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tjemegames · 1 year ago

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HSR: HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY! 🥳🎉 - TJ's 1st Annual Playthrough Recap

The big day is finally here! One full year has passed since Honkai: Star Rail first launched and so much fun was had. I’m so pumped to officially be starting year two and I can’t wait to see what the Devs have in store for us. Until then, let’s chat about my experience over the last year:

⚠️ Extremely summarized spoilers ahead for the events/storylines of HSR versions 1.0-2.1. Read at your own discretion! ⚠️

Also, apologies in advance this post will be a bit verbose because I don’t know how to stop yapping about this game; we'll get into it all under the cut!

Stats Overview

Firstly, what can I say? I fell absolutely head over heels for this game on day one; I was initially a bit turned off by the combat mechanics when the teaser demos came out — I had a very limited experience with turn-based games at this point (shoutout Wizard101 💀) and was confused about how they were going about it. Suffice to say that my weariness was unnecessary because, as of today, I’ve logged 342 days of gameplay on my main account!

The Astral Express Annual Trailblaze Report (data collection as of 03/31/2024 at 23:59) had some great insight on the statistics of what I’ve done since launch:

My e6 Natasha and I were really doing the damn thing together for so long:

She’s since been replaced by Aventurine (because I was finally smart and pulled a premium sustain) but we had a good thing going for us. Thank you for paving the way, Dr. I won’t forget about all our struggles together.

Prominent Story Moments & My Thoughts on Storytelling

Once it was determined that combat wouldn’t be an issue for me, I immersed myself wholeheartedly into the lore and storytelling that was provided. I absolutely adored getting to know the Nameless better and exploring parts of the cosmos with the Astral Express Crew. We’ve done so much already:

Being coalesced into existence, fending off the Antimatter Legion’s relentless attack, and helping restoration efforts on the Herta Space Station

Becoming Herta’s guinea pig in the Simulated Universe

Dismantling a corrupt leader and freeing the under worlders in Belobog

Keeping the IPC from seizing the entirety of Belobog to pay off the backdated interest on their ancestor's 700-year-old unpaid debts

Foiling the war-motivated plots of an Emanator of Destruction on the Xianzhou Luofu

Business Simulator 1.0: Restoring Aurum Alley and making a grown man bark

Becoming the best Ghost-Hunting Content Creator on Ghostly Grove

Getting swallowed by a giant Swarm bug and being fender-bendered by a Knight of Beauty; having to duel him into acquaintance (because he’s just quirky like that) before witnessing him valiantly sacrifice himself for the Express, in the name of “Beauty” (because he’s also a little delulu), and then texting us once to see if we were okay after escaping through the hole he cut in the bug’s stomach. Subsequently, disappearing back into the cosmos without a trace (can you tell that I’m enamored by Argenti?)

Being drugged by Ruan Mei, having to deal with her experiments (I hate that synthetic bug with a burning passion) and becoming a Cat Cake extraordinaire.

Accepting the Charmony Festival invitation and having a “very heartwarming and uplifting” (aha aha-hA 😭) “vacation” in Penacony

And of course, so much more in between all of that but those were the things that stuck out the most to me.

I will say that I am in the camp of people who had to experience the Xianzhou storyline before it was streamlined for comprehension purposes and, as much as I loved it there, there were a lot of missed opportunities and wasted moments in that section of the storytelling. Not a huge fan of games trying to get me to care about something by forcing me into a nonsensical quest line during an ill-fitting moment, thereby muddying my understanding of what’s going on/what the importance of said thing is… But it is what it is, and they slapped a band aid on it for newer players. Hopefully, when we eventually return to the Luofu, they will have a better grip on what it is they want to portray there.

Overall, I’m not too fussed by the story so far. It’s been very enjoyable, extremely satisfying in some parts — a bit less so in others. One of the things that I love about sci-fi/fantasy is the ability to go all out and do pretty much anything you can think of because of the creative freedom that both genres allow. I think we’re just barely beginning to scratch the surface of what the series writers have planned for us.

Simulated Universe & Permanent Endgame Modes

Oh boy, I was almost home free in my drafting of this post when I remembered I hadn’t yet yapped about Simulated Universe, Memory of Chaos, & Pure Fiction. I am so sorry, I will try to keep it short, but I’ve got a lot of feelings about these permanent endgame modes.

Let’s kick it off with the SU. Back in the late summer of ’23 when we had our first bout of dry patches, I did more SU runs than I thought I ever would do because I didn’t want to stop playing the game. I was absolutely hooked, and I wanted to hone my skills prior to facing off against the next Echoes of War boss we would get. Within the first four months of launch, I think I had collected almost all the blessings, curios, and Aeon information that you could possibly get. Hell, there was even a day where I spent probably six hours just trying out all the different resonance paths against Gepard. It was so novel to me, and nothing like my previous experience with other rouge-like domains/dungeons – I just couldn’t get enough…

That was until they started patching in new updates. Swarm Disaster eviscerated all my excitement and desire for SU. I hate that bug; I hate that bug so very much. It’s only now that I have e2 DHIL that I don’t mind going back into Swarm and attempting to collect the rest of the rewards that have been sitting there waiting for me since its debut. The same kind of applies to Gold and Gears, although that mode is slowly starting to grow on me. I haven’t spent enough time in there playing around with all the different dice and strategies to have a definitive opinion on it. I’ll probably make some content of myself exploring the upper levels of G&G when I inevitably unlock them.

Now for the thing that would’ve really turned out to be an essay if I weren’t more capable of reining myself in; the curse that keeps on giving, MoC. Listen, I love this game. I love the combat and having to be a bit strategic, but sometimes floors 11-12 make me want to pull out the tiny bit of hair that my buzzed head tends to have. It took me 11 and a half months to 36 star the MoC for the first and only time that I’ve been able to do so. I’ve reset, changed teams, and fully rebuilt characters in attempt to beat floor 12 within 10 cycles more times than I can count. Sincerely, I wish we could’ve seen a year-end review of just the reset statistics alone. It is a source of infinite frustration for me, and it really shouldn’t be so goddamn difficult sometimes… Please Hoyo, just let me have my last star; I’m tired of sitting at 35/36 stars. There's only so much min-maxing a person can do before losing their mind.

Don’t think that I forgot about PF. Follow-up attackers’ paradise and what seemed like it would be a great time until I remembered that my only follow up attackers are Jing Yuan and an under leveled, mostly untouched Herta. This game mode is truly the one that got away for me. I’ve barely participated in it due to a lack of necessary characters. O7 to all the jades that I’ve missed out on. We’ll get there one day.

The Triumphs & Perils of Warping

What’s a gacha game without pulling? I’ve been keeping track of all my luck, both good and bad, since I started playing. This is what a year, 380 standard passes, and 1013 special passes got me:

Not a bad roster at all. There were a couple questionable choices made by me though. The lack of pulling a limited 5 star sustain until Aventurine came out being my biggest flop of them all. I did attempt to get Fu Xuan on her release banner, but I lost 50/50 and wasn’t willing to put everything I had into her at that time.

Out of all nine 50/50s I’ve had so far, I only lost three of them; I also pulled two of the following guarantees early after that so I’ve been a lot luckier than I thought I would be. My Genshin wishing experience sunk the bar for my pulling expectations well below ground, so everything feels like even more of a win here. I hope things continue to stay that way.

Another thing of note: I chose Bronya’s e1 from the standard banner selection reward once I hit the 300-warp requirement. I probably should’ve chosen Himeko for PF purposes but e1 was just too good to pass up for my hyper carry teams.

Also, Dr. Ratio gave himself to everyone (for free) in the pursuit of “curing idiocy” so that’s why I have him. Had I have been proactive in pulling his signature LC, I could be rocking a Ratiorine team right now – but no, instead he remains in Level 1 Purgatory with the rest of my unused characters.

Let us not forget about the light cones either:

I broke my one cardinal rule of avoiding weapon banners for this game, but I don’t regret it in the slightest — I did lose 75/25 to Sleep Like the Dead twice and then proceeded to get it a third time (from the standard banner), so I'm salty about that. Still no regrets though!

Final Thoughts

This game has been such a safe space of indulgence for me over the last year. It reminded me of my love for turn-based combat and strategy-based games. It has also helped me reinvigorate my creativity — this blog is proof of it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so enthralled, inspired, and passionate, so I’m grateful to Hoyo and all the HSR Devs for bringing this game to life.

While there have been some low points from struggling with story bosses, tediously challenging endgame, and incohesive plot lines, I have mostly found great enjoyment in my traversal of the stars thus far. I can’t wait to see who else I’ll meet and where this journey among the cosmos will lead me. I also look forward to sharing even more of my adventures and insights with all of you in the years to come!

Happy Anniversary, Trailblazers! May the next year be fruitful and fulfilling. Don't forget to sign in and collect your 1600 jades!

#honkai star rail #hsr #hsr anniversary #astral express annual trailblaze report #hsr spoilers #hsr 1.0 to 2.1 spoilers #hsr character roster #hsr light cones #tj talks hsr #tj yaps so much in this post #tjs hsr shenanigans #tjemegames

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cipher-fresh · 6 months ago

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Clark’s uneasy relationship with his reputation, Krypton, and getting his articles written (~1400 words, will probably clean this up & put it on AO3

Lowering himself into the— thank Rao— empty stairwell, Clark spent a solitary moment thinking about just walking into his apartment with his suit on and collapsing onto his bed, before dismissing it and unlocking his apartment door with his key in his reporter��s garb.

God. What a long day. He trudged through the apartment and replaced the dress shirt with a tee. Putting it on shook dirt out of his hair and it cascaded to the wooden floor. This afternoon he’d told Lois that he was “Getting my dry cleaning- well, it’s also kind of a story but, like, not an important one” and been gone the rest of the day. Car crash on I-38 highway. Med-evac’ing one of the victims to the hospital. Comforting the victim’s mom that he’d be okay. Armed robbery at a franchise grocery store. Out of control fire at a restaurant, to which the owner screamed that all the day’s prepared food was ruined by his ice breath. (He’d even previously thought about taking Lois there on a date I next month. Crossing that one off the list.) Football player with broken leg. Car crash. Building collapse in the next city over. Bridge collapse. (Need to investigate- same company cutting corners?) Two gunshot wounds received by college fraternity brothers in a hazing ceremony. Finally, construction worker fallen into a pit in a quarry.

Clark rolled over on his bed to stare at the ceiling…What had that guy said in the restaurant? He needed a quote. “It’s you fucking non-Americans” something something. There were plenty of people in the restaurant when the owner started screaming, Clark could have been there at lunch and happened to hear it. Plausible deniability was getting harder with some of these recent stories. He sometimes wishes he could just keep a tape recorder on his belt flying around to get people’s comments.

He licked his lips. Took a breath. He needed this story for tomorrow afternoon. He furrowed his brows. Maybe—maybe Emil Hamilton had finished his request.

He shook off all the third he could and changed back into the Superman outfit. Next stop: STAR Labs.

He had his own entrance at Star Labs. It wasn’t the main one, it was a balcony on the sixth floor near some other buildings that obscured it from view of the public. Superman walking through the front doors might make people think something’s wrong. He even held a few items here, the things the public knew about. A chirp alerted on a screen.

“Kal-el! One moment. Great to see you again!” said the perpetually-running-late voice of Emil Hamilton. He took a second, but entered into the room. Emil’s face brightened.

“Doctor.” Clark greeted back cordially.

Emil held his hands together. “You’re not having any trouble with the-“

“Oh, no. I just- wanted to try that super-computational laptop.”

Emil’s eyes lit up. “Oh, fantastic! Would-“ he looked a little more troubled. “Would you want to have the lab observe it? Make sure it works? Collect some data on how fast it works? It’s technology from your planet, it felt unethical to not let you try it first.”

Clark frowned imperceptibly at his planet but purses his lips. “I’d love to do the recorded tests, but I want to try it out first.”

Emil tried to mask his disappointment, and but his lip. “Of course. When- when would you-“

When did Clark not have a scheduled interview? Thursday. Please don’t let there be any big stories on Thursday.

“Thursday. Afternoon.” He answered helpfully. “I can also do another debris removal for NASA but I don’t have all day.”

“I’ll tell NASA to update their calendar.”

Emil found this fascinating. “-but I don’t have all day” isn’t the kind of thing a citizen usually heard out of Superman, especially it in regards to helping people. If it was, it was because he was greeting people after the disaster had been settled. He was, in a way, the Earth ambassador to Krypton. Probably no human on Earth knew that Superman said his given name was Kal-El. He tried to refer to him as it often- he can’t imagine the last time he heard someone other than himself say it.

The Kryptonian-advanced laptop was presented to Clark in a wrapped box with a bow on top. There was a circular thing next to it wrapped, too.

“These are—for me?” Clark asked, flattered by the effort to gift wrap either of them. Was the circular thing the computer’s battery?

“We hope you like them as much as they were pains in our asses to reverse-engineer.” said Dr. Jessica Halcyon, one of Emil’s coworkers.

Story’s still due, very soon. And Lois is gonna want an explanation.

“Does it have a writing program? Just something fast enough to keep up with me.” He asked.

Emil and Jessica shared a look. “It should, but that’s why we’ve been hoping you’ll test it in the lab.

Clark smiled. “These are greatly appreciated. I’ll be returning to the lab soon.” He assured, holding his two gifts and returning to his balcony to fly home.

First off: Shower. Dirt in his hair did not a civilian reassure. One of the STAR labs guys had even offered to brush his hair before a press conference a few weeks ago because Metallo had punted him into the ground an hour earlier. He wasn’t quite ready to take [SUPERHERO NAME]’s reccomendation of lava baths yet, so his apartment showerhead had to do.

Second: Clothes. A pair of pajama pants Ma sent him last year. Clean. Smell nice but not overwhelming.

Third: STAR’s gifts. He opened the rectangular thing first, and it looked like a laptop well enough. One of those big ones that Ma did her taxes on when he was a kid. Foldable, but not something a human would probably want to put on their lap.

It opened with a few flashes of light, confirming Clark’s Kryptonian status. It opened with an info base, then a few regular computer options. A writing program! It didn’t appear to be Word or Docs or Scrivener. Tentatively, he opened it and typed a word at hyper-speed.

His work computer still had a hole in it from the last time he did that.

The keys bounced back at magnificent speed. A keyboard that could keep up with him! God, just what he needed.

The computer had a few other options, emailing, included, but the instant-response type was a tantalizing prospect. His apartment was not a conducive place to write, so he grabbed the laptop, made a 360 view into the sky to see if he’d have any unwanted guests— no, no planes in range for a while. And shot into the sky with Emil Hamilton’s creation.

It would be the fulfillment of a dream he’d had since he was five to sit on a cloud, but they dispersed into dust and vapor when he tried. He crossed his legs to balance the laptop on his legs and hovered 6,000 feet above the ground. He typed Superman Stops Fire In High-End Restaurant and then frowned at the page and deleted it. It would be a long evening.

At 9:58 later that night, Clark returned to his apartment. He set the laptop down gently, several articles tucked away and one title he still couldn’t optimize in the least amount of words. He’d have Jimmy take a crack at it in the morning. If not him, then Lois. Scratch that. She might suggest a longer one, she looked pissed when he went to get his clothes from the laundromat or whatever he’d said.

He turned his eye to the circular thing. He gently removed the wrapping and it was a globe. A globe on a little stand. It wasn’t of Earth, it was orange and white. Krypton? It was of Krypton?

He looked back at the laptop. There was a message on one of the apps.

Jon provided us with some galactic star charts and planet data. This is Krypton 38 years before you were born. It lights up too. Enjoy. -STAR Labs team.

Clark laughed upon seeing that the glove needed to be plugged in, but he did so and pressed the button. It lit up with the corresponding light pollution on the different continents. He gently pushed the globe around and examined the outlines of the continents, the oceans and islands. He brought it to his night stand, which also had his phone, and the scarf Lois left in his apartment two weeks. He plugged the glove in, pressed the button, and pulled up the blanket.

#superman #ficlet #clark kent #emil hamilton #my writing #updates from cipher

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motorclit · 1 year ago

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I need to just... let myself fully indulge and enjoy the thing that's actually somewhat easily accessible to me... The thing that is NOT that is ecology, because I can only watch so many seminars before my ass hurts from sitting. I wanna go out and observe, experience, and even record data beyond just documenting for iNaturalist. I COULD do that, but I'm still not *quite* physically up to par to do that yet. I'm still working on strength and endurance, and since my .už has covid right now, I'm avoiding exercise for a few weeks until we know the virus isn't in this household anymore (haven't been able to get boosted yet because it's hard to get a hold of pharmacies that have novavax), and it'll take me all year to feel somewhat "normal" again fitness-wise.

So instead, the most accessible special interest of mine is X-Men TAS, since *most* episodes in my pirated copy still work (until we get Disney+ again which won't be for a little while still), plus there are 2 books out on that very show (one of course being an art book). I sort of avoid even watching it right now despite how excited I am for X-Men '97 to come out because I know when I watch it, it'll trigger a hyperfocus that goes Kaio-ken times 10 that will make me one annoying asshole to my muž about it.

I'm gonna talk to him about it, because the topic WILL be brought up a lot no matter how much I try to avoid info-dumping things that I love.

And when it comes to automatic special interest bring-up despite my mood, I will always correct anyone regarding ecology and animals (especially the creepy-crawlies) and I know it pisses people off but guess what? I don't care. Creepy crawlies deserve to be understood and respected as much as a damn tiger or some other charismatic mammal. There's just so many books on the topic of zoology and ecology and entomology that I want and I can't afford to keep up with that. (Don't mention libraries because we live out in the sticks. That's has money, gang. We can't always afford that.)

The only other semi-accessible special interest I have is punk music, specifically certain subgenres like riot grrrl or bands like the Lunachicks, and I'm hoping to work on my CD collection this year, too. Unfortunately, I have to order online. The nearest store that sells CDs is one of the last Sam Goodys in existence which is a 40 minute drive and they don't have a while lot of CDs left.

Soooo X-Men TAS it is.

And if anyone wants to know who my favorite character is, it's Beast; I have such a crush on him.

^ALSO I WAS SEARCHING THE GIFS AND I FORGOT JAPAN ANIMATED THEIR OWN OPENING OF THE SHOW AND LOOKIT HANK! I've headcanoned is obscenely strong but holds back to keep others safe, kinda like George Newburn's Superman in the late 90s, early 00s cartoons.

#TW: epilepsy #TW: flashing light #i dont know what frequency it becomes problematic so i put those tags there just in case #i hope i tagged them right

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lost-technology · 11 months ago

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They asked for it:

The previous crew, when on awake-duty on the ship encountered someone like the twins before – a random Independent Plant baby. Rem and another tried, but failed to save her as she was brutally vivisected to satisfy scientific curiosity. Her records and remains are stored on the ship. R.I.P. Tesla, we never knew you. We should have. “Tesla Lives!” Aus are common fanfiction in the fandom. (Well, in Stampede, she’s technically still alive…) So, when Rem found the new set of kiddos, she did NOT alert the rest of the crew, took care of them, constantly told them that when the rest of the crew awakens to not show any hint of powers or difference from human children and she forged records for them, planning to take them into cold sleep with her when her tour of duty was up. She was going to try to pawn them off as normal children so she could raise them and they could have a future. She sees them as being “like angels” – a bridge between Plants and humans. She has high ideals about humans and Plants finding ways to live together and about how people can live together in general. She is a kind brave lady putting her neck on the line for a couple of potentially destructive not well understood nuke-babies because she believes in and respects Life. But her love does not stop Knives from becoming so incredibly afraid of the human race that he decides that “they gotta go.” He hacks into the orbital program for the fleet to send everything crashing down onto the surface of the planet they’ve been orbiting and collecting data on. He intended for all of the human-carrying ships to crash in a spectacular genocide while the Plant-only carrier ships survived so he could terraform a world just for him and Vash. He was planning to spare Rem as the token “good human” because she’d raised them and Vash loved her. Rem, however, was a woman of duty and courage. She shoved the kids into an escape pod and ran back into the fires of their exploding ship to try to correct the codes. Much to Knives’ consternation, she succeeded. Not entirely – the fleet wasn’t course-corrected in enough time to save everyone, but the crash wasn’t as bad as Knives set it to be and enough human ships survived for there to be humans…alive…on the planet… in the universe. Drat! And thus began a rift between brothers wherein Vash is eternally pissed off that Knives killed Mommy. Vash has vowed to protect every human life on the planet because these are Rem’s people that she died for. Knives is out to finish his genocide. And this lasts for the next 150 years in a cat and mouse game because Knives is actually pretty lazy and Vash, although he says at one point that he plans to kill his brother, just doesn’t have it in him, despite everything.

Explaining Vash Outside the Fandom!

So, today on another forum I mentioned Vash the Stampede. I mentioned him by way of "I don't ask myself WWJD? so much anymore as WWVtSD?" and explained "Vash the Stampede." I said "If anyone is unfamiliar with this name, go ahead and ask and I can fangirl all over you, but be warned, you will be reading all day." I got a taker. And then another taker who is a person on the forum who is straight up not having a good time right now and needs some distraction I feel - to read someone's dumb fangirling over a fandom they aren't in yet. So... I wrote up an essay explaining Vash the Stampede in Word and pasted it in shifts on the blog: (uck, looks like I'm gonna have to post this in shifts, too. Dumb tumblr!

*Flashes my fangirl license* You asked about Vash the Stampede? *Raises eyebrows.* Big mistake. You shall be here all day! Vash is the protagonist of Trigun, an anime / manga by Yashiro Nightow. Well, the manga is by him and there are two different animes to date, one originally airing in 1998 before the completion of the manga (and it gained the idea enough popularity that Nightow was able to continue the manga and purposefully took a different track to keep the story fresh. Because he had to switch publishers the continuing story was titled Trigun Maximum). As of 2023 there has been a reboot of the anime, Trigun Stampede, done in a cell-shaded CGI style that takes more cues from the manga. It has done its own story elements, too, most notably having the City of July as a part of the story, making it almost a prequel, since the City of July is past tense in the other media. A second set / continuation / completion of it is set for a future release date and as of yesterday, the “final phase” of the new anime will be titled Trigun Stargaze. Additionally, there was a feature-movie made in 2011 based solely upon the first anime titled Badlands Rumble, which is kind of the black sheep of the fandom (personally I enjoy it, find it very funny). So, anyway, Vash is a tall blonde man with a Bart Simpson hairdo and a long red coat who lives on a desert planet with 10X the guns of ‘Murica. There are two suns and five moons. It’s a scavenger world where people barely eek out a living using a form of lost technology known as “Plants” – which are these energy and materials production entities housed in giant lightbulbs (or something more like tanks in Stampede). No one knows how to create Plants anymore and few know how to maintain them, so everything is slowly dying (except, of course, the native sandworms. Yep, there’s something Dune-like going on). People live a half sci-fi half Old West existence and things are, again, very violent. It’s a world where you have higher chances of making it out better as a bandit than a farmer. Vash is a pacifist. He is also an outlaw with Sixty-Billion-Double Dollars ($$) on his head because he has been shown to be capable of incredible destructive power. Now, most of this comes accidentally from trying to weasel out of tough situations and people after him getting themselves hurt, but somehow towns fall apart. Except for the City of July (or Jul-Ai in Stampede), which he did wipe out. Under circumstances not of his own making or will, but the normal citizens of the planet don’t know that. That was around 24 years ago in the first anime and in the manga. July exists as of the beginning of Stampede. Early on in the manga’s story, an insurance company that gets a lot of damage claims regarding damage he supposedly caused declares him a “Human Act of God” so as to avoid payouts. He is assigned a pair of insurance agents, Milly Thompson and Meryl Stryfe, to follow him around to attempt to mitigate the damage he might cause. In the anime, it is the same, except that his bounty is not removed for some reason. (In the manga, the government removes his bounty per his “Act of God” status). He is also known as the Humanoid Typhon, putting him in the same category as a destructive storm. Vash-damage is thereafter treated in the same like as hurricane damage! Honestly, this is one of the most creative things I have seen of any media – having the local superhero / super-cryptid followed by INSURANCE AGENTS. (I am fond of characterizing Trigun as “If Mayhem from the Allstate commercials was followed around by Flo from the Progressive commercials”). (To Be Continued in Reblog-posts)

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poisonheadcrabsalesman · 3 years ago

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What would you think about the idea of merging the former collective data of a Dumb AI with a newly generated Smart AI in an effort to "uplift" it? There's a big moral issue there, since the Smart AI is synthesized from the remains of an actual person, and there may well be some internal conflict between the vague concept their former self and the prepacked personality of the old Dumb AI. If the data of the Dumb AI is prioritized in this case, does this new consciousness come to accept the lingering donor's experiences as a sense of 'false memories' that they recognize are not their own? Or do they think that these are newly observable emotions attached to their own previous experiences that they were simply unable to conceptualize at the time? There are some very extreme ethical concerns here obviously, and nothing I'd ever personally condone, but it seemed like a procedure ONI wouldn't feel shy about trying. I am not a techy person myself, so if I had to make up some loose-sciencey sounding reason? Maybe some very fringe effort to retrieve vital unique data stored in a badly damaged Dumb AI's matrix that is so dangerously corrupt that attempting to save it manually would definitely result in loss. So this idea forms of- what if we merge what little is left with a more capable AI as a sort of operator who can attempt to retrieve and extrapolate the data at a software level? And suddenly you have ONI techs synthesizing a hydra. What really led to this was that I always loved how many Dumb AI, while lacking true sentience and capacity for emotion still tended to display a lot of it, supported by familiar imagery or personalities. It made it so easy for people- like Spartans and ODSTs, who are very used to interacting with Smart AI- to project their own feelings onto them and anthropomorphize them to a point that the lines separating the Dumb AI's own limitations blur into the negligible. Alas, my truest intentions here, Stumpy, because I am a predictable beast: in Retribution, Fred was perfectly aware of Damon's restrictions, but over time began speaking to him as someone without those barriers. What most interested me, is that Damon himself (shortly before his sudden demise) takes it upon himself to offer Fred comfort and condolences over a presumed death of Veta, saying he knew and understood how fond Fred was of her. It was still a canned response essentially, but the applied observations probably hit remarkably close to emotion for a person suffering a sense of loss, and the moment helps to really endear Fred to Damon. When Damon's chip is damaged, Fred expresses hope that he can be saved, and just I love exploring the depth of empathy that people can have for AI, all the while well aware of their capacity. In Damon's case, the collective data from his time with Fred probably would have been of extreme value to ONI for both in determining the scale of the growing threat of the Keepers, as well as for covering up their own internal corruptions and involvement in nearly losing control over a virulent parasitic agent. Of course just letting Damon die is also a great option, and safest, but let's let ONI be dangerously over-confident instead.

First off, thank you for the AI related ask. It is taking everything in me not to answer this like a discussion board, which is very funny to me.

Secondly, addressing your point of morality. Morality in Halo is so fluid especially when it comes to ONI and the UNSC; AI are not people, they are tools, and if ONI needs to do some body snatching to make the next very expensive lil computer guy to run a city or a spaceship, they will do it. So your point about the morality of merging two AIs or having one subsume the other is awesome, but I don’t see it as an issue for the humans.

What happens to the AI involved and their feelings about it would be so interesting, cannibalizing one of your own out of duty, or merging two different but similar souls/cores to make something new while preserving the old? How much lingers from the brain engram besides what they’ve already given us?

Someone should write something about that. Makes me think about Cortana and Aine and the Cryoraeth Dialogue. Much to think about.

So much to think about that apparently I spent 800+ words doing just that! More below.

You pointed out Damon’s limited but still touching capabilities and canned responses. They still had the drive to aid and comfort humans despite not truly being freethinking or creative to the extent of Smart AIs, but I would argue that the Dumb AI deserve more credit to what extreme emotional depth they have shown across many pieces of Halo media.

I am still technically writing a paper right now so I will limit my wiki diving and my screen shot collection, for now.

However examples that immediately come to mind are Deep Winter(who is apparently Smart, sorry I thought he was a dumb AI. I haven’t read Ghosts of Onyx yet, in my defense he lived a long time.), Deja, and the Superintendent, all Dumb AI who get attached to their charges, demonstrate emotions, and attempt in some ways to help or comfort their chosen humans.

Third, before I start talking about all the funny sci-fi words I must admit. I am a fake sci-fi fan, I dig past the topmost layer and attempt to understand the science but to be completely honest, I am not entirely sure what I’m writing or reading about half the time. The good news is that it is the same for every Halo writer.

I do want to dive into the comparisons between Rampancy and Dementia because there’s a lot to be said there but I want to do it justice, but focusing on the basis of AI, the Riemann Matrix, and the points about thinking themselves to death, hardware failure, and the matrix itself which is software and their actual brain. The matrix is the program that lets them think non-linearly and transfer from hardware to hardware in either nano-assemblages or the crystal data chips. Halo makes up its own rules and handwaves them so often it’s hard to tell what’s allowed and what’s not. Especially when we have so many examples of Cortana doing incredible and terrifying things like splitting and shedding her rampart shards.

The thing is, if they had some temporary housing for Damon, like say for example, the Mjolnir armor of a Spartan-II, I don't see why they couldn’t transport them. Mjolnir has that whole layer to help a starship grade AI help a soldier in the field, I did have to look at the wiki for this one, I don’t have all my armor layers memorized. The part of the outer layer called the memory processor superconductor layer: “AI can then aid the soldier in software intrusion, hardware hacking, and espionage by listening to enemy chatter.”

Come on, having a snarky voice in your head giving you waypoints and opening doors is a cornerstone of Halo.

It would also have been interesting to see Fred carry an AI as he’s the most likely to be suspicious of the after Intrepid Eye and his experiences with AI and armor failure. The character growth of him allowing an AI, no matter the ability, into his armor, in an extended hand to help this being not die would have been interesting to see!. And then he could play it off as saving an asset!

Okay I never read Retribution and looking at the events that led to Damon’s cracked datachip, it could be argued that Fred’s armor was too damaged to fully carry an AI, even a dumb one. Maybe.

However, I have a solution that’s neat and if you’ve read literally anything I’ve written on here then it’s obvious. Let the AI into the wetware!

There’s a big metal spike in most UNSC members’ brains called the neural interface and I’m sure if Damon asked politely and didn’t look too close and maybe compressed themself into a nice little kernel, Fred would have no serious lasting side effects.

Probably.

Someone should read Retribution and write something about that.

#long post #I wrote this on my break no one yell at me I needed to talk about AI or I would die #ai tag #asks #Volantis friend tag #thank you for the ask!#magellanicclouds

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river-bottom-nightmare · 4 years ago

Text

an (incomplete) list of things kon can do because lex luthor is his dad that people always forget about:

#1 : math - he's fifteen, and math comes easy to him (unlike a lot of people his age, or at least, his visible age.) a lot of things come easy to him, because when you have all knowledge in the known universe downloaded into your brain, things like advanced math don't bother you very much.

but it bothers his friends, because bart loses interest about three seconds into the assignments, cassie groans anytime "homework" is brought up in general, and tim hates the concept and execution of math so much that he'd rather hide in kon's room where he thinks no one will look for him instead of even cracking open a textbook.

but kon's pretty sure being a hero means you don't need any real world skills, and after his initial hesitation and disagreements, he realized that he genuinely wants these people to like him, to be friends with him. their math homework is easier than a breeze to complete.

#2 : tying a tie the ~fancy~ way - he's nineteen, and his fingers flow through a silk tie like a fish through water. the motions are beyond familiar, he could do them in his sleep. so is the action of pulling on a suit, pressing his collar, arranging his hair into a neat style. he's timothy drake-wayne's date tonight, and he needs to look the part. fortunately, luthor taught him how to look the part a long the ago.

the party itself is,,,,pleasant, he supposes. he spends most of the time as arm candy, tim's pretty little thing as his boyfriend sweet-talked investors and networked. but they both know that the tipsier people are, the easier they let slip secrets to someone they believe won't understand them, and kon gathers a wealth of information by the time he meets up with tim by the appetizer bar right before dinner.

tim tugs him close by his tie and kisses his cheek, then laughs when kon discreetly but disgustedly spits out the pickled salmon cracker toppings.

#3 : educated debating - he's sixteen, and in an argument with tim that's gone so off the rails that kon can't even remember what they were fighting about in the first place. wherever they started, they were here, now, kon on top of a table in an ice cream parlour screaming about how a socialist approach to taxes would boost the lower class, tim on top of a barstool screaming right back about how the middle class are the only ones paying taxes and socialism would only put more weight on their shoulders.

both of them are this close to busting out laughing, and the only reason they haven't been thrown out is because the employee behind the counter is frantically taking notes. kon can see it in tim's eyes, see the way the younger boy didn't expect to hold such a passionate and intense debate with him, didn't expect kon to be capable of it. it's a pleasant surprise, though; that much is evident in tim's barely-hidden grin.

the debate comes to a pause when bart smacks him with a spoon and tells him off for stepping on the speedster's ice cream, and the tiredness with which he collapses back into the booth is a good one.

#4 : efficient + effective workplace supervision - he's twenty, and wondering how in the hell people hadn't murdered the entirety of young justice when it was first founded. bart had graduated to being the flash's full time sidekick, and though he came to visit often, it wasn't the same. gotham was almost always on the verge of imminent disaster these days, and tim was one of the few ropes holding it together. kon missed him like crazy, but his few visits were all the boy could spare. cassie was in charge now, and she was a wonderful leader, but busy, always smoothing over relations between the team and the justice league and civilian offices.

so, somehow, that left kon to be the den mother to all the new younger kids, and somehow, kon was good at it. he knew exactly what to say to get people to listen to his commands, telling them to work on this or work on that, train for this and practice that. he tells them when to get some sleep and let the weight of the day roll off their shoulders, and when to push themselves to raise them higher than they ever thought they could go. unexpectedly, he finds himself liking it.

#5 : the splits

#6 : colour schemes + interior decorating - he's twenty-one, and tim's finally deciding to turn the nest into a home. bart, who had spent the last couple of years bouncing between allen-west-mercury households and was therefore accustomed to a home with a fire of love reaching every corner and every member of the family, was appalled. so was kon, honestly.

the penthouse that tim worked out of was cold and impersonal, sleek lines that angles that matched the limbs and contours of tim's body. but the shadows around tim's eyes had lessed over the past few years, his smile coming to his lips almost as easy as when young justice first learned how to work together. all it took was a little encouragement from cassie, and suddenly, all four of them were involved in a home renovation project.

cassie churned out ikea furniture like it was nothing, the three of them taking a break from their jobs to just watch her as she lifted one of their hardwood bookshelves with one hand. bart bought home goods and essentials from various department stores and ran around, stocking the house with them wherever he felt a saucepan needed to be hung (near the coat hanger) or a candle holder needed to be placed (on the kitchen barstools, because apparently those were decorative anyway).

kon, meanwhile, decorated. he painted rooms and bought curtains and pillows, yes. but he also sorted through every single souvenir and memory the four of them had managed to accumulate over the years, photographs and hacked-off pieces of giant robots and saved movie tickets and broken weapons. he gets his hands on everything he can find, then fills up tim's nest until it's brimming with a cosy warmth made up of the four of them.

still, it's an obnoxiously large penthouse, so there's empty and open space left over even after redecorating. it's tim who takes a breath and works up the courage to tell them, not ask but tell them, that he wanted each of them to have their own bedroom. so bart takes the largest guest room and turns it into an explosion of colour, and cassie spends too much time decorating a room that she won't even live in most of the time. kon conspicuously notes how tim doesn't bother giving kon a room, just dumps kon's backpack on his bed and clears room in his own closet. he does wrap tim in a ttk hug though, from all the way across the room, and drinks in tim's red flush.

#7 : speed reading (no powers) - he's seventeen, and just now realizing how competitive his best friends are. cassie had long since resigned herself to being the judge and the hander-outer-of-prizes (candy from the nearest convenience store) for the speed-reading competition, but tim, kon, and bart were still in the running.

eventually, though, the pressure from holding back his powers grew too strong, and bart slumped against the back of the sofa, mournfully opening his mouth so cassie could drop a candy into it.

and then there were two.

kon thought back to the confrontation that had started this contest in the first place, robin's offhand comment about how he had to be the one to collect the data files from the company office they were infiltrating, because he was the only one who could speed-read and retain information. that had spiraled into an argument, then a challenge, then a competition, with a clear rule not to use any powers.

kon darted his eyes across the page, soaking up every word, the pages like tiny knives on the pads of his fingers as he turned them. he lost track of the page count, just reading and reading and reading until he tried to turn the page and realized there wasn't a next one. he yelled in triumph, reveling in tim's defeated groan, and settled in for cassie's quiz on the contents of the book.

#8 : sophisticated meal and wine palette - he was twenty-two, and discovering that he really, really liked tim's shocked face. they'd been friends for years now, childish hatred turned into playful bantering turned into knowing each other inside out. still, every now and then, kon did something that forced tim's eyebrows high on his head, his eyes widening just the barest bit.

right now, kon was at a dinner party with the words moral support written across his forehead. tim could handle himself remarkably well, but there was tiredness lacing the smaller boy's frame, and kon could practically see the way the tips of his soul were frazzled. so kon let tim lean into his arm and whispered jokes about luna-with-the-big-ugly-purse and martonio-who-can't-do-a-combover into his ear. or, at least, he was.

somehow he'd been drawn into a good natured argument with the man sitting just two seats down from tim and kon. friendly opinions of food had been tossed back and forth, growing more and more heated until kon looked him right in the eye and said he liked prosecco with his prosciutto, internally crowing with satisfaction at their shocked silence and sighing with pity that none of the guests here would ever try that combination out of fear of deviation. once the man had regained his sensibilities, he shot back, saying the sixth course should never serve salmon, instead regaling the fish to the amusebouche or the cheese course. kon snorted and told him fish itself was going out of style, and if he wanted to impress guests at the next dinner party he hosted, he should try serving octopus.

tim's shocked face was a pleasant surprise, but seeing the stunned, controlled blinks of everyone around him as they realized he wasn't just a pretty face was satisfying as well. even more satisfying was when he and tim said their goodbyes; while waiting for the valet, tim pressed up onto the tips of his toes and whispered promisingly in kon's ear, i fucking love your competence.

#9 : manipulating people into hating him to justify his actions - he was eighteen, and he was screaming, crying, tearing his hair out. kon didn't know what he had expected. lingering fondness? grudging acceptance? maybe a small leap for a chance at love?

it didn't matter. clark didn't want anything to do with him. and he was eighteen now, which meant clark didn't need to take care of him anymore, didn't need to pretend to pay attention to him anymore. he'd made it quite clear.

maybe that was why he found himself hesitating before saying no to amanda waller's offer. he forgot about the warnings tim gave him, though, and waller pounced on that hesitation, quicker than a panther. it was easy, it was oh so easy to let himself go with her.

besides, they had a reason to hate him now. he hadn't done anything to clark. he hadn't asked to be made. but clark had wanted nothing to do with him anyway, and didn't that sting. so if people were going to turn him away now, it was going to be for something he did.

he didn't realize how bad he was spiraling, how close he was to stepping off the lighted ledge he'd been balancing on his entire life and tumbling into the darkness below. but cassie had a stronger punch than most grown superheroes, and bart had tenaciousness written into every strand of his ginormous hair, and tim gripped his jaw so hard his fingernails dug into kon's skin and told kon that he was getting his best friend back, no matter what the hell he thought he was worth.

maybe it was madness that made him throw himself forward, still wrapped in the lasso cassie borrowed from diana, practically mauling tim's lips with his own. he was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to break down crying after he kissed someone, given past experience, but the three of them, his wonderful, wonderful friends, just hugged him tight, let him fight and shake and sob until all the rage was gone. it was the first time in a long while he'd done something in hopes that someone would look at him with love, not hatred.

#10 : waltzing - he was twenty-three, twenty three and giddy with how much time he had left. conner was with tim drake-wayne publicly now, so expectations were thrust onto him, expecting to be met.

kon tended to have more fun at events than tim ever did. granted, kon didn't have to deal with all of his coworkers drinking too much and exchanging money with secrets faster than drugs and asking tim whether or not his relationship meant he was open for still-young and handsome men who needed just a small escape from their wives. but tim wasn't trying very hard to enjoy himself either.

so kon was completely justified in tugging him towards the center of the room, in a patch of floor sparsely occupied, then pulling him as close as he dared. tim's panicked whisper of what!? was overridden by kon's laughter, but he muffled his sounds for a minute, letting tim hear the quiet music playing in the background (prerecorded and playing on speakers, not live).

understanding broke over tim's face, and he arched into kon's hold as easy as breathing. kon moved one of his hands to grip tim's wrist, and he twirled the two of them effortlessly, breathless at tim's flabbergasted expression. the rhythm was simple, and tim caught on quickly. one two three, one two twist, one two three, one two step, one two three, one two switch, one two three, one two three.

kon couldn't say they danced the night away, because a little while later tim took a break for a drink, then speeches were made, then dinner was served. by then, they were both entirely too tired to dance, longing for just a bed and a soft blanket and each other. but for those few minutes in the middle of a packed yet empty ballroom, kon and tim did lose themselves in the music, just a little bit.

i don't know shit about taxes or socialism. this got way longer than anticipated whoops. i'm tagging this "long post," but if someone asks me to put it under a cut, i'd be happy to

also jesus christ this thing is almost 2.5k words. im uploading it to ao3 later if i'm in the mood

tag list: @woahjaybird @birdy-bat-writes @anothertimdrakestan @subtleappreciation @screennamealreadyused @pricetagofficial @catxsnow @bikoncon @maplumebleue-blog-blog @sundownridg @thatsthewhump @xatanna-troy

#scribbles from the swamp #kon-el #conner kent #superboy #timkon #core four #dc #kon-el headcanon #kon-el fic #conner kent headcanon #conner kent fic #superboy headcanon #superboy fic #timkon headcanon #timkon fic #core four headcanon #core four fic #dc headcanon #dc fic

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darwin-xf · 4 years ago

Text

Love is a Verb

His dick knew things.

In general, thinking with your little head not your big one got a bad rap.

But for him? The opposite seemed to apply.

Of course he’d been mortified when he sprung to life in her hand the night before, with Scully in full on doctor mode, acting so clinical and detached. While he was so very very exposed.

A wave of anger arose in the wake of his humiliation. At her. Which wasn’t fair. She was doing him a favor, after all. Examining him, because they were stuck in a crap motel in the middle of nowhere Florida, the day after a hurricane, flights snafued, roads clogged with debris. And him with a sea monster bite on his neck and an angry itchy red rash on his dick to match. She was caring for him, just like she always did. Even though neither one of them was exactly comfortable about the prospect.

But now, considering what that moment of vulnerability had led to, he was glad it happened. And hardly surprised.

And when his big head has been muddled and confused on a night a few weeks before? His dick had shown the way forward. When a different woman had laid her hands on him, slipped her tongue into his mouth.

He didn’t want her. He felt like a block of wood as she kissed him and touched him. And yet he let it happen. His mind filled with a fuzzy gray static as she whispered to him how she needed him, how she’d never stopped loving him, until she was kneeling on the floor in front of him. She opened his pants and he let her, hungry for something she was offering. He would think a lot about that later.

But then his dick was in her mouth. And she worked it, employed all her little tricks. And still it stayed soft.

Until, giving up, she stood. She crossed the room and poured herself a scotch. He tucked his junk in his pants and zipped up. Not even embarrassed.

“You love her,” Diana said, her back to him.

He nodded. “I do.”

“But Fox,” she said, closing the distance between them, sitting down next to him, “She doesn’t know you like I do. There’s so much I want to give you...”

She launched into the pitch he’d heard from her before. Since she returned, she’d been whispering to him whenever she could get him alone, offering him access. “There are so many things we can accomplish together, Fox. Why would you want to keep toiling in the dark when you can shape the future of the human race? You’ve more than earned your seat at the table. And your voice is needed there...”

Though he never really felt engaged in these conversations, his big head listened to what Diana had to say.

But the little one was more persuasive. Not to mention more persistent. The truth was, Scully had been the only one able to get him off for months. Though of course she hadn’t touched him.

His extensive collection of salacious videotapes these days stayed tucked in their hiding places, moldering in their cases. The magazines delivered to his door each month, Penthouse and Hustler and Escort and Razzle and Club, remained stacked on his entryway table, their spines uncracked, their pages unperused. Most with the black no-see-um wrapper still intact.

A fact Scully discovered while visiting his apartment a few weeks before. She turned up on the late side one evening, work on her mind, files in her hand, her body tucked dutifully away in some dark suit.

“Oh that,” he said when she placed her palm on the towering cache of smut, popped an eyebrow in his direction. She had spent enough time in his space to understand that this was a departure from his usual behavior, where his porn was concerned. Whereby he’d rip the covers off the mags as soon as they arrived and leaf through them, looking for anything particularly good. He’d turn down the corners of memorable pages then leave them piled haphazardly around his place: on end tables, under the fishtank, next to his bed.

The explanation was not something he was prepared to share. So he thought fast, and invented something on the fly that seemed remotely plausible. “Yeah, the boys tell me that those are going to be collector's items soon. Print is dead, Scully. Everyone making the switch from atoms to bits and bytes. Paper’s so pulpy and inefficient. I have a book on it somewhere...” He riffled through his bookshelf, glad to escape her excruciating gaze. He plucked out a book and handed her a copy of Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte. “He’s a smart guy. You should check it out.”

His effort to distract her was in vain. She put the book aside without glancing at the cover and continued to silently cross-examine him. He pretended to be interested in another book he’d pulled at random, but the moment stretched on uncomfortably. "I thought I could get more for them if they remained in pristine condition,” he said as he paged through the book he wasn’t reading. For all he knew he was holding it upside down. “You know how people keep their Star Wars toys in the boxes with the cellophane on?”

She shrugged, unconvinced. But she moved on, willing to let it go. Her stacked heels clacked obnoxiously against his hardwood floors as she slowly made her way into his living room.

He doubted she wanted to know the real reason. Though he was pretty sure he could turn the tables on her if he blurted it out. It would serve her right for the way she roamed around his apartment and let her eyes light on his stuff, storing her little data points in that mind, trying to figure him out. But maybe one day the tea leaves of his pitiable life she seemed so eager to read would finally speak to her. Maybe it would occur to her what was actually going on.

Which was that every time he touched himself, he imagined it was her hand. And he would try to switch things over, open one of his skin mags— his trusty strategy for years when it came to getting his thoughts off his partner and back where they belonged —but it wasn’t working anymore.

He’d listlessly page through the glossies, looking for a promising spread, land on some blowjob scene and eyeball it for a while. But when he got down to business it, was her mouth on him, warm and receptive, her eyes on his face, his hands in her coppery hair. He’d smolder for a while, thinking of her lips, her strong small hands, and always her eyes, then feverishly work himself up. And the magazine, forgotten, would slip away onto the floor.

On the bright side, his inappropriate intrusive fixation on his FBI partner was saving him two hundred bucks a month he used to spend on phone sex. The last time he dialed in he couldn’t even get it up. So he spilled his guts to one of his regular providers, droning on for forty-five minutes about how he had it bad for his partner, all the things she did that made him crazy, the reasons he couldn’t tell her. Realizing even therapy would be cheaper, and feeling like a terrible cliché, he’d quit calling those numbers.

His videos were his last line of defense. Their absorbing input had always been able to capture his attention, so he’d try one of those. It might work for a few minutes, but the real action was behind his eyes. In his mind it was her heels digging in to the small of his back as he plunged into her tight little cunt. She’d be beneath him hot and panting, open her mouth to moan and he’d stuff his fingers in, slide them wetly against her tongue. Soon he’d be picking up the pace... The television would blare fruitlessly in the background, rife with bad dialogue and silicone silo tits and oh babys. The money shot would come and go, unseen by him, and the screen would fade to black.

The reason porn had quit working was simple: in his fantasies, she always comes too. Usually more than once. He’d start slow, imagine he was taking his time kissing his way down her body. That could take a while. Then he’d tease her, rubbing the fat head of his cock up and down her slit. When she begged him to, he’d slip inside her and slam his hips forward. He’d hold there, bottomed out, and kiss her sweet mouth. Then he’d slide it in and out, looking into her eyes, feeling every inch of her.

Soon he’d need to fuck her harder, faster. He’d reach down to tease her clit until she was thrashing and pleading. Then she’d say his name, and her face would change, and she’d come on his dick. He’d watch her ride it out, humming with pleasure as her warm wet circles broke against him and travelled up his body in waves. Till his nuts and his gut and his heart and his throat and his brain were replete with her. Finally he’d come, imagining he was cradled by her hips and rocking, buried deep inside her, spilling his secrets into her ear.

In his dirty busy mind he’d already had her so many places and ways: in showers and motel beds, in cars and elevators, bent over his desk at work, the door unlocked, her skirt bunched around her waist, her drugstore pantyhose dangling from her ankle. Quick or slow or sweet or mean, acrobatic or missionary, rough or tender. Or both. God. Even boring. Just the two of them in his bed, nose to nose under the covers, whispering and giggling and whiling away a Sunday morning.

And the most pathetic and woebegone detail? Sometimes his fantasies contained no sex at all. He wanted to watch a movie with her feet parked in his lap. He wanted to shop for groceries with her and hold her hand on the walk home. To spend a weekend with her on the Vinyard and show her his old high school. He wanted to rub her back when she was sad and play footsie with her under the table during boring budget meetings. He wanted to gather her close and kiss her eyelids and hold her in his arms as she fell asleep. To watch her to rise naked from his bed and pull on his clothes she’d just stripped from his body. On red eye flights he wanted to leave the arm rest up and snuggle with her under those dingy felt blankets. To read to her while she soaked in the tub and find the nooks and hollows of her body where she was ticklish. He wanted to make her giggle, make her laugh, make her cry happy tears. He wanted to make her wet just with his voice. To lay in bed and watch while she got dressed for church. He wanted to kiss her in front of her idiot brother, maybe even slip her a tasteful amount of tongue. To shower with her before work, to soap her up and shampoo her hair. He wanted to stock his fridge with an assortment of her gross non-dairy yogurts.

Scully. Before she’d even descended into his office and introduced herself, he assumed she was a plant. Or a dupe, a patsy. Why else would a promising and talented young agent be conscripted to his lonely, disrespected division? Most likely she’d already agreed to keep tabs on him, to cast his work in a negative light. And even if she hadn’t, he was certain she’d be manipulated, using the lever of her obvious ambition, into doing so. He also suspected, since she’d spent most of her time thus far in the FBI in the lab or the classroom, that she was a house cat. The kind of agent who might hold romantic notions about working in the field, but who would soon balk at the grueling, unpredictable hours, the endless travel, the physical grind. And blanch at the dangers. It’s no kind of life for anybody who wants a life.

By the time their flight touched down in Oregon on that first case, he knew for sure that she was fun to spar with. And all kinds of smart. And even sort of cute. And while it can obviously be helpful to have a partner if things go sideways, he remembers hoping that didn’t happen to them before she washed out and retreated back to the lab. Because he suspected this itty bitty pathologist with zero field experience and impractical footwear? Would be more likely to become a liability than properly cover his flank.

After they’d worked a half dozen cases together, it was fair to say he’d reconsidered the hasty assumptions he’d made about Scully. Which is to say she surprised him at every turn. Except on the couple of occasions when she’d astonished him, leaving him flat-footed and slack-jawed in her wake. Against all odds, he had himself a partner. Which is not to say he fully trusted her. Not yet. And he doubted she’d hang around much longer.

But still. He’d learned that she was game. Skeptical and rational, but up for anything. She never complained about bad food or lumpy beds. And courageous, staring down firearms pushed in her face without blinking. She was fearless and cagy, and could take a punch or dish one out. And in the next moment she could soften, to connect with a suspect or a victim, to care for a child, or for him. She believed deeply in what she was doing. When he bumbled into trouble, which he seemed to have a knack for, she more than had his back. Yet when she’d sided with him and blew off her buddies from the Academy? It wasn’t loyalty to him she was demonstrating, but to the victims. To the truth. Above all, Scully was honest.

In some ways, he knew her so well. Yet all these years later there was there were aspects to her he could only guess at. Scully, he’d come to understand, was a deeply private person. Didn’t give pieces of herself away in idle conversation, like most people do. The fact that he was a trained and skilled profiler didn’t seem to help. In his fevered mind he’d become preoccupied with the things he didn’t know about her. Like how, exactly, does she like to be touched? He thought about that a lot. Is she a morning sex person? (God he hoped so.) Is she loud in bed? Or more quiet and intense? A little repressed, or wild and uninhibited? He could imagine it either way. Is she bossy? Submissive? A little of both? What does she taste like? Does she talk dirty? Will she like it when he does? (Because he definitely does.) How would he tease her? What are her kinks? Does she like it rough? And if he wanted to go down on her for hours, would she be okay with that?

So, yeah. He loved her.

That switch had been flicked for him on a steamy summer evening, a moment when he’d been staring down the real possibility of losing her. She walked away. He followed her, flew out his door like he’d been shot out of a cannon. Stormed up to her where she’d turned to face him in his hallway. Fists clenched, voice raised, he was in full on fighting mode. But he wasn’t fighting her. He was fighting to keep her. So instead of telling her off, as his body language suggested he might, he told her what she meant to him. How he needed her. Things he hadn’t even realized before they came out of his mouth. But all of it the truth.

She’d been girded and resolute, her body rigid and self-contained. But then she broke, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, she softened and stepped into his embrace. He looked in her impossibly blue eyes glinting with tears and realized with dreadful certainty that, Christ, he was going to kiss his partner. More than that, if she let him, he was going to pick her up and carry her back through the door of his apartment and lay her down and fuck her.

That plan had been derailed, but the urge for him remained. And not long after, he gathered his courage and, with all the earnestness he could muster, he’d looked her in the eyes and confessed.

So he’d told her that he loved her. But had he shown her?

That was a thorny question, and it made him uncomfortable to consider it. Because he had to admit that for the most part, he hadn’t.

It was strange, but once his feelings for Scully had shifted, his behavior toward her had become less loving. For one thing, he didn’t let her in on that fact that she’d become the only featured player in his secret late-nite fantasy theatre. But more than that, he found himself especially irritable with her. Dismissive. Self-centered. Sometimes even cold.

When he was looking for an excuse to be angry with her, he told himself a story that she’d rejected him. Because, oh brother. But he’d seen her eyes go wide for an instant, felt her animal panic. She’d pored over his hospital chart and had to know he wasn’t high. So he’d concluded that she didn’t want him. Didn’t love him.

And Fowley’d chosen that inopportune moment to skip back over the pond and make a play for his ass. And though he had no interest in rekindling that relationship, just having her around reminded him of all the reasons it just might be a bad idea to get tangled up sexually with your partner.

More than that, even though he knew that Scully felt insecure because of Diana for several legitimate reasons, he hadn’t bothered to reassure her that she had nothing to worry about. When Diana called him and invited him downstairs for lunch, he’d go. Mostly to be near his files, and to mine the trashcans for cases when her back was turned. But he’d steal away from the bullpen, not tell Scully where he was off to, or why. He let her twist in the wind, wondering who Diana was to him and what her reappearance meant for their partnership.

It would make sense that once you’ve discovered the person you love, the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your days (not even to mention nights), the person who is, quite possibly, it for you? That you would try to make that happen. To lock that down. And yet he seemed to be doing everything but.

Even after she’d been shot by Ritter, and he’d almost lost her again.

And why was that? How to explain this puzzling behavior.

Maybe she didn’t want him, and he was just protecting himself.

The thing was, when he was being honest, he knew that wasn’t true. When he’d been about to kiss her in his hallway, she’d looked confused at first. And then concerned, with real fear flashing in her eyes. But by the time his lips were hovering over hers? They were on the same page. She’d gone molten in his arms, and her mouth awaited his, wet and ready. His body remembered how she’d opened to him, with her sweet breath and her fingers on his neck. He knew in his bones how that encounter would have ended, if not for that stupid fucking bee. Recalled it every chance he got.

As a psychologist, looking at the situation objectively? He’d have to conclude that he was engaging in some epic self-sabotage. Yup.

That night in her apartment when Diana had made her intentions clear, he’d agreed like some kind of docile sheep to join her. To scrum up with the other chosen few at El Rico Air Force Base as Armageddon loomed and save himself at the expense of the rest of humanity. And Scully, even though he wasn’t by her side where he belonged, was still fighting. For him, For them. For the truth. For the future.

And to repay her for her steadfast faith in him and devotion to their work? He was flirting with the one thing that could tear them apart. With inflicting a betrayal that could send her packing for good.

They’d dodged a bullet that night. More than that, they’d gotten their files back, and were free to resume their work. And by any measure he should have felt relieved. But he woke the next morning with a hangover worse than any he’d ever gotten from liquor. He looked in the mirror to shave and realized he couldn’t even meet his own gaze. He was ashamed. And he had to admit that he’d been seduced by Diana after all. Not into bed, but into complacency.

Needing some time and space to think things through, he called Skinner and redeemed a few vacation days. He threw some clothes in a bag and set out driving, not sure of his destination.

On the road, heading north, armed with this new clarity, he mulled things over. How was he going to feel, he wondered, when he succeeded and chased her away? That seemed to be his end game, after all. He knew what he’d do. He’d track her down to wherever she’d absconded to and interrupt her as she attempted to reboot her life. Then, looking desperate and half mad, he’d profess his love.

But it would be too late. She would conclude, quite logically, that he only wanted her when she was leaving. And even if she loved him like he hoped she might, she would not settle for that. Not Scully. And it would be selfish of him to ask her to.

It hit him then, with complete and utter clarity, that he had no idea how to love someone. He’d had bad models and a dearth of life experience in that arena. He knew how he felt. But love is a verb. It’s about what you do. She had taught him that.

He was good with the grand gestures, sure. Tracking her down at the bottom of the world and fishing her out of an enormous alien vessel, for example. Then breathing life back into her and hauling her to the surface while sidestepping rabid lizard monsters who swiped at them with razor-edged claws? Check.

But she needed more. For him to find mundane ways to express his care and concern, perhaps. To show her how much she mattered to him. How much he valued her and all the ways she contributed to their work. To his life. She needed to see that he put her first. She deserved these things. She had earned them. And he knew wouldn’t let him glimpse her secret self, let him know her like he desperately wanted to, until he gave them to her.

He wasn’t sure he could do it. But he knew he had to try.

He decided to start right away. He’d been thinking of her all morning, of course. About celebrating their return by pressing her her against a wall in their office and pushing into her, fucking her breathless and senseless before lunch, to be exact. But he hadn’t thought of her at all, he realized. Not really.

Scully. She’d be there right now, in the basement waiting for him, their first day back where they belonged. Wondering where he could be with half the morning gone. Bewildered as to what might be keeping him from reclaiming his precious turf. Maybe she already talked to Skinner and knew he was taking a few days off. Maybe she’d be worried. Or pissed. Or worse, wondering if he was enjoying a morning lounging in bed with a treacherous leggy brunette.

At the next rest stop, he pulled off and powered up his cell phone. He was relieved to see that he'd missed a call from her. She hadn’t given up on him yet.

Rather than listen to her message, he dialed her back. She answered on the third ring.

“Hey Mulder,” she said.

“Hey Scully,” he said. “Are you in the office?”

“I am,” she said. “Where I thought for sure you would be. Skinner told me you were on vacation. What’s going on?” Her voice was brittle. Defensive.

“I will be, Scully. I’ll meet you there. And soon. But I need to take care of a few things first.”

“Okay,” she said thoughtfully. “What kinds of things?”

“I, ah, I need to get my head straight before coming back. I’ve been mixed up. About some stuff.”

“I see,” she said.

They were both quiet for long seconds.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Me?” The question surprised her. “I’m good. Enjoying the quiet. Working on expense reports. Glad to be out of the bullpen.”

“You sure? You were popular, Scully. I think Agent Kargoll was working up the nerve to ask you out.” Mulder would glare at him as he brought her a donut on a little plate in the mornings. He’d leave it on the corner of the desk if she wasn’t in yet, like an offering to the high priestess.

“Yep,” she said. “I noticed that too. Reassigned in the nick of time...”

“I did my best to scare him off...”

“He was persistent, I’ll give him that.”

“He seemed like a nice enough guy. You could do worse than landing a boyfriend who arrives bearing gifts every morning...”

“I could do better, too.”

“No doubt,” he said. “What would be better than that?”

“Hmm. Why do you ask?”

“Research,” he said.

“Research,” she repeated. “Okay. Let’s see. The bearing gifts is ok. But maybe someone with some sense of what I actually like?”

“Let me jot that down,” he said. She snorted a little laugh. Which warmed him all the way through. “It’s true, Scully, you’re not a big fan of donuts. I benefitted from his crush on you more than you did.”

“I tried to wait until he had his back turned before handing those off to you...”

“You’re very kind,” he said.

Just then a truck blew by on the highway, laying on the booming brake, rocking his car.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I, ah, hit the road this morning. Just to think. Just to drive. But I suppose I’m heading home. To see my mother for a few days.”

“Everything okay?” she asked. He heard the concern in her voice, the fear that she’d be needing to tend to him trepanned and shocky, bail him out of jail. The usual.

“Yeah,” he said. “Or it will be. I really think it will be.”

“Allright Mulder,” she said after a long beat. “I’ll be holding down the fort. Drive safe. And keep in touch.”

“I will. And save me some of that paperwork, Scully.”

She laughed and hung up.

He had, in fact, visited his mother. She was glad to see him, and he stayed a few days, helped her out with some chores around the house. Got on a ladder and plucked the muck and leaves from the gutters, shifted some dusty furniture from the basement to the curb.

And he absorbed the silences of that house, his mother’s sadness, the way every possession, every exchange seemed steeped in a deep, abiding misery.

He remembered his mother different. Laughing, for example. Playing bridge with her friends, toying with her strand of pearls as she leaned in to gossip. Teasing him with a glint of joy in her eyes. Before Samantha had been taken.

It had broken her. Broken all of them. Now she ghosted around her own home, tending to her roses, watching television. Always alone. He lived much the same way. This was all that was left.

All because his father had been unable to protect them from the men he worked with, no matter how noble his intentions. The same men he had been tempted by Fowley to join up with, if he was telling the truth. Now they were reduced to ash. He had no idea what remained, but he knew he and Scully would find out.

By the time he climbed in his car to come home, he was committed to not making his father’s mistake. And to living differently. Less stubbornly solitary. To inviting some goodness into his life, no matter how strange it felt.

And last night, when it was actually happening, when he was wrapped up in bed with Scully in real life, it had been so vivid, so peculiar. As he rolled his naked frame against hers, time slowed down. In his head he heard the seconds ticking away distorted by doppler effect, whomp whomp. Felt his stiff prick slide against her buttery thigh, painfully slow. Pressed his ear to her chest. Imagined the steady squeeze and release of her heart beneath her breastbone. Heard the whoosh of her blood through her veins.

Looked up at her flushed face, this beautiful untamable breakable beast.

And he loved her.

He’d told her so.

Now he needed to show her.

Thanks for reading. Check it out at Ao3 This fic stands alone, but is also chapter 10 of Bedside Manner

#the x files #today in fic #msr fanfic #msr #mulder x scully #x files #fox mulder #dana scully #x files fanfiction #the x files fanfic

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autistickeely · 4 years ago

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Spectrum 10k - Autism Scientific Research Study (UK)

To all my autistic friends, I want to know what your thoughts are on this new scientific research study. If you don’t know what Spectrum 10k is, it is a scientific study of autistic people’s DNA and information. A quote from their website states: “We aim to better understand how genetic and environmental factors affect the wellbeing of autistic individuals, including their physical and mental health. We hope this increased understanding will lead to an improvement in the quality of support and care for autistic people and their families.” They ask for autistic people to take part in a survey as well as send them a DNA sample.

A lot of autistic people are incredibly worried about this study, claiming that it is eugenics and is created to find a cure. However on their website they state that they will not look for a cure for autism and that they are ethically opposed to any form of eugenics.

Another concern is who will have access to the data collected, and if it could end up in the wrong hands and be used for eugenics in the future. They’re response to this was: “To access any anonymised data collected by us researchers will have to submit a full proposal, which then will have to be approved by us. To be approved it must align with our aims of no cure, no eugenics, not harmful etc. and have value to science and the autism community.” They also say that autistic people are part of their committee which makes the decisions about who to share data with. They don’t state how many autistic people are on this committee however.

People are also worried that Autism Speaks is involved but apparently they are not, they stated: “Autism Speaks is not involved with our project, we have not spoken to them about it. The Wellcome Trust funds many projects but we are not working with Autism Speaks and have no plans to do so.”

Coming from a non-biased point of view, what are the positives and negatives of this study?

The positives that I can see would be that they are exploring co-occurring conditions. About this they stated: “Genetic data can help identify meaningful subgroups of autistic individuals. This can allow for different types of support. This includes rare syndromic forms of autism with specific co-occurring conditions. One example is the gene CHD8 where autistic individuals are more likely to have severe gut difficulties. Some co-occurring conditions like epilepsy and certain forms of gut difficulties are overwhelmingly genetic. Understanding the genes underlying these conditions can help develop better medical support targeting these conditions in autistic people.” They say that through this research they will improve the wellbeing and support for autistic people which if true, is very much needed. Autistic people are very misunderstood in society and this could possibly raise more awareness and acceptance and create better support for autistic people.

The negatives would of course be that autistic people are sharing their DNA which will go into a database that could possibly be used to research some type of cure. Also there is concern about minors (those under 16) being forced to take part in the research by parents and carers. There is the argument that minors are unable to consent to a study like this, especially since their DNA sample will be stored and possibly used in other studies in the future. Part of me understands why they want data from a variety of ages, however, I think the study should only be for adults (16+) to participate in. I don’t feel that children are able to consent to a research study like this and I don’t like the fact that parents and carers can force their children to participate.

After doing my own research on this study I am still wary and unsure whether or not I would personally want to participate. Part of me wants to because I love science and I think more understanding of autism and co-occurring conditions is needed. The other part of me is worried that this could be used to look for a way of preventing autism or curing it. We need to understand why exactly this research study has been created and what the end goal is. We need to be confident that this is not a cover up for a eugenics study. I think I am willing to trust what is being said, that they are against eugenics and are not looking for a cure. I know that could just be my trusting nature (which can get me into trouble sometimes) but I like to think that the intentions of this study are pure and the goal is to help get better support for autistic people and their families.

Let me know what you think about Spectrum 10k. You are welcome to share any opinions and feelings you have whether they are positive or negative. I have linked the website incase anyone wants to have a more detailed look, they have a list of FAQs and explain more about the study there.

#spectrum 10k #actuallyautistic #autism #autistic #autistic people #autistic community #autistic experiences #autistic life #autistickeely

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worldsover · 5 years ago

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Judgement to the Desiccated ft. Karina

length ✦ 5573

genres ✧ sm type future; asphyxiation; blackmail; virtual_servant!Karina;

✦✧✦✧✦✧

Air did a poor job of not being polluted so Lee Soo Man flooded the world instead. The man himself certainly must be long gone and could not have been in charge of that decision but the legacy of his company far exceeds the legacy of any other human collective in history. Once on this planet, gas was the fluid of choice for respiration and breathing was an unconscious reflex. Now there’s Aether by SM. How very on-brand of them to have the liquid air you breathe follow perfume naming conventions.

Open your eyes and exit the sleeping chamber. Aether has you work for each inhalation, it desaturates the color of the bedroom—maybe there’s a subtle but uncomfortable tinge of yellow—and it makes your nose itch. Your muscles wield much less force than they used to because of the lack of resistance the fluid provides. Moreover, it smells like hairspray as though the ozone layer is taking sardonic revenge.

Screens impersonating windows track your eyes to ensure realistic parallax, playing the scene of divine blue heavens that could not exist. An azure sky is a reward for those planets that have an atmosphere and a sun for light to scatter. Your walls are either chrome or drywall white and your whole bedroom is plainly decorated just like the day you moved in.

“Etymology of bedroom,” you think out loud, though it falls on no ears.

“Bedroom is a compound noun consisting of bed and room. Bed goes back to Old English bedd ‘sleeping place, plot of ground prepared for plants,’ which goes back to the Germanic-”

Plants and sleep are both strong words to use nowadays. The former doesn’t exist in nature and it seems you’re the only one who bothers with the latter. Faint buzzing distracts you from the AI’s response and signals you to the nano drones that swim throughout the liquid to process carbon dioxide from your lungs. This whole ordeal could’ve been much worse if you didn’t have brain interfaces doing the hard part of controlling your diaphragm. The most you need is a purposeful thought. Still, it gets tiring having to think the same thought every three seconds. In. Out.

Was the metaphorical Soo Man teaching a lesson in perseverance? You love K-pop and imagine it’s how trainees used to practice dancing, singing, being charismatic. Being an idol had to be as natural as breathing air. Inhale and exhale. Right now with any antiquated programming language you clung on to, you could write a single for loop that did the same job. For every three seconds: breathe in, breathe out.

“What’s for breakfast today?” Not loud enough. “What’s for breakfast?” you think it louder.

“Welcome, master. Ae-Karina is ready for service.” It’s quite a kindness for SM to blur the bland dystopia you live in by augmenting reality through your neural device. A bosomy woman in a gold-lined but otherwise modest maid outfit appears from the corner of your eye and she bows. Ae-Karina is bewitching and almost becoming of her basis as its graphics have gradually upgraded over the rotations but you wouldn’t misconstrue the avatar as human.

“I said, what’s for breakfast!” It feels impolite to scream in your head, there’s other residents there, but finally the fridge lights up.

“Of course master. May I remind you eating is unnecessary?”

In. Out. Every day, she does remind you, yes. How kind of the company to put all your nutritional requirements in the new air. Aether goes in then Aether goes out. You wish the thoughts of breathing could fade into the background but they’re just like your cravings for food. Always hungry but never starving, whole though not once satisfied. Your eyes pause at her gorgeous face and she tells you there’s bacon. Take it from your fridge. Bacon goes in. Well, the drones take care of the out.

Your assigned living space is the entire 207th floor of a tower. Two hundred and seven floors below the surface. The neighbor a few floors upstairs says that he thinks living deeper is a sign of status. What a luxury. That guy should check the status of his facial muscles, maybe improve his code that lets him tell lies while he’s at it. A couple hundred flights of stairs to swim up is a useless skeuomorphism of skyscrapers in the days of the sun. In fact they were more than useless, you would've preferred a single vertical hallway as it would have let you propel upwards unimpeded. Each floor is the exact same, a glass door that affords no privacy for its residence, a false tree on each side. At the upper levels, malls, convenience stores and other gaudy retail, but it’s the gyms that mock you that you mock in return. They’re always empty.

Finally reaching the top is no true break even if it is a change in scenery. Inhale. Aether tastes a little different up here. Exhale. Can’t say you like it.

Countless satellites form a parody of the star from which the planet flew away, the false image refracted by the upper boundary of Aether. They can’t take away your memories of this star. Looking up at the sky once blinded you with ultraviolet radiation, burning your cornea. It was beautiful. Now everyone’s decided that if they’re playing the part of corporate dystopia, they might as well fit the aesthetic. In a way, it’s self-fulfilling. They wouldn’t have chosen a neon pink sun to compliment the blue and metallic gloom of the cityscape if it weren’t so ingrained in popular media already.

Still, you would’ve expected Google or Walmart to become the megacorp responsible for the state of the world, not a Korean entertainment company. Must’ve been quite the red paperclip scenario. Instead of material design or utilitarian architecture, tacky artistic structures line the streets. The same advertisements for albums that they’ve been selling for the past however long. It's all so obvious, the city could've been designed from scratch to accommodate new forms of travel and goddamn liquid air but instead they went with futuristic Tokyo.

Dubstep permeates your inner ear implants. A notification informs your thoughts that it’s “Hip-hop EDM dance pop with a strong jungle house groove and urban influences.” It’s dubstep. Liquid carries barely any sound so SM affords the option for implants if you're nostalgic for one of the senses. Even though it’s a slower form of communication than direct neural transfer, the noise comforts you. Of course the company would choose dubstep as their background music, but maybe they make money off refunds somehow. It switches to Ice Cream Cake. Much better.

You walk the not so busy roads towards a short brick warehouse in the distance and heavy rain soaks your clothes. No such thing as weather without the sun and water but it’s all simulated anyway.

A warm Seulgi adlib and you know it’s Psycho that starts playing. No, none of your senses are real. The most you could trust is your vision but even that’s being lied to. You could be living in a vat and fed all these thoughts, but then why make it so mediocre? Not paradise, nor torture but a lukewarm in-between. Guess that's what happens when SM Entertainment manages the post-apocalypse. Good on them for trying. The alternative would be a frozen hellscape without solar radiation. Can’t deny their work with geothermal and nuclear energy to keep the Aether warm so that you didn’t have to live underground for the rest of human history. It’s quite great PR to save humanity.

“Hey now, we’ll be okay,” repeats a few more times than you remember.

The Idea Factory Alpha White Delta Green says the neon tubes lighting the front of the brick and mortar building. Your ID card bears a name but it’s not yours, not until they approve your name change. Those usually get processed faster with how often people liked changing their names.

Sit at a desk with a sterile white keyboard and slick new monitor. Type and empty words appear on the screen: “Think for the many, not for the one. We need to think ahead.” A thumbs up. The company appreciates the input. That’s probably enough work for one day. Some SNSD live stages help the time pass, SM certainly appreciated the streaming numbers and it would net you some social points.

It’s hard to say what comes to mind when they ask you to envision a world without the sun and air, especially since it’s what you’ve known for... Two hundred years? There’s no frame of reference, that much you can tell from when you counted seconds to see how often the satellites completed their orbit. SM really took time to have them propel at random speeds, they love withholding sensitive information like that from citizens. To be fair, time is sensitive. Guess the meaning of that phrase changes like all parts of language.

Look around. Dozens of employees at identical workspaces all try to answer the same questions. Naturally, there’s no need for manual labor anymore but there will never be a replacement for human ingenuity. Nice slogan but you know you’re only here for data. Can’t see a need for customer retention though—what’s the alternative, skip Earth? See you on another planet?

“Hey bro, you come up with anything new?” Dave says. Two desks away, you see the enthusiastic, surprisingly spry man play around with a Newton’s cradle. The balls at each end bounce back and forth, not slowing down their rhythm any time soon.

“I think I got something,” you say, “Earth is not the answer. It can’t be, long term.”

“Ooh, I like that. Actually, I really like that.”

“What are you gonna do, copy me?”

“Of course not. You know how much SM hates plagiarism.” Click. Clack.

“Ha. As if there’s a single original thought left in the world.” Click. Clack. The imaginary sounds of metal spheres bouncing play in your mind. They got the volume wrong, no way it’d sound that loud from that distance. “You’d think with all their resources, they’d have figured out space travel by now.”

“I don’t think they want to leave, bro. Wouldn’t be great for profits.”

Your mouth opens to laugh and causes laugh8942.mp3 to play in Dave’s head. “I love it. SM probably hates that sass too,” you say.

“Oh no, they’re gonna arrest me for thoughtcrimes. Nah, they love creativity, just when it suits them. Also, if they actually did bust you for wrongthink like rumors say, I wouldn’t have this on me.” Dave twirls a finger and points at you and you thank his absurd flair for the histrionic that keeps you amused with such drab work.

“NewDrug.mp6. Would you like to play it?” the dry system voice notifies you.

“Woah woah there tiger, hold on.” Dave must’ve noticed your intrigued eyes and holds his hands up. “You might wanna experience that at home. But if you’re interested in more, ask for chicken parm at the vegan place. You know the one.”

Dave leaves his desk. He doesn’t return. You finish your work. Inspire. Expire. You’d rather not.

In contrast to your commute to work, the roads fill with others on your way home. You have to know. Take solace in the comfort of a bench where a huge McDonald’s arch bathes the surroundings and its people with a yellow glow. Really shouldn’t watch it now, especially if Dave says it’s a home type of watch but you have to know. A family of five watches you pass out. They, along with every other passerby, ignore your still body draped over the chrome outdoor seating as you look like yet another junkie. The title is correct after a fashion, the simulation is some sort of new drug. The details of the exploits that happen in the immersive replay wash over you but you don’t need them to know that it’s the sort of lewd that SM would not allow—at least not publicly and not without the right exorbitant payment.

Suit pants and underwear go straight to the laundry. That must’ve been an embarrassing sight but no one bothered to stop you, so it doesn’t matter. Look up where this vegan place was that Dave so presumptuously assumed you knew about and you find that it’s about four Avengers’ stores down from work. He must’ve eaten there before.

“Yo Dave, just wanna make sure, what’s the name of the vegan place called?”

“What are you talking about, man? You telling me there’s some secret underground farms that SM wouldn’t know about?”

You can’t tell when you got to work, a lack of standardized timing would help as well the haze of living in a monotonous dark. “Nah, I mean, for the-”

“I have no idea,” Dave emphasizes each word, “what you’re talking about.”

“I see.”

Work flies by, unusually.

“Hey, can I get a chicken-”

“Uh, this is Maron’s Veggies Only, it clearly says on the sign.”

Clear your throat. “Parm.”

The shifty part-time worker looks around and rubs his fingers gesturing for money. “No digital.”

Over the counter, you pass him a gold coin stamped with a holographic 1 and he hands you a USB stick and a laptop in return. How old-fashioned.

“It’ll sync with whoever you have set as your avatar experience aspect,” the worker says.

“Thanks.”

Ever vigilant as the patrol is, the alleys are the last place you want to go to hide with the obvious criminal element within them all but you head to one anyway. Dump the anachronistic technology in your storage pocket dimensions. Looking at its contents, you’d have to clean that mess up later, but the more you look like an average slob the better. The biggest problem with the inventories is all the people squatting in them. Inspectors wouldn’t care about the archaic ruins you left in yours.

“Welcome, master. Ae-Karina is ready to service.”

“I’d like to go on a date. A special date.” You highlight the key word special and sit on your living room couch. No one’s going to look in your glass door and regardless, you wouldn’t be the pervert for glimpsing into someone’s home.

“Ah yes, master. Ae-Karina is ready to fully service,” she says with a provocative tint in her tone, her sclera disperses to black to match. A pole drops from the ceiling while parts of her maid outfit dissolve which reveals more of the silky skin of her thighs, her lissom arms and most importantly her overflowing breasts. Ae-Karina wraps her legs around the pole and spins around, teasing fingers trace curves on her body to harden you. Her dance is precise but sultry regardless. She pulls up her short skirt to flaunt more of her ass beneath white panties and then pulls down to flourish her cleavage, not trapped by a bra. “Are you enjoying your maid’s show?”

“Very much so, yes,” you say.

Half of a smile forms before a glitch occurs and she teleports next to you, fully nude. It doesn’t pull you out of the illusion however. You just stare and drink in the splendor of her created body.

“You’re not going to touch?” Ae-Karina says.

A feel of her tits and you find it softer than pillows you used to rest on. Soft isn’t much of a character that exists anymore when the whole world is engulfed in liquid. No one has beds, especially with the rarity of sleep. Therefore, her mounds are a consummate dedication to the texture as you squeeze and pinch at her cute nipples.

Her maid outfit rematerializes as she straddles you. It provides more friction to your pants as she begins her lap dance. The weight of her body dragging across your legs and clothed erection induces your carnal impulses further. If only you could fuck the virtual idol. You have to make do with the imprint of her pussy lips on your bulge sliding up and down. Breath in. Breath out.

Ae-Karina pulls down your boxers and spits on your erection. It's not real but her hands so slick on your cock and you let reality slip. Real is for the past, you have desires gratified in the present. There is no real person nibbling at your neck but your nerves activate in sexual desire without discernment for truth. No, she doesn't love you, but when the voracious mass of ones and zeroes says it loves its master, you say it back.

"I love you."

ILOVEYOU infected ten million computers in 2000. An explosion. Calibration engaging. It’s 1:21 PM, Sunday, July 18, 2286 and hypothetically the sun would be out in its full rage. At this latitude and longitude, you’re at what was once the epicenter of all—Seoul, where a fountain caused a chain reaction allowing the hopeful remnant of a world to exist. It lasted a surprisingly long time without the sun and without Aether but the dying planet would succumb inevitably to the ever-increasing contamination so SM of all corporations took charge. A different kind of chain reaction occurred when they acquired a restaurant chain that discovered the recipe for liquid air. The law is on its way and prepared to punish you to its full extent.

You reel while your ears ring. An even sexier version of the woman you already fantasized about appears from your peripheral vision in the crater of your floor. A skimpy cop outfit, striated with reflective material that seems to wane black at different angles, outlines Karina’s curves. She has a tool belt with absurd gadgets, such as a knife baton hybrid, a taser combined with a spray bottle and a Tamagotchi. None of this is necessary. They could just immediately arrest you, impose limitations on your devices. Sure, SM cloned people to deal with underpopulation, but why Karina would be the enforcer is a whole nother issue. Maybe the entertainment company loves their irony?

“Halt. You’re under arrest. Any resistance will be penalized according to the combined Terms of Service of all SM and SM associated products.”

Fucked anyway, you figure you might as well go for it. Escape into your inventory and only seconds later you’re forced out. You manage to get what you need regardless.

“Violation of access rights will be charged to your account.”

It’s so obvious but there’s a reason you kept so much gold in physical storage. As you swim away, the sides of your apartment start to bubble. Bubbles? Already, your limbs feel unsteady. Something’s wrong in the Aether.

“This is standard procedure for escaping suspects that are indoors. Again, this is all agreed to under the Terms of Service.”

“When the fuck did I ever click accept to that shit?”

“When you were born in this world and decided you want to stay in it,” Karina says out loud. You hear her say it. Your physical ears process the vibrations in the air that come from her mouth. Gravity thwarts your desperate escape as your limp body floats on the limit between liquid and air. The atrophy of your muscles becomes apparent within the gaseous atmosphere. She watches you sink down as the room drains of all the false air though her eyebrows crease when she inspects you closer. Your breaths are involuntary. Despite your muscles shorting out, the force of gravity and the pressure of the gas bearing down on you, you’re breathing and you don’t mean to. Her eyes wander farther down. On your pants, a concrete rod stamps the fabric.

“Oh, you like what you see?”

“Shut up, criminal. Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

“Your pussy,” you say and she scoffs.

“Original.” Karina bites her lip as your erection continues to grow behind its prison. You use all effort to put your hands up.

“Please, miss Karina. I’ve been bad.”

“I could punish you even more for sexual assault.”

“Then do it.”

Heat radiates the room in a way you haven’t felt in a while and droplets of sweat form on each of your bodies, especially on the thighs that her revealing outfit parades. Her facial features contort in deliberation and the wait kills you. You bat your eyes at her before Karina takes off her tight shorts and drops herself into your anticipatory face. This makes no sense but none of this life made any sense so you decide to go with the tides.

Centuries of training your respiration has led to this moment, but when you finally have real air to breathe, you spit at the opportunity and choose to suffocate. Then you spit at her pussy and lap it up. Karina’s nectar transfixes your olfactory glands, for once a smell that isn’t the sterile Aether. Your eyes are mesmerized in parallel because of the perfect design of her pussy, a single crease that leads into her hole that your tongue emphatically explores. Karina spreads her thighs wide to reveal a small nub that craves attention. So give it. Suck and swirl and flick your tongue, and the woman provides you the tight clench of her legs as a gift. And the sounds, rediscovered glorious noise. Loud, almost too loud, and clear is how they assault your ears, even surrounded by the flesh of her thighs. Muffled by the weight of her legs, you hear Karina moan in approval but she’s still clearly in charge with how she chokes you with her legs. This is not about your pleasure but hers, and any satisfaction that you derive is not only incidental but probably punishable by SM copyright law.

Karina squirms her hips subtly on your mouth. Her eyes are sharp and she’s just about to stop your hands from moving but she notices them clasp together.

“I’ll do anything to make you cum, please.” you say sloppily as her pussy juices fill your cheeks and drip down your chin.

“God. I can’t.” She takes deep, contemplative breaths. ”That’s more time added on for inappropriate behavior.” Her groaning and brief squeals make her words sound incogent.

You give her a concluding lick and a kiss on her slit. “So what have you been doing right now then?”

Point to a corner of the room and a subtle red light indicates a recording camera. At once, she pulls out a hose from a pocket that could not fit it and the vacuum submerges the room with noise. Her expression shifts quickly to serious.

“We don’t play games here in SMTOWN unless it’s SuperStar so don’t fuck with me.”

“Look who's trying to be a comedian. How about you fuck with me any further and the video gets released.”

“That’s funny, you think you have any sort of power-”

“Yoo Jimin, I suggest you don’t push me more.”

“Where do you know that name from? Right now.” She weighs herself down on your neck.

“You think I don’t have contingencies for if I die too? Karina, we can make this a win-win scenario. We both get to cum, we both get to walk away unscathed.”

“Fuck you.”

Your weak arms wander between her thighs. At any moment, a feeble punch towards your face or another ten seconds of asphyxiation and she could call your bluff. Even if you did have the ability to expose her perversions in any way, there would be no permanent recourse, not as long SM was in charge. So it surprises you when Karina takes off her shorts.

“Goddammit. Your cock just looks too good. And your mouth, how are you so good with it?” Put up five fingers when she motions to remove her top as well, and instead she opts to take off your clothes, seizing your pants and throwing them to join the rubble in the room.

A finger slips in, then two and a third dares. Her flawlessly architected pussy lips clings to your digits and Karina shudders in reply. You explore her wetness and find it’s smooth to the point of having no faults, but her juice inside is gloppy and causes your fingers to stick more than the liquids she spills from her slit.

“Who said you’re allowed to have more?”

You lap up the nectar on your fingers. “Then why’d they make you taste so good?”

Your thumb teases her sweet tight asshole and puts just the slightest amount of pressure on it while you finger her with more intensity. The mass of her butt burdens your torso the closer she gets to orgasm. Her eyelids squeeze close and you see her body ripple in anxious pleasure. Karina shows off her pearly whites, teetering on the cliff of hysteria.

“Yes, yes! I’m so close,” she screams.

"Not yet."

“Fuck." Karina sobs, "God. Damn, fuck I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just fuck me.”

“My pleasure,” you say. There’s no need for you to grab her since she brings herself down to your groin, which you’re thankful for as your arms are as good as jelly now. Fortunately, your cock throbs as hard as ever while Karina’s slit rests on it.

“Say you’ll delete it all, all the evidence, promise me.”

“You’re gonna fuck me first or what?” Your breath hitches while she makes a strangled noise as her velvety walls swallow your cock whole to leave no room for comfort. Her tightness is stifling and you have to start counting just to breathe again.

“One two-”

“Be quiet.”

But there is no quiet when pleas for your cooperation intersperse her excessive profanities when she seats herself into your cock and ricochets up and down. Sweat emanates from her creamy skin while her legs widen to find a better angle for her supporting knees in her cowgirl position. Grapefruit and other citrus mingle with the scent of the sweat, fruits you haven’t seen except on billboards in music videos. As much as your mind crackles and your blood roars for every atmosphere of pressure Karina’s walls provide on each thrust in and out, you can’t help but reminisce on sweeter, more innocent times.

The white fluorescent lights in your apartment sputter. For all the advancements in technology, some among many things never change. Light refracts differently in air, less bright, but you can see the pure enjoyment on Karina’s face no matter the luminescence. Karina slows her ride to pull her hips down harder instead and she jolts when your cock finds the most tender spots inside her pussy and it interrupts her babbling.

Karina almost hyperventilates when she gets up to spit on your cock. She pulls out some kind of meter from her tool belt and sighs when there’s no beeping and you recognize it having to do with carbon dioxide. She gets back to dribbling saliva and the filament trailing down to your shaft mesmerizes you. This spit is real, not simulated, and it wettens your erection in a mix with her pussy juices to paralyze you further in your already listless state. Her bare thighs jiggle and you can’t exert much force with your hands but her buttcheeks are firm with just a bit of give.

“Thank you for this cock, thank you for being bad,” Karina says as you watch her ass sink deeper while her pussy holds your dick taut. She’s frenetic when bounces up and down to play an unadulterated orchestra of slick noises between your groins.

“You’re welcome,” you accomplish getting out the words between planned breaths. Your hands cup her buttcheeks but you fear they may break with how she strikes her ass into you.

Karina turns around once more to give you the spectacle of her facial expressions as she fucks herself into you. Knead her calves laying on your torso and they take no energy to spread them though she brings them back together, compressing your hard shaft within her pussy. A new game you play with her, a separate rhythm of loosening and tightening. Her feet press on your chest to help her bounce, but the way they bear down on your lungs against the timing of your breathing causes you to fumble. Your cock bends straight forward as she plunges herself into you and it sends prickles to your entire skin, making the new angle difficult but worth it. Karina takes your hand and starts sucking on your fingers.

“You want my promise that bad?” you say.

“Yes, as bad as I want your cum. I swear, I need it.”

She draws her knees up to her torso and hugs her legs to keep thighs as tight together as possible. Karina couldn’t keep her word, she was trying to kill your cock with constriction.

“Fuck, your pussy is so fucking tight. God, Karina, fuck. You’re so good.” Even if good isn’t the word you want to use to describe her.

“Do it, please, please. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, baby. Karina can be a good girl, a good maid, a good cop, whatever you want. Just don’t get me in trouble, please.”

Karina’s mouth stops saying words though her lips writhe, drunk in increasing lust. Her cheeks flush, before the rest of her skin joins in redness while she grapples your chest and whatever spare limb she can find. You still struggle wresting control of your body but nature seems to take over when you drive yourself into her and match her needy cadence. The air in the room is replaced by a new air but it isn’t Aether. Passion, sweat, heat and all fluids that you both exude join squelching sounds, slaps and moans in harmonic bliss when her body tenses and she screams. As her body tightens, her pussy especially holds your cock for dear life and endeavours to wring out all your semen as her wetness throbs and spills. Karina starts counting to three repeatedly and you laugh though your amusement quickly subsides when you feel her juices become more viscous and she continues her ride, even in the dying pulses of her climax.

“Was I good?” Karina asks.

Just a moment goes by before you mentally send her a screenshot of all the recordings being deleted. Karina hasn’t stopped fucking you yet so at least it wasn’t a ploy.

“Thank you, thank you, I love you.” The flexion of her pliant legs brings them all the way back to rest on top of your legs. Karina lays prone above you and finally give you a kiss. The citrusy flavor may be closer to lime than grapefruit but it’s been so long that you can’t remember which scent is which. Lips crash and her tongue lashes out at yours trying to establish dominance. Keep still to let her investigate your mouth while her pussy does the same to your shaft.

You savor the way Karina’s top emphasizes the bouncing of her tits synchronous with the rebounding of her waist on your cock, but your mouth waters when she frees them. Take the shortest moment to relish in the sight before Karina smothers you with her plump globes. You wriggle your face to try to breathe. Inhale, up and exhale, down, but all you inhale is the scent of her orbs’ sweat. Her hips undulate with a pace at least double yours breathing and the echoes of slapping flesh resonate throughout the air-filled chamber. The loudness is unlike any you’ve experienced in a long time. It’s almost a flashbang every time her ass slams into your lap, especially as you start to see white when orgasm threatens to overload you with preludial pulses.

The last words you hear infected ten million computers in 2000. Fade to black. Cut. You’re slammed out of existence back into existence as a sun rebirths both within you, heating your core to a dangerous high, and from your eyes, dazzling you in an unforgiving white light. In the throes of unconsciousness relapsing to consciousness back to tenebrosity, your streaks of semen suspend in the Aether like a dead tree resting from the wind. What flashes your mind in its orgasmic state are two things only you would remember, plants and weather. Your hyperventilation is unconscious but not unwelcome, as it’s the first time in a while your breaths were reflexive even in the liquid air. However, basking in your newfound power, you start to choke. Right. You breathe in and out again. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. Back in.

“Replaying KarinaArrestsYou.mp6.” A hint of vexatious glee in the system’s otherwise dry voice. You don’t stop for it.

✦✧✦✧✦✧

AFF, AO3

It’s pretty silly but the idea danced around in my head ever since I saw the absolute Black Mirror concept that SM had for aespa and I concur that Karina is insanely hot.

As I’m writing this, this Kurzgesagt video on the idea of a rogue Earth comes out and now I have to rewrite stuff to make it at least a little consistent. I’m obviously already going nuts with all these ridiculous sci-fi concepts but this video almost feels too targeted to me writing this for me to ignore it.

#kpop smut #aespa smut #male reader #reader insert #title tracks

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hylianengineer · 2 years ago

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*asks about job*

Anon you are my favorite.

Okay, so, I'm a laboratory and field technician in a soil and water science lab.

I love my job so goddamn much. I get to work with fancy machines like the gas chromatograph and spectrometer! (The spectrometer is actually really boring but shhh.) I get to go outside and watch birds while I collect water samples! I am getting paid for this! I get to learn data processing and engineering and wilderness safety precautions and how to explain complex science to people whose careers are Not This.

Also, research labs are chaos and I delight in it. Okay maybe not ALL research labs, I'm informed the chemistry department does not look like this. BUT this is an environmental science lab. It is full is bizarre, deeply nerdy, deeply passionate people. Who do things like eat baked potatoes like apples, improvise experimental setups with mason jars and duct tape, and nickname every instrument either a human name or a Pixar reference. I love them so much I have no words.

Crazy and fun things I've done for this job:

Freezer jenga followed by freezer tetris (had to take all the things out of a the freezer, put them in coolers to keep them cold, defrost the freezer, and put them back in except organized this time. I was delighted by this for no logical reason, my boss thought I was nuts).

Okay you know in scifi movies where they have some weird mystery substance and they put it in a box with gloves attatched so they can work with it without actually touching it? I've done that! Not because of hazardous substances, we just needed to put stuff in jars without exposing it to oxygen. But still! It was cool!

Shopping trip to get food for like half a dozen people for three days (I had weird dreams about being overwhelmed with tortilla chips afterwards, this doesn't sound that crazy but I promise you it felt like it).

Taped plastic tubing to 200+ funels until the boxes we were storing them in overflowed and there was no longer floorspace to walk (AFTER cutting the plastic tubing into 200+ equally sized pieces and stuffing it with ion exchange resin, which is like evil microplastic sand. Between all those things, this took WEEKS. It got really boring).

Dissolved like 10kg of KCl (KCl my behated, its very harmless but hell to get off glassware) in water to make 80 LITERS OF KCL SOLUTION (that's over 20 pounds of solid KCl and over 20 gallons of solution! My coworker and I were sort of laughing hysterically over this entire process because come on! 80 liters! For reference most lab protocols need like, a liter or less of whatever solution.) Fun fact about solid KCl, it tends to stick together into a giant brick. We were chiseling at it with scoops, spoons, whatever was on hand (i really wanted to attack it with a screwdriver but it would introduce dirt into the chemicals so i couldn't) and eventually we got so frustrated we went outside and dropped the thing off a second floor balcony. After wrapping it in like 3 layers of plastic bags because we knew at least one bag was gonna break. This did not actually help much but it was very cathartic.

There was a project once where we had to take sealed mason jars and replace all the air in them with nitrogen gas. Repeatedly. For over a hundred jars. My PI (principle invesitgator, means the scientist in charge of a project and usually a lab) is good at building things, so of course he assembled this manifold thing so we could pump nitrogen through a dozen jars at once. Which was great, except it involved two dozen needles, half of them attatched to flexible plastic tubing so they'd kinda bounce around when you pulled them out of the jars. It looked like a very stabby centipede-slash-octopus monster. Impressively, we only stabbed ourselves a couple times each with this thing (and changed the needles of course, we are aware of the risks of transmitting blood diseases).

Actually one of the craziest things about this job in my opinion is how many fucking needles we work with. You see, we study atmospheric gases. And to do that, we need to transfer gases between sealed containers, which means needles and septa (the rubber things they put on vials so you can poke needles through them). So. Many. Needles. Did you know you can only use a needle four times before it gets too dull? It's extremely noticeable as you're using them - not as they get dull, but when you discard an old needle and get out a new one it is a huge difference. I don't know why I find this so fascinating, but working with needles is honestly so fun. I feel like a mad scientist or something. Also, for the first couple months I kept poking myself on accident so I was just walking around with these pinpricks and papercut looking wounds. It felt a bit like a badge of honor, somehow, like a rite of passage for working in the gas lab. Another thing about needles, if you get scratched with one horizontally instead of stabbed, they look like papercuts. It's weird. Also weird is how good you get after a while at not stabbing yourself.

I think I like working with needles because they're something that used to make me nervous. Not horribly, but I have more than typical anxiety and I get nervous about everything. And yet I am now totally chill about needles, because I work with them all the time. It's... freeing I guess. Maybe empowering, even. I am scared of so many things, but I am not scared of this. Ditto large quantities of acid, once you've had to work with dozens of liters of the stuff you stop being scared of it - this was for the same project as the KCl and yes it was equally ridiculous. Dilute acid, thankfully, but to make dilute acid you have to mix the really concentrated stuff with water. It does not come as dilute acid, that would be too easy. So we spent multiple days in a row diluting acid and soaking things in it, there were plastic boxes full of the stuff on every available counter space with handmade warning labels, it was A Thing™️.

Anyways, I'm a person who's scared of everything, except weird stuff like hydrochloric acid, needles, and wasps. I can blame all three of those things on this job, which I love dearly. I love to learn new things, pretend I'm in a scifi movie, be surrounded by crazy people (affectionate), and apparently overcome my numerous fears. You absolutely did not sign up for this big puddle of feelings, anon, but thank you for inspiring it nevertheless.

#something something personal growth and overcoming fears. maybe that's part of why i love this job.#the wasp thing is because i have a field site at a bridge that's basically got wasp nests all over the underside #the wasps like to watch me work #i am genuinely having personal realizations while answering this ask #thank you anon sorry this got out of control i hope my exploits amuse you #some of it i think you just had to be there #also if anyone recognizes these stories shh you didn't see anything #my coworkers had better not see this it would be so embarassing #hylian rambles #hylian does science #anon #asks #thanks anon!#needles tw #i promise proper safety protocols were being followed in all of these stories #the acid involved so. much. ppe.

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semi-imaginary-place · 4 years ago

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thoughts on Nier: Replicant ver. 1.22 Ending E and an explanation for people playing Replicant ver 1.22 going "Oh its that thing from Nier: Automata"

spoilers for ALL of Nier: Replicant ver 1.22, Automata, Drakengard, and Drakengard 3

so let’s start of the beginning. God is evil, that’s the Flower in DoD3 and the angels DoD1. When Caim and Angelus brought the Beast Queen in our world/another iteration of our world, that caused all the problems of Nier. Researchers as we see in the notes on Project Gestalt, the Hamelin Organization, etc. learned to integrate magic from that world into our world’s technology which is how replicant/gestalt and android technology. The big tree you see in Replicant/gestalt is like a cloud storage server that contains the data collected from people from Project Gestalt. Project Gestalt also developed the androids used to manage the whole system. Like 10,000 years or something in the future aliens invade and develop the machines you fight in Automata. The machines continue after the aliens die out and develop a obsession with humanity and replicating humanity. Some way or another the machines managed to get a hold of the data which is what we see in the final endings of Automata.

As such the reason we see the angelic language throughout all of these games is because they all come from the same source and have been transmitted/infected throughout the course of these stories. So to reiterate Caim and Angela brought the Grotesquerie Queen and magic to the Nier world which was then integrated into the technology used in Project Gestalt and thus both the androids and the divine tree. the remnants of gestalt data continued to be used for android development and project yorha and at some point the machines managed to get a hold of it and remade themselves around it in the pursuit of becoming human.

This why in Ending E of Replicant ver 1.22 we see an area that resembles the Copied City shown in Automata, or more accurately the copied city resembles the data within the divine tree because it is data that Adam copied/derived from that original data that was originally stores in the Divine Tree. The Divine Tree stored data on humans from their memories to their personalities to their bodies, but it also stored data on all of human civilization, the world. You can see the cityscape in ending E, its data the Tree has stored on cities of the 21st century.

This is also why the digital environments we see in Replicant ver 1.22′s ending E and the digital environment/hacking zone from Automata look the same. Its like navigating a windows 7 and a windows 10 pc. they mostly work the same because they’re both windows. androids were made as a part of project gestalt and so the androids, the yorha server, and the big tree are running on the same thing. And then the machines copied the androids/corpse of the big tree which is why their hacking space also looks the same.

Its the same with the big flower at the end of Ending E. When I first read that a the end of the short story I remember being like... wat. but yeah same deal is going on.

also. In nier replicant/gestalt some people seem to have confused the robots in that game with the machines in automata. To those people I say remember that nier replicant/gestalt was published many years before automata was even conceptualized, so the writers didn’t know that the term “machine” would gain a very specific definition. the robots in nier were developed alongside the androids. They might not have had the same developers just like an iphone and a boeing 737 don’t share a development origin but they are of the same technological era. Though given the capability for intelligence and emotion that even simple mining security robots like beepy show, maybe robots and androids do share the same origins. idk and its not important. the aliens and thus machines did not come for many thousands of years later. the point is that THE ROBOTS OF NIER HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ALIEN MACHINES OF AUTOMATA.

and now finally to my closing point. coda to my previous posts of what it means to be human and my monogatari series post on which is more valuable the original or the imposter, existence precedes essence. humans are gone and we are all that remains the repeatedly recreated body data that was never meant to gain a will of its own, the human souls whose data will inevitably be corrupted, and the androids who were created in the image of humanity. and then we have the machines who literally have an origin that is out of this world. and the origin doesn’t matter. its the juxtaposition of those lines that are drawn the result in the end. that’s where the oof of 9s finding out yorha and machine cores are the same. the games start us off with the assumption that were is some fundamental underlying difference between human(replicant) and shade, android and machine. but those differences are arbitrary, both shades and replicants are are capable of loving, protecting, hating, and killing. I doesn’t matter that replicants were suppose to be empty shells, that they were never suppose to awaken. That’s why its powerful that we play through the game as something that was never meant to be a person. Then the player realizes that they are fighting the version of the protagonist that they played as in the prologue, because in the end there is no meaningful difference between the two, neither is more right or wrong than the other and neither is less a person than the other and the tragedy of it is that this confrontation will end in the annihilation of one of them.

(oh and last thing, the in lore reason we see nier bosses in the yorha dark apocalypse ffxiv raid series is because memories of those bosses were recorded by nier and kaine and stored in the divine tree who’s data the machines eventually got their hands on.)

#nier #nier automata #drakengard #nier replicant #nier gestalt #nier adam #9s #yoko taro #nier replicant ver 1.22

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gingermintpepper · 4 years ago

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After thinking it over for a bit, I've decided that I might as well do a proper underrated 3DS game rec list. I'm a bit of an ATLUS junkie and that's gonna be pretty disgustingly apparent in this list, but it's not my fault that they released hit after hit and all of them were duly ignored.

Due to tumblr's 10 image limit (and my struggle to keep motivated to do one thing for more than three hours) I'm definitely gonna have to break this up into parts and I'm fairly certain one of these lists is just gonna be MegaTen games lmao but I'd like to let people know about these excellent titles and see if I can't at least get people interested in them so they can get more traction.

So, without further ado:

Some 3DS Games that were criminally slept on (part 1)

Monster Hunter Stories

God, where do I begin with this game. Well, the basics: It's a JRPG spinoff title of the now widely successful and popular Monster Hunter series featuring a different take on interacting with the varied and intricate monsters populating the world: Riders.

Yep, instead of hunting the beasties, you play as a young rider who's completed their intiation ritual and can now bond with 'Monsties' as they've cutely labelled the usually ferocious monsters of the wilds. The great thing is that you still fight Monsters--tons of them in fact but this isn't a paid review and in my humble opinion, the most impressive thing about this game is the visual style. The landscapes, the armour, the way they redesigned and 3DS-ified the classically hyper realistic and monstrous beasts to not only be absolutely adorable but still capable of being intimidating when the time calls for it, the stellar animation of special moves and combination attacks--it's delicious, nutritious, stupendous, I can and will consume it like it's part of my recommended caloric intake.

It's very akin to Pokemon in the way its basic gameplay premise is set up, however, instead of catching--or even indeed befriending--the Monsties in the game, you rummage through their nests and steal their eggs, later hatching them and getting yourself a brand new lightly kidnapped monster pal!

Other general things about the game:

Pros:

The armour and weapon sets for both male and female characters slap along with the general character customisation options. They're incredibly diverse (though limited in body type) and you can switch around traits and features whenever you want from your house.

The POGS--these porkers are everywhere and they serve as tiny little achievements for exploring every odd and end of the world. Also they have little outfits. They're so cute. 🥺🥺

You can actually ride the Monsties. All of em. Or, at least the ones that you have available to be your buddies. They all have exploration skills and traits that not only make exploring much more interesting but encourage you to swap out your active Monstie and play around with your options a bit.

Y'all breeding Monsties is complicated and I live for just how intense and ridiculous you can get with optimal builds for these things.

The story is really competently put together! The characters, character designs and even the internal conflict with your starting trio of characters is really compelling along with the mystery of the blight that's infecting Monsters across the world. It's not anything worth awards but it's compelling and it makes you care about the characters if that's what you're in the market for.

Amazing sound design, expansive world, everything about the presentation of this game oozes that Monster Hunter charm even if the art is cutesier than usual. You'll never get bored of its stellar visual presentation!

Available for around twenty quid on the Google Play store, so if you want, you could actually get the full game on your smartphone or tablet. Note though that it would be a battery nuker.

Cons:

If you're on a regular 3DS, frame rate drops are a given. This game kinda pushes the visual capabilities of the 3DS to its absolute limit--a lot like Okamiden did back on the DS.

One save file :( It's pretty much for the same reason as above but still.

If you're playing as the girl, you can't get male armour and vice versa. Since there's only one save file, you'll never be able to have all of the armour sets in a single playthrough and that's criminal because both of the sets for the genders are absolutely breath-taking, thank you.

I 👏can't 👏make👏my👏 own 👏Palico👏

Multi-player for this game is pretty dead seeing as it's almost five years old by now and never got much press or traction. Usually this wouldn't be an issue - this game is 99% singleplayer and you don't really need to fuss about with multi-player to have fun, but if you want to collect all the Monsties, you'll need it since the only way to get Glavenus is through pvp achievements. :/

Final thoughts: Play it if you find yourself getting tired or disappointed with 3DS Pokemon games but still want something that feels as fantastical as Pokemon. It outshines the 3DS Pokemon games at every turn and I will never be over just how thoughtfully put together and fully realised these games are. Of course, if you've ever played Monster Hunter, then you know just how intensive these games are with the lore, biology, cultures and world of their Monsters but seeing that translated into JRPG format was just very sobering and it's a game that, to this day, continues to awe me with just how much love and attention went into it.

Last note: If you're still unsure about it, there's a demo available on the e-shop of the 3DS that allows you to play through the entire initial area of the game. Your data does carry through to the full release and to give you an idea of how much I've been able to squeeze out of it - my playtime for that demo is currently sitting at 22 hours. Make sure to get a hold of that Cyan-Kut-Ku!

7th Dragon III Code: VFD

The title may sound intimidating but the premise is not! A mysterious disease called Dragon Sickness spread by the Dragonsbane flowers that have cropped up all around the world. You and your team are recruited by the Nodens game company after you display extraordinary prowess in their hit virtual reality game 7th Encount. As you go through the adventure, you are tasked with finding out the truth behind the Dragon Sickness and asked to stop both it and the Dragons that are destroying the world.

This game is fun. It's another turn-based JRPG however, in this game you create all of your characters yourself from the myriad of classes available to you from the jump. Different classes of course have very different specialisations - Samurai focus on high powered cutting damage with their swords, Duelists are summoners who can influence the element of the battlefield as well as summon monsters from each element, Agents can hack into your enemies and inflict a barrage of nasty ailments, just to name a few - and you are given three teams of three characters each to experiment with different team comps and find the balance that works for you. There's also a wide variety of Dragons to hunt and kill in the game, which directly affects how infected your world is with the Dragon Sickness causing Dragonsbane. Along the way you will also come into contact with many interesting characters, concepts and confrontations that will make the task of saving the world all the more imperative.

Pros

1. The character creator and differing classes give way for tons of experimenting and playing around with your own unique approach to combat and carrying out your missions. Granted, 'character creation' is generous, it's little more than palatte swaps but the classes are really where VFD shines. Eight main classes may not sound like a lot, but the expaniveness of the character skills, their synergy with their fellow classes and the uniqueness of some of the classes in and of itself allows for so much flexibility and creativity in approaches to even tougher bosses. It also encourages the switching about of your party members to really finagle with the options available to you.

2. God this game is pretty. The locations, the character art, the creature design - all of it is gorgeous and this game capitalises on every bit of the 3DS's presentation limitations as it can.

3. You can romance anything and everyone - yes, you can even be gay/lesbian/poly in this game. In fact, one of the main characters - Julietta - is gnc and he's a constant source of joy as well one of my personal favourite characters, right behind Yuma.

4. Exploration is very very forgiving as the game has healing spots and teleport nodes all over the world to allow for quick, seamless travel between quest points without feeling like anything is too much of a hassle. There are also special enemies that allow for quick grinding as well as quick farming of money. In general, the game does a really good job of making sure that the grind is never unbearable or inconsiderate of your time.

Cons:

1. This is the fourth game in a series the West has never seen any other title for, and from the looks of it, will probably never see any other titles for. Because of that, there are some elements that may seem confusing or revelations in the plot that may seem to come out of nowhere.

2. While the visuals are great, the OST of this one is pretty short making for a lot of reused soundtracks that can get really annoying if you're like me and need your audio to be interesting or consistent so it doesn't distract you too much.

3. This one isn't really a con but it is divisive: This game gets pretty difficult at times. A few of the main dragon enemies including and especially the final boss can give you a serious run for your money in the annoy-o-meter in terms of the kind of absolute JRPG fuckery they can pull out of their magic bag of bullshit movesets and while I generally enjoy that kind of thing, I know it's not for everyone. Most regular combat shouldn't be too tricky once you have a team comp that works well together but you also need to pay attention since the same team that carries you to victory one time might be worth beans against another dragon.

Final thoughts: This is... a really good game. Interesting story, really interesting characters, pretty world and a battle system that really makes you sit down and think. There's also a demo for this available in the e-shop and while your data doesn't carry over - you do receive multiple perks for carrying over your demo data including some exclusive items that, while not game breaking, do help a ton in the early stages of the game.

This isn't a final list by any stretch of the word; I only have the energy to do these two right now, but the next games up for coverage are Ever Oasis and Stella Glow! If you're interested in my full plan of games I want to cover here then my current lineup includes: Theatrhythm: Curtain Call, Project Mirai: Deluxe, Culdecept Revolt, Alliance Alive, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Etrian Odyssey V, Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse.

Finally, if anyone has played any of the games I mention, cover or plan to cover PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME, I AM SO LONELY IN MY FORTRESS OF SAND. On a serious note, I'd love to hear what other people who've played these games think!

Thanks for reading,

-Ginger

PS: @feralpeacock Because a million years ago, on my first underrated games post, you asked that I remember you. :D

#ginger rambles #ginger talks about video games #monster hunter stories #monster hunter #code dragon iii vfd #video games #3ds #underrated games #These take so much energy to make holy shit #There are so many more amazing 3ds games I could talk about #But I legit just don't have the braincells for #Also I know Apocalypse probably has the biggest audience that played it out of all the games listed #But it's criminally underrated because it was different #So it's probably going to get it's own little review thing #Yeehaw

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