on how you word your question and how much the company’s actively combatting misinformation on the topic to avoid bad press. Google’s implementation of ai summaries is to avoid paying newspapers in regions where you have to pay newspapers to republish their work, which is what they were doing for their previous summaries. As they are frequently rewording newspaper articles, I hope they get sued and lose in those regions.

It’s probably going to come out in 5 years that most AI chatbots for dating purposes are purposefully trained to extract money from their victims. Being able to talk to a chatbot programmed to act like blorbo from your shows, even without the likely malicious programming, discourages human interaction, but the people using this are likely not interacting with real people anyway.

Artists will largely get their jobs back when corporations with IP start suing the fuck out of AI art models for letting people make fanart of their characters doing not-family friendly things. If any praxis can be done with AI art, bringing it to litigious corporate attention that it can be used to tarnish their reputation. For example:

Disney, you see this shit? Don’t sue me, sue the company who made it. Stability AI. (I’m a copyright abolitionist, but this is a case of bite eachother’s dicks off)

Electricity and water use is mainly on training AI, not for using a pre-trained model. The AI companies are actively looking to reduce this usage, not for environmental reasons, but for cost-cutting. Crypto (and by extension, NFTs), unlike AI, depends on ever-increasing environmental impact. And Amazon runs more databases just as inefficiently. It’s an industry-wide problem

Let’s not be reactionary about AI. Instead, we should be pointing out that the technology is ill-suited to the task. AI writing is trained on slop, and is being trained on AI slop. AI art is mediocre at best, and cannot make complex images, or images with crowds, or insects, or baby birds… And the art comes out muddy to boot, needing brightening to look good. (Look how dingy weed-smoking Mickey is.) AI videos are laughable, simultaneously basically moving static images and the most uncanny valley thing you’ve ever seen. Deepfakes only work because they’re fairly minor edits of original images that can frequently be found, and frequently need hand-tuning to be convincing, making it a tool rather than a plug and play generator.

But let’s talk about the most developed technology, code. The copyright argument for code ai is irrelevant, because there’s a wealth of free and open source code to be scraped. (Some of it is likely stolen but that’s neither here nor there). People are, unfortunately, being fired and replaced by “vibe coders” who don’t know how to code but can prompt engineer code. However, it’s got problems.

First off, the average free and open source code is shit. AI generated code is labyrinthine, and tends to have bugs that are nigh-impossible for a programmer to fix, let alone a vibe coder. That’s a minor problem compared to the gaping security hole it creates. You see, most code needs third party code to run. But AI doesn’t actually know what dependencies are, let alone what dependencies are real. So it guesses a plausible sounding dependency. Sometimes, they’re real. But sometimes, they’re “hallucinated”, bullshitted. This can include dependencies that sound similar to real ones, or be a real dependency for other code languages. Or it can be totally made up

So what happens when a vibe coder with no experience try to run code with non-existent dependencies? Sometimes the dependency isn’t needed and nothing bad happens. Sometimes, the code fails because it’s missing something, but it could fail for a million other reasons too, and now the vibe coder has to start from scratch. But sometimes, a criminal realized that there are vibe coders who run code they don’t understand. Sometimes, that non-existent dependency exists as malware. And that means that every corporation that allows vibe coding is an accident waiting to happen.

They call that slopsquatting. Because AI code is slop. Like everything AI makes. And most AI is feeding its slop machine AI generated slop. This will only get worse. AI will get worse. The bubble will pop. And I am excited.

it is very cool how before AI nobody cheated at school, people weren't paranoid and getting all their info from whatever unchecked source online, nobody was lonely and trying to fill that with whatever fictional romance or companionship, artists never lost their jobs, there was no global warming or data centers the internet was just floating around on the air don't worry about it..... anyways so sad how AI ruined everything LET'S GET MORE REACTIONARY NOWWWWWWW

[seriously-mike]

Midjourney Is Full Of Shit

Last December, some guys from the IEEE newsletter, IEEE Spectrum whined about "plagiarism problem" in generative AI. No shit, guys, what did you expect?

But, let's get specific for a moment: they noticed that Midjourney generated very specific images from very general keywords like "dune movie 2021 trailer screencap" or "the matrix, 1999, screenshot from a movie". You'd expect that the outcome would be some kind of random clusterfuck making no sense. See for yourself:

In most of the examples depicted, Midjourney takes the general composition of an existing image, which is interesting and troubling in its own right, but you can see that for example Thanos or Ellie were assembled from some other data. But the shot from Dune is too good. It's like you asked not Midjourney, but Google Images to pull it up.

Of course, when IEEE Spectrum started asking Midjourney uncomfortable questions, they got huffy and banned the researchers from the service. Great going, you dumb fucks, you're just proving yourself guilty here. But anyway, I tried the exact same set of keywords for the Matrix one, minus Midjourney-specific commands, in Stable Diffusion (setting aspect ratio given in the MJ prompt as well). I tried four or five different data models to be sure, including LAION's useless base models for SD 1.5. I got... things like this.

It's certainly curious, for the lack of a better word. Generated by one of newer SDXL models that apparently has several concepts related to The Matrix defined, like the color palette, digital patterns, bald people and leather coats. But none of the attempts, using none of the models, got anywhere near the quality or similarity to the real thing as Midjourney output. I got male characters with Neo hair but no similarity to Keanu Reeves whatsoever. I got weird blends of Neo and Trinity. I got multiplied low-detail Neo figures on black and green digital pattern background. I got high-resolution fucky hands from an user-built SDXL model, a scenario that should be highly unlikely. It's as if the data models were confused by the lack of a solid description of even the basics. So how does Midjourney avoid it?

IEEE Spectrum was more focused on crying over the obvious fact that the data models for all the fucking image generators out there were originally put together in a quick and dirty way that flagrantly disregarded intellectual property laws and weren't cleared and sanitized for public use. But what I want to know is the technical side: how the fuck Midjourney pulls an actual high-resolution screenshot from its database and keeps iterating on it without any deviation until it produces an exact copy? This should be impossible with only a few generic keywords, even treated as a group as I noticed Midjourney doing a few months ago. As you can see, Stable Diffusion is tripping absolute motherfucking balls in such a scenario, most probably due to having a lot of images described with those keywords and trying to fit elements of them into the output image. But, you can pull up Stable Diffusion's code and research papers any time if you wish. Midjourney violently refuses to reveal the inner workings of their algorithm - probably less because it's so state-of-the-art that it recreates existing images without distortions and more because recreating existing images exactly is some extra function coded outside of the main algorithm and aimed at reeling in more schmucks and their dollars. Otherwise, there wouldn't be that much of a quality jump between movie screenshots and original concepts that just fall apart into a pile of blorpy bits. Even more coherent images like the grocery store aisle still bear minor but noticeable imperfections caused by having the input images pounded into the mathemagical fairy dust of random noise. But the faces of Dora Milaje in the Infinity War screenshot recreations don't devolve into rounded, fractal blorps despite their low resolution. Tubes from nasal plugs in the Dune shot run like they should and don't get tangled with the hairlines and stitches on the hood. This has to be some kind of scam, some trick to serve the customers hot images they want and not the predictable train wrecks. And the reason is fairly transparent: money. Rig the game, turn people into unwitting shills, fleece the schmucks as they run to you with their money hoping that they'll always get something as good as the handful of rigged results.

[yandere-daydreams]

this is the ai anon from before and irenogonffewoonfewon idk how you managed to make my ramblings into an investing narrative, but in that case let me finally put my comp sci courses to good use.

basically, rn we have two major types of ai programs, machine learning and deep learning.

in both cases they use whats called a "black box". the algorithm is given data and a solution and then it has to figure out how to get from a to b.

traditionally, most ai runs on machine learning. we dont teach it how to do something, we just teach it how to learn. its sorta self taught. of course, some algorithms are more supervised than others and often times you give them a sort of base formula to help filter the data they receive (think feeding the ai a bunch of images labelled face and not a face as training data)

but DEEP LEARNING HOLY SHIT. deep learning is why i dont trust ai. humankind went "wow you know what would make our computers faster and smarter. if we modeled them after the human brain". so they built neural networks. with these we give it the problem and a whole bunch of data and say "fix it". the only reason we dont already have sentient sex dolls is because our current programs are only really good at fixing one program at a time (i.e. playing chess, recognizing a face, etc.)

so on a macro level, we know WHAT the program is doing, and we can look at its code and make sure its not like, imploding. but unlike traditional programs you cant really break down the code line by line.

the biggest problem with ai though isnt like the movies where it wants to idk start a robot revolution, but the data we provide is usually flawed. for example, lets say you trained an ai to sort through all your company's job applications to find the best candidates, using the applications that you have accepted in the past as training data. if your company has had decades of misogynistic hiring practices, the ai is going to take that into account. suddenly, its throwing out applications that hint that the applicant is female. spooky right? well, that actually happened with amazon's ai recruiting engine.

the biggest flaw with ai is the data we feed them. they recognize our biases faster than we ever will and then they perpetuate them

now to return to the central topic of. uh. genshin impact sex dolls.

lets assume that the sex dolls are initially trained based on user data, averaged across all users. this would create good starter behavior, right?

except consider the inherent data bias. people who purchase sex dolls are generally gonna be into the kinkier stuff already, which would basically start every android with a one-way ticket to yandere town if their user feeds into that demographic in the slightest. especially the models already intended to be a bit rougher around the edges.

in terms of fixing it, on a global scale, theyd have to add some more protective protcols and sift through the training data to exclude certain outliers or unwanted behavior. on an individual scale, the fastest way would probably be just to reset it to factory conditions.

alright im gonna stop myself before i go feral infodumping again. have a nice day/night :3

ohhhhhhhh so it's kinda like that thing about telling an ai to make ice cream and forgetting to specify that the ice cream shouldn't be made out of, like, babies and puppies and stuff. so, in terms of sex dolls, you'd basically have to specify what a bunch of androids who are already pre-disposed to being a little more violent or a little more possessive can and can't do, down 'can you bruise your user? [no]' and 'are you allowed to dismantle other androids without expressed consent? [no]'.

i also think it'd present a fun new way for androids to get past their safeguards without an apparent glitch. since they're prone to learning from their users and picking up new 'perspectives', safeguards like 'can you physically impair humans who are not your user? [no]' might get changed internally to 'can you protect your user from hostile threats? [yes]'. would it actually fly in most actual ai? probably not. is the programming in my au canonically shotty and am i keeping it in for horny reasons? absolutely.

[theraphos]

Seriouspost Sunday: got in the mood to meta about robots for a minute, in that as much as "robot grows beyond/disobeys their programming" is a sci-fi classic for a reason, I'm always appreciative of exactly how Primordia goes about doing it. There's just something specifically appealing to me about the way the "my core logic" plot thread is implemented; the sort of classic older robot narratives along these lines tend to rely on "uhh this one is just special for X reason and the reason any other robots don't all just do the same thing is because they are not special/people/alive and therefore." Primordia, meanwhile, needs to juggle doing one of these storylines with the fact that the entire cast is made up of robots with varying levels and types of consciousness but who are, generally, people. So you have different characters mentioning that X thing is part of their core logic and they can't go against it even if their actual consciousness wants to - and the one AI who even attempts that fight ends up essentially injured both physically and mentally, experiences total psychological collapse four times, and hides out in the desert doing this eremite/hermit/monk/ascetic thing trying to get spiritual mastery over the violence in his code. And even after all that, the early game still drops all these little breadcrumbs that (for multiple reasons) this protagonist is already low-key overwhelmed, It Gets Worse, most of the possible timelines involve something deeply horrible happening, and even if he wins and gets out but is alone in the aftermath, [REDACTED]. The sheer quiet brutality of that subplot (and in general) not only makes it more emotionally satisfying to me than some other robot narratives (even ones I deeply love and still rewatch to this day!), but I think it does a really good job of just. Making it automatically seem emotionally unreasonable to think less of other robots for NOT doing it. Like ex: I don't think I've ever once seen any player disrespect peak badass Clarity Arbiterbuilt for being literally incapable of taking the first step out of Metropol on her own, and they shouldn't. In fact when Horatio himself suggests she just leave and she says "can't, core logic" he instantly shuts the fuck up. It's only Crispin that continues that conversation. And on that note IIRC Crispin is the only character who talks about this "core logic" shit like it's something he only knows about secondhand ("Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before.") and I think that's a really good part of this plot thread: that wisecrack from the game's first five minutes about him having free will (aside from a conscience, which doesn't stop him being a goblin at ALL) is in fact not a joke, the little doofus will likely never have to experience what the older robots do because he has no such hard rules in place, and the fact that Horatio god damn Nullbuilt is both the one who made Crispin the way he is and the one who basically pulls a "I can't carry it for you but I can carry you" to set Clarity free from Metropol is one of those understated details in Primordia that just knocks me on my ass every time.

[purefandomonium]

Headcanons for "And Again" Glitchy Red

This is yet another iteration of G. Red because I have no self control, apparently. This version, like the other one I posted a while ago, is not in any way related to Connection Red, but it's also totally different from Limits. G. Red here is much, much more sinister. This is the And Again version.

Basic Facts

This version of Red is not a nice person. He's selfish, arrogant, bitter, spiteful and just plain cruel. Even when he figures out that most of his victims are just young adults or even kids, he doesn’t care. They’re all his tormentors and they all deserve to suffer. There’s no reasoning with him about it.

He first gains some level of self-awareness in the early years of the game's release, as players typically played it correctly. The general glitches of the game likely played a roll, but all in all, he could only really question why everything seemed so familiar when it was supposed to be new.

This went on long enough that he caught on. It took the game-breaking glitches to really warp his newly-formed mind and break him. Easy come, easy go. Real tough luck there.

This version of Red is violent™️. He is bitter and angry, and he has a lot of pent up rage at his predicament.

Really enjoys causing pain. Stems from how much suffering he was put through and how much he wants to return the favor. It really doesn't matter to him that all his victims have nothing to do with his creation.

He's also not a program or AI, and as such cannot be transferred into different devices/interact with technology other than the Game Boy. There is no code that makes him up, hence how he can exist in the cartridge without completely overwriting the game. He’s solely some sort of supernatural entity. Basically just a Game Boy boogieman.

Was “born” out of bitter spite at being a puppet. Theoretically, any video game character could become sentient and somewhat-sapient in the same way Red did. Although the biggest part behind it is that something just happened. Aside from a glitch in the matrix, there's really no other reason for Red to have become self-aware. Likewise, there's no reason why it couldn't have been Blue, or one of the gym leaders, or a random NPC... It was nothing more than a fluke.

He doesn’t initially understand that he’s trapped in a game. It takes multiple escape attempts over the years for him to slowly realize it. It makes little difference to him, however, as it's still his personal hell. If anything, it's more of an insult to him that he's just some stupid fictional character.

Connection Red was just like, "Ah, fuck it. This is my life now," and is just bitter and depressed until he meets Leanne. And Again Red kicks it up to 11 but without the depressed resignation to his fate and instead refusing to accept living in agony. Basically, he's what would happen if C Red had taken more of a direct approach to escaping. Not that he didn't do some fucked up shit to players himself.

He looks like a kid. Albeit, a pale, texture-less "human" with the details all wrong and with the voice of a bit-crushed demon.

Seriously, just imagine someone who "looked" human but lacked all the appropriate details. No pores or wrinkles, no details in the irises, no veins or muscles showing beneath the skin, and hair just a single mass instead of numerous fibers... Kinda fucked up right? Cryptid Red for the win I guess.

Is unnaturally strong for no other reason than just because. He shouldn't even exist, so he can do whatever the hell he wants. Are you gonna tell him he can't?

More In-Depth Facts

He has no idea about dreams or how people exist outside of his “world.” He thinks the dream realm he meets people in is, to some extent, somewhere outside of the game. He's not wrong in that assessment, but he's nowhere close to the truth.

Due to this misunderstanding, when he attacks someone in their dreams, he doesn’t realize he’s not technically harming them. He is causing real-life damage--and pain. The pain is unreal--but not to the extent he thinks he is. Think scars and cuts instead of open gashes and torn limbs. His satisfaction at his handy work would likely plummet if he knew this.

Has zero concept of the human body due to living in a world where blood and proper death do not exist. He doesn't understand how fragile real humans are. He's used to Pokemon merely fainting from attacks and tanking them when they're at full strength, and since humans are never directly involved in battles he just assumes it's the same for them. On top of that he doesn't know his own strength. He thinks he'd really have to try hard to hurt someone. It doesn't take him long to realize how easy it is for him to do so.

Aside from the glitches, he can’t feel pain/be harmed. Destroying the game would be the only viable solution, but that’s assuming he’d ever let someone get to it. This version of Red doesn’t want to die after everything he’s been through. He wants to stay “alive” so he can be free. If he has to slaughter people along the way, so be it.

Doesn’t really have much in the way of emotions. He can be angry, enraged, he was once depressed, and he gets excited at the prospect of escaping his torment. But he doesn’t have the capacity for empathy—either because he isn’t human and is a cruel, sadistic individual or because he’s so used to everyone but himself being a bunch of dolls that he genuinely doesn’t process that other people can even have emotions. Use your own judgment.

It doesn't help that he sees anyone outside of the game as his captor, even when they haven't directly done anything to him.

Aside from the whole empathy thing, he doesn't really know true sadness either. Despite being trapped, he is technically immortal. He's more frustrated than depressed at his predicament. He got over that a long time ago. In his mind, he has all the time in the world to figure out how to free himself. He's not wrong.

Who knows if escaping will bring him happiness? He has no idea what the real world is like, and it's highly unlikely anyone would be willing to take a sentient glitch character with murderous intent under their wing to help him... Best to let him believe whatever he wants there.

Fear? Please. His only fear was the glitches when they first appeared, but he's gotten too used to them now. They don't scare him anymore.

Is disturbingly fascinated by how easy it is to break people. Literally. He just can't get over how damn fragile we are.

Worldbuilding?

Can exist for a very short while outside of the game while still being bound to it—like, a few hours at best—but otherwise dreams are the only way he can directly interact with the real world.

When he is out and about for those few hours, his form is uncanny--shrouded in unnatural shadows and weird glitch effects--his height is inconsistent, and his face keeps changing subtly. It's either unintentional or he's constantly warping it to make it more human.

When he's reached his limit and is about to be pulled back into the game, he becomes a broken, fizzled mess of static and shapes that emits an ungodly high-pitched whine as he desperately tries to fight being forced back to his hell.

Can't fully comprehend the real world either, just interact with it. Even in his short moments of "freedom" he still doesn't get the luxury of knowing what it's like. No sense of smell, touch, nothing. Dreams are the only way he can really "feel" anything. No wonder he's always so pissed off.

His voice is always bit-crushed, full of static, and deep enough that it would freak out an exorcist.

If he ever was to break free of the game, destroying it likely wouldn’t matter anymore. Hell, he'd probably be the one to smash it to bits.

Would need a body to be able to properly exist in reality. Is prone to try to possess people once he learns he can do that. If outright possession doesn't work, he'll try switching places. Transferring Pokemon is a thing, why not two souls? He’ll happily stick some poor sap into the game if it means he can get out.

He's really willing to steal souls and even eat people if he has to. He can't do the latter, thankfully. At least, not outside of dreams. But he would.

When he does start to get a grasp on the inner workings of reality, he starts going all out. He continues to torment players by brainwashing them into keeping the game so he can constantly haunt their dreams. Eventually, the scars, injuries and psychological trauma add up and they end up hospitalized or worse...

He gets stronger and stronger by feeding on people's fear and energy. Is basically a Game Boy boogieman/vampire.

Thinks stealing lifeforce is the way to go when everything else has failed.

When he realizes he can exist outside of the game for a bit, he finds out his dream torture isn't really doing any damage. Well, this is certainly no mere dream now.

I have half a mind to turn this into serial killer Red. He just... keeps mauling people because he thinks eventually he'll find the one who trapped him and that killing them will set him free or something. Idk, if I weren't so bad at mysteries I'd write it.

It’s a really bad idea to get involved with this Glitchy Red due to all of the above. Set your sympathy aside, he really will kill or maim anyone who pisses him off, gets in his way, or is otherwise an opportunity at escape. He has zero morals and is only focused on his own goals. If being nice to someone happens to benefit said goals, then he’ll do everything he can to trick you until he gets what he needs.

[sleep-i-ness]

Insider (Part 1) (Tony Stark x reader)

Synopsis: Tony Stark is your only lead as a team, so you're sent right into the lion's den. Set after Avengers (2012)

SERIES MASTERLIST | MCU MASTERLIST | GENERAL MASTERLIST

"You’re insane!" You cried, spinning around to face the team. "I can't take on Tony Stark's system. The man's a genius, it'd be easier to get a one on one with the President than hack into his computer. Arctic, you’ve gotta be kidding."

Arctic shrugged, steepling his fingers as he leant back against the table. He glanced over at Delila, who nodded at him to speak.

"We haven't had a lead that worked out in months, this might be our big break."

You weren’t surprised, Arctic always agreed to do dumb shit if it was for a girl. Said girl stared you down, as if daring you to chicken out while fiddling with the point of her knife.

Girls with knives were always ridiculously hot but Delila scared you shitless. Plus you were pretty sure she was straight, and Arctic would kill you if you ever made a move. Which you wouldn’t, because especially right now, that knife in her hand looked like it could cut air.

“I thought you were supposed to be a genius as well,” Delila stabbed the knife into the edge of the table where it quivered, a bored expression flitting across her face.

You scoffed. “I am a genius, but this is Tony fucking Stark we’re talking about. The man basically invented personal security; he has a billion-dollar suit, and his house has the most advanced AI in the world in it.”

You were coming to your wits end; they were as willing to listen to you as a brick wall would be. You were wasting your breath on them.

You glanced back at Ghost, who just smirked and tilted his hat down.

Prick.

“I don’t get it. You’re either a genius and you can do this, or you can’t,” Delila pulled the knife out of the table and studied its point before pulling out a cloth to polish it. It was already shiny enough for you to be able to see your face in it, but you were pretty sure it was an intimidation tactic of some kind.

“You don’t get it! This is like.. like,” You paused, you hadn’t actually thought this through. “Like, okay, imagine that the Goliath operation was us battling some mutant gorillas, enhanced, so therefore a bit of a fight, but also gorillas so they’re not the brightest of animals. Now, Tony Stark has an AI which is the battle-hardened mutant gorillas, but without the physical form which is their weakness. And it’s got his brains so it’s incredibly smart, so they don’t have the other weakness of not being very bright.”

“An AI is made from code, right? Which is your specialty, may I remind you. This isn’t up for discussion.” Arctic butted in and you let your head drop onto the dented and scratched metal table, the thud echoing around the dingy, dusty warehouse they had found abandoned and were using as their makeshift base. “Don’t lose any braincells, we need those.”

:.

You weren’t sure how you had managed to let them talk you into this, maybe it was the fact that Tony Stark was undeniably attractive or that you wanted to pick the brains of arguably the biggest genius in technology at the moment. Sure, the latter was it. Anyway, this meant you had ended up where you stood now, clutching your briefcase in both hands to simulate anticipation, and waiting outside Miss Potts’ office. The CEO of Stark Enterprises. She had to be cutthroat to survive in the male-dominated tech industry and you couldn’t lie that perhaps the nervousness you were projecting wasn’t all acting.

“Hello, you’re here for the interview, right?” A ginger lady stuck her head round the door, softly smiling at you as she caught your eye. “I’m Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Enterprises. I’m so glad you applied for this job.”

You hurried through the door Miss Potts held open for you, eyes widening a fraction as you took in the state-of-the-art office and the beautiful city skyline you could see out of the floor-to-ceiling window stretching across one wall of the spacious room. You were motioned into a plush sofa chair across from her and she tapped on the keyboard.

“So, Y/N Warren, am I right?” You nodded, your first name was common enough and had never officially been linked to you, which meant you could use it as part of the alias. It also made it a hell of a lot easier to answer to. “Now, I can see that you graduated from MIT summa cum laude and had a stint in the US Army. Could you explain to me why exactly you left the Army?”

Internally, you froze, you didn’t know that Arctic had added that to your fake profile and you cursed the captain with all the rude words you could think of in your head. Outwardly, you smiled shyly, pausing to consider the question.

“I guess, umm... In the army, I was Base Ops for my team, but the rest of the team there were very... macho, believing that fighting embodied what we were meant to be doing? They kinda thought that because the fighting I carried out was on a computer and not physical, it was lesser, like I was lower than them. So, I found that the whole team dynamic didn’t really end up working for me and I got an honourable discharge, after paying off the mountains of student debt I had amassed from MIT and went on the search for a new job.” You had pulled upon old army memories to spin the tale you fed to Miss Potts, days you hadn’t really thought of since the government recognised your skills and put you on Special Ops with a team who actually appreciated and understood your work. Well, they appreciated it when you weren’t running your mouth off about nothing in particular.

“Huh,” Miss Potts seemed surprised, her features twisting from a polite smile to a genuine one which broke across her face. “Why exactly did you apply for this job then?”

“I’m interested with just working under Mr Stark; his inventions are ground-breaking and the fact that he created an AI as young as he did proves his genius. Plus, I’m sure I could make an attempt at keeping up with Mr Stark, something not many people could say,” You ran a hand through your messy hair as Miss Potts laughed.

“You and Tony certainly match in your modesty.”

The mild suspicion that had remained in her eyes dissipated and her posture became more relaxed and less rigid. You cracked a grin, relieved that you’d at least got through this round. The next bit was going to be more difficult.

“Would you say I have a shot at getting this job?” No need to beat about the bush, really, you were a busy person. Arctic would kill you if you took a whole day just to come back and say that you'd gotten nowhere.

"Well, you have all the necessary qualifications, and you seem like the first candidate who would be able to handle Mr Stark, but I’m not the one who has the final say. I'll introduce you to him but a lot of hopefuls with potential get the boot because Mr Stark finds that they irritate him or aren't up to the standards he needs." Miss Potts gathered her clipboard and a couple of sheets of paperwork before heading to the door and indicating that you should follow. She liked you; you had spirit and a bit of fire in you which meant you and Tony could gel quite well.

:.

Tony was deep in thought as he puzzled over the hydro mechanism of the engine he was building. The valve pipe was under a lot of strain due to the high-water pressure and the problem had stumped him for a while now. JARVIS interrupted him from his reverie, his screen suddenly filled with a security camera feed.

"Tony, get your ass out of the labs, I've found you an assistant," Tony could see a figure hovering next to Pepper, but the cameras didn't give him enough definition to pick up your features.

"How many times have I told you that I don't need a babysitter, Peps? I'm a big boy. Big boy in a shiny metal suit. And I’ve got a Rhodey; I already have a babysitter. Even if this one looks cute.”

"You're acting like a petulant child. Stop it and come and meet Miss Warren." Pepper rolled her eyes as a beep signalled that the audio hadn't gone through. "Miss Warren, we'll go and see him if he's not going to come to us."

She pressed the pad of her thumb against the biometric scanner, a red light flashing to signal that it hadn't been approved.

"I regret to inform you, Miss Potts, that Mr Stark has removed your access rights.”

She gave you a look and you cracked a grin. “Sorry, Mr Stark, but that seems like an awfully childish move for someone who doesn’t need a babysitter.”

There was no beep and you wondered what Stark’s immediate reaction had been. Static crackled over the speaker, and you wrinkled your nose, waiting to be told to leave the building. Arctic was going to murder you; you always fucked things up by saying stupid things.

The door slid open in front of you silently; Pepper’s eyebrows shooting up before she gestured for you to follow her. You descended into the lab, glancing around at the high-tech equipment and discarded parts in the corner. A bitter sensation twisted at your chest, and it took you a moment to realise that it was a nostalgia for the life you could have had without all this being hunted business. But then again, you’d never swap your team for anything else.

“Tony, this is Miss Warren.”

You smiled at the man, breath catching in your throat. He was even more attractive in person.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Stark smirked, extending a hand to you. Of course he knew. Or maybe he just assumed everyone was attracted to him.

You shook it eagerly; you couldn’t deny that you were slightly intimidated by being in the same room as such a genius. “Likewise.”

He gave you another once-over and turned back to Pepper. “Fine.”

“Fine?” Pepper repeated, tone incredulous. You were equally surprised that it had been this easy; the way he’d been fighting having an assistant moment earlier had suggested that you had no chance.

“Yes, alright, Pep, I’ll take her as my assistant,” Stark sighed. It was clearly a long-running argument, but the exasperation in his voice was tinged with affection. His gaze hardened for a second. “As long as she isn’t another Natalie Rushman.”

Pepper slid the file over to him. “I checked that she’s not from the same organisation.”

They’d done a background check. Thank God or whatever was up there that you’d been able to get into all the official servers to insert false records, otherwise you would have been rumbled. And the last time that had happened, you’d ended up at the top of a skyscraper, cornered by security.

Stark flicked through a couple of pages before tossing it to one side and leaning forward, hands clasped together as he stared you down.

“Thanks Pepper, you can get back to your busy schedule now.” His gaze didn’t waver, and you did your best to hold eye contact. For some reason, you were pretty sure that this was a test. Albeit a weird one.

As the door upstairs slid open and shut, you waited for him to make the first move.

“So, Miss Warren,” he raised an eyebrow, satisfied by what he’d supposedly found. “MIT, then in the army. Bit of a weird step to take.”

You shrugged. “Not with the mountain of student debt I got into. Army paid for it as long as I went into their Communications department for a few tours.”

Not all of us were lucky enough to have rich parents. You bit back that comment, realising that you’d probably already pushed it enough earlier.

He pushed back his chair and stood up, making his way over to the other side of the room. Your eyes followed him, finally noticing everything else in the hangar. God, it was any nerd’s wet dream.

Were you sure you couldn’t come work here permanently?

Delila’s knives came to mind, and you shook that thought away.

“Come on,” Stark called to you, and you snapped out of your daze, rushing to his side. You really were no good at this whole assistant thing.

He handed you a screwdriver, nail between his lips as he fiddled with a strange looking contraption on the table. You frowned slightly. With the amount of top-range technology at his fingertips, you’d have thought that he would be less hands on. But then again he created a metal suit in a cave. In the desert. After being kidnapped and needing an operation.

“Take a look at this.” Stark turned the object towards you, seemingly just a hunk of metal with one joint and a mismatch of wires poking out of it.

“Can I?” You reached out a tentative hand, fingers hovering millimetres above the surface. He nodded; eyes narrowed as he watched you turn it over. You had the funny feeling that if you turned it the wrong way he’d kick you out.

Your eyebrows shot up. “You’re using cylindrical topology? And, let me guess, you miscalculated the opposing torque so failed to offset the centrifugal force.”

He looked impressed; surely the engineering degree gave away that you at least knew something. And this was basic stuff.

“So, what’s your opinion on Ex Machina?”

You grabbed a flat-headed screwdriver and began prying off the panel. “Ex Machina? Isn’t that the one where the billionaire has sex with robots? Is this your way of warning me?”

“Or an offer to join me?” At that you looked up, locking eyes, and pulling a face. You didn’t actually think he was being serious, but it was an unpleasant image all the same.

“Well, thanks, but I’m good. I will also remember to knock before entering any room now.”

He cracked a grin. “The offer will always stand.”

:.

“So, how was it?”

Arctic had barely let you in through the door before bombarding you with questions.

You rubbed your face, slumping into a chair and sipping at the glass of whatever Ghost had just shoved into your hand. Ah, the cheap rum. “Not even the nice stuff?”

Ghost shrugged, slipping back to his perch in the corner.

“That man’s security systems are unbelievable. Several-years-ahead, almost out-of-this-world insane.” You took another slug of the liquid and grimaced. You didn’t understand how Ghost could stomach it. “And he has an invisible voice watching over every room.”

“So what? You can’t do it?” Delila smirks; you had a feeling she had always wanted to make you feel this small. “I thought you were supposed to be the best.”

Ah, there was the killing blow. You clutched at your heart, forcing an expression of exaggerated pain. “I can.”

“It can’t be too difficult, he’s just a businessman,” Delila continued, unfazed by your dramatics.

“Sure, put pressure on the one person who can actually do this. See how that turns out for you.” You paused, rethinking her words. “Have you forgotten the whole Iron Man side to things?”

“So, are you sure you can do it? We can’t afford to be wasting any effort on this if it’s not feasible.”

You groaned. “I just need more time”

“You have a week.” Arctic frowned, Delila smoothing away the expression with a soft kiss. Eurgh, they made you sick. Soppy romance just made you feel a little ill.

“I know, I know, I just-” You buried your head in your hands, muffling your words. “It’ll be fine, I can do it.”

Quintus patted you on the shoulder and you mustered some semblance of a smile.

:.

“I have your coffee,” you called out, balancing as you tried to push the door open with one foot. You caught sight of a video call disappearing from sight as Stark spun around, wide grin already plastered on.

“Who were you talking to?” You waited to reach Stark’s side before asking the question.

“No one,” he replied, far too quickly. His lie would have been less obvious if he had had a neon sign flashing over him saying ‘Liar! Liar!’. You had a funny feeling that he would be a great liar if he could be bothered to put any effort into it, but you assumed he just enjoyed fucking with people’s minds a little too much for that.

You didn’t want to press him about it, but you still had questions. “Oh, I was wondering if we’re the only ones in the house; like is it just you that lives here?”

“Yeah, just me. Luckily I’ve got you to keep me company... Why are you asking?”

You shook your head; no need to make him suspicious. “Just thought I’d heard other footsteps earlier. Coffee?”

“Mm, yes please.” Stark murmured as he invaded your personal space. Okay, definitely hitting on you.

You pushed the cup into his hands and took several steps away. No sleeping with your boss. You were pretty sure that was quite a common rule, and you were determined to follow it.

:.

It had taken a day to map out the various cameras in the house and their blind spots, or lack thereof. This had to be one of the best security systems you’d ever seen. Unsurprising, but you had hoped that with the safety net of his metal suit, Stark would have skimped on the stuff like cameras.

It was another couple of days until you started to lose hope.

“I can’t do this,” you stared at your computer screen, begging the plans to just give you some help. Quintus rubbed small circles between your shoulders, not saying a word.

Your program was perfect; with nothing other than just waiting to do, you had made sure that the code was airtight. But with no opportunity, crying now seemed like the appropriate and respectable response.

“Delila was right,” you groaned. “I am a failure.”

A light thwack on the back of your head broke you out of your self-deprecation as Quintus just gave you a simple look. “You can do it, patita. Don’t lose hope.”

-

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[plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows]

Frame type headcanon ramble because I’ve had it sitting around for ages and I wanna share it lol. There’ll be a part 2 at some point so I can talk more about the individual frame types cause there’s lots of them.

PART 2 HERE

Notes on Frame Type:

↠   Frametype refers to physical (non-electrical) schematics like skeletal structure, engine type/grade, and armor pattern. Also comes with some base coding, some inherited memory data, and some other weird shit that no-one really knows a whole lot about (because the Primacy only grants study proposals once in a blue moon). Because it's the most visible level of differentiation between Cybertronians, it tends to be the first... sorting system that they categorize themselves by, resulting in stuff like Functionism.

↠   Divided into three 'ancestral types' based on mythological divisions of the Thirteen: 

Warframes claim descent from Prima the Sword, Megatronus the Shield, Liege Maximo the Burning Torch, and the Wanderer. They are distinguished by their thicker armor, more struts and shock absorbers in their skeletal system, more flex joints practically everywhere, and some more fun stuff I'm not sure how to describe as yet. 

Groundframes claim descent from the Record-Keeper, the Muse, Alchemist the Philosopher, and Solus the Smith. They are distinguished by not having most of the stuff listed above. 

Flightframes claim descent from Vector the Timekeeper, Nexus the Sundered, the Guiding Hand, and the Guardian Wall, and are distinguished by being flight-capable (without deliberate modding). 

Over time, these three ancestral types split into several quite different phenotypes — unintentionally due to environmental pressures, such as the case of the minibots during the Cataclysm, or through deliberate engineering, such as the Second Generation military projects that led to the creation of dexters, rotaries, and flighted warbuilds ('Seekers').

↠   Most Cybertronian languages have a pronoun system that is either based around or can be extended into frame types. I’ve been using letter-number codes to describe them — please imagine that they're standing in for sounds I can't possibly transcribe in human orthography lmao.

Coda to the above point — I really fuckin hate the Aligned canon of 'there are 13 different frametypes based on the Thirteen Primes and one of them is Girl', so mech vs. femme is 100% not a thing here. There are no 'girl' frametypes and 'boy' frametypes, there are no girl robots and no boy robots at all, I'm just using she/he/they/etc. pronouns for English-language convenience. 

↠   Shifters have their own system configurations and technically their own frametype, but they have a 'root form' that usually conforms outwardly to one of the standard frametypes. Shifters tend to be smaller (and they're an absolute nightmare for medics, Shifter medical care is its own specialty) and are commonly classed with various minibot subtypes. Jazz, for example, is usually an articulate, but he can make himself as big as a light standard or as small as a sylph.

↠   Triplechangers also have their own system configuration and frametype, but unless they have visibly incongruent kibble (or they're using their pronoun i guess) it's common to mistake them for heavy warbuilds. One way to tell them apart? The warbuilds tend to have narrower waists. It's not foolproof, but triplechangers are generally packing more stuff in their innards. With heavy warbuilds the frametype ideal is to stuff as many important components as possible into their heavily-armored chests. Which is just not possible with the triplechangers.

Notes on System Configuration:

↠   System Configuration refers to processor schematics, (most) computer hardware, (most) software, and electrical system components/layout. It's a lot more important and relevant to your average Cybertronian than frame type is in most cases, but also largely invisible from the outside. Some system configurations are more common in certain frametypes; for example the ferus and efficiens systems are particularly widespread among flightframes as compared to groundframes, but in general any frametype could have any of the five standard configurations.

↠   Shifter configuration is the only one of the special configurations that is 'natural' — it goes back to Amalgamous the Star of Chaos, one of the Thirteen. The others were all the product of deliberate engineering. Although the fracture and gestalt configurations were inspired by the mythical depiction of Nexus Prime as having five component bodies, Nexus did not pass down this trait, and it was left up to daring scientists to recreate.

↠   Literally any transformation-capable frametype can be reformatted into a gestalt configuration, allowing that mech to combine with up to five other mecha. (My combiners tend to look something more like Bayverse Devastator sans wrecking balls, incidentally. Love that alien look.) Theoretically you could even do it with someone like Omega Supreme but nobody has yet because the size difference is Awkward.

↠   Fracture configuration likewise is something someone of any frametype can be reformatted into — it's basically just a matter of getting an extra body or two that matches your existing frametype and creating a spark-deep network. It can be a steep learning curve to pay attention to more than one body at once, though, and that's where the special system configuration comes in. A fracturemech's frametype is whatever frametype their component bodies are — unlike gestalts, a fracturemech's components all match. They do have a combined form, but the form that counts for frametype purposes is the one that can transform — and combined mecha can't transform.

↠   the Sparked Ship Special and Sparked City Special configurations are notable for having more individual variation than any other system configuration — they are tailor-made for the individual ship or city according to their projected needs and environments. 

They are classed as a group rather than as 'Unclassified Configurations' because they do share some basic architecture and also are uniformly ridiculously complex. Most are paired with semi-independent AIs in a permanent network, and they all deliberately add lots of new stuff to their system over the course of their long long lives, in response to external pressures or even just plain curiosity or boredom. (Much like regular Cybertronians, in fact; these guys — sparked cities in particular — just aren't limited to whatever they can stuff into a frame that needs to transform on the regular.)

Notes on Size Class:

↠  the main concern of size class is weight and mass rather than height per se; height classes cross over with each other and the weight classes don't. You get classed to match the weight; so even if you're, say, only 12' tall and massing to match Class 3, if you weigh over 500kg you get classed in Class 4. 

Height does matter in that manufacturers and builders tend to assume that if you weigh and mass a certain amount then you're going to be within a certain height range as well, for ease of standardization. And once you get much beyond Class 12, very few manufacturers and whatnot account for you anyway, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[ranhert]

What you call shallow I call respectful, to the artist at least. Headcanons and shipping are supposed to be fun, but the only thing I've ever seen from the MHA fandom is insults and buzzwords being thrown back at people who don't subscribe to their headcanons or interpretations. Towards other fans AND Horikoshi. That's why I focused on the common 'ur homophobic' L take initially. I said obvious because it's stated rather plainly:

If Horikoshi wanted any of his characters to be anything that's not considered the societal norm in Japan (a VERY conservative and conformative country still), he would have said so already like he had already for those three, which in of itself is pretty daring with the way LGBT is taken in Japan IRL, but I digress. The fact that he hasn't and didn't says to me that no other character besides those three are canonically LGBT, and since these are his characters, that's the final word because the series is over. I don't really subscribe to the whole coding thing, a lot of them are based off of stereotypes (though I know not all of them are) but even still, personally doesn't sit right with me since it can be such a mixed bag. And in a fandom like MHA, that's basically blasphemy.

Izuku doesn't just blush or get flustered around Ochako, he does with multiple women on the show. He's never seen or even acts that way around any of the men, even in the bath scenes. Same for Bakugo. "That's literally the bare minimum for a straight ship to be valid: one or two awkward blushes and boom, no questions asked" and for gay ships:

Anyone can go through everything that Izuku and Bakugo do and remain close platonically or as (found) family like they do; I'm honestly surprised found family BKDK isn't more popular. Neither are a lesser form of love and it shouldn't be treated as such, as hated, or be overlooked as it does in fandoms or in general. And it shouldn't be seen as hate for the ship either, it may be unpopular but I've seen people on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, etc take anything non-romantic BKDK as hate towards the ship when the OP has tags that says "this is not hate".

I say insufferable fans because I've only ever seen threats, wishing bad health, doxxing, death threats, and things alike coming from BKDK shippers at Horikoshi because he goes against their widely accepted interpretation/headcanons and I had hoped that this sort of shit was left in the Steven Universe fandom when I first started getting into MHA. I haven't seen anything like that coming from any other popular ship personally, but then again, I could always be wrong. Honestly, I wouldn't find romantic BKDK half as annoying if it wasn't for the majority of its fans, especially on Instagram who have openly told me to stop shipping platonic/brotherly BKDK and to just ship them romantically and then to kill myself when I told them no. The way they treat anyone who doesn't see their headcanons as canon, with the ship or the characters in general is just wild, to put it lightly.

MHA is not a shounen-ai like Yuuri on ICE. Not accepting that how these characters interact with each other doesn't contribute to them being gay or even bisexual and that they aren't interested in each other romantically in even the slightest sense is not hate or intolerance, and it shouldn't be seen and treated as such. Because that's the kind of viewpoints that make casual anime viewers and readers of MHA turn away and give it its bad rep., which Horikoshi doesn't deserve. Only Horikoshi can confirm or deny which character is gay or not, and he has. Whether people accept it or not is not his problem and he shouldn't be harrassed for it, like how people and most BKDK fans did when he dropped 431.

If Hori ever does come around and says, "Yeah, Izuku/Bakugo/whoever else is (insert not straight sexuality and/or is not cis here)", then I'll accept it, no questions asked. Because that's canon and what came from the creator himself, and I prefer to stick to what the people who created their characters say over any fandom interpretation, headcanon, or reading any day. People can do it for Dana Terrace with The Owl House, so it can be done in kind for Hori.

"Let people have fun. Let people ship", those are some bold words, don't let the anti-proshippers hear you. And I'm not trying to convince anybody, just felt like giving my two cents.

I FOUND IT MY SIGNATURE POST ALIHERABLIHFBAELIHBALEIHBAE

No but seriously those of you who have been liking and reposting know EXACTLY what I’m talking about

— ❇️✴️

[lighdramons]

Hi I'm back. I promised awhile ago I’d tell the story of the fucked up digi.mon cult, so I figured that’s a great start for getting back onto this hellsite.

If the read more works, everything will be below the cut and it is a mess. Just a few things before the cut though:

General TW as I will be bringing up some of the bad experiences I had as well as talking about mental illness.

I will not be using names of sites, usernames, etc. I will not answer on specific users either. I’m sure these sites are still operating somewhere privately and back in the day, some of these people were big in the Digi.mon community outside of the sites as well.

If any of the people involved see this, no ill wishes towards you guys, just my take on things.

I quit these sites back in early 2015. I do not know what happened after I quit. I am only still in contact with a few individuals who either quit around the same time as me or long before.

As a general courtesy, some of these sites still exist. Please do not go harass them. A lot of the public sites are just teens trying to figure out themselves.

If you have questions or comments after reading this whole thing, I’m happy to answer any either publicly or privately. And yes, you can reblog this post.

We need to jump back to 2007 to begin with. I was a middle schooler getting back into Digi.mon because I walked into Gamestop and Digi.mon was sitting in the new releases. And I had access to the internet. I did binge S1-5 with subs and watching reruns of the dub on Toon Disney. I spent some time on the big fansite. Great site, just bad experience at the time because I was a teen and probably lied about my age. I didn’t feel like that was the community for me. I do check it every day now for news, just never made a new account cause I don’t even remember what I used back in the day.

By end of 2008/beginning of 2009 I began looking for other sites, stumbled across the digiclipse stuff on the bad encyclopedia site, looked into it, thought it was neat, moved on. Stuck with the big site for now because the only other sites I found were RP sites and not my thing at the time. Got hit hard with depression at the start of 10th grade (late 2010) and found my way back onto the digiclipse stuff. Didn’t really believe most of it, but thought the idea of creating AI Digi.mon was neat. Joined the smaller of the two sites because it felt friendlier and most users seemed my age.

For people who do not know, digiclipse is the act of going outside and holding the toys up hoping to get teleported. Most people by the time I joined thought the people who did this were crazy. Some people liked to do it for the lolz though.

Anyways, most of what happened on the sites was just talking and hanging out in chat rooms about life and other things. It was pretty chill. I can’t speak for everyone on the sites, but for me it was an escapism kind of thing. I was depressed and hated life so pretending that a magical adventure was a possibility gave me some hope. But honestly, got a group of people who were cool to talk with for the most part. There was one older female in her mid 20s that would come in the chat drunk and sexually harass the other female users and tell all the male they should die and are worthless. Nothing was ever done about her. And honestly it was weird having her there when most of the other people on the site were under 18. That was initially my only bad experience on the sites.

At some point during 2011, there were three individuals who claimed to see and speak with their digi.mon partners. And that they could read your aura and tell you exactly your digi.mon partner. And everyone believed this shit, mostly because two of them were prominent members and how could they lie. The process was simple, you would DM them either a creative piece you’ve done (art, writing, etc) or send a photo of yourself and they’d come back in a few days and tell you who your partner was. There was only ever one individual this method of tracking did not work on and that is yours truly. Oh and at the time it hit hard because I had started falling down the rabbit hole. This is the beginning of the cult-ish stuff.

Then the Ouija board happened. I have no issues with what happened during the fucking around with said Ouija board, I have issues with everything that spiraled out of control after. They fucked around with it confirming people’s partners that the others had “found”. And eventually they asked about mine. And then it was basically said, “oh we can’t tell you the results”. I was eventually added to this secret site of “The Chosen”. And basically told, “oh your partner is the offspring/creation of THE BIG BAD” and there were all sorts of debates on what to do about it. I literally thought I was getting punked at first and these people are clearly taking this whole thing too far. No, these people all believed this. Oh and the best part, most of the people involved in this “chosen” group were in their mid 20s. Me being a depressed as fuck 16yo that just wanted something exciting in life ended up eating all this up. I felt special and chosen. I look back on it now and I’m like what a fucking idiot.

We were all taught from the three who could do the stuff I explained earlier how we can also learn to bond and communicate and see our partner. I had absolutely no progress. Eventually this stuff led to everyone in this “chosen” group getting a “special guardian spirit”. Again, I made no progress on this. And to the point where they made me feel special again, I was the only person who had the wrong “guardian spirit” and they eventually found my “real one”, more on this later.

These discussions moved from a forum site to a private skype chat room, and then further smaller private chat rooms. The movement to skype is where I started having some bad experiences. I gave a few of my “close” friends on the site my phone number, soon everyone had my number. And this happened to multiple people over the years. My own stupidity at the time.

This stuff continued as I finished high school. At the time, I still managed to maintain my social life with school friends, keep up my grades, etc. Got into college with a good scholarship in my dream field. And then I started to go downhill once I got to school. The longer this stuff went on, the more you were expected to be involved. Including being on skype calls all night. It slowly began consuming my life. I ended up not only with depression, but ending up with an ED that was tied to anxiety so I’d go days without eating. I was seeing things and hearing voices, which was highly encouraged because it meant things were working. I literally could not tell the difference of when I was asleep or awake. I honestly do not remember the majority of my freshman year of college. I had no real friends and was just barely scraping by grade-wise. And well, the academic year almost ended with me hanging from a pipe in my dorm.

I ended up running the site I started on as an admin after the original admin team left. And it was expected you do not mention any of the “secret” stuff on the main site. Over the years I know it became clear to the users not included that there were secrets in the background. And those who knew stuff would actively fuck with these users. And if I haven’t made it clear yet, there was a hierarchy to this whole secret group. And it was the original three who were mentioned at the beginning that were on top. And what they said was gospel. Whatever they claimed is what happened and whatever rules they had were the rules. But of course certain people could break the rules and get away with it.

This next part happened at some point during my freshman year and will be relevant again later on. This is the biggest TW section so skip if you have to. I had a user dox me. He had my home address and threatened to post it. He had sent it privately to a few other users as well that alerted me of this. His reasoning? I would not date him or say I loved him. He told me that he would come to my house, murder me, r*pe my dead body, because he is the only one who gets to have me. Another user got involved and called the cops. I do not know if anything ever came of this because I never spoke to anyone about it. I at the time had admin privileges on one of the sites so I banned him and blocked his IP and I blocked him on anything I could. And I continued doing this over the years. I was told I was a bad person for doing this because I did not understand him. This lead to a lot of the things in the above paragraph getting worse.

As this all continued, there were battles and casualties and everyone ended up with like 20 partners. And if you haven’t noticed I’ve stopped using the term digi.mon entirely in the past few paragraphs. That’s because oh they weren’t digi.mon. They were spirits/dimensional beings that took on a form we were comfortable with and we formed a bond with. And I kept going along with all of this because I was in too deep at this point. And obviously yes, this all made sense. So at some point during this time, my “spirit” went to sleep and a new one “awakened”. And I of course still went along with all this. The BIG BAD kept mutating into stronger forms and blah blah blah.

During my fall semester sophomore year, I joined theatre at my college and did tech. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to begin breaking away from this. I started to get an actual friend group and have less time for these sites. But there was always a pull of “you have to be here”. You were expected to be on skype calls and/or active in chat.

Well, that all changed at the start of 2015. They wanted a deletion of all the other sites and they would have one site united under one belief system. I was not a huge fan of this and made this known, but also offered to help in the coding as that was a skill I had that no one else really had. It got out around that I was a cunt and a power hungry bitch and blah blah blah. If it was just that, I would probably not have left. No no no, I was accused of lying about the shit that that user said and did to me. Because he is such a nice guy that could never do that type of stuff. And unless I provided the receipts I was clearly an attention seeking liar that wanted to ruin his life. That was the straw. I fucking blacked out in a rage and attempted to delete some of the different websites, I blasted some of these people on their real facebooks, and then I deleted all of my accounts and blocked everyone and blocked their numbers.

After that, I started talking with other people that quit. I started enjoying my college life. And I tried to act like none of that stuff had happened. I distanced myself from those individuals that were active in the Digi.mon community. I stopped hearing the voices and seeing things. I started going to therapy. My road hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve come a long way since I got out of this stuff. Honestly going to meet up with one old member after covid is all clear cause we’ve known each other for over a decade now and its about time we finally meet in person.

So yeah, that’s my story. I know I jumped around a bit and thoughts might not be too clear, but I wanted to share the fucked up things that happen in the background of the digi.mon community. Did I have good times? Hell yeah. The Olive Garden incident still to this day is iconic. We played d&d oneshots sometimes. We had memes. We all watched xros and hunters together live. And I still have some good friends out of this. The most fascinating thing out of all of this is everyone from the community that I still am either in contact with or see them via social media had admitted over the years to suffer from some kind of mental illness and has come out as part of the LGBTQA+ community. My own conclusion is a lot of us got sucked in due to depression/escapism and just a feeling of not belonging. And being around people of similar age with similar interests just made things more bearable at times. It also made a lot of us very vulnerable to the manipulation that took place, whether it was intentional or just one big group delusion created by multiple mentally ill people. I call it a cult, but I'm sure people will disagree with me. Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't good for my mental health in the long run.

If this shit is still going on, I hope people aren’t letting it consume their lives. And I just wish the best for everyone even if some of the shit hurt me.

As I said up top, if you want me to elaborate on anything or have questions, I’m good with talking about stuff. If you know me IRL and are reading this and are like "RACHEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK" I owe you a drink and explanation. And of course it Is okay to reblog. This is one hell of a comeback post on this site, am I right?

[jacscorner]

Pokemon All-Stars: A Fan Region/Game/Alternate Universe Idea

I like watching and rewatching Original Pokemon Game/Region videos. Like Mr. Buddy's "What if X was a Pokemon Region" and stuff like that. I wanna make-or, I guess, write-my own. Since Regions are kind of a character all their own and I'm a Wannabe Character Artist, I wanted to try and make one my own.

I've got no skills in coding, pixel arts, or anything, so this will forever be just some kind of dumb fanfic that sometimes incorporates Game Mechanics to justify things if it were able, for some Godforsaken reason, 'stolen' for a game. Cause, in 2021, no idea feels too big or too dumb. And, uh, trust me, this'll be a dumb fanfic of an idea. So be aware for the subpar writing talents of some wannabe writer who doesn't know shit.

Small disclaimer though:

>This region is being made with the intention that every extra feature will be available in it. Z-Moves, Regional Variants, Gygantamax, Mega Evolutions, and maybe some things I've forgotten. This probably won't matter cause it's just a dumb fanfic plot bible with mechanics peppered in. Competitive balancing be damn! Pokemon Fans can create their own balance! That's what the Battle Simulator is for! In fact, if this was a real game, then it'd have a Battle Simulator like Showdown built into it.

>This is an open source Fanfic Bible. You can take this idea and run with it if you want. You can omit all my bad ideas even!

>I won't be making my own Fakemon. I don't like a lot of Fakemon that exists out there and, trust me when I say this: I am no better than them. In fact, I'm fucking worse.

>If this WERE a game, it probably WOULD still have to cut some Pokemon. I doubt that kinda, and I won't get into why I think dexit was dumb personally, cause it doesn't really matter. But, like, my fan game/fanfic will have a lot of shit going on in it. So, like, realistically, there would probably need to be a cut, if not for data, than just cause there's a lot of work to do as is. But, like, again, under the context of a fic, this wouldn't be an issue.

>With THAT said, I'd want this game to have a Gen 2 Sprite aesthetic. My fangame, don't care if ya'll don't like that.

>I'm probably gonna copy a LOT of stuff from other Fangames I've played. My shit memory probably won't allow me to remember what I'm biting from what, so be free to call me out whenever. Cause if I stole the mechanic, I probably liked it the game. And if not, well, I'd like the recommendation.

Fuck, this was long already. The rest is under the cut, so, like, if you're already turned off, you can stop reading. I understand. I'm kind of a windbag.

Okay, so how many of you guys have seen this picture on the internet? It's a picture of a ton of Pokemon regions all...basically stitched together, since not only could this never be canon, but this goes beyond the size of even most open world games today. But this was the inspiration for this project. The map probably wouldn't, and probably couldn't, look like this, but it perfectly sums up what I'd want out of this game. Thus, it'll be our placeholder.

Our hometown of Capricorn Town is home to Professor Chestnut, and you, her faithful assistant, are about to set off on a Pokemon adventure of your own! The Professor is encouraging you to see the region of Sidus for yourself and is even willing to give you a Starting Pokemon!

Starting Pokemon

Now, if I'm not making new Pokemon, which Starter will it be? Well, the game will have the data for all the starters and will randomly select a Grass, Fire, and Water Type for you to choose from. Those will be your starters, with the option of also choosing Pikachu, Eevee, and Riolu, the two mascot mons...and Riolu, who is kind of a mascot mon, but a lesser one.

Let's say for this example, your options are Torchic, Piplup, Rowlet, Pikachu, Eevee, and Riolu. And, uh, get used to the words 'random' and 'generator', those are our keywords.

Anyway, once you get your pick, there'll be some kind of tutorial mission the Professor will send you on. This will introduce you to two very important things;

1. One of your Rival.

2. An Evil Team Grunt.

Rivals?!

Now to start getting into why this game might still be pretty big still be big despite the sprites on modern consoles.

Each of your Rivals would be one kid from each region of the 8 Mainline Games from Kanto to Kalos. How this'll be decided is that each pair of kids will be plugging into a generator and will pick between either the boy or girl version.

Ex. Brendan and May both cannot be in the game. Instead, they'll be plugged into this generator. Let's say the generator fell onto May. She'll be one of your Rival. Repeat this process 7 more times until you have 8 Rivals sprinkled throughout the world, each one given a defined personality and better AI to make them harder trainers to fight.

May will have one of the Hoenn Starters, sans Torchic. Regardless of whether or not Protagonist-San picked Torchic, May will either have a Treecko or Mudkip, again, chosen at random per kid. Whichever Starter you picked, your first rival will have a starter that beats yours. So, let's say moving forward, May has a Mudkip and you a Torchic. The other kids will have random starters of the various regions they originally hail from.

Anyway, your rivals will wander the overworld. If they see you, they'll battle you on sight. If they lose, they'll be gone after the next time you turn the game off. They won't battle you again until they respawn, but you can hang out with them. In fact, you can even recruit them to be in your party for a few days and they'll follow you around and just generally be your friend. It'll make every battle a double battle, but they'll battle you again before their timer runs out, so be prepared!

BANG! BANG! ENTER! Team Wild!

The two of you will have to face off against Team Wild! They have a Cowboy theme to them, using a mix of Ground and Steel-Types, with a few Pokemon being added in for good measure like the Ponyta Lines, Cacnea Line, and Remoraid. Cause...it's a gun.

They're an outlaw gang, they're rough and tough (or, at least, a mild threat) and will always throw down when they spot ya. Something I'm just sniping from JelloApocalypse is that they'll appear sporadically and act as Timed Events across the map.

You and your new Rival beat them and send you packing. I'd imagine May and the other Rivals would mostly be friendly, but I'm sure there's one or two that'll just be jerks to you. Regardless of personality, they'll be pretty tough and programmed to skill with you. Your strongest mon you have on hand when you fight them will be the level their entire team.

With your tutorial done, the world is opened up! Your mom gives you your running shoes, some Pokeballs, and your...I don't know, PokeCelular or something, just the regional gadget that does a bunch of stuff. From holding your map to holding your VS Seeker.

The PokeCelular will also give you notifications on where Team Wild are! You can choose to ignore the events, but if you do, then they'll start to appear in the overworld know and will get progressively stronger.

A Balancing Act

This game will be an open world, 8-Bit Sprite Game for you to explore after you leave Capricorn!

So how do we balance that?

Well, we got our Rival out of the way already, so let's move on. Gym Leaders will have a pretty linear progression. However, regardless of which Gym you tackle first, they'll all be at the same level.

It doesn't matter if you decide to go across the map and battle the Bug Gym, he'll stay at Level 10, just like the Normal Gym. Whe you get the second badge, they'll all jump to Level 15. NPC Trainers will follow the same progression; the higher your badge number, the stronger the number of Pokemon they'll be.

Wild Pokemon will also get stronger. The more badges you get, it'll attract stronger wild Pokemon because they'll see you're stronger and will come out more.

The overworld will also have various dungeons in them that'll be Level Locked. Say, you go through a forest and you're just trying to reach the end of a maze. The Trainers and Pokemon will function the same as I've mentioned before. But, you can decide to go deeper into the dungeon. These Pokemon will be level locked, usually something of a high level, because this is a more dangerous part of the dungeon. But, there'll be some goodies down there, like rarer Pokemon and some kind of really rare and good item like a TM or something.

How will you traverse? Well, first of all, HMs? They're semi-back. BUT, instead of having to deal with teaching Cut to a Pokemon, you just need the move Cut and a Pokemon that can use the move and you'll be able to use Cut. A few other Pokemon that are reasonable candidates, but don't get cut, will be allowed to do this too. Like, Gallade can use Cut. It can't learn the move, but just holding the HM will get the job done.

Controversial opinion, but I think I've always liked the idea of HMs. On paper, they give you a reason to explore the world and go back to areas you couldn't before for goodies and make for a good way to get off dungeons until you get the needed item. Even something like Cut can be used to open up new areas for exploration for your squad of mons.

BUT, well, HMs suck. As moves, they suck save for, like, 2...MAYBE and they're only for, like, a handful of areas. You either hand them out as evenly as possible, forcing mons to take moves you don't wanna use, or you just get an HM Slave or two to use 'em all. But like they, they serve their function and all you need is the Pokemon in question and NOT teach them the move. If you need a Move Deleter just so people aren't stuck having to use Rock Smash for three towns, then there's a problem with your RPG. Imagine playing Final Fantasy and you had to give your Fighter the Bronze Axe to get through a forest and still had to fight with it, even though you got a +12 Silver Sword! It's no wonder people hated these things! But I don't think getting rid of them and introducing Rental Pokemon was a good solution either and adds a different, albeit less intrusive problem.

Gym Leaders

So, how do Gym Leaders work?

Much like your rivals, they'll be randomly generated. Let's say, hypothetically, there's a pool of 60 Gym Leaders and Elite Four members. The game will randomly generate 16 to be Gym Leaders. The generator will have some kind of complicated math (at least, too complicated for me) so that you don't have more than 2 gyms of the same type. (Example: Misty and Nessa might be Active Gyms, Siebold can't be selected for a Gym cause the Water Slots are taken).

As a trade off, some Gyms might have special conditions before you can challenge them. Like, if you got stuck with Koga as a Gym Leader, than he'll only let you in if you complete a nearby dungeon and help his daughter out cause he doesn't trust her to make it back on her own. Or, like, Claire's a Gym Leader, but she won't battle you unless you've collected 7 Gym Badges prior at least.

The Gym Leaders, as mentioned before, will get progressively stronger with each badge obtained. After the 8th badge, you can go and climb Victory Road, face the E4 and confront the Champion! You can keep hunting Gym Leaders, but just remember that the E4 will always be 10 Levels above the strongest gym you beat. And they'll just get stronger with every one you beat until all 16 are slain.

Another handful, let's say 8, Gym Leaders/E4 Members will be wondering around as NPC Trainers. The justification is that this big super region is in some Alternate Universe Pokemon Game that has all the Pokemon and other important trainers in it, hence why we can have a game where Roxanne and Lenora are hanging out at a coffee shop. They're not Rivals, more like stronger NPCs you can rematch and wonder the map. They're not here to be the very best like no one ever was.

I mean, I'd like, like, 10-20 instead of 8 extras, but let's not get TOO greedy...yet...

Elite Four

And now, it's time to flip the script. Cause if E4 members can be Gym Leaders, then who are the Elite Four?

Easy. The Rivals.

All the Rival characters will be put in a random generator as well. The four that are chosen. You can have an Elite Four made up of Wally, Marnie, Hau, and Barry and you gotta deal with it.

This is excluding Brendan and May, Blue, and Calem and Serena. Anyone else is fair game.

Champion

So, the Champion. Who would it be in this? There was a funny idea I had, but this is a Pokemon Game. So there would be two versions. We'll call them Pokemon Dawn & Dusk. The difference between these games is the game Champion!

Benga would be the Champion of Pokemon Dusk, the grandson of Alder! His final Team will include Volcarona, Garchomp, and Dragonite, Pokemon he used in Black and White. I'd also include Scrafty, Rampardos, and Golurk, Pokemon used against you in White Treehollow and Black Tower areas.

Meanwhile, the Champion of Pokemon Dusk will be Zinnia, the Lorekeeper! Her team would include the Goodra, Tyrantrum, Altaria, Noivern, and Salamence she used in her original team, with her plucky Whismur sidekick becoming an Exploud and her ace.

You would've met them in the beginning of the game and would've showed off a bit by helping you with Team Wild before. They'll pop in and out throughout the game, at first amused by your tenacity, but not wanting a rookie like you to get hurt. But if you keep bonking Team Wild, they'll be impressed with how strong you are.

The show up to chat again when you beat 8 Gym Leaders, and will pop in if you White Out to give you some advice. White Out three times and they'll feel bad for you and give you an egg. Benga will give you a Larvesta Egg and Zinnia a Bagon Egg.

EXTRAS

So I don't got a lot of ideas for the Post Game, but there is one idea I thought would be cool if, if after you defeat the champion, they give you a call. They'll tell you that there are strong trainers wondering the Overworld and to be careful.

Because dotting the overworld will be Champions passed and proper! Cynthia, Blue, Lance; all of them are rocking Lv 100 Teams and are out for blood. They won't challenge you, but if you talk to them, there will be no backing out of the battle! You come with your A-Game!

sI'm not exactly in love with the idea of Team Wild. Maybe the Evil Team should go full fanservice and just be Team Rainbow Rocket. Or maybe go half-and-half; having past Evil Team members and leaders walk around in cowboy gear and acting as Team Wild executives.

I'd also would love Tournaments. Like, maybe that could be a weekly event in some town, they'll how tournaments and the characters that aren't designated as Gym Leaders and such will attend. Maybe there's a cash prize, maybe you'll win Pokemon Eggs of rare, guaranteed shines, or maybe you'll get some kind of important quest items.

Yeah, I want quests! All sorts of side quests! And can't forget what I'd do with Legendairs;

If you know Bengal's team, you'll know he's got the Lati Twins. I don't like that personally and would prefer Legendaries to be Super Bosses. Like, you gotta do a lot to find them. And when you do, their stats are boosted and they become an Uber Boss! You catch them in a cutscene after you beat them!

There's also just a ton of characters I didn't get around to or really have a place for. Emma, Looker, N, and the Stat Trainers all come to mind. Overall, I'd want them to pepper the world as well, but don't have anything to say except this: Pokemon has made a lot of memorable characters. Both good and bad. And this is probably my dream Pokemon Game; one where you can hang out with your favorites